Go Home, Stranger

Seven

He was still thinking about her as he got in the car, and it wasn’t entirely about what she might know. A terrific-looking girl, he decided. And Vickie, with her professional ear, had called the shot when she’d said she had a good voice. The smooth contralto purr of that “Good afternoon” was like music. As he came around the store and started out to the highway he stopped on sudden impulse and went inside. Right here was a good place to get the lab report, he thought with sardonic humor.

The blonde girl was reading a newspaper at the counter. She looked up as he came through the door.

“Pack of cigarettes,” he said. She reached in the case and handed them over, and as he slipped the cellophane off he asked, “Who’s the Latin type?”

She smiled sweetly as she handed him his change and a book of matches. “Pretty, isn’t she?”

“If you like ‘em like that, I guess. What’s she here for, the fishing?”

“Why didn’t you ask her? As soon as you got your breath?”

He shrugged. “Oh, I was just curious. Doesn’t matter. But she doesn’t look as if she’d care much for fishing.”

“Well, not for bass, anyway.”

Sharpen your hatchet, kid, he thought. You can do better than that. He started to turn away indifferently. “Probably a schoolteacher on vacation.”

The girl tucked a wisp of hair back of her ear. “She says she’s an artist.”

“A painter, eh?”

“I understand she likes muscles. She had Max Easter pose for her without his shirt.”

“Easter? Who’s he? I mean, when he has his shirt on?”

“A giant. Lives in a houseboat up the bayou. Some kind of a screwball.” She looked at Reno appraisingly. “Built about like you are. Maybe she’ll let you pose for her, too.”

“Uh-uh. I’m just fat.” He lit a cigarette and threw the match toward the door. “What’s your name?”

“Mildred. Mildred Talley. And I know you’re not interested in hers, but it’s Patricia Lasater. Or so she says.”

“Mine’s Pete Reno.” He went toward the door. “I’ll see you at dinner, Mildred.” He stopped then, half through the doorway. “By the way, who’s the redhead with the speedboat?”

“Hutch Griffin. He runs a boat service a couple miles down the channel. If you want to know any more about him, you could ask her.”

He shook his head and waved, and went on out the door.

He drove slowly down the highway, looking, for the road turning off into the timber. According to Mac’s report, the girl—Patricia Lasater, probably, he thought had passed Conway parked across from the Counselor. Then he had started his car and come along behind her for a short distance before he swung off into the trees. So it had to be somewhere very near here. He went a half mile, a mile. Another steel bridge loomed up ahead. The other arm of the bayou, he thought, remembering the map.

He was almost past it before he saw it, a faint pair of ruts leading off the highway into the oaks. He had to hit the brakes and back up a little to make the turn. You’d certainly have to know where that was in order to find it, he thought.

It was quiet in the moss-hung dimness of the timber. The road, little more than a pair of ruts, dodged sharply around tree trunks and pushed through overhanging limbs that scraped along the top of the car. After about a quarter mile the underbrush thinned out a little and he could see the glint of sunlight on open water as he neared the edge of the bayou. He stopped and got out. It was fairly open here under the crowns of the big oaks and he could see the remains of two or three long dead campfires. Fishermen, he thought. There’s probably a piece of shelving bank along here somewhere where you can launch a boat off a trailer. Conway might have been headed here, all right. But for what? And if he launched his boat, what became of it? And the trailer? And, for that matter, Conway?

An examination of the hard ground told him nothing. There had apparently been a few cars and campers in here since the last rain, but there was no way of knowing when that had been. And it had been a little over a month now since Conway had turned his car into this dead-end road, so the chances were very remote that any of these traces were his. He prowled moodily along the bank, having no idea of what he sought but drawn merely by the fact that this spot, this old camping place under the trees along a wild section of bayou, was the last place with which the mysterious Conway could be definitely linked before he had vanished.

He stopped to light a cigarette, squatting on his heels and looking out over the bayou through an opening in the tree wall along the shore. He smoked the cigarette out to the end and dropped it into the water below him. A small fish came up and batted at it, and then another. Fingerling bass, he thought, ready to tackle anything, even at that age. Idly he ran his gaze along the edge of the water, looking for more. And then suddenly he stopped, his face still and his eyes staring at a spot some eight feet off to the left while the hair prickled along the back of his neck. It was impossible. It just couldn’t be.

He jerked his glance upward, measuring the height of the bank. It was at least four feet and almost vertical, a straight drop from the top of the bank to the edge of the water, where the sloping mud bottom began to drop away, gradually at first, and then plunging down out of sight through the tea-colored water. And still there it was, quite plainly seen just under the surface of the water, the track of an automobile tire!

He shook his head. It was just some kid, he thought, playing with an old tire. Hurriedly springing up, he walked over and looked down. And there was another one, just the right distance over and more deeply pressed into the mud than the first, every tread distinct. There wasn’t any doubt of it.

But no, he thought, his mind beginning to react now— not a car. A trailer—a boat trailer. But what fool would try to launch a boat here? It would probably go in upside down, and he’d never get the trailer back on the bank.

But maybe, he decided suddenly, whoever put it down there didn’t want it back on the bank. What he needed was a boat and something to sound with. Turning, he ran back to the car and climbed in.

When he got back to Gulfbreeze Camp, Mildred Talley was lying on the float in a fragmentary bathing suit and blue rubber cap. He waved to her as he went inside the cabin after the rod and his tackle box. Locking the door again, he gathered up the oars and went down to the float to pick out a skiff.

“Hello,” she said, raising on one elbow. “How about a cigarette?”

“Sure.” He dropped the gear in a boat and walked over to her. Pretty, he thought, if she’d give her face a chance. Did she expect to swim in all that make-up? She’d poison the fish.

“You close the lunchroom and go out of business?” he asked.

“Delia is up there,” she said. “She’s my sister. Mrs. Skeeter Malone.”

“I see.”

She sat up and took the cigarette, waiting for him to light it. “You just missed your friend.”

He held the match for her. “My friend?”

“Miss Lasater. She just went up the bayou with an outboard.”

“Oh,” he said absently, still thinking about the trailer. The sun was far down against the wall of trees now and he had a long mile to pull with the oars to get back there.

“Maybe you’ll run into her up there. If you go far enough.”

“Is that what she goes up there for? To run into people?”

“I didn’t say that.” She smiled archly. “You did.”

“Maybe she’s painting,” Reno said absently. Why’s she got her harpoon in that black-headed girl? He thought. “It’s impressive country for landscapes.”

“I guess so,” Mildred replied. “Anyway, she spends a lot of time up there. And I’d be the last one in the world to suggest that she was going fishing with Robert Counsel.”

He had been only half listening to her, and the name came slashing into his reverie like a whip. He managed to keep his face still. “Afraid I don’t get you,” he said, puzzled. “Fishing with who?”

She laughed. “I forgot you didn’t come from around here. It was a kind of saying they used to have. Going fishing with Robert Counsel.”

“And not referring to bass fishing, I take it?”

“Not so you could tell it. It meant a girl was up to something she shouldn’t be. Wild parties. That kind of stuff.”

“And who was Robert Counsel?”

“His grandfather used to own all this land around here. The Counselor’s their old house. He lived there with his mother when I was just a kid. And he had a fishing camp or lodge way up the bayou that she didn’t know anything about. I used to hear the older girls talking about it. Ummm, brother!”

“Wonderful what you can do with money,” Reno said.

“It wasn’t only the money. Or the speedboats and the foreign car. He was a smooth job himself. Old family. And good-looking. I used to see him once in a while, but I was just a kid and he never noticed me, of course.”

“And now I suppose he’s married, with three or four kids, an ulcer and a job in the bank?”

She shook her head. “Nobody knows. He’s been gone from here for years. Never did come back after the war.”

“Was he killed overseas?”

“No, I don’t think so.” She stopped and was silent for a moment, gazing out abstractedly over the water. “Somebody who’s well known like that, you hear all kinds of stories about him. You know how it is. He was blinded. He was court-martialed for some silly thing. He lost both legs. A lot of people didn’t like him, anyway. And a few of them hated him, I guess. Like Max Easter.”

“Easter? Oh, the big guy. He hated him?”

She nodded. “Robert Counsel ran away with his wife. Or so they think.” She broke off abruptly. “But I’m keeping you from your fishing.”

So Easter hated him, Reno thought, pulling up the bayou with long strokes of the oars. Maybe he had a lot of enemies around here. Maybe that was the reason he was trying to get in here without anyone’s recognizing him. But why the boat? He swore under his breath and yanked savagely at the oars. I could stop that, he thought irritably. If I want to beat my brains out, why don’t I just wonder what he was doing with a vacuum pump?

The sun was gone from the water by the time he rounded the last bend and the long reach of the bayou stretched out dark and tranquil ahead of the skiff. He pulled over against the shore and began watching, knowing he was close. It was even darker under the trees, but in a few minutes he made out an open space that looked like the camp ground. Easing the boat up against the bank, he located the tire marks just under the surface of the water. Now, he thought.

Pulling a short distance straight out from shore, he let the boat come to rest on the mirror-like surface and set up the casting outfit, tying on a heavy spoon with a treble hook. The first two casts were unproductive. Maybe the water was a little deeper than it looked, he decided. The next time he let the spoon sink until he was sure it was on the bottom before he started his retrieve. This time he hit it. He felt the spoon bump something, hang up for an instant, and jerk free. Casting back to the same place, he hooked it solidly.

Not brush or weeds, he thought, feeling the excitement now. It was too rigid. Slowly he began winding the reel, pulling the boat back over the spot. When the line led straight down into the darkening water he lay flat on the stern of the boat and poked around with the rod tip. It encountered nothing. Still deeper, he thought. Hurriedly slipping the reel off its seat so it wouldn’t get wet, he stretched farther out over the stern, putting his head into the water and extending the full length of his arm and the five-foot tubular steel casting rod. He felt it then. The rod tapped something below him and the sound was unmistakably that of metal against metal. Swinging the rod back and forth, he heard it scrape against steel for two or three feet before he lost contact. He knew what it was—the pipe frame of a boat trailer, the shaft between axle and trailer hitch.

He raised his head and let water run out of his hair while he took a deep breath and considered his find with growing elation. It had to be Conway’s trailer. Nobody else would deliberately push into the bayou something that probably cost well over a hundred dollars, and it proved beyond any doubt that Conway had been up to more than a simple fishing trip.

But what next? He’d have to get a rope to haul it out where he could get a look at it. That was what he would do—go to town in the morning, pick up a piece of light line, and come back here with the boat. It would be easy to swim down and make the line fast to it, go ashore with the other end, and haul it up. Maybe there was some clue. . . . Maybe Conway was on it.

Looking up, he turned his head to estimate the distance from the bank and fix the spot exactly. It was about thirty feet straight out from the tire marks. It was then he saw the boat.

He sat up, startled. It was Patricia Lasater in a skiff less than fifty yards away, pulling down the channel on the oars and looking over her shoulder at him. He had been so intent on his activity he hadn’t heard her. But why hadn’t she been using the motor he could see on the stern of her boat?

She stopped rowing and the skiff came to rest alongside his. He looked across at her and nodded, busy putting the reel back on the rod and conscious of the water dripping out of his hair onto his clothing.

The brown eyes regarded him with faint irony. “A new method of stalking bass?” she asked.

“No,” he said shortly. “Hung up on some brush. I was trying to work the spoon loose.”

“Oh.” She smiled delightfully, looking very cool and attractive in the blouse and crisp white slacks. “I was afraid you were going to drown. You looked for all the world like a feeding duck.”

Reno was conscious of the baffled irritation of all males caught in something ridiculous by a pretty girl. “Is your motor broken down?” he asked stiffly.

She shook her head. “It’s all right. I was just rowing because I like the bayou at dusk and wasn’t in any hurry.”

That’s possible, he reflected grudgingly. After all, she shouldn’t have any reason to suspect what was down there. He was becoming suspicious of everybody. “Have you been sketching?” he asked, nodding toward the old brief case in the stern of the, boat. “The girl at the camp tells me you paint.”

“A little.”

“Oils?” “

She nodded. “I teach it at college.”

“Have you been here long?”

“About two months. Did you get your plug loose?”

“No. It’s useless.” He reeled in the rest of the line and yanked straight back through the guides. The line parted. “It’s time to start back, anyway.”

She glanced around at the deepening twilight. “Pass me your anchor rope and I’ll give you a tow with the motor.”

* * *

He was up early the next morning, out on the bayou working the shore line with a bass plug. Since he was supposed to be here for the fishing, he had to make it look good. At eight o’clock he changed clothes and went into Waynesport to buy the line. He thought of going to see Howell Gage, but decided to wait until after he had the trailer out. There might be something really important to tell him after he’d had a look at it.

When he got back to camp he remembered he hadn’t bought cigarettes while in town. He walked around to the lunchroom. It was empty, but just as he stepped inside he heard the low sound of voices out in the store.

A woman said something he didn’t catch, and then there was the deadly monotone of Skeeter’s voice. “I tell you she talks too damned much. If you can’t shut her big mouth, I can—” It chopped off abruptly as Reno let the door close.

A woman he hadn’t seen before came through the doorway at the end of the counter. Delia, he thought; Mrs. Skeeter. She was an older version of Mildred, faded a little, and coldly intelligent rather than petulant.

“Yes?” she said.

“Package of cigarettes,” Reno replied. Tough baby, he thought. I wonder if Mac talked to her.

He went back to the cabin. Picking up the tackle box and rod, he got the coil of rope out of the car and went down to the float. He put the rope under the stern seat and shoved off, and as he swung to look up the channel a flash of movement caught his eye. Swinging quickly back, he looked again, and saw it was Patricia Lasater in her skiff, going slowly along the opposite shore near the first turn. When he rounded the turn, some two hundred yards ahead, he looked again. She was nowhere in sight. The whole stretch of the bayou to the next bend was empty.

That was odd. She couldn’t have gone ashore; her boat would still be along the bank somewhere. And she certainly couldn’t have reached the next bend; that was at least a quarter mile away. Then he remembered. There was another of the innumerable arms of the bayou branching off along here somewhere. He had seen it last night. When he pulled abreast of it he saw her. She had just beached her skiff not fifty yards away, inside the entrance, and was climbing out. He suddenly ceased pulling at the oars, and stared in amazement at the man who had just stepped out of the timber along the shore.

He was one of the largest men Reno had ever seen, a gray haired giant whose shoulders had the solid, wedge-shaped look of power and who towered over the girl as if she were a child. He carried a rifle in the crook of his arm and made no effort to help her as she climbed the bank. While Reno watched, they turned and started into the timber, the big man in the lead. Easter, he thought, remembering Mildred Talley' description. There couldn’t be two people that size around here. A screwball of some kind, she had said. Just what had she meant by that? Probably, he reflected cynically, anybody who doesn’t chew gum. But why had Patricia Lasater met him up here, and where were they going? , He shrugged, and dug in the oars. There was no use guessing, and he had more important business. There shouldn’t be any interruptions this time.

When he arrived at the spot some twenty minutes later he set up the casting rod again, without the reel, and carefully lined up the tire marks in the mud. Lying flat in the stern, he began swinging the rod back and forth below him as he had yesterday. The rod encountered nothing, and after a minute or so of futile search he raised his head, taking another bearing on the tracks. The boat had drifted over a little.

He moved it slightly, using one oar as a paddle, and tried again. Still he met with no success. With vague irritation he raised his head and looked around, thinking he would have to drop anchor anyway to hold the boat still. But no, it was where he had put it.

Nuts, he thought impatiently, why waste time probing for it? He had to dive anyway. Stepping forward, he dropped the anchor overboard, then looked up and down the desolate stretch of bayou. There was no one in sight. Stripping off his clothes and watch, he dropped quickly over the side. He took a deep breath and let go the gunwale, swimming straight down. The water was only some ten feet deep, and almost immediately he felt the soft mud bottom under his hands. Moving slowly then, in a widening circle, he put out his arms to keep from bumping the wheels or axle with his head. He had a bad moment when the thought occurred to him again that Conway might be tied to the trailer, but with quick revulsion he shoved it out of his mind. Once his hand brushed something and he thought he had found it, but it was only the concrete block of the anchor. When his lungs began to hurt he kicked upward and took another breath as his head broke the surface. I couldn’t have been that far off in my bearings, he thought angrily. It’s got to be right here under me.

The truth began to come home to him then. The next dive settled it. Lying on the bottom in the warm, tea-colored water with his hands probing into one of the holes in the mud where the wheels had settled, he knew the answer.

There had been a trailer, or something, here last night, but it wasn’t here any more. Somebody had moved it.