“He would never have abandoned her for purely selfish reasons.”
“You’re having another peace-pipe dream, Quinn, and the smoke’s gotten in your eyes.”
“I can’t hear you,” Mother Pureza interrupted sharply. “Are you saying anything interesting? Speak up, speak up. What’s the good of conversation that can’t be heard?”
“For Pete’s sake, keep her quiet,” Lassiter said. “She gives me the creeps. I can’t think.”
Bill, who had gone on a brief inspection of the upper levels of the Tower, returned with the news that the place was empty. He glanced sympathetically at Mother Pureza. “I have a grandmother like that.”
“So what do you do to keep her quiet?” Lassiter said.
“Well, she likes to suck Life Savers.”
“Then for Pete’s sake give her a Life Saver, will you?”
“Sure. Come on, Grandma. Let’s go sit outside. I’ve got something nice for you.”
“Are you a good conversationalist?” Mother Pureza said, frowning. “Can you quote poetry?”
“You bet.” Bill helped her to her feet and led her slowly toward the archway. “How’s this? ‘Open your mouth and close your eyes, and I’ll give you something to make you wise.’”
“I’ve never heard that before. Who wrote it?”
“Shakespeare.”
“Fancy that. It must have been during one of his lighter moments.”
“It was.”
“Do you know any stories?”
“Some.”
“Will you tell me the one about how they all lived happily ever after?”
“Sure.”
Mother Pureza’s eyes brightened and she clapped her hands in delight. “Start right now. ‘Once upon a time there was a woman’ — Go on, say it.”
“‘Once upon a time there was a woman.’” Bill repeated.
“‘Named Mary Alice Featherstone.’”
“‘Named Mary Alice Featherstone.’”
“‘And she lived happily ever after.’”
Lassiter watched them leave, wiping the sweat off his face with his shirt sleeve. “We’ll have to take her back to San Felice with us, County General Hospital, I guess. A hell of a thing, leaving an old lady alone like that.”
The immediate problem of Mother Pureza had overshadowed the fact of Haywood’s death. His body seemed hardly more than a prop of scenery against which real, live people were acting out their personal dramas.
“Are there any other buildings?” Lassiter said.
“A barn, a couple of washrooms, a storage shed.”
“Take a look around, will you? I’ll radio headquarters to send an ambulance and put out an A.P.B.”
Quinn went to the barn first. The lone occupant was a mother goat suckling her new kid. The truck and the green station wagon were gone. The washrooms were empty, too; the only sign of recent occupancy was a bar of gray gritty soap lying in a couple of inches of water in a tin basin. The pieces of wool used for towels were all dry, an indication to Quinn that the colonists had abandoned the place shortly after his departure. They had stayed long enough to clean up the kitchen, burn the evidence, cover Haywood’s body, then they had taken off.
The big question was, where could they have gone? Whatever their destination, they could hardly hope to escape notice, all of them robed and barefooted and the Brothers with their heads shaved. To avoid attracting immediate attention they must have changed to ordinary clothes, perhaps the very clothes they had worn when they first came to the Tower. It wasn’t like the Brothers to throw anything away.
Quinn walked quickly along the path to the storage shed. The small room where he had spent the night at the Tower seemed to be in the same condition as he had left it. The two blankets were still on the iron cot, and underneath them was Karma’s old school book which Sister Blessing had given him to read. The window was still open, the padlocks on the doors leading to the other compartments still in place. But on closer examination he saw that he was mistaken. One of the padlocks had been too carelessly or too hastily closed and had failed to snap shut. Quinn removed it and opened the door.
It was a small, square, windowless room that smelled of must and mildew. When his eyes adjusted to the dimness he could see that the place was filled with cardboard cartons of all sizes, some with lids, some without, some empty, some stuffed with clothing, books, handbags, hats, bundles of letters, hand mirrors, wallets, hair brushes, bottles of medicine, boxes of pills. There was a fan made of peacock feathers, an old-fashioned hand-crank phonograph, a miniature outrigger canoe constructed of matchsticks, a red velvet pillow pitted with holes, an abalone shell, a pair of hockey skates, a lamp with a tattered silk shade, a framed reproduction of Custer’s last stand, a headless doll and an oversized coffee mug with dad on it. Each of the cartons was labeled with the name of a member of the colony, printed in crayon.
One of the cartons looked new and bore the brand name of a detergent that had only recently been put on the market. It was labeled Brother Faith of Angels. Quinn carried it out, put it on the iron cot and opened the lid.
The dark gray fedora on top was identical to the hat he had seen George Haywood wearing when he had met Willie King at the empty house in Chicote. Both the hat and the dark gray suit underneath it came from Hadley & Son, Chicote, California. The white shirt, undershirt, shorts and two handkerchiefs carried the same laundry mark, HA 1389X. The black oxfords and striped blue tie were made by nationally known manufacturers and could have been bought anywhere. There was no wallet or personal papers of any kind.
He was in the act of replacing the clothes in the carton when Sheriff Lassiter appeared in the doorway.
“Find anything?” Lassiter said.
“George Haywood’s clothes, I think.”
“Let’s have a look.” He examined the items carefully, holding each one up to the light, squinting against the slanting rays of the sun. “Are there any more of these cartons?”
“Dozens.”
“O.K., we’d better get going on them.”
Sister Blessing’s was brought out first. A thick layer of dust on the lid indicated that it had not been opened for some time. It contained a black wool coat, some white uniforms, a flowered crepe dress, underclothes, two pairs of white nurses’ shoes, a calfskin handbag, a few pieces of costume jewelry, a man’s gold watch and chain, and a sheaf of letters, some very old, signed your loving husband, Frank, and a few more recent, signed Charlie. The last one was dated the previous December:
Dear Mother:
Once again I am writing to wish you a Merry Christmas from Florence and the two boys and myself. I only wish it could be a Merry Christmas for you. When are you going to come to your senses and leave that place? Surely there’s enough misery in the world without the extra you’re deliberately inflicting on yourself, for no sane reason. There’s plenty of room for you here, if you choose to reconsider.
Flo and the boys had the flu last month but we are all well now. I enclose twenty dollars. Spend it, save it, tear it up, but for the love of heaven don’t hand it over to that doom-spouting madman who seems to have you mesmerized.
Merry Christmas,
Not even by reading between the lines could Quinn detect any sign of love or affection in the letter. Charles had written it in anger, and if he intended it as a real invitation for his mother to come and share his house, it was poorly expressed. Four words would have done the trick: We need you here.