Free Old Poison by Joan Francis Page B

her. You called her Evelyn.
Look, this case isn’t my jurisdiction. It’s FBI, and you aren’t
legally obligated to talk with me; but I really need to know what
that woman was doing and why she was murdered practically at my
door step.”
    “Actually I was hoping you could tell me
what she was doing. I don’t think I can help you much, but I would
like to talk to you about it.”
    He looked at the sky. “We’re gonna get
soaked if we stand here. Would you like to have a cup of coffee or
something at my place?”
    All my instincts told me he offered no
threat, but the cautious one on my internal committee still caused
a momentary hesitation. He picked up on it immediately.
    “If we talked at the police station that
would sort of make it official business, which it isn’t; but if you
like, we could drive back to town and talk over dinner at a
restaurant.”
    “No,” I answered. “A coffee at your house
sounds fine.”
    His small trailer home was orderly except
for the large number of books stuffed into every available corner.
He offered me a seat at a table and began assembling the
coffee-making equipment. With a shy apology he explained, “This
won’t take too long. I just use this cone and make it right in the
cup. Almost as fast as instant, but it tastes better.”
    I smiled and nodded.
    He looked in the refrigerator and then at me
and said somewhat hesitantly, “I don’t have much in here but some
leftover lamb stew.”
    “If that’s an offer, I accept. I just
realized that I haven’t eaten today. After an unpleasant interview
with Agent Camas at the morgue this morning, I went straight to the
rental car agency and drove from Flagstaff to Tuba City.”
    As he put the stew on to heat he said,
“Well, he’s enough to ruin your appetite, all right.”
    He said it in such a quiet, straight-faced
manner that it caught me by surprise, and I laughed a little too
loudly. His appearance at the wash had startled me, and my cackling
outburst was partly an emotional release as my adrenaline began to
subside.
    He served the coffee and sat down across
from me. I was about to admit that I hadn’t caught his last name,
but his first question distracted me.
    “You know, he had that business card of
yours from the time the body was found. I know because I found the
body. Why do you think he took so long to contact you?”
    “I don’t know, but the way he talked to me
made it obvious that he has a low opinion of both private
investigators and women. I’m afraid what I had to tell him pretty
much confirmed his prejudice.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    His question was direct but did not have the
coldness of interrogation. Taking a good look at my new friend in
the light of his home, I found his brown eyes reassuring, observant
and honest. Though there was tension in his face, he seemed to need
to know about Evelyn on the same level I did. I kept my story
simple and close to what I had told Camas. He listened quietly,
without interruption.
    When I had finished, he went to the stove
and dished up two bowls of hot stew. It smelled wonderful, and I
dived in as soon as was polite. As we ate, I asked, “When you
talked to Evelyn did she say anything that would help, like who she
was meeting, where she was staying, why she had come to the
desert?”
    He put down his spoon, rubbed his chin
thoughtfully, and finally answered, “Well, no, not really. She told
me she was on an archeological dig.” Then he smiled and got in his
own dig by adding, “Sort of like your rock hunting, I suspect,
because I don’t know of any significant site around there. When I
asked how she got out there, she basically told me to mind my own
business. She said that unless she was breaking some law, I was to
go away and leave her alone. I was in a hurry to get to my office
and didn’t need some crazy woman to make a bad week worse, so I
took her at her word and left.”
    He looked into my face and shrugged. “It’s
one of those things you