The Doomsters

13

I WALKED AROUND to the front of the house and rapped on the screen door. Zinnie answered. She had changed to a black dress without ornament of any kind. Framed in the doorway, she looked like a posed portrait of a young widow, carefully painted in two dimensions. The third dimension was in her eyes, which had green fire in their depths.

“Are you still here?”

“I seem to be.”

“Come in if you like.”

I followed her into the living-room, noticing how corseted her movements had become. The room had altered, too, though there was no change in its physical arrangement. The murder in the greenhouse had killed something in the house. The bright furnishings looked cheap and out of place in the old room, as if somebody had tried to set up modern housekeeping in an ancestral cave.

“Sit down if you like.”

“Am I wearing out my welcome?”

“Everybody is,” she said, a little obscurely. “I don’t even feel at home here myself. Come to think of it, maybe I never did. Well, it’s a little late to go into that now.”

“Or a little early. No doubt you’ll be selling.”

“Jerry was planning to sell out himself. The papers are practically all drawn up.”

“That makes it convenient.”

Facing me in front of the dead hearth, she looked into my eyes for a long minute. Being a two-way experience, it wasn’t unpleasant at all. The pain she’d just been through, or something else, had wiped out a certain crudity in her good looks and left them pretty dazzling. I hoped it wasn’t the thought of a lot of new money shining in her head.

“You don’t like me,” she said.

“I hardly know you.”

“Don’t worry, you never will.”

“There goes another bubble, iridescent but ephemeral.”

“I don’t think I like you, either. That’s quite a spiel you have, for a cheap private detective. Where do you come from, Los Angeles?”

“Yep. How do you know I’m cheap?”

“Mildred couldn’t afford you if you weren’t.”

“Unlike you, eh? I could raise my prices.”

“I bet you could. And I was wondering when we were going to get around to that. It didn’t take long, did it?”

“Get around to what?”

“What everybody wants. Money. The other thing that everybody wants.” She turned, handling her body contemptuously and provocatively, identifying the first thing. “You might as well sit down and we’ll talk about it.”

“It will be a pleasure.”

I sat on the end of a white bouclé oblong, and she perched tightly on the other end, with her beautiful legs crossed in front of her. “What I ought to do is tell Ostie to throw you the hell out of here.”

“For any particular reason. Or just on general principles?”

“For attempted blackmail. Isn’t blackmail the idea?”

“It never crossed my mind. Until now.”

“Don’t kid me. I know your type. Maybe you like to wrap it up in different words. I pay you a retainer to protect my interests or something like that. It’s still blackmail, no matter how you wrap it.”

“Or baloney, no matter how you slice it. But go on. It’s a long time since anybody offered me some free money. Or is this only a daydream?”

She sneered, not very sophisticatedly. “How dare you try to be funny, with my husband not yet cold in his grave.”

“He isn’t in it yet. And you can do better than that, Zinnie. Try another take.”

“Have you no respect for a woman’s emotions – no respect for anything?”

“Show me some real ones. You have them.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I’d have to be blind and deaf not to. You go around shooting them off like fireworks.”

She was silent. Her face was unnaturally calm, except for the deep dimension of the eyes. “You mean that scene on the front porch, no doubt. It didn’t mean a thing. Not a thing.” She sounded like a child repeating a lesson. “I was frightened and upset, and Dr. Grantland is an old friend of the family. Naturally I turned to him in trouble. You’d think even Jerry would understand that. But he’s always been irrationally jealous. I can’t even look at a man.”

She sneaked a look at me to see if I believed her. Our eyes met.

“You can now.”

“I tell you I’m not in the least interested in Dr. Grantland. Or anybody else.”

“You’re young to retire.”

Her eyes narrowed rather prettily, like a cat’s. Like a cat, she was kind of smart, but too self-centered to be really smart. “You’re terribly cynical, aren’t you? I hate cynical men.”

“Let’s stop playing games, Zinnie. You’re crazy about Grantland. He’s crazy about you. I hope.”

“What do you mean, you hope?” she said, laying my last doubt to rest.

“I hope Charlie is crazy about you.”

“He is. I mean, he would be, if I let him. What makes you think he isn’t?”

“What makes you think it?”

She put her hands over her ears and made a monkey face. Even then, she couldn’t look ugly. She had such good bones, her skeleton would have been an ornament in any closet.

“All this talky-talk,” she said. “I get mixed up. Could we come down to cases? That business on the porch, I know it looks bad. I don’t know how much you heard?”

I put on my omniscient expression. She was still coming to me, pressed by a fear that made her indiscreet.

“Whatever you heard, it doesn’t mean I’m glad that Jerry is dead. I’m sorry he’s dead.” She sounded surprised. “I felt sorry for the poor guy when he was lying there. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t have it – that we couldn’t make it together – Anyway, I had nothing to do with his death, and neither did Charlie.”

“Who said you did?”

“Some people would say it, if they knew about that silly fuss on the porch. Mildred might.”

“Where is Mildred now, by the way?”

“Lying down. I talked her into taking some rest before she goes back to town. She’s emotionally exhausted.”

“That was nice of you.”

“Oh, I’m not a total all-round bitch. And I don’t blame her for what her husband did.”

“If he did.” With nothing much to go on, I threw that in to test her reaction.

She took it personally, almost as an insult. “Is there any doubt he did it?”

“There always is, until it’s proved in court.”

“But he hated Jerry. He had the gun. He came here to kill Jerry, and we know he was here.”

“We know he was here, all right. Maybe he still is. The rest is your version. I’d kind of like to hear his, before we find him guilty and execute him on the spot.”

“Who said anything about executing him? They don’t execute crazy people.”

“They do, though. More than half the people who go to the gas-chamber in this state are mentally disturbed – medically insane, if not legally.”

“But they’d never convict Carl. Look what happened last time.”

“What did happen last time?”

She put the back of her hand to her mouth and looked at me over it.

“You mean the Senator’s death, don’t you?” I was frankly fishing, fishing in the deep green of her eyes.

She couldn’t resist the dramatic thing. “I mean the Senator’s murder. Carl murdered him. Everybody knows it, and they didn’t do a thing to him except send him away.”

“The way I heard it, it was an accident.”

“You heard it wrong then. Carl pushed him down in the bathtub and held him until he drowned.”

“How do you know?”

“He confessed the very next day.”

“To you?”

“To Sheriff Ostervelt.”

“Ostervelt told you this?”

“Jerry told me. He talked the sheriff out of laying charges. He wanted to protect the family name.”

“Is that all he was trying to protect?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that. Why did Mildred bring you out here, anyway?”

“For the ride. My main idea was to get my car back.”

“When you get it, will you be satisfied?”

“I doubt it. I’ve never been yet.”

“You mean you’re going to poke around and twist the facts and try to prove that Carl didn’t do – what he did do?”

“I’m interested in facts, as I told Dr. Grantland.”

“What’s he got to do with it?”

“I’d like an answer to that. Maybe you can tell me.”

“I know he didn’t shoot Jerry. The idea is ridiculous.”

“Perhaps. It was your idea. But let’s kick it around a little. If Yogan’s telling the truth, Carl had the pearl-handled gun, or one like it. We don’t know for certain that it killed your husband. We won’t until we get ballistic evidence.”

“But Charlie found it in the greenhouse, right beside the – poor Jerry.”

“Charlie could have planted it. Or he could have fired it himself. That would make it easy for him to find.”

“You’re making this up.”

But she was frightened. She didn’t seem to know for sure that it hadn’t happened that way.

“Did Ostervelt show you the gun?”

“I saw it.”

“Did you ever see it before?”

“No.” Her answer was emphatic and quick.

“Did you know it belonged to your mother-in-law?”

“No.” But Zinnie asked no questions, showed no surprise, and took my word for it.

“Did you know she had a gun?”

“No. Yes. I guess I did. But I never saw it.”

“I heard your mother-in-law committed suicide. Is that right?”

“Yes. Poor Alicia walked into the ocean, about three years ago.”

“Why would she commit suicide?”

“Alicia had had a lot of illness.”

“Mental?”

“I suppose you’d call it that. The menopause hit her very hard. She never came back, entirely. She was practically a hermit the last few years. She lived in the east wing by herself, with Mrs. Hutchinson to look after her. These things seem to run in the family.”

“Something does. Do you know what happened to her gun?”

“Evidently Carl got hold of it, some way. Maybe she gave it to him before she died.”

“And he’s been carrying it all these years?”

“He could have hid it right here on the ranch. Why ask me? I don’t know anything about it.”

“Or who fired it in the greenhouse?”

“You know what I think about that. What I know.”

“I believe you said you heard the shots.”

“Yes. I heard them.”

“Where were you, at the time?”

“In my bathroom. I’d just finished taking a shower.” With never-say-die eroticism, she tried to set up a diversion: “If you want proof of that, examine me. I’m clean.”

“Some other time. Stay clean till then. Is that the same bathroom your father-in-law was murdered in?”

“No. He had his own bathroom, opening off his bedroom. I wish you wouldn’t use that word murder. I didn’t mean to tell you that. I said it in confidence.”

“I didn’t realize that. Would you mind showing me that bathroom? I’d like to see how it was done.”

“I don’t know how it was done.”

“You did a minute ago.”

Zinnie took time out to think. Thinking seemed to come hard to her. “I only know what people tell me,” she said.

“Who told you that Carl pushed his father down in the bathtub?”

“Charlie did, and he ought to know. He was the old man’s doctor.”

“Did he examine him after death?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Then he must have known that the Senator didn’t die of a heart attack.”

“I told you that. Carl killed him.”

“And Grantland knew it?”

“Of course.”

“You realize what you’ve just said, Mrs. Hallman? Your good friends Sheriff Ostervelt and Dr. Grantland conspired to cover up a murder.”

“No!” She flung the thought away from her with both hands. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“How did you mean it?”

“I don’t really know anything about it. I was lying.”

“But now you’re telling the truth.”

“You’ve got me all twisted up. Forget what I said, eh?”

“How can I?”

“What are you looking for? Money? You want a new car?”

“I’m sort of attached to the old one. We’ll get along better if you stop assuming I can be bought. It’s been tried by experts.”

She rose and stood over me, looking down in mingled fear and hatred. Making a great convulsive effort, she swallowed both. In the same effort, she changed her approach, and practically changed her personality. Her shoulders and breasts slumped, her belly arched forward, one of her hips tilted up. Even her eyes took on a melting-iceberg look.

“We could get along, quite nicely.”

“Could we?”

“You wouldn’t want to make trouble for little old me. Why don’t you make us a shakerful of Gibsons instead? We’ll talk it over?”

“Charlie wouldn’t like it. And your husband’s not yet cold in his grave, remember?”

There was a greenhouse smell in the room, the smell of flowers and earth and trapped heat. I got up facing her. She placed her hands on my shoulders and let her body come forward until it rested lightly against me. It moved in small intricate ways.

“Come on. What’s the matter? Are you scared? I’m not. And I’m very good at it, even if I am out of practice.”

In a way, I was scared. She was a hard blonde beauty fighting the world with two weapons, money and sex. Both of them had turned in her hands and scarred her. The scars were invisible, but I could sense the dead tissue. I wanted no part of her.

She exploded against me hissing like an angry cat, fled across the room to one of the deep windows. Her clenched hand jerked spasmodically at the curtains, like somebody signaling a train to stop.

Footsteps whispered on the floor behind me. It was Mildred, small and waif-like in her stocking feet.

“What on earth’s the matter?”

Zinnie glared at her across the room. Except for her thin red lips and narrow green eyes, her face was carved from chalk. In one of those instinctive female shifts that are always at least partly real, Zinnie released her fury on her sister-in-law: “So there you are – spying on me again. I’m sick of your spying, talking behind my back, throwing mud at Charlie Grantland, just because you wanted him yourself–”

“That’s nonsense,” Mildred said in a low voice. “I’ve never spied on you. As for Dr. Grantland, I barely know him.”

“No, but you’d like to, wouldn’t you? Only you know that you can’t have him. So you’d like to see him destroyed, wouldn’t you? You hired this man to ruin him.”

“I did no such thing. You’re upset, Zinnie. You should lie down and have a rest.”

“I should, eh? So you can carry on your machinations without any interference?”

Zinnie crossed the room in an unsteady rush. I stayed between her and Mildred.

“Mildred didn’t hire me,” I said. “I have no instructions from her. You’re way off the beam, Mrs. Hallman.”

“You lie!” She screamed across me at Mildred: “You dirty little sneak, you can get out of my house. Keep your maniac husband away from here or by God I’ll have him shot down. Take your bully-boy along with you. Go on, get out, both of you.”

“I’ll be glad to.”

Mildred turned to the door in weary resignation, and I went out after her. I hadn’t expected the armistice to last.