Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

I glanced down at Sue Kelton’s hands again, knob-knuckled and work reddened, the one still twisted in that dishtowel. I hesitated for one last extra second before making the call. “Nah. It’s too hot to go on now. I guess we’ll stay over until tomorrow morning. Can we have a couple of your other cabins?”

Mrs. Kelton didn’t have a reason to say no, no matter how much she might want to.

Teddy Kelton stared at us from the shade of the pump shelters as I backed the ’57 in between our cabins. He didn’t offer to help us carry our bags in.

The Princess held off until we were inside of her airless little clapboard box. “Look, lover, I know it’s hot out there but I’d vastly prefer prickly heat to this!”

“Me, too,” I replied. I put down her makeup case and sat on the edge of the cabin’s creaky iron-framed bed. “But I’ve got kind of a funny feeling about this place.”

“No kidding!” Lisette braced her hands on her hips. “This place is strictly nowheresville... literally! The giant radioactive tarantulas are going to come crawling out of the desert at any minute! If you think I’m...” The Princess stopped revving her engine and looked at me sharply. “Wait a minute. You mean cop funny, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” I untwisted my Luckys from my T-shirt sleeve and drew one of the smokes from the pack with my lips. “I want to talk to that doc when he gets here,” I said around the cigarette, “and with the old man. And I don’t want to leave that old guy alone for too long either.”

Lisette crossed to the cabin’s front window and peered around the edge of the cracked shade, the outside glare putting a bar of light across her suddenly intent features. The Princess likes to hunt, too, although she maintains her amateur status. “The boy’s still watching us from over by the gas pumps. What do you think the caper is?”

I touched my lighter flame to my smoke. Standing, I joined her at the window, putting my arm around her slim shoulder. “I dunno, Princess. It could be the sun’s just getting to me, but when we brought that old Joe in breathing, I got the feeling that somebody was disappointed as all hell.”

Dr. Bruce Purcell of Barstow was a desert rat in his own right. He drove a battered Jeep station wagon, wore a sweat-stained stockman’s Stetson, and called his patient a dried-up old son of a bitch.

Rupert Kelton laughed at the comment, although it was a feeble kind of laugh. The station owner had come around a few minutes before the doc had arrived. He was shaky, but his head was clear and he didn’t seem ready to pack it in yet.

Kelton insisted on shaking my hand, and we had a hard time keeping him down on the pillow while doing it. “I surely appreciate it, son,” he said gravely, “and I’m sorry, causin’ you all this trouble.”

“Forget it,” I replied. Beat up or not, the old gent had a grip. “No big deal.”

“The question is, what happened to you?” the doctor demanded, rigging a blood-pressure cuff around Kelton’s other arm. “Any chest pain? Anything go numb or paralyzed? Any sparks of light in front of your eyes?”

“Ah, hell, Bruce. Nothin’ like that.” Kelton sounded disgusted. “I don’t know what happened out on that road... Damn me, I think I just fell asleep.”

He glanced toward his wife sitting stiffly in the cabin’s one straight-backed chair. “I’m sorry, Treasure. I guess you’re right. I am getting old.”

She didn’t make an attempt to go to him. “I told you, Rupe. This damn station is killing you!”

He shrugged and winced. “A man’s got to die someplace. You might as well do it somewhere you know.”

The doc pumped at the bulb of the blood-pressure cuff and scowled at the results on the dial. “I thought you had a buyer for the place?”

“Oh, I been thinkin’ about it. I was goin’ in to Barstow to talk to the fella again.” The old man closed his eyes. “I don’t think it’s gonna work out. He’s not offering enough to keep me, Sue, and the boy going for long. At least here we can stay alive.”

“No we can’t, Rupe!” For the first time there was real feeling in Sue Kelton’s voice and she sat forward in the chair. “Can’t you see that? Now the truck’s wrecked on top of everything else.”

“Don’t take on, Treasure,” the old man murmured back, not opening his eyes. “We’ll make out.”

The doctor unstrapped the cuff from his patient’s arm. “From what I can see, it’s cuts, bruises, and a mild concussion. Nothing seems broken, and I can’t see any indication of internal injuries yet. I don’t suppose I could convince you to go to the hospital for a couple of days for observation?”

Kelton still didn’t open his eyes. “Not likely.”

“On your own head be it, then. All I can say is to stay in bed for a few days and watch yourself. Concussions can be tricky.” The doctor started stowing his gear back in his bag. “If you start to feel strange or if you pass out again, have me called immediately, but by then it’ll probably be too late anyhow.”

The corner of Kelton’s mouth twitched up. “I’ll take it easy, Bruce.”

“What do you figure made him conk out, Doc?” I interjected.