Fadeout: A Dave Brandstetter Mystery

8

64 The sun was hot. On a flat, smooth stretch of lawn a gaunt old man threw his cane. Hard and a long way. Two dogs chased it, big lean dogs, hounds of some kind. Rough blue-gray coats. They moved clumsily, like rusty machines. But fast. One of them got the cane and came back with it to the old man. It was a heavy cane but in the dog's jaws it looked fragile. The other dog stood where the cane had been and made a hoarse, rumbling sound that was supposed to be barking. The old man took the cane from the first dog and grabbed its collar. He heaved the cane to the other dog. Holding the collar hampered his throw so the cane didn't go as far this time. The free dog shambled to it, picked it up, came back with it. Dave had been following the housekeeper, a middle-aged Mexican woman, square-built, the color and hardness of mahogany. There was flour on her hands, her apron, a streak of it in her hair, and when they came through the kitchen there was the smell of baking. Now as they neared the old man Dave could hear him breathing hard. The Mexican woman said, "The cane is to help you walk. You will kill yourself, throwing-" "Oh, go back in the house." The old man spoke without even glancing at her. "Leave me be." He bent and took the cane from the second dog. "God damned rain kept me penned up inside for ten days. Man's got to have exercise. Dogs got to have exercise." He threw the cane again. It cut the air with a whining sound. The dogs creaked after it. The old man turned, grinning like a kid, a sick kid. "Hell, Carmelita, I never felt better in my-" He saw Dave. His face kept the smile the wayan old barn keeps a sign. "Howdy?" It was a question. Dave told him who he was and what he wanted. Loomis's eyes went prairie flat. "Clear off," he said. "Git. Go home and tell your outfit my son-in-law is dead." "If he's dead," Dave said, "where's his body?" Loomis's leather mouth opened but it said nothing. He shut it with a click of false teeth and sourly held out his hand. It was bone and gristle, very big, a plow hand. One of the dogs brought back the cane. It had a brown rubber tip. The old man took it, leaned on it and headed for the house, which was ugly Spanish colonial, fierce white in the sun. The cold bare room he called his office had only one decoration on the wall. A shotgun in a rack. He sat at a blank-looking green metal desk in a metal posture chair that squeaked. He nodded at a metal straight chair. Dave sat on that. "All right," Loomis said, "his body should have been in 65 that there wash. It wasn't. But he never run off. That just plain don't make sense." "What does make sense?" Loomis's slat shoulders moved inside the buttoned-up sweater that said, as much as anything about him, that he was a sick old man. "Maybe Lloyd Chalmers killed him." Dave narrowed his eyes. "Are you serious?" "There's a new junior college going to be built in Pima. That'll mean a multimillion-dollar construction contract. Lloyd'll be due for that, like he's due for every building job that comes along around here." "Aren't there sealed bids?" "Lloyd's always turn out to be the lowest." Loomis's smile was wry and didn't last. "There's a freeway coming through this valleytoo, one way or another. They're after me for a strip of my land. . . ." He swiveledthe stifflittle chair and stared out the window at the staked vine rows slanting up toward the brushy humps of mountain. "But that don't make no never mind. Wherever they route it, Lloyd'll get the contract. Provided he's in charge of things at city hall." "Who would get the contracts if he wasn't? If Fox Olson had won the election?" "No if about it." The old man faced him, proud. "He had it won. Lloyd knew that. He's pretty took up with what a great man...