“I can’t keep track of my son any more,” she said in a soberer voice. “I haven’t seen him since breakfast. He’s off with his crowd somewhere. All they care about is surfing. Some weeks I don’t set eyes on him for days at a time.” She consoled herself with the rest of her martini. “Sure you won’t come in for a drink? I just made a fresh shaker, and if I have to drink it all by myself I’ll be smasherooed.”
“Pour it out.”
“The man is mad.” She studied my face with exaggerated interest. “You must be a wandering evangelist or something.”
“I’m a wandering detective investigating a murder. Your son may be able to help me.”
She moved closer to me and whispered through her teeth: “Is Ray involved in a murder?”
“That I doubt. He may have some information that will help me. Are you expecting him home for dinner?”
“I never know. Sometimes he’s out all night with his crowd. They have bedrolls in the hearse.” She burst out angrily: “I could kill myself for letting him buy that thing. He practically lives in it.” Her mind veered back to the point. “Who do you mean, he has information?”
“I said he may have.”
“Who was murdered?”
“A man named Simpson, Quincy Ralph Simpson.”
“I never heard of any such man. Neither did Ray, I’m sure.”
I said: “When Simpson was last seen alive by his wife, he was carrying a brown Harris tweed topcoat with brown leather buttons; the top button was missing. That was two months ago. The other day I saw one of the girls in Ray’s crowd wearing that topcoat, or one exactly like it.”
“Mona?”
“She was a big chesty blonde.”
“That’s Ray’s girl, Mona Sutherland. And the coat is his, too. I know it well. His father gave it to him the last time Ray visited him, so you see you’ve made a mistake. It’s a different coat entirely.”
“Now tell me where Ray really got it, Mrs. Buzzell.”
The manifestations of mother love are unpredictable. She threw her empty glass at my head. It missed me and smashed on the flagstones. Then she retreated into the house, slamming the door behind her.
I got into my car and sat. The sun was almost down, a narrowing red lozenge on the cloud-streaked horizon. It slipped out of sight. The whole western sky became smoky red, as if the sun had touched off fires on the far side of the world.
After a while the front door opened. The lady appeared with a fresh glass in her hand.
“I’ve just been talking to my ex on the long-distance telephone. He’ll back me up about the coat.”
“Bully for him.”
She looked at the glass in her hand as if she was considering throwing it, too. But it had liquor in it.
“What right have you got sitting on my property? Get off my property!”
I turned the car and drove up past her mailbox and parked at the roadside and watched the horizontal fires die out and the dark come on. The sky was crowded with stars when the woman came out again. She plodded up the slope and balanced her teetering weight against the mailbox.
“I’m smasherooed.”
I got out and approached her. “I told you to pour it out.”
“I couldn’t do that to good gin. It’s been my dearest friend and beloved companion for lo these many yea-hears.” She reached for me like a blind woman. “I’m frightened.”
“I didn’t mean to frighten you, and I don’t believe your son is involved in this murder. But I have to know where he got the tweed topcoat. His father had nothing to do with it, did he?”
“No. Ray told me he found it.”
“Where?”
“On the beach, he said.”
“How long ago was this?”
“About two months. He brought it home and brushed the sand out of it. That’s why I got so frightened, on account of the timing. You said two months. That’s why I lied to you.”
She was leaning on me heavily, one hand on my shoulder, the other clutching my upper arm. I let her lean.
“Ray couldn’t murder anyone,” she said. “He’s a little hard to regiment but he’s not a bad boy really. And he’s so young.”
“He’s not a murder suspect, Mrs. Buzzell. He’s a witness, and the coat is evidence. How he got it may be significant. But I can’t establish that without talking to him. You must have some idea where I can find him.”
“He did say something this morning – something about spending the night at Zuma. I know he took along some things to cook. But what he says and what he actually does are often two different things. I can’t keep track of him any more. He needs a father.”
She was talking into the front of my coat, and her grip had tightened on me. I held her for a bit, because she needed holding, until a car came up the road and flashed its headlights on her wet startled face.
The striped hearse was standing empty among other cars off the highway above Zuma. I parked behind it and went down to the beach to search for its owner. Bonfires were scattered along the shore, like the bivouacs of nomad tribes or nuclear war survivors. The tide was high and the breakers loomed up marbled black and fell white out of oceanic darkness.
Six young people were huddled under blankets around one of the fires. I recognized them: one of the girls was wearing the brown tweed coat. They paid no attention when I approached. I was an apparition from the adult world. If they pretended I wasn’t there, I would probably go away like all the other adults.
“I’m looking for Ray Buzzell.”
One of the boys cupped his hand behind his ear and said: “Hey?”
He was an overgrown seventeen- or eighteen-year-old with heavy masculine features unfocused by any meaning in his eyes. In spite of his peroxided hair, he looked like an Indian in the red firelight.
“Ray Buzzell,” I repeated.
“Never heard of him.” He glanced around at the others. “Anybody ever hear of a Ray Buzzell?”
“I never heard of a Ray Buzzell,” the girl in the coat said. “I knew a man named Heliogabalus Rexford Buzzell. He had a long grey beard and he died some years ago of bubonic plague.”
Everybody laughed except me and the girl. I said to the boy: “You’re Ray, aren’t you?”
“Depends who you are.” He rose in a sudden single movement, shedding his blanket. The three other boys rose, too. “You fuzz?”
“You’re getting warm, kid.”
“Don’t call me kid.”
“What do you want me to call you?”
“Anything but kid.”
“All right, Mr. Buzzell. I have some questions to ask you, about the coat Miss Sutherland is wearing.”
“Who you been talking to? How come you know our names?”
He took a step toward me, his bare feet noiseless in the sand. His little comitatus grouped themselves behind him. They crossed their arms on their chests to emphasize their muscles, and the red firelight flickered on their biceps.
With a little judo I thought I could handle all eight of their biceps, but I didn’t want to hurt them. I was an emissary from the adult camp. I flashed the special-deputy’s badge which I carried as a souvenir of an old trouble on the San Pedro docks.
“I’ve been talking to your mother, among other people. She said you found the coat on the beach.”
“Never believe her,” he said with one eye on the girls. “Never believe a mother.”
“Where did you get it then?”
“I wove it underwater out of sea lettuce. I’m very clever with my hands.” He wiggled his fingers at me.
“I wouldn’t go on playing this for laughs, Buzzell. It’s a serious matter. Have you ever been in Citrus Junction?”
“I guess I passed through.”
“Did you stop over long enough to kill and bury a man?”