The Doomsters Read online

  “Mr. Hallman was ess aitch oh tee. He’s dee ee ay dee.”

  “Don’t spell! You mustn’t spell!”

  In a miniature fury, the child flung herself between us and struck the old woman on the hip. Mrs. Hutchinson drew her close. The child stood still with her face in the flowered lap, her tiny white arms embracing the twin pillars of the woman’s legs.

  I left them and went through the inner door. An unlit passageway lined with shelves ended in a flight of steps. I stumbled down them to a second door, which I opened.

  The edge of the door struck softly against a pair of hind quarters. These happened to belong to Sheriff Ostervelt. He let out a little snort of angry surprise, and turned on me, his hand on his gun.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Coming in.”

  “You’re not invited. This is an official investigation.”

  I looked past him into the greenhouse. In the central aisle, between rows of massed cymbidiums, Mildred and Zinnie and Grantland were grouped around a body which lay face up. The face had been covered by a gray silk handkerchief, but I knew whose body it was. Jerry’s fuzzy tweeds, his rotundity, his helplessness, gave him the air of a defunct teddy bear.

  Zinnie stood above him, incongruously robed in ruffled white nylon. Without makeup, her face was almost as colorless as the robe. Mildred stood near her, looking down at the dirt floor. A little apart, Dr. Grantland leaned on one of the planters, controlled and watchful.

  Zinnie’s face worked stiffly: “Let him come in if he wants to, Ostie. We can probably use all the help we can get.”

  Ostervelt did as she said. He was almost meek about it. Which reminded me of the simple fact that Zinnie had just fallen heir to the Hallman ranch and whatever power went with it. Grantland didn’t seem to need reminding. He leaned close to whisper in her ear, with something proprietory in the angle of his head.

  She silenced him with a sidewise warning glance, and edged away from him. Acting on impulse—at least it looked like impulse from where I stood—Zinnie put her arm around Mildred and hugged her. Mildred made as if to pull away, then leaned on Zinnie and closed her eyes. Through the white-painted glass roof, daylight fell harsh and depthless on their faces, sistered by shock.

  Ostervelt missed these things, which happened in a moment. He was fiddling with the lid of a steel box that stood on a workbench behind the door. Getting it open, he lifted out a piece of shingle to which a small gun was tied with twine.

  “Okay, so you want to be a help. Take a look at this.”

  It was a small, short-barreled revolver, of about .25 caliber, probably of European make. The butt was sheathed in mother-of-pearl, and ornamented with silver filagree work. A woman’s gun, not new: the silver was tarnished. I’d never seen it, or a gun like it, and I said so.

  “Mrs. Hallman, Mrs. Carl Hallman, said you had some trouble with her husband this morning. He stole your car, is that right?”

  “Yes, he took it.”

  “Under what circumstances?”

  “I was driving him back to the hospital. He came to my house early this morning, with some idea I might be able to help him. I figured the best thing I could do for him was talk him into going back in. It didn’t quite work.”

  “What happened?”

  “He took me by surprise—overpowered me.”

  “What do you know?” Ostervelt smirked. “Did he pull this little gun on you?”

  “No. He had no gun that I saw. I take it this is the gun that killed Hallman.”

  “You take it correct, mister. This is also the gun the brother had, according to Yogan’s description of it. The doctor found it right beside the body. Two shells fired, two holes in the man’s back. The doctor said he died instantly, that right, Doctor?”

  “Within a few seconds, I’d say.” Grantland was cool and professional. “There was no external bleeding. My guess is that one of the bullets pierced his heart. Of course it will take an autopsy to establish the exact cause of death.”

  “Did you discover the body, Doctor?”

  “I did, as a matter of fact.”

  “I’m interested in matters of fact. What brought you out to the greenhouse?”

  “The shots, of course.”

  “You heard them?”

  “Very clearly. I was taking Martha’s clothes out to the car.”

  Zinnie said wearily: “We all heard them. I thought at first that Jerry—” She broke off.

  “Jerry what?” Ostervelt said.

  “Nothing. Ostie? Do we have to go through this again—all this palaver? I’m very anxious to get Martha out of the house. God knows what this is doing to her. And wouldn’t you accomplish more if you went out after Carl?”

  “I got every free man in the department looking for him now. I can’t leave until the deputy coroner gets here.”

  “Does that mean we have to wait?”

  “Not right here, if it’s getting you down. I think you ought to stick around the house, though.”

  “I’ve told you all I can,” Grantland said. “And I have patients waiting. In addition to which, Mrs. Hallman has asked me to drive her daughter and her housekeeper into Purissima.”

  “All right. Go ahead, Doctor. Thanks for your help.”

  Grantland went out the back door. The two women came down the funereal aisle between the rows of flowers, bronze and green and blood-red. They walked with their arms around each other, and passed through the door that led toward the kitchen. Before the door closed, one of them broke into a storm of weeping.

  The noise of grief is impersonal, and I couldn’t be sure which one of them it was. But I thought it must have been Mildred. Her loss was the worst. It had been going on for a long time, and was continuing.

  chapter 12

  THE back door of the greenhouse opened, and two men came in. One was the eager young deputy who excelled at cross-country running. Carmichael’s blouse was dark with sweat, and he was still breathing deeply. The other man was a Japanese of indeterminate age. When he saw the dead man on the floor, he stood still, with his head bowed, and took off his soiled cloth hat. His sparse gray hair stood erect on his scalp, like magnetized iron filings.

  The deputy squatted and lifted the gray handkerchief over the dead man’s face. His held breath came out.

  “Take a good long look, Carmichael,” the sheriff said. “You were supposed to be guarding this house and the people in it.”

  Carmichael stood up, his mouth tight. “I did my best.”

  “Then I’d hate to see your worst. Where in Christ’s name did you go?”

  “I went after Carl Hallman, lost him in the groves. He must of circled around and come back here. I ran into Sam Yogan back of the bunkhouse, and he told me he heard some shots.”

  “You heard the shots?”

  The Japanese bobbed his head. “Yessir. Two shots.” He had a mouthy old-country accent, and some trouble with his esses.

  “Where were you when you heard them?”

  “In the bunkhouse.”

  “Can you see the greenhouse from there?”

  “Back door, you can.”

  “He must of left by the back door, Grantland was at the front, and the women came in the side here. You see him, going or coming?”

  “Mr. Carl?”

  “You know I mean him. Did you see him?”

  “No sir. Nobody.”

  “Did you look?”

  “Yessir. I looked out the door of the bunkhouse.”

  “But you didn’t come and look in the greenhouse.”

  “No sir.”

  “Why?” The sheriff’s anger, flaring and veering like fire in the wind, was turned on Yogan now. “Your boss was lying shot in here, and you didn’t move a muscle.”

  “I looked out the door.”

  “But you didn’t move a muscle to help him, or apprehend the killer.”

  “He was probably scared,” Carmichael said. With the heat removed from him, he was relaxing into ca
maraderie.

  Yogan gave the deputy a look of calm disdain. He extended his hands in front of his body, parallel and close together, as though he was measuring off the limits of his knowledge:

  “I hear two guns—two shots. What does it mean? I see guns all morning. Shooting quail, maybe?”

  “All right,” the sheriff said heavily. “Let’s get back to this morning. You told me Mr. Carl was a very good friend of yours, and that was the reason you weren’t scared of him. Is that correct, Sam?”

  “I guess so. Yessir.”

  “How good a friend, Sam? Would you let him shoot his brother and get away? Is that how good a friend?”

  Yogan showed his front teeth in a smile which could have meant anything. His flat black eyes were opaque.

  “Answer me, Sam.”

  Yogan said without altering his smile: “Very good friend.”

  “And Mr. Jerry? Was he a good friend?”

  “Very good friend.”

  “Come off it, Sam. You don’t like any of us, do you?”

  Yogan grinned implacably, like a yellow skull.

  Ostervelt raised his voice:

  “Wipe the smile off, tombstone-teeth. You’re not fooling anybody. You don’t like me, and you don’t like the Hallman family. Why the hell you came back here, I’ll never know.”

  “I like the country,” Sam Yogan said.

  “Oh sure, you like the country. Did you think you could con the Senator into giving you your farm back?”

  The old man didn’t answer. He looked a little ashamed, not for himself. I gathered that he had been one of the Japanese farmers bought out by the Senator and relocated during the war. I gathered further that he made Ostervelt nervous, as though his presence was an accusation. An accusation which had to be reversed:

  “You didn’t shoot Mr. Jerry Hallman yourself, by any chance?”

  Yogan’s smile brightened into scorn.

  Ostervelt moved to the workbench and picked up the shingle with the pearl-handled gun attached to it. “Come here, Sam.”

  Yogan stayed immobile.

  “Come here, I said. I won’t hurt you. I ought to kick those big white teeth down your dirty yellow throat, but I’m not gonna. Come here.”

  “You heard the sheriff,” Carmichael said, and gave the small man a push.

  Yogan came one step forward, and stood still. By sheer patience, his slight figure had become the central object in the room. Having nothing better to do, I went and stood beside him. He smelled faintly of fish and earth. After a while the sheriff came to him.

  “Is this the gun, Sam?”

  Yogan drew in his breath in a little hiss of surprise. He took the shingle and examined the gun minutely, from several angles.

  “You don’t have to eat it.” Ostervelt snatched it away. “Is this the gun Mr. Carl had?”

  “Yessir. I think so.”

  “Did he pull it on you? Threaten you with it?”

  “No sir.”

  “Then how’d you happen to see it?”

  “Mr. Carl showed it to me.”

  “He just walked up to you and showed you the gun?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Yessir. He said, hello Sam, how are you, nice to see you. Very polite. Also, where is my brother? I said he went to town.”

  “Anything about the gun, I mean.”

  “Said did I recognize it. I said, yes.”

  “You recognized it?”

  “Yessir. It was Mrs. Hallman’s gun.”

  “Which Mrs. Hallman?”

  “Old lady Mrs. Hallman, Senator’s wife.”

  “This gun belonged to her?”

  “Yessir. She used to bring it out to the back garden, shoot at the blackbirds. I said she wanted a better one, a shotgun. No, she said, she didn’t want to hit them. Let them live.”

  “That must of been a long time ago.”

  “Yessir, ten-twelve years. When I came back here on the ranch, put in her garden for her.”

  “What happened to the gun?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Did Carl tell you how he got it?”

  “No sir. I didn’t ask.”

  “You’re a close-mouthed s.o.b., Sam. You know what that means?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this this morning?”

  “You didn’t ask me.”

  The sheriff looked up at the glass roof, as if to ask for comfort and help in his deep tribulations. The only apparent result was the arrival of a moon-faced young man wearing shiny rimless spectacles and a shiny blue suit. I needed no intuition to tab him as the deputy coroner. He carried a black medical bag, and the wary good humor of men whose calling is death.

  Surveying the situation from the doorway, he raised his hand to the sheriff and made a beeline for the body. A sheriff’s captain with a tripod camera followed close on his heels. The sheriff joined them, issuing a steady flux of orders.

  Sam Yogan bowed slightly to me, his forehead corrugated, his eyes bland. He picked up a watering can, filled it at a tin sink in the corner, and moved with it among the cymbidiums. Disregarding the flashbulbs, he was remote as a gardener bent in ritual over flowers in a print.

  chapter 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.”