He stared coldly, but said nothing as he drove off.

5

I located the fuse box and killed the circuits in that wing of the building so I wouldn't electrocute myself with the hose. Changing into swimming trunks, I went to work. I stood in the doorway playing the hose on walls and ceiling and furniture until water began running over the threshold. I broke open a half-dozen boxes of the soda and scattered it around and washed down some more. When I tried to move the bedclothes, curtains, and mattresses, they tore into rotten and mushy shreds, so I found some garden tools and raked them out onto the gravel, along with all the carpet I could tear up. It was sickening.

Even as diluted as the stuff was now, it kept stinging my feet when I had to step off the boards. I played the hose on them to wash it off. In about fifteen minutes I had the worst of it out. I dragged the bed-frames and headboards, the chest, the two armchairs, and the night table out onto the concrete porch and played the hose on them some more and scattered the rest of the soda over the wet surfaces. I showered and changed back into my clothes, and went over to the office. Josie said Mrs. Langston was sleeping quietly. She brought me the keys to the station wagon.

"Turn on the "No Vacancy" sign," I said. "And if anybody comes in, tell him the place is closed."

She looked doubtful. "You reckon Miss Georgia goin' to like that? She's kind of pinched for money."

"I'll square it with her," I said. "She needs rest more than she needs money, and we're going to see she gets it."

That wasn't the only reason, but I saw no point in going into it now. I drove into town and parked near the garage. In the repair shed a mechanic was working on my car, unbolting the old radiator. He looked up and nodded.

"Borrow one of your screwdrivers?" I asked. "Sure," he said. "Here."

I went around back and tested one of the screws holding the rear plate. It came loose freely. So did the other one. You could even see where he'd put machine oil on the threads to break them loose. I heard footsteps beside me and looked up. It was the sour-faced foreman in his white overall.

He nodded. "What's all the whoop-de-do with the license plates? Man from the Sheriff's office was fiddlin' with 'em a while ago. And dusting powder over them."

"Which man?" I asked.

"You wouldn't know him. That hard case."

"Magruder?"

He shook his head. "That's the one thinks he's hard. This one is. Kelly Redfield."

I thought he'd sounded like a good cop. He screamed about it and for some reason tried to slough it off, but in the end he had to come and see. "What he say?" I asked.

"Say? That guy? He wouldn't give you the time of day."

"But he did tell you where they broke in?"

Surprise showed for an instant on the sour and frozen face before he brought it under control again. "How'd you know? He said there was a busted pane in the washroom window. And he wanted to know if we'd missed anything."

"Have you?"

He shook his head. "Not as far as we can tell yet."

"How about battery acid?"

"We haven't got any."

Well, he'd stolen it somewhere in this area, because he had it here at two a.m. He couldn't have gone very far after it. Maybe Redfield had some ideas. I should be able to catch him at the office.

It was at the rear of the courthouse, a dreary room floored with scarred brown linoleum and smelling of dust. The wall at the right was banked with steel filing cabinets, and across the room at desks near a barred window, Magruder and a bull of a man with red hair were doing paperwork. The wall at my left was filled with bulletins and "Wanted" posters. A large overhead fan circled with weary futility, stirring the heat. At the left end of the room there was a water-cooler and a doorway leading into an inner office.

Magruder came over. I noticed he still wore the heavy gunbelt and the .45 even while shuffling papers. Maybe he wore it to bed. "What do you want now?" he asked.

"I want to talk to your boss."

At that moment a lean-hipped man in faded khaki came out of the inner office with a handful of papers which he tossed on one of the desks. Magruder jerked his head at me. "Kelly, here's that guy now."

Redfield turned with a quick, hard glance. "Chatham?"

"That's right," I said.

"Come in here."

I followed him into the inner office. An old roll-top desk against the wall on the left. On the right there were two filing cabinets, and a hat-rack on which were draped his jacket, a black tie, and a shoulder holster containing a gun. A locked, gla.s.s-fronted case held four carbines. One barred window looked out onto a parking area paved with white gravel.

He nodded towards the straight chair at the end of the desk. "Sit down."

Without taking his eyes off me, he groped in the pocket of the jacket for cigarettes. He lit one, without offering them to me, and flipped the match into the tray on his desk. He was a man of thirty-six or thirty-eight, with an air of tough competence about him that matched the way he had sounded on the telephone. The face was lean, the jaw clean-cut and hard, and he had a high, rounded forehead and thinning brown hair. The hard-bitten eyes were gray. It was a face with intelligence in it, and character, but for the moment at least, no warmth at all.

"All right, Chatham," he said. "What are you after around here?"

"Magruder told you," I said. "You sent him to find out."

"I did. And you don't make any sense. Start making some."

He irritated me, and puzzled me at the same time. Honest, hard-working professional cop was written all over him, and he hadn't been able to resist a police problem, but why the antagonism? "Were there any prints on those plates?" I asked.

"No," he said curtly. "Of course not. And there wouldn't have been any in the room, or on those jugs. You think the man who worked out that operation was a fool, or an amateur? But never mind him; let's get back to you."

"Why?"

"I want to know who the h.e.l.l you are, and what you're doing here. He went to all that trouble to use your plates Why?"

The message was for me," I said. I told him about the telephone call warning me to leave, and the earlier call to her and my efforts to find the booth with the noisy fan.

He walked over in front of me. "In other words, you're, not in town thirty minutes before you're up to your neck in police business. You're a trouble-maker, Chatham; I can smell you a mile off."

"I reported it to this office," I said. "And I was kissed off. You're trying to slough off this acid job, too, but you can't quite make yourself do it entirely. What's with it? I've seen dirt swept under the rug before, but you don't look quite the type for it."

Just for an instant there was something goaded and savage in his eyes, and I thought he was going to hit me. Then he had it under control. "n.o.body is being kissed off here," he said. "And nothing is being swept under the rug. The description of that man, and his car, have gone out to all adjoining counties and to the Highway Patrol. I know where the acid came from-"

"You do?" I asked.

"Shut up," he said, without raising his voice. "You shot off your mouth, and I'm telling you, so listen. The chances are a thousand to one he'll never be picked up. Green Ford sedans are as common as Smiths in a raided wh.o.r.e house. So are men answering that description. Even together, you haven't got much, and by now he'll be in a different car altogether. In a place this size, he had to be from out of town. That means he was probably hired for the job, and he could be from anywhere within a thousand miles of here. The acid itself is a dead end. A truck was hijacked a few weeks ago just east of here, and one of the items on the manifest was ten gallons of sulphuric acid. I just looked it up. The hijackers were never caught, and none of the stuff's been located. The bulk of it was paint, that could be sold anywhere. So try to come up with a lead there. That just leaves you."

"What do you mean?"

He jabbed a forefinger at me. "You stick out of this mess like a blonde with a pet skunk, and the more I look at you the wronger you get. For some reason, it happens the very day you show up. You've got some c.o.c.k-and-bull story about a mysterious telephone call. If you're lying about that, you're mixed up in it. If you're not lying and somebody is trying to get you out of here, you're mixed up in something else. I don't like trouble-makers and goons that wander in here for no reason at all and seem to wind up out there at that motel. We've still got the stink from the last one."

"I thought we'd get back to that," I said. "In other words you don't care what happens to her, or how she gets pushed around. You've got an unsolved murder on your hands and as far as you're concerned she's guilty, whether you can prove it or not. Well, you're right about the smell around here. And it's about time somebody found what's causing it."

He leaned over me with one hand on the corner of the desk. "Get this, Chatham," he said harshly, "and get it straight the first time. I don't know what you're after around here, but I know you. We don't need any meddlers, and we've got all the trouble we need. You make one phony move, and I'm going to land on you, and land hard. Now get out of here, and do your best to stay out." I stood up.

"Okay. I can hear you."

Magruder had come over, and was standing in the doorway. He stared coldly. Redfield nodded for him to let me out, and he moved to one side. "Big shot," he said.

I ignored him, and spoke to Redfield. "I'm not stupid enough to bring charges before a Grand Jury as long as you're going through the motions, but don't think you can stop me from looking under the rug myself. And when you land on me, make sure you've got legal grounds."

"I will have," he said. "Now, beat it."

I went out, conscious that I had just made the situation worse, but still angry enough not to care. I stopped at a drugstore to have the prescriptions made up, and drove back to the motel. When I parked in front of the office, I looked at my watch. It was after eleven, and I remembered I'd never had any breakfast. Maybe I could catch Ollie alone at the same time. I walked across the road, ordered a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and carried them into the bar. There was only one customer, a man in a linesman's outfit. He finished his beer and went out, clanking like a walking tool kit.

I put my stuff on the bar and pulled up a stool. "You don't mind if I sit here?" I asked. "As long as I'm not bothering your regular customer?"

He shrugged, but there was amus.e.m.e.nt in the level brown eyes. "I'm sorry about that. But you know how it is."

"Forget it," I said. He had a clean-cut look about him, and I had a hunch he wasn't one of the crowd that was on her back. I wished I could be sure.

He came over, propped a foot on the shelf under the bar, and leaned on his knee. He lit a cigarette. "That was a dirty pool, that acid."

"How did you hear about it?" I asked.

"Saw the stuff over there, where you pulled it out. I went over, and the maid told me about it. Sheriff's office come up with anything?"

"Not much," I said. I drank some of the coffee.

"That Redfield's a good cop. Tougher than a boot, but smart. And honest."

"Yeah," I said non-committally. "But why did you ask me?"

"It's all over town you've got some connection with her."

I nodded. "I didn't have. But I do now. That acid job was partly my fault."

"How come?"

"Let me ask you a question first," I said. "Do you honestly think she was involved in that murder?"

"You want to know what I really think?" He looked me right in the eye. "I think I've got a nice place here. Forty thousand dollars' worth, and I won't be twenty-seven till next month. It makes me a good living and I like it. So I think whatever my customers think, or I keep my fat mouth shut."

"Don't try to snow me," I said. "You didn't make all this in your twenties by being bird-brained or gutless. You know d.a.m.ned well what you think, and that is she's not the type of woman who'd even give Strader the time of day."

He nodded. "All right. So maybe that's what I think. I didn't say it, mind you; you did. So what does it buy? I've got a hobby, see-"

"Hobby?"

"Yeah. It's chasing things. Two things-women and tarpon. And by now I know just about everything there is to know about tarpon, but I still don't know one d.a.m.ned thing about women. Neither do you."

"Sure. But you can play the odds. Now, listen-do you recall who used your telephone booth around two yesterday afternoon? A couple of hours before I was here?"

He frowned and shook his head. "I'd probably never notice unless they asked for change. People are in and out of it all the time. Why?"

I told him about the filthy telephone calls and the noisy fan. "Somewhere around town he must have seen me, and caught onto what I was doing. If he was in your lunch-room when she drove home-and I think he was, because he called right afterwards-he also saw me go into the office with her. So he knew me. You don't remember, then?"

"No-o. There could have been several, but I never pay any attention."

"Many people in and out of the bar between two and the time I showed up?"

"Half-dozen. Maybe more. It's hard to say."

"What about the ones who were here at the same time?"

"Hmmm," he said. "Let's see. That big guy was Red Dunleavy. He works at a filling station just up the road. He's probably made his share of improper suggestions to girls, but he'd make 'em in person, not over the phone. Rupe Hulbert's a loud-mouth, and nosy, but generally harmless. But what you're looking for, Chatham, is a nut. It wouldn't be any of those guys. Pearl Talley gets off some pretty raw jokes, but nothing like that-"

"What about the guy in the guitar-player's shirt, at the table with her?"

Ollie grinned briefly. "That's who I'm talking about. Pearl can be a man's name too down here. Talley's a clown type, and to look at him you'd think they had to rope him every morning to put shoes on him, but it's a front. He's sharp as a razor in a business deal; he can swap nickels with you, even money, and come out two dollars ahead. Owns several farms around here; runs I cattle on 'em, mostly."

There didn't appear to be anything in those three to I warrant any further questions at the moment. "Tell me about that night," I said. "What was it about the fake accident? They figure the two of them were going to leave Langston's car down there?"

Ollie nodded. "That's right. Langston had all his tackle and his motor in the station wagon, and was supposed to be going fishing."

"At four-thirty in the morning?"

"Sure. You fish for ba.s.s at daybreak."

"But what about the fake accident? Are they sure of that?"

"Yes. There was never any doubt of it. You see, Langston was a man about forty-seven years old and not very strong. He'd been sick. Well, there at Finley's Cut where he kept his boat tied up, there's a steep climb down about an eight-foot bank to get to the edge of the water. And a big log at the bottom of it that they padlock their boats to. His outboard motor weighed nearly fifty pounds. So you can see yourself what everybody would naturally think when he was found down there with his head busted open against the log with the motor on top of him."

I nodded. "And what was Strader doing when Calhoun jumped him?"

"He was down there by the water with a flashlight and a piece of the b.l.o.o.d.y tarp, fixing up the log."

"There'd have to be more blood than that."

"That's right. And Strader knew it. He had his knife out and had just sliced it into the heel of his left hand when Calhoun told him to stand up and turn around."

I nodded. Ollie went on, his eyes thoughtful. "You see? Strader's a complete stranger around here, and not supposed to know either of the Langstons. So how did he know any of this? Where Langston kept the boat, how to get there, about the steep bank, and the log at the bottom of it?"

"I don't know," I said. It was deadly, all right. It was planned, premeditated murder, and one of them had got away with it. But did it have to be Mrs. Langston? Not so far. Any number of local people would have known all those things. But the really d.a.m.ning part of it was the attempt to make it look like an accident. That meant somebody involved knew he would be, or could be, suspected if it were discovered to be murder. Somebody with a known and provable connection with Langston. And since it didn't seem to be Strader. . .