Random Killer by Hugh Pentecost Page B

decided to do him in,” I said.
    “She probably had dozens of them,” Chandler said, tight-lipped again. “Boyfriends were her stock in trade. But there was no one here that January I could point a finger at. Oh, there are men who come here with a woman one season, and a different one the next season. And the first woman is here with some other dude. Everyone acts like strangers. Sharon had never been here before, so there was no way I could tell if there was someone here then who’d been involved with her past. Could have been, but I had no way of knowing.” He took a corner so fast I shut my eyes. “Sharon was attractive, alluring even, but you could tell she came from way over on the wrong side of the tracks.”
    There were lights everywhere, in the windows of the buildings, outside the front doors, hanging from poles in a sort of compound surrounded by cottages, in a huge main building, and in little shops where they apparently sold western clothes, boots, tack for western riders. I imagined all these were turned into ski shops in the wintertime.
    “How many people can you take care of here?” I asked Chandler, as he pulled up outside the main building.
    He leaned back, flexing his fingers. Maybe he wasn’t as relaxed as he looked, driving that crazy way. “People doubled up, and mostly they do,” he said, “about three hundred and fifty. Cabins will take more than two if someone doesn’t mind sleeping on the couch. When there’s a ski jump in the winter season, we have squeezed in over four hundred.”
    Windows to the main house were open on this cool June night and I could hear a low murmur of voices and laughter against a background of someone giving a very good imitation of the late Fats Waller on a piano. “Ain’t misbehavin’—I’m savin’ my love for you.”
    “Party?” I asked.
    “Every night,” he said. “Just sitting around. Freddy Lukes can keep ’em occupied as long as we want to sell booze.”
    “Lukes?”
    “Black piano player,” Chandler said.
    He carried my bag into a huge, high-ceilinged room, dimly lit. There were two enormous fireplaces at either end of the room with low fires burning, for cheer not heat. Couples were draped around on couches, on the floor. There was a bar at one side of the room, handled by two white-coated bartenders. Opposite, on a little raised platform, was an upright piano. The black man playing was lighted by a little pinspot over his head. He wore black glasses even in the semidarkness. He broke into “Honeysuckle Rose,” one of Fats Waller’s best, as we came in.
    “I’ve got a room for you in the main building,” Chandler said, “if you can sleep over the noise. They’ll keep at it till probably around one or two o’clock.”
    That reminded me of the time difference. They had a couple of hours to go.
    “I could sleep in a boiler factory,” I said. “A little jet lag, I guess. I’ve an appointment at Sharon Dain’s jail at nine in the morning.”
    “I’ll have you called at seven,” Chandler said. “The state prison is about an hour away. I’ll provide a car for you.”
    “With you driving that’s about a hundred miles,” I said.
    He laughed. “Not me. It’s about forty-five miles.”
    Everybody in the room was dressed like cowboys and cowgirls. A blond cowgirl came over from the bar to join us.
    “Welcome, Mr. Haskell,” she said.
    “My wife, Nikki,” Chandler said. I found out the spelling later.
    Nikki Chandler had a curious charm of her own. Late thirties, I thought, tanned mahogany brown from the sun. Hair worn shoulder length, bleached by that same sun. Endless exposure to weather, summer and winter I supposed, gave her skin a leathery look, fine little wrinkles at the corners of her blue eyes and across her high forehead. She was slim, athletic looking, with not too much in the way of bosoms. But there was a kind of tension about her, very near the surface, as if she was waiting for someone to provide her with an