Detour to Death (9 page)

Just hearing Joyce speak again brought a tightness to Trace’s throat. He moved away from the doorway and stood pressed against the wall.

“Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind. But if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call.”

Need anything! As if Joyce Gaynor had to rely on Lowell Glenn for her needs! Trace waited for the click of the closing door, and then for the sound of Joyce coming nearer. She came slowly and at last stood in the double doorway, her face terribly young and terribly solemn under a small black hat. He could see she was troubled by the opened doors until the sight of him gave her bigger troubles.

“Trace,” she gasped, “what are you doing here? What have you done to grandfather’s things?”

It was too late for discretion. He’d had neither time nor thought for closing the desk. “I’m looking for something,” he said.

“I can see that, but what are you looking for?”

“I’m not sure. A beginning, a reason for three violent deaths.”

These first few moments were the most difficult—this first shock of finding him here in the house; but if Trace won these moments, he might win time to finish the search. Joyce hesitated and then came into the room.

“You’re trying to help Danny Ross,” she said. “Why?”

“Because he’s innocent.”

“How can you be sure?”

There was a strangeness in her voice that made Trace uncomfortable. “I’m not sure,” he answered, “but I’m not the only one who feels this way. Alexander Laurent was the first. He asked me to defend Danny.”

“In court?”

“We hope it doesn’t go that far.”

Joyce was impressed. She knew what the name Laurent stood for in the pursuit of justice, and what it meant to Trace. No one could have known Trace so long and so well without knowing his idols. Her hesitation was a green light for the full treatment.

“Can’t you see?” Trace argued. “Your grandfather had no enemies; he could only have been killed because something he knew or suspected was dangerous to someone. And what could he have known? Think, Joyce. It was he who answered the call when Francy was found dying on the highway. He gave her emergency treatment, and was with her in the hospital when she died. And on his way home to make an official report on the cause of her death he was killed. Everybody loved Charley Gaynor, but it seems to me that somebody loved life a lot more.”

“But the money—” she protested.

“Haven’t you heard about Danny’s man in a raincoat? He was found in Junction City last night with a bullet in his head and quite a stack of twenty-dollar bills in his possession.”

Joyce was trying hard to keep up with his arguments, he had to give her credit for that, but the ordeal she’d just been through made it all so difficult. Death, that’s all she could retain. Sudden, horrible, violent death. Black wasn’t her color and cold-blooded logic wasn’t her forte.

“I’m sorry about Francy,” she said vaguely. “I meant to send flowers but there was so much to do.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Trace muttered. “She couldn’t have smelled them, anyway. Joyce, I’m not doing this because of Francy. I’m here for the living, not the dead!”

He wanted to say so much more, but they mustn’t get started talking about Francy. Francy always led to an impasse, and at the moment all he wanted to lead to was that appointment book. It took a bit of doing, but in the end Joyce agreed, and they studied it together. The last page was filled with dates that would never be kept, but it was the day of Francy’s death that interested Trace. What he expected to find was vague and nebulous in his mind, and what he did find did nothing to better that condition. The doctor had put in a routine day. A local hypochondriac, a couple of regular visits from expectant mothers, and only one patient who elicited any interest at all.

“Ada Keep,” Trace wondered aloud. “What’s troubling Ada? Surely she isn’t in a family way!”

Joyce almost smiled. “Poor Ada,” she murmured. “I don’t know what she came to Grandfather for—sympathy perhaps. I think he was running some kind of tests.”

“IQ?”

“You shouldn’t talk that way!”

“I know.” Trace slammed the book shut with a gesture of finality. It had seemed such a good idea, too. But at least the morning hadn’t been wasted. He had been with Joyce all this time without argument, and even now, when there was no excuse left for staying, she hadn’t asked him to leave. Perhaps it was because death in the house brought back mutual memories, and not all of them were bad. Not nearly all.

“Joyce,” he began, knowing in his heart it was useless effort. Automatically she drew away and became terribly preoccupied straightening the old man’s desk, much as if he’d be coming back soon and might scold if things were out of place. The appointment book went back into the top drawer, the letters back into the pigeonholes, and an old fountain pen left uncapped required immediate attention. “This old pen!” she fussed, screwing on the top fiercely. “With all the fine pens Grandfather’s been given, he always uses some leaky old thing like this!”

Just a cheap fountain pen, but through it came all the meaning of death. Joyce slumped down in the old leather chair and began to cry softly while the pen twisted foolishly between her fingers. “Joyce, honey—” Trace’s arm was about her shaking shoulders in an instant, but the impulse was a very bad guess. “Leave me alone!” she cried. “Get out of here! It’s all your fault!”

“My fault? Good lord, Joyce, what are you saying?”

“You and Francy! If my grandfather was murdered because of Francy Allen it’s your fault. You brought her back here!”

“Of course I did. She was half dead when that butcher in Red Rock got through with her. What else could I do?”

“You could have married her!”

It took a moment such as this to break through the wall of ice and reach the core of her anger. Now that it was said there were no words left between them. Trace turned on his heel and left the house as silently as he’d come, and was blocks away before he remembered what was on Joyce’s hand where she held the pen. A blue stain, a smudge just like the one the mortician had found on Francy’s fingers.

P
EACE
C
ANYON
was a world without sound. There were no trees for the winds to rustle (and seldom any wind), no highways bustling with traffic, and no living things except the little ground creatures that crawled or scampered between the rocks. The cabin to which Trace had taken Danny stood on a clearing on the canyon floor, sheltered and lonely and so weathered by time that it blended with the crusty soil like some native growth. There were two buildings actually—the cabin and a small barn, and since they were built close to the east wall of the canyon the sun was a long time reaching them.

It was the sun that awakened Danny. It must have been noon or after from the heat of it, and the cabin had become an oven while he slept. He came out of a troubled dream sweating and peeled off the leather jacket he’d been wearing all this time. Exhaustion and caution had prevented taking stock of this sanctuary earlier—lighting the lamp he’d found on the table seemed unwise—but now he could sit on the edge of the bunk and survey the entire cabin. It consisted of just one small room with a black kerosene stove and a cupboard at one end, the table and a couple of chairs in between, and an old-fashioned dresser at the far wall. It looked like an overnight stopping-place for a range rider, or maybe just a place to hole in if a fellow got fed up with people. For Danny it was just fine, and then he became aware of an uncomfortable sensation that, on closer analysis, turned out to be hunger.

The food Trace had left him was in a cardboard box on the table: a few tins, some cheese, and a canteen of water. The cheese and the water were all right, but the tins weren’t much good without a can opener, and Danny’s pockets were clean after being relieved of his possessions by the sheriff. According to Trace the cabin hadn’t been used for years, but since the furnishings were intact there was a chance a few utensils might be left in that cupboard. It was worth a look.

The very first door he tried brought a surprise. No can opener but something a lot more interesting—beer. Half a dozen cans of beer as well as a bottle of bourbon about two-thirds empty. Maybe this was a thoughtful gesture left for any wayfaring stranger, but if so the wayfarers must have been regular customers because there was no dust on the cans and no dust on the neck of the bottle. Now Danny forgot about the can opener. He ripped open the other cupboards and took stock of the contents: a couple of glasses, a few pieces of cheap china, a can of coffee, and a small slab of unsliced bacon. Even a loaf of bread that didn’t feel stale to the touch! Of course he’d heard stories, some of them pretty tall, about how long food remained fresh in the desert air, but this stuff, was a little too fresh for comfort.

A quick look about the room affirmed his fear. This cabin hadn’t sat empty all these years since Trace sold the ranch; it had been occupied and not very long ago. The lamp on the table was filled with kerosene, the wavy mirror over the dresser was free of dust and grime, and a cracked saucer on the dresser top was filled with cigarette butts of a recent vintage. What made the butts so interesting were the lipstick stains on some of them. No cowboy or bindle stiff had left those! And then Danny looked down at his feet and spied another stain even more interesting.

The curse of blood seemed to be following Danny Ross: first the old doctor’s blood that somehow got all over his hands and face, then the blood coming from that little hole in Steve Malone’s forehead, and now a wide brown stain on the bare floor boards beneath his feet. He didn’t have a doubt in the world but what it was blood. It figured, didn’t it? Everywhere he went was grief.

This had been a big grief. The first wide stain was only the beginning; beyond it he found the little stains like drops making a trail across the floor. It was an easy trail to follow once he’d found it, and it led straight to the door. Outside was a little flat roofed porch and the stains were there, too, but where they led farther was something he could not know. The floor of the canyon was a moving thing constantly shifting and sifting so that footprints or bloodstains were lost almost as soon as they were made. But from the porch Danny’s eye traveled naturally to the barn a few yards to the rear.

He didn’t want to go into the barn. He didn’t want to stumble across another corpse, but by this time he couldn’t help himself. Already his imagination was building up another crime of violence, for it was a cinch all that blood hadn’t come from a cut finger. The double doors opened easily, and for a few moments he was blinded by the sudden darkness after all that sunlight. Then the sunlight began to creep in from a hundred cracks in the siding and the roof, and to pour in from that opened door. Danny breathed easier. This time his luck had changed. This time no corpse.

No corpse, no blood, no gory weapon—“Kid, you’re getting jumpy,” he said aloud, and the sound of his own voice was like that of a stranger.

But that still left a brown stain on the cabin floor. He looked in the stalls—a long time empty from the looks of them—and even raised the lid on a feed bin that held nothing but about a handful of oats. No four-footed animal had left any recent trace, but the soft earthen floor showed a perfect set of tire prints—heavy-duty treads that might have come from a truck or a jeep.

Danny squatted on his heels in the dust and tried to make something of a combination like bloodstains in the cabin and tire marks in the barn, and after what he’d been through these past few days there was no limit to what could be made of it. But all the time the canyon was as peaceful as its name, and the sun beat down with warm reassurance. Broad daylight was no time for nightmares. Trace Cooper would come around in a few hours and explain the whole thing; meantime, he was supposed to stay under cover instead of going about looking for more trouble. With a whistle on his lips, forced and not too effective, Danny retraced his steps to the cabin and opened the door. It was too late then to do anything about the uninvited guest waiting for him inside.

• • •

It was a man Danny had never seen before. It was a man who looked like a boy at first sight and grew older before his eyes. He was slender and tall, with a fine high forehead crowned by a crest of blond waves, and an expression of startled bewilderment on his patrician face that was a perfect match for Danny’s sentiments. He stood beside the bunk holding Danny’s leather jacket in one hand and the sheriff’s revolver in the other.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “What are you doing in my cabin?”

The question made no more sense than the man’s presence. Danny took the cabin to be Trace’s.

“That’s my business,” he said.

“Your business? Did you ask my permission? Does anybody ever ask my permission?” The jacket was hurled to the floor in an angry gesture, but he wasn’t letting go of that gun. It looked ridiculous dangling from his long white hand. He was white all over, this man. White skin, whitish hair, white flannel trousers—like a refugee from a tennis court or a musical comedy chorus.

“I know what you come here for!” he blazed. “I won’t have my cabin used for that sort of thing! I won’t have that woman coming here any more!”

Danny wanted to duck and run, but he also wanted to know what was ailing this guy. “What woman?” he asked.

“That terrible woman! She comes here all the time with her men friends. She leaves the place in a terrible mess. Look for yourself—”

“It looks all right to me,” Danny said.

“Oh, it does!” With his free hand the man reached over and ripped open the top dresser drawer. It was filled with a most amazing collection of articles for a rancher’s outpost cabin: a sheer nightgown, a negligee, a full array of feminine finery sticky with the scent of cheap perfume. “Her things, all her smelly things,” the man shouted. “Her things in every drawer!”

He seemed almost to have forgotten Danny, busy as he was scooping the unwanted articles from the dresser drawer by drawer. A filmy handkerchief landed at Danny’s feet and he stooped to pick it up. It was a cheap lace affair with a huge monogram of one letter:
F
.

“Francy!” Danny said.

“Then you do know her!”

“No. No, I don’t. I only heard of her.”

As mad as this guy was, Danny wanted no part of Francy Allen. In fact, he no longer wanted the cabin. “I came here alone,” he added. “I’m not staying. I’ll get out right now.”

Very gladly would he get out right now! Apparently this indignant owner didn’t read the papers or listen to the radio, because up to now he’d shown no interest in Danny’s identity. He was just a trespasser on private property.

“Wait a minute!”

So long as he held that gun anything the man said was an order. Danny waited.

“Get this stuff out of here!”

“But it’s not mine!”

“I don’t care whose it is; get it out!”

Danny had his arms full of some pretty silly articles when the man in white jerked open the bottom drawer. It stuck at first and then let go all the way, spilling both drawer and contents at his feet. Suddenly Danny was looking at a brown stain again, and this time there was no doubt about what it was. It was a black iron skillet with some blond hairs matted and stuck on the bottom, and it was a towel that had been white before it absorbed all that blood.

Gun or no gun, Danny wasn’t sticking around to be blamed for this, too. He let fly with the lingerie and was halfway across the barnyard before the shot came.