Archer - The Chill Part 26

He seemed unpleasantly surprised to find me still in the front room. "Good night, Mr. Archer, or whatever your name is. We're closing up for the night now."

"You're not very hospitable."

"No. My sister is the hospitable one." He cast a sour glance around the little room, at overflowing ashtrays, clouded gla.s.ses, scattered newspapers. "I never saw you before, I'll never see you again. Why should I be hospitable?"

"You're sure you never saw me before? Think hard."

His brown eyes studied my face, and then my body. He scratched nervously at the front of his thinning hair. He shook his head.

"If I ever saw you before I must have been drunk at the time. Did Sally bring you here when I was drunk?"

"No. Were you drinking last Friday night?"

"Let's see, what night was that? I think I was out of town. Yeah. I didn't get back here until Sat.u.r.day morning." He was trying to sound casual and look unconcerned. "It must have been two other guys."

"I don't think so, Jud. I ran into you, or you ran into me, about nine last Friday night in Pacific Point."

Panic brightened his face like a flash of lightning. "Who are you?"

"I chased you down Helen Haggerty's driveway, remember? You were too fast for me. It took me two days to catch up."

He was breathing as if he'd just finished the run. "Are you from the police?"

"I'm a private detective."

He sat down in a Danish chair, gripping the fragile arms so hard I thought they might break. He snickered. It was very close to a sob.

"This is Bradshaw's idea, isn't it?"

I didn't answer him. I cleared a chair and sat in it.

"Bradshaw said he was satisfied with my story. Now he sends you up against me." His eyes narrowed. "I suppose you were pumping my sister about me."

"She doesn't need much priming."

Twisting in the chair, he threw a wicked look in the direction of her bedroom. "I wish she'd keep her mouth shut about my business."

"Don't blame her for what you did yourself."

"But the h.e.l.l of it is I didn't _do_ anything. I _told_ Bradshaw that, and he believed me, at least he said he did."

"Are you talking about Roy Bradshaw?"

"Who else? He recognized me the other night, or thought he did. I didn't know who it was I b.u.mped in the dark. I just wanted out of there."

"Why?"

He lifted his heavy shoulders and sat with them lifted, head down between them. "I didn't want trouble with the law."

"What were you doing at Helen's?"

"She _asked_ me to come. h.e.l.l, I went there as a good Samaritan. She called me at the motel in Santa Monica and practically begged me to come and spend the night. It wasn't my beautiful blue eyes. She was frightened, she wanted company."

"What time did she call you?"

"Around seven or seven-thirty. I was just coming in from getting something to eat." He dropped his shoulders. "Listen, you know all this, you got it from Bradshaw, didn't you? What are you trying to do, trap me into a mistake?"

"It's an idea. What sort of a mistake did you have in mind?"

He shook his head, and went on shaking it as he spoke. "I didn't have anything particular in mind. I mean, I can't afford to make any mistakes."

"You already made the big one, when you ran."

"I know. I panicked." He shook his head some more. "There she was with a bullet hole in her skull and there I was a natural setup for a patsy. I heard you fellows coming, and I panicked. You've got to believe me."

They always said that. "Why do I have to believe you?"

"Because I'm telling the truth. I'm innocent as a little child."

"That's pretty innocent."

"I didn't mean in general, I meant in this particular situation. I went a long way out of my way to give Helen a helping hand. It doesn't make sense I'd go there to knock her off. I _liked_ the girl. She and I had a lot in common."

I didn't know if this was a compliment to either of them. Bert Haggerty had described his ex-wife as corrupt. The man in front of me was a dubious character. Behind the mask of his good looks he seemed dilapidated, as if he'd painfully b.u.mped down several steps in the social scale. In spite of this, I half-believed his story. I would never more than half-believe anything he said.

"What did you and Helen have in common?"

He gave me a quick sharp up-from-under look. This wasn't the usual line of questioning. He thought about his answer. "Sports. Dancing. Fun and games. We had some real fun times, I mean it. I almost died when I found her the other night."

"How did you happen to meet her?"

"You _know_ all this," he said impatiently. "You're working for Bradshaw, aren't you?"

"Put it this way: Bradshaw and I are on the same side." I wanted to know why Roy Bradshaw loomed so large in Foley's mind, but other questions had priority. "Now why don't you humor me and tell me how you knew Helen?"

"It's simple enough." He jabbed his thumb downward like a decadent emperor decreeing death. "She rented the downstairs apartment when she was putting in her six weeks this summer. She and my sister hit it off, and eventually I got into the act. The three of us used to go places together."

"In Sally's car?"

"I had my own car then--sixty-two Galaxie five hundred," he said earnestly. "This was back in August before I lost my job and couldn't keep up with the payments."

"How did you happen to lose your job?"

"That wouldn't interest you. It had nothing to do with Helen Haggerty, nothing whatever."

His overinsistence on the point made me suspicious. "What were you working at?"

"I said you wouldn't be interested."

"I can easily find out where you were working. You might as well tell me."

He said with his eyes down: "I was in the cas.h.i.+er's cage at the Solitaire in Stateline. I guess I made one mistake too many." He looked at his strong square fumbling hands.

"So you were looking for work in Los Angeles?"

"Correcto." He seemed relieved to get away from the subject of his job and why he lost it. "I didn't make a connection, but I've got to get out of this place."

"Why?"

He scratched his hair. "I can't go on living on my sister. It _cuts_ me, being on the ding. I'm going down to L.A. again and have another look around."

"Let's get back to the first time. You say Helen called you at your motel Friday night. How did she know you were there?"

"I already called her earlier in the week."

"What for?"

"The usual. I mean, I thought we could get together, have some fun." He kept talking about having fun but he looked as if he hadn't had any for years. "Helen already had a date that night, Wednesday night. As a matter of fact she had a date with Bradshaw. They were going to some concert. She said she'd call me back another time. Which she did, Friday night."

"What did she say on the telephone?"

"That somebody threatened to kill her, and she was scared, I never heard her talk like that before. She said that she had n.o.body to turn to but me. And I got there too late." There seemed to be grief in him, but even this was ambiguous, as if he felt defrauded by Helen's death.

"Were Helen and Bradshaw close?"

He answered cautiously: "I wouldn't say that. I guess they lucked into each other last summer the same way Helen and I did. Anyway, he was busy Friday night. He had to give a speech at some big dinner. At least that's what he told me this morning."

"He wasn't lying. Did Bradshaw and Helen meet here in Reno?"

"Where else?"

"I thought Bradshaw spent the summer in Europe."

"You thought wrong. He was here all through August, anyway."

"What was he doing here?"

"He told me once he was doing some kind of research at the University of Nevada. He didn't say what kind. I hardly knew him, actually. I ran into him a couple of times with Helen, and that was it. I didn't see him again until today."

"And you say he recognized you Friday night and came here to question you?"

"That's the truth. He came here this morning, gave me quite a grilling. _He_ believed I didn't do that murder. I don't see why you can't believe me."

"I'll want to talk to Bradshaw before I make up my mind. Where is he now, do you know?"

"He said he was staying at the Lakeview Inn, on the North Sh.o.r.e. I don't know if he's still there or not."

I stood up and opened the door. "I think I'll go and see."

I suggested to Jud that he stay where he was, because a second runout would make him look very bad. He nodded. He was still nodding when a counter-impulse took hold of him and he rushed me. His heavy shoulder caught me under the ribs and slammed me back against the doorframe wheezing for air.

He threw a punch at my face. I s.h.i.+fted my head. His fist crunched into the plaster wall. He yipped with pain. He hit me low in the belly with his other hand. I slid down the doorframe. He kneed me, a glancing blow on the side of the jaw.

This impelled me to get up. He rushed me again, head down. I stepped to one side and chopped the back of his neck as he went by. He staggered rapidly through the door and across the landing, and plunged down. At the foot of the stairs he lay still.

But he was conscious when the police arrived. I rode along to the station to make sure they nailed him down. We hadn't been there five minutes when Arnie came in. He had an understanding with the officers. They booked Foley for a.s.sault and related charges, and promised to hold him.

chapter 24.

Arnie drove me out to the Lakeview Inn, a rambling California Gothic pile which must have dated from the early years of the century. Generations of summer visitors had marched through the lobby and trampled out any old-world charm it might once have had. It seemed an unlikely place for Roy Bradshaw to be staying.

But Bradshaw was there, the elderly night clerk said. He took a railroad watch out of his vest pocket and consulted it. "It's getting pretty late, though. They may be asleep."

"They?"

"Him and his wife. I can go up and call him, if you want me to. We never did put telephones in the rooms."

"I'll go up. I'm a friend of Dr. Bradshaw's."

"I didn't know he was a doctor."

"A doctor of philosophy," I said. "What's his room number?"

"Thirty-one, on the top floor." The old man seemed relieved at not having to make the climb.

I left Arnie with him and went up to the third floor. Light shone through the transom of 31, and I could hear the indistinct murmur of voices. I knocked. There was a silence, followed by the noise of slippered feet.

Roy Bradshaw spoke through the door. "Who is it?"

"Archer."

He hesitated. A sleeper in the room across the hail, perhaps disturbed by our voices, began to snore. Bradshaw said: "What are you doing here?"

"I have to see you."

"Can't it wait till morning?" His voice was impatient, and he had temporarily mislaid his Harvard accent.

"No. It can't. I need your advice on what to do about Judson Foley."

"Very well. I'll get dressed."

I waited in the narrow ill-lit hallway. It had the faintly acrid smell which old buildings seem to absorb from the people who pa.s.s through them night by night, the smell of transient life. The snoring man was uttering terrible moans between his snores. A woman told him to turn over, and he subsided.