Horror on the ruby x, p.9
Horror on the Ruby X, page 9
“That’s a ridiculous question,” she said, finally.
“I suppose it is.” Patrick was casual. “But, Miss Fraser, Mrs. Mackenzie is a very kind and sympathetic woman. You know that.” The eyes glowered. “She took Joel Chapman out of the kindness of her heart. He was ill. He’d never had a home. He didn’t know who his father was and his mother died in prison because she peddled narcotics.” Cousin Ada set her considerable jaws. “And Laurie Brent is indebted to her because she helped her finish school. Laurie’s father went to prison.”
Cousin Ada stood up and crossed the room to pick up her knitting. When she came back she didn’t sit down. Patrick had risen when she did and I rose now. She said, “You apparently know more about some things than I do, young man. They are none of my business. You must go now. I must retire.”
“Just one more question. Do you recall the name of any police detective who investigated John Mackenzie’s death?”
Her reply was to stride to the door and open it. We thanked her for letting us come. Patrick suggested that she keep her door locked. She snapped that she always did. She closed the door very firmly after us.
“Well, did you learn anything?” I whispered.
“A little. Let’s go out that way.”
“That’s the hall door they keep locked.”
“I don’t know enough about the house. I’ve been meaning to ask Alan to show us around. No chance.” He turned the key in the lock of the door they kept closed, at the opposite end of the hall from the one which opened into the living room. I heard a rustle and glanced back. Gloria Wyatt, in a quilted taffeta robe, was leaving Gina’s sitting room. She walked toward the living-room door without turning her head.
Before we had closed the hall door Cousin Ada came out of her room and without comment turned the key in the door on her side after we’d gone through it into a small hall.
The hall was more like a vestibule, with the door which led from the dining room and a third, open on another long passage. Patrick went ahead along the passage. Three bedrooms opened from it, all to the right, so that the windows would not overlook the rest of the house, but the open country to the south and west.
The first room looked like a guest room. David’s probably. A suitcase with airplane tags lay open on a rack at the foot of the bed. It, too, had its own bath. The next was Joel’s. It was in disorder and, though not a studio, it had a clutter of paints and canvases about, and smelled of turpentine. Some unframed canvases in various stages of completion hung or stood around, any old way, and the bed, the single divan kind with a dark cover, was mussed as if someone had lain there after it was made up. The last and best room was Alan’s.
It was a big room with big windows, an attractive room with heavy dark oak furniture, a brown carpet, pale walls and curtains in the same pale shade. The windows occupied almost all the south and west walls. The curtains weren’t drawn and the snow, still falling, was drifting on the sills outside. In one corner was a fireplace in which a fire was burning. A large desk stood to the right of the fireplace. There was an odd smell in the room. I was looking at the photographs on the desk when Patrick moved the fire screen and fished a small something from the fireplace. He dropped on his knees and sniffed at some spots on the hearth.
He jumped up abruptly and stuck whatever he’d picked up into his pocket and was calmly studying a landscape painting on the east wall when Alan asked angrily from the door, “What the hell goes on?”
Chapter Eleven
Patrick stepped toward the fire. Alan stood just inside the room. He was so furiously angry that he had to choke back whatever he started to say first. Words would not come. He avoided me altogether.
“This demands an explanation!”
Patrick said easily, after lighting a cigarette, “I told you this afternoon that if I came here I would ask questions you would not like. I should have said I’d do unpleasant things, too. There’s no choice.”
“That’s beside the point. I can’t see why your being asked to this house this afternoon gives you the privilege of prowling and prying in private bedrooms. You certainly owe me an explanation and an apology for coming to my room without consulting me.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
Alan took a lunge toward Patrick, who sidestepped. Alan got hold of himself and stood back when I said, “There was a queer smell in this room, Alan. Something was burning. When we came into that little hall outside the dining room we smelled it and came to see what it was.”
This wasn’t exactly true, of course, but Alan frowned and asked, “Well, what was it?”
“Can’t you still smell it?”
He didn’t reply. Patrick took the thing he’d fished from the fireplace, unfolded the handkerchief which swathed it, and held it up for Alan to see. He wrapped it up and returned it to his pocket.
“A leather bag has been recently burned in your fireplace. Kerosene from that little three-legged pot on the hearth was poured on it to hasten its destruction.”
Alan grunted, still angry, “That’s what the pot’s for. Kerosene is needed for starting the fire.”
“The bag-burner was in a great hurry. If you’ll sniff at those damp-looking spots on the hearth you’ll see that he splashed the kerosene around. Probably from haste. Who was it, Alan? Who burned the bag?”
Alan shrugged. He wanted a cigarette, declined one of Pat’s and helped himself to his own brand from a carton on his desk.
“I don’t know what kind of snide deal this is, but it doesn’t explain why you’ve been barging into one bedroom after another.” How did he know that? “If a leather bag was burned in here, it was burned. It’s none of your business.”
“It was a Hopi snake bag.”
Alan’s dark grim face was closed and obstinate.
“Alan, why did you burn the bag? It was a valuable piece of evidence.” He made no reply. Patrick patted his pocket. “Luckily we rescued this bit of one of the drawstrings. The fact that it was burned in your private fireplace is probably a more important piece of evidence than the bag itself. Why did you do it?” Again Alan hunched as if to take a lunge at Patrick. Apparently he thought better of it. He stood back a pace or two and said, in a surly tone, “What right have you to go to my mother’s room and insult her the way you did?”
“Weren’t you in the living room when she sent Tom Smith to ask Jean to come to her bedroom?”
“She asked Jean. Not you. And Jean’s language was insulting and unnecessary. My mother is shocked and hurt.”
“Have you any idea what your mother said to me, Alan?” I asked.
Patrick shook his head at me. He was afraid I would tell Alan that his mother had said that Alan had killed his wife, and over a year later the man Refugio because he knew the truth about Ruby’s death.
“My mother told me what she said. I can’t see that that gave you cause to criticize and insult her. She is an older woman, even though she does not look her age. She is your hostess here. Also, she didn’t include Pat when she asked you there, and he stood outside and eavesdropped. Gina is gravely offended.”
“Nuts,” I said.
Patrick said, “Have you entirely forgotten your anxiety for Laurie Brent?”
“She’s in the living room. With Mike Carreras, my brother David, Tom Smith, and occasionally Jim Trask. She is certainly in no danger now. The rattler was terrifying, but you know as well as I do that if she had been bitten we could haye taken measures to prevent the bite being fatal. Much too much fuss has been made about that snake.”
“But why did you burn the Hopi bag?”
Alan evaded answering. “After you left, my mother was so upset when she told me what you had said and done that I decided to beat hell out of you. Couldn’t find you. Learned then that you were with Cousin Ada. For God’s sake, why?”
“Who told you? Gloria?” I asked, but Pat shook his head at me and said, “Your mother made certain statements about your father’s death. I thought we should have Miss Fraser’s version.”
“What the hell? He killed himself many years ago. Don’t you know how hard that was for my mother? And for Cousin Ada, too. If …”
“Why are you so sure it was suicide?”
“Because it was. The police investigated. Looked into every angle. Closed the case. I won’t have you dragging that up and making my mother suffer all over again. It has absolultely nothing to do with what has gone on here, and it’s none of your business.”
“Murder,” Patrick said deliberately, “is everybody’s business.”
Alan flicked his head back and in pure exasperation said, “Did Cousin Ada tell you that my father was murdered?”
Patrick’s eyes opened innocently.
“No—o. She said that she found him after he …”
“I found him!”
“You were only three years old,” I put in.
“That’s right. I was alone in a room they called the sun room. I heard a loud pop. I ran through the dining room to a short hall between the main hall and my father’s den. He was sitting with his head on his desk. There was a little black hole in his right temple. His right arm hung down and there was a revolver on the floor. I was too little to know what it meant. I stooped to pick up the gun and Cousin Ada ran in, screamed, grabbed up the gun herself, and me, and took me out of the room.”
“Spoiling any prints on the gun?”
“I told you the police investigated. Somebody tipped them off that it might be murder. Pure maliciousness. Nothing else.”
“How do you account for your father’s will? Why, when you were only three years old, should he leave in trust for you the bulk of his estate?”
Alan shrugged his shoulders and put out his cigarette.
“Much as I love Gina I know she is not practical. I guess my father thought he might as well take a chance on me.”
“It was a good guess, wasn’t it? You’re supposed to be very rich.”
Alan said, in a defeated tone, “I’ve got land. Too much land. I’ve overextended my acreage and cut myself short on money for operating the ranch. If I’d had a lucky oil strike, like Cousin Ada, and money coming in regularly, I’d be sitting pretty. But I’m land-poor. My father was certainly a better businessman than I am.”
“You may strike uranium,” I said. “They do all the time around here.”
Alan’s half-smile was not because he was amused. He was still very angry. He seemed more to be playing for time. Why?
Patrick said, “I noticed one of those roadside zoos on Route 66 near Gallup. One of those places which keeps wildcats and porcupines and rattlesnakes to lure tourists. I wonder if one could buy a snake at such a place?”
“I couldn’t care less!” Alan stormed. “I wish I’d never asked you to come here. You’re doing no good and you’re stirring up trouble for everybody. The minute the snow lets up you get out. And stay out.”
Patrick met the smoldering eyes coolly.
“Nope. We’ve cut ourselves in till it’s over, Alan. Sorry.”
Alan went over and sat down at his desk. He rested his face in his hands. Patrick signaled me to leave the room. He followed. In the dining room I said, “I’ve suspected all along he is back of everything, Pat. He is a strange inverted character. I’m afraid he’ll kill himself.”
“I’d like a strong shot of Scotch,” Patrick said.
“Have you no feeling? He is your friend.”
“Was.” Patrick opened the door and we entered the living room. The fire was gay. Lauren and David were chatting and laughing on cushions they had placed before the fire. Mike Carreras sat within arm’s reach of the Navajo knives on the refectory table.
Patrick poured us drinks at the portable bar and asked Mike about Trask. He’d gone to the garages, he said, to search the trunks of the various cars. Mike had no idea where Tom Smith had gone, or Joel Chapman, but thought maybe to the kitchen since Chapman had said he was hungry. Gloria, David offered then, had gone back to his mother, in Gina’s rooms.
The front door burst open. Trask lunged in, pushing the Navajo ahead of him.
“Get over to that stool!” he thundered. “If you leave this house again you’ll get a slug, and I won’t be particular where.”
Tom Smith went to his hassock. He sat down. His face was much improved. All the swelling was gone from his nose and the damaged eyelid looked much better. Herbs? If the sheriff’s threats disturbed him he showed no sign of it.
“David,” Trask said, “go ask your mother to come out here.”
David got up and gave Lauren a hand to rise and put the cushions on the sofa.
“Must she be disturbed again, Jim?”
“I guess so. Where’s Alan?”
“In the kitchen, I think. He said something about coffee.”
“Pat, you get him. I want Chapman here, too. I’ve got news for everybody. I want everybody here.”
As he said it Cousin Ada, dressed as when we had been in her room, entered by the door which led to her hall. She closed the door and walked to the fireplace. All six feet of her was set with resolve. She wore the terrifying glasses.
“I have come to make a statement,” she said. “Where’s Georgina? Where’s Alan? I met David and he’ll be right back. I must have all the family here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Trask said. “Sit down, ma’am.”
“I prefer to stand.”
“This may take some time, ma’am.”
“I’m the judge of that, Sheriff. I’ll stand.”
Everybody came at once. Joel Chapman wore a gaudy Hollywood shirt, with the tail outside his jeans. Alan and Patrick followed Joel from the dining room. David, Gina and Gloria came from their wing. Gina was again in her black sweater and slacks. Gloria was glamorous in the taffeta house coat. Gina sat down in her chair. Gloria got a cushion and sat down beside Gina and pressed her little hand to her cheek. Her make-up must have been on solid. It didn’t rub off.
Trask said, “Please take a chair, Miss Fraser.”
“I shall stand. Now everyone is here, I certainly don’t want it said that I said what I am going to say behind anybody’s back.”
Trask tumbled some tools out of a piece of burlap onto the table beside the Navajo knives.
Cousin Ada continued. “The Bible says, Thou shalt not bear false witness. I have been guilty. I can only atone by telling the truth now.”
“Found these in the trunk of that Doretti,” Trask said. He glared at Tom Smith. “Just what did you figure to do with them? Lose them somewhere?”
“What on earth are they?” Gina asked.
Cousin Ada said, “I had the floor first, Sheriff. You will kindly wait until I make my statement. I’ve been too long coming to this decision to let you put me off now.”
“Two wrenches and a hacksaw,” Trask boomed.
“Ada,” Gina cried. “I forbid you …”
“You forbid me? You?” Cousin Ada’s nostrils vibrated like those of an outraged horse. “You border-town trash! You wicked, godless, selfish woman! You killed your husband. You’ll do anything to keep Alan from marrying that nice Laurie. She’s not pretty, but …”
“Oh, shut up!” Gina shrieked. “Alan, stop her!”
“I don’t think this is quite the time to talk about private things, Cousin Ada. Why not wait …”
“Why wait?” yakked Joel Chapman. “Tell us all, Cousin Ada, honey.”
“Look at that one!” Cousin Ada shook a finger at Gloria. “Not a brain in her head. Painted like a hussy. But she’s got money….”
“Miss Fraser,” Trask said, patiently. “These two wrenches and this hacksaw …”
“Sit down, dear,” David said.
Cousin Ada lifted her old head in proud defeat. She said, as she stalked out, “I’ve waited half of my life to tell the truth. But I’m not allowed to do it because of two wrenches and a hacksaw.”
Chapter Twelve
In the brief silence which followed Cousin Ada’s departure it seemed to me that all eyes were on Lauren Brent. A blush had colored her smooth complexion rosy. Her thick, short, straight, gold-bronze hair gleamed in the light of the lamp on the table beside her. Her dark blue eyes were veiled behind her eyelids, and her lips trembled slightly, perhaps from amusement at Cousin Ada’s somewhat militant admiration. Why did men find her so attractive? They looked at her with immediate warmth and you might even say affection. But definitely she was no beauty. She was womanly, that was it, and she didn’t talk too much, and when she did she spoke in a low and lovely voice.
Alan was watching her. The dark eyes which had glared at us in such anger, were imploring. David’s bright face was brighter when his blue eyes rested on Lauren Brent. The sheriff was respectful. And Patrick made no secret of his admiration for the girl. Yet she had said and done nothing. Their attention was drawn to her now because she’d been the target for Cousin Ada’s embarrassing praise.
Gloria Wyatt batted her eyelashes and patted Gina Mackenzie’s hand. Cousin Ada’s opinion had not jarred her vanity.
Gina said, “Alan, Ada has to go. I simply cannot put up with her any longer.”
“If you wish it, dear.”
David said, “Of course. We’ll handle it for you, Gina.”
“My good sons!” Gina sighed.
Joel Chapman said, “Like hell you’ll let her go, Gina, darling. Think of all her money. So long as you have her around you won’t have to give up hope.”
“It’s no joke, Joel,” David said. “She’s going crazy.”
“Crazy like a fox!” snorted Joel.
The sheriff said, his sarcasm thick, “If you all have finished what you have to say we’ll get on with what we’re here for. You see these wrenches and this hacksaw. I figure one of these wrenches was used to remove the bolt so that the Pitman arm fell off the Abbotts’ car. The hacksaw sawed through the cable which carries the brake fluid. Therefore the brakes failed. These tools have been wiped clean of any fingerprints before they were put in the trunk of that Doretti car. I aim to get at the bottom of this if I have to stay here till kingdom come.” All faces looked blank or puzzled, even Joel’s, as Trask pounced on the Indian. “Tom Smith, do you recognize these tools?”
