a conspiracy to make his life difficult.
I let him get away with that for a time; then I said, “Listen, Barney, there’s a hell of a lot more going on up here than you led me to believe. I can’t help it if things keep happening.”
“Is there any chance it’s murder? Hell, it must be murder. I don’t buy that kind of coincidence.”
“Neither do I. But there’s no evidence so far.”
“The directors are going to scream if we have to pay off twice on that goddamn double indemnity clause. What about the surviving partner? Treacle? If he killed them for the money we won’t have to pay him a dime.”
“If he killed them. And if it can be proved.”
“Concentrate on him,” Barney said. “Come down hard on him if you have to. Let’s get this thing resolved fast.”
“Screw you, Barney,” I said.
“What?”
“I’ll call you again when I’ve got something to report,” and I hung up on him just as he began to squawk.
On the way up Highway 5, Kerry and I talked about the two apparently unrelated and accidental deaths; the people who might be involved if the deaths turned out not to be accidental after all. She seemed fascinated, as she often was by my investigations, and her questions and comments were sharp. A very intelligent lady, my lady, even if she did drive me nuts sometimes.
There were more than a few cars on the switchbacked road leading down to Mountain Harbor, and a hell of a lot of people milling around along the lakefront when we got there. Curiosity seekers, drawn by the news of tragedy and sudden death; vultures hunting for scraps of the lurid and the sensational to help sustain their meager lives. What they were feeding on at the moment was the activity of half a dozen men, a couple of them sheriff’s deputies, who were winching the fire-gutted wreckage of the Kokanee out of the lake.
Thunder grumbled overhead as Kerry and I made our way to the cafe-and-store; black and bloated clouds moved restlessly above the high rock walls protecting the harbor. The sound of the winch made a whining, ratchey counterpoint to the thunder, and the two sounds together put little cold skitterings on my back. The water had a dull black shine and looked too-still-like something waiting. I had a clear mental image of the way it had been last night, out there in that black water, swimming through the debris with O’Daniel’s blown-off arm touching my face. And I shivered a little and looked away.
Tom Decker and his wife were both inside the store; I’d expected to find them either there or in their own cabin-somewhere away from that eager crowd outside. I introduced Kerry to them, and returned the bundle of borrowed clothing.
Decker said, “I’ve been giving some thought to what we talked about last night-you know, the possibility that O’Daniel’s boat was deliberately blown up. I still can’t figure a way it could’ve been done, not unless he arranged it himself to commit suicide.”
“I don’t think that’s likely,” I said. “It has to be either an accident or murder.”
“Which way are you leaning?”
“Away from accident. But that’s not based on anything substantial yet.”
“Well, if you’re right,” he said, “it has to have been some sort of rigged-up device, something that would cause the explosion without the killer being on board and without leaving any traces. If somebody else thought of it, one of us ought to be able to think of it too, sooner or later.”
When we went outside again the sheriff’s men had the Kokanee winched clear and were getting ready to load it onto a long boat trailer. I drove us away from there without wasting any time. I did not want to look at that dripping, burned-out hulk; I wanted to forget it and last night as quickly as possible, bury them in that shallow mental grave I reserved for the horrors and near-horrors that touched my life.
The first drops of rain began to splatter against the windshield just after we turned onto Highway 5. Within minutes, it was coming down in sheets and the gusty wind that had sprung up with it was strong enough to wobble the car. Lightning slashed and flickered in the vicinity of Mt. Shasta. Thunder kept rumbling, very close, very loud. The day turned so dark it was almost like dusk, and what light remained was a wet, eerie gray, tinged with yellow every now and then from the lightning flashes.
Neither of us said much until we crossed the bridge over Turntable Bay. Then Kerry asked, “Where are we going now?” She sounded a little subdued; I thought it was probably the weather. It made me feel a little subdued myself.
“ We’re not going anywhere,” I said. “You’re going back to the motel; I’m going to Musket Creek.”
“Oh? And why don’t I get to go there too?”
“Because I’m going to see Paul Robideaux and it might not be a pleasant discussion. Besides which, you coming along yesterday didn’t work out too well.”
“Meaning I got in your way, I suppose.”
“Meaning it might not be safe for you out there.”
“Oh, crap,” she said. “You still won’t admit you handled things badly yesterday, will you?”
“All right, I’ll admit it. But that was yesterday; this is today. And another man died in between. I’m going alone-that’s all there is to it.”
I expected her to give me more argument, the you’re-a-macho-jerk routine again, but she didn’t. “Do what you have to,” she said, and scrunched down on the seat, and sat staring out at the rain. She didn’t have anything else to say on the ride to Sportsman’s Rest, and nothing to say once we got there; she just opened the door and got out of the car and ran for the room.
Another fun evening ahead, I thought gloomily as I U-turned out of the motel lot. Some job. Some vacation. Some soul mate.
It was enough to make you consider misogyny as an alternative lifestyle.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There was rain at Musket Creek too, but it wasn’t as heavy, and little jigsaw patterns of blue were visible here and there among the clouds. The lightning and all but dim echoes of the thunder had stayed over near Redding. In the dreary light, the little valley and its collection of relics and anomalies had a desolate, forgotten look, like a vision of something out of the past-something small and insignificant, something doomed.
The road was muddy from the rain; I had had to drive at twenty all the way in from Highway 299, and had to crawl at an even slower pace down the steep hillside into town. Lights burned in Coleclaw’s mercantile, in Ella Bloom’s cottage up on the hillock-pale blobs against the wet gray afternoon-but nobody was out and around that I could see. I drove in among the ghosts of Ragged-Ass Gulch. My imagination made them into crouching things, battered and weary old shades with blind eyes and signboards for mouths, waiting for night to fall. The things they’d seen, the things they knew… just the thought of it put a small, cold ruffling on the back of my scalp, as if somebody had blown his breath across it.
I saw no one among the buildings either, and no one on the way up the far slope and into the woods. The shadows were thick here; it might have been twilight. The rain made hollow dripping noises in the trees, glistened and writhed like silverfish in my headlight beams.
Paul Robideaux’s cabin was just that-a country cabin made out of notched logs, with a peaked roof to keep the snow from piling up during the winter. Both front windows showed light. Down in front, just off the road, was the jeep Robideaux had been driving yesterday. It was alone there, until I put my car alongside it and gave it some company.
Robideaux must have heard the sound of my car’s engine; the front door opened just as I reached the porch and he stood there glowering at me. The glower faded somewhat when he got a good look at my face, but he pumped it up again after a couple of seconds and said, “What the hell are you doing here?” in the same belligerent tone he’d used on our first meeting.
“I’ve got some questions to ask you, Mr. Robideaux.”
“You tried that yesterday,” he said. “It didn’t work then; it’s not going to work now. Beat it. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
