Slack Tide

by George Harmon Coxe

  “Tell us again about how the woman got away from you. You went in to get her dinner tray, right?”

  “That’s right,” Danaher said. “When I bent over to pick it up my back was turned, and that’s when she let me have it.”

  “Knock you out?”

  “No, but I went down. The door was open, and as she went out she flicked the switch. Maybe the darkness confused me. Maybe I was a little groggy and didn’t know it. Anyway, when I got in the hall she was gone.”

  “Couldn’t you hear her running?”

  “She was barefoot.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “Well, she had this nightgown on—” Danaher hesitated, and when he did not continue Terry said:

  “What else?”

  “That’s all, I guess,” Danaher said.

  “You mean that’s all the clothes she had?”

  “Well, she had a nightgown and a robe and slippers.” He sat up. “Look, Lieutenant. I don’t know what Kingsley had in mind. Maybe he wanted to make it tough for her in case she ever did give us the slip. I didn’t have anything to do with it. All I did was bring her meals.”

  Lunt said: “So she ran out the door and disappeared. What did you do?”

  “I started to search the other rooms and then I realized that was silly, so I ran to the head of the stairs and yelled down to Kingsley. At first he didn’t believe it, and we yelled back and forth—I don’t know exactly what we said—and finally he said to try the back stairs.”

  “So?”

  “So I did. When I got outside I started round the house, sort of beating the bushes, and then I headed for the boat slip because that’s where the dinghy was. I was about halfway there when I heard somebody call, and right after that the outboard started.”

  “You didn’t see Kingsley?” said Lunt.

  “Or the girl?” added Terry.

  “I didn’t see nothing. When I got to the inlet the dinghy was gone, and I couldn’t even hear the outboard any more. I went through the cruiser to make sure she wasn’t there, and when I finished, there still wasn’t anybody around, so I came back to the house.”

  “Okay,” Lunt said. “What does she look like?”

  “What?”

  “We want a description.”

  “Well, she was a good-looking dame. Blonde—”

  “How blonde?”

  “I’d say medium. Hair kind of long, green eyes, good figure. You know, kind of slender, but curvy too. Very nice.”

  “How tall would you say?”

  “Oh—five foot six maybe.”

  “Okay.” Lunt looked at Terry. “We’d better get a bulletin out on her and—”

  The sentence remained unfinished, and the sound that cut it short had a cracking, urgent quality that was unmistakable. Somewhere in the house a gun had been fired, and on the heels of the shot a woman screamed.

  The combination of those sounds had a terrifying quality that froze every nerve in MacLaren’s body. He could feel the muscles jerk as his back stiffened. Just as suddenly the reaction came, and he jumped to his feet. As he began to think, he saw that Terry had wheeled, his mouth still open. The chair fell over as Lunt bounced out of it, and then they were racing for the stairs, Terry leading by a step.

  Terry was still ahead when they gained the second floor, and now MacLaren realized that the two halls were joined in the shape of an L. One side, the front, faced the river. The other side faced the inlet, and as MacLaren gained the landing, he was aware that Earl Harwell was standing opposite an open door toward the rear. Lucille Baron had come out of her room near the head of the stairs, and now she stood looking across the corridor, her slender body stiff, her eyes big and frightened.

  Terry slid to a stop, Lunt beside him. He snapped a question at Lucille, and when she did not answer he took her arm and tried again.

  Still mute, Lucille pointed to a room in the center of the front hall. Terry and Lunt started marching. MacLaren followed, aware that Danaher was now at his side. As he stepped through the doorway, he found himself in a huge room that could only have been Oliver Kingsley’s.

  There were four windows, an adjoining bath, the door of which stood open, and an out-sized bed that had obviously been made to order. The only light came from a lamp on top of the leather-inlaid, knee-hole desk.

  Beside the desk, their faces in shadow, stood Carla Lewis and Neil Ackerman. Carla stood very straight, her face pale, her eyes staring at the gun in Ackerman’s hand, a long-barreled .22 Colt Woodsman. Ackerman was looking at the gun, too, a curious expression on his face, as though he was not sure quite what had happened or how the gun had gotten there. Now, aware of the others, he let the gun swing down in his hand and turned to face them.

  6

  AFTER THAT first long moment when the room was still and all motion seemed suspended, Lunt stepped forward and reached for the Woodsman. Ackerman, understanding the silent gesture, handed over the gun. Lunt thumbed out the clip and jacked the shell from the chamber. He glanced at Carla, back at Ackerman.

  “All right,” he said. “Who fired the shot?”

  The answers came simultaneously.

  “He did.”

  “She did.”

  Aware of what the other had said, both started to speak at once. Lunt cut them off sharply.

  “All right, all right…. Now—one at a time. You first, Miss Lewis.”

  Color began to seep back to Carla’s cheeks and there was a defiant tilt to her chin.

  “I thought I heard someone in here,” she said. “The door was partly open and I glanced in, and then I saw that the only light was the one here on the desk. I wondered why, and I came in, and then I saw that that drawer was open.” She pointed at the upper right-hand drawer of the desk which had been pulled out. “I also saw the keys, and as I was standing there wondering what it was all about, I heard this sound, and when I turned, Neil was standing right beside me.”

  She took a breath and said: “I hadn’t heard him. I didn’t know where he came from, and he startled me. When I turned, he grabbed at the gun—”

  “You had the gun?” Lunt said, interrupting.

  “Yes.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Well—Oliver had it, but I used it mostly.”

  “For what?”

  Carla had recovered enough of her composure to manage a small smile. “Have you ever heard the expression—plinking?”

  MacLaren knew what she meant. It was a local expression and referred to what was usually an inexpensive, single shot, .22 rifle used mostly for popping at tin cans and bottles or any small animal that happened to be around. He also remembered that he had heard someone over here on the island shooting in the afternoon and assumed that it was Carla. Lunt also was familiar with the term because he nodded.

  “Well, that’s what I use it for,” Carla said.

  “You heard someone in here—” Lunt let the thought dangle and tried again. “Where’s your room?”

  “Across the hall,” Carla said.

  “You heard someone in here, and you were so scared you didn’t dare come in without a gun,” Lunt said.

  “I don’t know how scared I was,” Carla said, “but I was nervous, and jumpy, and I was still upset about what happened to Oliver. I—I guess I just picked up the gun without thinking too much about it.”

  Lunt turned to Ackerman. “What were you doing in here?”

  “I wasn’t in here,” Ackerman said. “I mean at first.”

  “Oh?” Lunt gave the lawyer a moment of silent inspection. “Then you don’t agree with Miss Lewis’s story?”

  “She told it the wrong way around,” Ackerman said. “The door was part-way open, the way she said, and I looked in. I knew it was a woman and wondered what she was doing here. I came in to find out why she was fooling around the desk, and she wheeled on me with the gun. I didn’t know what she was going to do, so I grabbed at it, and when I yanked it out of her hand it went off.”

  Lunt
looked at Carla. “Still stick to your story, Miss Lewis?”

  “Certainly, because it’s the truth,” Carla said.

  “Maybe,” Lunt said. “But you both can’t be right.”

  Lieutenant Terry had been taking all this in silently, and now he moved to the desk drawer and examined it. “Hmm—a special job,” he said to no one in particular. “Steel-lined.”

  He pulled the key from the lock, and MacLaren could see that it was on a gold ring along with three or four other keys. Terry looked the room over and by now everyone was here. The blonde Lucille and Earl Harwell stood just across the threshold, and Danaher was watching from one side.

  “Where did these come from?” Terry held up the keys. When no one answered he said: “Well, whose are they?”

  “Kingsley’s,” Ackerman said.

  “Was he in the habit of lending them?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Maybe he forgot and left them in the lock,” Terry said, in a tone that was mildly sardonic. When he saw he was not going to get an answer, he said: “What did Kingsley keep in here?”

  “I never took an inventory,” Ackerman said. “He’s got a safe in the town house. He keeps some jewelry there, and stock certificates—things like that. But there’s one thing that should be here, at least I would expect it to be here.”

  “What?” Terry asked.

  “Ten thousand dollars.”

  “In cash?”

  Ackerman nodded. “Oliver always liked to have plenty of cash on hand.”

  “Bail money?” Terry said dryly. “Or for a pay-off, in case he slugged some poor guy when the banks were closed?” Ackerman made no answer and Terry did not pursue the thought. “How do you know he had ten thousand?”

  “He stopped at the bank in New York before we left the city.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “I got a glimpse of it. Ten thousand in new fifties with one of those paper straps the bank puts around money to make it easier to count.”

  “Where did he put it?”

  “In the inside pocket of his jacket. That’s the last I saw of it,” Ackerman said.

  Terry stepped back from the drawer. “Well it’s not here now…. Any of you know anything about it? Did any of you see it?” he persisted when there was no answer.

  “You didn’t find it on him?” Ackerman asked.

  “No.”

  “Well—if it’s not in one of his pockets he must have put it here.”

  Lunt turned and walked to the closet. He opened the doors and began going through the suits that hung there. Meanwhile, Terry had begun to pull the papers out of the drawer. From where MacLaren stood it seemed that two or three of these might have been stock certificates, but the rest had no distinguishing characteristics, and there was no money or jewelry, nothing of value that he could see.

  “We’d better make an inventory of this,” Terry said. “We’ll give you a receipt and take it along for the time being, if you have no objections.”

  Ackerman said it was all right with him, and now Lunt came back from the closet and gave the lieutenant a silent shake of his head to indicate that he had not found the money. As Terry began to make a list of the contents of the box, Lunt said:

  “Another question, Mr. Ackerman. Maybe we should have asked it before. Do you know about Kingsley’s will?”

  “In general terms,” Ackerman said.

  “What are they? Does he have any other relatives beside his wife? How much will the estate amount to?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Ackerman said. “Perhaps a million and a half after taxes. Maybe a little more. He has a sister living in Italy, married to some Italian count. She’ll get the bulk of the estate. His wife will get a third, his sister the rest, along with his personal property that includes some rather valuable pieces of jewelry his mother left him.”

  “Any other bequests?”

  “I think there’s five thousand to the Filipino couple, and another five thousand to Carla.”

  “Nothing to anyone else? Not even you?”

  Ackerman smiled. “No bequest, but I’m co-executor.”

  “With who else?”

  “His sister. And as the lawyer for the estate, I’ll be reasonably well paid for the work I do.”

  “How much?”

  Ackerman touched his mustache absently and considered the question. “It depends on how much work I do. Of course, the court has to approve my bills, but I would say on an estate of that size it might run between thirty and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Very nice,” Lunt said.

  Lieutenant Terry had completed his inventory, and now he turned to Ackerman. “Do you want to go over this?”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Ackerman said. Terry scribbled something on a piece of paper and signed his name. He handed it to Ackerman and stood up, and the lawyer said: “I’ll get you an envelope for that stuff.”

  As he left the room, Lunt turned to the gun that he had put on the desk. He handled it briefly, put it back, shoved the clip beside it, and glanced at Carla Lewis.

  “This was Kingsley’s gun,” he said, “but you’re the one who used it. Did you or Kingsley happen to have a permit?”

  “I have,” Carla said. “I got it from the First Selectman last summer. He said it would be no good outside the town, but for what I wanted it was all I’d need.”

  Lunt nodded. “All right, Miss Lewis. But just remember you can get hurt even with a plinking-gun. It’s usually a pretty good idea to be careful of these things.”

  “I will be in the future,” Carla Lewis said.

  Ackerman came back with a large envelope, and Terry stuffed the papers he had taken from the drawer inside. As he and Lunt moved to the door, he spoke again about seeing them in the morning and, with a nod to MacLaren, left the room.

  When they got to the edge of the inlet, Terry turned his flashlight on and swept it the length of the cruiser. Kingsley had done some excavating of the beach so that he had a miniature basin which would accommodate the boat without its stern projecting very far into the inlet. Alongside this, a catwalk had been built against the fender pilings, and, as the boat was now moored, this walk extended perhaps three or four feet beyond the end of the stern.

  The shoreline right here was rather sandy and, as Terry swept his light from the cruiser to the water, something apparently caught his eye. He grunted softly and bent over. When he straightened, he extended his hand palm up and in the center was a gold cigar-cutter.

  “Did Kingsley smoke cigars?” he said to MacLaren.

  “I never saw him with one,” MacLaren said.

  “Who did?”

  “I’ve seen Ackerman with a cigar. I don’t know about Harwell or Danaher.”

  When MacLaren had ferried them across the inlet, they waited on the floating dock while he moored the skiff and put the plastic cover on the outboard. The floodlights were still on, and when they had gained the main dock, Terry turned and said:

  “I didn’t notice it until we got over there where the light was good.”

  “Didn’t notice what?” MacLaren said.

  “That bruise on your cheek.”

  “Oh.”

  MacLaren touched his cheek lightly with his middle finger, and his reply was not unduly delayed. A reasonable excuse came quickly to mind, but other thoughts arose simultaneously that were less easy to dispose of. For he was wondering again about Ruth Kingsley, and why she had fled and where she was and how long it would be before the police picked her up. The minute she told her story they would come back to him, and what sort of excuse could he give for his silence?

  There was no answer to this, and he could not understand what aberration of the mind prevented him from telling the story now. It was not stubbornness. It was not with any thought that by withholding this information he could do any good to anyone. Reason, logic, common sense—all these told him that he was only making things worse, and yet there persisted a faint hope that he might be able
to find the girl first and learn why she had run away.

  The medical examiner had said that Kingsley had a wound on the back of his head. MacLaren did not think it could have been caused by the small piece of wood the girl had thrown. If this was so it must mean that he had been hit again. By Ruth Kingsley? Had she somehow managed to get back to the island? He did not believe this, and in the end he made a compromise with his conscience. In the morning, if the girl had not been found, he would tell the story and try to find some explanation as to why he had not told it in the first place. Until then, he would let things ride.

  “I got that when Ed Chaney woke me up,” he said. “I heard this knocking, and I reached for my shoes in the dark. When I bent over, I banged my face against the side of the bedside table.”

  “Scraped your knuckle too, didn’t you?” Lunt said.

  MacLaren was ready for this one because he had seen the scraped knuckle before and had hoped that it would not be noticed by anyone else.

  “Scraped knuckles are an occupational hazard of any boatyard. It happens all the time.”

  MacLaren wondered if he saw a gleam of doubt in Terry’s bespectacled gaze, but there was no change in his expression as he thanked MacLaren for his help. He said he would see him in the morning, and then, in the same even tone, he said:

  “It may be a little different then. You’ll be talking for the record. You can be thinking it over,” he added, “in case you want to change any part of your story.”

  “Change it?”

  “What the lieutenant means,” Lunt said, “is that there could be a little hole or two in it here and there—at least the way it sounded to us. In the morning it might be a good idea to tell the truth—all of it.”

  This had all been said in a very conversational tone. They said good night the same way before they started for the corner of the building and the car that was parked behind it.

  7

  WHEN DON MACLAREN had turned off the floodlight and locked the door, he went upstairs. Not bothering with the living-room light, he crossed to the bedroom and started to peel off his sweater. Then, abruptly, he stopped and sat on the edge of the bed, his glance touching the pajamas and robe he had put out for Ruth Kingsley.