Man on a leash - By Charles Williams Page 0,19

I think what you’d see would be the wheel tracks and tail-skid marks of a lightplane.”

“Why?”

“A lot of junk comes in from Mexico that way. And it could be how your father got to San Francisco.”

Romstead tried once more, with the feeling he was only butting his head against a wall. “Look—he got back here at five A.M., and two hours later he was on the phone to his broker to raise two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash. There hadn’t been a word about going to San Francisco or about a business deal. I think something happened in those two hours we don’t know about.”

“Sure. Because he hadn’t said anything,” Brubaker said wearily. “You ever hear of anybody on his way to pick up a shipment of junk that bought time on TV or took out an ad in the paper? Anyway, what is there to argue about now? I’d say Jeri Bonner had settled it once and for all.”

It would always come down to that, Romstead thought, and it was unanswerable. Brubaker went on, “I’ll admit I goofed to some extent; I searched the house, and I didn’t see it; but I was looking for something the size of that suitcase, not a teabag.”

“Incidentally,” Romstead asked, “where was the suitcase? Did you find it right here?”

“No. It was in the trunk of the car. We brought it inside. They must have been waiting for him when he drove in.”

“Since you keep begging me for my opinion—” Paulette said.

“All right. Go ahead.”

“Your whole theory’s horseshit. I don’t have the faintest idea who killed Captain Romstead, or why, but he wasn’t a drug peddler. And if Jeri found that heroin in this house, I say he didn’t know it was here.”

* * *

“Why?” Romstead asked. He had brought Paulette home, and they sat in the air-conditioned living room of her house with the bloody Marys she had promised. It was too hot now to sit out by the pool, and neither was interested in lunch with the death of Jeri Bonner weighing on their spirits. The Romstead house was locked up again, and Brubaker had said he would notify Sam Bolling so the broken window could be replaced. Romstead had given him the key to return. “I don’t think he knew the stuff was there either,” he went on, “but what makes you so sure of it?”

“Because I knew him. Better than anybody here.” She set her drink on the coffee table between them and lit a cigarette. “I’ve heard his views on the subject, and like all the rest of his views, they were pretty strong. He had nothing but contempt for people who used drugs of any kind—except, of course, for his drugs: Havana cigars, brandy, and vintage champagne—and an even worse loathing for pushers and smugglers who dealt in any of it, even marijuana. On the Fairisle, his last command, he arrested one of his own crew for trying to smuggle some heroin in on it. I mean, right out of the eighteenth century, locked him up like Bligh throwing somebody in the brig, and turned him over to the federal agents when they docked. High-handed, oh, brother—he could have been fired for it or picketed by every maritime union in the country, except that the man was guilty, he had the heroin to prove it, and the guy was convicted and sent to prison. That’s no wild sea yarn, either; I knew the nut myself. He was out in orbit, a dingaling with a hundred and sixty IQ. But I was going to tell you how we met, almost five years ago.”

She hesitated a moment, rattling the ice in her drink; then she looked up with bubbling amusement. “This is a kooky experience—I mean, telling a son about your affair with his father. I feel like a dirty old woman or as if I were contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

“It’s all right,” Romstead said. “I’m precocious for thirty-six.”

“Good. I felt fairly certain you might be ... Anyway, this happened in 1967. Steve—my husband —was a businessman, mostly real estate and land development, here in Nevada and in Southern California; but his health was beginning to give him trouble, and he was semi-retired. We lived about half the time at our place in La Jolla and did quite a bit of sailing. Steve had been an ocean-racing nut since he was a young man, but he’d given that up when his health began to