Reno Rendezvous, page 5
“Gosh, I must have been asleep,” she said. She rubbed her eyes like a flushed sleepy child. I nodded. She sat there, staring ahead of her, her eyes gradually changing as reality focussed in her mind.
Suddenly she raised her eyes to mine. A sharp spasm of pity tore my heart. It didn’t seem possible that any twenty-one-year-old could hold such anguish.
“Call Clem for me—will you, Grace?” she said, unsteadily.
“You’d better do it yourself, darling,” I said. “I did call him, and was told he didn’t care to be disturbed.”
She stared at me with parted lips and stricken eyes.
“Did you tell him who you were?”
I nodded. “But I’ll call him again . . .”
“No, no!” she said quickly. “Never mind. It’s all right.”
She got up abruptly and stood by the window looking out. After a little she came back to the sofa, sat down and reached for a cigarette, and lighted it, without, I knew, the faintest awareness of what she was doing.
I picked up the phone. “Send Mrs. Bonner some coffee and bacon and eggs and toast immediately,” I said.
She got up and went over to the window again. I could see her slim shoulders quivering, her brown fists clenched. Then suddenly she came back to me.
“Oh, I can’t stand it, Grace!” she whispered. “I can’t stand it! Oh, what have I done . . . what have I done!”
She let her head sink on my shoulder, her arms tightly around me, and mine around her. At first I thought she was crying, but she wasn’t.
Then she galvanized into life at the jangle of the phone beside us. I looked at her sharply, completely dumbfounded at the change that came over her.
“Answer it, Grace,” she whispered. “Please—answer it!”
I picked it up, said “Hello,” and listened. I turned round to her.
“It’s Joe, at the ranch,” I said. “He wants to know if you’re coming out.”
She relaxed abruptly, and pushed her bright hair back from her forehead, pale even under its deep sun tan. God knows what she expected to hear. I had no idea . . . not then.
“Oh, yes!” she cried, almost hysterically. “Tell him of course I’m coming! Tell him I’ll be right out!”
And she dashed for the bath.
Which is how I happened to be in my room half an hour later when Colonel Primrose—apparently free for a moment from Mrs. de Courcey—telephoned and asked me to go for a ride with him . . . and how, what with one thing and another, we were taking our horses out of the paddock, a little after six, and trotting around the race track, a mile or so out of town.
“Buck said he saw you,” Colonel Primrose said.
We were going around the half-mile track, my horse, a two-year-old named Dragonfly, shying at every post.
“He doesn’t approve of Reno. He thinks it’s a cesspool of iniquity.”
He cocked his head down, giving me an amused glance. He got a bullet in his neck at the Argonne, so that whenever he wants to turn his head he has to duck a little, which makes him look rather like a parrot. The impression is sustained by the way his dark eyes can contract and dilate, on occasion, with appalling shrewdness, behind the kindly twinkle that’s ordinarily there. It’s always there when he’s talking about his Sergeant Buck, who was with him in the Army and now lives with him in the old yellow brick house in Georgetown lived in by generations of Primroses, and manages him as if he were the heavyweight champion instead of a retired gentleman of independent means who’s turned a hobby into an amazingly lucrative profession.
“Well,” I said, “he’s finally discovered it’s not me that’s the triple threat, but Mrs. de Courcey.”
I grabbed the martingale as Dragonfly shied at the grain in the center field, agitated by a sudden gust of wind sweeping across the flat.
“Mary de Courcey is a very amusing woman,” Colonel Primrose said seriously. “She used to be a great beauty. I think she’s still remarkably handsome.”
“Oh, very,” I said. “—If it weren’t for her hair,” I added . . . but not out loud.
Colonel Primrose glanced at me. “You’ve got a nice seat,” he said.
We rode on. The sun dropped behind the bowl of dun-colored hills around us, a veil of purple and indigo and rose settled over them. The low grandstand with its banners and the neat rows of whitewashed stalls beyond the board fence might have been miles from Virginia Street and the Hotel Washoe.
“As a matter of fact,” he said after a while, “I’m glad Buck’s worried about Mary de Courcey.”
“Why?”
He looked around at me with a chuckle.
“You’ve heard about red herrings.”
“Are you sure it’s she that’s the red herring?” I asked, very stupidly.
We were going around the outside track then.
“I wish I thought it would make the least difference to you, my dear,” he said quietly.
Dragonfly shied at a branch of cotton wood that the wind blew from one of the big trees lining the board fence along the back lane, and shied again at a couple of bluebottles buzzing around his ear. I was so occupied keeping him in order, trying not to let Colonel Primrose see that his sudden seriousness had definitely startled me, and trying to assure myself at the same time that it was just the old Army habit of being gallant to a lady, that I didn’t notice the car parked by the fence where the track turns.
We cantered on in silence, past the old-fashioned hearse with its gold and black flambeaux and oval windows and black and gold fringed broadcloth fittings that had been abandoned there. Behind it was a couple of old carriages, abandoned like the hearse, and a sleigh with rusted runners. The door of the hearse creaked on its rusty hinges in the evening breeze.
I glanced at Colonel Primrose. He didn’t seem to have noticed the hearse, which was odd, as he always notices everything. I thought for a moment that he might still be thinking of Mary de Courcey—or me. But I was quite wrong. He was looking back the way we’d come, frowning a little. He drew his horse up, abruptly.
“Let’s go back this way, shall we?” he said.
He was curiously preoccupied, but I’ve long since learned quite unquestioning obedience when he suggests something. So I pulled Dragonfly around, and we cantered back the way we’d come. At the turn I pulled him down to a walk.
“These darn bluebottles!” I said.
Colonel Primrose was not interested in my problems. I doubted at first if he’d even heard me.
Then he said, “I noticed them,” very absently; and added, “I’d like a look at that car.”
We walked our horses over to it, Dragonfly protesting mildly, shaking his head, switching his tail.
And suddenly Colonel Primrose, a little ahead of me, said sharply, “Go back, Mrs. Latham! Here—take my horse. Go back to the fence.”
I stared at him, caught the reins he tossed me as he dismounted, pulled Dragonfly around and got the two of them back across the track. I got off, tied them both to the fence, and ran back. It was then that I noticed for the first time that the car was a handsome green coupé, custom-built, with New York license plates.
Colonel Primrose was standing there motionless, staring into the window.
A bluebottle buzzed back, and away. I crept quietly up beside Colonel Primrose and looked inside. Lying slumped down on the yellow leather seat—with blood dried in solid streaks and still in viscid pools on the white rubber floor—was the body of a man. There was a ragged hole in the right side of his throat.
I knew who it was even before my horror-stricken eyes escaped to touch, even for an instant, the lean brown face and staring sightless eyes of Dexter Cromwell.
Even then they didn’t rest there. They were riveted, as Colonel Primrose’s were, on the red-gold hairs caught under the man’s hand clutching the tortoise-shell wheel in the steely grasp of death. . . .
6
I stood there, staring at the red-gold hairs, the universe swirling in a nauseating shambles round my head. I hardly realized that I was swirling myself until I put out my hand to steady my shaking knees and heard Colonel Primrose’s voice—it might have been a hundred miles away—snap out at me: “Don’t touch that car!”
He caught my hand.
“What is the matter, Mrs. Latham?”
“Nothing,” I gasped. (“Oh, don’t be a fool!” I told myself.) “It’s just the . . . altitude,” I said, more steadily . . . thus unconsciously bringing out the oldest of all Reno alibis.
I took a deep breath. “I’m all right now.”
I looked at him, and tried to smile. He let go my wrist, but he kept on looking at me, his black eyes sharpened, and still a little puzzled.
“Do you know who it is?” he asked evenly.
I nodded.
“His name is Dexter Cromwell. I met him yesterday. My niece knows him quite well, I believe.”
I added to myself: “You’re not going to catch me, my friend.” Those red-gold strands of hair under the fingers frozen in rigor mortis stood out in my mind like strands of the gallows rope. Invisible skywriting swirled through my brain: “Be careful! Be careful! Don’t say too much—don’t say too little!”
Colonel Primrose looked back through the window of the car.
“Take your horse, Mrs. Latham,” he said shortly. “Go back to the corral. Tell the watchman, and phone the police. I’ll stay here.”
It didn’t take me the fraction of an instant to think—and shake my head.
“You go,” I said. “I’m afraid of that horse with my knees so shaky. Let me sit down a minute.”
I pushed my hair off my damp forehead. “I must be getting soft,” I added.
He nodded, and in a moment I heard his horse’s hoofs clop-clopping rapidly. I waited until I saw the dust rising beyond the far turn in the track. Then I took a deep breath, tried desperately to control my hands, shaking with just plain terror, and went round to the right side of the car. I didn’t want to dislodge his body, wedged under the wheel and against the left door . . . not thinking, of course, that it would take far greater strength than mine to move that frozen rigid form.
I turned the handle of the door, and opened it. The pool of blood, dried on the white floor, was still viscid-moist where it had seeped under the door. It oozed slowly down toward the running board . . . the only live thing in that whole revolting place except the horrible buzzing bluebottles.
My stomach gave a dizzy crazy lurch. I wanted to slam the door shut, closing back the oozing blood and the staring dreadful eyes that kept watching me as if Dexter Cromwell, Reno playboy, was not dead at all. Reaching out, I inadvertently touched his hand. It was warm, outside, from the furnace heat that the sun, beating all day on the closed car, had wrapped it in; but underneath it was cold with the profound hideous cold of death.
I drew back and closed my eyes. Then I opened them again. The red-gold hairs were still there, and they were caught firmly; and I had to get them away. I mustn’t break them, and I mustn’t release his hold, even if I could, for rigor once broken would be too damning. I took off my clumsy cape skin glove and took hold of the hairs again—pulling cautiously at them, and so slowly, not daring to keep my eyes long from the track behind me . . . sick with apprehension, hearing all the time, as if it was beating an awful tattoo on my inner ear: “Oh, I can’t stand it, Grace—I can’t stand it! What have I done . . . what have I done!”
Nothing in the world could have kept me from getting those silent witnesses out of the hands of Death. I pulled at them, gently, again and again, and at last they came, and I stood there with them in my hand, motionless and almost sick with relief. Then behind me I heard the muffled rhythm of hoofs. I thrust the hairs into the pocket of my blouse and buttoned it with frantic fingers, grabbed my glove and closed the door . . . Dexter Cromwell watching me, all the while, with Lazarus eyes.
I couldn’t tell whether it had taken me longer than it seemed, or whether it had only seemed a century and Colonel Primrose had been very quick. He galloped up, jumped off his horse and had it tethered at the post beside Dragonfly before I could recover myself and get my compact away again, with the bright hairs in the bottom of my pocket under my handkerchief, and tell myself I mustn’t forget and pull it out till I could burn them in my room.
I went to meet him.
“The police will be right out,” he said. He looked at me sharply. “You’ve got a streak of powder under your right eye.”
I brushed it off quickly—too quickly, I realized, seeing the tiny smile flash in his eye and then fade abruptly. I followed him back to the car, my heart stone-cold inside me. I saw him stop at the door with a quick start, and stand—it seemed an eon in which worlds could rise and fall again—staring in through the window; and I knew, as well as I ever knew anything, that he had seen at once that the red-gold hairs were not there.
I steadied myself, waiting for him to turn around and fix me with those black sparkling X-ray eyes from which all the kindliness and humor would be gone, and all memory of friendship and the amused affection I knew he’d felt for me from time to time—ever since he’d first come to my house, the over-flow guest of a friend of mine at April Harbor. But he didn’t turn. He simply stood there, until I wanted to scream. And suddenly behind us was the sound of a motorcycle, and then a car.
Colonel Primrose said quietly, without turning his head, “The head of the Department of Criminal Identification of the Reno Police is one of the best young men in the country.”
I was still a little numb as I watched a lean-jawed, blue-eyed man, clean-shaven, with crisp curly blond hair, get out of the police car with the quick steel-trap spring of an athlete and with something of the determined air of a bulldog. He nodded to Colonel Primrose not only as if they’d known each other but as if they’d already met again a little time before.
“Stand back, you fellows,” he said curtly. “Don’t stampede here like a herd of buffaloes. Get out of those car tracks, Johnson.”
I saw for the first time the tire tracks ending where Dex Cromwell’s car had left the dusty road to come out onto the grass. The marks on the grass were gone.
Colonel Primrose moved aside to give him room at the window. He stood there an instant, looking coolly in, without comment. He turned back.
“The name’s Dexter Cromwell?”
“Mrs. Latham identified him,” Colonel Primrose said. “She met him yesterday.—This is Mr. Hogan . . . Mrs. Latham.”
Bill Hogan, Chief of Reno’s Department of Criminal Identification, detective, technician and—as I learned—widely regarded through these parts as the whitest guy that ever fingerprinted a prostitute or a cracksman, gave me a quick nod, and glanced at my jodhpurs and the two horses tethered to the fence.
“Yeh,” he said. “I’ve seen him around the hot spots.”
He turned to one of the men with him. “You go back, Slim. His name’s Dexter Cromwell. You start checking on his friends—on the quiet. Start with the crowd at the River House and the Washoe. Don’t let ’em know he’s dead. Get his mail, and see if he had any phone calls today.—Was he staying at the Washoe?”
They all turned to me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I met him in the bar there.”
I watched the man called Slim start for his car. “I’ve got to get to Judy,” I thought desperately, but I didn’t dare ask to go in with him. Colonel Primrose would be waiting for me to do just that. So I stood there, watching the second police car back out and scoot off in a cloud of dust, helpless to warn her that the deluge was breaking and to get ready for it. I knew Colonel Primrose was watching me—even if his eyes weren’t on me, as they weren’t when I pulled myself sharply together and turned back to the car.
The doctor they’d brought joined them. They opened the door—the one by the wheel that I’d been afraid to open, and should have done, for Dex Cromwell’s body was far too stiff to move and there was no telltale blood on that side.
“He’s been dead for hours,” Hogan said tersely. “Even in this heat . . .”
He put aside the cuff of the white wool jacket, blackened and stiff with blood, and looked at the square platinum watch on Dex Cromwell’s wrist. “Stopped at three, but that’s probably this afternoon.”
He turned the stem once and nodded. “Just run down is all.”
“I’ll have to get him out before I can do much,” the doctor said. I never heard his name, but I’m perfectly certain that the detective magazine, that later said he was a vet., Bill Hogan had picked up at a stable on his way out was either mistaken or lying. He seemed efficient enough, and he was right about the cause of death in spite of everything—or in spite of me at any rate.
“He was stabbed, with something pretty sharp and not very big,” he said. “Not a knife. I can’t be sure until I wash all this muck off.”
“Sure it’s not a bullet?” Hogan said.
“You can see it’s not,” Colonel Primrose said quietly, and with so much quite unconscious authority that they both looked round at him.
“The flesh sticks up round the edges of the wound—you can see something’s been pulled out. A bullet at the point of egress would do something of the sort, but that’s out of the question. There’s too much blood down here—you can see it spurted out of the jugular. You’re hunting a pointed weapon about a quarter of an inch square and as sharp as hell.—I opened that door, by the way. I’m afraid I forgot it wasn’t my own case, for a moment.”
Bill Hogan glanced at me, quite perfunctorily. I shivered.
“All right, boys,” he said. “Let’s get going. Hitch this light up to your battery, Johnson, and give me my camera. I want to get this fingerprinted before we take it in. You look around the grounds, Fred, and see if you see anything that looks like it could be used for a weapon. Make it snappy, boys—it’s getting dark.”
He turned to me.
“You’d better go back to town, miss. I can use the Colonel if you can make it alone.”
