“No! Christ, no. I wasn’t anywhere near Shasta Lake last night. I was home and I can prove it. My kid was there with me.”
“Like I said-tell that to Jim Telford.”
“Okay. But I’m telling you too. I didn’t have anything to do with O’Daniel getting killed and I didn’t have anything to do with Randall getting killed either. I was home with my son that night too. ”
I had nothing to say.
“Nobody in Musket Creek had anything to do with them two dying,” he said. “You understand? Nobody!” He wiped his face again, hunched his shoulders, and stepped around me and went away up the steps.
I watched after him until the building swallowed his bulk, thinking: Funny bird-what yanks his chain for him, anyway? I couldn’t decide whether or not he was dangerous; I couldn’t get much of a handle on him at all. Well, maybe Telford could. Or maybe there just wasn’t much of a handle to get hold of in the first place. I shrugged and swung around and started over toward the parking lot.
And Martin Treacle’s Continental was there, just skidding into one of the diagonal slots nearby. Treacle was behind the wheel, and he had two passengers. One, I saw as they got out, was the secretary, Shirley Irwin. The other, for some reason, was Kerry.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Treacle was in a dither. His face was pale, his hands twitched, his eyes kept doing odd little flicks and rolls, as if he were about to go into some kind of fit, and he had a slight stutter when he spoke. He came charging over to me and said, “Why didn’t you call me last night? For God’s sake, why didn’t you tell- tell me what happened?”
“Take it easy, Mr. Treacle. I didn’t call you because I didn’t want to sound a false alarm; nobody was sure yet it was your partner who died in the explosion.”
“You should have notified me anyway. I had a right-a right to know, didn’t I?”
Kerry and Miss Irwin made us a not very appealing foursome. The secretary didn’t seem cool and efficient this morning; she looked distraught in a contained sort of way. Kerry’s face was almost as pale as Treacle’s, as if she’d had some kind of shock or scare herself.
I said to her, “This is a surprise. What’re you doing here?”
But Treacle didn’t give her a chance to answer; he said, still nattering, “We went to your motel after the sheriff-the sheriffs man called. I wanted to talk to you first, before I see him.”
“who?”
“You were there last night, you almost got killed yourself. It wasn’t an accident, was it?”
“That’s what everybody wants to know. The exact cause of the explosion hasn’t been determined yet.”
“But it must have been an accident,” Miss Irwin said. “Fuel leaked into the bilges and some kind of spark set it off-that’s what the radio said. Poor Frank must have forgotten to use the blowers.”
“Maybe.”
“There is some doubt, then?”
“A reasonable amount.”
“Did someone see something, is that it?”
“No. It’s nothing specific.”
Treacle said, “It’s murder, all right. Somebody killed Frank-killed Munroe, too, we were wrong about that. And now I’m-now I’m next in line.”
He’d changed his tune completely. Neither Northern Development nor all that insurance money-at least $200,000 now-appeared to matter much to him anymore; what he was worried about at the moment was his own hide. Or so it seemed. The fear looked genuine enough, but you can’t be sure about things like that. It could all be an act, a smokescreen, designed to divert suspicion from himself.
“They want me dead,” he was saying now, “all those people in Musket Creek. Coleclaw, that son of a bitch, there’s one for sure.” He leaned my way and poked me in the chest with a forefinger. “You were talking to him when we drove in. What were you talking about?”
I resisted an impulse to slap his hand away. Whether he was putting on an act or not, I had finally reached the point where I could dislike him. Actively, if not with any particular malice. I said, “Nothing that concerns you, Mr. Treacle.”
“Why is he here? He didn’t come-come to turn himself in, did he?”
“No. He’s here because of the fight he had with O’Daniel on Friday evening. He knows it makes him look bad-”
“You’re goddamn-damn right it does.”
“But he says he has an alibi for last night. And an alibi for the night of Munroe Randall’s death. If those alibis stand up he’s in the clear.”
“All right, so maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it wasn’t. But somebody out there is a mur-a murderer. And you better find out who he is. You or Telford or some-somebody. ”
I kept my mouth shut.
“I’m going to demand police protection,” he said. “I’m going to tell-tell Telf-tell Tel — shit! Look at me, I’m a nervous-nervous wreck, I can’t even talk straight.”
Miss Irwin took his arm. “We’d better go inside,” she said. He started to resist, but she held on and said in one of those calm, stern voices mothers use on their troublesome kids, “This isn’t doing any of us any good. Come on, now.”
“All right,” he said, “all right.” He let her lead him away about three paces, but then he twisted his head around and said to me, “You just find out who kill-who killed Frank and Munroe, that’s all. You just find out.”
“Sure,” I said to shut him up, “I’ll find out.”
They moved off. Kerry stayed where she was, and when they were out of earshot she said, “I hope Ms. Irwin’s got enough sense to do the driving when they leave. God, he drove like a maniac on the way over here from the motel.”
“Is that why you were so pale when you got out?”
“You’d have been pale too. He almost hit a bus, two pedestrians, and a motorcycle. I thought I was going to wet my pants.”
“What’s she doing with him anyway? It’s Sunday.”
“She lives near him; he stopped and picked her up on the way in. For moral support, I guess.”
“Why did you come along?”
“I was bored. And you said you’d be here.” She pulled a rueful face. “But if I’d known he was going to drive like that I’d have walked.”
“You must have seen how upset he is. You could have figured it out from that.”
“We can’t all have great deductive minds like yours, you know,” she said. “Not that I’m incapable of a deduction or two myself. I’d make a pretty good detective if I set my mind to it.”
“Sure you would.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I just said you would. How about if we get out of this heat? My face hurts a little.”
“Poor baby. Maybe you should put some more salve on it.”
“Good idea.”
We went over to my car and got in. Kerry said, “Where to now? Back to the motel?”
“Yup. For the salve, plus I’ve got to call Barney Rivera.”
“And then?”
“Out to Mountain Harbor to return the clothes I borrowed from Tom Decker last night.”
“I’d like to see that place,” she said. “I’ll keep you company.”
I didn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t, so I said, “All right,” and started the car.
Barney was home, probably shacked up with a blonde from his office for the weekend; his voice had that satisfied, well-fed tone when he first came on the line. But it didn’t last long. He made a wounded noise when I told him about Frank O’Daniel’s death and started grumbling at me, as if the whole thing was my fault and I was head of
