The Underground Man

chapter 7

Kelsey carried the spade in one hand and the bloody pickax in the other. He tossed them into the back of the truck and helped Mrs. Broadhurst into the cab. I took the wheel.

She rode between us in silence, looking straight ahead along the stony road. She didn’t utter a sound until we turned at her mailbox into the avocado grove. Then she let out a gasp which sounded as if she’d been holding her breath all the way down the canyon.

“Where is my grandson?”

“We don’t know,” Kelsey said.

“You mean that he’s dead, too. Is that what you mean?”

Kelsey took refuge in a southwestern drawl which helped to soften his answer. “I mean that nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him, ma’am.”

“What about the blond girl? Where is she?”

“I only wish I knew.”

“Did she kill my son?”

“It looks like it, ma’am. It looks like she hit him over the head with that pickax.”

“And buried him?”

“He was buried when I found him.”

“How could a girl do that?”

“It was a shallow grave, ma’am. Girls can do about anything boys can do when they set their minds to it.”

A whine had entered Kelsey’s drawl under the pressure of her questioning and the greater pressure of her fear. Impatiently she turned to me:

“Mr. Archer, is my grandson Ronny dead?”

“No.” I said it with some force, to beat back the possibility that he was.

“Has that girl abducted him?”

“It’s a good assumption to work on. But they may simply have run away from the fire.”

“You know that isn’t so.” She sounded as if she had crossed a watershed in her life, beyond which nothing good could happen.

I stopped the pickup behind my car on the driveway. Kelsey got out and offered to help Mrs. Broadhurst. She pushed his hands away. But she climbed out like a woman overtaken by sudden age.

“You can park the truck in the carport,” she said to me. “I don’t like to leave it out in the sun.”

“Excuse me,” Kelsey said, “but you might as well leave it out here. The fire’s coming down the canyon, and it may get to your house. I’ll help you bring your things out if you like, and drive one of your cars.”

Mrs. Broadhurst cast a slow look around at the house and its surroundings. “There’s never been fire in this canyon in my lifetime.”

“That means it’s ripe,” he said. “The brush up above is fifteen and twenty feet deep, and as dry as a chip. This is a fifty-year fire. It could take your house unless the wind changes again.”

“Then let it.”

Jean came to meet us at the door, a little tardily, as if she dreaded what we were going to say. I told her that her husband was dead and that her son was missing. The two women exchanged a questioning look, as if each of them was looking into the other for the source of all their troubles. Then they came together in the doorway and stood in each other’s arms.

Kelsey came up behind me on the porch. He tipped his hard hat and spoke to the younger woman, who was facing him over Mrs. Broadhurst’s shoulder.

“Mrs. Stanley Broadhurst?”

“Yes.”

“I understand you can give me a description of the girl who was with your husband.”

“I can try.”

She separated herself from the older woman, who went into the house. Jean rested on the railing near the hummingbird feeder. A hummingbird buzzed her. She moved to the other side of the porch and sat on a canvas chair, leaning forward in a strained position and repeating for Kelsey her description of the blue-eyed blond girl with the strange eyes.

“And you say she’s eighteen or so?”

Jean nodded. Her reactions were quick but mechanical, as if her mind was focused somewhere else.

“Is – was your husband interested in her, Mrs. Broadhurst?”

“Obviously he was,” she said in a dry bitter voice. “But I gathered she was more interested in my son.”

“Interested in what way?”

“I don’t know what way.”

Kelsey switched to a less sensitive line of questioning. “How was she dressed?”

“Last night she had on a sleeveless yellow dress. I didn’t see her this morning.”

“I did,” I put in. “She was still wearing the yellow dress. I assume you’ll be giving all this to the police.”

“Yessir, I will. Right now I want to talk to the gardener. He may be able to tell us how that spade and pick got up on the mountain. What’s his name?”

“Frederick Snow – we call him Fritz,” Jean said. “He isn’t here.”

“Where is he?”

“He rode Stanley’s old bicycle down the road about half an hour ago, when the wind changed. He wanted to take the Cadillac, but I told him not to.”

“Doesn’t he have a car of his own?”

“I believe he has some kind of jalopy.”

“Where is it?”

She shrugged slightly. “I don’t know.”

“Where was Fritz this morning?”

“I can’t tell you. He seems to have been the only one here for most of the morning.”

Kelsey’s face saddened. “How does he get along with your little boy?”

“Fine.” Then his meaning entered her eyes and darkened them. She shook her head as if to deny the meaning, dislodge the darkness. “Fritz wouldn’t hurt Ronny, he’s always been kind to him.”

“Then why did he take off?”

“He said that he was worried about his mother. But I think he was scared of the fire. He was almost crying.”

“So am I scared of the fire,” Kelsey said. “It’s why I’m in this business.”

“Are you a policeman?” Jean said. “Is that why you’re asking me all these questions?”

“I’m with the Forest Service, assigned to investigate the causes of fires.” He dug into an inside pocket, produced the aluminum evidence case, and showed her the half-burned cigarillo. “Does this look like one of your husband’s?”

“Yes it does. But surely you’re not trying to prove that he started it. What’s the point if he’s dead?” Her voice had risen a little out of control.

“The point is this. Whoever killed him probably made him drop this in the dry grass. That means they’re legally and financially responsible for the fire. And it’s my job to establish the facts. Where does this man Snow live?”

“With his mother. I think their house is quite near here. My mother-in-law can tell you. Mrs. Snow used to work for her.”

We found Mrs. Broadhurst in the living room, standing at a corner window which framed the canyon. The room was so large that she looked small at the far end of it. She didn’t turn when we moved up to her.

She was watching the progress of the fire. It was in the head of the canyon now, slipping downhill like a loose volcano, and spouting smoke and sparks above the treetops. The eucalyptus trees behind the house were momentarily blanched by the gusty wind. The blackbirds and pigeons had all gone.

Kelsey and I exchanged glances. It was time that we went, too. I let him do the talking, since it was his territory and his kind of emergency. He addressed the woman’s unmoving back:

“Mrs. Broadhurst? Don’t you think we better get out of here?”

“You go. Please do go. I’m staying, for the present.”

“You can’t do that. That fire is really on its way.”

She turned on him. Her face had sunk on its bones; it made her look old and formidable.

“Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do. I was born in this house. I’ve never lived anywhere else. If the house goes, I might as well go with it. Everything else has gone.”

“You’re not serious, ma’am.”

“Am I not?”

“You don’t want to get yourself burned, do you?”

“I think I’d almost welcome the flames. I’m very cold, Mr. Kelsey.”

Her tone was tragic, but there was a note of hysteria running through it, or something worse. A stubbornness which could mean that her mind had slipped a notch, and stuck at a crazy angle.

Kelsey cast a desperate look around the room. It was full of Victorian furniture, with dark Victorian portraits on the walls, and several cabinets full of stuffed native birds under glass.

“Don’t you want to save your things, ma’am? Your silver and bird specimens and pictures and mementos?”

She spread her hands in a hopeless gesture as if everything had long since run through them. Kelsey was getting nowhere trying to sell her back the pieces of her life.

I said:

“We need your help, Mrs. Broadhurst.”

She looked at me in mild surprise. “My help?”

“Your grandson is missing. This is a bad time and place for a little boy to be lost–”

“It’s a judgment on me.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“So I’m talking nonsense, am I?”

I disregarded her angry question. “Fritz the gardener may know where he is. I believe you know his mother. Is that correct?”

Her answer came slowly. “Edna Snow used to be my housekeeper. You can’t seriously believe that Fritz–” she stopped, unwilling to put her question into words.

“It would be a great help if you’d come along and talk to Fritz and his mother.”

“Very well, I will.”

We drove out the lane like a funeral cortege. Mrs. Broadhurst was leading in her Cadillac. Jean and I came next in the green Mercedes. Kelsey brought up the rear, driving the pickup.

I looked back from the mailbox. Sparks and embers were blowing down the canyon, plunging into the trees behind the house like bright exotic birds taking the place of the birds that had flown.