“Destiny?”
“Yeah, destiny. He said he was working out his destiny or something. I dunno what he meant when he said that. They were talkin’ pretty high-falutin’.”
“How did his voice sound? Was he excited?”
“Naw, he was real cool and cold. She was more hysterical like.”
“Did he threaten her, Mrs. Sholto?”
“I wouldn’t say he threatened her. More like he soothed her down. She was okay when they drove off.”
“Who was driving?”
“He was. She was at the wheel when they were sitting there, but he changed places with her. He did the driving.”
“What time did they leave?”
“I dunno. The clock broke. When are you going to get me a new clock, Hank?”
“Saturday.”
“I bet,” she said serenely, and retreated into the house.
Sholto turned to me. “It was twilight when they left here, nearly night, I’d say around eight o’clock. I didn’t know there was nothin’ wrong or I’d of phoned her father. You think the guy did something to her, eh?”
“We have some evidence that points that way. Was Miss Blackwell wearing a hat when you saw her last night?”
“Yeah, a little hat with a veil. I noticed it because the girls don’t go in for hats around here much.”
“I found her hat in the lake just now,” I said. “With blood and hair on it.”
His eyes went almost out of sight in their twin nests of wrinkles.
“The man she was with, Campion, is implicated in two other murders. One was his wife. Her maiden name was Dolly Stone, and she’s supposed to have spent some time here last summer. Did you ever hear of a Dolly Stone, or Dolly Campion?”
“No, sir. No siree.”
“What about Q. R. Simpson?”
“Come again.”
“Quincy Ralph Simpson. His wife told me he was up here a couple of months ago.”
“Yeah,” he said matter-of-factly, “I knew Ralph. He worked for the Blackwells for a little while, in May I think it was. The Colonel opened the lodge early this year, in April. He told me he wanted to give his new little wife a chance to watch the spring come on.” He paused, and glanced at the declining sun as though to reorient himself in the present day. “Did something happen to Ralph Simpson?”
“He’s the other murder victim. We don’t know for certain that Campion was responsible. The chances are he was. What sort of work was Simpson doing for the Blackwells?”
“Chief cook and bottle washer, while he lasted. He didn’t last long.”
“Why not?”
Sholto kicked at one of the sawhorses. “I don’t like to pass it on about a dead man. There was talk around that Ralph took something. I didn’t put much stock in it myself. Ralph may have been a gamblin’ fool, but that don’t make him no thief.”
“He was a gambler?”
“Yeah, he can’t stay away from the tables. It was my belief he gambled away his money and got stuck here and had to take any job he could get. He must of had some reason for hiring himself out for a cook – a young fellow with his brains. Now you tell me he’s dead,” he said with some resentment.
“Did you know him well, Mr. Sholto?”
“We shot the breeze a couple of times when I was doing repair work at the lodge. The kitchen linoleum buckled, and I had to piece it. Ralph Simpson was a likable fellow, full of ideas.”
“What kind of ideas?”
“All kinds. Man in space, the atom bomb, he had an opinion on everything. Reincarnation and the hereafter. He had a great understanding. Also, he had a system to beat the tables, for which he was trying to raise the capital.”
“How?”
“He didn’t say.”
“What is he supposed to have stolen from the Blackwells?”
“I dunno. I never got it straight.”
“Who did you hear it from?”
“Kito. He’s houseboy in one of the other lodges. But you can’t always trust these Orientals.”
“Still I’d like to talk to Kito.”
“He isn’t around any more. The family closed the place up last month and went back to Frisco.”
“Do you know their address in Frisco?”
“I have it written down in the house.”
“Get it for me, will you?”
He went in and came out with a Belvedere address written in childish longhand on the back of an envelope. I transcribed it in my notebook.
“Is there anything else you can tell me about Simpson?”
“I can’t think of anything.”
“Or anyone else who can?”
“Well, he did have a girl friend. It wouldn’t be fair to pass that on to his wife. Matter of fact, he never mentioned a wife. I thought he was a single man.”
“It hardly matters now,” I said, with my ball-point poised over the open notebook. “What’s the girl friend’s name?”
“He called her Fawn. I don’t rightly know her last name. I saw her a couple of times in the clubs with Ralph, and once or twice since.” He added, with a rueful glance at the house: “I don’t go there to gamble. I can’t afford to gamble, with my family. But I like to stand around and watch the excitement.”
“Can you describe the girl?”
“She’s a pretty little thing. She looks something like a real fawn – she has those big brown eyes.”
“What color hair?”
“Light blonde, palomino color.”
That didn’t make it easier. Palomino fillies browsed in herds on the Tahoe shores.
“You say she’s little?”
“Yeah, about five foot two or three.” He held out a hand at shoulder level. “I call that little in a woman.”
“What does she do for a living?”
“I dunno where she works, or if she works. She may not even be here any more. We have a floating population. They drift in and out. I been here for years myself, come here from Porterville when State Line was nothin’ more than a wide place in the road.”
“When did you last see Fawn?”
“A couple weeks ago, I think it was at the Solitaire. She had some older fellow on the string and they were playing the machines, leastways she was. He kept buying silver dollars for her. Yeah, I’m pretty certain it was the Solitaire.”
16
SHOLTO DEPOSITED ME in front of the club and bumped away in his pickup. The main street of State Line was an unstable blend of small-time frontier settlement and big-time carnival. The lake seemed artificial seen from here: a man-made lake dyed a special shade of blue and surrounded by papier-mâché mountains. In this setting it was hard to believe in death, and life itself was denatured.
I went inside the club, where the late afternoon crowd were enjoying themselves, if gamblers can be said to enjoy themselves. They wheedled cards or dice like sinners praying to heaven for one small mercy. They pulled convulsively at the handles of one-armed bandits, as if the machines were computers that would answer all their questions. Am I getting old? Have I failed? Am I immature? Does she love me? Why does he hate me? Hit me, jackpot, flood me with life and liberty and happiness.
A number of men and a few women were hanging around the bar. I waited my turn with one of the overworked bartenders and asked him where the security officer was.
“I saw Mr. Todd on the floor a minute ago.” He scanned the big room. “There he is, talking to the character in the hat.”
I made my way down one of the aisles of slot machines. Todd was an athletic-looking man in an open-necked shirt. He had iron-grey hair, iron-grey eyes, a face that had been humanized by punishment. The other man, who wore a white Stetson with a rolled brim, was drunk and fat and furious. He had been robbed, the machines were fixed, he’d see the management, invoke his influence with the governor.