“Martha?”
“Yeah. She let me do it to her. But that was a long time ago, about sixteen or eighteen years. I read about these wigs and stuff in a movie magazine, so I went down to Hollywood and bought an outfit. I wanted to chase the chicks on Sunset Strip. And be a swinger.”
“Did you catch any?”
He shook his doleful head. “I only got to go the once. She doesn’t want me to have a girlfriend.”
His gaze moved past me to his mother.
“I’m your girlfriend,” she said brightly. “And you’re my boyfriend.” She smiled and winked. There were tears in her eyes.
I said: “What happened to your wig, Fritz?”
“I don’t know. I hid it under my mattress. But somebody took it.”
His mother said: “Albert Sweetner must have taken it. He was in the house last week.”
“It was gone long before last week. It was gone about a month ago. I only got to chase the chicks the once.”
“Are you sure about that?” I said.
“Yessir.”
“You didn’t drive down to Northridge Saturday night and put it on Albert’s head?”
“No sir.”
“Or wear it up the mountain Saturday morning – when you knifed Stanley Broadhurst?”
“I liked Stanley. Why would I knife him?”
“Because he was digging up his father’s body. Didn’t you kill his father, too?”
He shook his head violently, like a mop. His mother said: “Don’t, Fritz. You’ll do yourself an injury.”
He stayed with his head hanging, as if he had broken his neck. After a time he spoke again: “I buried Mr. Broadhurst – I told you that. But I never killed him. I never killed none of them.”
“Any of them,” Mrs. Snow said. “You never killed any of them.”
“I never killed any of them,” he repeated. “I didn’t kill Mr. Broadhurst, or Stanley, or–” He lifted his head. “Who was the other one?”
“Albert Sweetner.”
“I didn’t kill him, neither.”
“Either,” his mother said.
I turned to her. “Let him do his own talking, please.”
The sharpness in my voice seemed to encourage her son: “Yeah. Let me do my own talking.”
“I’m only trying to help,” she said.
“Yeah. Sure.” But there was a dubious questioning note in his voice. It issued in speech, though he kept his hangdog posture on the bed: “What happened to my wig and stuff?”
“Somebody must have taken it,” she said.
“Albert Sweetner?”
“It may have been Albert.”
“I don’t believe that. I think you took it,” he said.
“That’s crazy talk.”
His eyes came up to her face, slowly, like snails ascending a wall. “You swiped it from under the mattress.” He struck the bed under him with his hand to emphasize the point. “And I’m not crazy.”
“You’re talking that way,” she said. “What reason would I have to take your wig?”
“Because you didn’t want me to chase the chicks. You were jealous.”
She let out a high little titter, with no amusement in it. I looked at her face. It was stiff and gray, as if it had frozen.
“My son’s upset. He’s talking foolishly.”
I said to Fritz: “What makes you think your mother took your wig?”
“Nobody else comes in here. There’s just the two of us. As soon as it was gone, I knew who took it.”
“Did you ask her if she took it?”
“I was afraid to.”
“My son has never been afraid of his mother,” she said. “And he knows I didn’t take his blessed wig. Albert Sweetner must have. I remember now, he was here a month ago.”
“He was in prison a month ago, Mrs. Snow. You’ve been blaming Albert for quite a number of things.” In the ensuing silence I could hear all three of us breathing. I turned to Fritz. “You told me earlier that Albert put you up to burying Leo Broadhurst. Is that still true?”
“Albert was there,” he answered haltingly. “He was sleeping in the stable near the Mountain House. He said the shot woke him up, and he hung around to see what would come of it. When I brought the tractor down from the compound, he helped me with the digging.”
Mrs. Snow moved past me and stood over him. “Albert told you to do it, didn’t he?”
“No,” he said. “It was you. You said that Martha wanted me to do it.”
“Did Martha kill Mr. Broadhurst?” I said.
“I dunno. I wasn’t there when it happened. Mother got me up in the middle of the night and said I had to bury him deep, or Martha would go to the gas chamber.” He looked around the narrow walls of the room as if he was in that chamber now, with the pellet about to drop. “She told me I should blame it all on Albert, if anybody asked me.”
“You’re a crazy fool,” his mother said. “If you go on telling lies like this, I’ll have to leave you and you’ll be all alone. They’ll put you in jail, or in the mental hospital.”
Both of them could end up there, I was thinking. I said: “Don’t let her scare you, Fritz. You won’t be put in jail for anything you did because she made you.”
“I won’t stand for this!” she cried. “You’re turning him against me.”
“Maybe it’s time, Mrs. Snow. You’ve been using your son as a scapegoat, telling yourself that you’ve been looking after him.”
“Who else would look after him?” Her voice was rough and rueful.
“He could get better treatment from a stranger.” I turned back to him: “What happened Saturday morning, when Stanley Broadhurst borrowed the pick and shovel?”
“He borrowed the pick and shovel,” Fritz repeated, “and after a while I got nervous. I went up the trail to see what they were doing up there. Stanley was digging right where his father was buried.”
“What did you do?”
“I went back down to the ranch and phoned her.”
His wet green gaze rested on his mother. She made a shushing noise which narrowed into a hiss. I said over it:
“What about Saturday night, Fritz? Did you drive down to Northridge?”
“No sir. I was here in bed all night.”
“Where was your mother?”
“I don’t know. She gave me sleeping pills right after Albert phoned. She always gives me sleeping pills when she leaves me by myself at night.”
“Albert phoned here Saturday night?”
“Yessir. I answered the phone, but it was her he wanted to talk to.”
“What about?”
“They were talking about money. She said she had no money–”
“Shut up!”
Mrs. Snow raised her fist in a threat to her son. Though he was bigger and younger and probably stronger, he crawled away from her on the bed and huddled crying in the corner.
I took hold of Mrs. Snow’s arm. She was taut and trembling. I drew her into the kitchen and shut the door on the dissolving man. She leaned on the counter beside the kitchen sink, shivering as though the house was chilly.
“You killed Leo Broadhurst, didn’t you?”
Mrs. Snow didn’t answer me. She seemed to have been overcome by a terrible embarrassment that tied her tongue.
“You didn’t stay in the ranch house that night when Elizabeth Broadhurst and Stanley went up the mountain. You went up there after them and found Leo lying unconscious and stabbed him to death. Then you came back here and told your son to bury him and his car.
“Unfortunately Albert Sweetner knew where the body was buried, and eventually he came back here hoping to turn his knowledge into money. When Stanley failed to show up with the money Saturday night, Albert phoned here and tried to get some more out of you. You drove down to Northridge and killed him.”