The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®
Page 18
Helena broke into my thoughts by inquiring, “How do you plan to get rid of Lawrence?”
Glancing at my watch, I saw it was seven p.m. “I don’t tonight. He’ll keep in his icebox another day. But we’ve got some scouting to do. Better put on a jacket, because it may be chilly along the lake.”
I drove the car on our scouting trip. Our tourist court was not far from Berwyn Summit, and I cut straight east to the University of Chicago. Then I turned south along Lake Michigan until we began to run into beach areas.
At eight-thirty Helena said, “Shouldn’t we be thinking about dinner soon?”
“No,” I said shortly. Ever since I’d lifted that burlap bag I hadn’t been able to think of anything but the iced corpse beneath it, and the thought didn’t induce much appetite.
I drove as slowly as the traffic would let me, checking signs on the left side of the road. Finally, about nine o’clock, I spotted one which looked promising. It was on a wooden arch over an unpaved road and read: “Crcstwood Beach, Private Road.”
We were past it before I spotted it, however. I had to drive on another mile before I could turn around.
Crestwood Beach proved as promising as it had looked. The beach itself was but a narrow strip of sand, and clustered along its edge were some two dozen modest summer cottages. I noted with satisfaction lights showed in not more than a half dozen.
Parking next to one of the dark cottages, I examined it carefully before getting out of the car. Apparently its owner’s summer vacation had not started yet, for the windows were still boarded up. The cottages either side of it, each a good fifty yards away, were dark also.
I climbed out of the car and told Helena to get out also.
Together we walked the scant fifty feet down to the water. As I had hoped, each of the cottages had its own small boat dock. Nothing much, merely a series of planks laid across embedded steel rods, but adequate for an outboard boat.
“Think you can find this same place alone tomorrow night?” I asked Helena.
“If I have to.”
I pointed out over the calm, moonlit water. “I’ll be out there somewhere in an outboard. I won’t be able to tell one beach from another in the dark, so you’re going to have to signal me with the car lights. We’ll set a time for the first signal, and you blink them twice. Just on and off fast, because we don’t want any of the other cottagers out here to come investigating. Then regularly every five minutes blink them again. Got it?”
“Yes.”
We went back to the car and I drove back under the wooden arch to the main road again. A mile and a half northwest of Crcstwood Beach I stopped once more, this time at a sign which read: “Boats for rent.” This sign too was at the entrance to an unpaved road. I followed the road only about fifty yards before coming to the boat livery.
The proprietor was a grizzled old man in his seventies who chewed tobacco. He sat on the screened porch of a small cottage reading a Bible by the light of a Coleman gasoline lantern.
“They’re all taken tonight, mister,” he said as soon as I put my feet on the steps. He shot a stream of tobacco juice at a cuspidor halfway across the porch. “Everybody heard the large-mouths is biting.”
Then he let out a cackle. “Don’t know who starts them rumors. Look at that lake. Calm as glass. They’ll come in with a mess of six-inch perch.” He spat again.
“You booked up for tomorrow night?” I asked through the screen-door.
“Nope.” He got up and opened the door for me.
Walking onto the porch, I said, “Then I’d like to reserve a boat. When’s best to go out?”
“Ain’t much point till it gets dark. If you mean to use live bait, that is. Eight-thirty, nine o’clock.”
I told him I’d be there at nine and paid in advance. The price of a boat and a fifteen-horsepower motor was six dollars, a Coleman lantern fifty cents extra, and I gave him a dollar for a can of night crawlers.
When I got back to the car, Helena asked, “May we eat now?”
I stopped at a roadside eatery and let her have some dinner while I drank two cups of coffee. I hadn’t eaten since noon, but I still couldn’t develop any appetite.
CHAPTER 13
By ten the next morning we were downtown at the largest branch of Sears Roebuck. Why criminals ever buy their necessary equipment anywhere else, I can’t imagine. Police records are full of cases where kidnappers were trapped because the paper of the ransom note was traced to some exclusive stationery shop, or murderers were caught because a hammer was traced to some neighborhood hardware store where every customer is remembered. At a place like Scars you are only one of thousands of faces seen by the clerk waiting on you, and even if by some unlikely chance the item you buy is traced back to that particular clerk, the chance of his remembering anything at all about the person who bought it is remote. The chance of its being traced that far is even more remote, since identical items are sold across Sears counters all over the country every day.
In the men’s clothing department I bought the cheapest fishing jacket I could find.
In the sporting department I bought a cheap glass casting rod, a three-dollar-and-ninety-five-cent metal and plastic reel, fifty yards of nylon line, a cheap bait box and an assortment of leaders, sinkers, hooks and lures to fill up the bait box. I didn’t intend to use any of it, but it might have excited comment at the boat livery if I had showed up to go fishing without any gear.
I also bought two eight-pound rowboat anchors. I intended to use them.
In the hardware department I bought fifty feet of sash cord. Also to use.
I stowed all of my purchases in the trunk of the convertible.
The rest of the day we simply waited.
At seven thirty in the evening we started the job of disposing of Lawrence Powers’s body. First I transferred my fishing gear, the anchors and the sash cord from the car trunk to the rear seat of the car. The fishing jacket I put on. Then I carefully covered the floor of the trunk with the three burlap bags.
We hadn’t added any ice to the tub since Helena showed me the body, and it had melted away to no more than about twenty-five pounds. I managed to lift the dead man out without spilling ice all over the floor.
The body was stiffened in its prenatal position, the ice apparently having caused it to retain rigor mortis longer than it normally would have. I made no attempt to straighten it out because I would only have had to fold the knees up to the chest again in order to get it into the trunk.
There was little danger of anyone seeing me carry it the one or two steps from the car port door to the trunk, inasmuch as the car itself blocked the view from outside, but I had Helena stand in front of the stall anyway as a lookout.
The body was cold and slippery against my arms and chest as I staggered through the door with it and shoved it into the trunk. When I locked the trunk, I found I was drenched with sweat.
I let Helena drive. It was just nine o’clock when we pulled up across the road from the boat livery. I had Helena co-ordinate her watch with mine.
“I’ll give you a half hour,” I said. “Blink your lights exactly at nine thirty, and then again every five minutes after that until I dock. O.K.?”
“I understand,” she said.
Collecting my fishing gear from the back seat, but leaving the anchors and sash cord, I got out of the car. Helena drove off without a word.
The boat the old man gave me was a flat-bottomed scow about ten feet long. In addition to the motor it contained a pair of oars and a gas can with an extra gallon of gas. The Coleman lantern he furnished had a bolt welded to its bottom which fitted into one of the oarlocks.
I had to wait while he picked two dozen night crawlers from a large box of moss. I didn’t have a use in the world for them, but it would have looked peculiar to go
fishing without bait.
When I was settled in the boat, the old man said, “Looks like a good night for bass.”
I looked out over the water, which was as smooth and moonlit as it had been the previous night.
“Yeah,” I said sarcastically. “Just a little choppy.”
He let out a cackle. “Them little six-inch perch is good eating anyway, even if they ain’t much sport. You ought to catch a bushel.”
I started the motor and pulled away while he was still cackling at his own humor.
CHAPTER 14
For about a quarter mile I set a course straight out from shore, then swung right and followed the shoreline for what I judged to be about a mile. The water was dotted with lights of other night fishermen, some farther out and some between me and the shore.
At twenty-five minutes past nine I picked a spot several hundred yards from the nearest fisherman’s light, cut the motor and let the boat drift. There was a slight inshore current, but I figured I would maintain the same relative position to the other boats because I assumed they would take advantage of the current for drift trolling instead of anchoring and doing still fishing.
At nine twenty-nine by my watch I began studying the shoreline, concentrating on the point I judged Crcstwood Beach would be. Minutes passed and nothing happened.
With my eyes straining at the shoreline, dotted here and there by cottage lights and silhouetted by the lights of moving traffic on the highway beyond it, I sat motionless for minutes more. Finally I risked lowering my gaze long enough to glance at the time, and was shocked to see it was twenty minutes to ten. By then Helena should have flashed her lights three times.
Just as I raised my eyes again, a pair of headlights blinked twice off to my right, a good quarter mile from where I had been searching for them. I only caught them from the corner of my eye, and they blinked on and off too fast for me to take a fix. There was nothing to do but wait another five minutes with my gaze centered in that direction.
Eventually they blinked twice again.
Starting the motor, I headed at full throttle toward the point where I had seen the lights. But running a boat in the dark is confusing. I was fifty yards offshore, had turned out my Coleman lantern and was heading confidently toward a narrow dock I could see protruding out over the water when the lights blinked again a hundred yards to my left.
Changing course, I cut the throttle way down and slowly chugged up to the small dock Helena and I had stood on the night before. As I tied up I could make out the dim shadow of the convertible next to the dark and boarded-up cottage.
Helena greeted me with a calm, “Hello, Barney.”
“Any trouble?” I asked.
“Not since I got here. I missed the turn and was a few minutes late. But no one from the other cottages has come out to ask why I was blinking my lights.”
Looking in both directions, I could see no one. The cottages both sides of us were still dark. Going behind the car, I lifted the trunk lid and took the dead body of Lawrence Powers in my arms.
As I lurched past the front seat with my burden, I said, “Bring the gunny sacks.”
I’m a fairly strong man, but it’s quite a chore even for a strong man to carry an inanimate hundred and forty pounds over uneven ground in the dark. Once I stumbled and nearly dropped the body, and as I started to lower it into the boat, it slipped from my grip and nearly tumbled into the water before bouncing off the gunwale and settling just where I wanted it on the bottom of the boat.
Again I found myself drenched with sweat.
When I finished wiping my face with a handkerchief, I found Helena standing on the dock beside me, the three burlap bags in her hands. Carefully I covered her husband’s body with them.
Then I returned to the car for the two anchors and the sash cord.
When I was finally reseated in the boat and ready to start, Helena still stood on the dock.
“Can’t I go along and help?” she asked.
“I’d never find this place again in the dark,” I told her. I looked at my watch, noting it was five of ten. “Pick me up at the boat livery at ten thirty.”
When she didn’t say anything, I glanced up at her. Maybe it was only an effect of the moonlight, but I imagined there was a look of disappointment on her usually expressionless face, as though I had refused her some pleasure she particularly wanted to enjoy.
“Ten thirty,” I repeated.
She merely nodded, and I started the motor and pulled away.
I headed straight out from shore at quarter speed for about fifty yards, then stopped long enough to light my lantern. I didn’t care to have the Naval Reserve pick me up for running without lights.
When I started up again, I opened to full throttle and held it until I was even with the farthest boats from shore, approximately two miles out. I didn’t want to risk calling attention to myself by going out beyond them.
There weren’t many boats out that far, perhaps a half dozen spaced several hundred yards apart. I cut my motor halfway between two.
There was no risk working under the bright glare of the Coleman lantern for since I could see nothing of the other boats except their lights, I knew it was impossible for them to see what was going on in mine. Working rapidly. I uncovered the body, cut a length of sash cord and tied one of the anchors around Lawrence Powers’s neck. The other I tied firmly to his feet after lashing his ankles together.
I was standing up in the boat and just getting ready to heave him over the side when a voice said almost in my ear, “Any luck?”
Starting violently, I lost my balance, made a wild grab for the side of the boat and sat down with a thump on the body. I took one wild look over my shoulder, expecting to see someone within feet of me, then drew a deep sigh of relief. There was a boat light slowly coming toward me, but it was still a good twenty yards away. I realized it was only the acoustic effect of sound traveling across water which had made the voice seem so near.
Since the two figures in the other boat were only faceless shapes to me, I realized they couldn’t see into my boat any clearer than I could see into theirs. Quickly I pulled the burlap sacks over the body and pushed myself up onto the rear seat next to the motor.
Only then did it occur to me I hadn’t even answered the other boat’s hail. Belatedly I called back in as calm a voice as I could muster, “Couple of small perch is all.”
The boat was now within ten yards, and I could make out the two men in it. The one in front was in his early twenties and the man operating the motor was middle-aged. The motor was barely turning over, which was the reason I hadn’t heard their approach. But they hadn’t been trying to sneak up on me, I realized when I saw a line stretching back from either side of the boat. They were moving at that slow speed because they were trolling.
They passed within three yards of me. As they went by, the middle-aged man said, “We ain’t having any luck either. We’re about ready to go in.”
Then they were past. Neither had glanced at the burlap-covered mound in the bottom of my boat.
I waited until I could see nothing of them but their light, then uncovered the body again, lifted it in my arms and heaved it into the water. It landed on its back, the sightless eyes peering straight up at me for a final second before it disappeared in a gurgle of bubbles.
I tossed the burlap bags overboard after it. Then, with shaking fingers, I lit a cigarette and drew a deep and relieved drag.
CHAPTER 15
I was halfway back to shore before it occurred to me the old man at the boat livery might think it odd if he noticed my line wasn’t wet. Cutting the motor, I tied a yellow and red flatfish to my line and made a long cast out over the water. I knew the chance of getting a strike on an artificial lure at night was remote, but all I was interested in was getting the line wet.
Then I had another thought. I didn’t have an Illinois fishing license. And it would be just my luck to step out of the boat into the arms of a game warden.
So I unhooked one of the nicest northerns I ever boated and tossed it back in the water.
When I pulled in at the boat livery dock, the old man asked me, “Any luck?”
“A five pound northern,” I said. “But I tossed it back in.”
He cackled. I knew he wouldn’t believe me.
Helena had parked the car just off the highway on the dirt road leading down to the boat livery. She was sitting on the right side of the seat, so after tossing my fishing gear in the back, I slid under the wheel.
“Everything go all right?”
“O.K. I even caught a fish on the way in.”
“Oh? Do you like fishing?”
“Under ordinary circumstances,” I said. “It’s my favorite sport.”
“Then why didn’t you stay out a while?” she asked seriously. “I wouldn’t have minded waiting.”
The question solidified an opinion I had already formed. Beneath her beautiful exterior Helena was almost psychotically callous. The casual way in which she had borrowed ice for our drinks from the tub containing the corpse of her husband had convinced me of that. Her suggestion that I might have enjoyed a little fishing immediately after dumping the same corpse in Lake Michigan only confirmed my judgment.
I didn’t try to explain it to her. I just said, “I wasn’t particularly in the mood for fishing tonight.”