Date for Murder by Louis Trimble Page A

lifeless, still, but as they approached a bent figure came from the lean-to.
    “Howdy,” the Chief said. “Busy, Curtis?”
    The old man wagged his shaggy head. “Nothing more’n usual, Chief. What’s on your mind?”
    “Murder,” the chief said. “Don’t tell me you ain’t heard.”
    “Oh, sure. Catrina came in all upset a little while ago. But I reckoned you was here to ask something.”
    “You reckoned right,” Mark said dryly. He lit his pipe and watched the old man lean against a palm trunk and chew a stem of dried oat.
    “You got any cyanide, Curtis?”
    The old man bobbed his head. “Lots of it. Use a spray sometimes. Want some?” He cackled as if it had been a good joke.
    The Chief said, “You keep this door locked all the time?”
    “Ain’t never locked. No one around here to steal nothing.”
    “Then any time a person could walk in and you wouldn’t know it, huh?”
    “Any time I was out in the groves,” the old man said. “That’s most of the day. Why, something gone?”
    “Some of the cyanide,” the chief said. “It was used in the murder.”
    “I thought he was drowned,” the old man said, unperturbed. “Reckon it could have been my cyanide, though.”
    The Chief ducked his head and went into the lean-to shed. Mark followed, the old man close behind him. It was low in there, so low Mark’s head had to be kept bent so it wouldn’t hit the board ceiling. There were spades, mattocks, shovels, hoes and other assorted paraphernalia along the walls and strewn on the floor. Long date-picking ladders, wide at the bottom and almost pointed at the top, hung on pegs along the walls. Cans were stacked along one wall, and two pair of huge pruning shears with extension handles hung by the ladders. Gunny sacks half or dully filled with fertilizer gave the room a dead, decayed odor, and various sprays added a pungency that made Mark’s mouth taste brassy as if he hadn’t brushed his teeth after a drinking bout. Everything seemed in orderly disorderliness. Mark doubted if he could find anything quickly in there, and knew that the old man could put his fingers on any article at a moment’s notice.
    “The cyanide,” the Chief said. “Don’t touch it, though.”
    Old Curtis pointed to a can near the center of the wall, then bent down curiously. “Hell,” he objected, “that ain’t it. Damned if it ain’t been moved …” He crowed triumphantly. “There ‘tis, under the work table there.” He pointed to a work table filled with flats, most of them empty, a few containing tiny plants in their first stage of growth. “Danged if it was there last time I saw it,” he said. “Some ornery cuss has moved it on me.”
    “The murderer,” Mark said.
    “I reckon,” the old man admitted. He seemed more perturbed over the moving of the cyanide than over its more recent use.
    “When did you use it last?” Mark asked.
    “ ‘Bout a week ago.”
    “Remember to have me send the print man down here,” the Chief said. “Maybe he can catch something on that can. Don’t touch it, Curtis.”
    “Okay, but get through with it. It don’t belong under that bench,” the old man said querulously. “It belongs right with these others against this wall. Dang these messy people anyway.”
    The Chief grinned and ducked out into the stifling but fresher air. When they were all out, he asked, “What time did you get up this morning, Curtis?”
    “My usual time,” the old man said. “I don’t let none of the goin’s on in that house bother my work. I got up at six like always.”
    “What did you do then?”
    “I went out to the back section an’ started irrigating,” he said. “Got it started and came back an’ made my breakfast. Then I went back out. Just got in here ‘bout ten minutes ago.”
    “You didn’t see anyone or anything, huh?”
    “Saw Catrina goin’ to the house,” the old man cackled. “Reckon she did it?”
    The Chief smiled. “Did she have reason?”
    The old man