Girl In The Plain Brown Wrapper

by John D. MacDonald

  "My poor wife threw herself out a twelfth-story window last evening, David."

  "What! What the hell are you saying? There wasn't a

  thing in the paper about--"

  "Believe me, she went out the window. I heard the sound of the impact and I know she didn't walk away. I thought the workmen would find the body, but it seems to be gone."

  "What the hell do you mean-gone?"

  "Today I learned from Biddy that her old friend, Mr. McGee, told her at the party that he saw Maureen sneaking out alone. Assume he knows the terms of the trust funds. So I think he'll get in touch with me to sell me a little information. Your next job is to get to him first, David, and see if you can encourage him to tell you all about it."

  Broon did not respond. I found it hard to relate the voices that came over the little speaker to the two men standing under a distant tree across the sunny pasture-land.

  "You poor damn fool," Broon said.

  "It's really quite imperative to get going on it," Tom Pike said, "because even if he hadn't interfered, it will take several months before they'll close out the trust and transfer the principal directly to Bridget."

  "Somebody steals a body and you think it's some kind of an inconvenience! You damn fool!"

  "Why get in an uproar, Broon? Body or no body, nobody can ever prove a thing."

  "You don't even realize it's all over, do you? I'll tell you, there's only one way I can walk away from this one, partner."

  Quite suddenly there was a grunt of effort, a gasp of surprise, over the speaker. The distant figures had merged abruptly, and as they spun around it looked, at that distance, like some grotesque dance. The taller figure went up and over and down, and we heard the thud of impact. Both of them were down and invisible. The grass concealed them. Dave Broon stood up, stared down for a moment. Stanger lowered the binoculars quickly. Broon made a slow turn, all the way around, eyes searching the horizon.

  "Shouldn't we--"

  "Shut up, Lew," Stanger said.

  Broon trotted out of the shade and across the sunlit grass to his car. He opened the trunk. Stanger put the glasses on him as he came back.

  "Coil of rope," he said. "Tie him up and tote him away, maybe."

  "But if he drives off--" Nudenbarger started to say.

  "If I can't punch that engine dead at this range with that there carbine, Lew, I'm not trying.".

  Broon squatted over Tom Pike for a little while, then straightened and took Pike under the armpits and dragged him about fifteen feet. He dropped him there and went quickly to the tree, jumped and caught a limb, quickly pulled himself up and out of sight in the leaves.

  "Son of a gun!" Stanger said.

  "Why is he climbing the tree?" Lew asked plaintively.

  "He took the end of the rope up with him. What do you think?"

  Nudenbarger looked baffled. I comprehended the shape and the sense of it. And soon it was confirmed when Tom Pike sat up in the grass quite slowly, slumping to the side in an unnatural way.

  Then he rose slowly up from a sitting position.

  "Oh, God!" cried Nudenbarger.

  "Keep your damned voice down to a soft beller!" Al snapped.

  Over the speaker came a strange sound, a gagging, rasping cry. Pike ran a few steps in one direction and was snubbed to a halt. He staggered back. He tried the other direction and did not get as far.

  Stanger said, not taking his eyes from the glasses, "Got the fingers of both hands into that loop now, holding it off his throat."

  "Broon!" the deep voice cried, cracked and ragged.

  He seemed to run in place and then he moved up a little bit. Straight up. And a little bit more. His legs made running motions. He began turning. Then his shoes were above the highest blades of grass. Dave Broon dropped abruptly into view. Nudenbarger raised the carbine and Stanger slapped the barrel down.

  Broon got into the red wagon and swung it in a quick turn and parked it close to where Pike hung.

  He got out, backed off, looked at Pike, and then ran for his car.

  "Now!" Al Stanger said. He snatched up the carbine and vaulted the fence with an agility that astonished me. By the time we were over the fence, he had a twenty-yard lead. As the green Ford began to roll, picking up speed, Stanger stopped, went down onto one knee, and fired four spaced, aimed shots. At the fourth one the back end of the car bloomed into a white-orange poof of gasoline, and as the car kept moving, Broon tumbled out the driver's door, somersaulting in the grass. He got up and started to run at an angle toward the far side of the pasture but stopped quickly when Stanger fired his fifth shot.

  He turned, hands in the air, and began to walk slowly toward the tree. The car had stopped in tall grass, tinkling, frying, blackening. He walked more quickly. And then he began to run back toward the tree.

  "Head him off, Lew. Grab him."

  Lew had good style. He loped in that loose deceptive stride of a good NFL end getting down for the long bomb. Stanger and I headed for the tree. He jogged. I started to run by him and he blocked me with the barrel of the carbine extended.

  Thus we all got to the red wagon at about the same time. Nudenbarger was taking no chances with Dave Broon. He had one meaty hand clamped on the nape of Broon's neck and had Broon's arm bent back up and pinned between Broon's shoulderblades by his other paw.

  Broon was hopping up and down, grunting, struggling, yelling, "Cut him down! Al! Hey, Al! Cut him down!"

  We looked up at Tom Pike. He turned slowly toward us. His clenched fists were on either side of his throat, fingers hooked around the strand of rope that crossed his throat. He looked like a man chinning himself, face blackening with total effort.

  I saw that I could swing him over and up onto the roof of the station wagon and get the pressure off his throat immediately. As I moved toward him quickly, Stanger clanked the carbine barrel against the back of my skull. The impact was exquisitely precise. It darkened the day without turning the sun out completely. It loosened my knees enough to sag me to a squat, knuckles against the turf, but not enough to spill me all the way. I turned and stared up at Al, blinking away darkness and the tear-sting of skull pain.

  "Don't go messing with the evidence, boy," he said.

  "Don't do this to me, Al!" Broon begged. "Please, for God's sake, don't do it like this."

  Nudenbarger, with Broon firmly in hand, was staring slack-mouthed at Tom Pike. "Jesus!" he said softly. "Oh, Jesus me!"

  And Tom Pike continued the slow turn. He lifted his right leg slowly, the knee bending. Classic shoes, expensive slacks, navy socks of what looked like brushed Dacron. The leg dropped back.

  "See him twitching any, Lew?" Stanger asked mildly.

  "Well... that leg moved some."

  "Just reflex action, Lew boy. Posthumous nervous twitch, like. Doesn't mean a thing."

  Broon said, "You're killing me, Al. You know that."

  "You're all confused. You killed Tom Pike, Davey."

  "You're miserable, Al. You're a mean bastard, Al Stanger."

  Slowly, slowly, Tom Pike turned back to face us. He had changed. The look of muscular tension had gone out of his fists and wrists. They were just slack hands, pinned there by the loop, fingers pressing into the flesh of the throat. His chin had dropped. His toes pointed downward. His face had become bloated and the eyes no longer looked at anything at all.

  "See now how it was just the nerves twitching some?" Al asked gently.

  "You were right, Al. He's dead for sure," Lew said.

  I pushed myself up and fingered a new lump on the back of my head. "How long would you say he's been dead, McGee? All things considered."

  "I'd say he must have been dead by the time Broon started to drive away, Al. All things considered."

  "Guess we shouldn't touch a thing. Get a reconstruction by the lab people to match up with the eyewitness account." He handed me the carbine and went over and took handcuffs out of a back pocket. He snapped one around Broon's wrist, told Lew to bend him over a litt
le, and snapped the other around Broon's opposite ankle. Lew let go and Stanger gave Broon a push. Broon sat in the grass, knees hiked up.

  "Lew, you cut across and get the car and bring it around in here. Might as well stop and pick up our gear over there on the way. We'll be waiting right here."

  With a last look at the body, Nudenbarger hurried off.

  The body had stopped turning. Stanger stared into the distance, sighed, spat. "Sorry I had to rap you like that."

  I looked into his small dusty brown eyes. "I guess it was the quickest way to stop me, Al."

  "Feel all right?"

  "Just a little bit sick to my stomach."

  "Funny. So do I."

  21

  I STAYED AROUND and did what I could to help Bridget Pearson through the worst of it. In a conference about strategy, Ben Gaffner had accepted my suggestion that nothing would be gained by opening up the actual way in which Maureen had died. It could bring down on us a lot of awkward questions from high places.

  Better to make it an identification error over in Lime County and let the phosphate pit story stand.

  He agreed that there was so little to go on that Dr. Sherman's death might as well remain on the books as suicide. But the Penny Woertz murder had to be taken out of the active file, and properly closed. That meant some acceptable explanation of motive. Dave Broon came in handy. He was smart enough to have started talking about strangling Tom Pike in a fit of anger and then, upon discovering he was dead, trying to string him up to make it look like suicide.

  That gave Gaffner a choice-to play ball with Broon or to go for murder first. Murder first would need only the eyewitnesses to state that they had seen Pike trying to get free as Broon was slowly hauling him clear of the ground. Gaffner had, Broon brought in for a private playback of the tape of the conversation under the live oak. Broon then said it was his certain knowledge that Pike was having an affair with the nurse and had killed her out of jealousy. Gaffner, out of respect for the reputation of the deceased Miss Woertz, edited it down to Pike's pursuit of her, with the crime of passion occurring doubtless when his advances were repulsed. All this cooperation earned Broon the chance at a plea of guilty to murder second, with, whether the sentence was ten, fifteen, or twenty, a chance at parole in six.

  Even though by funeral time-a ceremony for two, for Mr. and Mrs. Pike-the swarm of auditors and examiners were beginning to find that Tom Pike had been distributing newly invested capital to previous investors and calling it a distribution of capital gains, Fort Courtney was full of people who could not, and would never, believe that such a brilliant and warm and considerate and handsome and well-mannered man could have ever juggled a single account in any questionable manner, to say nothing of stabbing anyone.

  No, it all had to be some kind of vicious and clever conspiracy, engineered by Them. They were the subtle, hidden enemy, hiring that Broon person, making some kind of intricate deal with him, and then probably taking over toe wonderful properties Tom Pike had such great plans for at the time of his death.

  So the funeral was well-attended. Biddy knew that all the allegations were so absurd as to be grotesque. And so did Janice Holton. Biddy was so certain, that I could not risk the slightest slur or shadow of doubt to color anything I said to her, or she would never have let me try to help her in any way. She kept going on tranquilizers and raw courage. I helped her close up toe house. It would be sold once all estate and inheritance matters were straightened out, and the funds would go to the unfortunate who had invested in Development Unlimited. Fortunately, as there was no doubt of Maureen's having died first, the trust fund would go directly to Bridget. Because Maureen had signed certain papers in connection with her husband's enterprises, had he died first, it was possible the monies might have been diverted to toe creditors of Development Unlimited.

  She said she was going to drive on down to Casey Key and open up toe old house and stay there for a time, quite alone. She said she would be all right. She would walk the beach, get a lot of painting done, sort herself

  out.

  The morning I was packing to leave the Wahini Lodge, Lorette Walker stopped by and said she heard from Cathy I was checking out. I asked her to come on in. She leaned against the countertop and lit a cigarette and said, "Stayed you a long time, huh?"

  "I couldn't tear myself away from this garden spot."

  "Lot of things happened. Always like that wherever

  you go?"

  "I'm happy to be able to say no."

  "That's no good way to fold a shirt! Mess it all up for sure." She came over and took the shirt back out of the bag, spread it out on toe bed, folded it quickly and deftly, and put it in the bag. "Best way," she said, backing off. "Sorry I couldn't do you much good on what you wanted me to find out."

  lot of good. You'll never know how

  "You did a much."

  "But nobody come hard-nosing around to try to make

  me say it twice."

  "I told you I'd leave you out of it." She said wistfully, "Could be better for me if you never did keep your word."

  "How do you mean?"

  "I told myself, back there when I wanted to trust you some, I said okay, gal, you just go ahead and he'll mess you up good. Be a good lesson. Stop you from ever going soft again for any whitey."

  "That's why you did it?"

  She put on a look of owlish innocence. "Well, then there was that chance of toe airplane ride you mentioned. I figured on Paris. Anyway, here's toe change from that two hundred. I spent eighty of your dollars on people that didn't have anything worth telling."

  "So let's split what you've got left there." She flared immediately. "So it means I got no right to tell myself I ever did a damn thing for you just for a favor? You buying me for this sixty dollar, you think?"

  "Right off the slave block, woman. You did a favor, but I've got no right to do a favor, according to you. I know you didn't expect a dime, but by God you'll take that sixty dollars and you'll buy yourself a pretty suit, something tailored, maybe a good medium shade of blue, and you will wear that damned suit, and you will accept it as a gesture of friendship and trust."

  "Well... I guess you don't need no lessons in coming on mean, mister. I... I guess I can take it like it's meant. And thank you very much. You're sure? The only thing I got a right to do with it is buy a winter suit?"

  "That's how it has to be," I said, putting the sixty left over into my wallet.

  She shrugged and smiled. "Well, then... got to get

  on back up to those rooms. We run pretty full last night."

  I held my hand out. "You helped a lot. And a pleasure

  to get to know you, Mrs. Walker."

  After a moment of wary hesitation she shook hands. "Same to you. Good-bye."

  She opened the door and turned back, her hand on the knob, and looked at me and moistened her lips. "McGee, you have a nice safe trip back home, hear?" She bolted out and closed the door. My last glimpse and last impression of her was of the slender and vital brown of her quick legs. Another lady in a plain brown wrapper. No, that was not a good analogy, because there was nothing very plain about that sleek wrapper. It was special- flawless, matte finish and inordinately lovely.