“Great,” I said. “They usually land at night. Keep a flashlight handy and get them one by one as they come out of the little door.”
The kid nodded, taking in this sage advice. I gave him another dime for a Whiz candy bar and a Pepsi from the refrigerator in the corner and got back in my Crosley.
Nothing was happening in the center of town and I felt less than comfortable parking near Sheriff Nelson’s office, but no one appeared on the street when I got out and headed for the door of the Old California Antique Shop. The guy in overalls who had been looking in the window was gone. I tried the door. Locked. I knocked. No answer. Through the window I could see shelves of curlicue lamps, clocks with gold-painted cupids, and fancy little boxes.
It looked like the kid was wrong and Claude Street wasn’t at work. I couldn’t blame him. Business on the street wasn’t even good enough to be called bad. It wasn’t raining but looked as if it might. The rich people were probably in their beach houses with their binoculars and hunting rifles, waiting for the invasion.
There was a narrow grassy space between the antique shop and the hardware store. It was worth a try. I walked between the buildings and found the back door of Old California. I didn’t knock this time. I tried the handle. The door opened. I went in and closed it behind me.
I was in a back room, very dim. There were no windows, but there was a curtain across the door leading into the shop. The curtain was thin. I went in. A man, who for want of better information I took to be Claude, was lying on the floor, his legs sprawled across an overturned chair and a hole, a little bigger than the one in Adam Place’s forehead, in his throat. On a table, ticking happily and watching over the scene, was Gala Dali’s second clock. The glass face of the clock was broken and covered with blood. Over the clock, hanging from the wall was Dali’s second painting, a grasshopper sitting on an egg. The egg was cracked and a small human head and arm were trying to get out. The grasshopper seemed to be looking down at the human and I had the feeling that when the little guy got out he’d be grasshopper food. There was something else in the painting-or had been until someone had splashed green over the lower right-hand third of the canvas. Written in yellow over the green was,
Claude was a slightly overweight man with a little yellow wig-I could tell it was a wig because it had fallen off when he fell-and round blue eyes locked on a not-very-interesting light fixture in the ceiling.
To be sure he was who I thought he was, I checked his pocket and found his wallet. He was Claude Street, all right. I took a closer look at the Dali painting and saw a bloody handprint like a signature in the lower left-hand corner. The blood was still wet. I looked at the floor, listened to the ticking of Gala Dali’s clock, and let my eyes follow the trail of dripped paint to the curtain. I got my.38 in my hand, then moved to the curtain. I pushed the curtain aside and stepped into the front of the store. Nobody, at least nobody inside. Outside the window, standing in front of my Crosley, was the man I wished least to see, Sheriff Mark Nelson of Mirador.
Nelson was a wiry little man, about forty, in a lightweight white suit and a straw hat. He squinted at me through the window as if unsure of what he was seeing. I stood still. He moved right up to the window, took off his straw hat, shielded his eyes with his right hand, and looked at me and the.38 in my hand.
I considered my options, put the.38 back in my pocket and moved to open the front door of the Old California Antique Shop so the now-smiling sheriff could enter.
“Mr. Toby Peters, you are a trial and a tribulation,” said Sheriff Nelson about five minutes later as he ushered me into his office two doors down from the Old California Antique Shop. “A trial and a tribulation. You were so on the occasion of our last meeting and you are once again.”
The sheriffs office was a remodeled store about the same size as the one run by the recently deceased Claude Street, but the layout was different. There was a low wooden railing with a gate. Visitors on one side. Cops and robbers on the other. Nelson held the gate open for me and I went in, past a desk and chair with a bulletin board behind them full of notes, clippings, and “Wanted” posters. To the left was a cubbyhole of an office with “Sheriff” marked on the door. To the right were two cells, both with open doors, neither occupied.
Nelson had my.38. He had taken it as soon as I had opened the door of the Old California Antique Shop. He had then walked through the curtain and seen Claude Street’s body. It was when he came back through the curtain the gun in his hand aimed at my chest, that he first declared me “a trial and tribulation.”
Nelson pointed to the first cell. I stepped in. He closed it behind me.
“There have been four murders in the history of this municipality,” he said, shaking his head and looking constipated.
“The Indians probably killed each other from time to time before we came here,” I suggested. “And the Spanish-”
“One of these murders, in 1930-” he went on.
“Woman on the beach brained her husband with rock,” I recalled.
Nelson smiled, a very pained smile.
“You have a memory worthy of remark,” he said. “You are correct. The next murder we had was a little over one year ago and you were very much a thorn in my side during that episode. The third murder should not really count. A Mex farmer south of town shot a man who, he says, was engaged in an unappreciated folly with the Mex farmer’s wife. And now this. Mr. Toby Peters, you have been involved in one-half of the murders which have taken place in Mirador since I became sheriff.”
There was a cot in the cell. I remembered it had a lurking spring. I sat down on the cot and looked up at Nelson, who was wiping the inside band of his straw hat.
“I’m going to tell you something, sheriff,” I said. “I know you won’t do anything about it, but I’ll feel better having said it. The person who killed Claude Street can’t be far away. The paint on the picture and on the floor was still wet. He didn’t have a car parked, at least not nearby. Mine was the only one out there till you pulled up.”
Nelson moved to the chair at the desk and sat. He looked at the phone and then swiveled the chair with a screech like teeth against a blackboard and glared at me.
“I do not care for you, Mr. Peters,” he said. “That you may have surmised from my demeanor. The Municipality of Mirador has grown in population and industry since you were last here. Murder most violent is not conducive to tourism.”
“I noticed the boomtown excitement,” I said.
“See, there you are. Sarcasm. Big city sarcasm.” He plopped his straw hat on the desk and looked at the phone. “That’s what people move down here to get away from.”
“Nelson,” I said. “Pick up the phone and call the Highway Patrol. This is out of your league.”
“You are a truly vexing person,” he said. “I will indeed call the Highway Patrol in a few moments-to inform them that I have apprehended the murderer of a member of one of Mirador’s oldest families.”
“Oldest,” I repeated. “Not most prominent, most beloved?”
“Oldest will suffice,” said Nelson, looking away from me through the front window of the office. Two kids, one boy, one girl, both about ten, were walking down the middle of the street unthreatened by Mirador’s growth of population and industry. “And respected.”
“Respected?”
“Any family which is capable of contributing one hundred and six votes in a town of a little more than two thousand permanent residents is a respected family,” Nelson explained, letting his fingers touch the phone.
“One hundred and five,” I corrected.
“One hundred and six is what I said and what I meant,” Nelson said with irritation. “Mr. Claude Street was a newcomer to this community and had not yet registered to vote.”
“Newcomer?”
“One who has recently come,” Nelson said with a shake of his head, as if talking to a semi-retarded nephew, “from Carmel.” He said “Carmel” as if it were a particularly sticky and unpleasant word.
“It was not easy to rent that store,” he said.
“You own the store?”
“If it is of any concern to you, I own all of downtown,” Nelson said, without enthusiasm. “And as you can see, it has made my fortune.”
“Nelson, I didn’t kill Claude Street,” I said. “You know that.”
His back was to me now and he was staring at the phone.
