Melting Clock by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

California Antiques on Main Street.”
    I was going to say thanks and leave, but the kid put his comic book down and came up with a rifle from nowhere.
    “Hands on your head,” he said, standing.
    I put my hands on my head.
    “Why are you asking all these questions about Mirador?”
    “I’m looking for Claude Str—”
    “You a Jap spy? No, maybe you’re a Nazi. Japs landed you in a submarine. I’ve been watching the beach a year. So have Andy and Dad.”
    “I drove up in a car, remember?” I reminded him as he reached for the phone.
    “Smart. I know you guys’re smart. I know you got big subs,” he said.
    “Not big enough to hold a car,” I tried.
    “Big enough to hold that little Jap car,” he said, nodding toward my Crosley.
    “It’s an American car. And how would they get it out of the submarine? Through the little trapdoor?”
    This gave him pause.
    “Smart,” he said.
    “I’m a private detective, undercover,” I said. “Call the sheriff. Call Mark Nelson. He knows me.”
    Yeah, I thought, Nelson knows me. He told me never to come back to Mirador unless I wanted to go through life walking like a sloth on my knuckles.
    “You know Sheriff Nelson?”
    “Like a brother.”
    He lowered the rifle and took his hand away from the phone. I slowly took my hands away from my head, without asking permission.
    “Sorry,” the kid said. “Just that we’ve been expecting the Japs for two years. We’re ready for them, too. I practice every Friday.”
    “Great,” I said. “They usually land at night. Keep a flashlight handy and get them one by one as they come out of the little door.”
    The kid nodded, taking in this sage advice. I gave him another dime for a Whiz candy bar and a Pepsi from the refrigerator in the corner and got back in my Crosley.
    Nothing was happening in the center of town and I felt less than comfortable parking near Sheriff Nelson’s office, but no one appeared on the street when I got out and headed for the door of the Old California Antique Shop. The guy in overalls who had been looking in the window was gone. I tried the door. Locked. I knocked. No answer. Through the window I could see shelves of curlicue lamps, clocks with gold-painted cupids, and fancy little boxes.
    It looked like the kid was wrong and Claude Street wasn’t at work. I couldn’t blame him. Business on the street wasn’t even good enough to be called bad. It wasn’t raining but looked as if it might. The rich people were probably in their beach houses with their binoculars and hunting rifles, waiting for the invasion.
    There was a narrow grassy space between the antique shop and the hardware store. It was worth a try. I walked between the buildings and found the back door of Old California. I didn’t knock this time. I tried the handle. The door opened. I went in and closed it behind me.
    I was in a back room, very dim. There were no windows, but there was a curtain across the door leading into the shop. The curtain was thin. I went in. A man, who for want of better information I took to be Claude, was lying on the floor, his legs sprawled across an overturned chair and a hole, a little bigger than the one in Adam Place’s forehead, in his throat. On a table, ticking happily and watching over the scene, was Gala Dali’s second clock. The glass face of the clock was broken and covered with blood. Over the clock, hanging from the wall was Dali’s second painting, a grasshopper sitting on an egg. The egg was cracked and a small human head and arm were trying to get out. The grasshopper seemed to be looking down at the human and I had the feeling that when the little guy got out he’d be grasshopper food. There was something else in the painting—or had been until someone had splashed green over the lower right-hand third of the canvas. Written in yellow over the green was,
    Time is running out. One clock. One painting.
Last chance. Look where he ate the sardine.
    Claude was a slightly overweight man