It had been in Messenger’s mind, on the way to the casino, to tell John T. Roebuck about the fourteen thousand dollars impounded in San Francisco. If Dacy Burgess truly didn’t want it, then Anna’s dead husband’s brother was next in line. But now that he’d met Beulah’s big fish, he wouldn’t say a word to him about the money. He didn’t like John T. Nor Mrs. John T., either. Let Dacy tell them if she felt like it. Or Inspector Del Carlo, once he was notified.
“Fact is, Jim,” Roebuck said, “the murders of my brother and his baby girl were the worst thing that ever happened in this town. Even in the old hell-roaring mining days, wasn’t anything as terrible. It hit us hard and it hurt us bad. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Of course.”
“So it’s only natural we’re happy the woman who did it is dead and gone to hell where she belongs. All we want now is to put the whole ugly business behind us, try to forget it as best we can. But we can’t do that if a man who knows nothing much about the crimes, nothing at all about our people and our ways, goes around making wild claims about Anna’s innocence.”
“Suppose she was innocent,” Messenger said.
Lizbeth Roebuck said, “Oh shit, we know she wasn’t. We know it, you hear?” She finished her drink, went to the wet bar, and poured herself another.
“That’s right,” John T. said. “Anna did it, no question. That’s why she killed herself. Innocent people don’t slice their wrists and bleed themselves to death.”
“They do if they’re driven to it.”
“Meaning by us, her friends and neighbors? We drove her out of town, drove her to suicide? Well, I hope we did. Better that than what might’ve happened if she’d stayed.”
“What would’ve happened?” Messenger was angry now. The Roebucks’ cold and bitter self-righteousness was like an abrasive on his nerves. “You’d have taken the law into your own hands? Gone out to her ranch some dark night and lynched her?”
“You been watching too many Western movies, Jim. We’re real civilized out here these days. Got indoor plumbing and everything. The last lynching in this county was more than ninety years ago.”
“How about the last accidental shooting death? The last sudden unexplained disappearance?”
John T. didn’t like that. He pointed his cheroot at Messenger and said thinly, “That’s just what I meant before. About stirring folks up, making wild claims.”
“I’m not claiming anything. Except that I don’t believe Anna killed your brother and her daughter. I’m sorry if that bothers you, but I don’t see any reason to keep quiet about it.”
“Man’s entitled to his opinion. Question is, what’re you planning to do about it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing.”
“And maybe something. How long you fixing to stay in Beulah?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“I wouldn’t stay too long, if I was you. This is a tight little town and it can be pretty uncomfortable for an outsider hellbent on rubbing salt in healing wounds.”
“Is that a threat, John T.?”
“Threat? Lizbeth, you hear me make any kind of threat?”
“No.” Ice rattled in her glass; her hand was no longer steady. “All you did was tell him not to keep pissing against the wind or it’s liable to blow right back in his face.”
“Got a way with words, don’t she?” Roebuck said. “Tell you what, Jim. Have yourself a T-Bone and a couple of drinks in the Grill, on me. Then go on back to your motel, think things over, and maybe you’ll decide the best thing for everybody is to head out in the morning after all. Drive on down to Vegas. Hell of a lot more attractions down there, by a wide margin. It’s a friendlier place, too.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“How about it, then?”
“I’m not in the mood for steak tonight,” Messenger said, “and I doubt I’ll be in the mood for Vegas tomorrow. Beulah’s got all the attractions I’m interested in right now.”
“Then you better learn how to duck. That’s my best advice, Jim: Learn how to duck real quick.”
He wondered, as he drove back to the High Desert Lodge, if he’d been foolish to provoke John T. Roebuck the way he had. If he might be getting himself in over his head. Small towns were bad places to make enemies, especially of the local honcho; he understood that from having grown up in one. And John T.’s thinly veiled threats hadn’t struck him as idle. Stick around, keep asking questions, and he was inviting more trouble than he was equipped to handle.
Maybe he should pull up stakes tomorrow morning. What did he know about playing either detective or the standing-tall hero? One man pitted against an entire town — familiar theme in mysteries and Westerns both, and not a role for somebody like him. He was a CPA, for God’s sake. He led a quiet, nonviolent, disciplined existence. He was so far out of his element in Beulah, Nevada, that he could blunder around here for the next two weeks and even if he stayed out of harm’s way, find out little more than he knew right now.
Still, he was reluctant to let go of the opportunity. He may be a passive individual, but that didn’t mean he ought to let himself be pushed around by men like John T. But it went beyond that. It even went beyond the question of Anna’s innocence or guilt, the challenge of systematically trying to prove an equation true or false. What he had developed was almost a compulsion, as if he were being manipulated into finishing what he’d started. Not by outside forces, but by forces within himself — the same forces that had led him to do what he’d done here so far.
Male menopause, he thought. Jim Messenger’s own private hot flashes. But it wasn’t funny. In a way it was crucial. A kind of rebellion, perhaps, against the slow downward spiral into resignation and despair that had claimed Ms. Lonesome, and that one day, if he allowed it, might claim him as well.
In the cold hour before dawn, he awoke to the moaning melody of a rough desert wind blowing outside. Blowing riffs, high notes and low, like a hot-licks horn man improvising at an all-night jam. He had been dreaming about Doris, and he lay there thinking about her — both for the first time in years. Lay remembering another cold, windy night four months after their marriage: Candlestick Park, Giants versus Astros, early May.
Doris loved baseball. She had a man’s feel for the game, an enthusiastic appreciation of strategy and statistics as well as for its subtleties, its fluidity and grace. When he’d voiced this perception to her she made a face and accused him of being sexist; but he hadn’t meant it that way at all. His own interest in baseball was not quite as keen as hers, particularly when it came to going to the ’Stick or the Oakland Coliseum for games; he was just as content to be a couch-potato TV spectator. But she craved the live atmosphere. Games were more exciting in person, she said. Besides, she loved hot dogs, peanuts, all the other ballpark trappings. They went to a lot of Giants and A’s games that first year — thirty or more.
He hadn’t wanted to go that May night because of the weather. Doris nagged him into it. Pleasing her was important to him then; it had been important to him, for that matter, right up until the day she’d told him, “It just isn’t working, Jimmy. I think we’d better end it right now, before things get any worse between us.”
The wind-chill factor at the ’Stick must have been close to zero — a raw wind so frigid it might have swept down from the Arctic wastes. Less than 2,500 other hardy souls were scattered through the stadium, most clustered in the lower deck behind home plate. Doris preferred to sit in the upper deck, the higher the better on the first base side; she thought you had a better perspective on the whole field from up there. As empty as the park was, they had an entire section to themselves: nobody above them, nobody within twenty rows below. Two castaways in the center of an island of empty seats, huddled and shivering beneath a heavy wool car blanket... he remembered that image crossing his mind at some point during the evening.