Rex Stout - 1939 - The Mountain Cat Murders Read online

  A voice sounded behind her. “That’s too bad, boss. Honest it is. Them turkey buzzards keep a place clean.”

  She turned and saw a wiry little man with good-humored eyes. “I only got one, Joe. Did you see it go? Riding the air like an eagle and then suddenly losing it, turning loose of its grip on the air. I’m sick of popping gophers because I never miss any more. What are you doing out here?”

  “Got a message. Do you know Ed Baker, the county attorney?”

  “No. Should I? What about him?”

  “He just phoned he wants to see you. At his office in the courthouse any time before midnight, or he says he could drive out here. He said to tell you he’s interviewing everybody who talked with Dan Jackson the day he was killed. I told him I’d call him back.”

  “But I thought—” Wynne Cowles frowned. “Oh, hell. I don’t like being interviewed.” She returned the pistol to its holster on her belt. “At that, maybe I can get in a lick for that kid. That Brand girl.”

  “You were going into town for dinner anyway.”

  “I know it. Come on.”

  She found her horse in the shade of the towering brown rocks where she had left it. His was there too, and together they rode the mile to the ranch house, past corrals, outbuildings and irrigated fields. The house was low, painted white, had a patio and was surrounded by trees. A tiled veranda was shaded with a bright green awning, and a similar awning covered the entire expanse of a first-class tennis court, near which was a large enclosure containing a dozen pronghorns. On a low forked limb of a tree near the veranda, startlingly life-like, a cougar crouched in readiness to leap, seemingly onto a table below which held a stack of magazines, a bowl of fruit and a carved bishido cigarette box. Broken Circle Ranch was a picturesque and expensive layout, but it was also an efficient going concern; Joe Paltz was the best sheepman in northern Wyoming. Wynne Cowles turned her horse over to him on the path at the corner of the veranda, went to her suite overlooking the patio, removed her clothes and gave her body an approving glance in a Tronville mirror, and stepped into the shower cubicle.

  Lem Sammis, at his mahogany desk in his office on the top floor of the new Sammis Building, was saying irritably, “I tell you, Harvey, that don’t matter. Dellie Brand is out of it and no thanks to you either. What we’ve got to do is shut Ed Baker off!”

  Harvey Anson offered mildly, “The governor said he’d see him this evening and Ollie Nevins—”

  “Phut! Talk! More talk! Have you lost all the sense you ever had?” Sammis hit the desk with his fist. “Do you know what’s going on or don’t you? That squarehead Carlson has decided to use this for a showdown. Do you understand English? He has picked on this because he thinks he can force it and he knows I’ve got to fight at a disadvantage. He knows I can only handle it one way on account of Amy. The dirty coward, getting at me through my daughter! He knows me, all right. I won’t permit it! I won’t have it, right here in my own state, my daughter dragged into a public mess, maybe questioned in a courtroom, about her married life with that polecat! Good God, when I think what I’ve kept out of courts and newspapers, you tell me I can’t keep this out?”

  “This is murder, Lem.”

  “You talk like a Sunday School teacher!”

  “No, I don’t.” Anson spread out his palms. “Now here. The fact that it’s murder and the people want it gives Carlson a chance to put pressure on Baker to see that they get it. Everybody in this county has heard talk about Jackson and various women, and here is their chance to get the details, and they want them. His wife being your daughter doesn’t make them any less eager, either. Baker can’t possibly hush it up. Carlson could run him right out of the state. I stick to my advice: don’t try to force Baker to a jump he can’t take, or he’ll grab the bit in his teeth. He’ll have to. Play with him. Give him all the help he wants in his investigation and tell Amy to do the same, with the understanding that he keeps everything under the lid that he doesn’t have to use in court when he gets it lined up. That’s another thing, he may never get it. It looks doubtful to me.”

  “You mean let him pry into my intimate family affairs? My daughter’s?”

  “I mean let him investigate whatever he wants to, with the understanding—”

  “I won’t do it! That little squirt that used to bellyache around for a hundred dollar fee!”

  “Have it your way, Lem.” Anson shrugged. “I know you’re bullheaded, but I’ve seen you pull in your horns when you had to. I’ve seen you throw in many a bum hand. Why are you playing this one up against your chin? Maybe my advice is no good, but if so it’s only because I don’t know all the facts, and I’m beginning to suspect that’s the case.”

  “You know all the facts I do. Somebody went to Dan’s office at night and shot him and killed him. That’s all I know.”

  “All right. But see here, Lem, maybe your judgment is bad because it touches Amy so close. Maybe your head isn’t quite as cool as it ought to be, whereas mine is. I’m for you, you know that, but I can’t give you good advice unless you give me good information. If you know some little fact that I don’t, it would be a lot better if you’d tell me. Otherwise I don’t quite understand why you don’t see that the way I suggest is the best way to handle it.”

  “I don’t know anything you don’t know.”

  Anson shrugged again. “All right, Lem.”

  Delia Brand arose to her feet. Her face did show strain now, much more than it had two hours previously, when she had been conducted by the sheriff to his office, to find a crowd there to welcome her. The county attorney’s questioning had been courteous enough, but it had been thorough. She asked, “Is that all?”

  “Not quite.”

  “I—I’m pretty tired.”

  “I know you are.” Baker screwed up his lips, regarding her. “You remember that I told you downstairs that your being released now doesn’t prohibit a future charge against you in case new evidence warrants it. I want to be sure you understand your position clearly, especially since you submitted to this questioning freely, with no lawyer present.”

  “But there can’t be any charge! There can’t be any evidence—”

  “Yes, there can. That’s what I want to make clear to you. At this moment I don’t believe you shot Jackson, but somebody did, and with a gun you had been carrying around in your bag. The gun had left your possession, I admit that as established, but it is possible that you had recovered it. Nothing is known—”

  “But I couldn’t! I’ve told you! I went straight from Jackson’s office to the Cockatoo Ranch and didn’t even miss the bag until I was far away, and from there I went to the cemetery, and then—”

  “I know. But there is a peculiar fact about the bag being taken from Pellett, your uncle, when he was knocked down the stairs—the fact being that you are the only living person who was there when it happened. I don’t say that I am accusing you of hitting him with that piece of ore—”

  “You couldn’t accuse me of it if you wanted to. I was sitting in Jackson’s office with him when we heard him fall.”

  “You say you were,” Baker said drily. “Jackson is dead.”

  Delia stared at him with her mouth open.

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” he went on. “I’m not accusing you of hitting your uncle on the head or recovering the bag or anything else, I’m just making your position clear to you. Pellett walked up those stairs carrying the bag with the gun in it, and from the moment he got knocked on the head I have no idea what happened to the bag or who got it. You might have got it as easily as anyone else—in fact easier, since you were there on the spot. Nor have you been entirely frank and open with me. You refused to explain your statement to the clerk at MacGregor’s, and the question you had written down to ask Tyler Dillon, by telling me about Rufus Toale as you could have done, and I learned that, and could ask you about it, only because the sheriff phoned up to tell me about Toale’s visit to him this afternoon. Not only that, but there is the matter of Amy J
ackson driving into her yard Tuesday night just as you were going up the path.”

  “What do you mean?” Delia looked puzzled. “I told you about that.”

  “About her driving in, yes. But you didn’t say anything about her father being in the car with her.”

  “But I—but he wasn’t! He was out at Cockatoo Ranch!”

  “What makes you so sure he wasn’t? It was dark, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course it was.” Delia frowned at him. “It seems to me like you’re contradicting yourself. First you say I’m not being frank because I didn’t tell you Mr. Sammis was in her car with her and then you say I couldn’t tell whether he was there or not because it was dark. Anyway, I have been frank. I’ve told you everything I know that could be connected with Dan Jackson. I’ve told you that I never liked him and I didn’t know him very well even when Dad was alive and they were partners.”

  Baker leaned back in his chair, gazing at her. She stood, waiting, and finally asked, “Is that all?”

  “I guess it is. For now.”

  “Then I want—may I have my handbag, please?”

  “No, you can’t. It’s locked up. It’s evidence.”

  “I don’t mean the gun. Just the bag.”

  He shook his head. “It was there on the desk and you say you didn’t take it there. It’s important evidence.”

  Her lip quivered; she controlled it. “There’s a picture of my mother and father in it. May I have that?”

  “I’m sorry. The bag and its contents will be kept intact. You’ll get it back when—when the time comes.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and turned and walked out of the room.

  She had already decided what she was going to do next, but there was a little delay in her plans. Though it was close to six o’clock, the anteroom of the county attorney’s office was far from empty. Four men, one in the uniform of a state trooper, sat in a corner talking in subdued tones. Another group of three men sat against the wall: Bill Tuttle and Ken Chambers, and between them the roughly dressed man with a weathered face and nearly white hair whom Delia had last seen Tuesday night when, with a warm gun in her hand, she had turned at the sound of a voice. Her glance had encompassed those two groups when she was attacked from two directions. A pair came trotting at her, one with a noisy vocal barrage and the other aiming a camera; and simultaneously, from the other side, her name was called and she saw Clara, Ty Dillon and her Uncle Quin. Dillon, on the run, swerved to intercept the reporters, with Pellett supporting, while Clara seized Delia’s arm and hustled her to the door and through it.

  “But Sis—why—you shouldn’t have waited all this time—”

  “There’s a mob out front, Del—it’s awful—come this way—”

  They made it to the back stairs and clattered down, and near the bottom were overtaken by Dillon and Pellett, panting. In the basement they took a narrow side hall and came to a back door, closed, with a man standing there. Dillon handed the man something, and the door opened and they passed through. The large paved court where parking was reserved for officials’ and employees’ cars was almost deserted and they hurried across it to a maroon sedan which Delia recognized as Dillon’s.

  He told her, “Pile in!”

  Delia balked, shaking her head. “I’m not going home.”

  They stared at her.

  “I mean not now. Not first. First I’m going to see Doctor Toale.”

  “Holy smoke!” said Uncle Quin. “Listen to her!”

  “You’re not going to walk, are you?” Ty demanded. “Pile in anyway!”

  They all climbed in, Ty taking the wheel. The engine roared and the car leaped forward, circled careening, and scooted for the gap leading to the street. Delia caught a glimpse of many faces as they swept by. She demanded of Clara’s ear, “But why a mob? Not after me!”

  “Sure they are.” Clara squeezed her arm. “They want to give you three cheers and carry you home on their shoulders. The radio said you were being questioned as a witness and would soon be released. What’s this about going to see Doctor Toale?”

  “I’m going, that’s all.”

  Clara opened her mouth to reply, but the car careened again, turning a corner, and she grabbed for the strap; and then, apparently, thought better of it. Three minutes later the car rolled to a stop at the curb, under a tree on River Avenue, and Ty Dillon, behind the wheel, twisted himself around to face the back seat.

  “Now,” he said, with a challenge in his tone. “The place for you is home. I thought you said you had been doing some thinking the past two days?”

  “I have, Ty.” Delia didn’t quicken to the challenge. “Of course the place for me is home. But first I’m going to see Doctor Toale.”

  Pellett demanded, “What for?”

  “Not for anything foolish, Uncle Quin. I know you all think I’m a fool. I’ve been locked up in a jail, and you think as soon as I get out I want to do something mysterious and dramatic, but I don’t, I swear I don’t. What I’m going to do is quite simple and straightforward. You can drive me home and I’ll take my car—where is my car? I left it on Halley Street.”

  “It’s home in the garage,” said Clara. “Frank Phelan had it brought around yesterday.”

  “Then if you’ll drive me home I’ll take it—”

  “Nothing doing,” Ty declared shortly. “If nothing else, with that open car you’ll collect a crowd wherever you go. Damn it, you’re a sensation! The whole town thinks you shot Jackson and you’ve been turned loose through Sammis’s influence. I’m telling you, you ought to go home and lock the door. What do you want to see Toale for?”

  Delia shook her head. “I’ve changed, Ty.” She frowned into his eyes. “Really I have. But before I go into that house again that was Dad’s house, where my mother died, I’m going to do something and I know what it is, and it’s all right.”

  He looked at her. “Okay.” He twisted under the wheel. “We’ll drive you there and we’ll wait out front.”

  The comfortable and attractive parsonage occupied by the Reverend Rufus Toale, widower, was at the rear of the church, on Maltbie Street. The table on which he ate his modest evening meal, when he had no guest, was in the bay window of the sitting room, which he preferred to the dining room at that time of day because it was cooler, and because from his chair there he could see the tinted enlarged photograph of his deceased wife hanging on the wall. He was gnawing fragments from a lamb chop bone when his housekeeper entered to announce that Miss Delia Brand wished to see him.

  “Who, Mrs. Bonner? Are you sure?”

  “I am, sir.”

  “Praise God! Seat her in the library.” He slowly and methodically wiped his fingers on his napkin, his lips moving in silent prayer, took a drink of water, arose and buttoned his coat, and went to the library, a smaller room across the hall.

  Delia was standing up with her eyes fixed on the door, awaiting his entrance.

  He stopped three paces short of her. “Sit down, my child.”

  She shook her head, swallowed, and said nothing. She swallowed again and said, “I just came to tell you something.”

  “But you can tell me sitting. Guests and friends who talk, children of God—”

  “I’m not a guest or a friend, Doctor Toale. I’m not a child of God either—not your God—”

  “My poor child, you are overwrought with this ordeal—”

  She blurted, “You told Sheriff Tuttle today that it was you I wanted to kill.”

  “So I did. I had tried to see you—”

  “You were right.” She stood with her back straight, her arms straight at her sides. “I did want to kill you. I even thought I was going to kill you. I decided to. But I’ve been seeing into parts of me that I never saw into before and I don’t think I would ever have done it. I think I was hysterical. I think I was a false alarm and a four-flusher. Anyway, that is all past and everything that is gone is past. I want to tell you that I know you killed my mother, I don’t know how or why, bu
t I know you did, and that’s all I want to say. And I don’t care whether you are punished or not, because when I was lying there on a cot I was looking at Mrs. Welch and thinking about it—and something she said to me—about evil and wickedness and mercy. I couldn’t ask for mercy for you, even if there was anybody to ask, but I’m not going to be a faker and a four-flusher any more and try to pretend that I—that I—”

  She faltered. Her lips were working but not saying anything, and she couldn’t stop them.

  The Reverend Rufus Toale stepped forward with a hand outstretched. “My poor child! God bless you—”

  “Don’t you dare to touch me!” she gasped, and turned and fled from the house.

  He stood in the hall five minutes, his lips moving silently, looking at the front door she had left open. Then he went and closed the door, returned to the table in the bay window of the sitting room, glanced up at the tinted picture of his wife and, glancing down, saw that the other lamb chop was cold and greasy.

  Chapter 11

  County Attorney Ed Baker was laying down the law to two of the three men who were seated in his office with him. “You can either keep your mouth shut, Chambers, or get out. I didn’t send for Hurley in order to badger him, but to get information from him. You keep out of it unless you get an invitation. Understand?”