Cry for the Strangers Page 0,95

had written him the last time be bad been here. Then he went to the gallery door and stuck his head in.

“Glen? You here?”

“In back,” Glen called.

As he made his way to the rear of the building Brad looked around, surprised at the progress that had been made. He was even more surprised to find that Glen wasn’t alone in the back room.

“You mean you finally got some help?” he asked.

Glen straightened up from the drafting table where he was working on some sketches and grinned.

“Did you meet Chip Connor when you were out here?” he asked.

The deputy put aside the saw he was holding and extended his hand to Brad. “Glad to meet you,” he said with a smile. “You must be Dr. Randall.”

“Brad,” Brad corrected him. He gazed quizzically at Chip. “Are you on duty?”

“Not for the last hour,” Chip said. “But if anybody in town wants to charge me with neglecting my duties, they could probably make it stick.”

Now Brad’s gaze shifted to Glen, and when he spoke he sounded genuinely puzzled.

“I don’t quite understand,” he said. “When you called this morning you sounded horrible. I expected to find you huddled in a corner or worse, not happily at work with the deputy sheriff.” He glanced at Chip. “You are Whalen’s deputy, aren’t you?”

“Also his nephew, more or less,” Chip said. As Brad shifted uncomfortably Chip’s smile faded. “You want to talk to Glen alone?”

“That’s up to Glen,” Brad countered.

“It’s all right,” Glen said. “Chip knows what’s been going on. As a matter of fact, he’s been helping me out with more than just this.”

Brad looked at the nearly finished gallery. “It certainly seems to be coming along,” he said. “Now why don’t you fill me in on whatever else has been going on?”

Glen opened three cans of beer and they sat down, making themselves as comfortable as possible on the makeshift furniture. Brad listened quietly as Glen and Chip explained what had happened over the last few days, and Harney Whalen’s unreasonable insinuations that Glen was somehow involved in the death of Max Horton, and possibly even Miriam Shelling’s. When he was done Brad shook his head sadly.

“I don’t understand that man,” he said. “At first I thought he simply didn’t like strangers. But I’m beginning to think it’s something else. Something much more complicated—”

“More complicated?” Chip asked. “What do you mean?”

Brad didn’t answer, didn’t even seem to hear what Chip had asked. Instead he asked Glen an apparently irrelevant question.

“What about Robby?”

“Robby? What’s he got to do with all this?”

“I don’t know,” Brad said, trying to sound casual. “But we know something’s happened to him out here, and now things are happening to other people too.”

Glen’s eyes narrowed as he recognized the implication. “Are you trying to say you think Robby’s involved in whatever’s happening?”

“I’m not trying to say anything,” Brad replied. “But things that seem to be unrelated often aren’t. I think I better have a look at Robby.”

The three men fell silent. Suddenly there was nothing to say.

21

Chip Connor sat at the bar of the Harbor Inn that evening sipping slowly on a beer, trying to sort out his thoughts. He was confused and upset; things seemed to him to be getting far too complicated. He drained the beer, slammed the empty glass down on the bar, and called for another one. Merle Glind appeared next to him.

“You want a little company?” he asked, rubbing his hands together. Chip smiled at the little man.

“Sure. Let me buy you a beer.”

Glind scrambled onto the stool next to Chip. He carefully added a dash of salt to the beer he had drawn, tasted it, and nodded happily.

“Nothing finishes off the day like a good salty beer,” he chirped. Then he looked at Chip inquisitively. “You want to tell me what’s on your mind?”

“I’m not sure anything is,” Chip replied evasively.

But Merle Glind was not to be put off. “It’s written all over your face. I know—I can tell. Now why don’t you tell me about it?”

“There’s not much to tell,” Chip said uncomfortably. “It’s just a bunch of things, all added together. I guess I’m worried about Harn.”

“Harn? Harn Whalen?” Merle Glind’s voice was filled with disbelief, as if it were incomprehensible to him that anyone could be worried about the police chief.

“That’s what I said,” Chip repeated sourly, but Glind seemed not to hear.

“Why, I just can’t imagine that,” he clucked. “There isn’t anything wrong with him, is there?”

Chip shrugged, almost indifferently. “Not that