The Kissed Corpse

by Brett Halliday

  Whirling from the window, I asked directly: “Why was Young bringing you with him tonight?”

  “Because I asked to come.” She spoke impatiently.

  “Do you generally keep your dates under a cottonwood tree on rainy nights?”

  “We agreed to meet there this afternoon … before it started raining. I came down on a bus from Juarez late this afternoon.” She paused, then went on coolly: “Mrs Young has a very jealous nature and doesn’t approve of me. Naturally, it was best for her not to know Les and I were meeting tonight.”

  “You made the arrangement this afternoon? Where?”

  “I don’t see how that can concern you.”

  I didn’t tell her that it was going to concern the police. Instead, I persisted:

  “What time did you see Young this afternoon?”

  She didn’t answer for a time. I struck another match and started toward the bed. She was lying back as if she had suddenly grown weary.

  “Well … what time?” I asked again.

  She sprang up to a sitting position. “Why the cross-examination?” she flared. “It seems to me you’re the one who should be answering questions. Why are you pretending to be Les? Where did you get that note you showed the girl downstairs? What’s it all about?”

  “Don’t try to be naive all of a sudden,” I grated.

  She stood up and went to the window and I walked over and stood beside her. She was tight-lipped and quiet. Her shoulder was touching my arm. I was thinking hard about her heavily rouged lips, and about the rouge found on Young’s dead face and mouth.

  Suddenly my hands gripped her shoulders and shook her. “You’d better come clean and answer some questions. This isn’t any time for smart repartee.”

  Her flesh was softer under my fingers than I had supposed it would be. She let me shake her without offering any resistance.

  The faint moonlight touched her face. Her red lips mocked at me and there was a gurgle of laughter in her throat.

  “You wouldn’t be wanting to take … advantage of me … locked up in a place like this, would you?”

  She was taunting me and I knew it. She was one of those women who recognize a man’s feelings before he, himself, is aware of them. Her words brought me to a realization that beneath my anger another emotion surged.

  My fingers were tight on her shoulders, but I wasn’t shaking her any more. She was leaning back, laughing up into my face, a shaky, baffling sort of laugh. The pliant warmth of her body was pressed close to me, and her lips parted beneath mine in the semi-darkness.

  Perhaps there is a psychological tie-up between the presence of danger and the sex-urge. Many psychologists argue that this is true. Explain it any way you want to … or let it pass … but instead of hurling leading questions at a woman who might be a murderess, I was holding her in my arms and kissing her—when a key grated in the lock.

  The beam of a flashlight was on us before we were wholly untangled. Two uniformed Mexican policemen were dimly outlined in the back-glow of a candle. One of them spoke in broken English:

  “You weel both come weeth me to ze jail in Juarez.”

  Laura clung to my arm as I stepped forward and said heatedly: “You can’t arrest us. What the hell have we done? We’re American citizens and I demand …”

  Both policemen held revolvers. “Eeet ees for murder,” the man continued. “For ze murder of anozzer gringo … Meester Leslie Young.”

  7

  Laura’s head snapped up and she gasped: “Leslie Young? Murdered!”

  “Si, Senorita.” The Mexican nodded gravely while I wondered if she could possibly be putting on an act. If so, she was doing a good job of it, popping excited questions at the policeman to which he responded with a stolid shaking of his head.

  Then they were herding us out and down the long hall to the stairway. Holding my arm tightly, Laura whispered:

  “You knew about Les, didn’t you? How? Tell me what all this means.”

  I concentrated on keeping my mouth shut and my eyes open. I wasn’t worried about the arrest, of course. Burke would fix that up with the Juarez police. But I hated to be hustled away from the hacienda with so many unanswered questions hanging fire.

  I didn’t learn any of the answers on the short trip out to the front door, which Pasqual held open unsmilingly. The curtains were tightly drawn across both archways leading off the hall, and there was silence inside as we were pushed past.

  Outside, I tried to argue with our captors, but Mexican cops are hell on wheels when it comes to carrying out orders. They hustled Laura into the front seat of the police car they had driven down, put me in the driver’s seat of my car while a cop got in the back. He ordered me to follow along behind the other car, and Laura leaned out to wave mockingly as they pulled away from in front of the hacienda.

  Nothing happened on the road to Juarez. I pulled up behind the police car in front of the Juarez station, and my shadow and I got out behind Laura and her escort.

  The first person I saw inside the police station was Jerry Burke. He was lounging against the railing talking to the officer in charge, and he blinked his eyes and stared when Laura and I were led in.

  Then he began laughing.

  That gave me the idea he had engineered the entire arrest and it made me sore as hell. I didn’t laugh. I said:

  “Maybe it’s funny to you, but my sense of humor is out of joint.”

  He quit laughing and did some rapid explaining to the officer in charge of the desk. The Mexican knew Burke, and very politely turned us over to him with the explanation that he knew nothing about the matter except a telephone from the Hacienda del Torro to send men to arrest a couple of people who were impersonating Mr. and Mrs. Leslie Young of El Paso. While the cops were waiting for us to be brought in it seemed that Burke had just happened to turn up at the police station in the nick of time to identify us.

  While Burke was shaking hands and matching the Mexican’s politeness, I moved over beside Laura and said:

  “You’d better come along with us and answer some questions that Jerry will want to ask you.”

  She looked through me. “So you’re a stooge for the cops?”

  Burke was coming across the room toward us. I turned to him and said:

  “Let me present Miss Laura Yates. She messed things up for me at the hacienda and she’s admittedly been friendly with Young and if she kissed a man the stain would stay on his mouth a long time.”

  He glanced at my mouth and grinned. “Is that what you were proving when you accumulated that war paint?”

  I got out my handkerchief and rubbed my lips. The shock of being arrested had caused me to forget that moment in the barred room just before the police came.

  Burke didn’t rub it in. He went on casually: “I drove over in my car. Suppose we all go out to your place to talk this thing over, Asa.”

  “You’d better bring Miss Yates in your car,” I told him stiffly.

  Jerry Burke turned on her with that slow grin of his that spreads all over his square face. Her white evening gown looked incongruous as hell in that drab setting but she was just as self-possessed as ever.

  I went out and got in my car, drove over the Sante Fe Bridge and out to the bungalow where Nip and Tuck pretended they were totally disinterested in my return, but gave away the show because they couldn’t control their tails.

  I let them out for a run in the yard, went into the bathroom where the mirror showed a faint crimson stain still on my mouth. I went to work with a soapy cloth and had it cleaned off by the time Burke pulled up in front.

  He and Laura were in the front room when I came out. They’d let the pups in, and Laura was squatting down with her full skirt spread out on the floor, making up to Tuck.

  It was disgusting to see the way he squirmed and fawned on her when she petted him. Nip, though, came to me when I sat at a table and poured myself a drink. I’ve always thought she had more discernment and dignity than her frowsy mate.

 
; Burke sat in the chair opposite me and told me to spill it. Laura played with the pup, pretending not to listen while I told Burke everything that had happened from the time I picked her up in the rain until we were brought into the Juarez police station, omitting only an explanation of the lipstick on my mouth, and, for Laura’s benefit, not mentioning seeing him across the line.

  When I finished, Burke got up and paced the floor slowly for a couple of minutes. He didn’t seem to be disturbed … only curious. His eyes went to Laura several times, but she paid not the slightest attention to him.

  He came back to his chair and sat down, got his pipe going. Laura was sitting on the rug and Tuck’s head was in her lap, his eyes contentedly closed.

  Jerry Burke turned his chair to face her and said: “Now, Miss Yates.”

  “Your stooge has told you my part of it.” Her gaze met his frankly.

  I poured myself another drink and kept quiet.

  Burke frowned and asked: “How well did you know Leslie Young?”

  “Quite well.”

  “Enough so his wife was jealous of your intimacy?”

  “I don’t like your use of the word ‘intimacy’. Les and I were rather friendly.”

  “Friendly enough for Mrs. Young to object?”

  Laura laughed coldly. “That doesn’t mean anything. Myra Young was jealous of Leslie’s shadow.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “This afternoon.” Laura’s gaze was steadily on Burke’s face.

  “Where?”

  “In the canyon, about a mile above his house.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “There isn’t much to tell. We’ve met there often to avoid an unpleasant scene with Myra. I drove out in my car and he met me on horseback. He called me about noon, told me about the O’Toole note, and we arranged to meet. When we met he told me of the telephoned warning for him to stay away from the hacienda, which naturally made him more determined to go. It sounded interesting and I asked him to take me along. He agreed to pick me up in his car just the other side of Zaragoza. I was waiting for him when your friend came along and picked me up.” She nodded toward me with a half-smile.

  “Leslie Young was alive when you left him this afternoon?” Burke persisted.

  “Of course. Would I have been waiting out in the rain for a man whom I knew to be dead? Don’t be absurd. You haven’t told me …”

  “You’re telling me, Miss Yates. What time was it when you last saw Leslie Young?”

  “About two-thirty. It was approximately three o’clock when I reached my apartment on Tularosa.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Almost two months … ever since I’ve been in El Paso. As a matter of fact, I came here from the east particularly to contact him.”

  Burke puffed on his pipe and said: “Suppose you explain that.”

  She shrugged her shoulders again. “There’s nothing in our relationship that I have any reason to hide. I’m a free-lance writer … specializing in Sunday newspaper feature stories for eastern syndicates. About three months ago Leslie Young submitted an article to one of the syndicates which I represent. It contained interesting subject matter but was amateurishly done. The editor turned it over to me for a rewrite job and I had to get in touch with the author to clear up certain obscure points. His reply concerning himself gave me the idea that he would be a good source of material for future articles and I suggested collaboration. He welcomed the idea so I came here as soon as I was free to work up a series of Mexican articles with him. We worked together harmoniously until his wife got the idea that our relationship was more than a literary collaboration.”

  “Was it?”

  “No.”

  “Is it your custom to kiss your collaborators when meeting them secretly?”

  She wasn’t at all disturbed. She answered serenely: “If I like them well enough … and if it will help me get material I need for an article.”

  “Why did you spoil Baker’s impersonation of Young before he had a chance to get a line on Young’s murderer?”

  Laura glanced over at me and spoke to both of us. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t know Les had been murdered. I didn’t know why another man … a perfect stranger … was trying to pass himself off as Les. I felt I might earn the O’Toole gratitude by exposing the fraud at once … and might get a good feature yarn from her.”

  “Do you know either of the Americans at the hacienda?”

  She shook her head with a frown. “No. But the disguised roughneck who said he knew Mr. and Mrs. Young seemed vaguely familiar. Good clothes couldn’t hide the piratical look he has.”

  The telephone rang. Burke answered it while Laura got up after giving Tuck’s head a farewell pat, and came over to stand close to me. Laura sat down in a chair close to me and looked as if she wanted to ask some questions, but I forestalled her by picking up the evening Free Press and glancing at the front page.

  Jerry came back from the phone rubbing his chin meditatively. “It begins to tie up,” he said. “I’ve had the Mexican authorities checking on Michaela O’Toole. She is the daughter of an American renegade, Michael O’Toole, and her mother is a Maya Indian from Yucatan. She’s a radical firebrand, an active leader in the Young Socialistic Movement of Mexico which has been clamoring for the nationalization of all the natural resources of the country. There’s a link … some sort of a link … between Raymond Dwight, Michaela O’Toole, and Leslie Young’s murder.”

  “How and when was Les killed?” Laura asked.

  “Shot through the head with a .25 automatic about a mile up the canyon from his cabin at approximately three o’clock this afternoon,” Burke told her bluntly.

  “A mile up the canyon?” Laura dropped her air of bravado and self-confidence for the first time since I’d met her.

  Burke nodded. “His horse was tied to a sapling and he had evidently met and talked with someone in a car.”

  Laura looked at Burke, turned away quickly from his piercing eyes. For a moment she was silent, and I could tell that she was doing some fast thinking. After a while she said:

  “Then … he must have been shot just after I drove away.”

  “With your lipstick still hot on his mouth,” Jerry Burke agreed drily.

  “Les was like that. He didn’t believe in impersonal friendship between the sexes.” Laura also spoke drily but there was a faint flush on her cheeks.

  “Did you see anything out of the ordinary? Did he say anything to indicate he might be in danger?”

  “There was only the anonymous telephone call warning him to stay clear of the hacienda. He joked about that. He was sitting under a tree smoking a cigarette when I left him.”

  “He was lying under the tree when Asa and the pups found him a little before four o’clock.”

  “There goes a swell batch of feature material,” Laura said disgustedly, and I had the feeling that Young’s death meant exactly that to her and no more.

  Which shouldn’t have mattered to me, but somehow it did.

  “Suppose you run Miss Yates home?” Burke suggested to me. “I’ll probably still be here when you get back … if it isn’t too late.”

  “It won’t be late,” I told him, getting up. Laura went out with me to my car and told me she lived in the 3800 block on Tularosa. It was a fifteen-minute drive from my place and we didn’t say anything during those fifteen minutes.

  She pointed out an old frame house that had been made over into housekeeping apartments, and I pulled up in front. She got her overnight bag out of the back while I sat glumly behind the wheel.

  She affected me in a perversely different way from any woman I’d ever met. I was tremendously attracted by her, and ashamed because I was. It was something I couldn’t analyze. Just one of those things that are. I’m pretty sure she knew how I felt.

  She came around to my side of the car and put her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry I spoiled things for you at the haci
enda by speaking out of turn.” Her voice was warmer, more nearly human than it had been before.

  “And I’m sorry the cops came in when they did.” I didn’t know I was going to say that. I didn’t know why I said it. Just one of those inane things that a man says and doesn’t mean. Or … maybe I did mean it. Looking back, I guess maybe I did.

  Her fingers tightened on my arm. There was that same pulsing warmth I had felt before. She said:

  “I’ll be seeing you. I’m going to do some personal checking on Leslie’s murder.”

  “Do you think it’ll make a feature story?” I asked bitterly.

  “It might.” She was gone down the path and a mocking laugh floated over her shoulder to me.

  Burke was sitting in the living room when I got back. He got up and yawned when I came in the door.

  “It doesn’t add up, Asa. Why did Michaela O’Toole write that come-on note to Young? Who warned him not to go … and why? O’Toole and her political faction are ardently opposed to any payment for expropriated oil property … what’s her hook-up with Dwight and Hardiman? How well did Dwight know Leslie Young? Was Young alive when Laura Yates drove away from the canyon this afternoon?”

  I dropped moodily into a chair. “Why ask me? I’m not an oracle.”

  “They are important questions, Asa,” he said. “It’s a touchy business … digging into international relationships.” He looked moody and prepossessed, and I had the feeling that he was not talking to me, but to himself.

  “What,” I asked him, “did you find out on your trip to the hacienda tonight?”

  “Not a damned thing,” he admitted. “I was watching through a window and saw you jerked out and taken upsairs. And I overheard them phoning for the police to come for you, so I knew you weren’t in any actual danger. That’s why I motioned up to you to let matters take their course.” He yawned and got up, reaching for his hat.

  “We’ll be visiting McKelligon’s Canyon tomorrow,” he said, starting for the door. “There are some questions I want to ask Mrs. Young and Raymond Dwight.”