He was in the dining room now with Kay, stuffing himself with the impromptu meal she had prepared for him at my request. Rambling and rumbling on endlessly about my general worthlessness.
“…me an’ daughter just couldn’t support him any longer, so he comes back down here. An’ he sent her a little money, but it was like pulling teeth to get it out of him. And this last month, more than a month, I guess, he didn’t send nothing! No, sir, not one red cent! So I just up and decided—Pass me that coffee pot, will you, miss? Yes, and I believe I’ll have some more of them beans an’ potato salad, and a few of them…”
In the kitchen, Jeff Claggett unwrapped the strip of black tape from around the telephone cord, and held the two ends apart.
“A real sweet old lady,” he laughed sourly. “Well, that takes care of any calls since she left today, if you had any since then. But I’m damned if I understand how she could head off the others.”
I said it was easy, as easy as it was for her to see that I got no mail that would reveal what she was up to. “She kept the phone out in the kitchen when she was in the house, and when she was away she hid it where it couldn’t be heard.”
“And you never caught on?” Claggett frowned. “She pulls this for almost a month, and you never tipped?”
“Why should I?” I said. “If someone like you called, of course, she’d see that you got through to me. Anyone else would be inclined to take her at her word. She had a little luck, I’ll admit. But it wasn’t all that hard to pull off with someone who gets and makes as few calls as I do.”
“Yeah, well, let’s get on with the rest of it,” Claggett sighed. “I hate to ask, but…?”
“The answer is yes to both questions,” I said. “Mrs. Olmstead mailed the checks I sent to my wife—or rather she didn’t mail them. And she made my bank deposits for me—or didn’t make them.”
Claggett asked me if I hadn’t gotten deposit slips, and I said, no, but the amounts were noted in my bankbook. Claggett said he’d just bet they were, and he’d bet I hadn’t written “for deposit only” on the back of the checks. I said I hadn’t and couldn’t.
“I needed some cash for household expenses,” I explained, “and I’d run out of personal checks. I had some on order, but they never arrived.”
“I wonder why.” Claggett laughed shortly. “Well, I guess there’s no way of knowing how much she’s taken you for offhand, or how much if any we can recover—when and if we catch up with her. But Mr. Blabbermouth or Bannerman shapes up to me like a guy who means to get money out of you right now.”
“I’m sure of it,” I said. “I should have at least a few hundred left in the bank, but it wouldn’t be enough to get him off my back.”
“No,” he said. “With a guy like him there’s never enough. Well—” he drew a glass of water from the sink, drank it down thoughtfully. “Want me to handle him for you?”
“Well…” I hesitated. “How are you going to do it?”
“Yes or no, Britt.”
I said, Yes. He said, All right, then. He would do it, and there was to be no interference from me.
We went to the dining room, and sat down across from Bannerman. He had stuffed his mouth so full that a slimy trickle streaked down from the corner of it. Claggett told him disgustedly to use his napkin, for God’s sake. My father-in-law did so, but with a pious word of rebuke.
“Good men got good appetites, Mister Detective. Surest sign there is of a clean conscience. Like I was telling the young lady—”
“We heard what you told her,” Claggett said coldly. “The kind of crap I’d expect from a peabrain loudmouth. No, stick around, Nolton”—he nodded to Kay, who resumed her chair. “I’d like to know what you think of this character.”
“He already knows,” Kay said. “I told him when he tried to give me a feel.”
Bannerman spluttered red-faced that he’d done nothing of the kind. He’d just been tryin’ to show his appreciation for all the trouble she’d gone to for him. But Kay had taken her cue from Claggett—that here was a guy who should have his ears pinned back. And she was more than ready to do the job.
“Are you calling me a liar, buster?” She gave him a pugnacious glare. “Well, are you?”
He said, “N-no, ma’am, ’course not. I was just—”
“Aaah, shut up!” she said.
And Claggett said, Yes, shut up, Bannerman. “You’ve been talking ever since you stepped through the door today, and now it’s time you did some listening. You want to, or do you want trouble?”
“He wants trouble,” Kay said.
“I don’t neither!” Bannerman waved his hands a little wildly. “Britt, make these people stop—”
“All right, listen and listen good,” Claggett said. “Mr. Rainstar has already given your daughter a great deal of money. I imagine he’ll probably provide her with a little more when he’s able to, which he isn’t at present. Meanwhile, you can pack up that rattletrap heap you drove down here in, and get the hell back where you came from.”
Anger stained Luther Bannerman’s face the color of eggplant. “I know what I can do all right!” he said hoarsely. “An’ it’s just what I’m gonna do! I’m gonna have Mr. Britton Rainstar in jail for the attempted murder of my daughter!”
“How are you going to do that?” Claggett asked. “You and your daughter are going to be in jail for the attempted murder of Mr. Rainstar.”
“W-what?” Bannerman’s mouth dropped open. “Why that’s crazy!”
“You hated his guts,” Claggett continued evenly. “You’d convinced yourselves that he was a very bad man. By being different than you were, by being poor instead of rich. So you tried to kill him, and here’s how you went about it…”
He proceeded to explain, despite Bannerman’s repeated attempts to interrupt. Increasingly fearful and frantic attempts. And his explanation was so cool and persuasive that it was as though he was reciting an actual chronicle of events.
The steering apparatus of my car had been tampered with; also, probably, the accelerator. Evidence of the tampering would be destroyed, of course, when my car went over the cliff. All that was necessary then was for me to be literally driven out of the house. So angered that I would jump into the car, and head for town.
But Connie had overdone the business of making me angry. She had pursued me to the kitchen door—and been knocked unconscious when I flung it open. And when I headed for town, she was in the car with me…
“That’s the way it was, wasn’t it?” Claggett concluded. “You and your daughter tried to kill Mr. Rainstar, and your little plan backfired on you.”
My father-in-law looked at Claggett helplessly. He looked at me, eyes welling piteously.
“Tell him, Britt. Tell him that Connie and me w-wouldn’t, that we just ain’t the kind of p-people to—to—”
He broke off, obviously—very obviously—overcome with emotion.
I wet my lips hesitantly. In spite of myself, I felt sorry for him. This man who had done so much to humiliate me, to make me feel small and worthless, now seemed very much that way himself. And I think I might have spoken up for him, despite a stern glance from Jeff Claggett. But my father-in-law compensated in blind doggedness for his considerable shortcomings in cerebral talents, and he was talking again before I had a chance to speak.
“I’ll tell you what happened!” he said surlily. “That fella right there, that half-breed Injun, Britt Rainstar, tried to kill my daughter for her insurance! He stood to collect a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and that was just plenty of motive for a no-account loafer like him!”
Claggett appeared astonished. “You mean to tell me that Mr. Rainstar was your daughter’s beneficiary?”
“Yes, he was! I’m in the insurance business, and I wrote the policy myself!”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Claggett said in a shocked voice. “Did you know about this, Britt?”
“I told you about it,” I said, a little puzzled. “Don’t you rememb
er? Mr. Bannerman wrote up a similar policy on me with my wife as beneficiary, at the same time.”
He nodded, and said, Oh, yes; it all came back to him now. “But the company rejected you, didn’t they? They wouldn’t approve of your policy.”
“That’s right. I don’t know why exactly, but apparently I wasn’t considered a very stable character or something of the kind.”
“You were a danged poor risk, that’s what!” Bannerman said grimly. “Just the kind of fella that would get himself in a fix with the law. Which is just what you went and done! Why, if I hadn’t spoken up to the sheriff, after you tried to kill poor, little Connie—”
He chopped the sentence off suddenly. He gulped painfully, as though swallowing something which had turned out to be much larger than he had thought.
Kay gave him a cold, narrow-eyed grin. There was a snap to Claggett’s voice like a trap being sprung.
“So Mr. Rainstar was a pretty disreputable character, was he? Was he, Bannerman?”
“I—I—I didn’t say that! I didn’t say nothin’ like that, a-tall, an’ don’t you—”
“Sure, you did. And you told everone in town what a no-goodnik he was. A blabbermouth like you would be bound to tell ’em, and don’t think I won’t dig up the witnesses who’ll swear that you did!”
“But I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. I was just talkin’,” Bannerman whined. “You know how it is, Britt. You say you wish someone was dead, or you’d like to kill ’em, but—”
“No,” I said. “I’ve never said anything like that in my life.”
“You didn’t trust your son-in-law, Bannerman,” Claggett persisted. “And you sure as hell didn’t like him. But you allowed the policy on your daughter to stand—a policy that made him her beneficiary? Why didn’t you cancel it?”
“I—Never you mind!” Bannerman said peevishly. “None of your doggoned business, that’s why!”
Claggett asked me if I had ever seen the policy, and I said I hadn’t. He turned back to Bannerman, his eyes like blue ice.
“There isn’t any policy, is there? There never was. It was just a gimmick to squeeze Mr. Rainstar. Something to threaten him with when he tried to get a divorce.”
“That ain’t so! There is too a policy!”
“All right. What’s the name of the insurance company?”
“I—I disremember, offhand,” Bannerman stammered, and then blurted out, “I don’t have to tell you, anyway!”
“Now, look you!” Claggett leaned forward, jaw jutting. “Maybe you can throw your weight around with your friendly hometown sheriff. Maybe he thinks the sun rises and sets in your ass. But with me, you’re just a pimple on the ass of progress. So you tell me: what’s the name of the insurance company?”
“But I—I really don’t—”
“All right.” Claggett made motions of rising. “Don’t tell me. I’ll just check it out with the Underwriters’ Bureau.”
And, at that, Bannerman gave up.
He admitted weakly that there was no policy, and that there never had been. But he brazenly denied that he and Connie had done wrong by lying about it.
Ol’ Britt was tryin’ to get a divorce, and she had a right to keep him from it, any way she could. And never mind why she was so dead set against a divorce. A woman didn’t have to explain a thing like that. The fact that she didn’t want one was reason enough.
“Anyways, Connie hasn’t been at all well since the accident. Taken all kinds of money to pervide for her. If she hadn’t had some way of scarin’ money out o’ Britt—”
“Apparently, she’s able to take care of herself now,” Claggett said. “Or do you have round-the-clock nurses? And just remember I’ll check up on your story!”
“Well—” Bannerman hesitated. “Yeah, Connie’s coming along pretty good right now. ’Course she’s all jammed up inside, an’ she’s always gonna be an invalid—”
“What doctor told you that? What doctors? What hospital did her X-rays?”
“Well…” Bannerman said weakly. “Well…” And said no more.
“Jeff,” I said. “Can’t we wind this up? Just get this—this thing the hell out of here? If I have to look at him another minute, I’m going to throw up!”
Claggett said he felt the same way, and he jerked a thumb at Bannerman and told him to beat it. The latter said he’d like to, there was nothing he’d like to do more. But he just didn’t see how he could do it.
“I used practically every cent I had comin’ down here. And that ol’ car of mine ain’t gonna go much further, without some work bein’ done on it. I want t’get back home, these here big cities ain’t for me. But—”
“Save it,” Claggett said curtly. “You’ve probably got half of the first nickel you ever made, but I’ll give you a stake to get rid of you. Nolton”—he gestured to Kay—“get him in his car, and see that he stays in it till I come out.”
“Yes, sir! Come on, you!”
She hustled my father-in-law out of the room, and the front door opened then closed behind them.
I gave Claggett my heartfelt thanks for the way he had handled things, and promised to pay back whatever money he gave my father-in-law.
“No problem”—he dismissed the matter. “But tell me, Britt. I was just bluffing, of course, trying to shake him up, but do you suppose he and your wife did try to kill you?”
“What for?” I said. “I was willing to get out of their lives. I still am. Why should they risk a murder rap just because they hated me?”
“Well. Hatred has been the motive for a lot of murders.”
“Not with people like them,” I said. “Not unless it would make them something. I’ll tell you, Jeff. I don’t see them risking a nickel to see the Holy Ghost do a skirt dance.”
He grinned. Then, again becoming thoughtful, he raised another question.
“Why is your wife so opposed to divorce, d’you suppose? I know you’ll give her money as long as you have it to give, but—”
“Money doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it,” I said. “She was that way right from the beginning, when I didn’t have a cent and it didn’t look like I ever would have. I just don’t know.” I shook my head. “There was a little physical attraction between us at one time, very little. But that didn’t last, and we never had any other interests in common.”
“Well,” Claggett shrugged, “Bannerman was right about one thing. A woman doesn’t have to give a reason for not wanting a divorce.”
We talked about other matters for a few minutes, i.e., Mrs. Olmstead, my work for PXA, and the prospects for suing over the condemnation of my land. Then, he went back to Bannerman again, wondering why the latter had caved in so quickly when he, Claggett, had threatened to call the Underwriters’ Bureau.
“Why didn’t he try to bluff it out, Britt? Just tell me to go ahead and check? He had nothing to lose by it, and I might have backed down.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Is it important?”
“We-ell…” He hesitated, frowning. “Yes, I think it might be. And I think it bears on the reason for your wife’s not giving you a divorce. Don’t ask me why. It’s just a hunch. But…”
His voice died away. I looked at his troubled face, and again I felt that icy tingling at my spine…a warning of impending doom. And even as he was rising to leave, a pall seemed to descend on the decaying elegance of the ancient Rainstar mansion.
28
Claggett drove off toward town to get some money for my father-in-law, Bannerman following him in his rattletrap old vehicle. Kay came back into the house.
While she prepared dinner for the two of us, I cleaned up the mess Luther Bannerman had left and carried the dishes out to the kitchen. She glanced at me as I took clean silver and plates from the cupboard; asked if I was still mad at her. I said I never had been—I’d simply tried to set her straight on where we stood. Moreover, I said, I was grateful to her for the several jolts she had given my father-in-law.
She sa
id that had been a pleasure. “But if you’re not mad, why do you look so funny, Britt? So kind of down in the mouth?”
“Maybe it’s because of seeing him,” I said. “He always did depress me. On the other hand…”
I left the sentence hanging, unable to explain why I felt as I did. The all-pervading gloom that had settled over me. Kay said she was sort of down in the dumps herself, for some reason.
“Maybe it’s this darn old house,” she said. “Just staying inside here day after day. The ceilings are so high that you can hardly see them. The staircase goes up and up and it’s always dark and shadowy. You feel like you’re climbing one of those mountains that are always covered with clouds. There are always a lot of funny noises, like someone was sneaking up behind you. And…”
I laughed, cutting her off. The house was home to me, and it had never struck me as being gloomy or depressing.
“We both need a good stiff drink,” I said. “Hold the dinner a few minutes, and I’ll do the honors.”
I couldn’t find any booze; Mrs. Olmstead apparently had finished it all off. But I dug up a bottle of pretty fair wine, and we had some before dinner and with it.
We ate and drank, and Kay asked how much Mrs. Olmstead had stolen from me. I said I would have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out.
“It really doesn’t bother me a hell of a lot,” I added. “If she hadn’t gotten it my wife would have.”
“Oh, yes. She tore up the checks you sent your wife, didn’t she?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Well, uh, look, Britt…” She paused delicately. “I’ve got some money saved. Quite a bit, actually. So if you’d like to—”
I said, “Thanks, I appreciate the offer. But I can get by all right.”
“Well, uh, yes. I suppose. But”—another delicate pause. “How about your wife, Britt? How much do you think she’d want to give you a divorce?”