Brad bit his lip. “Sorry,” he said. “It isn’t any of my business, of course. But Jeff seems pretty upset, and dealing with people who are upset happens to be my specialty.” When Jeff looked at him quizzically, Brad winked. “I’m a psychiatrist.”
Elaine stood up suddenly, and the movement caught Brad’s attention, exactly as she had intended.
“Why don’t I take Jeff out for a cup of coffee while you settle our business with the chief?” she suggested. “All right?”
Brad knew immediately his wife was trying to defuse the situation. He smiled at her gratefully. “If you don’t mind,” he said, knowing she didn’t; knowing, in fact, that she had taken the situation in hand.
“Of course I don’t mind.” She turned to Whalen and smiled at him. “Is there anything I’ll need to know about the house right away?”
Whalen shook his head slowly, glancing from one of the Randalls to the other and back again. But before he could speak Elaine plunged on.
“Fine. Then we’ll see you in a few minutes,” she told Brad. She took Jeff Horton by the arm and pulled him to his feet. Jeff, looking baffled, offered no resistance as she led him from the office.
“Do you have the keys?” she heard Brad asking Whalen as she walked down the corridor. She silently congratulated herself. Maybe the wrong member of their family was the psychiatrist.
“It hasn’t been easy for you, has it?” Elaine asked Jeff. They were sitting in the cafe, drinking their second cup of coffee, and Jeff had told Elaine what had happened.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Jeff said bitterly. “The worst of it is, I’m not going to be able to hang around here any longer, and the minute I leave that police chief is going to drop the whole thing. Hell, he almost has already.”
“It might really have been an accident,” Elaine offered.
“If it were anyone but Max, I’d agree. But Max was one of those people who just doesn’t have accidents. He was always methodical, always careful. He always said there’s no such thing as an accident. Like the other night, when the storm caught up with us? Anyone else would have tried to make it down to Grays Harbor, and if they hadn’t made it, it would have been called an accident. But Max would have called it damned foolishness and blamed it on the skipper.”
“And he would have been right,” Elaine agreed.
“For all the good it did him. Anyway,
“I don’t think he does,” Elaine said softly. Before Jeff could ask what she meant she changed the subject. “What are you going to do now?”
“Go back up north, I guess, and start over. But without Max it isn’t going to be easy.”
“Can’t you stay here awhile?”
“I’m broke. I can pay for one more night at the hotel and that’s it. But I want to stay and find out what happened to Max.” He looked deeply into Elaine’s eyes and his voice took on an intensity that almost frightened her.
“Somebody killed Max, Mrs. Randall. I don’t know who, but somebody killed him. I have to find out why.”
Elaine studied the young man opposite her and tried to weigh what he had said. Still in shock, she thought, and badly shaken up. Yet what he had said made sense. If his brother had been as careful as Jeff claimed — and she had no reason to doubt it — then it seemed unlikely that the trawler’s getting loose had been an accident. And if it wasn’t an accident …
“Look,” she said suddenly. “If it’s that important for you to stay around here for a while, you can stay with us. It’s primitive, but it’s free.”
“With you?” Jeff seemed totally bewildered. “But you don’t even know me.”
Elaine smiled warmly at him. “If you hadn’t said that I might have been worried. Anyway, that makes us even: you don’t know us, either. Believe me, after a couple of days we’ll know each other very, very well. The house we rented isn’t big and it doesn’t have any electricity. I’m told the plumbing works but I’ll believe it when I see it. There’s a couple of bedrooms upstairs, guest rooms, and you might as well be the first guest.” Before Jeff could reply Elaine glanced at her watch and stood up. “Come on, we’ve been here long enough. If Brad isn’t through with Mr. Whalen yet, something’s gone wrong. And the movers must think we’ve died.”
“Movers?”
“I told you we were just moving in. That was a sort of a lie, really. We haven’t moved in yet. As a matter of fact, we just got to town half an hour ago.”
Taking Jeff by the arm, she led him out the door.
They almost bumped into Brad as they turned the corner onto Main Street, and Elaine knew by the look on his face that something was wrong. “What’s happened?” she asked.
Brad stared at her blankly for a moment, then chuckled hollowly. “You won’t believe it,” he said. “Whalen didn’t remember renting the house to us.”
“Didn’t remember? Are you serious?”
Brad nodded. “That’s why he looked so surprised when we walked into his office. He thought we were gone for good. I had to show him the lease before he’d give me the keys to the house. I guess we were right when we thought he was in some kind of trance the day he showed us the place.” He saw Elaine turn slightly pale and decided now was not the time to pursue the subject. Instead, he made himself smile genially at Jeff Horton. “I assume Elaine invited you to stay with us?”
“If it’s all right with you, Dr. Randall.”
“My name’s Brad, and of course it’s all right with me. If she hadn’t invited you I would have. We’d better get going though, or the movers are going to dump our stuff in the street. Whalen’ll lead us out there, just to make sure the place is all right.”
As if on cue, Harney Whalen emerged from the police station and stared balefully at the three of them. When he spoke his words were obviously directed at Jeff.
“I thought you’d be on your way by now.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jeff said softly. “Not till I find out what happened to my brother.”
Whalen’s tongue worked at his left cheek as he thought it over. “Still staying at the hotel?” he asked finally.
“He’ll be staying with us,” Elaine said flatly, as if to end the discussion.
“That so?” Whalen said. “Well, I guess it’s none of my business, is it. You want to follow me?”
“Sure,” Brad replied. He turned and signaled the movers, who were lounging against the fender of their truck half a block away. They ground their cigarettes out and climbed into the cab. “We’ll be right behind you,” Brad called to Whalen, who was already in his police car. Whalen’s hand, black-gloved, waved an acknowledgment, but he didn’t speak. Instead he simply started his engine and pulled away from the curb, his face expressionless as he passed them. The Randalls, with Jeff Horton, followed. Behind them, the moving truck closed the gap.
Harney Whalen drove the black-and-white slowly and kept his eyes steadily on the road. But he was driving automatically, guiding the car almost by instinct. His mind was in turmoil.
Jeff Horton wasn’t going to go home.
Instead he was going to stay in Clark’s Harbor, stirring up trouble.
And the Randalls. Where had they come from? He searched his mind, trying to remember having signed a lease.
His mind was blank. He remembered showing them the house, but as for a lease — nothing. Absolutely nothing.
More trouble.
Harney Whalen didn’t like trouble. He wondered what he should do about it.
And he wondered why strangers kept coming to Clark’s Harbor. It had never been a good place for strangers.
Never had been, and never would be.
