Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [111]
“That looked a rather dangerous climb,” I said mildly, by way of breaking the ice.
“Not something I'd do for fun,” he said dismissively.
So the gentleman did not care for amusing repartee; very well, I too would be blunt. “So why were you doing it? If you don't mind my asking.”
He was not interested in giving out any information, but I had often found that by handing over a revelation of my own it served to, as it were, prime the pump.
So I told him that someone I knew had died there, and with that his words began to flow.
It seemed that he was an insurance investigator looking into a death claim that might have been faked. It also seemed that this corner was infamous as a killer of motorcars.
Indeed.
He finished his cigarette, and by the looks of it the driver's flask, then with a tip of the grey fedora he climbed into the back of the van. The other man slammed the door behind him and hurried around to the driver's side; in moments he had the van turned around and headed back north.
Flo held out a packet of something in my direction. “You want a piece of chewing gum, Mary?”
“Thanks, no,” I said, and she helped herself, folding the stick into her pretty mouth. “Well, can we go now? It's too windy to smoke and I'm freezing to death standing here.”
“I was thinking we might go back to Serra Beach and have a drink or something.”
“Back? Mary, we're running late as it is. And it's a pig to drive a strange road in the dark. Wouldn't you say, Donny?”
“Oh, it's not so bad,” he said, but we could both hear the doubt in his voice. “If it's a jolt you want, I've got my flask.”
Body-temperature gin was not what I needed at the moment. “As I said, I'm happy to take over the driving,” I told him, but was not much surprised when I received the same response I'd got when I'd made the offer out in front of the St Francis: a polite and disbelieving smile. Clearly to Donny's mind, “girls” didn't drive unless there wasn't a man around to do that job.
The van had reached the tight curve at the top of the hill, and disappeared around it. My thoughts followed it for a few moments, but I decided that yes, the episode had been slightly odd, but it could hardly be judged as ominous: As coincidences go, this one was scarcely worth noting.
“Okay,” I told my companions, resigning myself to the backseat again. “Let's keep going.”
Flo bundled herself back into her fur rug as Donny worked the starter and put the powerful car into gear. Another motor was parked at the far end of the little beach, I noticed as we drove past; a closed Pierce-Arrow, about as far from Donny's blue monster as could be imagined, with a bored-looking driver and half-shut curtains in the passenger compartment: old lady come to the beach for a Sunday drive, I diagnosed. No more ominous than finding a Fresno insurance agent hiring a local mechanic with a temporarily unemployed bread-delivery truck. I was, I realised, looking for something—anything—to distract me from the empty sensation that had been growing since we had left San Francisco.
And even before that—what else would explain my having asked two perfect strangers to accompany me to the Lodge? When I'd telephoned to Flo the previous morning, I had only meant to tell her that I wouldn't be joining the Monday party she'd talked about, but in the process of telling her where I was going, I'd somehow ended up inviting her. And then she suggested that Donny could drive us, and—I'd had qualms the instant I hung up the earpiece.
I told myself that, if their presence became too much of a strain, I could as easily send them back and hire a car to take me when I was ready.
I did not know why the death