Melting Clock by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page B

with a little yellow wig—I could tell it was a wig because it had fallen off when he fell—and round blue eyes locked on a not-very-interesting light fixture in the ceiling.
    To be sure he was who I thought he was, I checked his pocket and found his wallet. He was Claude Street, all right. I took a closer look at the Dali painting and saw a bloody handprint like a signature in the lower left-hand corner. The blood was still wet. I looked at the floor, listened to the ticking of Gala Dali’s clock, and let my eyes follow the trail of dripped paint to the curtain. I got my .38 in my hand, then moved to the curtain. I pushed the curtain aside and stepped into the front of the store. Nobody, at least nobody inside. Outside the window, standing in front of my Crosley, was the man I wished least to see, Sheriff Mark Nelson of Mirador.
    Nelson was a wiry little man, about forty, in a lightweight white suit and a straw hat. He squinted at me through the window as if unsure of what he was seeing. I stood still. He moved right up to the window, took off his straw hat, shielded his eyes with his right hand, and looked at me and the .38 in my hand.
    I considered my options, put the .38 back in my pocket and moved to open the front door of the Old California Antique Shop so the now-smiling sheriff could enter.
    “Mr. Toby Peters, you are a trial and a tribulation,” said Sheriff Nelson about five minutes later as he ushered me into his office two doors down from the Old California Antique Shop. “A trial and a tribulation. You were so on the occasion of our last meeting and you are once again.”
    The sheriffs office was a remodeled store about the same size as the one run by the recently deceased Claude Street, but the layout was different. There was a low wooden railing with a gate. Visitors on one side. Cops and robbers on the other. Nelson held the gate open for me and I went in, past a desk and chair with a bulletin board behind them full of notes, clippings, and “Wanted” posters. To the left was a cubbyhole of an office with “Sheriff” marked on the door. To the right were two cells, both with open doors, neither occupied.
    Nelson had my .38. He had taken it as soon as I had opened the door of the Old California Antique Shop. He had then walked through the curtain and seen Claude Street’s body. It was when he came back through the curtain the gun in his hand aimed at my chest, that he first declared me “a trial and tribulation.”
    Nelson pointed to the first cell. I stepped in. He closed it behind me.
    “There have been four murders in the history of this municipality,” he said, shaking his head and looking constipated.
    “The Indians probably killed each other from time to time before we came here,” I suggested. “And the Spanish—”
    “One of these murders, in 1930—” he went on.
    “Woman on the beach brained her husband with rock,” I recalled.
    Nelson smiled, a very pained smile.
    “You have a memory worthy of remark,” he said. “You are correct. The next murder we had was a little over one year ago and you were very much a thorn in my side during that episode. The third murder should not really count. A Mex farmer south of town shot a man who, he says, was engaged in an unappreciated folly with the Mex farmer’s wife. And now this. Mr. Toby Peters, you have been involved in one-half of the murders which have taken place in Mirador since I became sheriff.”
    There was a cot in the cell. I remembered it had a lurking spring. I sat down on the cot and looked up at Nelson, who was wiping the inside band of his straw hat.
    “I’m going to tell you something, sheriff,” I said. “I know you won’t do anything about it, but I’ll feel better having said it. The person who killed Claude Street can’t be far away. The paint on the picture and on the floor was still wet. He didn’t have a car parked, at least not nearby. Mine was the only one out there till you pulled up.”
    Nelson moved to