Clay Hand (23 page)

He slowed down at Clauson’s driveway, and then stopped when one of the deputies signaled. “I’m colder than a blue monkey,” the man said at the car window.

“I hope you don’t get a chance to warm up.” Fields handed him his flask. “You and Pekarik can have this. It may help. If it looks calm I’ll pick you up at midnight.”

“That’s over two hours, Sheriff.”

“I know. Just tell stories to one another and stay awake.” He ran the window up and drove to the house.

Clauson came to the window at the sound of the car. Phil could see him straining to see who it was. “Poor old devil. I walked up here tonight. After Glasgow and the daughter went upstairs he sat there crying. It’s a terrible thing to see an old man cry.”

Fields turned off the ignition. “It’s a worse thing to see a young man die.”

Gainsay that, Phil thought. Sentiment be damned.

Clauson had the door open, waiting for them. The many lines had deepened in his face these last few days. His eyes were bloodshot and his hand shook as he motioned to them to sit down. “I have a little wine, gentlemen?”

“No, thanks just the same,” Fields opened his jacket but did not take it off.

“Do you want my daughter and him?”

“You don’t like him very much, do you?” Fields said.

The magician did not answer. He sat down and folded his hands in his lap. Fields was studying the picture above the fireplace. “Your girl’s got some real nice color there, Mr. Clauson.”

“She does good work,” Clauson said.

“Ever do any of that stuff on cloth?”

Clauson looked at him. “Yes. She paints all my things. Some illusions, though I sell few of them. Women are great illusionists, but women do not travel into these hills in search of a manufacturer.”

Somewhere above them, a board creaked.

Fields merely straightened up in the chair. “Did you ever talk with Coffee about that sort of thing?”

“Oh yes. Several times. We talked a great deal about spiritualists and so-called mediums. In my youth, I conducted a considerable expose of fakers. Then we talked about an opera called
The Medium.
Richard had seen it last year. I will tell you something. There it is on the table. It came this morning.”

Fields got up and went to the table. He picked up an album of records.

“That was the way he was,” Clauson explained. “We talked about it, and he wrote away and had it sent to us.”

Fields returned to the chair.

The magician touched the records lightly, almost affectionately.

“McGovern, would you mind going to the car and bringing me that package, please?” Fields spoke curtly and thrust the keys into Phil’s hand.

By the time he returned, Rebecca was coming down the stairs in her bathrobe. Glasgow was already standing in the room, his hands on his hips, a scowl on his face as heavy as his mustache. Whatever he had said, Fields was on his feet. “I haven’t accused you of anything yet, Mr. Glasgow. If I do, you won’t be standing in this room arguing with me. Now I want to know if you were home a week ago last Saturday.”

“I went to work at a quarter to five.”

“Couldn’t you just as well told me that civil?” Fields turned to Phil and took the bag from him. Without explanation he drew the green cloth from it and shook it out. Phil, watching Rebecca, saw her eyes narrow. A little pulse began throbbing in her throat.

“Mr. Clauson, do you recognize this piece?”

The old man nodded that he did.

“When was the last time you seen it?”

Clauson cleared his throat. “One night a few weeks ago. I cannot name it exactly.”

“You better tell me the whole story,” Fields said quietly. He motioned to Glasgow to sit down.

“There is no story,” he began scarcely audibly. He glanced up for a pained instant at his daughter and then down at his hands again. There was a little, tight grin on Glasgow’s face. “We were talking one night about effects on a blacked-out stage…”

“Who was with you?”

“Rebecca and Richard. I sent Rebecca to the trunk for it to illustrate.”

“Did you ever see it before, Glasgow?”

“Ha! Where the hell should I see it? Do you think they’d show their precious treasures to a dumb bastard like me?”

“I asked you if you saw it,” Fields repeated harshly.

“No. I never laid eyes on it.”

“Go on, Mr. Clauson.”

“What more is there to say? Afterwards Rebecca put it away. Didn’t you, my dear?”

“I did. I put it away.”

“But here it is now,” Fields said, draping it across the back of a chair.

“Maybe it got up and walked out,” Glasgow said. “It’s a lively looking thing.”

“It’s a deadly thing,” Fields said. He went to Rebecca’s chair then and looked directly into her face. She met his eyes evenly. “Mrs. Glasgow, you know the testimony given at the inquest. You know you were seen entering the drift mouth over behind that cliff with Coffee…”

“And I say it’s a deliberate lie,” she said, the veins standing out in her neck.

“It don’t look like a lie to me,” Fields said. “Coffee was seen carrying that bloody thing, and I say bloody, because I found a string matching the piece on the back of it. I found it where Kevin Laughlin died. He died in maybe the one room in that whole section where there was enough gas to kill a man. Something lured him in there. Richard Coffee told you about that gas. He even marked the room…”

“If he did it was for Laughlin…”

“Then you know he marked it?” She did not answer, and Fields went on relentlessly. “I’m telling you now what’s in my mind, and what’s going to be in the mind of the coroner’s jury when they meet again next week: You had a neat place there for meeting Coffee. It was dark, but you didn’t need any light. Then the old loon came on you, poor old daft Laughlin, and you thought you’d get rid of him.”

“It’s you that’s out of your mind,” she said into his face. “Richard Coffee was a decent man, the only decent man I’ve ever known. He was kind. I think I could kill if I had to. But he couldn’t.”

Fields straightened up. “Right now, I’m talking about you, Mrs. Glasgow.” He turned abruptly on Glasgow. “You were with the 118th Engineers in Europe after the war. Where were you stationed?”

“In Stuttgart,” he said immediately. “But we were a lot of places on reconstruction.”

“Have you ever been in the mines here?”

“Never.”

“Did you know Kevin Laughlin?”

“I knew him from seeing him around the town. I knew him for a nut.”

“He wasn’t around town much,” Fields said. “He was a bashful sort of man, looking for a woman he lost a long time ago. I’ve been told you were seen with him along the tracks out there back of the mines.”

“Then you’ve been told a cock-and-bull story. I never met nobody along the tracks unless it was the ginks working there.”

“You’ve the use of one of them little handcars, Glasgow. It comes in real handy, don’t it?”

Glasgow smiled. “You’re fishing in muddy water, Sheriff. You checked my record with the company. They wouldn’t stand any nonsense.”

Fields studied him. “Not a nerve in your body, is there, Glasgow? How much do you get in your pay envelope?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“I won’t have much trouble finding it out.”

“Twenty-eight dollars.” Glasgow looked at his wife.

There was a faint change of expression on her face. Fields caught it. “Did you think he made more, Mrs. Glasgow?”

She lifted her head but did not answer him.

“That ain’t much for a skilled worker. You wouldn’t have to put in much time for that.”

“What are you getting at, Sheriff?”

“Nothing special. I was just figuring you get quite a bit of time to yourself—one end of the line or the other. I was wondering what you did with it.”

“I read a lot,” Glasgow said sarcastically. “I want to improve my mind so’s I can talk with my family.”

Through it all the old man sat, his head bowed, his hands clinched together. Fields folded the illusion and put it back in the bag. “Somebody took this out of the house here,” he said quietly. “There’s three people living here, and one regular visitor when he was living. Sooner or later I’m going to find out who took it. It’d save the wear and tear on all of us if you could give me the answer right now.”

“I gave it to Mr. Coffee,” the old man said then. “Yes. He asked if he might borrow it, and I gave it to him.”

“When, Mr. Clauson?”

“When? I don’t know when. What is one day from another to an old man?”

“Did you see him give it to Coffee, Mrs. Glasgow?”

“No.” There was real fear in her face now. “Papa, did you give it to him?”

“I have just said that.”

“Maybe he wanted something to remember you by, Becky,” her husband said. “The old boy would have been all for that. Oh, how he’d like to have a son-in-law like Coffee.” He slapped his hand on the record album. “Opera, books, Latin, Hebrew, Greek. Godalmighty, maybe the Greeks had a word for it. So do I.” He spat a vulgarity at them.

“Norman, why don’t you get out of this house?” the old man said, his voice quivering.

“I will when I’m damn good and ready, Pop. She took me for better or worse, and damn glad to get me. Now I’m sticking.”

How many scenes like this had Dick suffered through, Phil thought. This was no new routine. Night in, night out when he was home, it must have gone on like this, the nagging, the baiting, the fear and hate.

Fields put on his hat. “I’m glad you’re sticking for a while, Glasgow. I’ll want to talk to you some more.”

“I’ve the Louisville run in the morning.”

“Just see you come home from it on schedule.”

He and Phil left then, none of the three moving from his place until the door was closed. Fields turned the car around at the back of the house, the headlights catching the eyes of one of the goats as it poked its head out of the shelter.

“Shooting from a blind,” the sheriff said. “It was like aiming a cannon at a gopher.”

“I don’t believe Clauson gave that illusion to Dick.”

“If he didn’t, one thing’s sure. He wasn’t protecting Glasgow.”

“I
T’S TIME THEM BOYS
were breaking it up,” Fields said as they passed McNamara’s. “They’re spoiling for trouble.” He drove on to Krancow’s and parked the car. From the parlor steps they could hear the shouting and the clamor. There was no more music, just oratory, loud and abandoned.

Through the big window, they could see one of the deputies stretched out on the sofa and the other sprawled on a chair…the sleeping disciples. Fields opened the door. “How long’s it been since you were down the street there?”

One of them leaped to his feet. “Gosh,” he said, shaking off the sleep.

Fields disgustedly waved him back where he was. He and Phil started down the hill. They broke into a run, for at that moment the door to McNamara’s swung open. Nichols hurried out, the roar of the men following him until the slamming door muffled it. Fields called out to him.

“You better break them up,” Nichols said. “The talk in there now is that Coffee and the girl murdered Laughlin.”

Fields threw the tavern door open, and for a moment the place was hushed. It was the same crowd as in the afternoon, only swelled, and uglier for the more of them. Their faces were flushed, their eyes bloodshot from the smoke, so thick in the room that Phil brushed it from his face like a spider web.

The sheriff walked to the bar and turned his back on it, facing the men. “Is there something you’d like to say to me, any one of you?”

There was a grumbled, indistinct response.

“Is it that you have the case solved for me?”

“You’re the servant of the people, Sheriff. Maybe if you solved it, we wouldn’t be troubled this way.”

Fields whirled around, for it was Eddie Halloran, helping McNamara behind the bar. The big man himself was tight-lipped. Billy Riordon came up and stuck his face under the sheriff’s. “Eddie’s put it right on the line to you, Sheriff. Did you bring the woman in?” His voice hardened. “Or is it you’d like us to go out and assist you?”

“Do you have some evidence I haven’t seen?” Fields said, pushing Riordon from him with the back of his arm.

“It isn’t that you haven’t seen it, Sheriff. You don’t seem to get the sense of it.”

“Let me hear the sense of it then.”

“There’s a simple thing. Old Laughlin got in the way of their pleasure. Coffee and her tried scaring him out of the mine with a ghost. Instead they scared him into a bloody gas chamber.”

“Did you see the ghost, Billy?”

“I heard tell of it.”

“I can believe that. Where’s Whelan?”

“Here!” Whelan shouted from the back. “Here and accounted for.”

“Look, Sheriff,” Riordon insisted, pulling at Fields’ sleeve. “He knew there was gas there. Why didn’t he tell them before Laughlin was dead, and not after it?”

“Answer it, you. You’ll have solved one of my problems. Remember it’s Coffee’s death I’m investigating.”

“We think you’d be better investigating Laughlin’s death. He was one of our own.”

“Sam, there’s something to what the men say,” McNamara said then, “and they’re in terrible need of the work. Give them some satisfaction.”

“What are you persuading for?” Jerry Whelan thrust himself through the crowd. “I say we go up in a body. There’s ways of squeezing the truth out of one like that. You’re too easy, Sheriff.”

“But who the hell wants to squeeze her?” someone yelled.

There was ribald laughter. Whelan pounded his fist on the table. “You never can tell. The thorniest bush is often the mother of the sweetest berries.”

“Ah, you’re a philosopher, Jerry.”

“A philosopher and a philanthropist,” Riordon said, his tongue thickening on the word. He lifted a glass of beer. “Here’s to Jerry Whelan. May he live forever and get no older than he is today.”

Fields looked at McNamara. “What have you been pouring tonight?”

“Beer. Nothing but beer.”

“They smell of more than beer.”

“Some of the boys had a drop of their own. At times like these, I close my eyes to it, Sheriff.”

“At times like these you should open them. You had a sample this afternoon, didn’t you?” Fields strode across the room to Jerry Whelan and caught him by the front of his shirt. “So you’re a philanthropist, Jerry? Your wife and kids’ll be glad to know it.” In an instant he ran his hands over Whelan’s pockets, drawing from one of them a half-filled whiskey bottle. “Old Oak,” he read the label. He uncorked it and put the bottle to his nose. “The makers’ll be glad to test it for us. Where did you get this, Jerry?”