Till Death Do Us Part (6 page)

Over the coffee, she said, “All right, you’re grumbly enough to be a husband. Now let’s play some other game. What’s on the agenda for today?”

I remembered my decision of the night before. I said, “I’m going to Fronteras.”

“I’m going to get awfully tired of that drugstore,” she said, “but let’s go.”

We went. I parked her with a book and a cup of coffee in the booth by the front window of the drugstore and went across the street to Rosanne’s office.

Amalie was there. She looked pretty good; someone had painted out her bruises. Her eyes went wide when she saw mine. “Oh
señor
, I did not realize the fight was so bad yesterday.”

I said, “This was another one,
chica
. But you look good.”

She pouted. She was very cute when she pouted. She made me want to pat her head and wipe her nose again. “You did not come to see if I was bad hurt.”

I said, “I was going to,” I said. “I swear it. But someone put me to sleep on a pile of garbage and when I woke it was too late.”

Her eyes got even wider as she digested what I’d said. “This is true?”

I said, “I never tell anything but the truth. Now can I see your gorgeous boss?”

“You make the joke of me,” she said. “And you cannot see her until you promise to come and see me first.”

I thought she was being flirtatious until I had a good look at the expression on her face. I felt myself flushing a little. The kid had a crush on me, probably because I’d “rescued” her from Delman.

I said, “I don’t think your boyfriend would like my coming to see you,
chica.”
She looked so blank that I added, “Ignacio.”

“Oh, him!” She began to giggle. “But he is small and you are big. And he is only some of the time. You too can be some of the time.”

I began to wonder if the business of a crush was an act, and if Nace hadn’t steered her onto getting me alone and pumping me. But those calf eyes of hers were awfully convincing.

I said, “Soon. I promise. And we’ll do up the town. Both towns.”

“All right, now you can see her. But she is not so gorgeous, that
rubia.”

“As blonds go, I’ve seen better,” I conceded. “Tell me, Amalie, did a piece of paper really blow off your desk and land in front of the
señora’s
door?”

“Señor!”

I grinned. She was too indignant. She jerked open the door to Rosanne’s office. I walked in. Amalie shut the door firmly.

Rosanne looked me over, said, “A drunken brawl?” and dismissed the whole matter of my appearance.

I said, “I came to tell you that I’m earning my money. Pachuco hasn’t checked out of the hotel yet.”

“A telephone call would have brought me that information.”

She was being frosty this morning. I decided to begin my new campaign. I said, “By the way, what’s with you and Navarro?”

I caught her flat-footed on that one. She had no time to duck or even to spar with me. She sat bolt upright and the frost got thicker. I ignored it. I said, “You didn’t seem eager to talk about him yesterday; yet he’s your partner in two businesses. Do you think he’s connected with Pachuco?”

“You’re being absurd!”

I’d hit a tender spot. I put my thumb on it and pressed hard. “Navarro seems to think you hired Pachuco to check on him,” I lied.

The color left her cheeks. She was almost whispering when she said, “You talked to him about my bringing you here?”

I said, “Not before I resigned from this job.” I tossed the money she’d given me to date on her desk. She let it lie.

I said, “I don’t like the runaround. And that’s what I’ve been getting from you. As far as I can tell, this business about Pachuco and his telephone call is so much crap.”

Something was worrying her. She had started to gnaw on her lower lip. It was too thin for her to lose very much of it. She stopped gnawing and began pushing the money around the desk top with the tip of a manicured finger. I decided that she was having some kind of argument between greed and self preservation.

I just waited.

Finally, she said, “Just what do you want, Mr. Blane?”

I said, “I want some answers. You know a lot more than you’ve told me. Pachuco’s threat wouldn’t have caused you to part with the money to hire me unless there was something behind it—something you were afraid of.”

She gnawed at her lip again. She said, “Perhaps I misjudged you.” She didn’t explain what she meant by that. She took her finger and pushed the money toward my side of the desk. “Please consider yourself still working for me.”

“Not under the present conditions.”

She took out her purse and found a fifty dollar bill. She laid it on the other money. I said, “What’s the point of that? I want information, not money.”

She left the fresh fifty lying there. “Tonight I want you to come to a barbecue at my ranch.”

I said, “Thanks, but I don’t feel very social right now.”

“There’s someone there I want you to meet,” she said. The frost was gone from her voice. The warmth of yesterday was creeping back in. I wondered if she was the type who liked to be pushed around. If so, it would explain her attraction for Delman. He probably slapped her every Friday night just for kicks.

I said, “Why should I meet this person?”

“So that when I explain what you need to know, you’ll understand my problem.”

I picked up her money. I said, “I’m making a condition. I’m working for Navarro too. If there’s a conflict of interest, I’ll decide which of you is being more honest with me. I’ll return the money to the other one and do everything I can to make trouble.”

She didn’t even hesitate to think that over. She got up. “I accept that,” she said. She came around the desk to where I was standing. “Until tonight, then, Mr. Blane. Come about seven o’clock.”

We went to the door. She had turned on the warm smile again. It was too bad she didn’t have the mouth for this sort of thing. I couldn’t look at her without thinking that the corners of her mouth were joined together by steel trap springs.

It was very much too bad. Today she wore a pale cream suit, and nobody could have asked for more than she had beneath it.

I went out before I let myself forget what a professional bitch she really was.

W
HEN
I
OPENED
the door, Amalie was standing close to it. For a moment I thought she’d been up to her old tricks but then I saw a man standing by the desk.

She said, “The
señor
Kruse to see you,
señora
,” to Rosanne.

I recognized the man now. He was the member of Rosanne’s party who looked as if he worked. The one Navarro identified to me as Jim Kruse, the foreman of her ranch.

He gave me a cold look, full of suspicion and hostility, and stepped toward the door. I moved aside. Rosanne said, “What are you doing in town at this time of day?” Her voice was sharp. She was playing hard at the role of female executive.

His expression changed as he looked at her. Instead of hostility, he now registered cow-like devotion. His voice matched his face when he said, “I came to get some stuff for the barbecue, and I thought I’d better talk to you about how many are coming.”

I could see that Rosanne was thinking the same thing I was—that he had dug up an excuse to get a look at her. She didn’t seem overly pleased at such flattery. She stepped back. “You could have phoned,” she said, “But come in now that you’re here.” As he went by her, she gave me a final look and a smile. “Until tonight, Mr. Blane.”

“Hasta la noche,”
I agreed.

I gave Amalie a smile as I walked into the waiting room. She came after me, catching me at the front door. “You are going to spend the night with that woman!” she said accusingly.

“Just business,” I said.

She slammed the door behind me. I looked back. She was staring through the glass panel. I waved and she went away. I hurried across the street and got Arden and headed back for Rio Bravo.

I spent most of the day lying on my bed and trying to think. By evening, I was right back where I’d started—as I saw it, Navarro and Rosanne were in some kind of business that Pachuco decided he could cut himself a piece of. Whether the business was legal or illegal, I had no way of knowing yet, but I didn’t doubt that Pachuco’s angle would be illegal.

The logical one to have killed Pachuco—assuming my premise to be true—was Navarro. But I found it hard to picture him as a torturer. It was easier to think of Rosanne twisting a thumb screw. I was willing to credit her with almost any action.

But no matter how I twisted the facts, I couldn’t find a logical explanation for Nace or Arden, and not much of one for Amalie. The more I thought of Amalie, the less sure I was that she was pretending to have a crush on me. I hoped she was pretending; if not, then I had one more problem on top of the rest. I had no idea what to do with a hero-worshipping child.

I smoked and nursed my bruises and finally got around to wondering just who was interested enough in getting me out of Rio Bravo to have given me that beating. Nace, of course, but Nace wasn’t big enough. Porter Delman possibly. After all I had made him look somewhat of a fool before his fiancee. Or someone else—Navarro perhaps—who was in a position to hire a thug to do the job.

I thought of another possibility—Jim Kruse. The look of adoration I had caught when he looked at Rosanne gave me an idea. I saw him finding out that Pachuco was causing her trouble and of him taking care of the trouble in his own way—by murder. It wasn’t hard to see him deciding that I was just more of the same and giving me a beating as a warning to get out of her hair. He was big enough to break me in two.

And then there was always the possibility of its being someone I didn’t know. In other words,
señor
Fulano de Tal—which is Spanish for Mr. So-and-So.

I thought hopefully, maybe Rosanne will have all the answers tonight, and I rolled over and went to sleep, a pastime Arden had sensibly been working at for about the last hour.

When I awakened, it was growing dark. I could hear the shower running in the bath. In a few moments Arden appeared, bright-eyed and dressed in jeans, high-heeled boots, a plaid shirt, and a flat-brimmed hat. She looked real sharp.

I said, “Where do you think you’re going in that rig?”

“With you,” she said sweetly, “to the barbecue.”

“The hell you are,” I said flatly. “This is no time to connect yourself to me. Remember, someone wants me to leave this part of the country. Since I haven’t, they just might decide to try to get at me some other way—and that way could be you.”

She said, “Darling, I didn’t know you cared.”

I got up and washed and changed my suit and came back. She smiled sweetly at me. I said, “This is no kidding matter. You could get hurt.”

She said, “I was hired to do a job and I’m going to do it.”

Something in her tone warned me that she was going to be difficult to argue with. She stood with hands on hips and her body posed so that her peculiar loose-jointedness thrust the more interesting parts of her anatomy at me. But she wasn’t being coquettish. That was just one of her ways of standing.

The pose gave me an idea. I stepped closer to her. “Look, honey,” I said, “can’t you see I don’t want to take a chance on your getting hurt?”

She just cocked her head and gave me a half grin. I took another step, put out my arms, and tried to move in even closer. But she was a smart girl. Either that or she could read my mind. One way or another, she guessed that I wasn’t making a pass but was trying to grab her so I could tie her up.

She kept her half smile as she took a step backward. I made a grab for her. She went up in the air in one of her dance steps. She reached the top of her leap and let one leg fly. If I hadn’t moved fast, the high heel of her boot would have taken me squarely in the Adam’s apple. As it was I caught it on the collarbone. The jolt was enough to change my mind about rough-housing her.

I said, “What happens to the guy who makes a real pass at you?”

She had landed on both feet, and for all her exercise, she was a good deal calmer looking than I. She said sweetly, “I’m ready to demonstrate any time. Now let’s get started or we’ll be late.”

I said, “This is a big affair, I think. Navarro will probably be there. He can nursemaid me for one night.”

She said, “He’ll be there, but he’ll be busy.”

That ended that. We went to the barbecue together. At least we went as far as Fronteras together. There Arden agreed to go on her own. Her idea of doing that was to hire a taxi and follow the car I rented.

The ranch was eight miles from town, out in the middle of the cactus and sage hills east of the river. I later learned that the land Rosanne held covered eighteen square miles. It wasn’t much in the way of a cattle ranch, but it made a nice quiet place to go and relax.

Like so many ranches, most of the money tied up in this one had gone for cattle and water wells. The outbuildings were no better than they needed to be, and the ranchhouse was a rambling, weather-beaten Victorian horror.

I parked the rented car in front of the house, beside a long line of cars, and sat and smoked a cigaret. By that time Arden had left her taxi and disappeared. I gave her ten minutes all together and then went after her.

The party was in full howl by the time I appeared. The cooking took place behind the big barn in what I presumed was one of the corrals. Fires had been built in pits and allowed to burn down to coals and now the heat from them was making whole steers turning on great spits sizzle and fill the air with the best smell I’d sniffed in a long while.

The first person I met was Rosanne. She was dressed as Arden was, but her clothes looked as if she’d done some work in them. I said, “Did I miss anything?”

“Just the first round of drinks.” She led me to a long table where bottles and ice and glasses and mixers were lined up. “Help yourself.”

I helped myself. She went away. I was half through my first drink when she came back with a man in tow. As they neared, I heard him say in a pettish voice, “But Rosanne, darling, I was so enjoying myself talking to that dancer of Navarro’s.”

“There’s someone else I want you to meet,” she said in one of her firm voices. She stepped aside so that I had a good look at the man with her.

I recognized him as the “very funny fellow” I’d seen at Navarro’s the other night. Rosanne said, “Mr. Blane, I’d like you to meet Calvin Calvin. He’s our local celebrity. Mr. Blane is a detective on vacation from Mexico City, Cal.”

He said, “Pleased,
amigo.”
He didn’t offer me his hand. I didn’t offer mine.

Seen close up, Calvin Calvin was even less prepossessing than from a distance. He was a little man, still quite young, with a jaundiced complexion and one of those thin, pointed faces with a long nose that looks boneless at the tip. It was the kind of nose that dripped in chilly weather. Now it just wriggled. With that kind of nose, he should have had rabbity front teeth and a sloping jaw, but instead he had a pugnacious, bulldog jaw.

I said, “Pleased. I heard your show.”

He said, “Like it?”

“Fine,” I said. “Damn funny.” If he could talk shorthand, I figured I could too.

Our sparkling conversation might have continued for quite a while except that just then Delman appeared, plowing toward the table as if he thought Rosanne needed rescuing. He came in swinging his shoulders and forced Calvin against me. I backed away. Calvin smelled as if he’d got too close to the smoke from the barbecue pit.

I turned on Delman as he tried to crowd me against the edge of the table. “Since I’m a guest here,” I said, “I’ll let it pass this time.”

He turned, scowling, looking as if he was eager to take up where we’d left off in Rosanne’s office. Rosanne put a hand on his arm and said something very low and very quick. He swung around again and stalked off. She went with him.

I got myself another drink. Calvin said, “My, what’s with you and our local cattle baron?”

I said, “We’re both just mad about that gorgeous blond. Aren’t you?”

“Heavens no!” He gave me a long look, his face tipped coyly over toward one shoulder.

I said something about looking for the washroom and got away from him.

I wandered around, looking over the guests, wondering if Calvin was the one Rosanne had wanted me to meet or if it was someone else in the crowd. I saw Navarro, but exchanged no more than nods with him. As Arden had told me, he was busy. He was surrounded by a half dozen of Texas’ prize cornflowers. I gathered that Navarro was still worth three goats.

I saw that Calvin had left the vicinity of the table. I worked my way back there and got another drink. By the time I’d finished it, I found I really did need the washroom. I saw that the rear of the house was invitingly lighted and I headed for it.

I worked my way from the big back porch, through a huge kitchen and into a hallway. I was about to go down it when I heard a voice say distinctly, “You’re being absurd. Jim Kruse is absolutely trustworthy. And you’re imagining things. I am
not
in any trouble, Porter.”

The voice was Rosanne’s; its characteristic sharpness was unmistakeable. The answer came in Delman’s superior tone. He said, “I don’t believe you. And I damn well intend to do something whether you’ll tell me the truth or not.”

“Porter! I’ll not have you….”

He interrupted her. “If you aren’t in trouble, what’s that crummy private detective doing here?”

That was me. I didn’t like him either.

“Mr. Blane is an acquaintance,” she said. “He’s visiting in Rio Bravo. I asked him to drop by and say hello.”

His snort said that he wasn’t buying this. He said, “There’s something going on, and I think Kruse is mixed up in it. I’ve seen him working on you. He wants a ranch of his own and he figures to marry you to get it. And if he can’t do it that way, he’ll do it some other.”

“Nonsense!”

Both of them must have realized the argument was getting pointless because without answering Delman stomped off one way and she another. I could hear him heading for the hall. I pulled back under the shadow made by stairs going to the second floor. If he looked, he couldn’t miss me, but I didn’t much care. I waited, my fist cocked.

He didn’t look. He plowed on, glaring straight ahead at nothing. His strong, heavy features were set in a hard, uncompromising line. He wasn’t drunk; he was just plain mad.

I heard Rosanne let a screen door close lightly behind her. When Delman was out of the kitchen, I walked on down the hall, looking for her. I came to a kind of foyer. On the left a door opened into a lighted room that looked like a library. On the right was a dark room which I imagined to be the parlor. Straight ahead of me was the screen door I’d heard slam. It led to the big front veranda.

I started to go onto the veranda but for the second time voices stopped me. I was raised to believe that eavesdropping was something no gentleman ever did. But the detective business had taught me that there were times when anything was proper. Considering the mess I was in, I felt that this was one of those times. Rosanne was talking again.

I couldn’t see her so I left the foyer for the darkness of the parlor. From there I could see through the front windows onto the veranda. I could see Rosanne and Jim Kruse outlined by light that came through the screen door.

They were busy. As I watched, I could feel myself flushing. I was, I decided, a damn poor judge of character. I had figured Rosanne for one hundred percent frost. But if what she was doing to Kruse with her arms and her torso was frost, I’d have hated to tangle with her type when warmed up.

Finally she got herself unglued from him. I caught a glimpse of his expression. I was afraid he was about to pass out. I backed into the foyer; watching something like that wasn’t in my contract.

Now I could hear them talking again. Rosanne’s voice had a crooning quality that I’d never caught in it before. When Kruse said, “Let me take care of that big ape for you, dearest,” she murmured, “No, please, lover, you’ve done too much for me already. I can handle him.”

I wondered just what he’d done for her that was too much. Beat me up, perhaps? Kill Pachuco, maybe?