I hung up and moved out of the booth.
“Something tells me I’ve started a little trouble,” I said. “If my bet’s right, Brandon won’t have pleasant dreams tonight.”
“What a shame,” Kerman said.
III
Drive North along Orchid Boulevard, past the Santa Rosa Estate, and eventually you will come to a narrow road which leads to the sand dunes and my cabin.
As a place to live in, it’s nothing to get excited about, but at least it’s out of ear-shot of anyone’s radio, and if I want to yodel in my bath no one cares. It is a four-room bungalow made of Canadian knotty pine with a garden the size of a pocket handkerchief, kept reasonably tidy by Toni, my Filipino boy. A hundred yards from my front door is the blue
Pacific Ocean, and at the back and to the right and left are scrub bushes, sand and a half-circle of blue palmetto trees. It is as lonely and as quiet as a pauper’s grave, but I like it. I have lived and slept there for more than five years, and I wouldn’t care to live or sleep anywhere else.
After I had left Finnegan’s bar, I drove along the sandy road, heading for home. The time was twenty minutes to midnight. There was a big water-melon moon in the sky, and its fierce white rays lit up the scrub and sand like a searchlight. The sea looked like a black mirror. The air was hot and still. If there had been a blonde within reach it would have been a romantic night.
Tomorrow, I told myself as I drove along, would be a busy day. Paula had promised to check both Macdonald and Janet Crosby’s wills as soon as County Buildings opened. I wanted to see Nurse Gurney again. I wanted to find out who Maureen Crosby’s lawyer was and have a talk to him. If I could I wanted more information about Douglas Sherrill. If the wills didn’t produce anything of interest, if Maureen’s lawyer was satisfied with the set-up, and if there appeared to be nothing sinister about Douglas Sherrill then I decided I’d hand back the five hundred dollars and consider the case closed. But I was pretty sure at the back of my mind that I wouldn’t close the case, although I was open to be convinced I was wasting my time.
I pulled up before the pine-wood hut that serves me as a garage, ploughed through hot loose sand to open the doors. I got back into the Buick, drove in, switched off the engine and paused to light a cigarette. As I did so I happened to look into the driving-mirror. A movement in the moonlit bushes caught my eye.