“And he wasn’t here in Citrus Junction, after the police released him?”
“How would I know? He wouldn’t come to us.”
“He may have, in a sense. He may have been across the road burying Ralph Simpson. Whoever buried Simpson must have had a reason for picking the house across from yours.”
She squinted at me, as if the light had brightened painfully. “I see what you mean.”
“Are you sure Ralph Simpson never came here to your house?”
“There’s no reason he should. We didn’t even know him.” Mrs. Stone was getting restless, twining her hands in her lap.
“But he knew Dolly,” I reminded her. “After she was killed, and you brought the baby here, he may have been watching your house.”
“Why would he do that?”
“It’s been suggested that he was the baby’s father.”
“I don’t believe it.” But after a pause, she said: “What kind of a man was Ralph Simpson? All I know about him is what I read in the papers, that he was stabbed and buried in the Rowlands’ yard.”
“I never knew him in life, but I gather he wasn’t a bad man. He was loyal, and generous, and I think he had some courage. He spent his own last days trying to track down Dolly’s murderer.”
“Bruce Campion, you mean?”
“He wasn’t convinced that it was Campion.”
“And you aren’t, either,” she said with her mouth tight.
“No. I’m not.”
Her posture became angular and hostile. I was trying to rob her of her dearest enemy.
“All I can say is, you’re mistaken. I know he did it. I can feel it, here.” She laid her hand over her heart.
“We all make mistakes,” I said.
“Yes, and you made more than one. I know that Bruce Campion was the baby’s father. Dolly wouldn’t lie to me.”
“Daughters have been known to lie to their mothers.”
“Maybe so. But if this Simpson was the father, why didn’t he marry her? Answer me that.”
“He was already married.”
“Now I know you’re wrong. Dolly would never mess with a married man. The one time she did–” Her eyes widened as though she had frightened herself again. She clamped her mouth shut.
“Tell me about the one time Dolly messed with a married man.”
“There was no such time.”
“You said there was.”
“I’m saying there wasn’t. I was thinking about something entirely different. I wouldn’t sully her memory with it, so there.”
I tried to persuade her to tell me more, with no success. Finally I changed the subject.
“This house across the way where Simpson was found buried – I understand it wasn’t occupied at the time.”
“You understand right. The Rowlands moved out the first of the year, and the house was standing empty there for months. It was a crying shame what happened to it and the other condemned houses. Some of the wild kids around were using them to carry on in. Jack used to find the bottles and the beer cans all around. They smashed the windows and everything. I hated to see it, even if it didn’t matter in the long run. The State just tore the houses down anyway.” She seemed to be mourning obscurely over the changes and losses in her own life. “I hated to see them do it to the Jaimet house.”
“The Jaimet house?”
She made a gesture in the direction of the road. “I’m talking about that same house. Jim Rowland bought it from Mrs. Jaimet after her husband died. It was the original Jaimet ranch house. This whole west side of town used to be the Jaimet ranch. But that’s all past history.”
“Tell me about Jim Rowland.”
“There’s nothing much to tell. He’s a good steady man, runs the Union station up the road, and he’s opening another station in town. Jack always swears by Rowland. He says he’s an honest mechanic, and that’s high praise from Jack.”
“Did Dolly know him?”
“Naturally she knew him. The Rowlands lived across the street for the last three-four years. If you think it went further than that, you’re really off. Jim’s a good family man. Anyway, he sold to the State and moved out the first of the year. He wouldn’t come back and bury a body in his own yard, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I was thinking that you never could tell what murderers would do. Most of them were acting out a fantasy which they couldn’t explain themselves: destroying an unlamented past which seemed to bar them from the brave new world, erasing the fear of death by inflicting death, or burying an old malignant grief where it would sprout and multiply and end by destroying the destroyer.
I thanked Mrs. Stone for her trouble and walked across the road. The earth movers had stopped for the day, but their dust still hung in the air. Through it I could see uprooted trees, houses smashed to rubble and piled in disorderly heaps. I couldn’t tell where Rowland’s house had stood.
22
THE DEPUTY on duty at the Citrus Junction courthouse was a tired-looking man with his blouse open at the neck and a toothpick in his mouth. A deep nirvanic calm lay over his office. Even the motes at the window moved languidly. The ultimate slowdown of the universe would probably begin in Citrus Junction. Perhaps it already had.
I asked the tired man where Sergeant Leonard was. He regarded me morosely, as if I’d interrupted an important meditation.
“Gone to town on business.”
“Which town?”
“L. A.”
“What business?”
He looked me over some more. Perhaps he was estimating my Bertillon measurements. He belonged to the Bertillon era.
“Anything to do with the Simpson case?” I said.
He removed his toothpick from between his teeth and examined it for clues, such as toothmarks. “We don’t discuss official business with the public. You a newspaper fellow?”
“I’m a private detective working with Leonard on the Simpson case.”
He was unimpressed. “I’ll tell the Sergeant when he comes in. What’s your name?”
“S. Holmes.”
He reinserted his toothpick in his mouth and wrote haltingly on a scratch pad. I said: “The ‘S.’ stands for Sherlock.”
He looked up from his laborious pencil work. The old crystal set he was using for a brain received a faint and far-off signaclass="underline" he was being ribbed.
“What did you say the first name was?”
“Sherlock.”
“That supposed to be funny? Ha ha,” he said.
I started over: “My name is Archer, and Leonard will want to see me. When are you expecting him back?”
“When he gets here.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He tore up the paper he had been writing on and let the pieces flutter down onto the counter between us.
“Can you give me Leonard’s home address?”
“Sure I can. But you’re the great detective. Find it for yourself.”
Archer the wit. Archer the public relations wizard. I took my keen sense of humor and social expertise for a walk down the corridor. There was nobody at the information desk inside the front door, but a thin telephone directory was chained to the side of the desk. Wesley Leonard lived on Walnut Street. An old man watering the courthouse chrysanthemums told me where Walnut Street was, a few blocks from here. Archer the bloodhound.
It was a middle-middle-class street of stucco cottages dating from the twenties. The lawn in front of Leonard’s cottage was as well kept as a putting green. A stout woman who was not so well kept answered the door.
Pink plastic curlers on her head gave her a grim and defiant expression. She said before I asked: “Wesley’s not here. And I’m busy cooking supper.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“He’s generally home for supper. Wesley likes a good hot supper.”