Death Claims (18 page)

Chromed wire spokes glittered at the edge of the door Katy held half open. The old woman said, "What's all this about?" Fingers twisted by arthritis gripped the door and swung it wider. Her bones looked strong, but the flesh on them was wasted. She was smaller than Dave had thought. At her withered throat was a fine old silver brooch. A bright afghan covered her legs. Open on it lay a big book in Braille, the stiff pages sand-color. She turned up to them a face honed by prairie wind and sun. The question came sharp from crinkled lips held to shape by expensive dentures. "You say somebody used my son's car?" 

"Hank here doesn't think so," Dave said. 

"I heard what he said. Nothing wrong with my ears. This Arena Blanca the only place you know of that's got white sand?" 

"It's the only place I know of where John Oats was killed. And the day he was killed was the only day it's rained in the past month. And on that day he telephoned here." Dave looked at Katy and named the date and time. "It's on his telephone bill. Do you keep a record of incoming calls?" 

"Yes, but I really think Mr. Cochran ought—'' 

"Go look it up, Katy," the old woman said. 

And Katy went, brisk and prim, across the handsome pegged floors and out through the double doors that had fern patterns etched in their long, milky panes. She left the doors open. Beyond them the sun sparkled on the blue water of the swimming pool. At the pool's near end a pair of Japanese boys in white lab smocks were taking the entrails out of the video tape equipment. At the side of the pool a hawk-faced young man in a shirt with rosebud stripes rattled a Selectric on the redwood table while a man with a gray chin beard leaned over the back of his chair, craning to read the words he typed. 

The old woman turned the flat black mirror surfaces of her glasses toward Dave. "I don't know what your game is, but I think you're bluffing. I never heard of any John Oats and my son tells me everything. Always has." 

"Then maybe it wasn't your son who got the call," Dave said. "Maybe it was Peter Oats. He did tell you about Peter Oats, didn't he? Almost every night for two weeks he was in El Molino to watch Peter Oats in a play. And almost every night after the play they went to dinner together. And the night after the last performance of the play they spent together in a motel. Then Peter left home. And a note from his father's desk has the boy's name on it. With the phone number of this ranch." 

"Hank," the old woman said. "Go get Wade." 

"But he's at the lodge," Hank protested. "You know he don't let anybody bother him there. If I show up there, he'll have my hide." 

"He'll come here to me," she snapped. "He's got some tall explaining to do. Now, get a move on." 

"Ma'am, I don't want to leave you unprotected." 

"Don't talk like a bigger fool than you are. There's four men out there by the pool. And there's three more out and around the place working. I can still yell if I need to." 

"Yes, ma'am." Hank glowered at Dave. "All right." He wheeled and bow-legged off on his round-heeled boots, the gun hanging from his hand like a thing to be thrown away. He disappeared around the corner of the house. 

"Why send him?" Dave asked. "Why not phone?" 

"There's no phone at the lodge. No electricity. Running water from a well with a fuel-powered pump. Cost a fortune. But that's all. It's Wade's private place. A man public as he is—you don't know what that's like. And he's a spiritual man. He's got to be able to get away by himself. Just him and his Lord. Built this ranch for that to start with, get clean away from Hollywood. But it didn't work, not for long. Pretty soon he was busier here than he'd been in town. His writers are out there now. He was to be back down here for lunch and a story conference with them at noon. And to test out that machine that's being fixed before the mechanics can get away." She frowned. "Queer. Not like Wade not to—" The fern-pattern doors rattled, closing. The old woman turned her head. "Katy—that you?" 

"Yes." She came back between the tufted horsehair chairs, the marble-top tables, the ruby-glass coal-oil lamps. She said stiffly to Dave, "John Oats did call. On the day you said, at the time." 

"Who—?" His throat felt dry. He swallowed. "Who did he ask for?" 

"What do you mean?" A line appeared between the pale-red eyebrows. "Mr. Cochran, of course." 

"Not of course," Dave said. "He could have asked for his son. Peter Oats. The boy in that snapshot I showed you. Is it written down that he asked for Mr. Cochran?"

 "It is. But even if it wasn't, why would he ask for someone who wasn't here? I told you—" 

"I remember what you told me. And I remember that Mr. Cochran doesn't allow you to lie. Are there any more notations about the call?" 

"There aren't, but when I looked at the memo, I remembered it. This is an unlisted number and hard to getp-she gave him a tight little smile—"as you know. His name meant nothing to me. I told him so. He said if Mr. Cochran heard it, he'd talk to him. I put the phone on hold and went and found Mr. Cochran. He took the call. In his bedroom. Then he drove off." 

"Right." Dave felt sick. He bent and touched the old woman's knotted hand. "Thank you, Mrs. Cochran. I'll be on my way now." 

"No." She caught his wrist. Her grip was painfully strong. "You wanted to see Wade." 

"Hank just rode out that gate on a horse," Dave said. "He told me your son left here on a horse." 

"There's no way into the lodge by car." 

"And how far is it? How long will it take?" 

"An hour up, an hour back. But you wait. You have to hear his explanation." 

"It wouldn't explain anything," Dave said. 

"Wade Cochran never did a wrong thing in his life!" she cried. "You don't know him. I do." 

He said, "To love somebody isn't necessarily to know him." 

"Then you tell me what you know," she said fiercely. "Katy, run along. I want to talk to this man alone." 

Katy opened her mouth to protest, shut it again and left. When the fern doors latched, the old woman let go Dave's wrist. "You come in here and shut that door and tell me why you think my beautiful son killed this man Oats." 

"You don't want to hear it," Dave said. 

"You think I'm weak," she said. "You're wrong. I'm crippled up and I'm blind. That's the Lord's will and he's blessed me a hundred other ways and I don't complain. But I'm not weak. I'm strong." Her jaw closed on the word like a trap meant to splinter bone. "If I wasn't strong, Wade would never be where he is today. Now you tell me what you know and you tell it to me straight. Who was this John Oats?" 

Dave shut the door. "I'd like a drink," he said. 

"If you mean whiskey, we don't keep it. Wheel me over by a chair so's you can sit." 

He did. Her lined face turned toward him stoic. He told her who John Oats was, about the burns, about the morphine, about Dwight Ingalls and Sam Wald. "The day he died, he phoned them first. They both told him they weren't coming. Later they lost their nerve and did go. But he couldn't know that would happen. And he needed money. So he phoned your son. He'd held off on that a long time, probably out of love for his own son. Everyone says they were very close. But in the end, drugs don't permit you any decency." 

"But—" She was very white. "He was blackmailing those other men. How could he blackmail Wade? Why would he think Wade would give him money?" 

Dave took a grim breath and let it out. "Mrs. Cochran—Peter Oats is a homosexual. Do you know what that means?" 

She sniffed, her mouth twitched. "I've lived a long time, mister. I've seen and heard just about everything a woman of seventyfive could be expected to, and a mite more than most. I know what you're talking about." She turned her face away. "What's it got to do with my son?" 

"Maybe nothing," Dave said. "I could be wrong. But I don't think I am. He's in his thirties. He's never married. There's a lot of publicity about him in the magazines. None of it ever mentions a woman. No woman except you." 

"He's attached to me," she flared. "He wouldn't hurt me by trifling with women. What other woman could have made him what I did? He's got everything a man could ask for in this world. And he's doing good with it. He's serving Jesus Christ with it. Not like the rest of them, with their drink and their night clubs and their divorces." 

"Right," Dave said. "But when John Oats called, he went. Arena Blanca's fifty miles from here and it was a rainy night. But he got in that yellow Lotus of his and he went there. There's got to be a reason." 

"He wasn't afraid. He's afraid of no man. He's got no cause to be afraid." Her warped fingers gripped hard on the book in her lap. "He'd seen this boy Peter in this play, you say. They'd taken supper together. It must have been to talk business. The boy's an actor." 

"It wasn't the boy who called. Anyway, your son told me he wasn't interested in Peter as an actor. He pretended he hardly remembered him. He said they'd had a meal together—once. That wasn't true. Shall I tell you what I think was true?" 

She didn't say yes, but she waited. 

"I think your son fell in love with Peter Oats. He's beautiful and gentle. I think Peter fell in love with him. I think they slept together at that motel. And I think they wanted to go on sleeping together. It couldn't be here. But it could be up at that lodge of his, where no one goes but himself." 

Her dry lips moved, but no speech came. 

"The boy went home and packed his belongings. That much is fact. He talked to his father. On that I haven't the facts. His father refused to discuss it with the girl whose house he and Peter were sharing. But it upset him badly. And I think I know what it was. Peter had a weakness for honesty. He and his father had been good friends. I think he told him he was homosexual, that he'd found a man to love and was going to live with him. He gave his father the phone number here. Obviously he also gave him the name of the man-your son's name." 

"Did he know his father was a dope fiend?" She was trembling. Her voice scratched like an old phonograph record. "If he did, it was a wicked thing to do. A terrible thing. He's destroyed my son." 

"I think he was like you," Dave said. "If he'd paid attention, he would have noticed changes in his father, something wrong. But he loved the man and it blinded him-I'm sorry. He didn't see because he didn't want to see. No, I don't think he knew his father was an addict." 

But she wasn't listening. She was grinding the words out under her breath. "Destroyed my son. My wonderful son. Destroyed him." She jerked her head up and was fierce again. "That boy can't be handsome, he can't be gentle. You're lying. He'd plotted with his father to get money out of Wade." Her jaw thrust forward, the pinched nostrils flared. "And if Wade did kill the man—" 

"If he did, he didn't tell the boy. He didn't suspect any plot. He wanted to keep him. There wasn't much chance Peter would hear of his father's death. Not shut away up there at the lodge. And when he did hear, he'd hear of an accident, a drowning. That was how Wade had arranged the murder to look. Only I didn't believe it. And I turned up here, saying I thought Peter had killed his father for his insurance. That my company wasn't accepting the verdict of death by misadventure. Wade couldn't go to the lodge right then because you had plans for him and that evangelist. And your plans for him come first. But next morning he went. What happened up there I don't know. What I do know is that in a few hours Peter walked into police headquarters in El Molino and turned himself in for the murder of his father." 

He stood up and looked down on the beautiful white hair. "There's a Bible verse, Mrs. Cochran. I'm sure you know it better than I do. 'Greater love hath no man than this—' " 

She didn't lift her head. She finished it tonelessly. " 'That he lay down his life for his friend.' " 

"Do you want me to get Katy for you?" 

She shook her head. "I want to pray." 

He left her like that, alone, in the middle of the handsome make-believe room, at the end of her make-believe world.

"I
T DON'T AMOUNT
to a damn." For a tenth time Sheriff C. Clinton Hackett of Maricopa County fingered back his shirt cuff and squinted at his watch, thick steel on a thick strap on a thick wrist. He rocked in a creaky yellow swivel chair back of a yellow desk and chewed a wooden match, working it from one side of his slack mouth to the other. His eyes were little and pale and restless. He wanted to be someplace else. "A telephone call from a man who happened to drown that night, some white sand under the fenders of his car. Not a damn." 

"He was a drug addict," Dave said, "and he was using blackmail. I have witnesses to that." 

"No witnesses to what was said in that phone call." The Sheriff swiveled his chair half around, faced a barred window where brown tin Venetian blinds hung crooked at half-mast. Outside, birds squabbled, noisy, shrill, over sleeping rights in the dark old acacia trees that framed the parking lot of the Maricopa County Offices building. The lot was empty except for a fat five-year-old Cadillac and three brown patrol cars. "No witnesses the Oats boy was ever at Cochran's ranch." 

"Check out that private lodge of his. You'll find the boy's clothes." 

The Sheriff sighed and turned back. "I used to ride pretty good. Had a big bay gelding to carry me. Lot of Mexican silver mounting on the saddle. Used to go on that long ride out of Santa Barbara every year at fiesta time. Always got down to Pasadena for the Rose Parade. Then I hurt my back. Spine like a stack of broken crockery now. Be worth three months in the hospital was I to get aboard a horse today." 

"Send somebody," Dave said. 

Hackett wagged loose jowls. "Couldn't get no warrant. You think any judge around here would sign a warrant against Wade Cochran? Oh, they might"—something sly, meant for a smile, twitched his mouth, showing big rabbity teeth—" supposing we'd caught him up to his ass in the water, chucking Oats under and holding him there till the bubbles stopped. But nobody in this neck of the woods is going to brace a big, famous man like that on a mixed-up story like yours. About a murder somebody else already took the blame for." A snort. "They sure as hell aren't going to amble up to him and call him a pansy."