“Tomorrow morning will do,” Hendrycks said calmly.
“I’ll put it as simply as I can,” Barney told him. “I’ve been retained by the law firm of Peterman, Klassen, Smith, Woolley and Smith, of 98 Wall Street. I have a law office of my own in the same building, but nobody seems to know it. It’s a closet. Peterman, and so forth, handle nothing but gilt-edged trusts and estates. They don’t consider me quite respectable. I suspect they hired me because they didn’t know what else to do, and didn’t want to use anyone who might bring them publicity. They hate publicity like the Omega Chamber of Commerce would hate snow in August. They retained me because I used to be a detective, second grade, on the metropolitan police force, because I was an MP in the Army, because I was starving and willing to forget about my law practice for a time.”
“Go on.”
“One of their clients is Jan Stuyvesant Hunter. Do you know him?”
“Malcolm’s older brother. Much older.”
“Like a beaten-up eagle.”
“That fits,” Hendrycks nodded.
“Jan Hunter said his brother Malcolm had disappeared under what he chose to call a cloud. Last week. A certain guide and trapper here in Omega, one Alex Kane, also disappeared at the same time. Alex Kane’s wife has been screaming that Malcolm killed her husband and ran. The fight, she says, was over her own sweet self. Well, I’m supposed to find Malcolm Hunter and if he’s in trouble, I’m supposed to help him.”
“He’ll be found when he wants to be found. And he won’t appreciate your help.”
“I’ll do what I’m paid for,” Barney said. “Have I got the story straight?”
“Mostly.” Hendrycks sighed again. “Are you a married man, Mr. Forbes?”
“I was.”
Hendrycks looked alert. “Divorced?”
“My wife was killed in an auto accident two months after we were married,” Barney said. “Is it important to you?”
“I’m sorry, son. I was just thinking of Mrs. Hunter.”
“What about her?”
“You’ll know it when you see it.” Hendrycks stood up. His face was tired, gaunt, seamed. His hair looked white under the harsh light, like week-old snow on a city street. “I’ll see you at the station tomorrow morning.”
“Are you ordering me out of town?”
“You know I can’t do that. I’m just advising it.”
“Thanks. But I’m not going,” Barney said. “Do you know where I can find Malcolm Hunter?”
“If I knew where Hunter was, I’d keep it to myself.”
“I hoped you might help me,” Barney said.
Hendrycks paused at the door. “I’ve given you the best advice I can. Go back to your closet on Wall Street, son. Forget about Malcolm Hunter.”
“You make him sound dangerous.”
“He is.”
“Did he really chase after this trapper’s wife?”
“I wouldn’t know. He has the idea he’s got the right to chase any woman in Omega. Like one of them lords of the Middle Ages.”
“Do you think he killed Alex Kane, as Kane’s wife says?”
Hendrycks shrugged. He looked defeated. “We don’t have the body. Alex could be in the woods, hunting, or on a guide trip. He didn’t necessarily have to tell Ferne where he was going.”
“Ferne is Alex Kane’s wife?”
“Right.”
“Pretty?”
“Sexy.”
“Have you looked for either Kane or Hunter?”
“Better ask Straehle about that. He’s the D.A.”
“Straehle put the clamps on you?”
Hendrycks shrugged again. “Take that train in the morning, son. You won’t get anywhere in Omega.”
He started out. Barney said: “One thing, chief. What were you looking for in my bags?”
Hendrycks grinned. He had big, honest teeth. “When you told my sergeant you were here to help Mal Hunter, I thought maybe you might have something to tell me where to find him.”
He closed the door gently after him.
2
BARNEY had breakfast the next morning in the dining room of the Omega Hotel. The sun was warm. The air was soft. Every rocking chair on the veranda was occupied by the spectator brigade. From the blue lake came the racket of outboard motors and the distant shouts of water skiers. The waitress was trim and friendly. The breakfast was enormous, well prepared, well served. He was tremendously hungry.
Omega was the county seat. There was a big public square with the usual Civil War monument and a wheeled .75 installed by the VFW in 1920. There were benches, brick walks, a fountain, iron-spiked fencing all around. In the center was the courthouse. To the right was the Omega Times news office, a big wooden building with a false veneer of brick. Behind the newspaper office was a gray, monstrous Victorian house.
Two men had followed Barney from the moment he stepped off the hotel veranda and walked into town. They had not been difficult to spot among the rocking-chair brigade. They stood out from the other guests like mambo dancers in a stately minuet. One was short and fat, the other was young, nervous, pale. They wore a gaudy assortment of sport clothes they thought suitable to a mountain resort. Barney was interested. He was not troubled by them. He let them follow as he crossed the central square and went into the newspaper office.
There was no difficulty in getting the elderly woman clerk to let him browse through the files. He found a comfortable chair in the sunlight next to a window in the rear, facing the lawn and the big Victorian house in back, and read about Malcolm Hunter.
There were photographs: a big man, over six feet, with a fine narrow head, cruel mouth, an arrogance in the black eyes that frowned at the camera. Even in the spotty news photo, an aura of money and power touched Barney. There were pictures of Malcolm Hunter playing polo, Hunter in night clubs, Hunter at Cannes. He’d been snapped at the Governor’s inaugural, at the dedication of the new high school, the opening of a wing to the Omega Public Library, the unveiling of a statue in the courthouse to Colonel Mauritius Hunter of the Continental Army that fought at Bennington, Vermont. There were pictures of Hunter in his private plane, in his Jaguar, aboard the racing schooner Clio in the annual Bermuda races. It formed a fairly thorough pattern.
There had been two marriages, one to a wispy New York deb named Georgette Freeley. Nothing was said about how she had been disposed of. There was only one story on the second marriage, to an Evelyn Smith of Reading, Pa. No background on Miss Smith. No further details. Presumably, she still lived in the sprawling English Tudor estate up at the head of the lake.
A sister existed in Paris, apparently in exile. The much older brother, Jan, was relegated to New York, and Barney had already met Jan. He was almost through with his research when he heard an apologetic cough at his elbow.
“Mr. Forbes?”
He looked up into a pair of soft, sad brown eyes in a narrow, effeminate face. The man said: “I’m Jase Franklyn. I’m the editor of the Omega Times.”
They shook hands. Franklyn was the fluttery type. He wore a black linen suit with a prissy blue polka-dot bowtie. He looked studious, with a white goatee and an intellectual forehead.
“You are interested in Mal Hunter, I understand.”