Nightshades nd-12 Page 7

  Definitely an oddball, I thought. Musket Creek seemed to be full of them, all right. But Penrose, at least, had my sympathy; the strain of coping with physical deformities like his was enough to throw anybody a little out of whack.

  “That was a dreadful pun,” he said. “Gary can’t help it if he’s retarded; I don’t know what makes me so cruel sometimes. I apologize. No one should make fun of others, should they.” It wasn’t a question, so he didn’t wait for a response. He went on, “What else did the boy tell you? Did he say anything about the Northern Development Corporation?”

  Kerry simulated a blank look that would have got her thrown out of any acting school in the country. But again, Penrose didn’t notice; he still wasn’t looking at her, except for brief sidelong eye-flicks whenever she spoke. “No,” she said, “he didn’t. Is that something we should know about?”

  “Yes. Oh yes. If they have their way you won’t want to move here.” He paused. “But I’m forgetting my manners. I haven’t many visitors, you see. Would you like to come in?”

  Kerry said, “Yes, thanks. That would be nice.”

  So Penrose stepped aside and we went in. The interior of the cabin-just one big room-was furnished sparsely with mismatched secondhand items and strewn with books. Against the back wall was a long table with a typewriter, a bunch of papers, and an unlit candle on it. The candle caught and held my attention. It was fat, it was stuck inside a wooden bowl, and it was purple-the same color purple as the one I’d found at the burned-out ghosts.

  I went over to the table for a closer look. When Kerry finished declining Penrose’s offer of a cup of coffee I said to him, “That’s a nice candle you’ve got there.”

  “Candle?” he said blankly.

  “I wouldn’t mind having one like it.” I gave Kerry a pointed look. “We collect candles, don’t we, dear.”

  “Yes, that’s right. We do.”

  “Did you get it locally?” I asked Penrose.

  “From a widow lady who lives here, yes.”

  “May I ask her name?”

  “Ella Bloom. She makes them; it’s her hobby.”

  “Just purple ones? Or other colors too?”

  “Just purple. Her favorite color.”

  “Does she sell them to anyone besides you?”

  “Oh, I didn’t buy it from her. She gave it to me. She doesn’t make them to sell.”

  “Does she give them away to everyone around here?”

  “Yes. Everyone. Maybe she’ll give one to you, if you ask her. Her house is right near the mercantile.”

  So much for the purple-candle angle.

  I steered Penrose back to the topic of Northern Development, and this time he managed to stay on it without getting sidetracked. He launched into a two-minute diatribe against the developers and what he called “the warped values of modern society.” He didn’t seem quite as militant as Robideaux and Mrs. Bloom, but then he didn’t know I was a detective.

  I said, “Isn’t there anything that can be done to stop them, Mr. Penrose?”

  “Well, we’ve hired attorneys, you know, and they’ve filed suit to block the sale of the land. There’s nothing else to be done until the suit comes to trial.”

  “Have you tried appealing to the Northern people? To get them to modify their plans?”

  “Oh yes. They won’t listen to us. Awful people. The head of the company was an insensitive swine.”

  “Was?”

  “He died a few days ago,” Penrose said, with a hint of relish in his voice. “A tragic accident.”

  “What sort of accident?”

  “He went to blazes.” Penrose did his barking sea-lion number again. This time he didn’t look quite so embarrassed when the noise stopped. “One shouldn’t speak lightly of the dead, should one,” he said.

  “You mean he died in a fire?”

  “Yes. In Redding.”

  “That’s a coincidence,” I said.

  “Coincidence?”

  “You had a fire here recently. We noticed the burned-out buildings on the way through.”

  “Oh, that. It was only four of the ghosts.”

  “Another accident?”

  He didn’t answer the question. Instead he said, “I told the others they should have let the fire spread, let it purge the other ghosts as well, but they wouldn’t listen. A pity.”

  Kerry said, “You wanted all the buildings to burn up?”

  “All the ghosts, yes.”

  “But why?”

  “They’re long dead; cremation is fitting and overdue,” he said. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

  I said, “Shouldn’t the buildings be preserved for historical reasons? After all, this was once a Gold Rush camp-”

  “Definitely not. The past is dead; requiescat in pace. Resurrection breeds tourists.” He smiled, rubbed his bulbous nose, and repeated the phrase as if he liked the sound of it: “Resurrection breeds tourists.”

  “Does everybody in Musket Creek feel the same way?”

  “Oh, yes. Leave us alone, they say. Let us live and let us die, all in good time.”

  “So that’s why nobody here ever tried to restore any of the buildings,” Kerry said.

  “Just so,” Penrose agreed. “Natural history is relevant; the history of man is often irrelevant. You see?”

  I asked, “How do you suppose the fire got started? The one here, I mean.”

  “Does it matter, Mr. Wade?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “Curiosity kills cats and lays ghosts,” he said, and cut loose with his laugh again. Listening to it, and to his slightly whacky comments, was making me a little uncomfortable. I get just as nervous around unarmed oddballs as I do around those with weapons.

  “Is it possible somebody set the fire deliberately?” I asked him. “Somebody who feels as you do about cremating the ghosts?”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Penrose’s mean little eyes narrowed, and when he spoke again his voice had lost its friendliness. “I think you’d better leave now. I have work to do.”

  Kerry said, “Couldn’t we talk a while longer, Mr. Penrose? I really would like to know more about-”

  “No,” he said. “No. Come back and visit me again if you decide to move here. But I don’t think you should; it’s probably too late. Good-bye.”

  There was nothing for us to do but leave. We went out onto the platform deck, and Kerry thanked him for talking to us, and he said gruffly, “Not at all,” and banged the door shut behind us.

  On the way down the stairs she said, “Why do you always have to be so damned blunt?”

  “He was getting on my nerves.”

  “We could have found out more if you’d been a little more tactful.”

  “We? ‘Bill and Kerry Wade, from San Francisco.’ Christ!”

  “It got him to talk to us, didn’t it?”

  “All right, so it got him to talk to us.”

  “Which is more than you accomplished with your direct approach to Mrs. Bloom,” she said. “You probably blurted out that you’re a detective to Gary Coleclaw and that artist, Robideaux, too. No wonder they wouldn’t tell you anything.”

  “Listen, don’t tell me how to do my job.”

  “I’m not. I’m only suggesting-”

  “Don’t suggest. I didn’t bring you along to do any suggesting.”

  “No, I know why you brought me along. Women are only good for one thing, right?”

  “Oh for God’s sake, I didn’t mean-”

  “You can be a macho jerk sometimes, you know that? You think you know everything.”

  She got into the car and sat there with her arms folded, staring straight ahead. I wanted to say something else to her, but I didn’t seem to have any words. The thing was, she was right. I had handled things badly with Penrose, and with Gary Coleclaw and Robideaux and Mrs. Bloom. And with Kerry, too. It was just one of those days when you can’t seem to get the proper handle on how to deal with anybody. But it galled me to have t
o admit it, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Which was silly and petulant, but it was also a pride thing, however much of a macho jerk it made me. Kerry wasn’t the detective here, damn it; I was.

  A half-mile farther along there was another homesteader’s cabin, this one owned by a family named Butterfield, but I was in no frame of mind for another Musket Creek interview. I drove back into the valley. When we came to the Coleclaw place I looked it over for some indication that Jack Coleclaw and his wife had returned from Weaverville. There wasn’t any-no automobiles, no people, not even any sign of the fat yapping brown-and-white dog. So there was no point in stopping there either.

  I kept on driving up the road and out of Ragged-Ass Gulch.

  CHAPTER NINE

  There was a message waiting for me at the Sportsman’s Rest. And it surprised me a little when I saw who it was from: Mrs. Helen O‘Daniel. She had called about ten o’clock, left a telephone number and an address, and asked that I either get in touch with her by phone or drop by any time this afternoon. She hadn’t said what it was she wanted. Or, for that matter, how she’d known where I was staying, although she’d probably got that information from her husband or from Shirley Irwin.

  I ruminated for about ten seconds and decided to go see her in person. I wanted a look at the lady, for one thing; and I wanted to find out if there was anything to Penny Belson’s intimations of an affair between her and Munroe Randall. You can’t bring up delicate matters like that on the telephone, or even do any subtle probing. Telephones are blunt instruments in more ways than one, especially among strangers.

  The address she’d given me was a number on Sky Vista Road; that was a ritzy section up in the hills west of town, the motel clerk told me. I got directions from her and then returned to the room to tell Kerry where I was going. She said, “I hope you don’t make an ass of yourself with her too.” I sighed and went out and got into the car and drove away feeling grumpy.

  It took me half an hour to find Sky Vista Road and the O’Daniel house. It was one of these split-level jobs built into the side of a hill, made out of redwood-and-brick with waves of ivy clinging to it. There was a covered platform deck that served as a garage, and parked on it was a lemon-colored Porsche with a personalized license plate that said FAST UN. You couldn’t see the back end of the house from the road, because of the way it was built and because of oak and pepper trees that crowded in close on both sides; but you knew there would be wide balconies on at least two levels, with a sweeping view of the town and the mountains and Mt. Shasta in the distance.

  I found a dirt turnaround to park in nearby, walked back and down some stairs to the front porch. A little card above the bell read: NO SOLICITORS. I pushed the bell anyway and stood there waiting.

  The door opened before long and I was looking at the woman in the photograph on Frank O’Daniel’s desk. The dark hair was piled up on her head and fastened with a barrette; she was wearing a tank top and a pair of white shorts that revealed a lot of skin the color of burnt butter. She had very good legs.

  She let me look her over for about five seconds, while she did the same to me. I was more impressed by what I saw than she was, but not by much. Her expression was even more snooty than it had seemed in the photograph.

  She said finally, “Yes? May I help you?”

  “If you’re Helen O’Daniel, maybe you can,” I said, and I told her who I was.

  The name worked a kind of metamorphosis on her. The snootiness vanished, her mouth got smiley, she put a hand up to touch her hair; she went a little soft-looking, too, at least around the edges. She wanted to do all of that slowly and subtly, so it didn’t look like she was putting it on just for me. But she wasn’t good at that sort of thing. It all seemed to come at once, like a quick-change artist shedding one costume for another: within the space of two heartbeats I was looking at a completely different version of Helen O’Daniel. I doubted if I was going to like the second one any better than the first.

  “Forgive me,” she said, “I didn’t mean to sound rude. It’s just that there have been so many interruptions today… and I wasn’t sure if you’d call first…”

  “I probably should have,” I said, “but your message said to drop by.”

  “No, it’s perfectly all right. I’m glad you did. Come in-we’ll talk out on the deck.”

  She led me through a maze of white, hairy-looking furniture, suspended mobiles made out of silver doodads and colored glass, big tropical plants with thick trembly leaves that had the malevolent look of carnivores. Most of that stuff was in a massive living room or family room or whatever they call them. Part of its outer wall was made of sliding glass, open now; the other part was a brick fireplace with some weird abstract paintings mounted above the mantel. The deck beyond was about what I’d expected: a wide balcony complete with a tinted-glass sunroof and a view that had probably added another twenty thousand to the price of the house.

  Mrs. O’Daniel stopped in the middle of the room and faced me again. “I was just about to have a gin and tonic,” she said. “Will you join me?”

  “Thanks, no.”

  “Something else, then? I have just about everything…”

  “Nothing right now.”

  “Well. Excuse me just a second?”

  “Sure.”

  She went out of the room through a doorway beyond the fireplace, rolling her hips a little the way she had on the way in. It wasn’t an exaggerated roll, but I thought that it was deliberate. Whatever her reasons, Helen O’Daniel was about as subtle as an elephant’s hind end.

  I decided I didn’t want to keep on standing there like another piece of furniture. Besides which, the nearest tropical plant seemed to be looking at me in a hungry sort of way. So I went and examined one of the hairy items. It was large, it was oddly shaped, it had tufts of white furry stuff sticking out of it. It looked like nothing so much as a giant rabbit that had been decapitated, stuffed, and turned into a chair.

  Helen O’Daniel was still out in the kitchen; I could hear her rattling ice. I wandered over to the fireplace for a closer look at the weird paintings. One of them was tolerable: it had a sort of design and at least its riot of colors-reds and blues and blacks-didn’t clash. The other one looked like somebody had vomited up a purplish succotash and stirred it around on canvas with a stick. Things like this made me glad I was a lowbrow and didn’t know the first thing about art. A name was scrawled in one corner, and idle curiosity about who had perpetrated such a piece of crap made me lean down and peer at it. Only then my curiosity quit being idle and I wasn’t thinking about art any more.

  The name of the artist was Paul Robideaux.

  Mrs. O’Daniel came back just then, carrying a tall glass. She saw me standing in front of the painting, blinked, and came to a standstill. Her face didn’t show much, though, not even when I pointed to Robideaux’s atrocity and said, “Nice piece of work here. I was just admiring it.”

  “Yes. It’s quite good, isn’t it.”

  “Local artist?”

  “I imagine so. I bought it at a crafts fair a year or so ago. Shall we go out on the deck?”

  I considered pushing the topic a little further, maybe coming right out and asking her if she knew Robideaux, but it didn’t seem to be the way to handle her. And I’d made enough mistakes by being blunt today as it was. So I shrugged and said, “Sure,” and we went out on the deck.

  A chaise lounge had been pulled out near the balcony railing, to catch the last of the sun as it passed over to the west; Mrs. O’Daniel sat on that. The only other chair in sight was a Chinese rattan thing with a fanlike back and a narrow seat that looked uncomfortable. And was.

  She said, “You’re wondering why I wanted to talk to you, of course. It’s nothing earthshaking. My husband and I were talking at dinner last night and he mentioned you were here investigating poor Munroe’s death for the insurance company, talking to people who knew him, that sort of thing, and that we should all cooperate in any way we can in order
to get the matter settled as quickly as possible.”

  Some sentence. Some Mrs. O’Daniel, too. She had a better reason than that for wanting to see me; and I had a pretty fair idea what it might be. She hadn’t had dinner with her husband last night, either, or found out about me that way. He’d reminded her on the phone yesterday that he was leaving from the office for some lake in the area, to spend the weekend on a houseboat.

  But I said, “You knew Mr. Randall pretty well, did you?”

  “Oh yes. I met him when Frank and I were married several years ago. His death was a terrible shock.”

  “I’m sure it was.”

  “Such a tragic accident,” she said. She had lowered her voice a couple of octaves and given it a sepulchral tremor; it sounded only about half sincere, like an undertaker sympathizing with somebody else’s loss. “That garage of his… well, it was an awful firetrap. I don’t know how many times Frank and I warned him to clean it up.”

  I said something noncommittal.

  “The police said that’s where the fire started-in the garage. Spontaneous combustion. I suppose your findings concur with that?”

  “So far they do, yes.”

  “So far? You mean you think the fire might have started somewhere in the house?”

  “I mean it’s possible the cause wasn’t spontaneous combustion.”

  She took a large bite out of her gin and tonic; she looked vaguely uneasy now. “I can’t imagine what could have caused it then,” she said.

  “A match, maybe.”

  “Match? You don’t mean arson?”

  “It’s possible. I haven’t ruled it out yet.”

  “But that’s absurd!”

  “Your husband doesn’t think so. Neither does Martin Treacle.”

  “They don’t believe the fire was deliberately set.”

  “They admitted the possibility.”

  “I don’t believe it either. It was an accident.”

  I waited, not saying anything.

  Pretty soon she said, “Those people in Musket Creek… are they the ones you suspect?”

  “I don’t suspect anyone, Mrs. O’Daniel. Not yet anyhow.” I paused. “But it could be one of them; they all seem to have had good reason to hate Randall.”