Corpus Delectable

by Talmage Powell

  “I don’t have much choice.”

  “Staying with what?” Keith Sigmon said.

  “Jean Putnam’s murder,” Eppling said. “I just came from police headquarters, where I talked with Steve Ivey, a homicide detective. It seems that Rivers barely missed sharing a headline with Jean.”

  Sigmon had an empty-eyed moment of absolute disorientation. Elena hiccuped, a drunken little sound of fright.

  Then Sigmon’s eyes became quite cold. “So that’s why you were nosing around here.”

  “I imagine Rivers will be sticking his nose in many places,” Eppling said as if he were secretly relieved.

  “You sonofabitch!” Sigmon said to me.

  “Easy on the language, friend. I’ve taken a natural aversion to you, too.”

  He looked at my face, took a step back, got his anger under partial control. “Okay Rivers,” he said between his teeth. “I’ve dealt with your breed before. If you’re trying to hatch a shakedown, you’ll find it damned unhealthy sitting on the nest.”

  “I didn’t lay the eggs, and it wasn’t my choice to keep them warm.”

  Fred Eppling’s eyes glinted with pleasure as he watched Sigmon sweat. He shared my lack of respect for the client he had inherited.

  “Keith,” the attorney said mildly, “why don’t you have a drink?”

  “An excellent idea,” Elena said. “How many shall I mix?”

  “Three,” Sigmon said. “Rivers is leaving — unless he wants to get arrested for trespassing.”

  Eppling strolled with me to the door. Silently he handed me one of his business cards. “You won’t need an appointment,” he said.

  “Were you close to Jean Putnam?”

  “No, but I respected her. I knew the attorney who was her guardian and the administrator of her estate. He was an old man, died a year ago. Through him, I met Jean.”

  “Who had a reason to kill her?” I asked. “No one. Her character was spotless.” “Until,” I said, “a tragedy-ridden old lady from Venezuela died.”

  Four

  A bold-breasted, leggy woman in a simple sleeveless white dress was waiting beside my car.

  Sunlight glinted on dark-blond hair that spilled to her wide shoulders. At my approach she took off heavy, dark sun glasses. The lustiness extended to her face, with its high cheekbones and strong features.

  “You’re Ed Rivers, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “My name is” — she made a slight face — “Myrtle Higgins. A little cruel of my parents, don’t you think?”

  With all those accessories, she should have been a real eye-knocker. Somehow, for no reason I was able to pin down, she just missed the achievement of rare beauty. It wasn’t a promise still in her future. While young, she was right now in the full bloom of maturity. She was like a lush fruit which, when touched, is found to be made of wax. Or like a painting by an artist who has mastered all the mechanical details without being able to fuse them into a potential whole.

  “What can I do for you, Miss Higgins?”

  “I overheard a few words of what went on in the house. I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Any time.”

  “How about now?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  She glanced toward the sprawling hacienda. “But not here.”

  I opened the car door, and she got in without hesitation. I went around the car and slid under the wheel.

  I turned the key in the ignition. “Any place in particular?”

  “I was invited to a party at the Clavery house.” “I know where it is.” I started the car from the driveway.

  “I came by here, intending to pick up a few things and take a taxi.” She looked back at the house as the man-made jungle closed around us. “I can get my things later. What I overheard … it made a couple of uniforms and a pair of whites unimportant.”

  “You worked for Señora Isabella?”

  “Yes. I was her nurse.”

  “Then you knew Jean Putnam.”

  “Oh, yes.” She hesitated, experiencing difficulty in laying the words out blunt and cold. “Is it true … Jean is dead?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She opened the wind-vent window wider and let the breeze strike her face. “How did Jean die?” “She was shot.”

  A shiver crossed Myrtle Higgins’ fine, wide shoulders.

  I briefed Myrtle on the rest of it. “And all I get on Jean Putnam is a report of undiluted purity.”

  “You get the truth, Ed. But Jean was no prig. She was always ready for fun — up to a point. The kind who’d attend the Clavery blast and cut out before the ball turned into a brawl. She was good-natured, sensitive, very considerate.”

  “Were you close friends?”

  “No,” Myrtle said. “Friends, compatible co-workers here at the old señora’s hacienda. But not bosom pals. Jean liked people, was friendly with everyone. She’d lived a rather lonely life as an orphan in private schools.”

  “Do you know a girl named Lura Thackery?”

  “Not well,” Myrtle said. “But from the way Jean spoke of her, Lura was her closest friend.”

  “Where’s the sense of it?” I said. “Jean was a veritable angel, but a pro killer guns her down like the sluttiest moll about to squeal on the gang.”

  “From what you say, Ed, she didn’t have much time for squealing.”

  “She said one thing.”

  “About the theft?” Myrtle asked.

  My ears got long and pointed. “Which theft?”

  “Was there more than one?”

  “Which one are you referring to?” I countered.

  “Señora Isabella’s old portfolio,” Myrtle said. “Jean discovered it missing and told Keith Sigmon about it a couple days ago. He said the brief case contained nothing more than a few personal items of the old lady’s, sort of keepsakes. A few snapshots, clippings from newspapers when the señora’s husband and daughter were killed — the sort of junk a little old lady will squirrel away.”

  “Nothing of value?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Did Sigmon report the theft?” I asked.

  “To the police? I don’t think so. He said it wasn’t important, that Jean probably had misplaced the portfolio and that it would turn up.”

  “Has it?”

  Myrtle shrugged. “How would I know? Keith Sigmon doesn’t confide in me. Anyway, I’m all through at the hacienda, as soon as I move my things to my apartment.”

  “You don’t care much for Keith Sigmon, do you?”

  “Frankly, no.”

  “What do you know about him, Myrtle?”

  “Not much. I understand he drifted into Venezuela years ago, met the old señora’s daughter, an only child, and eloped with her.”

  “Fortune hunter?” I suggested.

  “Could be. Señora Isabella hated his guts. She no longer had to tolerate him, after a terrorist’s bomb killed her husband and daughter, Keith’s wife.”

  “Which explains why she left Sigmon behind when she fled Venezuela,” I said. “But Elena stayed in Venezuela too, don’t forget.”

  “Maybe Papa Keith influenced his daughter’s decision, Ed.”

  “Sure,” I said, “Elena being the only remaining string Papa had on the fabulous fortune.”

  The Clavery house came into view. The number of parked cars had increased. I eased into the driveway.

  “As the old señora’s nurse,” I said, “you should know if there was any remote possibility that she didn’t die from natural causes.”

  Myrtle gave me a glance. “None, Ed. Absolutely none. She had the best doctors attending her. You could check with them.”

  She stirred as I stopped the car in the middle of the driveway. “Actually, I think a terrorist’s bomb helped shorten the old lady’s life, Ed. Except for a sort of dutiful affection for Elena, she’d lost everything dear to her. She went through the motions of keeping herself feverishly interested in a lot of projects, but it was a
cover-up. The señora never got over the tragedy, the moment the bomb exploded. Finally she admitted to herself that she was old, sick, and tired. In the end, she quit fighting, Ed.”

  I watched the lithe movements of Myrtle as she got out of the car. I had a hunch as to what was needed to put the spark in all that potential loveliness.

  “Thanks for the lift, Ed.” She closed the door and stood looking at me a moment.

  “If I have more questions,” I said, “where do I ask them?”

  “I’ve told you everything I know.” “But I’m pretty good at thinking up questions.” A smile came to her wide red lips. “I’m not in the phone book yet.”

  “I’ll try information,” I said.

  “You’d find a clue.” She turned and moved away from the car toward the noise that all those pleasure-seeking pirates were making.

  I spent the brief remainder of the afternoon at police headquarters, joining Lieutenant Steve Ivey in his routine. His men were rounding up known gunsels and questioning stoolies.

  The net result was zero. If the Unknown Party under the coconut straw hat was local, nobody was talking.

  When I came out of headquarters, the day had turned to a short semi-tropical twilight. The twilight had deepened to darkness by the time I worried the car through massed traffic toward my apartment on the edge of the Cuban quarter, Ybor City.

  I parked the heap in the long, shedlike garage behind the beat-up old building, got out, and arched my back muscles. I was dogged. Everywhere there were bright lights and frolicsome people, but for me it was the low, tag end of a depressing day.

  I went across the street to a narrow stool-and-counter eatery and knocked the edge off fatigue with a thick Cuban sandwich and a beaker of suds.

  I thought of Jean Putnam’s young face with the light going out of it. It reminded me somehow of a face I’d known long ago, years ago. I — and the world — had been young then.

  She’d been mine, the girl with that other face. Or so I’d thought. I’d known her in Jersey, where I had been born, grown up, walked my first beat as a rookie cop. I had never been able to figure the mystery of her. She had run off with a punk I was trying to nail, and their car had tried, and failed, to beat a fast freight train to a crossing.

  With the flowers fresh on her grave, I had drunk to her memory. I hadn’t quit drinking, not for a long time — not until the day I woke up in a back alley right here in Ybor City. I’d lain there with the sweat hot and cold on me, the searing sun in my eyes, and I’d realized I would never completely burn the memory of her out of me.

  I’d got a job on the docks of Port Tampa and worked the rotgut out of my system. Nationwide Detective Agency had given me a second chance. I’d been with the outfit ever since, more than sixteen years now.

  And today another face of innocence had looked into my life, and I wondered if I would ever solve the mystery of this one either….

  When I came out of the beanery, the very air of the Quarter seemed to quiver with a feeling of festivity. The crowds were laughing, filled with Gasparilla friendliness. Jalopies piled with boys and girls mingled with the sleek, purring limousines of the Latin elite. In the gay garb of old Spain, caballeros and señoritas were on their way to torchlighted street dances that marked the annual fun festival.

  The narrow streets with their shops and stalls and lacy iron balconies shimmered with light, resounded with gay voices. Ragged kids, infected by the general excitement, dropped sputtering firecrackers behind passers-by and ducked into alleys in Spanish-shrilling gangs.

  I jostled my way into a sidewalk phone booth. I slugged the phone and tried the number of Jean Putnam’s one-time classmate, Lura Thackery.

  By the fifth or sixth ring, I’d decided the girl with whom Jean had shared an apartment was still out. Probably enjoying Gasparilla, unaware that Jean was dead.

  I gave the phone a couple more chances. I was hanging up on the final ring when a connection was made. A girl’s voice answered, breathlessly, as if she’d heard the phone and rushed into her apartment.

  “Miss Thackery?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Rivers,” I said.

  “Rivers? I’m afraid I don’t know you,” she said, too quickly.

  “I’d like to come over. I have something relating to Jean Putnam I must discuss with you.” “I’m very busy …”

  “I’ll have to insist, Miss Thackery. It’s urgent.” “Are you …” she hesitated, “the man Jean was going to see?” “Yes.”

  “Is she with you now?”

  “No, Miss Thackery. I’m afraid she isn’t. I have the address. I’ll be right over.”

  Five

  She was trying, not very successfully, to hide her agitation as she showed me into the small, tasteful apartment on Calmwaters Boulevard. She was a thin girl with an angular figure like a Vogue model. I don’t make a habit of reading Vogue, but she wasn’t unattractive, if you like them without meat.

  She turned and faced me squarely for the first time. Her features were fine-boned, almost delicate. Her skin had a gently transluscent quality on the surface. She had a wide, sensitive mouth and very arresting eyes. Eyes of the deepest blue, set in misty hollows. I sensed that she was the kind of girl who could weep softly over the images evoked by a tender, tragic little poem.

  Her slender hands reminded me of the subtle twitching of a butterfly’s wings when the insect is at rest.

  “When may I expect Jean, Mr. Rivers?”

  I took her hands and pressured her gently into a chair. Those large, haunting eyes lifted to make a study of me. The silence began to fill the apartment like a creeping fog. Lura Thackery wasn’t repelled by my face; she seemed suddenly to need the strength she saw there.

  “Is she badly hurt, Mr. Rivers?” she said at last.

  “Yes.”

  “She won’t be coming back at all, will she?” “No,” I said.

  The translucence of her face turned to wax. I decided she needed a sip of water, or something stronger, if I could find it.

  When I started to pull away, she gripped my hand tightly in refusal. Her nails dug into my skin as if I were her link with reality right now.

  “I told Jean it was none of her business!”

  “Do you know why she was coming to see me?” I asked.

  “No,” she said with a shake of her head that spilled the baby-fine, short-cut brown hair about her forehead and temples.

  She recoiled slightly when her eyes met mine. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I don’t think you’re leveling with me, Miss Thackery.”

  “But I am! Jean said she was going to see a private detective named Rivers. She wanted to explain, but I wouldn’t let her. I didn’t want to know her reasons!”

  Sobs began shaking her body like a sheaf of straw exposed to a cold, hard wind. “What will I do without Jean?” she moaned.

  I vaguely pitied and was repelled by her words. Lura was interpolating Jean Putnam’s death in terms of her own needs.

  “You might think of doing something about her,” I said.

  She shook her head, writhing in the chair as if the full horror were just now sinking in.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “Jean was a friend I can never replace. My parents … they hated each other. Neither wanted me. Divorced and chasing their own empty, foolish desires, they pretended I didn’t exist by placing me in school. I wanted to kill myself — until I met dear, kind Jean.”

  She mashed her knuckles against her mouth, shutting off the flow of words for a minute.

  Her shoulders gradually straightened. Her voice lowered its pitch. “You don’t understand, do you? You’ve a revealing face. You’re cruel enough to live in a cruel world. You’ve never needed people, been lonely, known bitterness or fear.”

  “No, honey,” I said. “Some of us have it perfect.”

  “Please don’t mock me. I can’t stand to be mocked or turned away from!”

  “
I’m sorry,” I said. And I really meant it. She couldn’t help the way she was put together, any more than the rest of us. How was I to know how much she’d struggled to change herself?

  It was no trick to get her to talk, on subjects of her choosing. Her heart broke with nostalgia as she told me how Jean had introduced her to a world in which there was fun, boys, dates for Saturday afternoon football games, occasional dances.

  In many close friendships, I reflected, there is a leader, a follower. Lura Thackery had been Jean Putnam’s devoted follower, aping her in manner and dress, content to let Jean run interference and carry the ball at the same time.

  Her reminiscence included the tale of an afternoon class-cutting so that she and Jean could secretly meet a couple of college boys. The date had included a late evening at a roadhouse strictly off-limits for students at the girls’ school.

  I assumed it was the wildest and most daring escapade of Lura Thackery’s young life. She’d treasure it as some men secretly delight in a wartime experience.

  “Jean was happy as an employee of Señora Isabella, wasn’t she?” I suggested, trying to steer the talk.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “The señora was a fine old lady, from all I’ve heard. She really can’t be blamed for feeling as she did about Keith Sigmon, her son-in-law.”

  I’d touched vitriol. It showed in Lura Thackery’s expressive eyes. “That rotter!” I was certain that Lura and Jean had gossiped about the rotter.

  “Women?” I suggested.

  “A parade of them, to repeat gossip. Once he latched onto the old señora’s daughter and got himself in a plush spot, Keith Sigmon let his true nature show.”

  “Then the old lady’s daughter and Sigmon weren’t happy?”

  “Not at all,” Lura said. “But his wife’s religion was against divorce. After Elena was born, Sigmon felt he was securely tied to the Sorolla y Batione fortune. He took almost openly to the role of a Caracas playboy. Why, at the time the old señora died …”

  “Yes, Lura?”

  “From talk that Jean overheard … she got the impression that Elena was alone in Caracas when she received news of her grandmother’s death. Keith and a girl named Ginny Jameson were — shacked up, I believe is the word — in a mountain cottage. Not very nice for a girl Elena’s age, was it? To have to seek out her father in such circumstances at a moment of bereavement …”