longest. I decided I would kill him when I got through the job in Paulton. That made me feel better. I started the engine and drove away. For a long time I could see the neon sign, Tony's, through the rear mirror.
CHAPTER FOUR
IT GOT really hot again in the morning. I kicked the sheet off the bed, but that didn't do any good. It was too hot to sleep. My watch said nine o'clock. I got up and peered at myself in the mirror. My face wasn't so bad. There was a blue mark on one cheekbone, and a swollen lip. I cursed Pug Banta again, but I hadn't forgotten I had my own business first. My own and then Oke Johnson's. Somebody would toast for that. I hoped it was Pug Banta. That would tie everything up nice.
I thought about Oke. He'd been killed by a bullet from a rifle with a silencer. That didn't sound like a crime of passion, as the newspapers say. What I'd told the chief about husbands not keeping rifles with silencers in the closet was right. Somebody smart and cold-blooded killed Oke, and h could only have been because of our case.
I shaved and put on a white linen suit and sent four dirty shirts to the laundry and went down to the air- cooled coffee shop. I ordered the sixty-cent club breakfast, with ham and eggs and corn bread. The waitress gave me the Paulton Morning Mail. It didn't have anything about Oke's death that I didn't know. My name was mentioned at the bottom of the story. The name Karl Craven, that is. I was a friend of Oke's, according to the police.
I didn't like the story. It meant somebody might take a shot at me with that silenced rifle. Maybe they'd wait, though, to see how much I knew. I'd worry along.
I drove around the town in the Drive-It sedan for a while. There was a haze over everything and the air was hot and still. I found a cop and asked him how to get to the Vineyard. He told me. I drove past the brick school and followed the car-line. Pretty soon I saw the vineyards. They ran up a range of low hills, broken in spots by flower and vegetable gardens and trees, and disappeared over the crests of the hills a couple of miles away. Green grapes hung from the vines. The road ran between low brick walls, but from the sedan I could see people working in the vegetable gardens. They were mostly women, in bright-coloured clothes that looked like Rumanian or Hungarian peasant costumes. Some of the women had red bandanas on their heads.
I came to a big gate with a metal sign over it: THE VINEYARD. Up to the left I saw the buildings. The gates were open and I drove in. There were two big live-story buildings, two smaller ones, all of them of brick, and a big marble temple. That was where Solomon lay in state. I'd read about it in the American Weekly. They bad embalmed him like Lenin and had put him in a glass coffin where the people could look at him. They were waiting for the Day of Judgment, when Solomon would jump out and lend his people to heaven in a flaming catafalque. That's what the story said, a flaming catafalque, but I never found out what in hell that was.
I drove past the temple and parked in front of one of the smaller buildings. There were some other cars parked there. I got out of the sedan and started to go into the building. A tall guy in a white blouse and black trousers stopped me. He wore boots over the trousers.
“Only on Sunday are tourists allowed, brother, he said.
“I'm not a tourist,” I said.
“What do you want?”
He looked damned unfriendly. His hair had been cropped close almost shaved,- and that made his bushy eyebrows seem queer. His eyes were deep-set and they looked as though they had been mascaraed. “I want to see Penelope Grayson.”
He hadn't been paying much attention to me before, but now his eyes poked at me from under the bushy eyebrows. “What for, brother?”
“You can ask her, brother, after I get through talking with her.”
“Are you a relative?”
“No.”
“You can't see her.”
“If I can't,” I said, “I'll be back with a court order.” His face didn't change.
“And if that doesn't work, I'll get a warrant charging the Vineyard with kidnapping.”
He didn't like me. He'd have liked to take a punch at me. He probably couldn't because he was a member of the Vineyard. He went in the building. I looked around. I saw a few more men dressed in the white blouses and black trousers moving between the buildings. The clothes made them look Russian. I didn't see any women.
He came out and crooked a finger at me. We went along a brick walk towards one of the five-story buildings. Behind the buildings, in a hollow, I saw barns and silos. In one field a woman was ploughing behind a pair of grey horses. It was funny to sec a woman ploughing. We went up the building's front steps and into a big room filled with old-fashioned furniture. A woman about thirty-five with eyes the colour of maple sugar came into the room. She had a soft white face. She wore a white blouse and a red skirt.
“Daughter Penelope,” the man said.
I thought I saw interest in the woman's face, but when she turned to me she had no expression at all.
“Your name?”
“Karl Craven.”
“I will ask her.”
“I come from her uncle,” I said.
I saw the maple-sugar eyes light up again. She went out. I sat down on a couch and lit a cigarette. The man touched my shoulder.
“We do not allow smoking, brother.”
I put the cigarette out. I started to throw the butt in a waste-basket, but I thought better of it and stuffed it in my pocket. The man stood looking down at me, his face cold and unfriendly. He made me uncomfortable.
“Hot weather we're having,” I said.
