CHAPTER TWENTY

From the depot I went downtown to a Kress’s variety store and paid a quarter to get DeMour’s journal snugly wrapped for mailing. Then I drove to the main post office and mailed it to Frank Russell, the president of my bank back home, along with a note asking him to hold it safely in the vault until I came by to pick it up. After that, I breathed a little easier. Besides being a fellow rancher and political ally, Frank was a trusted friend. Once the diary was in his hands it would be safe, since he was so closed-mouthed he wouldn’t even discuss routine bank business with his wife.

Next I stopped at a Texas Company service station to gas up my car and have the oil checked. I asked to see the phone book, and in a few seconds I had Alma Copeland’s address. This was a relief. For all I’d known she might have been married or living with her parents, which would have made what I had in mind considerably more difficult. Her place turned out to be a small bungalow in one of the older residential neighborhoods on the west side of town. There was no sign of her car in the driveway, but a small porch light burned against the deep gloom of the afternoon. Ever mindful of my blood sugar, I found a mom-and-pop store a few blocks away where I bought three Cokes, a box of crackers, and a small jar of peanut butter.

I went back to the bungalow and parked on the opposite side of the street about thirty yards from her driveway so that my car was partially screened by a large privet hedge. It was a long wait. My peanut butter was half gone and it was nearly dark when her little coupe pulled into the drive. I slipped out of my car and hurried up the street. Moving as soundlessly as I could, I mounted the porch behind her and slipped my hand under her arm just as she was unlocking the front door. She jumped a foot high and almost dropped her purse. “God, you scared me!” she cried out.

“Good,” I said roughly. “It’s about time something did.”

“What do you want? I thought I told you—”

I took her by the arm and pushed the door open with my other hand, then shoved her through the doorway and closed the door behind me.

“You can’t do this—”

“Yes, I can.”

“I, I—”

“Shut up,” I snarled and pushed her across the room and threw her down on a small sofa that sat against one wall. “You’re going to tell me what I want to know if I have to beat it out of you. In fact, after the runaround I’ve gotten on this case, knocking you around a little might be fun. Or maybe I’ll just arrest you as a material witness and take you to Austin this very night to talk to some investigators from the attorney general’s office. How would you like a week or so in the Travis County Jail with the state boys going over you?”

“You’re awful!” she said, near tears.

I looked at her coldly, my eyes meeting hers. “Probably,” I said. “But diagnosing my personality quirks isn’t going to help you a bit.”

“I’ve told you everything.”

“What you’ve told me is a pack of lies. I think your motives are innocent, but that doesn’t change things. So talk.”

She was crying freely now. I stood staring down at her implacably. Finally she wound down.

“Talk,” I repeated. “Make it easy on yourself.”

“What do you want to know?” she whispered.

“Let’s start with Madeline’s breakup with Nolan Dunning. She was seeing somebody after that, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” she muttered with a reluctant nod.

“You know so. Now who was it?”

She heaved a great sigh. “You’re going to think this was so cheap.”

“Never mind what I may think. Who was it?”

“Henry DeMour.”

I nodded. “That’s just what I’ve suspected since I talked to his wife earlier in the afternoon. Give me the whole story.”

She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “Mr. DeMour came to her school with a tour of local business and civic leaders, not long after the fall semester started. Apparently he was quite the ladies’ man. They met and talked and he asked for her phone number. She gave it to him and he called a few days later. Not long after that she broke up with Nolan and started seeing DeMour.”

“How did Nolan take it?”

“How do you think he took it?”

“All right, tell me about the night DeMour was killed.”

“Nolan had been badgering her continuously about coming back to him, even threatening her. But finally he quit. Then after about a week he called her and told her he was reconciled to the fact that she was gone, but that he wanted her to help him with one thing. He promised her that if she would, he’d never contact her again. He said some friends of his needed to talk to DeMour about a business deal, but he’d been reluctant to see them. Nolan wanted Madeline to bring DeMour to the Snake Eyes Club so they could meet him. He told her that it was a great deal for DeMour, and that later on he’d be grateful that she’d done it.”

“And she believed him?” I asked in amazement.

She nodded.

“Why?”

“Because she wanted to, I guess. I mean, she and Nolan had been together for over a year and they’d had some good times. And if he was telling the truth about this, then maybe she could convince herself she wasn’t so stupid for getting involved with him in the first place.”

“It never occurred to her that Nolan might want to get DeMour off where he could do something to him?”

She shook her head. “She thought DeMour was too important for a deputy sheriff to mess with. Besides, Nolan could be really smooth and convincing when he put his mind to it.”

“So she said. But I’ve also heard he was too stupid to come in out of the rain. Which is it?”

“He’s pretty dumb in some ways, but he has a sort of animal cunning where women are concerned. I can see where he’d have a certain appeal to girls like Madeline.”

The way she put it puzzled me. “What do you mean, ‘girls like Madeline’?” I asked.

She looked up at me with eyes that had gone cold and hostile. “Girls who like men.”

“Don’t you—” I began and then a lot of subtle, little things fell into place and it became clear to me. That she’d worn a slacks suit to a funeral; the no-nonsense way she combed her hair; a certain mannishness to her bodily movements, minimal makeup. “I see,” I said softly. “Go on. What happened that night at the Snake Eyes?”

She shrugged. “As soon as she and DeMour got out of the car, those two hoods were on him. She ran and got away from them.”

“So there wasn’t another girl there with her that night?”

“No, just Henry DeMour.”

“Go on.”

“Then a couple of days later Nolan called her and told her he’d make it right with the people behind it if she’d come back to him.”

“So she told the truth about that much, at least.”

“She told you as much of the truth as she felt she could,” she said plaintively.

“Why didn’t she tell me about DeMour?”

“She was afraid her parents would find out she’d been fooling around with a married man who was a lot older than she was.”

“That seems rather trivial, really, when you consider the number of people who’ve gotten killed over this business.”

“You don’t know her parents. They’re old-fashioned and very religious. She would never have heard the end of it. They might have even disowned her.”

“Do people really do that?” I asked. “I thought it only happened in Victorian novels.”

“Like I said, you don’t know them.”

“How did she get from Huntsville to Beaumont?”

“She called me from Palestine, and I went over there to meet her.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said with a nod. “Did she give you any reason why she bolted?”

“She just said she was so nervous with dogs barking at odd times and guns everywhere. She said that your friend Nora kept a thirty-eight in her pocket and that the old man never stepped outside the house without his rifle.”

“But that was why she was safe there. Didn’t she have sense enough to realize that?”

She just shrugged.

“Why didn’t you just tell me at the cemetery that you were the one who picked her up in Huntsville?”

“Because she asked me not to.”

“What happened after the two of you got back to Beaumont?” I asked.

“I don’t really know. She had me drop her off at her place and that’s the last I ever saw of her. She was supposed to call me the next morning, but she never did.”

“So you have no idea what she did or where she went after she got home?”

She shook her head firmly. “No.”

I stood regarding her thoughtfully. “I hope you’re telling me everything you know,” I said. “It’s to your benefit to come clean.”

“I have.”

“If that’s true I won’t be bothering you anymore.”

I was across the room and just reaching for the doorknob when she said, “Thank you.”

I turned back, a little puzzled. “For what?”

“For not asking about me and Madeline. I mean, if we ever…” She gave me a wan smile.

I shook my head in wonder that she could think such a thing important at such a time. Or that she could think I really gave a damn. “Good-bye, Alma Copeland,” I said softly and stepped out into the darkness of the night.

*   *   *

I should have had my mind on my business instead of on the sad screwball I’d just talked to, but I didn’t. So I fell for the oldest trick in the book. Or at least it’s a trick as old as the backseats of cars. I’d climbed in my Ford and pulled the door shut and was just fitting the key into the ignition when the blow came. It must have been a padded sap of some kind or it would have killed me. As it was it slammed me forward into the steering wheel and almost—but not quite—knocked me out. It did render me helpless, and they had me hustled out on the street in a flash. I remember being on unsteady legs for a moment with two men holding me up while somebody drove away in my car. Then a big Buick four-door sedan materialized before my eyes. It had fancy whitewalls and a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department seal on the door, and I recall thinking that was strange since cop cars were always plain-Jane Fords and Chevys and Plymouths with blackwall tires. Suddenly the back door of the Buick was magically open, and they shoved me inside.

That was when I noticed that somewhere along the way I’d acquired a pair of handcuffs on my wrists. I felt something sharp at the base of my rib cage and looked down to see a big, long-barreled revolver. Its muzzle was buried in my side, and its other end was attached to the arm of an exquisite gentleman who was wearing several hundred dollars’ worth of hand-tailored silk suit and a camel’s hair overcoat. I saw a handsome matinee idol’s face with wavy hair that was going gray at the temples, a pencil-line mustache, and manly features. He looked like Errol Flynn, but he wasn’t. He was Milam Walsh, and his smile was the smile you’d expect to find on a mako shark.