The Mountain Cat

Chapter 17

Lem Sammis opened the door of the two-storied frame building and entered. Five paces inside he stopped and stood peering around at the confusing array of animals and birds — deer, grouse, eagles, chipmunks, jack rabbits, the elk, the bear, the cougar. But nothing alive was there, so he tramped to the rear behind the partition and found what he was looking for. “I sent for you three times,” he growled.

Quinby Pellett, seated at the workbench, looked up. His graying hair looked dustier than ever, and the hump of his stooped shoulders was almost a semicircle. “I don’t give a damn,” he declared calmly, “if you sent a thousand.”

Sammis approached him, glaring. “Look here, Quin. You’ve always been independent. That’s all right. But if we’re working the same claim, and in this case we are, there’s no help in this kind of an attitude. Baker’s got your niece shut up in the courthouse right now. He won’t hang any murder on me or mine or you or yours, but it looks like he can raise a big stink before I can stop him. He’s digging into your sister’s life and maybe her death, too. And my daughter. And Charlie and Dan. He’s got Clara there now. He had you for two hours this morning. I want to know what you told him.”

“I told him nothing.”

“You were there two hours.”

“I told him nothing.”

“Frank Phelan was there part of the time. I’ve had a talk with Frank.”

Pellett put down his scraping knife. “If Frank said I told Baker anything about your family or my family that neither you nor I would want him to know, or want anyone else to know, he lied. The reason I didn’t come to see you was because I don’t want to talk about it even to you. There’s too much talk already.”

“There’s too much shooting, too, Quin.”

“I know damn well there is.”

“You’re not telling Baker about Amy and Dan or anything?”

“No.”

“You’re not going to?”

“No.”

“That’s straight?”

“That’s straight.” Sammis stood gazing at him for ten seconds, then turned and went.

Chief of Police Frank Phelan hissed in rage, leaving his desk to advance threateningly on the trio of city detectives in plain clothes. “Suffering snakes! Is it a button in a boulder I asked you to find? No! I want you to find the Governor of the State of Wyoming! Goddamn it, shall I draw a picture of him for you? I don’t care where he’s hid or who hid him! Find him! Lem Sammis wants him and Ollie Nevins wants him! Shall I print it out for you, you half-witted apes? Get out of here before I boil you down for boot grease!” They clattered out.

County Attorney Ed Baker blurted truculently, “What do you want?”

Ken Chambers, Sheriff of Silverside County, stood his ground in front of Baker’s desk. He drawled, “I came to tell you something about Squint Hurley.”

“What about him?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on him. He’s just been making a call at the Brand house on Vulcan Street.”

“What if he has?”

“I thought you ought to know. He was there over an hour. He only got back to his room a little while ago.”

“What makes you think I ought to know?”

“Jesus.” Chambers lifted his shoulders and drooped them again. “What did they elect you for, to keep you out of mischief? If you’ve got no curiosity about what Squint might be after at the Brands—”

“Who did he see there?”

“I didn’t go in with him.”

Baker made a noise of exasperation, got his phone and spoke in it. The door opened to admit a husky but tired-looking young man. Baker asked him if he knew where Squint Hurley was rooming and he said he didn’t.

“I’ll show him,” Chambers offered.

“Much obliged. Go with Chambers, Jack, and get Squint Hurley and bring him here.”

“Is there a warrant?”

“Good gracious.” Baker was wearily sarcastic. “I forgot. Stop at the printers and get an engraved invitation.”

“Okay. Excuse me for breathing.”

When they had disappeared into the anteroom, Baker went to another door, on the opposite side, and passed through into a smaller room. It had a skylight and a ventilator was whirring, but there were no outside windows. Limp in a chair, with her eyes closed, was Clara Brand. At Baker’s entrance she opened her eyes and blinked.

He stood in front of her. “Come to any decision yet?”

“I want to go home, Mr. Baker.”

“I said you could go at dinnertime. That’s no great hardship. You want these murders solved, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. They have to be.”

“You realize that can’t be without someone getting hurt.”

“I suppose not.”

“You know not. Do you want to shield a murderer?”

“No.”

“Then help me, Clara. Get it over with.”

She shook her head. “You won’t?”

“I don’t know, I... I believe I went to sleep. I’ll stay awake now.”

“Do you want a sandwich or something?”

“No, thanks.”

Under an awning on the tiled veranda at Broken Circle Ranch, Wynne Cowles, in yellow silk lounging pajamas, reclined on a portable chaise longue with chromium frame and pneumatic tires. Handy was a little table with cigarettes, matches, books, accessories. At the sound of approaching footsteps she let her magazine drop and pivoted her head, her pupils contracting as she faced the blazing sunlight beyond the awning’s edge.

“Hail, traveler!” she cried. “At the very minimum, an excuse for a highball, which is exactly what I needed.” She frowned as she extended a hand in greeting. “But what a face! You’re absolutely haggard! I’ve promised to be at Saratoga in August. You sounded on the phone as if it was something important, but you look like a cataclysm. Turn that chair around. Scotch or rye, and charged or plain?” She rang a bell.

“Rye with bubbles.” Ty Dillon sat down. “I must be an awful exaggerator if I look like a cataclysm.”

“Then it isn’t one?”

“Lord, no. Just something I want to ask you. A little information to help a struggling young lawyer.”

“I’m flattered.” A Chinese appeared and she instructed him about the drinks and sent him off. “But if you don’t mind, I’d like some information myself first. What about Clara Brand? Did she shoot that person?”

“No.”

“Is she going to be arrested?”

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s good.” Wynne Cowles removed the magazine from her breasts and put it on the table. “Darn her anyway. She’s as independent as a hog on ice. I phoned her three times this morning, and twice she refused to come to the phone, and the third time she said she didn’t-need-any-help-of-any-kind-thank-you.”

“Naturally.” Ty attempted a grin. “I’m her lawyer.”

“Don’t try to achieve flippancy, it just makes you look sick. I know you’re gone on the young sister. Sunk you are. That’s why I don’t waste effort on you. She’s a nice kid. When you phoned I thought possibly you wanted finances for the defense. I’d be glad to.”

Ty shook his head. “Not now, thanks, but I’ll bear it in mind. All I need at the moment is a little information about something that happened two years ago.”

“That’s a long time for a memory like mine. Is it going to require a feat of memory?”

“Not much of one. One day you took a sheet of white paper and wrote on it ‘mountain cat ready for prey.’ ‘Mountain cat’ was on the first line and ‘ready for prey’ on the second. Beneath that you wrote the figures, 450. At the bottom you signed it with your initials, WD. You wrote it in black ink. Your name was Wynne Durocher then.”

“So it was. O Time in thy flight... Here we are.” She pushed at books to make room on the table for the Chinese to put the tray down, stirred the tinkling ice, handed a glass to him, and took hers. “So I wrote ‘mountain cat’ on a piece of paper. It was two years ago that I was given that lovely name, Mountain Cat. By the way, I owe your girl friend a bottle of wine. If you’ll take it to her she’ll probably accept it. She thinks I’m hooked on a life contract with the devil.”

Ty sipped his highball. “You remember writing that?”

“Now do I?” Her brow wrinkled. “So many things are apt to interfere with my memory, and one of the worst is curiosity. I’m as curious as a mountain cat. If I did write that on a piece of paper two years ago, how the dickens do you happen to know it? And if you do happen to know it, why is it worth driving out here thirty miles to ask me about it?”

Ty waved a hand. “I’m a lawyer, I know everything. As for asking you about it, that may be only an excuse to have a highball with my most attractive client.”

“Baloney. I’ve seen your eyes on Delia Brand. How’s the drink, all right? Too thin?”

“No, thanks, it’s fine. You know you’re attractive.”

“I certainly do.” She smiled. “I also know whether you’re candid or not. About my writing things on white paper with black ink. What a grasp of details! I’ll tell you what — refresh my memory by showing me the paper.”

“I’d like to, but I can’t.”

“Why, haven’t you got it?”

“No.”

“Who has?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where did you see it?”

“I’ve never seen it.”

“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “From the way you described it, I was sure you had been keeping it under your pillow.” She drank, and licked her lips with a quick red tongue. “I call that a good highball.”

“So do I.” He put his glass down. “Look here, Mrs. Cowles. You’re playing with me, you’re having fun, and ordinarily I wouldn’t object to that, but this is important. You do remember writing that, don’t you?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. Quit shoving. As soon as I remember it and tell you about it, you’re going to gallop off to court or prison or somewhere, and I need you for another drink.” She rang the bell. “I’m scared to death of lawyers. I always think they’re trying to trap me.”

“Yes, I can see you tremble.”

“Of course you can— More ice, John— Anyhow, you can’t blame me if I’m curious. You say you’ve never seen this paper, you don’t know where it is or who has it, and yet you describe it as if you had seen me write it. After all...” She shrugged.

“It was described to me by someone who saw it.”

“Who?”

“A prospector named Squint Hurley.”

“Where did he see it?”

Ty tried not to scowl. “He saw it lots of times. He carried it around with him for two years.”

“Where did he get it?”

“He found it.”

“Where?”

Ty surveyed her a moment without further attempt to hide the scowl, then said abruptly, “All right. You’ll either help us or you won’t. He found it under the dead body of Charlie Brand in the cabin where he was murdered.”

“Oh.” Her lashes flickered. “Indeed. A paper I wrote found under a dead body. You don’t suppose I did the murder and have forgotten about that, too?”

“No. If I had I wouldn’t have come to ask you about it.”

“But you did come to ask me, trying to keep it casual, without telling me what I would be letting myself in for.” Her pupils were contracted, though she was not facing the sunlight, and her voice had an edge. “I was under the impression that I’m a client of your firm? That I’ve paid you a satisfactory retainer?”

“You wouldn’t be letting yourself in—”

“No? Really, Mr. Dillon. It sounds as if the least I could expect would be the witness chair in a murder case, which would be — shall I say inconvenient?”

“But I’m only asking — confidentially—”

“Oh, no. You’re cheating. If I admitted I had written such a paper, and its being found under the body of a murdered man made my testimony vital as to whom I had given it to, would you still keep it confidential?”

“In that case I’d ask you—”

“Of course. You’d ask me to testify, and I’d refuse, and I’d get a subpoena to appear written on white paper with black ink. Here’s the ice. Have another highball.” She poured and mixed. “It’ll brighten you up. You’ve only partly satisfied my curiosity. For instance, how did the prospector know the writing on the paper was mine?”

“He didn’t.”

“Then who else saw the paper?”

“No one that I know of.”

Her brows lifted. “Did you do it with mirrors?”

“I showed Hurley an envelope you addressed to me and he said the writing was identical. The word ‘mountain.’ ”

“Ah! Then you already suspected me by intuition? Whose? Not yours?”

“It was an accident. I happened to have that envelope in my pocket with others.” Ty hadn’t picked up his second highball. “You are wrong, Mrs. Cowles, if you think there was the slightest intention of causing you any trouble—”

“Oh, I don’t! No trouble at all. Just the key witness in a notorious murder case.” She shivered delicately. “This prospector must be quite a handwriting expert. I’d love to see the paper. What happened to it?”

“Hurley gave it to Dan Jackson Tuesday morning. That night Jackson was killed and the paper taken from him.”

Wynne Cowles’s glass had been started toward her mouth, but was halted midway on its course. Then it went on to its contact with her warm firm lips, and she drank. She put it on the table. “Well!” she said. “Not just one murder. Two murders. Thank you so much!”

“You’re welcome.” Ty leaned forward to her. “I’m a first class boob. I’ve messed this all up. I had brains enough to know you wouldn’t want to be mixed up in a murder trial, no one does, but I should have gone on from there and considered what kind of an appeal would be effective with you. I should have told you the whole thing to begin with and then put it to you: we need your help. The Brand girls need it. You say Delia is a nice kid. That’s putting it mildly. I heard you at the courthouse, day before yesterday, offering Clara your assistance up to any amount. I know you meant money, but money isn’t what they need. Your information, who you gave that paper to, is absolutely vital. It’s the only trail we have—”

“You’re assuming as a fact that I wrote such a paper.”

“Well, you did. Didn’t you?”

“No.”

“You didn’t write that on a piece of paper and put your initials on it, WD?”

“No.”

He looked straight at her eyes and said, “I don’t believe it.” She shrugged. He said, “What you mean is that you did write it, but the paper can’t be produced as evidence, so you propose to avoid inconvenience and notoriety by denying it. If you mean that, why don’t you say so and I’ll know where I stand? We’re here alone.”

She shrugged again. “I’ll say that if you’d like it better. Delia has been released from jail, hasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Is there any danger of her being arrested again?”

“No. I think not.”

“And you told me Clara isn’t going to be arrested. They are already having their inconvenience and notoriety, but that can’t be helped. So I’ll say this: if I had written such a paper, and if I thought it would convict a murderer for me to admit it and get summoned to a courtroom and testify on the stand about it, I wouldn’t do it. Does that let you know where you stand?”

“It does,” said Ty bitterly. “It lets me know where you stand, too.”

“I know.” She grimaced, and picked up her drink. “I’m a cockatrice, a mugger, a harpy — hell, I’m a mountain cat. I don’t mind. I don’t like murderers, but I’m not crazy about hangmen either. Maybe I’m an anarchist. You have not touched your drink.”

“I don’t want it. Listen, Mrs. Cowles. Tell me in confidence and I swear you can trust me—”

“You’re in love. I’d be a fool to trust you. No.”

“Damn it, you offered to help Clara—”

“I’ll help her. How much?”

He kept it up ten minutes longer, but it was futile. All he got was a few scratches from the mountain cat’s claws. He lost his temper, and he left without it.

He drove back to Cody in thirty-five minutes, narrowly missing a collision with a flock of sheep in Engel’s Gulch. It was a quarter to five when he turned into the Brand driveway on Vulcan Street. Delia opened the door for him. His face answered her question before she asked it, and she proved her right to some rarer appellation than “nice kid” by not asking it.

“Did you lie down?” Ty demanded.

She shook her head. “I just fooled around. Wishing I had gone with you.”

“It’s just as well you didn’t. Mountain cat? She’s a hyena. Come and sit down and I’ll tell you about it.”

When he had finished, leaving nothing out, he sat and stared at her miserably, glum, licked. Her lips were moving, nervously jerking, and she put her teeth on the lower one to stop it.

“I did it wrong,” he said. “I’m a fish. I’m a goddamn worm. Two words from her was all I needed, and I muffed the chance. If I’d had an ounce of brains I’d have figured it out better. Like this: either she had a hand in the murder of your father or she didn’t. If she did, she already knew about that paper and it didn’t matter what kind of an approach I made, nothing would drag an admission from her. But if she had nothing to do with the murder, which we had agreed to suppose, then the approach made all the difference, because she couldn’t have known why I was asking about that paper. I could have cooked up a plausible tale that wouldn’t have alarmed her, and she would have told me. Now she’s on guard, and there’s not a chance. It was our one measly lead and I’ve thrown it away.”

“You did your best, Ty.”

“If that’s my best, my worst would be a world’s record.”

“You think she does remember writing it and what she did with it?”

“I know she does. A million to one.”

“Do you still think she had nothing — that she didn’t—?”

“The murder? I don’t know. But ten to one she had nothing to do with it. Why would she? Can you conceive of any reason?”

“No.” Delia slowly shook her head. “No. We should have been smarter. We weren’t clever enough.”

“I know. You can’t possibly feel as much contempt for me as I feel for myself.”

“I don’t feel contempt for you, Ty.”

“You should.” They sat and said nothing.

Finally he heaved a deep sigh that shook his frame. “Well,” he said grimly, “now for the next mistake. I’d like to make this a grand one. What good would it do to take it to the county attorney? Even if he’s on the level and wanted to put the screws on Wynne Cowles, how could he? There’s no evidence except Squint Hurley’s word that there ever was such a paper, and even less that she wrote it. Do you believe Hurley told the truth?”

“Yes.”

“So do I.” Ty abruptly got up. “I’m sunk. I’m grabbing for straws and there aren’t any. The only gleam of hope I see is to go and put it up to Phil Escott. I wish to God I had done that instead of beating it to Broken Circle Ranch with my chin stuck out. Have you heard anything from Clara?”

“I phoned about an hour ago. They wouldn’t let me talk to her, but they said she would be home for dinner at seven o’clock.”

“She has no car there. Shall I go after her?”

“They said they’d bring her.”

“I’ll put that up to Escott, too. They can’t keep on hounding her. Will you let a high-grade moron kiss you?”

She put up her face. He kissed her, not as one who deserved it, pulled away and strode to the door, where he turned. “God, Del. I’m sorry.”

“It’s as much my fault as yours, Ty. Phone me after you’ve talked to Escott.”

After she heard the front door close behind him she buried her face in her hands, her elbows on her knees, and stayed that way a long time. She wasn’t crying; she didn’t feel like crying. There was no energy or purpose left in her; her nerves and brain and muscles all were flabby with fatigue. There was no coherence in anything; nothing in the world, within or without, had any significance. She was, in fact, about to surrender to a state of unconsciousness which could only by euphemism have been called by so sweet a name as sleep, when suddenly something happened in her brain which made her lift her head. There was, after all, something significant, something which she told herself she must remember to do that very day. What could it be? She frowned. What was it? Oh, yes, of course. Butter. There was no butter in the house, and she had neglected to order it with the other things on the phone.

Her brain struggled desperately with the question of butter, and finally solved it with the heroic decision to go to the Vulcan Market two blocks away and get some. She got to her feet and her knees held her up. Good. She went to the drawer in the dining room where she usually put her handbag, but it wasn’t there. It wasn’t in the kitchen. Upstairs then. No. The county attorney had it. That recollection threatened to floor her mind again with a thousand urgencies more pressing than butter, but she had decided to get some butter. They carried no account at the Vulcan Market, and she needed cash. She needed cash anyway, and there was no telling when she would get her handbag back.

She trudged to the stairs and ascended, helping herself with her hand on the rail, and went to her bedroom. She closed the door behind her because that was her habit whenever she entered there with the intention of opening that drawer. From the dark corner of a shelf in the closet, between the folds of a scarf, she got the key, and with it unlocked the top drawer of the bureau which stood between the windows.

Butter nearly got abandoned again, for that drawer was all she had of treasure. The silver spurs her father had given her, the clippings from the Times-Star praising her performances in high school plays, the soda fountain straw through which she and Ty Dillon had both sipped root beer one day a year ago (Ty would have given something, any time those twelve months, to have known it was there), many letters, and especially the letters her mother had written her on various occasions...

She resolutely fought the memories back and reached to a box at the rear of the drawer for a brown paper envelope, opened the flap and inserted her fingers, and extracted a twenty-dollar bill. The mere sight of it was enough, momentarily, to cause one memory to crowd out all the others — the story Rufus Toale had told her as he died, only the night before. Involuntarily she looked at the bill in her hand, and even turned it over and looked at the other side. Then she gaped. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes bulged in an idiot stare. In the upper right hand corner of the bill, small and faint but unmistakably there, were two letters in fine script: R.T. It was God’s money.