False colors

by Powell, Richard, 1908-1999

  "Wise guy," McCann said, disgustedly. "She'll make the

  charge, all right. It's just that she's tired and confused, and I let her take a phone call that tired her out some more, and—"

  "What kind of a phone call?"

  "Where do you get oh 0 , asking me questions? And speaking of phone calls, I hear you got away with one a little before we showed up. What did you do, ask somebody to turn the heat on Miss Raymond or buy her off?"

  "You have a nasty mind."

  "Yeah. That's why I sometimes get the right answers. I—"

  Somebody rapped on the closed bedroom door. The cop opened it, peered out. Then he stepped back and Kay Raymond waltzed in. She had draped a white silk scarf around her neck, probably to hide the marks left by the strangler. You might have thought she would be a bit superstitious by now about having silk scarves around her neck. But perhaps women have no time for any superstition that might keep them from looking their best.

  "Oh, poor dear Pete," she crooned. "I'm so terribly sorry you've been suspected. I do hope you'll forgive me and put it down to the shock of what happened."

  I stared at her and made fish-out-of-water sounds. Things were moving a little too fast for me.

  "You wanna he down?" McCann asked me in a rasping voice. "That seems to be quite a jolt."

  "Please be nice to him," Kay said. "He's had an awful experience."

  "Hah!" McCann said. "I had the awful experience. No charges, Miss Raymond?"

  "Of course not. As soon as I remembered things clearly, I knew that poor Pete didn't attack me. He probably saved my life."

  McCann said, "And you got no idea who tried to choke you?"

  "A burglar, I suppose."

  "You want to give me a list of what this burglar took?"

  "I don't think he could have taken anything before Pete frightened him off."

  "How do you know?" McCann said. "You ain't had a chance to look around."

  "I'm sure he couldn't have had time to steal anything," Kay said brightly. "But if I find anything missing, I'll let you know."

  McCann closed his notebook with a snap, like an alligator missing a meal by an inch. "Okay, Meadows," he said. "I got a nasty mind and I'll bet I had the right answer. Come on, Joe. Let's clear out." He trudged heavily out of the bedroom with the cop following.

  I shut the door so I wouldn't be overheard and turned back to Kay. "That was quite an act you put on," I said. "You never for one minute thought I was the strangler."

  "Of course not," she said, giving me a smile that would have looked natural on one of her African masks.

  "You were paying me back for last night?"

  "Oh, partly."

  "Who was it tried to knock you off?"

  "That burglar you walked in on, of course. Don't forget you owe me something. When I started to come to, I saw him going for you with a knife. I'm afraid I got hysterical. But that screaming may have saved your life."

  "Don't give me that burglar stuff. You know perfectly well who the guy with the knife was."

  "I couldn't be less interested."

  "He was tricked into coming here by a phone call. I trailed him. He went for me because he thought he was being framed."

  "How complicated it all is," Kay said, yawning. "Really too much for poor little me."

  "Was it a frameup? Did you fake those marks on your throat?"

  "You're a suspicious creature, aren't you? By the way, I don't think we should stay in here any longer with the door closed. Your friends in the living room might wonder about us."

  "Friends? What friends?"

  "Nancy Vernon and Sheldon Thorp."

  "Let me out of here," I said, heading for the door.

  "Yes," she cooed, "you wouldn't want to worry Miss Vernon.

  Such a sweet girl. Smart, too. Imagine her being clever enough to bring me a little gift."

  That detective, McCann, didn't have a nasty mind at all. Just a practical one. Kay had been bought off. "I see it now," I muttered. "You've got your hands on that painting again."

  "And this time," Kay said, "I also have my hands on a bill of sale. I always say it's better to be legal—if you can."

  10.

  I brushed past her and opened the door and went into the living room and found Nancy and Sheldon. Everybody else had gone. Nancy was sitting on the edge of the couch, her fingers laced together as if it was a struggle to keep them out of somebody's hair. Sheldon was studying the bronze animal mask from the Ivory Coast.

  When I came in, Nancy jumped up and took a couple of quick steps toward me. Then she stopped and said, "Are you all right, Pete?"

  "I'll live," I said.

  Sheldon turned. "Hello there, old man. Hear you had quite an evening. All's well that ends well, what?"

  He looked very poised and superior, and he made me feel like something a bum would throw away. "Let's not be so jolly," I said. "I'm not sure that anything has ended and I don't know what's good about it."

  "You might at least thank Nancy," Sheldon said. "She went to a lot of trouble to get you out of this."

  Nancy said, "But you ought to get the credit, Sheldon. After all it was your idea."

  I was saying the wrong things but I couldn't help myself. "Thank you both very much," I said. "Now I will pack up my criminal record and go home, if nobody minds."

  "Take it easy, old man," Sheldon said. "Whatever happened, nobody's going to hold it against you."

  Behind me, Kay said in a hoarse but rather cheerful whisper, "If I can forgive him, you people should be able to. I don't suppose you'd all like to stay for a drink?"

  "This late at night," I said, "I never touch cyanide."

  "No, we'd better go," Sheldon said. "Although some time I'd like to drop in at your shop, Miss Raymond, and see if you have any more bronze masks like these. I did some hunting in Africa after the war and saw some of these masks being used in tribal ceremonies. Always wanted a few. But the beggars wouldn't part with them. Are you ready, Nancy?"

  "I've been ready to leave ever since we set foot in the place," Nancy said.

  We headed for the door and Kay opened it for us. "Thanks so much for the painting," she said. Then, before I could move, she leaned forward and kissed me. "Just to prove there are no hard feelings," she said.

  I looked at Nancy and saw that Kay couldn't have been more wrong about the hard feelings. We took the elevator downstairs and Nancy said she wanted to go home. I wasn't sure whether she wanted me to trail along or not, but I stayed around anyway. We started walking toward Nancy's house on Delancey Place.

  "How did you get in on this?" I asked Sheldon.

  "Just by chance, old man. I dropped in at Nancy's house tonight, to see if anything interesting had happened since the painting was stolen. While I was there, you called. So Nancy told me the story and asked what we ought to do."

  I didn't like the way he said "we." It was too possessive. "You told him everything?" I asked Nancy.

  She jabbed an elbow warningly into my ribs, and said, "Yes, of course. I told him Kay Raymond tried to buy the painting yesterday afternoon, and that we suspected her of stealing it last night. And I told him how we got it back."

  "Can't imagine why she wanted the thing so badly," Sheldon

  said. "After all, it's only a smear of color. Do you have any ideas, Pete?"

  Nancy's elbow nudged me again. Apparently she didn't want me to mention the faked Van Gogh. "I don't have any ideas," I said. "You never know what will appeal to a person."

  "Well, anyway," Sheldon said, "when Nancy told me the story, I wondered if we could buy off that playmate of yours."

  "Don't call her my playmate."

  "All right, Pete," Sheldon said, chuckling, "I admit it didn't seem like play."

  "Sheldon," I said, "we'll get along better if you'll quit giving me the needle."

  "Suppose I don't want to get along better?"

  "Oh, stop it, both of you," Nancy said.

  "I'm sorry," Sheldon said. "Pete and
I have known each other a long time. Now and then we get on each other's nerves. Go ahead and tell Pete how you had that brilliant idea about the painting."

  "It was really your idea, Sheldon."

  "Was it? I'd forgotten. Anyway, we decided it might be worth while to try to get Miss Raymond on the phone, and offer her that painting if she would withdraw any charges against you."

  "And you gave me a key to the shop yesterday," Nancy said. "So we hurried down there and found the painting under your desk pad, the way you said, and telephoned that woman from there."

  "She was willing to listen to reason," Sheldon said. "In fact, if we hadn't made the offer, I think she would have suggested it."

  "So that's all there was to it," Nancy said. "Now what about you, Pete?"

  "Why don't I make it easy for everybody to believe?" I said. "Why don't I merely say that I dropped up to see Kay and passion got the better of me and when she resisted I tried to choke her."

  "Come on now, Pete," Sheldon said. "A few things may have

  got the better of you during your life, but I don't think passion is one of them."

  "Besides," Nancy said, sniffing, "I doubt that she would have resisted."

  "After we bought off Miss Raymond," Sheldon said, "she told the policeman in the room that it must have been a burglar, and that you must have frightened him away."

  "I'm willing to tell you that story, too," I said. "But I didn't think you'd believe it."

  Sheldon said, "Could Miss Raymond have faked the whole thing? She knows you're coming to visit her. She wants to get something on you, so she can blackmail you for that painting. So she takes an eyebrow pencil and marks up her throat as if she had been strangled and—"

  "It wasn't makeup," Nancy said. "I would have spotted that."

  "Then she made real marks on her throat."

  Nancy shook her head. "I don't think a woman would do that. Especially not one who considers herself attractive. Did you see any trace of a burglar, Pete?"

  It was my turn to nudge her with an elbow. "No trace."

  We reached Nancy's house on Delancey Place, and she invited us in for a drink. I had never been in the Vernon house before, and it impressed me. There was a nice highboy in the living room with its original brasses intact, and a set of Chippendale chairs that William Savery wouldn't have been ashamed of making. Around the walls were portraits of assorted Vernons and Van Rensselaers, looking as stern as if somebody had just said New York was a better place to live than Philadelphia.

  Nancy pointed out a liquor cabinet to Sheldon and suggested that he go to work on the drinks, and asked me to come into the kitchen to help her get the ice.

  I followed her to the kitchen, and said, "Where's William? I feel I ought to meet him."

  "He got worn out keeping an eye on me while Sheldon was here, earlier this evening. He doesn't approve of Sheldon."

  "I gathered from the pokes in the ribs that you didn't tell Sheldon the whole story."

  "I didn't tell him about that copy of a Van Gogh we found under the top painting. And I don't want you telling him."

  "Why not? Afraid Sheldon might go around talking about it?"

  "Well, he might. The fewer people know about the trouble Nick is in, the more chance he has to get out of it."

  "Don't bet on his chances," I said. "You know who was at Kay Raymond's when I got there? Nick."

  Nancy studied my face, and said finally, "You don't like Nick but I know you wouldn't make that up. Tell me about it."

  I gave her the whole story, including the reasons why I was sure Nick hadn't been the one who choked Kay.

  When I finished, she said breathlessly, "Oh but Pete, this is getting serious!"

  "Yeah. I figured that out a while back."

  "But was it really meant to be a murder?"

  "All I know is that it was meant to be a frameup."

  "Poor Nick."

  "You mean poor Pete. I was the one who ended up framed."

  "Poor Pete. Now do you feel better?"

  "No. By the way, while we were walking here, you said you didn't think Kay staged the thing. I'm not so sure of that."

  "Well, I'm not either, now. But when I said that, I didn't know Nick was involved. Kay wouldn't have made a lot of ugly marks on her throat to frame you, Pete. She would rip her dress off one shoulder and let out a yell. But she might have to go to more trouble to frame Nick, since he didn't know her."

  Sheldon came out just then to see why we were taking so long, and we got the ice and returned to the living room. I had a Scotch on the rocks, and Sheldon had a plain Scotch, and Nancy poured a tiny splash of rye into a highball glass and filled it with ice and ginger ale. I couldn't help wondering what Philadelphia debs were coming to; in my day they would have put in a tiny splash of ginger ale and filled the glass with rye.

  "Let's settle a few tilings about this painting," Sheldon said. "Nancy told me that, at the Clothesline Art Exhibit, Ludwig Lassiter acted as if he wanted to buy the thing. Do you really think he wanted it, Pete?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "If he wanted it, he had a good reason," Sheldon said. "I've bought a lot of stuff through Lassiter. He doesn't make mistakes."

  "Maybe he didn't want it, though."

  Sheldon studied the amber color in his glass. "You know what?" he said genially. "I think you two are holding out on me. You have a nice little mystery and you want to keep it private."

  "It isn't much of a mystery," Nancy said.

  "Come on, now," Sheldon said. "An absolutely top dealer shows an interest in buying the picture and then walks off when you two come along. The artist raises hell when he finds you're giving his pictures a one-man show. A very clever woman steals the painting, and then after you recover it, she pulls a blackmail trick to get it again. Not much of a mystery?"

  "Why would you want to bother with it?" Nancy asked.

  "The chase element gets me," Sheldon said. "I like hunting things, especially if there's enough danger to make it interesting. Did I ever tell you about the hunting I did in Africa?"

  "Yes," I said, hoping to head it off.

  "The hell with you, Pete," he said cheerfully. "Sit back and be polite."

  I sat back glumly, and off we went on safari. It was quite a story and he told it well. The worst part of it was, it was probably all true. If you thought he exaggerated the size of the animals he had killed, you could go look at them in the habitat groups he had given to the Academy of Natural Sciences. After the war he had been restless and had gone hunting in Africa for excitement. Stalking animals was fun, but shooting them at a couple of hundred yards was too easy. The real fun was coaxing animals to stalk you. For instance, a wounded Cape buffalo in high grass could be quite entertaining. Twice he had deliberately wounded a buffalo instead of bringing him down, just to get a little excitement. But even that became boring at last. After all, there was no way the animal could win if you didn't make a mistake.

  The moral of all this was that in hunting, the more risk, the more fun. A hunt involving people could produce more risk than any other kind. So Sheldon would like to get in on our hunting expedition.

  Nancy had been quite taken by darkest Africa, but I saw she was doubtful about letting Sheldon help us. Probably she was afraid he might decide that the most interesting person to chase was Nick Accardi. "I wish there was a way you could help," she said, "but we've told you everything we know."

  "Well, I'll be hanging around if you find out anything more," Sheldon said. "How about it, Pete, shall we let Nancy get a little sleep tonight?"

  I said okay, and we left the house together. His car was parked in a garage on the way to my apartment and I walked there with him. He was in high spirits and I knew why. He wasn't really interested in our game of cops and robbers. He had a hunt of his own under way and, thanks to the opening I had given him that evening, he had sneaked up fairly close to the quarry. He was still chasing Nancy. If he got her it would be over my dead body.

  Of co
urse, considering what had happened to me lately, maybe someone would arrange that for him.

  11.

  After leaving Sheldon I walked back to my place on Walnut Street. It has adjoining doors, one leading into the shop and the other opening to stairs leading up to my apartment. Both doors are set back in a small entry. As I turned into the entry a shadow moved. I started to duck, and a guy grabbed me and pasted a hand over my mouth.

  "It's okay," he said softly. "It's me, Nick Accardi. Relax." He took his hand away from my mouth.

  I swallowed a couple of times, and said, "I usually pick other ways to relax than having guys jump at me around corners."

  "You're in a game where you better watch how you turn corners. If you're smart you'll take them wide. Can we step inside a minute?"

  I unlocked the door to the stairway and we went inside and I asked him up to the apartment.

  "Let's talk here," he said. "I only got a couple things to say. Look, I'm sorry I went for you with that knife. Only how was I to know you were leveling with me? I asked the woman who runs my rooming house and she backed up your story. What I want to know is, why did you give me back my knife and let me beat it?"

  "I thought you were being framed. You went to Miss Raymond's place because of a phone call. The way you wrote down her address proved you hadn't been there before, and maybe you didn't even know her. I didn't think you'd use a silk scarf if you wanted to knock somebody off."

  "You know who that phone call was from?"

  "Your landlady said it was a man."

  Nick said grimly, "He said his name was Peter Meadows."

  "I couldn't have made it."

  "Now wait. You could have made it. But you didn't, or you would have followed through on the frameup. You'd have set the cops on me."

  "How do you know I didn't?"

  "I hung around for two hours across from where I live, watching for them. Cops always do the natural thing first. When they want a guy, they go to his home. Maybe you know I'm on parole. They have my address. Well, the cops didn't show, so you didn't tell them."