The Zebra-Striped Hearse Read online

“Why not?”

  He glared down at me, moving his tongue around under his lips as if he had foreign objects between his teeth. “My wife has the standard female illusion that all marriages are made in heaven. Apparently she’s infected you with it.”

  “I asked a simple question, about this particular marriage. Won’t you sit down, Colonel?”

  He sat stiffly in the chair his wife had occupied. “The man’s a fortune-hunter, or worse. I suspect he’s one of those confidence men who make a career of marrying silly women.”

  “Do you have any evidence along those lines?”

  “The evidence is on his face, in his manner, in the nature of his relationship with my daughter. He’s the kind of man who would make her miserable, and that’s putting it gently.”

  Concern for her had broken through into his voice and changed its self-conscious tone. He wasn’t the stuffed shirt I had taken him for, or at least the stuffing had its human elements.

  “What about their relationship?”

  He hitched his chair forward. “It’s completely unilateral. Harriet is offering him everything—her money, her love, her not inconsiderable attractions. Damis offers nothing. He is nothing—a man from nowhere, a man from Mars. He pretends to be a serious painter, but I know something about painting and I wouldn’t hire him to paint the side of a barn. Nobody’s ever heard of him, and I’ve made inquiries.”

  “How extensive?”

  “I asked a fellow at the art museum. He’s an authority on contemporary American painters. The name Burke Damis meant nothing to him.”

  “The woods are full of contemporary American painters, and there are always new ones coming up.”

  “Yes, and a lot of them are fakes and impostors. We’re dealing with one here, with this Burke Damis. I believe the name’s an alias, one he picked out of a hat.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “The point is, he’s given me no reason to think otherwise. I tried to question him about his background. His answers were evasive. When I asked him where he came from, he said Guadalajara, Mexico. He’s obviously not Mexican and he admitted having been born in the States, but he wouldn’t say where. He wouldn’t tell me who his father was or what he’d done for a living or if he had any relatives extant. When I pressed him on it, he claimed to be an orphan.”

  “Maybe he is. Poor boys can be sensitive, especially under cross-examination.”

  “He’s no boy, and I didn’t cross-examine him, and he’s got the sensitivity of a wild pig.”

  “I seem to have struck out, Colonel.”

  He sat back in his chair, unsmiling, and ran his hand over his head. He was careful not to dislodge the wave in his meticulously brushed white hair.

  “You make it very clear that you think I’m taking the wrong approach to this problem. I assure you I am not. I don’t know how much my wife told you, or how much of what she told you was true—objectively true. The fact remains that my daughter, whom I love dearly, is a fool about men.”

  “Mrs. Blackwell did mention,” I said carefully, “that a similar situation had come up before.”

  “Several times. Harriet has a great desire to get married. Unfortunately she combines it with a genius for picking the wrong man. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not opposed to marriage. I want my daughter to get married—to the right man, at the proper time. But this idea of rushing into it with a fellow she barely knows—”

  “Exactly how long has she known Damis?”

  “No more than a month. She picked up with him in Ajijic, on Lake Chapala. I’ve visited Mexico myself, and I know what kind of floaters you can get involved with if you’re not careful. It’s no place for an unattached young woman. I realize now I shouldn’t have let her go down there.”

  “Could you have stopped her?”

  A shadow stained his eyes. “The fact is I didn’t try. She’d had an unhappy winter, and I could see she needed a change. I was under the impression she would stay with her mother, my former wife, who lives in Ajijic. I should have known better than to depend on Pauline. I naturally supposed she’d surround her with the appropriate social safeguards. Instead she simply turned her loose on the town.”

  “Forgive my bluntness, but you talk about your daughter as though she wasn’t responsible. She isn’t mentally retarded?”

  “Far from it. Harriet is a normal young woman with more than her share of intelligence. To a great extent,” he said, as if this settled the matter, “I educated her myself. After Pauline saw fit to abandon us, I was both father and mother to my girl. It grieves me to say no to her on this marriage. She’s pinned her hopes of heaven to it. But it wouldn’t last six months.

  “Or rather it would last six months—just long enough for him to get his hands on her money.” He propped his head on his fist and peered at me sideways, one of his eyes half closed by the pressure of his hand. “My wife doubtless told you that there is money involved?”

  “She didn’t say how much.”

  “My late sister Ada set up a half-million-dollar trust fund for Harriet. She’ll come into active control of the money on her next birthday. And she’ll have at least as much again when I—pass away.”

  The thought of his own death saddened him. His sadness changed perceptibly to anger. He leaned forward and struck the top of my desk so hard that the pen-set hopped. “No thief is going to get his paws on it!”

  “You’re very certain in your mind that Burke Damis is one.”

  “I know men, Mr. Archer.”

  “Tell me about the other men Harriet wanted to marry. It may help me to understand the pattern of her behavior.” And the pattern of her father’s.

  “They’re rather painful to contemplate. However. One was a man in his forties with two wrecked marriages behind him, and several children. Then there was a person who called himself a folk singer. He was a bearded nonentity. Another was an interior decorator in Beverly Hills—a nancy-boy if I ever saw one. All of them were after her money. When I confronted them with the fact, they bowed out more or less gracefully.”

  “What did Harriet do?”

  “She came around. She sees them now as I saw them from the beginning. If we can keep her from doing something rash, she’ll see through Damis eventually, just as I do.”

  “It must be nice to have X-ray eyes.”

  He gave me a long black look from under his formidable eyebrow. “I resent that remark. You’re not only personally insulting but you seem decidedly lukewarm about my problem. Apparently my wife really got to you.”

  “Your wife is a very charming woman, and possibly a wise one.”

  “Possibly, in some situations. But Damis has her hoodwinked—she’s only a woman after all. I’m surprised that you should be taken in, however. I was told that you run one of the best one-man operations in Los Angeles County.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Peter Colton, of the D.A.’s office. He assured me I couldn’t find a better man. But I must say you don’t exhibit much of the bloodhound spirit.”

  “You may have enough of it for both of us.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve got the case all wrapped up and tied with a noose before I’ve started on it. But you haven’t given me any concrete evidence.”

  “Getting the evidence is your job.”

  “If it’s there. I’m not going to cook up evidence, or select it to confirm you in your prejudices. I’m willing to investigate Damis on the understanding that the chips fall where they fall.”

  He threw his Roman-emperor look around my office. It bounced off the drab green filing cabinet with the dents in it, riffled the flaking slats of the Venetian blind, and found the ugly pin-ups on the wall all guilty as charged.

  “You feel you can afford to lay down terms to your prospective clients?”

  “Certain terms are always implied. Sometimes I have to spell them out. I have a license to lose, and a reputation.”

  His face had e
ntered the color cycle again, starting with pink. “If you consider me a threat to your reputation—”

  “I didn’t say that. I said I had one. I intend to keep it.”

  He tried to stare me down. He used his face like an actor, making his brow horrendous, converting his eyes into flinty arrowheads pointed at me between slitted lids. But he grew tired of the game. He wanted my help.

  “Of course,” he said in a reasonable tone, “I had nothing in mind but a fair, unprejudiced investigation. If you got any other impression, you misread me. You realize my daughter is very dear to me.”

  “I can use a few more facts about her. How long has she been back from Mexico?”

  “Just a week.”

  “This is the seventeenth of July. Does that mean she returned on the tenth?”

  “Let me see. It was a Monday. Yes, she flew back on Monday, July tenth. I met them at the airport around lunchtime.”

  “Damis was with her?”

  “He was very much with her. It’s what all the trouble is about.”

  “Just what kind of trouble has there been?”

  “Nothing overt, yet. We’ve had some—ah—discussions in the family. Harriet has been quite obstinate, and Isobel, as you know, is on the side of the lovebirds.”

  “You’ve talked to Damis?”

  “I have, on two occasions. The three of us had lunch at the airport last Monday. He did a good deal of talking, about theories of painting and the like. Harriet sat there enthralled. I was not impressed.

  “But it was the second time we met that I really began to smell a rat. He came to dinner Saturday night. Harriet had already confided to me that they were planning marriage, so I made an occasion to talk to him alone. It was then he gave me all those evasive answers. On one point at least he wasn’t evasive. He admitted that he didn’t have a dime. At the same time he was ogling around my house as if he already owned it. I told him that would happen only over my dead body.”

  “You told him that?”

  “Later,” he said. “After dinner. He’d made himself highly obnoxious at the table. I mentioned that the Blackwell family name embodies three centuries of tradition, going back to the early days of the Massachusetts colony. Damis seemed to think it was funny. He made a satiric remark about the Colonial Dames—my mother was one, as it happens—and announced that he was bored by such traditions. I said in that case he would certainly be bored as my son-in-law, and he agreed.

  “But later I surprised the fellow in my bedroom. He was actually fingering through my wardrobe. I asked him what he thought he was doing there. He answered flippantly that he was making a study of how the other half lives. I said that he would never find out, not at my expense or the expense of any member of my family. I invited him to leave my house and while he was at it to vacate my other house which he is occupying. But Harriet came rushing in and made me countermand—withdraw the suggestion.”

  “Damis is living in a house that belongs to you?”

  “Temporarily. Harriet talked me into it the first day. He needed a place to paint, she said, and I agreed to let him use the beach house.”

  “And he’s still there?”

  “I assume he is. They’re not even married, and he’s already scrounging on us. I tell you, the man’s an operator.”

  “He doesn’t sound like a very smooth one to me. I’ve known a few painters. The young unrecognized ones have a special feeling about accepting things from other people. They live off the country while they do their work. All most of them want is a north light and enough money to buy paints and eat.”

  “That’s another thing,” he said. “Harriet’s given him money. I happened to glance through her checkbook yesterday, shortly after I phoned you.” He hesitated. “I don’t normally pry, but when it’s a question of protecting her—”

  “Just what are you trying to protect her from?”

  “Disaster.” His voice sank ominously. “Complete and utter personal disaster. I’ve had some experience of the world, and I know what can come of marrying the wrong person.”

  I waited for him to explain this, wondering if he meant his first wife. But he failed to satisfy my curiosity. He said: “Young people never seem to learn from their parents’ experience. It’s a tragic waste. I’ve talked to Harriet until I was blue in the face. But the fellow’s got her completely under his thumb. She told me Saturday night that if it came to a showdown between me and Damis, she would go with him. Even if I disinherited her.”

  “The subject of disinheritance came up?”

  “I brought it up. Unfortunately I have no ultimate control over the money she has coming from her aunt. Ada would have been well advised to leave the money permanently in my keeping.”

  This struck me as a doubtful proposition. Blackwell was a sad and troubled man, hardly competent to play God with anybody’s life. But the sadder and more troubled they were, the more they yearned for omnipotence. The really troubled ones believed they had it.

  “Speaking of money,” I said.

  We discussed my fee, and he gave me two hundred dollars’ advance and the addresses of his houses in Bel Air and Malibu. He gave me something else I hadn’t thought of asking for: a key to the beach house, which he detached from his key ring.

  chapter 3

  IT WAS IN a small isolated settlement north of Malibu. Far down below the highway under the slanting brown bluffs, twelve or fifteen houses huddled together as if for protection against the sea. It was calm enough this morning, at low tide, but the overcast made it grey and menacing.

  I turned left off the highway and down an old switchback blacktop to a dead end. Other cars were parked here against a white rail which guarded the final drop to the beach. One of them, a new green Buick Special, was registered to Harriet Blackwell.

  A wooden gangway ran from the parking area along the rear of the houses. The ocean glinted dully through the narrow spaces between them. I found the one I was looking for, a grey frame house with a peaked roof, and knocked on the heavy weathered door.

  A man’s voice grunted at me from inside. I knocked again, and his grudging footsteps padded across the floorboards.

  “Who is it?” he said through the door.

  “My name is Archer. I was sent to look at the house.”

  He opened the door. “What’s the matter with the house?”

  “Nothing, I hope. I’m thinking of renting it.”

  “The old man sent you out here, eh?”

  “Old man?”

  “Colonel Blackwell.” He pronounced the name very distinctly, as if it was a bad word he didn’t want me to miss.

  “I wouldn’t know about him. A real-estate office in Malibu put me onto this place. They didn’t say it was occupied.”

  “They wouldn’t. They’re bugging me.”

  He stood squarely in the doorway, a young man with a ridged washboard stomach and pectorals like breastplates visible under his T-shirt. His black hair, wet or oily, drooped across his forehead and gave him a low-browed appearance. His dark blue eyes were emotional and a bit sullen. They had a potential thrust which he wasn’t using on me.

  The over-all effect of his face was that of a boy trying not to be aware of his good looks. Boy wasn’t quite the word. I placed his age around thirty, a fairly experienced thirty.

  He had wet paint on his fingers. His face, even his bare feet, had spots of paint on them. His jeans were mottled and stiff with dried paint.

  “I guess he has a right, if it comes down to that. I’m moving out any day.” He looked down at his hands, flexing his colored fingers. “I’m only staying on until I finish the painting.”

  “You’re painting the house?”

  He gave me a faintly contemptuous look. “I’m painting a picture, amigo.”

  “I see. You’re an artist.”

  “I work at the trade. You might as well come in and look around, since you’re here. What did you say your name was?”

  “Archer. You’re very kind.”
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  “Beggars can’t be choosers.” He seemed to be reminding himself of the fact.

  Stepping to one side, he let me into the main room. Except for the kitchen partitioned off in the corner to my left, this room took up the whole top floor of the house. It was spacious and lofty, with a raftered ceiling and a pegged oak floor that had been recently polished. The furniture was made of rattan and beige-colored leather. To my right as I went in, a carpeted flight of steps with a wrought iron railing descended to the lower floor. A red brick fireplace faced it across the room.

  At the far end, the ocean end, on the inside of the sliding glass doors, an easel with a stretched canvas on it stood on a paint-splashed tarpaulin.

  “It’s a nice house,” the young man said. “How much rent do they want from you?”

  “Five hundred for the month of August.”

  He whistled.

  “Isn’t that what you’ve been paying?”

  “I’ve been paying nothing. Nada. I’m a guest of the owner.” His sudden wry grin persisted, changing almost imperceptibly to a look of pain. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to work. Take your time, you won’t disturb me.”

  He walked the length of the room, moving with careful eagerness like an animal stalking prey, and planted himself in front of the easel. I was a little embarrassed by his casual hospitality. I’d expected something different: another yelling match, or even a show of violence. I could feel the tension in him, as it was, but he was holding it.

  A kind of screaming silence radiated from the place where he stood. He was glaring at the canvas as if he was thinking of destroying it Stooping quickly, he picked up a traylike palette, squizzled a brush in a tangle of color, and with his shoulder muscles bunched, stabbed at the canvas daintily with the brush.

  I went through the swinging doors into the kitchen. The gas stove, the refrigerator, the stainless steel sink were all sparkling clean. I inspected the cupboards, which were well stocked with cans of everything from baked beans to truffles. It looked as though Harriet had been playing house, for keeps.

  I crossed to the stairway. The man in front of the easel said: “Augh!” He wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to his canvas. Stepping softly, I went down the stairs. At their foot a narrow door opened onto outside steps which led down to the beach.