Like many divided and inarticulate men, Armistead had an old-fashioned poetic streak. I tried to keep him talking.
“Where did you live when you were a boy?”
“Near Newport. That’s where I met my wife. I used to crew for her first husband.”
“Jerry is supposed to have met Susan Crandall in Newport.”
“He may have. We sailed down there in June.”
I showed him the girl’s picture, but he shook his head. “So far as I know, he never brought a girl aboard – her or any other girl.”
“Until Thursday?”
“That’s correct.”
“What happened Thursday night? I’d like to get it straight.”
“So would I. I gather from the scuttlebutt that the girl got high on something. She climbed the mast and dove into the water. She barely missed one of the pilings. This was about dawn on Friday morning.”
“I understand Jerry’s on drugs.”
His face closed up. “I wouldn’t know.”
“His father admits he’s been using them.”
Armistead glanced toward the gate. Kilpatrick was still there.
“A lot of people use them,” he said.
“The question may be important.”
“All right. I tried to discourage it, but he was using pep pills and other dangerous drugs. It’s one of the reasons I let him live aboard.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He was less likely to get into trouble on the boat. At least, that was my theory.” His face turned sullen again.
“You’re fond of the boy.”
“I tried to be a father to him, or a big brother. I know that sounds like corn. But I thought he was a good one, in spite of the drugs. What makes them so important?”
“I think the girl Susan had some kind of a breakdown. And she may have killed a man yesterday. Have you heard about the murder?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“The victim was a man named Stanley Broadhurst.”
“I know a Mrs. Broadhurst who lives here.”
“She’s his mother. Do you know her well?”
“We don’t know anyone here really well. The ones I know best are the harbor people. Fran has her own friends.”
He glanced around the harbor restlessly like a sailor who had gone to sea in his youth and never moved back ashore. He looked at the town with uncomprehending eyes. It hung like a city made of fog or smoke between the restless sea and the black mountains.
“I’m not connected with any of this,” Armistead said.
“Except through Jerry.”
He frowned. “Jerry is finished and done with as far as I’m concerned.”
I could have told him that it wasn’t that easy. Jerry’s real father seemed to know it already.
chapter 17
Kilpatrick was standing inside the wire gate. He looked at me like a suspect waiting to be released.
“Armistead’s bitter, isn’t he? He’ll throw the book at Jerry.”
“That I doubt. He’s more let down than angry.”
“I’m the one that’s really let down,” Kilpatrick said competitively.
I changed the subject. “Do you know where Sheriff Tremaine is this morning?”
“I know where he was an hour ago – at the main fire camp on the college grounds.”
Kilpatrick volunteered to take me up there. Driving a new black Cadillac, he led me in my not-so-recent Ford to the eastern edge of the city and onto a county road which climbed into the foothills through areas where the fire had been and gone. Just before we reached the campus, we passed a walled Forest Service compound where tanker trucks and tractors were being repaired.
We were stopped at double iron gates which stood open between iron gateposts. A brass sign was bolted to one post: Santa Teresa College. The ranger who stopped us knew Kilpatrick and told us to drive on through – the sheriff was on the athletic field with the fire boss. Joe Kelsey, whom I also asked him about, had passed that way not long before in a deputy coroner’s truck.
Kilpatrick and I parked behind the bleachers that overlooked the athletic field. Before I left my car I got the green-covered book out of the trunk and put it in my jacket pocket. We made our way among official cars and trucks that had assembled from all over Southern California, from the Tehachapis in the north to the Mexican border.
The athletic field resembled a staging area just back of the lines in a major battle. On the grass oval inside the cinder track, bubble copters were landing and taking off with reinforcements.
Undisturbed by their din, smoke-jumpers lay on the grass with their closed and soot-blurred faces to the sky. There were men of every color there – Indians and blacks and weathered whites – hard-nosed, stoic, working stiffs with nothing to lose but their bedrolls and their lives.
We found Sheriff Tremaine in the main command post, which was a plain gray Forest Service trailer. The sheriff-coroner was a big-bellied man wearing a tan uniform and a Stetson. The flesh of his face hung in folds like a bloodhound’s dewlaps and made his smile a strange and complex thing. He gave Kilpatrick an old-fashioned politician’s handshake, with his left hand on the elbow as he pumped.
“What can I do for you, Brian?”
Kilpatrick cleared his throat. His voice came out tinny and uncertain. “My son Jerry’s in a spot of trouble. He’s taken Roger Armistead’s sloop and gone to sea with a girl.”
The Sheriff smiled his complicated smile. “It doesn’t sound so serious. He’ll come back.”
“I was hoping you could alert the people up and down the coast.”
“Maybe if there were two of me. Take it up with the men at the courthouse, Brian. We’re planning to move base within twenty-four hours. And on top of everything else, I hear we’ve got a dead man on our hands.”
“Stanley Broadhurst?” I said.
“Yessir. Do you know him?”
“I was with Joe Kelsey when his body was found. The girl that Mr. Kilpatrick is talking about is a material witness in that killing. And she and Jerry have Stanley Broadhurst’s son with them.”
Tremaine became more attentive, but he seemed too tired to react fully. “What do the two of you want me to do?”
“Put out an all-points alarm, as Kilpatrick suggested, with emphasis on the coastal cities and seaports. The missing boat is a sloop named ‘Ariadne’.” I spelled it out. “Do you have an aero-squadron?”
“I have, but the volunteer pilots are up to their necks.”
“You could detach one plane and send it out to the islands. They may have anchored out there.” From where I stood I could see the islands, embossed on the slanting sea.
“I’ll consider it,” the sheriff said. “If there’s anything else, you can take it up with Joe Kelsey. He has the full cooperation of my office.”
“There’s one other thing, sheriff.”
He bowed his head in weary patience. I produced the green-covered book and got out Stanley Broadhurst’s ad from the San Francisco Chronicle.
The sheriff took the clipping in his hands and studied it. Kilpatrick moved to his shoulder and looked at it, too. The two men lifted their eyes at the same time and exchanged a glance of dubious recognition.
“The man is Leo Broadhurst, of course,” the sheriff said. “Who’s the woman, Brian? Your eyes are better than mine.”
Kilpatrick swallowed. “My wife,” he said. “My ex-wife, that is.”
“I thought it was Ellen. Where is she now?”
“I have no idea.”
The sheriff handed the clipping back to me. “Is this connected with Stanley Broadhurst’s death?”
“I think so.”