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Murder Comes to Eden. Leslie Ford
Читать онлайн.Название Murder Comes to Eden
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781479428618
Автор произведения Leslie Ford
Жанр Ужасы и Мистика
Издательство Ingram
“Stan Ashton’s the only person who could make any kind of a deal this side of the bridge,” Spig said quietly. “And he’s the one person you could count on not to make a deal.”
“Mr. O’Leary!” There was a sudden flash of anger in Sudley’s eyes. “Do you think any big-time gambling outfit comes into a small county like this without sounding out the county commissioners, cutting them in on building and maintenance contracts, to grease the wheels and keep the sheriff off their necks? Maybe you and Mr. Stanley Ashton didn’t know that, Mr. O’Leary. Why, that fellow in the blue silk suit sitting right behind you at the meeting the other night—what do you think they sent him down here for? I saw him shaking your hand, congratulating you on a fine speech. Sure, he’s all for zoning . . . once his outfit’s in. But he’d already talked to us, Mr. O’Leary—about the four acres Mr. Stanley Ashton was selling them, for what they call a ‘beach club’ on the Devon.”
He got in his truck. Spig O’Leary stood there too stunned to move, his face going from an angry flush to pale to flinty grey-white. The truck moved towards him and stopped. Sudley’s voice was charged with passion.
“Maybe you didn’t know, Mr. O’Leary. Buck Yerby says you didn’t. But I’ll tell you this. I hate gambling and everything that goes with it. I love my land and I love this river. All I wanted the Plumtree tract for was to take care of Miss Fairlie and the road and my river. But by God I’ll sell every inch of land I’ve got, I’ll drive every one of you people out of this place, before I’ll see your cotton-mouth brother-in-law defile it. You tell him. And tell him to keep out of my way. Tell him I’ll kill him if he doesn’t. Sure as you’re born I’ll kill him.”
The truck moved on. Spig O’Leary stood there blindly, a smoky red haze all around him. “Oh, no. You won’t kill him.” It seemed to him he was almost shouting it. “You won’t have to. I’ll do it. The little swine . . . I’ll kill him myself, if it’s true.”
CHAPTER IV
OH NO. You won’t kill him. You won’t have to. I’ll do it. The little swine . . . I’ll kill him myself, if it’s true.
It seemed to Spig O’Leary he must be shouting it, the way his throat was torn. But Sudley didn’t seem to hear him. He was going methodically about his business, helping the boy unhitch the disker and load it on to the truck. They were lumbering across the narrow bridge over the drainage run down into Plumtree Cove, going out Miss Fairlie’s lane to the old road, when the red haze blinding Spig finally dissolved and he found himself standing there alone.
He got back into his car and drove on to the pineapple-topped gate posts fifty feet along in the woods on the right. There were two signs, one saying “O’Leary”, the other, “Stanley S. Ashton”. He was conscious of a sort of basic numbness in his brain that seemed to transmit itself to everything around him. Superimposed on it was the shameful awareness of his own humiliation, the writhing remains of his self-esteem. O’Leary, the hot shot of the Eden Neck Home Owners’ League . . . He could see himself at the commissioners’ meeting Thursday night. O’Leary eloquent as all hell, and Sudley and the five other commissioners sitting there, courteously, gravely listening to him sound off on the evils of Devon Death Strip, a menace to our children and a curse to us, quoting the Governor, and the commissioners knowing all about the guy in the blue silk suit sitting right behind him. As Buck Yerby knew . . . and how many others in the crowded room? They think you’re as big a heel as he is a louse . . . thinking he was putting up a civic front for Stan Ashton to work behind. O’Leary, heel or sucker—which was worse?
He drove in to the fork where the Ashton’s fine new road cut off from the O’Learys’. Or the other way around—it made the O’Learys’ look like a mud track to an illicit still. A few yards along he put his foot on the brake, looking back at it, a smooth, white ribbon of oyster shell going off through the woods. In November, when the Ashtons were building their house, they used the O’Learys’ lane clear in to the dead chestnut tree. This new road wasn’t much over a month old. Spig drew his ginger brows together, trying to recall the way Stan had put it.
“It’ll give us both a lot more privacy, Spig,” he’d said, “if you’ll let us have a thirty-foot right-of-way closer to the entrance. I’ve got the deed drawn up, to save you the trouble and expense. We’ll give you back our rights to your lane in to the chestnut. And we’ll pay for the clearing and building, and keep it up, of course.”
“Big of you, old man.” Spig remembered thinking that, amused because old Stan had developed a slightly pompous as well as humourless attitude towards himself and his newly acquired wealth. It explained the businesslike efficiency with which he whipped the deed out of his handsome new pigskin briefcase. Or so Spig had thought. Now he wondered. The right to use the O’Learys’ lane had been friendly, never put in legal form.
He must have been planning even then . . . O’Leary caught himself sharply, rubbing his hands back over his head, kneading his skull under the short, ginger stubble, trying to think. He didn’t know that what Sudley had said was true. People didn’t like Stan Ashton very much, but a lot of it was prejudice. Kathy had made a lot of friends. It was tactless, bringing in a rich, new wife as he’d done it, and Anita’s giving most of Kathy’s stuff to the church rummage sale hadn’t helped. But now he stopped to think, it was obvious that the whole thing was a fantastic error of some kind. In the first place, there was the letter stipulation. Or second place, anyway. First place was Stan Ashton’s own name and reputation. That alone would keep him from selling out to the kind of outfit Sudley wouldn’t touch with the fork he used to spread manure. Because Stanley S. Ashton’s name and reputation meant more to him and anything else he had. The high priest of highway sanctity wasn’t going to show any cloven hoof that would kick his own face right off the television panel. Not old Stan . . . not if Spig knew him. And there was still the letter of stipulation in young Judge Twohey’s office.
Spig moved uneasily. It was eerie how clearly there for a moment the old judge’s voice seemed to come to him, almost as if it were recorded there in the whispering leaves of the oak trees. The old judge was gone now, but Spig could hear him speak again.
It is my duty to tell you that such a stipulation is not legally binding. At most it could be used to show intent.—Gratitude is highly volatile. It seldom withstands the impact of hard cash.—There must never be a threat to Eden in Miss Fairlie’s lifetime. I want your solemn word of honour, Mr. O’Leary . . .
“You have it, sir . . .” Spig O’Leary spoke back to him across the years, across the silent bourne, as if he knew some way the old judge could hear him, repeating his solemn word. Strangely, he felt calmer then, able to see the thing much more clearly, the fiery catharsis of his rage burned down to ordinary sanity again. There was no doubt Sudley believed what he was saying. But he was wrong. He didn’t know Stan Ashton. The cynic who said that all men were motivated by one of two things—vanity or cupidity—had hit the Stan Ashton nail square on the head, and cupidity was out. Anyone who had seen the fine flowering of Stan Ashton’s ego, watered by the life-giving rain of all the publicity he’d got, would know him better than to think he’d do anything to wither it.
“And the poor guy’s not a swine,” Spig told himself. “Or if he is, he’s not a fool. He’s not going to commit professional suicide.”
He looked at the clock on the dash. It was a quarter to seven, just thirty-five minutes since he’d stopped to talk to Yerby at the blue glass Three D. He started the car and drove on through the woods, past the old chestnut, towards what the O’Learys called the Home Farm, the five cleared acres where the house was, overlooking the Devon River. I’ll go see him. Right after dinner I’ll go over.
He rubbed his face hard to smooth away the outward and visible signs of any inward doubt, and creased his eyes and lips into a reasonable facsimile of the happy grin of the home-coming parent, hearing the kids shouting over in Tip’s garden plot as he made the last bend through the woods.