Death Claims by Joseph Hansen

pants, linty corduroy slippers. In one of his hands was a sheaf of typed papers, in the other a half-empty glass of milk. A smear of peanut butter was at a corner of his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, frowned. 
    "Mr. Brandstetter? It's not one o'clock." 
    "I'm sorry," Dave said. "Getting here didn't take as long as I thought it would." It was a lie. Los Collados, tucked in folds of the Sierra Madre foothills east of Pasadena, was twenty minutes from the freeway. He'd known that, starting out. But to reach a place early meant you learned things you weren't supposed to learn. Mostly they were useless things. Now and then they helped. He made the offer he always made but rarely got taken up on. "I'll go away and come back later if you like." 
    "No need. Come in. I'm just finishing my lunch." He knocked back the rest of the milk and with the hand that held the empty glass pushed open the screen. "Can I offer you anything? Anything simple, that is. I'm down to basics. Crackers, sardines. Alone, you tend to let the larder go to hell." 
    "I know," Dave said. "Thanks—I've eaten." 
    The screen door lapsed shut behind him. There was no hall. They were in a broad, low-ceilinged living room, redwoodpaneled chest high, white-plastered above. Built-in bookcases. Window seats. Arched brick fireplace. Chairs, couch, coffee table were Mission style, flat-armed golden oak, fifty, sixty years old. Comfortable, the cushions covered in good-looking plain fabrics. Vast would have had to be the word for the carpet. Oriental, rich plums and russets, scuffed in places but still darkly splendid. The colors repeated themselves in stained-glass panels above the wide windows. Art Nouveau flowers and leaves. 
    "Sit down. I'll be with you in a minute." 
    Ingalls went away into the rear of the house. Old plumbing shuddered. Tapwater splashed. Dave put on his glasses and crouched to look at the books on the shelves. Wright Morris. Nathanael West. H. L. Davis. And Thomas Wolfe, first editions again, as at April Stannard's. There was a hefty volume of Wolfe's letters too, the wide backstrip in soft black cloth. And next to it, in hard-finish beige buckram, Thomas Wolfe's Western Journal: The Lost Pages . A slim book. He took it down, opened it. Edited with an introduction by Dwight Ingalls, Los Collados College Press, 1958 . 
    There was no noise from the soft-soled slippers on the thick rug, but a creaking board made Dave aware of Ingalls passing through the room. He set the book back. The screen door made a wooden sound. Dave stood with a snap of knee joints. Outside, Ingalls said something. One of the truckers answered him. Dave pushed the glasses back into his pocket. There was the hollow bump of the wheelchair down the porch steps. Dave dropped onto the couch. The screen door closed. Ingalls came back. 
    "And that's that," he said bleakly. "That's that." 
    He'd left the milk glass, the peanut-butter smear and the handful of papers somewhere. He sat in a chair by a lamp that was a pear-shaped Arab water jar of hammered copper, shaded by a drum of rough brown burlap. The table the lamp stood on was crowded with paperback books; pamphlets, literary quarterlies. Among them Ingalls found a crumpled Tareyton pack. He dug into it with a thin finger. Empty. He twisted it, dropped it into a hammered-copper ashtray already glutted with butts. Dave held out his own pack. 
    "Thank you. What's this about John Oats?" 
    "He's dead." Dave scratched a match. 
    Ingalls sat forward to get the light. He nodded. "They told me at the bookstore. Drowned. A shame." 
    "He was a strong swimmer. My company isn't satisfied it was an accident. Oats and Norwood is a hundred miles from here. You still go there?" 
    Ingalls turned down the corners of his mouth. "I telephone occasionally. There's not much point in going anymore. The shop slipped badly after John left." 
    "It didn't look prosperous to me," Dave said. "Dusty. Gaps in the shelves. Why?" 
    "John was the