“Maybe you’ll have something to say to the county sheriffs investigators, then.”
“What?”
“They’ll be along pretty soon. And they won’t be as easy to deal with as I am.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No? I’m talking about Frank O’Daniel.”
“That bastard. What about him?”
“He’s dead. Or didn’t you know?”
It seemed he hadn’t known. Either that, or he was putting on a good act. He said, “Dead? What do you mean, dead?”
“It’s been on the radio.”
“I don’t listen to the radio. O’Daniel… what happened to him? How did he die?”
“His houseboat blew up last night at Shasta Lake. I was there; I almost got blown up myself.”
“Jesus,” Robideaux said. The belligerence was gone now; he looked shaken, a little pale around the gills.
“It might have been an accident,” I said, “just like Munroe Randall’s death might have been an accident. I’m betting neither one was, though. I’m betting they were both murdered.”
He shook his head, as if he were only half listening to me; the other half of his mind seemed to be on something else. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “I was here last night.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. Alone.”
“No visitors?”
“Listen, you,” he said, “I’m not doing any more talking. Not to you, not to anybody until I see my lawyer.” He started to back up, to close the door.
I said, “Have it your way. I’ll go get the truth out of Mrs. O’Daniel.”
He stopped backing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think it means?”
“You tell me, smart-ass.”
“I’ve seen that painting of yours she’d got hanging over her fireplace,” I said. “And I know about the two of you. Now you and I can talk it over, or I can go to her. Either way. And watch what you call me from now on. I’ve had all the crap I’m going to take off you or anybody else.”
Part of it was a shot in the dark; if there was nothing between him and Helen O’Daniel, all he had to do was slam the door in my face. But he didn’t do that. He just stood there looking at me. No glower now; his long, thin face was still pale, and if anything he looked worried and maybe a little scared.
Ten seconds went by while we matched stares. It was no contest, though: He let his breath out in a wobbly sigh and said, “Okay. We’ll talk.”
“Inside, huh? It’s wet out here.”
He backed up again, into the room this time, and let me come in and shut the door. The place was as much an artist’s studio as it was living quarters; most of the rear wall was glass, a skylight had been cut into the roof back there, and that part of the room was cluttered with easels, canvases, a table full of bottles and tubes and brushes, a paint-stained drop cloth on the floor. The walls were covered with finished oils, and more were propped up along the baseboard-fifty or sixty altogether, at a quick guess. Not all of them were as awful as the one over Helen O’Daniel’s fireplace, but they were all in the same vomit-stirred-on-canvas class and all done in odd pastels and off-colors. The effect was almost hallucinatory, like a bad trip on some drug or other. A claustrophobe trapped in here would have gone bonkers inside of ten minutes.
Robideaux had entered a little kitchen alcove and was rummaging in a cupboard. He came out with a bottle of bourbon, poured himself about three fingers, downed them in one swallow. Then he shuddered and walked back to where I was. There was color in his cheeks now, the same shade as his fiery hair; he seemed to have himself under a kind of rigid control.
He said, “How did you find out about Helen and me?”
“I’m a detective, remember?”
“Yeah, well, it’s not as bad as it looks.”
“No?”
“No. They were going to get a divorce.”
“Were they? That’s news to me.”
“It’s the truth. So you see? Neither of us had any reason to kill O’Daniel.”
“Sure. Except that now she gets all their assets, not just half of them.”
“I don’t like the way your dirty little mind works,” he said.
“I could say the same thing about yours, if you want to play it that way.”
We glared at each other some more. It was no contest this time, either; he turned abruptly and went to an easy chair covered in brown cloth and folded his big frame into it stiffly. He sat there not looking at me.
I moved over near him, but I stayed on my feet. “How long have you and Mrs. O’Daniel been seeing each other?”
“Don’t you know? I thought you knew everything.”
“Some things, not all. That’s why I’m here.”
Pretty soon he said, “All right. About three months.”
“Regularly?”
“Whenever we could. Two or three times a week.”
“Out here?”
“No. Her place sometimes, during the day. Motels.”
“How did you meet her?”
“She showed up at a crafts fair in Red Bluff, where I had some of my paintings on exhibit. We got to talking and we hit it off.” He shrugged. “So we ended up back here.”
“Didn’t she have any qualms about coming to Musket Creek?”
“Later, sure. Not that night.”
“Why not?”
“She didn’t know who I was or where I lived until we got here; she never involved herself in O’Daniel’s lousy company-not to much of an extent, anyway.”
“But you knew who she was?”
“You trying to say I hit on her because I thought she could influence her old man? Well, you’re wrong. In the first place, I didn’t know who she was, not until she told me later, out here; we weren’t into last names in Red Bluff. And in the second place, O’Daniel never paid any attention to what she said or did. Hell, she hung that painting of mine right there in their living room, didn’t she?”
“Why did she do that?”
“A joke. I thought it was a stupid idea, but she said he’d never notice. And he never did.”
“I noticed.”
“Yeah. A stupid idea.”
I said, “So she and O’Daniel had a lousy marriage.”
“The pits. They barely spoke to each other and they hadn’t slept together in close to a year. That’s why she was so willing the day she met me.”
“You were her first extramarital affair, is that it?”
“No. She’s not a nun; she’d made it with a couple of other guys since her husband turned off on her.”
“What other guys?”
“How do I know? I didn’t ask and she didn’t tell me.”
“But she wasn’t seeing anybody when she met you?”
“No.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Sure I’m sure. She wouldn’t lie to me.”
The hell she wouldn’t, I thought. Little Miss Roundheels. She’d started up with Munroe Randall, it seemed, while she was already playing around with Robideaux-juggling two separate affairs. And I’d have bet a hundred
