Verdict Suspended (7 page)

“You can’t think that Jaime killed Sheilah!” Greta’s shock was genuine. She had no suppressed fears; no flaw in her loyalty to Jaime.

Steve had difficulty meeting her eyes. “No, of course not!” he said. He took hold of her by the shoulders and held hard. “Please, don’t get upset,” he begged. “I didn’t come here to hurt you. I don’t want anything to hurt you!”

When Greta could think of herself again, she could feel the strength of his hands and draw back, slowly and comprehendingly, against the cushions.

“You’re not surprised, are you?” Steve asked.

“No … I don’t think I am.”

“You shouldn’t be. I envied Jaime from the day I met you … and you’re good for him. The best thing that’s come into his life. That’s why I had to tell you this. What I think—what anyone in Cypress Point thinks—isn’t important. Jaime is the man with the burden.”

It was true. Greta listened and absorbed the thought until she was certain it was true. “Sometimes we know things without realizing that we know them,” she said. “That’s what’s preying on Jaime’s mind—the time after the quarrel that he can’t remember.”

“And it’ll get worse if he stays here,” Steve said.

“But I’m not sure I can make him leave. Jaime wants the house. He spoke of it this evening—”

“I’m only asking that you try, Greta. I can’t sell without Jaime’s permission. He’s the heir. He knows nothing about business, but you can surely trust me to make a good deal.”

Greta was sober and subdued. Small worry lines pinched her forehead. “I’ll have to approach Jaime in my way,” she said.

“I leave the details in your capable hands.” Steve came to his feet. He looked down, smiling. “Not so grim, now,” he said. “I didn’t come to spoil the honeymoon…. And remember, if you need me for anything, anything at all—” Then he laughed, sharply. “I sound maudlin. I’m going up to the house now. You get something on your feet before you catch a cold.”

Cypress Point had begun its development in the booming twenties, shrugged off the depression, and languished during the war years. In the postwar boom, land values soared and what had been a small and exclusive coastal resort town started to take on civic pride. It had no industry, but a brisk business in tourists, artists, architects, and year-round residents who valued privacy, good food, and string quartets. Along the main street various specialty shops were established, as well as one or two supermarts; but through the changing times it was the independent and unchangeable market, owned by an equally independent and unchangeable Chad Winters, to which the long-term residents went for foodstuffs and gossip.

Chad Winters was a native of Maine. Some thirty years ago he’d gone as far west as possible without fins, and altered his way of life in no manner whatsoever. Chad would be a native of Maine in Tokyo or Paris. He was a spare beanpole of a man with a narrow, cynical face that lengthened continuously as his hairline slipped past the meridian. He wore rimless glasses and a white shirt with a hard collar and a black, snap-on tie; and he knew every item of stock in his store, including the Spam and Argentine beef left over from the era of rationing. He carried gourmet items, such as Maine lobster flown in by jet on order, and sold sowbelly by the slab and crackers by the tin. He was a listening man, an opinionated man, a man of stubborn loyalties.

He was on duty by himself, occupied with a customer who couldn’t find the carbonated water, when Jaime reached the store. Jaime took a cart and started to work on Greta’s list. It struck him that this was the first time he’d done this sort of thing, and he began to feel very married and even a little conspicuous. The feeling was heightened at the frozen food locker when he encountered a Cypress Point matron in a rough tweed coat, who reacted to his presence with a slightly startled expression and then hurried on down the aisle. Jaime tried to fasten a name to her face. Sheilah would have known it instantly, plus a biographical profile. Sheilah’s mind was a miracle: perfectly organized, efficient, controlled. It was as if she had been born with the intuitive knowledge that every individual on earth had something to contribute to her own well-being, and she had only to learn the knack of acquiring that contribution in such a manner as to make the giver believe he was the receiver. It was a talent Jaime didn’t possess. The woman in the aisle was a stimulus for the imagination: a mystery, a poem, possibly a tragedy in shabby tweed; but he couldn’t have remembered her name or legal description for sixty full seconds. It never occurred to him that she could be an object of profit.

Or of loss.

When Jaime approached the check-out stand, no one was in sight except Chad Winters. It was almost closing time, and he was tallying receipts from the cash register. He didn’t look up. Jaime waited for a long time and then said: “Can’t that wait, Chad? I have a new wife who’s anxious to go domestic.”

Chad checked off another column on his ledger before he faced Jaime. A new wife for an old customer rated one of his rare smiles; but Chad wasn’t smiling. His eyes were ice-blue round behind the glasses.

“Sorry,” he said. “Store’s closed.”

Jaime smiled uncertainly. Chad wasn’t noted for his sense of humor.

“Look,” Jaime said, “I’ll pay you tomorrow if you don’t want to refigure your cash tonight. I’ve just got a few things for breakfast.”

Chad adjusted his glasses and pinioned Jaime on the end of a stare. “Stayin’ up at Steve Quentin’s cottage, ain’t you?” he said.

“Temporarily.”

“Couldn’t go back to Sheilah’s house and face things like a man, could you?”

It was an unexpected cut. Jaime’s mouth groped for an answer. “The house is closed for inventory,” he said.

“So I heard.” Chad slammed the cash register shut. “Sorry, Mr. Dodson, the store’s closed for the day.”

He would have let it end at that, but Jaime had other ideas. The shock was over; the anger boiled up like the birth of a volcano.

“Chad, what’s the matter with you?” he demanded. “You know me. I’ve been trading here since I was a boy. If I say that I’ll pay you tomorrow I’ll pay!”

“Maybe I just don’t want your money,” Chad said, “tomorrow or any other day.”

“My God, why not?”

“I’ve got other customers. One of them just went out of here all upset. Saw you down the aisle. This is a small town, Mr. Dodson … a quiet town. Respectable people. They don’t like murder.”

“I didn’t kill anyone!”

“Didn’t say you did, Mr. Dodson. Just said my customers don’t like murder. Sheilah, now, they liked her fine. She was a nice woman. Friendly, civic-minded—”

“And I’m not,” Jaime said. “Is that a crime?”

“You are what you are, Mr. Dodson. Mostly, though, my customers like friendly people.”

“Who belong to the right clubs and slap the right backs?”

“I belong to a couple of clubs myself, Mr. Dodson.”

“And I belong to the human race! Not everybody in it thinks the same way.”

Chad Winter’s upper lip was turning white with anger. “No, they don’t!” he snapped. “Not everybody thinks the same as the coroner’s jury over at the county seat. I think you better find another place to buy your groceries, Mr. Dodson. Might try that supermart out at the crossroads. They do a big business with the itinerant ranch hands from over the valley way.”

Jaime stood quietly, but he could feel his hands tightening into fists until the nails cut deep into the palms. Another moment and he might have let one of them smash into Chad’s face … and then an unexpected thing happened. Neither Jaime nor Chad had noticed the other customer in the store. Quietly, surprisingly, a man stepped up to the counter and took hold of Jaime’s shopping cart. He was a stranger to the Point: middle-aged, medium height, wearing a well-cut but comfortably aging tweed suit. His eyes brightened with wry amusement as he looked from Chad to Jaime, as if he found the human race childish and a little sad.

“Mr. Storekeeper,” he said, “I’m not a patient man. I’ve never forgiven progress for these horrible self-help institutions where one must not only pay outrageous prices for the essentials of life but perform the manual, mental, and psychic labor of locating and gathering them. If you don’t want the young man’s money for his basket of goodies, perhaps you’ll accept mine.”

The stranger placed a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. In his half century on earth, Chad Winters had never turned away a homeless twenty-dollar bill.

“Well,” he reflected, “it saves me putting the stuff back on the shelves.”

The stranger eyed Jaime appraisingly. His blood pressure was still showing. “It probably saves you more than that,” he said. “Do you have any objections, Mr.—Dodson, was it?”

Jaime was too choked with rage to answer. He turned and stalked out of the store. The night air was cool and moist. The ocean fog had drifted in far enough to hang yellow globes about the street lamps, and the windshield and leather upholstery of the convertible were frosted with moisture. He was barely aware of these things. What he was aware of was the sick dread settling like the dregs of his anger.

It was Albert Trench, and then it was a nameless woman in a tweed coat, and then it was Chad Winters. Tomorrow it could be all of Cypress Point. After the anger there had to be reasoning powers—there had to be logic and law and justice. There had to be something to grab hold of and pin down and answer.

“I am Jaime Dodson and I endured the ordeal of a coroner’s inquest without being held responsible for my sister’s death.”

But out of the darkness, Albert Trench mocked him.
“… you can’t be held in double jeopardy, can you?”

Jaime didn’t hear the stranger come out of the store. It was the aroma of burning tobacco that brought him out of his dark mood. When he looked about, the stranger was trying to get a good draw on his pipe—badly handicapped by the bag of groceries on his arm. He saw Jaime watching him and took the pipe out of his mouth.

“Mind if I set these groceries in your car for a minute?” he asked.

He didn’t wait for an answer. He settled them in the front seat and went back to work on the pipe. One more match completed the job. The flame licked up before dying, framing the man’s face in light. Jaime stared at him, suddenly aware that he had features—mouth, nose, eyes, a thick, somewhat shaggy head of reddish-colored hair, shaggy reddish eyebrows.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

The match-light died slowly.

“I doubt it,” the stranger said. “My name’s Howard. Ralph Howard. I’ve taken a cottage for the winter. Working on a book. Dull stuff. Biology.”

The match-light was gone.

“Mr. Howard?” Jaime reflected. “No, I don’t know the name, but you reminded me …” He stopped, puzzled.

“Only time I can stand a resort town is in the winter,” Howard added quickly. “No tourists. No confounded motorboats waking me each morning…. Well, nice to have met you, Mr. Dodson. Look me up if you have time.”

The fog collaborated in a quiet disappearing act. Howard simply wasn’t there. Jaime stared. The yellow globes around the street lights were dimmer now. The only trace of Howard was the footsteps fading in the distance. Jaime turned back to the convertible. He opened the door, but a heavy brown paper bag blocked his entry.

“Hey, Mr. Howard,” he called, “you forgot your groceries!”

Now even the footsteps were gone. Jaime glanced back at the store. A glowering Chad Winters was drawing the shade on the door.

Puzzled, Jaime climbed in behind the steering wheel and started the motor. Greta would have her supplies for breakfast whether Howard intended it or not. Howard … The name nagged at his mind. It meant nothing, but the face … and the voice …

Jaime braked the convertible to a stop where a signal poked red through the fog; and then he sat listening to Ralph Howard’s voice playing tricks in his mind:

“… Jaime … what happened after Sheilah fell?”

Steve Quentin took morning coffee in his study—a habit the temporary acquisition of Albert Trench hadn’t changed. He took it from a small electric percolator plugged into a wall socket behind his chair. The pot, coffee, a bottle of vitamin pills—the other ingredient on his breakfast menu—were arranged neatly on the top of his desk. Also on the desk were an electric clock, an appointment calendar, a silver-based pen set, and a gold tennis trophy used as a paperweight. Each of these things sat in its own specific place, because Steve Quentin liked to know where everything was. This was one of the reasons why Jaime was making him nervous. Jaime was restless. He wouldn’t sit down; he didn’t want coffee. He picked up the tennis trophy and played it about in his hands.

“Yes, Greta talked to me about selling the house,” he said. “I’m against it.”

Steve was surprised. “I don’t see why. After what happened at Chad Winter’s store last night, I’d think you’d be glad to get away.”

“And leave this mess to simmer?” Jaime protested “You know what gossip can do—”

“To anyone who will take it in,” Steve said. “People will talk, Jaime. I tried to warn you of that yesterday. Sheilah was a popular woman—”

Jaime’s eyes brightened. “With her checkbook,” he said. “Every charity drive, every fund-raising spree—”

“Be patient, Jaime. It’ll be your checkbook someday.”

The trophy smashed down on the desk. “I don’t mean that, and you know it!” Jaime shouted. “It’s this pious, hypocritical snubbing that burns me…. That woman in Chad’s store. What does she know? What does Chad know?”

“Only that we have an unsolved murder in Cypress Point,” Steve answered. “Jaime, if you just wouldn’t be so stubborn. I can get you a job in San Francisco. In six months or a year—”

“In six months or a year—what?” Jaime challenged. “Do I come back a hero?”

“People forget things,” Steve said, “if you let them.”

Jaime stood quietly for the first time since he’d broken in on Steve’s breakfast. He was listening, and that was an improvement.

“Yesterday,” Steve added, “you went after Trench because he didn’t want to serve us in the cottage. Wouldn’t it have been wiser to leave him alone? … As for Chad, well, trade at the supermart. I’ve been doing it for years. I know, it seems like running away when you’d rather fight. But what are you going to fight? It’s just something in the air. Nobody can stop gossip. It has to die of boredom.”