Talk of The Town by Charles Williams(5)

“Ridiculous,” she said. “I’m as healthy as a horse.”
“Sure you are. A horse that hasn’t had a square meal in a
month, or a full night’s rest since last year. You’re going to
stay right where you are and let me handle it.”
“But—”
“No buts. Ever since I landed in this town I’ve been
jockeyed around by some character who thinks I’m on your
side. He’s finally convinced me he’s right.”
The telephone rang out in the office. Josie appeared in the
doorway. “It’s for you,” she said. “A long distance.”
Talk of The Town— 91
8
I went out and took it at the desk. I told the operator we’d
accept the charges, and Lane came on. “Mr. Chatham?”
“Yes. How did you make out?”
“Fairly well. Here’s what I’ve been able to round up since
you called; so far it’s mostly just the stuff anybody would
know who followed the investigation last November.

Strader's full name was Albert Gerald Strader, he was thirtyfive
years old at the time he was killed, and if you were
looking around for a good one-word description of him, bum
would probably do as well as any. Or lady-killer, except I
guess that’s gone out of style.
“Not a crook or a hood, however. He had no previous
criminal record as far as they could discover—apart from a
few misdemeanors like an occasional assault and battery,
and a drunk driving or two—and they went into it pretty
thoroughly. The F.B.I, had nothing on him. I gather that
what you’re trying to find out—along with everybody else
who ever had anything to do with the case—is what the hell
he was doing up there in that place, and I don’t think there’s
much chance it was anything criminal unless being a
compulsive tomcat is a crime. The consensus of opinion is
almost a hundred per cent that it was a woman. Probably a
married one.
“He was a pretty big guy with an athlete’s build not too far
gone to seed. Played football in the military school he went
Talk of The Town— 92
to. Good-looking sort of Joe, dark hair, olive skin, gray eyes,
and he knew how to buy and wear clothes. Women—or at
least, certain kinds of over-sexed and bored and restless
women—went for him in a big way. And let’s face it; women
like that usually know what they’re after, so he must have
had it.
“He was a salesman. He wasn’t much good at it, oddly
enough; you’d think he’d be a whiz with all that appearance
and self-assurance, but I guess it takes more than that, like
maybe some interest in working at it. From last July up until
the time he was killed he was selling real estate, or trying
to. Worked for an outfit called Wells and Merritt in the
north-east part of town, housing sales and rentals, and had a
small bachelor apartment not too far away on North-East
Sixty-first Street—”
“How long had he been around Miami?” I asked.
“Off and on since about 1945, when he got out of the
Navy. Its spotty, and they don’t have the whole record.
During the same period he spent some time down in the
Keys, at Marathon and Key West, and for a while I think he
was in New Orleans. But he usually came back to Miami.
Let’s see, I’ve got some notes here—“
“Let me get something to write on,” I said. I located a
sheet of stationery in the back of the desk and undipped my
pen. “All right, shoot.”
”Okay. He grew up in a small town in northern Louisiana.
His father was a lawyer and later a District Judge. Both
parents are dead now, and the only surviving relative at the
time he was killed was a married sister three years older
who still lives there in the same town. Whitesboro. She was
the one who came down to Galicia to claim the body. Strader
apparently wasn’t a particularly wild kid, but just useless.
Probably nothing on his mind but girls, even then. Managed
to get through four years at a military school in
Pennsylvania, but was dropped at Tulane before mid-term of
his freshman year for poor grades. Went into the Navy in
1942, and after boot camp he got into an electronics school
—Treasure Island in San Francisco, I think, and was a
Radioman Second when he came out at the end of the war.”
“He wasn’t in subs, by any chance?”
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“No. Jeep carriers, it says here. Anyway, in 1946,
according to his employment record, he was announcer at a
small radio station here in Miami. Stayed there a year or
maybe a little longer. Most of 1948 is blank, but I
understand a good part of that winter he was shacked up
with some racy old girl who owned a string of horses. Then
about 1950 he was selling cars. Worked for three or four
different agencies here in Miami for the next two years, and
was also down in the Keys. In the fall of 1953 he latched
onto a traveling job, selling sound-motion projectors to
lodges, churches, and schools. He was working for a
distributor in Jacksonville, with Florida and parts of
southern Alabama and Georgia for a territory. As usual, he
didn’t set the course on fire, and apparently quit or was
fired after about six months. Seems to be a gap there, and
the next thing he was back in Miami in the fall of ‘fifty-four,
selling cars again. Then in 1955, and up until about June
1956, another traveling job working for an outfit called
Electronic Enterprises with home offices in Orlando. I don’t
know what he was selling, but maybe sound systems again.
When that fizzled out he managed to pass the examination
for a real estate salesman’s license and went to work for this
firm I mentioned first, Wells and Merritt. Just a boomer and
a drifter, you see. I think women were supporting him a
good part of the time.
”There’s no record he ever knew Langston?” I asked.
“None whatever, and they dug into it for weeks. They
were in different worlds. Langston was a pretty big wheel,
till he smashed up, and Strader was a poor type that
couldn’t have bought his way into that crowd.”
“How about the first Mrs. Langston?”
“Another big nothing. You’d think there might be a
chance, since she was a pretty gay type, especially since the
divorce, and she had a lot of money, but they’ve never found
any connection at all. And believe me, they tried. Don’t
forget, Miami’s a big place. And of course, where they really
went to work was on the second Mrs. Langston, the widow.
For obvious reasons. I mean, they had it made. Strader went
up there to see a woman, presumably a married woman, and
he winds up killing a husband, with a woman known to be
with him while he was trying to get rid of the body, so where
do you look? We’ll crack this one in an hour, boys. That was
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seven months ago, and they still haven’t come up with the
first lead to indicate the two of them had ever met. She
simply wasn’t his cup of tea. The only thing they had in
common was the fact they’d both lived a long time in Miami.
She was a medical lab technician with no money except her
salary, and she didn’t run with any gay or big-money crowd
at all. I think the way she met Langston was slipping those
wires to him to take an electrocardiogram.”
“Okay,” I said. “So far, so good. I suppose they gave up
long ago on the angle that Strader was hired for the job?
“Sure. In the first place, they couldn’t find anybody who’d
want Langston bumped off. The insurance went to his
twelve-year-old daughter. I mean, even if the junior high
crowd is circulating lists of professional triggermen these
days, this kid was fond of her father. Langston had never
made any particularly bitter enemies in business. He wasn’t
a chaser. There was some bad feeling between him and his
first wife, but what would she stand to gain? She already
had the divorce, a good chunk of the money, and the Cuban
player she was after. And even if there’d been anybody who
wanted to hire a killer, why Strader? He was no hoodlum,
and nobody ever starts out in crime as a professional
murderer. You generally work up—or down, depending on
your point of view. Also, there’s the way Langston was
killed. Being hit on the head. That’s too much work for a
pro. No, that one was a dead theory almost before they got
through saying it.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“No. That’s about all at the moment. You always come
back to the fact it had to be a woman he went up there to
see. It wasn’t business, because you couldn’t even give away
Miami real estate in that town, let alone sell it. And if it had
been business, whoever he’d gone to see would have come
forward and said so. So there you are. He drove up there
three times in a little over two months, and it’s nearly a
thousand miles’ round trip. And with Strader, only one kind
of business was that important.”
“Okay,” I said. “Right at the moment I don’t see any lead
to follow at all, but take another run at him tomorrow.
Maybe you can find out what he was up to during those
holes in his employment record. See how many old girl
Talk of The Town— 95
friends you can uncover and where they are now. I gather
there were no letters in his stuff at the apartment, but did
they check long-distance calls?”
“That’s right; there were no letters. But there were two
toll calls from there. And in both cases they were made the
day before he drove up. No lead. They originated at call
boxes.”
“Smart baby,” I said. “All right. Call me back tomorrow if
you get anything new.”
I went back. She was sitting up in bed with her arms
around her knees. “Have you had anything to eat yet?” I
asked.
She shook her head. “No. I just woke up about half an
hour ago.”
“How about having dinner with me?”
She smiled. “I thought you weren’t going to let me out of
bed.”
“I’m not. Do you like steak? That’s the only thing I know
how to cook.”
“A steak sounds fine. But you don’t have to cook it. I can
do that, or Josie.”
“You’re going to rest. And Josie gets the evening off. I
want to talk to you.”
I went out and cleaned up the station wagon with the hose
and some detergent, threw a folded blanket across the wet
seat, and drove into town. I bought two steaks, an avocado,
some French rolls, gin and vermouth, and a bottle of
burgundy. Returning to the motel, I shaved and changed
clothes, putting on a long-sleeved shirt to cover the dressing
on my left arm.
The prescriptions I’d had made up were still in the station
wagon. I removed the sleeping pills, though it seemed silly
the way she was snapping out of it, and carried the rest of
the stuff over to the office. Josie was just leaving.
“Try to be back before midnight,” I told her. “I want you to
set up a cot in the living-room and stay with her. She seems
to be in a lot better condition than I expected, but it’d be a
good idea for tonight, anyway.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied. She left.
Talk of The Town— 96
I went on into the kitchen and sized up the facilities for
cooking the steaks, and found Josie had put two potatoes in
to bake. I broke open the gin and vermouth, and while I was
stirring the Martinis I heard footsteps behind me and looked
around. Georgia Langston was standing in the doorway. She
had on slippers and dark blue pajamas, the blue dressinggown
around her. She’d put on a little lipstick, and her hair
was freshly combed, the rich mahogany gleam of it
contrasting darkly against the pallor of her face and the
large gray eyes. Strader would have driven a lot further than
five hundred miles, I thought. Except that he’d never seen
the day he could play in her league.
“I thought I told you to stay in bed,” I said.
She shook her head with a faint smile. “I won’t be bullied
in my own house.”
“You’re not well. The doctor says you’re supposed to rest.”
“I have news for you and the doctor. When a woman is
well enough to feel uncomfortable about entertaining a man
in her bedroom, she’s well enough to be up. It’s a perfectly
sound clinical test.”
I shrugged, and measured out the Martinis. “You win.
Come to think of it, I don’t believe a woman could be very
far under the weather and look as wonderful as you do. So
maybe you’re right.”
“Why, thank you,” she said, with the same shadow of a
smile. “But, really, hadn’t you better tell me some more
about your brutality before I’m misled? You can’t be too
careful about that.”
“Ouch,” I said. I carried the Martinis through to the livingroom
end of the outer room. She sat on the sofa with her
legs curled under her. I put the Martinis on the coffee table,
sat down across from her, and lit our cigarettes. “I’m sorry
about clubbing you over the head with it that way. But I get
in those moods. It’s from having too much time on my hands
to feel sorry for myself. I need a job.”
She nodded. “But don’t you think you owe me an
explanation, after saying a thing like that about yourself?”
“There’s not much to explain. It happens to be true, except
that I wasn’t fired. I was suspended, but resigned voluntarily
Talk of The Town— 97
as soon as I realized I didn’t belong in police work. That was
what hurt.”
“I realize it’s none of my business,” she said firmly, “but I
still think you owe me an explanation. You said a while ago I
was a friend of yours, and that can work both ways. Was this
man in custody?”
“No,” I said.
“Well,” she said coolly, “that’s quite a different thing, isn’t
it? Was it something personal?”
“No,” I said. “But wait a minute. That’s exactly it. It wasn’t
personal, but I made it personal. You see, I was no longer a
pro; I was a fanatic.”
“What had he done?”
“He was a pusher. A dope peddler.”
“Oh,” she said.
“That doesn’t justify it,” I said. “You can’t. Laws are
supposed to be enforced by impersonal people, not by
crusaders or fanatics. Actually, I was as cool a cat as any of
them until I happened to be assigned to a narcotics detail,
but there’s just something about that business that got to
me. It’s dirty in a way that nothing else can be dirty,
especially where kids are concerned. You may not be
familiar with quite all the things that, say, a sixteen-year-old
girl will do to get the price of a fix when she has to have
one, and if you don’t know, don’t bother to look into it—”
I broke off. “But never mind; I didn’t intend to get on the
soap box. It finally drove my wife away. She could see where
I was headed, even if I couldn’t, and she had this weird idea
I should come home once in a while. And in the end it cost
me the job. I was after one particular pusher, a smart punk
around twenty-three who was shoving the stuff to kids, and I
was too hot-eyed and eager to get him, and I muffed it.
When I brought him in I didn’t have a solid case and he beat
it. He gave me the horse-laugh and walked out. Inside of
three days he was right back in business. Then one night I
ran into him in a bar. He tossed me some smart-alec remark,
and then didn’t have any better sense than to go back to the
washroom.”
I paused, staring at the cigarette in my fingers. “That’s
about it. There was a big uproar, of course, but even without
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the suspension I realized what was happening to me and
that I had to get out of it.”
She nodded. “Yes, I suppose it was wrong. But I think
you’re too harsh on yourself. Nobody can turn emotion off
entirely.”
“No. But a cop is supposed to bring in a case that can be
tried in court, not in a locked wash-room with his fists. But
let’s change the subject. I wanted to talk business.”
She took a sip of the drink. “About the motel?”
“That’s right. You said you wouldn’t sell at a sacrifice. Do
you want to sell, if and when you can get a fair price?”
She nodded.
“Tell me something about it. What you paid, the size of the
mortgage—if any—and what you think it’s worth now.”
“We paid ninety-five thousand, a little over a year ago.
Thirty-five cash, and the balance at five per cent. We
intended carrying on the landscaping ourselves, but my
husband’s health became worse and we never could do it.
And since his death it’s gone downhill even more badly. I
can’t do it alone. Actually, I suppose the only sensible thing
to do would be to sell and take the loss before I have to take
a larger one, but I’m too stubborn to face it. The last time I
had it evaluated, a real estate firm in Tallahassee that
specializes in business property said they wouldn’t even be
interested in a listing on it at over seventy-five thousand.”
“It could be built up,” I said. “I think you could get over a
hundred thousand. It’s not the basic plant—it’s just that the
grounds are so bleak. You need a swimming pool, children’s
playground, lawns, shrubs, flower beds—”
“Of course. But I don’t have the money. I don’t know how
I’m even going to refurnish that room—”
“That’s where I come in,” I said. “I’ve got a little money
that was left me by my mother's family, and I told you I was
looking for something to do, some kind of hard physical
labor that’d sweat the gripes out of my system. I like
gardening and landscape work; one of my uncles was a
landscape architect down below San Francisco, and I used
to work for him during summers when I was in high school
and the two years I went to Stanford I know how to do all
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that, even to most of the swimming pool, and I’d like to try
it. I think I could make a real showplace out of it.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “You’d like to buy a half-interest,
and landscape it, as a speculation?”
“That’s it. I’d match the present value of your equity in
cash to be put into landscaping. And by doing most of the
work myself, which is what I want to do, we could make a
pretty good profit when we sell. I hope.”
“But aren’t you forgetting something? You’ve just seen an
example of the bitterness here. If someone hates me enough
to do that to me, he isn’t going to stop merely because he’d
be hurting somebody else too. Are you sure you want to let
yourself in for it?”
“I was just coming to that. The thing to do is stop it. I
gather you think that’s the work of some crackpot? Some
joker with a warped mind who’s taking his viciousness out
on you because he thinks you’re responsible for the death of
your husband?”
“Yes,” she said, frowning. “Don’t you?”
“No. I think it’s the people who killed him.”
She barely avoided spilling her drink. She put it down.
“But that was Strader—”
“And some woman. Well, she’s still here, and she’s got
help. Maybe another boy friend, I don’t know. Listen— in all
the time the police were questioning you, did they ever
consider the possibility somebody might have tried
deliberately to frame you?”
”Why, no,” she said wonderingly. “Not to my knowledge.”
“They could have kicked it around, of course, without
telling you. At any rate, they should have.”
“Do you ready think so?”
“Yes. I don’t mean just her leaving the car out there; she
had to get rid of it in some place that wouldn’t incriminate
her, and it would be logical to put it back where Strader
might have left it himself. I’m thinking of the telephone
call.”
The one that woke me up?”
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“Yes. You see—” I broke off then. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I
didn’t intend to start digging into it now and ruin your
evening. I want you to eat that steak.”
She smiled. “Don’t worry. I intend to eat it, and this isn’t
going to ruin my evening. After what I’ve been through, a
little sympathetic questioning is almost like having a big
shoulder to cry on.”
“It was pretty rough?” I asked. “The questioning, I mean?”
“It was bad enough.”
“Who questioned you? The Sheriff?”
“Mostly. And sometimes Redfield. And often both of them
at once.”
“What kind of man is the Sheriff?”
She thought about it. “A very competent one, I would say.
He’s in his sixties, and I understand he’s held the job for
over twenty years. But his health is failing; for the past
month or more I believe he’s been at the Mayo Clinic. But I
wasn’t mistreated, if that’s what you mean; it was just so
terrifying. The Sheriff himself is a very courteous old
gentleman, and while I began to feel after a while that
Redfield disliked me intensely there was nothing mean or
vicious in the way he treated me. Certainly there were no
third-degree methods used.”
“Were you arrested?”
“Yes. But not right at first. In the beginning they were just
trying to find out whether my husband knew Strader and if
they’d planned to go fishing together and what time he’d left
here, and so on and if I’d heard Strader's car leave or come
back. Then about nine o’clock that morning they found out
from the cook at the Silver King that he’d seen the car drive
in and that it was a woman who got out of it. I was taken in
to the Sheriff’s office then, and late in the afternoon I was
charged with suspicion of murder and put in jail. I was
questioned for hours at a time for three days before they
finally dropped the charge for lack of evidence and released
me.”
“And all the time they were hammering at you along one
line? They wanted an admission, or proof of some kind, that
you and Strader were—I mean—”
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She smiled faintly. “Lovers,” she said calmly. “Yes. And
after a while I began to be terrified. It just didn’t seem
possible that they could believe a thing like that, but then I
started seeing not only how they could but that it all looked
so damaging they might even be able to convince a jury of it.
In the first place, I’d told them originally I didn’t know
Strader, and didn’t even know he was registered here. I’d
just learned my husband had been killed and I was numb
with shock, so naturally the name meant nothing to me. It
didn’t even register in my mind. Then later, when I was able
to think a little, I did remember I’d been in the office the
evening before when he came in and asked for a room. So
they wanted to know if I’d ever seen him before. I told them
no, which was true to the best of my knowledge. Then they
showed me two registration cards for the previous month—
October—both with Strader's name and automobile number
on them. It was merely a simple matter of my husband’s
having been in the office on each of these times when he
registered, but by now it had begun to snowball and
everything looked suspicious. There was the fact I’d gone to
Miami, alone, near the middle of October, between the first
and second time Strader had come up here—”
“You went to Miami?” I hadn’t heard that part before.
“Yes.” She took another cigarette, and I lit it for her. “I
went to see a doctor. They wanted to know why, of course,
when we had a family doctor here—Dr. Graham. My nerves
were just about at the snapping point by this time and I was
on the ragged edge of hysteria, so my reaction was enough
to arouse suspicion in itself. I became furious and refused to
tell them why. Naturally, as soon as I realized the stupidity
of this, I did explain, and they verified it with the doctor by
long distance, but it was still damaging because it was
something that could have been deliberately arranged as an
excuse for going to Miami to meet Strader if I were carrying
on an affair with him. I mean, I had appointments with the
doctor for an hour each morning for two successive days,
and while I did see an old friend or two while I was there, I
was still alone in Miami for a large part of two afternoons
and two nights. And then it wasn’t a case of my being ill—”
She hesitated.
“It’s all right,” I said. “You don’t have to go into it.”
Talk of The Town— 102
She made a little gesture, and smiled. “Oh, why should it
be embarrassing? My husband and I were very anxious to
have a baby and were beginning to be concerned. It happens
all the time. But I was furious when they were questioning
me.”
“Well, look,” I said. “One of the big items against you was
the fact that when they knocked on the door a little before
five-thirty that morning it was obvious you were already
awake. You explained it was a telephone call. Do you know
whether they ever made any effort to check that?”
She shook her head. “No-o. Not that I know of. Why?”
“Because that’s the exact point it should have begun to
occur to them there was a chance they had the wrong party.
I understand the woman wanted to talk to somebody that
wasn’t even registered and that she sounded about halfdrunk,
or at least with enough of a heat on to want to argue
about it?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“Do you remember the name of the man she wanted to
talk to?”
“Yes. It was a Mr. Carlson.”
“Well, do you know whether they ever made any attempt
to find out if there was a Mr. Carlson registered at that time
in any other motel or hotel in the county?”
“They never did say so if they did.”
“Of course, they might have, without bothering to tell you.
They should have, at least, because five-fifteen in the
morning’s a rather odd time to have a buzz on in a country
town where the bars have been closed for hours. And either
a little early or a little late to start trying to locate somebody
in a motel. Did they ever challenge you on it?”
”Yes. They accused me several times of lying about it.”
“Sure. It could mean, then, that they’d found out there
wasn’t any Mr. Carlson registered anywhere. So there was a
pretty good chance nobody was trying to reach him. And if
you were lying, you were obviously guilty. But if they
accepted that, they were also morally obliged to accept the
other side of the coin along with it. And that is that, if you
weren’t lying, you were not only innocent, but were actually
talking to the woman who did kill your husband.”
Talk of The Town— 103
She stared at me. “What kind of woman could do a thing
like that?”
“A tough one and a smart one,” I said. “Take a good look
at her. In the space of a little over an hour she’d helped to
kill a man, she’d seen her lover shot down by a policeman,
and still she was able to get herself off the hook and figure
out a way to set you up for it so she could stay off. Not
exactly a choke-up artist, and about as flighty and hysterical
as a cobra.”
Talk of The Town— 104
9
I cooked the steaks after a while and we had dinner, not
talking about it any more until afterwards when we were
having coffee. She was quiet, but she ate a little of the steak
and drank some wine. I lit a cigarette for her.
“Are you positive your husband never knew Strader?” I
asked.
“Yes,” she said definitely. “I never heard him mention the
name.”
“Then you realize he had to know the woman?”
“Why?” she asked.
“One of them had to have some provable connection with
him; otherwise there was no point in trying to make it look
like an accident. Strader wouldn’t have been suspected
merely because he happened to be staying here at the
motel. So the woman knew she would be. or could be. Look
—there’s what’s driving the police crazy. The whole thing
goes around in a perfect circle and always comes right back
where it starts. The woman knew she would be suspected if
there were a homicide investigation; there was a homicide
investigation, and you were the only one who was ever
suspected. Q.E.D. Except that they haven’t got any actual
proof you even knew Strader, let alone were carrying on an
affair with him. And if they tried to go to court without that
proof, any defense attorney who’d been out of law school an
hour would cut ‘em to shreds. Redfield probably wakes up
Talk of The Town— 105
shrieking and chewing the bedclothes. However, that’s his
problem; mine is something else.”
“And what is that?”
“Simply this—what in hell became of the other woman?
The one who knew she would be suspected, and never was?”
“Maybe she was mistaken, or exaggerating the possible
danger.”
“No. On the evidence she’s a long-headed, cold-blooded
type that doesn’t get rattled or jump to silly conclusions. So
why was she wrong?”
“You say you think there’s another man involved. Maybe
he was the one.”
I don’t think so. Strader came up here to see a woman;
that’s what you run into everywhere you turn. The woman
was at the bottom of the whole thing, and in it up to her
neck. But say for the sake of argument it was this other man
—why wasn’t he suspected? From what you say of that
Sheriff, he wouldn’t deliberately suppress evidence for
anybody. And I don’t think Redfield would.”
“No. I’m sure neither of them would. Redfield is a very
hard man, but fair. And I think he’s thoroughly honest.”
I frowned. “That’s the picture I get of him too. But
something’s chewing him. I get the impression he hates you
and doesn’t care what they do to you out here, and at the
same time he hates himself for it because basically he’s too
honest a cop for that kind of thing.”
She nodded. “I think I understand what you mean. You
remember I told you that during the questioning I began to
feel he disliked me intensely. There are two reasons for it.
My husband knew him quite well, and I remember his
remarking once that Redfield was what was known as a
dedicated police officer. There was nothing he hated worse
than seeing a criminal get away with something. And the
other reason is simply that my husband was a sort of
boyhood hero to Redfield, as he was to a lot of others around
here who were younger than he was. I mean, when they
were in grammar school he was the greatest end the local
high school ever turned out, and then when they were in
high school he was being mentioned for Ail-American at
Georgia Tech with his picture and big write-ups in the
Talk of The Town— 106
Florida papers. Boyish, perhaps, but it lasts. Especially when
he went on to become a war hero and then made a name for
himself in business in Miami. He was always popular. And
especially here in his home town, particularly when he
returned to it when his health failed and he had to retire. So
to Redfield and to a lot of others the whole issue is crystal
clear. I’m a tramp, and I committed murder and got away
with it.”
She said it calmly enough, with no evidence of cracking.
You’d have to look closely to see the weariness and pain far
back under control. I had a strong desire to comfort her in
some way, but at the same time sense enough to realize
there was nothing I could do. Except get on with it.
“What time did Strader check in?” I asked.
“Around six p.m., I think,” she replied.
“And he was alone?”
She nodded.
“And those two times in October, did the cards show he
registered alone then?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t recall there was ever any evidence afterwards
that there had been a woman in the room with him?”
“No,” she said. “Even if there were, though, the maid
would just assume the room had been rented to a couple and
not say anything about it. But of course it was searched very
thoroughly the last time, by the police. There was no trace
of a woman at all.”
“So the woman lived here in town, and he apparently
wasn’t bringing her to his room, even late at night. Or at
least, not the last time. Did they check the records at all the
other motels to be sure he hadn’t been here at other times
and stayed at a different place?”
“Yes. Apparently he came up only those three times, and
always stayed here for some reason. That was damaging,
too, of course.”
“Did you recall seeing him at any time later that same
night? I mean, when you went outside, did you notice
whether his car was still in front of the room?”
Talk of The Town— 107
She shook her head helplessly. “No. They kept asking me
that, but I just don’t remember. There were eight rooms
rented that night, so the chances were against my noticing
whether any one car was there or gone.”
“And your husband was going fishing alone?”
“Yes.”
“What time did he leave? Did you get up too?”
“No,” she said. I always offered to, to make his coffee for
the flask, but he insisted on doing it himself. He rarely took
a lunch, because he was usually back by noon. That morning
he got up at three-thirty—I remember him setting the alarm.
It woke me, too, of course, and I could hear him moving
around in the kitchen, drinking coffee and filling the flask.
All the fishing equipment and his motor were already in the
station wagon, of course, since he always loaded it the night
before. He came into the bedroom before he left, as he
always did, and kissed me when he saw I was awake. He
made our standard joke about catching bass so big he
wouldn’t have to lie about it, and then I heard him drive off.
I—I-” She took a sudden, shaky breath, and leaned forward
to crush out the cigarette.
“You didn’t hear any other car leave?” I asked quickly, to
get her past it.
“No.” She was all right now. “After a while I went back to
sleep. And the next thing was when the phone woke me and
this woman wanted to talk to Mr. Carlson. By the time I’d
finally convinced her there was no such person registered, I
was too wide awake to go back to bed. I washed my face and
heated the coffee—he always left some for me. It was less
than ten minutes later when the Sheriff knocked on the
door.”
“Do you know exactly what time he left here?” I asked.
“It would be between ten minutes to and four o’clock,” she
replied. “It was nearly always the same. It took twenty to
twenty-five minutes from the time the alarm went off.”
”And how long does it take to drive to this Cut where he
kept the boat?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“Did they fix the exact time Calhoun jumped Strader down
there?”
Talk of The Town— 108
She nodded. “Calhoun testified at the inquest that it was a
squeaky brake on the car that woke him up. He looked at his
watch, and it was four-twenty-five.”
“Umh-umh. There’s just one more thing. Have you ever
had reason to suspect your husband was involved with any
other woman at all?”
“No,” she said. “Certainly not.”
“Well, sometimes at that age—”
There was a quick ruffling of temper in the eyes. “I told
you—” Then she stopped abruptly. “I’m sorry,” she said, and
smiled. She pushed a hand back through her hair with that
weary gesture she had. “I didn’t intend to snap at you that
way.”
She was tiring. It occurred to me I was doing a very poor
job of carrying out the doctor’s orders. I crushed out the
cigarette and stood up. “Back to bed for you. I’ll get your
medicine.” I brought over one of the sleeping pills from my
room.
She smiled. “You and Dr. Graham are a heavy-handed pair
of conspirators. Didn’t it ever occur to either of you if I’d
wanted to take that way out of it I’d have done it long ago?”
“To be frank,” I said, “neither of us was too sure how
you’d come out of that business this morning. You’re a
stronger girl than we gave you credit for.”
She stood up and held out her hand. “Well, run along
before I make a liar out of you. You’ll never know how nice
you’ve been.”
“Good night,” I said. “We’ll talk over that deal in the
morning.” I locked the back door and left. I sat on the side of
the concrete slab in front of my room smoking and watching
the place until Josie returned. There was no telling what
they would do next. Georgia Langston was sleeping
peacefully when Josie came back around ten-thirty and set
up her cot in the living-room. I told her to keep the front
door bolted, and went across to bed.
I checked to be sure the window at the rear of the room
was locked and the curtains tightly drawn. There was
something very chilling in the thought of that shotgun. I
could still see the empty eyes at the ends of its dual barrels
searching for me down there in the gloom like some
Talk of The Town— 109
nightmarish radar. Only a fool wouldn’t be scared. He was
smart, and he was deadly, and I didn’t have the faintest idea
who he was. And if I didn’t flush him out before he had a
second chance, I wasn’t going to be very pretty when they
found me.
I lay in bed in the darkness, listening to the quiet hum of
the air-conditioner and trying to make some glimmer of
sense of it. Langston had left here alive at ten minutes to
four at the earliest, and he’d arrived there at four-twentyfive
with his head bashed in, rolled up in a tarpaulin in the
back of his own station wagon. It was a twenty-minute drive.
So in fifteen minutes at the outside he’d gone somewhere
and managed to get himself killed. He couldn’t have gone
very far. But that didn’t mean anything. It was a small town,
and at that time of morning, with no traffic, you could get
from one end of it to the other in less than five minutes.
But how did a woman get into the picture? Even if he were
a chaser, which everybody said he wasn’t, nobody went
prowling at four in the morning in a country town. Not with
bass tackle and an outboard motor and a flask of coffee. It
was ridiculous.
The woman was in the picture, obviously, because she was
Strader’s girl friend, the one he’d been coming up here to
see. But what possible connection could there be between
Strader’s girl friend and Langston? The easy answer to that,
of course, brought you right back to the police point of view.
Langston was married to her. So try again. The woman was
here in town. She lived here. Somewhere before she must
have known Strader. He’d driven up here three times in two
months to see her, and it was a thousand miles’ round trip.
Strader, on the evidence, was no love-starved adolescent, so
she must be quite a girl. Of course, you never knew what
some other man would go for, but how many had I seen
around here so far that could pull me the length of the State
of Florida?
One. I was back to the police point of view again.
I sighed in the darkness and lit a cigarette. She was here
somewhere and I had to find her.
I had one very slim lead. When she’d called me on the
phone, she had made no attempt to disguise her voice, even
if it were possible, or cover it with the slurred speech of the
Talk of The Town— 110
half-drunken as she had when she’d called Mrs. Langston
that morning. It simply wasn’t necessary, because in half an
hour I was going to be dead anyway. It wasn’t much, but it
was something.
But how did you explain that insane thing about the fan?
Then I set straight up in bed, cursing myself for an idiot.
Why hadn’t I seen it before? There was no mystery about the
fan at all. That first call, when she’d hung up abruptly,
wasn’t a teaser or come-on, as I’d thought it was, or a way of
lending authenticity to her story. Or not solely any of those.
It was also a test. They were checking me.
Somewhere he’d seen me going in and out of those phone
booths, and suspected what I was up to, but he wanted to be
absolutely sure. So what could be simpler than setting up a
phony for me, duplicating the noise with a fan near some
other telephone, and watching while she called me? If I ran
across the street to try to catch her when she hung up, he’d
know. And I had. And he knew. So she made the second one,
and sent me out to meet the shotgun. Very smooth
teamwork; you had to admit it, even if it scared you.
So far, so good. Did it mean, then, that it had to be one of
the four who’d been at the place that first time— Rupe,
Dunleavy, Ollie, or Pearl Talley? Not necessarily, I thought;
they seemed to have ways of knowing everything I did in
this town, and even if he’d spotted me somewhere farther up
the line and followed me for a while to make sure what I was
doing, he could have found out from any number of people
that I’d finally come out and checked the booth at the Silver
King. But it definitely made more sense if it were one of
those four. He’d know I had more reason to suspect him,
because he was still there.