Dead, She Was Beautiful Page 16

  Wishart drew out his words painfully. “I guess so, Hagen. It’s worth your pay to face the facts. I’ve fumbled the ball from the very beginning, so much that’s personal was involved. No use pretending otherwise.”

  “And now the question of Jack being in your way also. He’s dead. All of you know it. For five minutes we’ve been talking about him in the past tense and nobody objected.”

  “Yes, we know it,” said Mrs. Wishart. “But we don’t intend to observe mourning.”

  “The police are going to observe something. Jack died of a bowstring around his neck. Right, Avis?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said the secretary. Every inch of her face and body was now under perfect control. Her voice was flat and polite, although not quite deferential. She made but one betraying gesture. She put her hand on Wishart’s shoulder, as if for support, and left it there.

  Hagen asked, “How much of the night did you spend at the Kent Hotel?”

  “None of it. Please don’t be insulting.”

  “How was Jack the last time you saw him?”

  “Dead, I believe. I didn’t go near him. His face looked dead. But I couldn’t see what had killed him. For all I know he was in the last stages of heart attack and I wasn’t going to help him.” Her hand still held to Wishart’s shoulder, her nails clenching the pyjama material. Hagen wondered who was supporting whom. Avis added wistfully, “I don’t see very well, you know.”

  Wishart said tensely, “What are you getting at, Hagen? Are you accusing me or Avis? Make up your mind.”

  “I wish I could. For my client’s benefit, I’m merely thinking police thoughts. Let’s book you first. Your future’s tied up in Oakmar and you wanted to protect that, even if it meant sacrificing your wife. When Jack butted in you killed him too.”

  “Ridiculous. I’m sick in bed.”

  Hagen went on inexorably. “Or if you don’t care for that, let’s book Avis. She also had access to the weapon, opportunity and motive. Jack saw her leave through the back gate after deflating Hilda. So she played along with Jack. She borrowed the sleeping medicine the doctor left here last night. She had a sociable drinking party with Jack until he was groggy enough for her to strangle. After all, I did see her leaving the hotel this morning.”

  Avis said nothing. Mrs. Wishart shook her head at the secretary reassuringly but Avis didn’t appear to need help. In fact, the faint smile she bestowed on Hagen looked a bit pitying.

  Hagen kept trying. “Or we can make the bed up for two. You shared the labour. You killed your wife and Avis killed your blackmailer.”

  Mrs. Wishart was glaring by this time. “These scare tactics are a lot of nonsense. Neither of these young people killed anybody. Wayne was going out last night to try to reason with that Ferreira person. Unfortunately my son had a momentary fit of depression, for which nobody can blame him. As for Avis, I sent her to the hotel this morning myself. The sum demanded was exorbitant but I thought it better to pay Ferreira off and be rid of him. Avis found him dead or dying and returned immediately. With the money.”

  “Good.” Hagen smiled. “I’ll be sure of my fee then, won’t I?”

  Mrs. Wishart snorted. “Do you think you’ve earned any?”

  “I’m about to. I’m picking up some valuable information this evening at seven o’clock. What with the information you people have been kind enough to give me, I expect a great light to burst over me any time tonight. I only hope I’m not threatening anyone present.”

  With that Hagen walked out of the bedroom. He was nearly to the front door when he heard his name being called. Wayne Wishart was following him, barefoot and without bothering to don a robe over his pyjamas. Hagen waited.

  “I wanted to ask you a question privately,” said Wishart. “Back there, when you were talking about Avis, you said she had motive for killing Hilda. What did you mean by that?”

  “Well, Avis lives here and she’s a young lady. You live here and you’re a man of considerable means. Hilda is dead, so don’t you see what that makes you?”

  “No.”

  “Single,” said Hagen. He went out and left Wishart standing in the doorway, staring after him.

  20

  HE arrived at Dagne’s apartment precisely at the hour he had promised, seven o’clock. He had crammed a good deal, including an hour’s sleep, into the time since he had left the Wishart house. He looked better than he felt, however; the freshness was only surface deep.

  Although Hagen was punctual, Dagne was not. Her windows were dark, the shades were up and Hagen could detect no life within. He rang the door bell for a long while but didn’t get an answer. He went back to sit in his car and wait but he felt uneasy. He remounted the steps and searched for the extra key that she had said she kept above the porchlight. It was there.

  The apartment was warm from the heat of the day and fragrant with the scent of the owner. But it was empty. Hagen checked rapidly through the small rooms to make certain and then chose a spot on the sofa to wait for Dagne’s return. For a while he sat in the dark but that made him drowsy so he finally got up and turned on a lamp.

  It was then that he saw the note. It had been placed on the mantelpiece above the fake fireplace and weighted down with a brass candlestick. It was really two messages, on separate pieces of paper.

  The first was typewritten. Neatly double-spaced, it began: Army of the United States. Honourable Discharge. This is to certify that LAWRENCE F. BELDORIAN 39 022 529 Sergeant … It went on to loose him from the military service and to testify to his Honest and Faithful Service to his country. There was a good deal more, comprising his Enlisted Record. Hagen searched out Section 36, the report of foreign duty. On such and such a date, Beldorian had departed for the Asiatic Pacific Theatre. The date was long before Hilda’s missing year.

  And Beldorian had been discharged from Schofield Barracks. The letters TH stood out like a brand. This date fell in December, in the last month of Hilda’s missing year. Beldorian had been in the Territory of Hawaii at the same time as Hilda.

  He read the second piece of paper. It was hand-written, a hasty scribble. Dear H, it said, I knew you’d come in out of the rain so am leaving this info on L.B. that you asked for. Sorry to duck out on you, but got a call to come out to Oakmar tonight at 7.30. Something about Hilda. Be right back. Love, D.

  Hagen stood frowning, reading the note a second time. Oakmar … 7.30 … something about Hilda…. He looked at his watch. It was nearly 7.30 already.

  He had a crawling intuition that Dagne wouldn’t be right back.

  And then the bright light burst over him, just as he had warned the Wishart household. It was a brilliant radiation—fittingly gaudy—that pierced through his mind like an arrow and inflamed every corner of his brain. He swore in wonder. All day he had been on the verge of this discovery, ever since he had figured out the meaning of Hilda’s hunting knife. And now he held the answer in his hand, the final titbit that made him a contented pigeon—or a dead one.

  Unwittingly, Dagne had written out the identity of the archer. Hagen shoved the two notes into his pocket and ran for his automobile.

  He drove like a menace. His hands seemed to melt into the steering wheel and his feet into the floor pedals. He and the car were a single straining machine, pointed for Oakmar. He had to reach there in time. A hitherto secret place in his mind kept asking, In time for what? but he closed a door on it. Houses, stores, street lamps raced by to the tune of his engine, all burning peaceful lights, the placid glow-spots of men and women of good will. I don’t belong with them, he thought. I belong at Oakmar where it began.

  It had been only two and a half days since he had driven this way the first time. But the truth wouldn’t fit into that cramped time period, it needed a longer time, at least a life or two. In the span of those few hours, he had seen Hilda dead, and Doc and Jack. He had said goodbye to a yellow-haired woman he once loved and had found himself falling for her identical dark image.

  The lights of the c
ity sank behind him and became an ember streak in his rear view mirror. The cool night breeze whipping the scent of sagebrush across the barren mesas, seemed intent on holding him back. There was no moon and the stars winked in dim mockery. It was a beautiful night, but for his savage hurrying ambition, the kind of night to spend driving with your girl, with plenty of falling stars to wish on. Hagen had a lot to wish for.

  He squinted his eyes ahead, seeking the read tail-light of an automobile, thinking that his maniac pace might have been enough to overtake her. But though he rushed abreast of an occasional other car, he did not catch up with the one he sought. He came at last to the gloomy desertion of Oakmar.

  The Modern Community for Modern Living was no more alive than the first time he had seen it. It was still an advertising promise, an unborn town. His head-lights, swinging in a wide arc as he skidded off the main highway, startled a large white owl perched atop the billboard. The bird flapped away like a retreating ghost. But there was no sign of human life.

  Driving slowly now, using his spotlight to sweep back and forth, Hagen bumped along the dirt road. He passed the surveyor’s office, the little imitation castle. It was padlocked and uninhabited. Tyre tracks showed a corrugated pattern in the dust of the roadway but he had no means of telling how fresh they were.

  Rabbits bounded across the gouge that served as the main street, dazzled momentarily by the brilliant spread of his headlights. A roadrunner darted into the open and kept his company for a few yards. At various unexpected locations construction machinery—bull-dozers and graders and ditchers and earthmovers—loomed out of the night to startle him, like gods in some heathen pantheon.

  “Dagne,” he whispered, probing with the searchlight. “Where are you?”

  He found her car at last, parked on a scrubby slope of the subdivision where the road wound upward along a narrow mesa between two precipitous canyons.

  Dagne’s car was empty. One door hung open, as if she had got out too hurriedly to close it. Or as if she had been dragged from it. Or as if she still lay across the shadowy front seat.

  Hagen pulled up and stopped his engine but didn’t cut his lights. For a moment, he sat listening to the night sounds, peering at the car before him. Then he slid out, flashlight in hand, and went to investigate.

  He had taken only two steps when a lizard scurried through the underbrush. At the rattling sound, Hagen swerved aside. The lizard saved his life. The arrow stabbed into his shoulder.

  21

  THE arrow knocked him to his knees and Hagen flung himself down the rest of the way. His flashlight bounced from his hand and flickered out as its lens splintered against a rock. Hagen crawled rapidly for the cover of the brush. He had to get away from the damning radiance of his own headlights. He couldn’t roll for shelter because of the arrow shaft that stood like a flagstaff in his right shoulder.

  Panting, he reached darkness and stopped his noisy scrambling retreat. He didn’t know whether other arrows had followed his headlong crawl or not. He lay pressed against the ground and now the pain began in his shoulder. He gritted his teeth against it and after a long moment the agony subsided to a slanting column of pain, with twinges of fire every time he shifted his arm. He hadn’t realized an arrow hurt so much. It felt like a telephone pole stuck through him.

  He tried to consider the blessings of his position. He was invisible for the moment. The arrow wasn’t in the middle of his back, as intended. He could move about, although his right arm was out of commission.

  Yet the deadly fact remained that he was not alone. Somewhere on the mesa lurked the archer, waiting for a sound, a glimpse, stalking him like an animal. Only an accidental lizard had saved Hagen from the first shaft, and the archer would be carrying a whole quiverful of arrows.

  Hagen looked back at his car. There was the protective armour he needed but it waited for him in its own bright glow, the perfect trap. If he made a dash for it … He could picture himself grovelling in the dust of the road, a human pincushion. He gave up the car idea.

  He lay helpless and unarmed, listening with his entire body, peering into the murk to see where his nemesis waited. He heard the breeze rustle through the weeds, he made out the squat shadows of bushes and stunted trees but nothing more. It was the moment for gambling on long odds. Hagen took the chance.

  He called out, “I didn’t think you’d go through with it—not without telling me why.” As soon as he spoke, he quickly clawed his way ahead. He heard the arrow whistle through the air behind him. The archer had shot for a crouching man. From his quick glimpse of the feathered shaft, Hagen thought he could figure out the approximate direction of his murderer.

  The moon was about to rise. It peeped redly over the jagged edge of the eastern hills like a fearful spectator. In a few minutes, Hagen would be able to see much better. Of course, he reflected painfully, that works both ways. I’m going to be a better target.

  He had no choice but to do battle with what he had. He shouted again, “Better talk to me while you got a chance. The cops are on their way.” Another arrow sped for his voice, aimed for a prone man this time, but Hagen had already scuttled away. His progress was impeded by the shaft standing up from his shoulder. Every time it caught on the underbrush, he wanted to pass out. Though he knew it would start fresh bleeding, he clenched his teeth and, clumsily reaching with his left hand, wrenched the arrow free. Although unflanged, the steel point felt like a fish hook coming out. He felt the gush of blood run warmly down his side. His shirt and coat began pasting themselves to his body.

  He brooded over the arrow in his hand, four inches of its tip blackened with part of his own life. He examined it thoughtfully. At least it was pointed. It wasn’t much of a weapon unless he could get close to the archer, but it was better than a single empty hand. His left hand, at that. If he could out-manœuvre his enemy….

  “The moon’s coming up,” he warned. “I’ve got a gun.”

  The reply this time was not another arrow. It was a laugh. And then he saw the archer. She strode deliberately out into the middle of the road and stood grinning toward his hiding place. She wasn’t more than fifty feet away. She wore jeans and a girlish sleeveless blouse and her head was bare. By her casual garb and the quiver slung across her back and the long bow in her hand, she looked like a lady engaged in harmless recreation.

  “You amuse me, Hagen,” she said. “And it’s the first time. Go ahead. Use your gun, whistle up some cops.” She laughed again, scornfully.

  “Don’t make me do it, Dagne.” He crouched, ready to spring away if she strung her bow.

  “I won’t—because you can’t do it, Hagen, darling. I know you backwards and forwards. I knew you’d rush out here to save me because of your hero complex. I knew you wouldn’t bring any cops, not a lone wolf like you. And as for you having a gun! Really, don’t pretend you ever carry one. I made sure of that every time I kissed you.”

  Hagen shifted his position as noiselessly as possible. She was idly fitting an arrow to her bow. Suddenly she fired, her eyes concentrating, her mouth smiling pleasantly. She fired almost straight up. It was a playful lobbing attack. The arrow disappeared from sight in the sky and then speared down into a mesquite bush about two yards away from him. Dagne was playing with him.

  He said, “I’m going to be a lot harder to hit than you think. This is a big landscape, plenty of room to dodge.”

  “You’re wounded. I can pin you down any time.”

  Time was on her side. She wouldn’t risk running out of arrows. He had to talk her out of shooting at all. While she talked he was safe. She’s a woman, he told himself desperately, and she’s Hilda’s twin. Pretend she’s Hilda. Get her in an argument.

  Hagen said, “No, I can run faster than a boar, faster than Bruce Shanner.”

  “You and your guesswork.”

  “Guesswork, hell! I scavenged out the answer bit by bit. Troge told me this morning that Bruce Shanner was one gentleman who preferred brunettes. That didn’t point to H
ilda. Where was Hilda during that year if she wasn’t in Hawaii?”

  “There you have the key to the whole thing, Hagen, and I’m the only one who knows. Where would a thief like Hilda be? She was in prison back in Illinois. You can’t steal as a whim and not get caught sometimes. She served a term under a made-up name. I knew no one could ever prove where she was that year. She never told anyone but me.”

  “Her loving sister? You’re just like her, Dagne, that’s the terrible truth.”

  “You’re trying to anger me. It’s not true and you know it. I’m not a tramp. I have a reason for every move I make. Don’t tell me otherwise.”

  Dagne could argue but the truth was there and it sickened Hagen. She looked like Hilda and she sounded like Hilda. Only the black hair was different and that was a lie from the beauty parlour. Identical twins, and their identity was more than skin-deep. They thought alike and acted alike. Hagen cursed himself for not following that assumption from the first. But, brooding about his failure with Hilda, he had yearned for a second chance. Dagne had supplied it and he had gone blind to everything else. Next time you fall in love, he warned himself, study the woman’s character. That is, if you live to fall in love again. The place for you is still Die-Hard Rock, where the women can’t get at suckers like you.

  It was all in the character. Hilda’s impulsiveness and lack of moral fibre had expressed itself in kleptomania. Dagne’s twin soul expressed itself in murder. Different manifestations sprouting from the same twisted root. And once the patterns had been set, neither sister could escape the consequences.

  “Okay,” said Hagen, “so you had a reason for making me your patsy Tuesday night. It was pure ego that brought you around to my office Wednesday morning.”

  “Use your head,” advised Dagne. “I saw by the papers that the cops had been too dumb to arrest you. I knew you were a fool for women because you’d once married Hilda, so I put on my best vengeful attitude and immediately got next to you. You were my listening post, Hagen. I could find out how the investigation was going without making myself conspicuously nosy at police headquarters.”