bucks that she’d been at Randall’s house the night he died, plus another hundred that it hadn’t been for tea and cakes and a social chat.
But I didn’t say any of that to Robideaux. He wouldn’t like hearing it, and it might close him off. I said, “What put the damper on her marriage? Originally, I mean.”
“He did. Maybe he had something going on the side himself. Or maybe he got wrapped up in being a big shot; he was never home, always running off to meetings, always working late at the office. Or, hell, maybe he just got bored and lost interest.”
Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe she was the one who got bored and lost interest, with or without provocation.
I asked, “If things were that bad, how come she stayed married to him?”
“Why do you think? He was making money. Everybody likes money.”
“He wasn’t making money recently. Northern Development is overextended; that’s why they’ve been fighting so hard on the Musket Creek project.”
“I know that,” Robideaux said.
“Then how come the sudden decision on divorce?”
“It wasn’t Helen’s idea.”
“No? You mean it was O’Daniel’s?”
“He was going to file any day. He told her that.”
“When did he tell her?”
“A week ago.”
“What made him decide he wanted out?”
“He said he was fed up with her sleeping around on him.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all he told her.”
“He didn’t try to get her to waive her community property rights, did he? Or to take some kind of smaller settlement?”
“Christ, no. She’d have laughed in his face.”
“I’ll bet she would.”
“Like I said before, she had no reason to kill him. Nobody did. It must’ve been an accident-”
“Nobody did?” I said. “How about you and just about everybody who lives out here? With Randall and O’Daniel both dead, Northern Development will probably go belly up. That’s damned good news for Musket Creek.”
“Sure. But I didn’t kill anybody to make it happen, and neither did any of my neighbors. I’ve been here six years. I know these people. None of them is capable of cold-blooded murder.”
“How about Helen O’Daniel? Is she capable of it?”
“No, and the hell with you.”
“You love her, huh?”
“Close enough,” he said.
“And she loves you.”
“So?”
“I’m just wondering why she didn’t call to tell you about her husband’s death. You’ve got a telephone sitting right over there, and she’s known about it ever since early this morning.”
He came out of the chair, narrow-eyed and tense. “Get out of here,” he said.
“It’s nothing you haven’t been wondering yourself, Robideaux,” I said. “Why didn’t she call?”
“She’s got a reason, all right? Now get the hell out of my house. Otherwise, you and I are going to have trouble, cops or no cops.”
He meant it; I could see it in his eyes. I’d got what I’d come for-some of it, anyhow-and I didn’t mind leaving, but I didn’t want to do it too quickly, didn’t want to give him the idea he could push me around.
I said, “Okay. A little warning first, though: If you’re holding anything back, protecting Helen O’Daniel or anybody else, you’d better think it over twice. Accessory to murder puts you behind bars a long time in California.”
I went out and shut the door softly on its latch behind me. The rain had stopped and there were more blue jigsaw pieces overhead; you could hear the water dripping in the surrounding woods like a chorus of leaky faucets. The heat was rebuilding, so that the air had a wet, steamy feel that was almost tropical.
In the car I sat for a time and thought over what I’d found out. Not much, really. Maybe Robideaux and Helen O‘Daniel were in love, but it was more likely he’d been using her-starving artist latching onto a meal ticket-and she’d been using him, too, for stud service. From what I’d seen, both of them deserved each other. Robideaux had plenty of motive for killing both Randall and O’Daniel, but none of it seemed particularly strong. I couldn’t see him doing it for community reasons; he was too self-centered for that. His home meant something to him, but it wasn’t special enough to warrant homicide in order to maintain it. Ditto his affair with Mrs. O’Daniel. Even if he’d found out she was seeing Randall behind his back, he just wasn’t the type to knock off a rival. If he was going to kill anybody in that kind of situation, it would probably be Helen herself.
Mrs. O‘Daniel also had plenty of motive for disposing of both her husband and her lover: O’Daniel to get her hands on what was left of his assets; Randall for any one of half a dozen good reasons, including the possibility that he’d been playing around on her too. She was the type to fly off into a jealous and violent rage, given enough impetus. But was she really dumb enough to believe she could murder both of them, no matter how clever her methods, and get away with it? All murderers are stupid, Jim Telford had said. Well, maybe. Maybe.
The one puzzling thing I’d learned was Frank O‘Daniel’s apparently sudden decision to file for divorce- assuming Mrs. O’Daniel hadn’t been lying to Robideaux about that, for reasons of her own. O’Daniel had told Treacle he couldn’t afford to divorce his wife. What had changed his mind? It was something I would have to check on.
The air was stuffy inside the car; I rolled down the window to let in some of the dying wind. Then I started the engine, backed out onto the road, and headed back the way I’d come.
But I didn’t get far, not much more than a few hundred yards. I came around a sharp turn, going fairly slow, twenty-five or so, and on the other side of it was an old black car pulled slantwise across the road, completely blocking it. And somebody, for Christ’s sake, was sitting on the hood, somebody wearing a yellow rain slicker and a yellow floppy hat.
There was no room to get around on either side; I hit the brakes, hard. The car slewed sideways on the muddy road surface and the wheel tried to come out of my hands. I held it, managed to get the machine stopped at an angle to the other one, not twenty feet from its right front fender.
Sweat stung my eyes; I sleeved it off and jammed the door handle down and got out yelling. “What the hell’s the goddamn idea? I almost plowed into you!”
The guy on the hood stepped down, slowly, and I saw who he was: Jack Coleclaw’s son, Gary. The car was the old Chrysler he’d been working on inside the garage yesterday. He covered about half the distance between us and then stopped. Both of his hands were thrust inside the slicker’s slash pockets.
He said, “I been waiting for you. I seen you drive by our place and come up here. So I followed you.”
“Why? What do you want?”
“To tell you something,” he said, and he took his hand out of his pocket. “You better go away and don’t ever come back here again. That’s what I got to say.”
What he was holding was a gun, a rusty-looking old revolver with a long barrel.
I went tight all over; I could feel more sweat come oozing out of me. But he wasn’t pointing the thing in my direction-he was just moving it up and down, hefting it. The whole scene was bizarre, a little unreal. For some crazy reason I found myself thinking of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, tough guys with sneering faces saying, “Get out of town, stranger, or I’ll fill you full of lead.”
“Listen, Gary,” I said, quietly, “put that thing away. You don’t need to-”
“You listen,” he said. “I mean it. Go away and don’t come back to Musket Creek. If you do…” and he moved the revolver again. He knew how to use it, too; the way he was handling it told me that.
He backed up to the Chrysler, opened the driver’s door with his left hand, and slid inside. The starter ground, the engine chattered. He put the car in reverse and backed down the road, not too fast, not too slow, until he
