I dROVE up the winding driveway to the Stonewall Jackson and permitted my eyesore of a jalopy to infect the parking area. An attendant hurried over. “Never mind,” I said. “The boat will be among its richer relatives only a short while.”
I went up the walk that bisected the terraced lawn. On the plateau below, Big Hominy was a toy town, clean and quaint from this distance. Beyond the hotel was the backdrop of sky and towering, hazed-over mountains.
Clarence Oldham was waiting for me in the lobby. He rose from a deep club chair and came over to greet me.
“You sounded urgent on the phone, Calhoun.”
“I feel that way,” I said. “Where can we talk?”
“My room.”
We rode the elevator to the second floor and walked down the corridor to its end. Oldham opened his door and we stepped inside.
He was living well. He occupied a two-room corner suite.
He closed the sitting room door behind us. “All right, Calhoun. What’s on your mind?”
“Bribe money.”
He crossed the room and sat down. “Who am I buying?” “I don’t know yet. You’ll have to help on that angle.” He motioned me to a chair. “You’re not making yourself exactly clear.”
“I’ll start at the beginning,” I said, sitting on the edge of the chair. “It’s simple enough. Hustin was murdered between nine and eleven at night. If we can offer evidence that she was here at the hotel, in her room, at that time, she’ll be in the clear.”
“It sounds too simple, too good to be true.”
“The simpler the better,” I said. “She really was in her room, but alone. We need a man to swear he was in her room with her.”
“Why a man?”
“It’ll look better to suspicious minds. If a girl had dropped in to visit—one of the hotel staff—the girl would have come forward by now. A man wouldn’t have. Not until he saw she was in real trouble, worse trouble than having a man in her room.”
Clarence leaned back, not taking his eyes from my face. “You couldn’t be the man?”
“Kirk would never believe it, not if I told him at this late date. The same goes for you. It has to be someone else, someone whose thought of scandal has kept him silent so far. A chef, a waiter, a bellhop. The right man ought to be among the hotel help.”
“By the right man you mean a man who can be bribed.”
“You’ve been here awhile,” I said. “You’ve observed them. It’s my guess you miss little, if just through idle curiosity and speculation. You’d have noticed any man who might have paid attention to her.”
Clarence smiled thinly. “Every hotel worker wearing pants has paid attention to her.”
I settled back in the chair. I’d outlined it to Oldham. Now it was up to him. He would spot the man. He had the money. He pushed himself from his chair, walked to the window, and looked at Big Hominy. I wondered if he felt a little like a god, looking at the tiny town in the distance.
He turned again toward me. “You’re slightly amazing, Calhoun. Too bad you were born out of place, out of time. However, you still haven’t considered one point.”
“Deaf Joyner?”
His brows jerked up. “Well! So you anticipate me.” “You leave Deaf to me.”
Clarence looked at me a moment longer. Then he ended the talk by the simple expedient of crossing the room and opening the door.
“Come back about three o’clock, if that will give you ample time to see Joyner.”
“Time enough.”
He nodded, and I stepped into the hall, and he closed the door. He had made no promises, but I knew his end would be taken care of. He would find the man.
It took me a half-hour to drive out to Wolfhead Lake. The approaches gave visible evidence of Deaf’s kind of care. The wooden fence at the private lake road was rotted away. The road was washed out in spots and the undergrowth on either side had grown unchecked. A grassy glade had been chosen for a dumping ground; it was littered with broken bottles, empty cans, and refuse that attracted flies.
Erected at random among the trees on the lake shore were several unpainted clapboard cabins. Deaf’s house, weathered and leaning on its poplar-post foundation, stood on the hillside where the road stopped. The front yard was a clutter of cordwood, old ropes and chains, and rusty tools. A Model-? sedan with one headlight, three fenders, and no windows drooped beside the house.
Lula Mae, Deaf’s common-law wife, was painting a flat-bottom boat set up on a pair of sawhorses beneath a tall pine tree. She was wearing clothes of Deaf’s—brogans, overalls, blue shirt. When she saw the car and who was getting out, she set down her paint can and brush and ran toward the house.
“Deaf! Deaf! It’s Wade Calhoun. He’s here! I warned you he’d come boiling out this way.”
I followed her toward the house, walking natural and easy. I had just started up the plank steps to the sagging porch when Deaf appeared in the doorway.
He was a tall bony man, wearing only a pair of faded blue jeans held up around his thin middle with a piece of old sash cord. His features were gaunt. His hair was a mouse-colored mat grown long about his neck and ears. Some mountain wit years ago had tagged him with his nickname because of his hearing, more acute than a Cherokee’s. The name had stuck.
When he appeared in the doorway, I stopped moving. His eyes were narrowed, and he held a rifle loosely in both hands. When a man holds a gun with such easy familiarity, it’s more than a weapon. It’s a friend; sometimes the only friend such a man has.
I kept my face composed, my eyes steadily on his. Then I moved to the porch.
“What you wanting here, Wade?” He tried to make it sound tough, but I had won the first little round.
“For one thing, I want to know if you’re pointing that gun at me.”
“I ain’t pointing it particular. I just ain’t wanting trouble.” “That’s a hell of a way to keep from finding it. I don’t want trouble, either. But I don’t like to talk to a man who’s holding a gun on me.”
‘What kind of talk, Wade?”
“Friendly.”
His gaze darted back to my face, seeking assurance. “You ain’t armed, Wade?” “Why should I be?”
“On account of you’re sore at me for telling Kirk Hyder who I seen come out of the cabin the other night.” “Let Lula Mae frisk me.”
She was standing close behind Deaf. He moved to one side to allow her passage through the doorway. She giggled as she slipped past him and patted my pockets and the waistband of my trousers.
“He ain’t carrying arms, Deaf.”
Joyner’s bony shoulders relaxed. He smiled suddenly. “By hell, we’ve always been friends, Wade.” “Sure.”
He reached the gun behind him, and propped it against the wall close to the doorjamb. “Lula Mae, bring me the fruit jar. Not the one with the white stuff in it.”
Lula Mae scurried into the house.
“Sit down, Wade,” Deaf said, motioning to a nail keg.
I sat down. He sat on the floor of the porch, near the door.
He draped his bony arms over his up thrust knees. “Nice day.”
“Sure is.”
Lula Mae returned with a fruit jar of amber liquor. Corn. But corn that had been buried in a charred keg until all the poison was gone. Joyner handed me the jar. I drank and passed it back. He drank as if the liquid were water.
“Mighty damn smooth stuff,” he said, wiping water from his eyes with the back of his hand. “You can have a little one, Lula Mae.”
Lula Mae drank about four ounces and set the jar beside Deaf. Then she moved to one side and filled her lower lip with snuff.
Deaf looked around at her. “Git on back to that boat.” “But, Deaf, I been working—” “You heard me!”
She shuffled from the porch. Deaf watched until she resumed work on the boat.
“I’m glad you didn’t come out here spitting blood and vinegar, Wade.”
“I just wanted to talk with you about the killing.”
“I’m always inclined to sociable talk, Wade. You know that. I told Kirk Hyder what I had to.”
“Sure, Deaf. I’m not holding it against you.”
“I’m mighty proud you’re not gunning for me, Wade. Live and let live, I say.” His gaze shifted over the unkempt yard, touched my face, moved to the lake.
“What was Rock running from, Deaf?”
“Trouble. I don’t know what kind. He was pretty close-mouthed with me.”
“How long was he here?”
“At my cabin? About four or five days.”
“Did he have much company?”
“Not much. His brother came to see him couple or three days before the killing.” “Which brother?”
“Giles. The big mean one. The one that used to side Rock in mischief around here and in Tennessee. Rock sent word to Giles where he was staying. Giles slipped in one night. I taken a jar of corn over to Rock. Giles showed up and they run me off.”
Deaf passed the jar over again. I had to drink or insult Deaf. I wondered if I were drinking from the side of the jar Lula Mae had used.
After Deaf drank, over a pint of whisky was gone from the jar. He set it down uncapped.
“Giles or anyone else been back to the cabin, Deaf?”
“Not that I know of. Kirk Hyder padlocked the cabin and put a notice on the door. I ain’t supposed to rent it until he says it’s okay. Nobody wanting it. Nothing unusual in there except a few bloodstains. ‘Course there’s a loose plank in the floor if you wanted to give the cabin a look.” He gave me a grin, and I nodded satisfaction with his cooperative attitude.
“I’m more interested in what happened the other night than I am in the cabin, Deaf.”
“I swear,” he said, his face long with sadness, “I do wish I hadn’t seen her, Wade. But I did. She cut right across that glade over there, and the moon was full on her face.
“Rock had no other visitors that night?”
“I didn’t see ‘em, if he did.”
“He had one, earlier.”
“If you say so, Wade.” He had another drink. He didn’t offer me one this time. He was beginning to feel nervous.
“Maybe somebody came earlier,” he said. “I wouldn’t say. I was bass-plugging the rushes over there in Jimson’s Cove. You know, like an old hoot owl. Sleep all day, get restless at night.”
“Why wouldn’t you say, Deaf?”
“Well, now, Wade, I—” “What time did you see her?” “Don’t recollect exactly.” “It was after midnight, wasn’t it?”
We sat without speaking for several moments. He turned his head slowly, looked at me, and then watched Lula Mae paint the boat. “It could have been after midnight, Wade,” A hardness came to his gaunt features. “I’m not saying it was. I didn’t have no reason to notice the time.”
“I can give you a hundred reasons.”
He unclasped his arms from about his knees and leaned against the porch wall. “You sure you got ‘em to give?” “I wouldn’t promise if I couldn’t deliver.” “When would that be?”
“When Kirk Hyder decides she went into the cabin and came out after midnight.”
“You’re sure set on that time.”
“Rock was killed no later than eleven o’clock. She wouldn’t have stayed in there with a dead man for over an hour. Even Kirk wouldn’t claim that.”
Deaf ran his hand through his hair. “I ought to think about this some.”
“There isn’t time.”
“I’d hate to tangle with Kirk …”
“You’re running no risk at all, Deaf. You’ll be backing up what is true. You’ve got to believe she didn’t go to the cabin until after midnight.”
Deaf picked up his jar, had a drink, and reflected on the remaining whisky without speaking. I stood up, feeling empty with despair.
“It’s up to you, Deaf. I don’t really need you. You’ve got me off the lake and home a time or two when I was in no condition to be fooling around in a boat. I thought I ought to throw a chance to make a hundred dollars your way.”
“Aw, hell, Wade, you know I ain’t had a hundred in one piece in better than a year.” He pushed against the floor with his hands and gained his feet with the agility of a monkey. “You know, right after I seen Vicky come out of the cabin, I came in the house and Lula Mae woke up. She asked me what time it was, and I had to look at the clock. When Rock was found, and the law come busting around, I got so unsettled I forgot. Now that I’ve had time to simmer down, though, I remember. What time you reckon it was, Wade?”
I looked at him levelly.
He grinned. His lips and gums looked slimy wet. “Twelve-twenty,” he said.
I nodded and went down the porch steps quickly. I wanted to get away from there fast, before Deaf had a chance to change his mind.