Read Online Detour to Death by Helen Nielsen - Free Book Online Page A

Trace glanced back to where Arthur waited in the sun-drenched jeep and then stopped the dark-skinned servant with a gesture of his hand. “No, thanks,” he said. “I can’t stay. I just dropped by to see if I heard you correctly last night. I was quite drunk at the time.”
    “You heard correctly.” Laurent smiled.
    “Then you’re really serious about taking this case?”
    “I am serious about you taking it, Mr. Cooper. I shall, of course, offer every possible assistance.”
    “Why?”
    The question was out before Trace could hold his tongue. “I told you last night,” Laurent answered. “I wish to know the truth about this horrible crime. Doctor Gaynor was my friend.”
    “Doctor Gaynor was everybody’s friend, but I wouldn’t say he was yours in particular.”
    From inside the house came the sound of music, a piano being played with the sensitive fingers of a master. Laurent raised his head and gazed across the valley. The noonday heat shimmered like a silver curtain between the ranch and the mountains, and no wind stirred.
    “Let’s put it another way then,” he said. “Let’s say that life gets dull without challenge. Danny Ross is a challenge. Is he guilty, or is he innocent? The mob says guilty, and so I must say innocent. That’s the story of my life, Mr. Cooper. Does it answer your question?”
    “One of them,” Trace admitted, “but it only makes the other more difficult. What I’ve been wondering for the past five years is why a man retires at the peak of his career. Why he leaves the world he’s brought to heel and buries himself—”
    “—in this beautiful, peaceful valley,” Laurent finished. “I’m an old man, Mr. Cooper.”
    “Sixty-one. Fifty-six when you quit your practice.”
    “You seem to know a great deal about me.”
    Trace pulled up just in time. Every man has to believe in something, and a much younger Trace Cooper had believed in Alexander Laurent and followed his career like some bobby-soxer with a fan magazine. As foolish, too. The Coopers were practical people; when they studied law it was to use it for their own advantage.
    “I went to law school,” he reminded. “Any law student knows a great deal about Alexander Laurent.”
    “And now we are working together. I’m flattered, Mr. Cooper, but please tell me what you’ve learned. I doubt that you came here for the ride.”
    Trace leaned back and relaxed. Never mind the personal equations; the problem was Danny Ross. “You aroused my curiosity last night,” he began. “After you left, I heaved a bottle at the mirror over the bar. Ross couldn’t be incommunicado with me installed in the adjoining cell.”
    “Ingenious,” Laurent murmured.
    “Not at all. I’ve broken about six of those mirrors already; the result is always the same. This morning I had a talk with Danny.”
    “Did you come to any conclusions?”
    “I never come to conclusions—that’s the story of my life—but I did learn one thing that seems important: Danny doesn’t have Charley Gaynor’s wallet. He has two hundred dollars he insists are his, but the wallet is missing. The sheriff thinks Danny threw it away and has a couple of men searching the grounds at Mountain View right now.”
    The music from inside the house was getting louder. Trace had to raise his voice to go on.
    “I don’t think they’re going to find it. I watched Danny when the search was getting started. If anyone had come close, come anywhere near where he’d thrown the thing, he would have shown some anxiety. The kid’s just too scared to put up a front.”
    “Then I take it that he betrayed no unusual emotion.”
    “That’s right. He just kept insisting the wallet was lifted by a man in the café who was waiting for the bus to Junction City.”
    Like Danny Ross, Laurent had betrayed no unusual emotion up to this point. Now he leaned forward, tense and alert. “And was there such a man?” he asked.
    “There was,” Trace said. “A man named Steve