Body For Sale

by Deming, Richard

  “All right,” I said. “It would help if you’d let me know what nights he’s going to be with you, though. I hate to waste my time tailing the two of you to parties.”

  She nodded. “You won’t have to worry about following him over this weekend. We’re attending a country-club dance tonight, and we’re invited to a friend’s home for bridge Sunday evening. It’s safe to forget him until Monday.”

  “Good,” I said. “I can use some time off.”

  We left it at that.

  11

  ESTHER WAS PLEASED WHEN I PHONED TO TELL HER I HAD the entire weekend free. Saturday evening I took her to dinner at the Patio.

  After my hectic week I felt like relaxing. I ordered a double Gibson before dinner.

  Esther raised her eyebrows when I ordered it. Since our first couple of dates she had drunk sparingly, if at all, when we were together.

  “I’ve had a rough week,” I said. “I plan to get drunk.”

  She lifted her shoulders in a graceful shrug. “Me too then,” she said ungrammatically. She told the waiter to bring her a double Gibson also.

  We had two each before dinner, a brandy apiece afterward, then moved to the Cellar Club and topped it all off with a half dozen highballs apiece. By the time we got to my apartment about eleven, I was so relaxed I had trouble finding the keyhole.

  It turned out that her story that drink dissipated her sexual desire was as phony as the one about hangovers having an aphrodisiac effect on her. She was not only ready but eager at any time of the day or night—drunk or sober, hung-over or fresh as a daisy.

  I got her home at one A.M. and picked her up again Sunday afternoon. Except for a couple of hours when we went out to dinner, we spent all afternoon and evening at my place, most of it in bed. We both seemed to feel a driving urgency to get as much of each other as possible before we had to separate, just as though we wouldn’t have another opportunity to get together again for years.

  But by about nine p.m. my spirits began to lag even though Esther seemed ready to go on forever. She kept urging me on to new efforts until, about eleven, I finally had to tell her bluntly that I was through for the evening.

  She gave a contented little sigh. “I bet we beat their record,” she said.

  “Whose record?”

  “George Mathews’ and Gertie Drake’s.”

  We were lying side-by-side on the bed. Rising to one elbow, I stared down at her. “Have you just been being competitive?” I demanded.

  “Well, you seemed so impressed by his endurance,” she said defensively. “I knew he couldn’t be any more virile than you are. I don’t like to think that any man could.”

  I shook my head with a mixture of amusement and disgust. “What a hell of a reason to climb in bed. I thought I was bringing out your hidden passions. And all the time you were just trying to run up a score.”

  “That’s not true,” she protested. “You know you drive me half crazy. It’s just that I thought as long as we were doing it anyway—”

  “Get your clothes on,” I interrupted. “We’ve both got to get to work tomorrow.”

  When I left her at her door, I felt much like I used to feel when I took Gertie Drake home. I gave her a good-night kiss, but I would just have soon have shaken hands.

  Monday George Mathews didn’t hold his usual office conference with Gertie. And he left the plant earlier than usual, taking off just before two P.M.

  Esther phoned my office the minute he walked out, and I was waiting in my car by the time he drove out of the parking lot.

  He first led me to a pawnshop on Franklin Avenue, where he spent about fifteen minutes. There were too few people on the street and the shop was too small for me to risk getting out of my car and peeping through the front window to see what he was doing. I contented myself with making a note of the pawnshop address.

  From Franklin Avenue he drove to the Westside Shopping Plaza. I parked two lanes behind him in the enormous plaza lot and watched as he entered a sporting-goods store. Again the place was too small for me to risk trying to follow him inside. But the front window was both broader and cleaner here than the one at the pawnshop. I could see him at one of the counters talking to a young, round-faced clerk. The clerk handed him a small package of some kind, shaped like a package of cigarettes but only about half that size, and Mathews gave him some money. He dropped the package in his pocket.

  When he came out of the store he crossed a corner of the parking area to a Montgomery Ward department store. This being a big enough establishment for me to lose myself among the other customers, I climbed from my car and followed him.

  When he stepped on an escalator to the basement, I waited at the top until he reached the bottom and turned left. Three other people were descending by then, and I followed them down.

  At the bottom I spotted him just as he turned a corner beneath a huge cardboard arrow marked: HARDWARE AND HOUSEHOLD FURNISHINGS. When I reached the corner he was standing before a counter along the rear wall of the store.

  There was a tall display of one-gallon paint cans stacked on a table only a few feet from the rear counter. It furnished convenient cover from which to eavesdrop.

  I was a little disappointed in what I overheard. Mathews bought six window sash weights and fifty feet of sash cord. Apparently he was in a domestic mood and planning window repairs.

  The package was only about a foot square, but it was so heavy he had to hold it with both hands. As he passed the paint display, I drifted around to keep it between him and myself.

  While he was ascending on the escalator, I took a stairway to the main floor and ducked out a side exit. This was a longer route back to my car, but as he was loaded down by his heavy package, I was back under the wheel before he reached his car. Keying open the trunk of the Lincoln, he heaved the package in with both hands.

  He drove directly back to the plant.

  When he turned in at the plant parking lot entrance, I parked on the street out front and ducked up to my office long enough to check with Norma Henstedder. Finding everything under control, I told her I’d be back within an hour and ducked right out again.

  The proprietor of the Franklin Avenue pawnshop was a wizened old man in his seventies.

  “Police officer,” I said, flashing an old volunteer fireman’s card, which resembled the card Raine City detectives carried if you didn’t examine it too closely. I put the wallet back in my pocket before he could get a good look.

  “Yes, sir,” the old man said in a polite tone.

  “A man came in here about an hour ago. About a quarter after two. He was around thirty-two years old, black, curly hair, slim and well-dressed. Deeply tanned.”

  He nodded. “Yes, sir. A Mr. McClellan, I think. Just a minute.”

  Producing a ledger, he opened it and peered at a page nearsightedly. “McClelland, rather. John C. McClelland of 1423 Renfrew Street. What about him, Officer?”

  So George Mathews had thought it necessary to give the pawnbroker a fake name and address. I said, “What did he want?”

  “He bought a secondhand thirty-two revolver. Twenty-five dollars. He looked quite respectable. He isn’t a criminal, is he, Officer?”

  “He isn’t yet,” I said slowly. “Maybe he’s planning to be.”

  From the pawnshop I drove back to the Westside Shopping Plaza and entered the sporting-goods store. As I had suspected, the counter at which I had seen Mathews was devoted to guns and ammunition.

  The same round-faced young clerk who had waited on Mathews approached and asked, “May I help you, sir?”

  “Do you stock thirty-two caliber pistol ammunition?” I asked.

  Turning around, he lifted two small boxes of different size from a drawer behind the counter and laid them in front of me.

  “Twenty-five or fifty rounds?” he inquired.

  The smaller box was the same size, shape and color as the one I had seen Mathews pocket.

  I said, “That’s regular ammunition, isn’t it
?”

  “Yes, of course. Lead slugs. Did you want steel-jacket?”

  I shook my head. “Scatter ammunition. Wooden slugs with B-B shot packed inside. For rabbits.”

  He gave me an indulgent smile. “I know what you mean, but I don’t think they make them any more. I haven’t seen any in years. Most people hunt rabbit with a small-gauge shotgun or twenty-two rifle these days.” Then he frowned. “You can’t shoot rabbit in June.”

  “You can in Australia,” I said. “It’s winter there.”

  While he was figuring this out, I thanked him and walked away.

  I didn’t jump to any hasty conclusions. Returning to the plant, I used the same device I had once before to get Gertie Drake into the dead-file room. When I joined her there for a second time, she looked a little irked.

  “Are you calling for these dead accounts just to trap me here alone?” she demanded.

  Assuming an air of mock shame, I said, “You’ve found me out, Gertie. I want to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “About us. Why can’t we get together again?”

  “I told you why,” she said impatiently. “I’m going steady.”

  I shook my head pityingly. “I know who you’re going with, honey. Everyone in the plant knows. Why waste your time on a man who’s never going to be able to take you anywhere but to back-street taverns?”

  “That’s all you know about it,” she flared at me.

  “What’s it going to get you to run around with a man like George Mathews, Gertie? He’ll never marry you because he’ll never get a divorce.”

  Balling her fists on her hips, she faced me with an angry look on her face. “Won’t he, smarty-pants? Well, for your information George loves me just as much as I love him. He is going to get a divorce and marry me.”

  That clinched it. I’d felt all along that George Mathews would never turn loose of his wife’s money by getting a divorce, or letting her get one.

  He had figured out a simple way to keep the money and have Gertie, too.

  12

  FROM ESTHER I LEARNED THAT GEORGE MATHEWS HAD left the plant again at three forty-five, about the time I was checking up at the Plaza sporting-goods store. It didn’t worry me any. By now I was familiar enough with his routine so that I wouldn’t have any trouble picking him up.

  I stopped for an early dinner after leaving the plant at five, then drove to the Raine City Yacht Club. I checked it first because it was closest, though in the opposite direction from Mathews’ home.

  When I failed to spot the red Lincoln convertible parked there, I doubled back toward Mathews’ home.

  His car wasn’t in his driveway either. I continued on Sheridan Drive to the Hillbrook Country Club. I found the Lincoln on the lot there.

  Taking my usual position up the highway in sight of the stone pillars, I settled down to wait. The Lincoln appeared from between the pillars at eight fifteen. It headed south.

  Tonight I wasn’t interested in how George Mathews spent his evening. I just wanted to make certain he wouldn’t be home. I tailed him only as far as Gertie Drake’s rooming house. When he picked her up and headed in the direction of the Flying Swan, I returned to the Mathewses’ home.

  Again I found Helen Mathews alone. She gave me a surprised look when she opened the door, but invited me in politely enough.

  As she led me into the front room, she said, “I thought you’d be following George. He’s out again tonight. Ostensibly at a meeting of the Clubs-and-Organizations Division for the United Fund Drive.”

  “He’s with Gertie Drake en route to the Flying Swan,” I said. “I thought it would be a good opportunity to stop by for a talk.”

  The two little red spots appeared in her cheeks. But she asked quietly enough, “Would you like something to drink, Mr. Cavanaugh?”

  “I could use a bourbon and water,” I said.

  Motioning me to a chair, she disappeared from the room and returned with a bowl of ice and a pitcher of water. Setting them on a beautifully carved Louis XIV sideboard, she opened one of the doors of the sideboard and produced a bottle and glasses. She mixed two drinks, carried one to me, then sat on the sofa and set hers on an end table next to it.

  After sampling my drink, I asked, “Are any of your windows here out of repair, Mrs. Mathews? Won’t slide up and down, for instance?”

  She looked puzzled. “We don’t have that type of window. They all open outward, like doors.”

  She demonstrated by rising and crossing to the windows facing the street. When she drew aside one of the drapes, I saw that the window behind it was the cantilever type.

  “They’re like that throughout the house?” I asked.

  She nodded. Dropping the drape back in place, she returned to the sofa. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. How about the garage?”

  “They have the same type.”

  “What about this cottage you mentioned at Weed Lake?”

  She was looking more puzzled by the minute. “It has swing-out windows too, Mr. Cavanaugh. There is no building we own that has the type of windows that slide up and down. I assume you have some reason for asking all this?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Does your husband own a pistol?”

  She frowned at the abrupt switch of subject. “Several. What are you getting at, Mr. Cavanaugh?”

  “It’ll hold a minute,” I said. “Mrs. Mathews, today I deliberately maneuvered to get Gertie Drake alone and needled her a little by telling her she was a sucker to play around with your husband. I said he’d never take her anywhere but to back-street taverns. She got mad and told me they were in love with each other and that he intended to divorce you and marry her.”

  She grew deathly pale. Silently she picked up her drink and drained it without stopping. I got out of my chair, lifted the glass from her hand, carried it to the sideboard and mixed her another. I made it a double. She said nothing until I had handed it to her and had returned to my chair.

  Then she asked in a steady voice, “Do you think she was telling the truth?”

  “She thought she was. But your husband hasn’t the slightest intention of divorcing you.”

  Her eyes widened in pleased surprise. She couldn’t have looked happier if I had informed her she had overpaid the Bureau of Internal Revenue by a million dollars and could expect the refund in the next mail.

  “You’re sure, Mr. Cavanaugh?”

  “Reasonably so. But don’t get too elated. I’m afraid you’re in for a severe shock. Maybe you’d better drink that drink.”

  Her happy expression faded. “What kind of shock?”

  “Drink your drink,” I suggested. “You’re going to need it.”

  After staring at me for a moment, she lifted the glass to her lips and drained half its contents.

  When she lowered it again, I said, “All of it.”

  Her face grew as pale as it had been before my remark made her momentarily happy. “He isn’t dead, is he?” she asked faintly.

  “Of course not. I told you he was en route to the Flying Swan with Gertie.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. Obediently she gulped down the rest of the highball and set the empty glass on the end table. A little of her color returned.

  I said, “Prior to my talk with Gertie, I followed your husband on a shopping tour this afternoon. At a pawnshop on Franklin he bought a secondhand thirty-two caliber pistol. At the Westside Plaza he bought twenty-five rounds of ammunition in a sporting-goods store. Then he went to Montgomery-Ward’s and bought six window-sash weights and fifty feet of sash cord. Incidentally, he bought the gun under the name of John C. McClelland of 1423 Renfrew Street. Does that name or address mean anything to you?”

  She shook her head. Her eyes were very wide.

  “I guess he just picked them out of the air, then. Since you say he already owns several pistols, I’d say he bought this one so it couldn’t be traced back to him. And if you can’t think of anywhere he might
find use for six sash weights and fifty feet of sash cord, I’d guess he intends to weight something and drop it in the lake. In short, he has no intention of divorcing you because he intends to kill you.”

  For nearly a minute she looked at me steadily without any expression at all on her face. Then she tumbled forward in a dead faint.

  I couldn’t get across the room fast enough to catch her before she hit the floor. But the carpet was too soft for her to hurt herself in falling. Scooping her up, I laid her on the sofa and began to massage her wrists.

  After a time her eyes slowly opened and she looked up at me dully. I carried her glass to the sideboard, slopped straight whisky into it and brought it back to her. After the barest sip, she shook her head and sat up.

  “I tried to break it gently,” I said. “I guess it wasn’t gentle enough.”

  She pressed the back of one hand to her forehead. She hadn’t even heard me. In a wondering tone she said, “That’s why he wants me alone up at the cottage. To kill me.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  She sat there, one hand still raised to her forehead, lost in her own thoughts. Setting her glass back on the end table next to her, I went back to my own chair. After a time she dropped her hand to her lap, straightened her slumping shoulders and stiffened her back. She was still deathly pale, but her expression told me that she wasn’t going to have hysterics, or even cry. At least not as long as I was there to watch.

  “I think I want to be alone for a time,” she said. “Will you please go?”

  “Of course,” I said instantly. “I’ll let myself out. Don’t get up.”

  As I started from the room, she said in a dead voice, “I’ll phone you at your office tomorrow, after I’ve had a chance to think.”

  13

  SINCE I HAD LEARNED WHAT HELEN MATHEWS WANTED TO know, there was no further point in tailing her husband. Tuesday morning I informed Norma Henstedder that my special assignment was completed and let her return to the stenographer’s pool.