“I’ll write you a check, now?”
“You can stop payment on a check. I need cash.”
I was playing for time in the faint hope that Blackwell would come to his senses, as he had once before. Though I couldn’t knuckle under to him, I was eager to hold on to the case. It was beginning to break, and a breaking case to a man in my trade is like a love affair you can’t stay away from, even if it tears your heart out daily.
“I don’t have that much in the house,” he was saying. “I’d have to cash a check at the hotel.”
“Do that. I’ll wait here.”
“Outside,” he said in a monitory tone. “I don’t want you prying around in here. You can wait in your car.”
I went down the hall and out, with Blackwell making shooing motions at my kidneys. He backed his black Cadillac out of the garage and drove away down the hill. I put in a bad ten minutes deciding where to go from here. It would have to be Tahoe, though I hated to make the trip on my own time.
The mourning dove had returned to the television antenna. He sat there still and perfect as a heraldic bird. I said hoo-hoo to him and got a response, hoo-hoo, and I felt better.
Isobel Blackwell, driving a small foreign car, came into the driveway from the road. I got out of my car to meet her. Her face looked wan in the sunlight, but she made herself smile at me.
“Mr. Archer! What a pleasant surprise.”
“Didn’t Letty get in touch with you?”
“I left the hospital early. I’ve been concerned about Mark.”
“You have some reason to be. He had a fainting spell a while ago. Then he had a yelling spell.”
“Mark fainted?”
“I gave him some information that hit him hard.”
She ducked out of her little car and thrust her face up toward mine. “Something has happened to Harriet.”
“We don’t know that. But something could happen to her any time. She’s wandering around Nevada with the man who calls himself Damis. His actual name is Bruce Campion, and he’s wanted in Redwood City for murdering his wife.”
It took her a minute to absorb this. Then she turned toward the house and noticed the empty garage. “Where is Mark?”
“He went down to the hotel to get some money to pay me off. He fired me.”
“What on earth for?”
“The Colonel and I have had it, I’m afraid. We’ve both had too much Army, in different ways – the worm’s-eye view and the god’s-eye view.”
“But I don’t understand. You mean you won’t go on with him?”
“I’d have to be asked. Which isn’t very likely.”
“I know how difficult he can be,” she said in a rush of feeling. “Tell me exactly what the trouble was.”
“He listened in on a telephone conversation I had with a police officer. I made some critical remarks about his treatment of Harriet. He didn’t like them.”
“And that’s all?”
“All there is on the surface. Of course he was thrown by the information I gave him on Damis-Campion. He couldn’t handle it, so he threw it back. He thinks that I’m what hurts him.”
She nodded. “That’s his standard pattern. It’s been getting worse since this began. I’m worried about him, Mr. Archer. I don’t know how he’s going to survive.”
“It’s Harriet’s survival I’m worried about. She and Campion were seen at State Line last night, and I have some Reno detectives on their trail. We have a chance to take him and rescue her, if we can stay with it.”
Her whole body reacted to my words. She clutched her handbag to her breast as if it was a child she could protect. “The man is a murderer, you say?”
“It’s a matter of police record.”
She moved closer to me. Her hand lit on my wrist, and she said in a voice as low as a mourning dove’s: “You said you’d have to be asked. I’m asking you. Will you take me for a client?”
“Nothing would suit me better.”
“Then it’s a contract.” Her hand slid from my wrist to my fingers, and squeezed them. “It would be a good idea to let me tell Mark about this. In my own time, in my own way.”
“I agree.”
She went into the house and came out and gave me money and went in again. Blackwell’s Cadillac rolled into the drive. He climbed out and gave me money. His color was better, and I could smell fresh whisky on him. He must have had a quick one or two at the hotel.
He looked at me as though he wanted to speak, but he didn’t say a word.
15
ARNIE WALTERS met me at the Reno airport. He was a short broad man in his early fifties who looked like somebody you’d see selling tips at a race track. But he had the qualities of a first-rate detective: honesty, imagination, curiosity, and a love of people. Ten or twelve years in Reno had left him poor and uncorrupted.
On the way to State Line he filled me in on the situation there. A handyman named Sholto, who kept an eye on several lakeside houses for their absentee owners, had talked to Harriet the night before. She had come to Sholto’s house to get the key to her father’s lodge, and specifically asked him not to tell her father she was there. Campion had been with her, but stayed in the car, her car.
“Apparently,” Arnie went on, “they spent the night, or part of the night, in the lodge. There’s some dirty dishes on the sinkboard, recently used. Also there’s some indication they’re coining back, or planned to. He left his suitcase in the entrance hall. I have the place staked out.”
“What about her suitcase?”
“Gone. So is her car.”
“I don’t like that.”
Arnie shifted his eyes from the road to my face. “You seriously think he brought her up here to do her in?”
“It’s a possibility that can’t be ruled out.”
“What were the circumstances of the other killing? The wife.”
“He strangled her. I don’t have the details yet.”
“Did he stand to gain by her death?”
“The San Mateo police think not. The only motive they’ve come up with is incompatibility, or words to that effect. Evidently it was a forced marriage: the girl was about three months pregnant at the time. He married her in Reno last September, by the way, which means that this isn’t new territory to Campion.”
“You think he’s repeating a pattern?”
“Something like that.”
“What kind of a character is he?”
“He has me baffled.”
“I never heard you say that before, Lew. Not out loud.”
“Maybe I’m slipping. I don’t pretend to be attuned to the artistic mind. Campion is a good painter, according to a critic who knows what he’s talking about.”
“You think he could be psycho? A lot of psychos magnetize the broads.”
“The psycho broads,” I said. “It’s hard to tell about Campion. He had himself in control both times I saw him. The second time was under severe provocation. Harriet’s father threatened him with a shotgun, and he stood up to it like a little man. But then psychos can be actors.”
“Bad actors. Is he as good-looking as the description says?”
“Unfortunately yes. I brought along a picture of him. It’s a self-sketch, not a photograph, but it’s a good-enough likeness to circularize. I want it back after you have it photographed.”
“Sure. Leave it in the car. I’ll get it around to our informers and have it posted in the lookout galleries in the clubs. Sooner or later he’ll show, if he’s hiding out in this area. You realize he could be long gone by now, and so could the girl.”
We drove in silence for a while, through country wooded with evergreens. The trees parted at one point, and I caught a first glimpse of the lake. It was the height of the season, and outboards were rioting in the afternoon sun. Skiers drove their plows of spray in eccentric furrows. I couldn’t help remembering that Tahoe was deep and cold. Harriet could be long gone, far down, sheathed in black bottom water.