Rising a little stiffly, he offered a gnarled hand. “Glad to know you, sir. Sit down.” He indicated a canvas porch chair.
I took the chair, and he resumed his seat in the swing. “The woman’s at a church meeting,” he said. “She’ll be sorry she missed a friend of Gert’s.”
“I thought Gertie might be here,” I said.
He looked surprised. “Gert rooms in Raine City, just a few blocks from Schyler Tools.”
“I know,” I said. “But since she’s on vacation, I thought she might be here.”
“She’s on vacation?” he said in an even more surprised tone. “And she told you she’d be here?”
“She didn’t tell me anything,” I assured him. “A long time ago she said if I was ever in Coral Grove to look up her folks. I just happened to be passing through and thought she might be here, since she’s out of town.”
“Oh,” he said, and gave me a quizzical look. “I guess you’re not the fellow then.”
“What fellow?”
“The one she’s been writing about. Fellow she’s talking of marrying.”
“No,” I said. “We’re just friends. As a matter of fact, I’m engaged to another girl. I didn’t know she was serious about anyone.”
“Is according to her letters. Never mentions the fellow’s name for some reason. The woman keeps asking her every time she writes, but Gert keeps forgetting to answer the question. He’s some kind of big wheel at Schyler Tools, though. Got a lot of money, according to Gert. I was always a little worried about Gert. Scatteredbrained little dickens when she was young, and run off to live alone in Raine City when she was only eighteen. But I guess things are turning out good for her after all.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “You don’t know where she went on vacation then?”
“Didn’t even know she was taking it yet. Usually takes it about August and comes here.” A sudden thought occurred to him. “You think maybe the little dickens run off and got married to this fellow?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I’ll bet she did. Last letter she said she was going on a weekend fishing trip on his boat. He’s got some kind of a cabin cruiser. Bet they got married and are off on a honeymoon. When’d her vacation start?”
“She hasn’t been to work since last Friday.”
“That’s it then, by gum,” he said, slapping his knee. “According to her letter, they were leaving last Friday right after work. A weekend fishing trip, she said. But I’ll bet the little dickens is off somewhere on a honeymoon.”
“Yeah,” I said heavily. “I guess she’s off somewhere.”
I left a few minutes later. I didn’t feel up to the hundred-and-fifty-mile drive back to Raine City, so I put up at a Coral Grove motel and drove back the next day. I stopped for lunch en route and got back to my apartment about one P.M.
As soon as I got in, I tried to phone Helen, but when a strange woman answered the phone, I hung up without saying anything. It was probably the cleaning maid Helen had once mentioned. I decided to wait until after dark before chancing another phone call.
I figured seven thirty would be the safest time to phone, as the cleaning maid should be gone by then and it was still a little early for any well-meaning friends to drop by with the idea of cheering up the grief-stricken widow. And I assumed she wouldn’t have dinner guests so soon after her husband’s funeral.
There was nothing to do but sweat out the hours until seven thirty.
While stewing around the apartment waiting for time to pass, I remembered my promise to call Esther. But there was too much on my mind to bother with her at the moment. I decided to skip it until I had held my conference with Helen. Esther had said to phone her no matter what time I got back, so there was no rush even if I didn’t get around to it until midnight.
About six I fixed myself a cold meal, then sat around waiting for more time to pass. At the stroke of seven thirty I dialed Helen’s number again. I was relieved to hear her voice answer.
“Alone?” I asked.
‘“Yes,” she said a little testily. “But you caught me in the bathtub.”
“I’m sorry. Would you rather call me back?”
“You didn’t get me out of the tub. I’m still in it. There’s a bathroom extension. But don’t you think it’s dangerous to be phoning me like this all the time?”
“Twice in the past week is hardly all the time,” I said. “I have to see you.”
“Again? I thought we agreed to mark time for a while.”
“There’s been a development.”
I heard a quick indrawing of breath. Then she asked fearfully, “Something serious?”
“Not if you don’t fly apart when the police come around. You may if you aren’t prepared for what they’ll have to tell you. That’s why I want to see you. To brief you on what to expect.”
“The police are coming to see me?” she asked in an apprehensive tone.
“Not immediately. They don’t even know they’re coming yet. It probably won’t be for days or even for weeks. But something has developed that makes it inevitable that they’ll get to you eventually. I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.”
“I’m expecting company in about a half-hour,” she said slowly. “George’s sister and her husband are coming over for a while. They think they have to drop by to cheer me up every so often.”
“How long will they stay?”
“Not more than a couple of hours, I’m sure. About ten.”
“Can you drive over here after that?”
She was silent for a minute. Then she said, “Why don’t you come here about ten thirty? I’ll make sure they’re gone by ten, even if I have to plead a headache. No one else will drop in after that time, so it should be safe.”
“All right,” I said. “Just in case you can’t shake them, leave your porch light on. If the porch is dark, I’ll know it’s all clear.”
“Fine. I’ll expect you at ten thirty then.”
I heard the ripple of water, suggesting that she had been in a reclining position and suddenly sat up to replace the phone on its hook. Then there was a click.
23
I COULDN’T STAND THE CONFINEMENT OF MY APARTMENT any longer. I drove over to Tony Vincinti’s Bar and Grill and sat at the bar talking to Tony until a quarter after ten. I was careful not to drink too much, though, because I knew I was going to need a clear head to break the news I had for Helen without having her go into screaming hysterics.
I pulled up in front of Helen’s home at exactly ten thirty. Her porch light was dark.
When Helen let me in she was fully dressed, but her hair was done up in pin curlers for the night and she had on no makeup at all, not even lipstick.
“Excuse my appearance,” she said. “They left at nine thirty and I thought I might as well get in my nightly beauty treatment while I was waiting for you.”
If there had been any doubt in my mind that our marriage plans were dead, her appearance would have killed it. She was still beautiful; she would have been beautiful even with her face plastered with cold cream. But a woman doesn’t let a relatively new lover see her in pin curlers and without makeup if she is still in love with him.
I didn’t bother to give her a kiss. It would have been a meaningless gesture. She seemed neither offended nor surprised by the omission. She seated herself on the sofa with the claw feet and looked up at me without offering either a drink or a chair. I didn’t feel like sitting, anyway. I felt like pacing.
“Now what’s this about the police?” she asked.
I paced up and down for a minute, organizing my thoughts, finally came to a halt in front of the sofa.
I said, “This is going to be a shock to you, Helen. It’s probably going to throw you for a loop. But it’s better that you suffer the shock now and get it over with than come apart at the seams when some cop gives you the news.”
She frowned. “You’re frightening me a little, Tom.”
“The
re’s no need to be frightened. We aren’t in the least danger, providing you keep your head when the police come to you. They won’t be reopening the investigation of George’s death. They’ll be investigating another crime. What I’m afraid of is that you may blurt out something that could cook us both when they tell you what they’re investigating.”
“Another crime?” she asked in a puzzled tone.
“Gertie Drake hasn’t been to work all week, Helen. At the plant everyone has assumed she was staying home, grieving over George. But I did some quiet snooping today, and I’m almost sure she’s dead.”
Her eyes widened. “Dead?”
“Uh-huh. Nobody but me as yet knows she’s missing. Her landlady thinks she’s visiting her folks at Coral Grove. Her folks don’t know where she is, but they’re hopefully guessing that she’s off on a honeymoon with the man she’s written them she planned to marry. Eventually either the landlady or Gertie’s folks will check up, and the minute they get together there will be a missing report. And once the police get on it, it won’t take them long to figure out she’s been murdered.”
“Murdered!”
“Murdered,” I affirmed. “She’s somewhere out in the lake with six sash weights tied to her body by sash cord.”
She stared at me with complete lack of comprehension.
“We evaluated George’s behavior a little wrong,” I said. “He bought the gun, weights and cord for Gertie. She must have been pushing him so hard to break up with you and marry her that he didn’t know any other way to get off the hook. But he was a lousy murderer. Gertie’s landlady knew him as George Mathers. She could describe his red Lincoln convertible to the police. Gertie had written her folks that she hoped to marry a big wheel at Schyler Tools who had a lot of money. She also wrote that she was leaving with him on a weekend fishing trip in his cabin cruiser last Friday. How many Schyler Tool executives own red Lincolns and cabin cruisers? He left so many clues pointing to himself, the police will know he killed Gertie within twenty-four hours of their receiving a missing report on her. And they’ll come straight to you to ask what you know, because they can’t talk to George.”
In a wondering voice she said, “He didn’t plan to kill me. He just wanted to get rid of her.”
“That’s the sort of remark I was afraid you’d make when the cops hand you the news,” I told her. “If you so much as mention you ever suspected he planned to kill you, they’re going to start wondering why you went off on a peaceful fishing trip at night when you knew his homicidal intentions. Once that thought strikes them, they’ll start wondering if George’s drowning was really the accident it seemed. They couldn’t prove anything, even if they dug him up for an autopsy, but they could sure as hell make our lives miserable. A thing like this would make headlines from coast to coast. And for the rest of our lives people would stare and whisper, ‘There’s that woman and her lover who got away with killing her husband.’ You’ll have to play dumb when the cops show up. You’ll have to act surprised and hurt that he was carrying on an affair with another woman. You can’t even suggest that you had any kind of grievance against him.”
She wasn’t hearing anything I said. She was gazing at me sightlessly with a numb expression on her face.
“He didn’t want to kill me,” she said dazedly. “He killed her to keep me. He didn’t want to lose me.”
She continued to stare at me blankly, not really seeing me, but looking through and beyond me at some scene from her memory. Then, gradually, her eyes focused on my face and recognition grew in them. Her face started to redden.
“You made me kill him,” she said with revulsion.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You made me kill him. You were the one who was all hot for murder, remember. I didn’t want any part of it until you dangled yourself and your money and social position in front of me and said take it or leave it. Don’t start blaming me for your homicidal tendencies.”
Her face continued to darken until it was beet red. “You made me kill him,” she repeated. “He still loved me. He loved me enough to kill for me. You cheap, conniving gigolo!”
“You can hold the name-calling,” I snapped. “Where I come from they have a name for women who offer themselves on the slave block like you did. If I’m a gigolo, you’re a whore.”
Leaping to her feet, she advanced on me with her claws spread for scratching. “Murderer!” she screamed. “You killed the only thing I ever loved!”
Catching her wrists, I forced her back on the sofa. “Settle down,” I said. “You’ll have the neighbors calling the police.”
She struggled helplessly, writhing and kicking at my knees.
“I’ll make you pay,” she spat at me. “I’ll see you die in the electric chair for what you’ve done.”
Releasing one wrist, I brought my right palm alongside her face in a stinging slap. It stopped her struggling, but it didn’t remove the hate from her eyes. They glittered up at me like some evil nocturnal animal’s. When I cautiously released the other wrist, she stared up at me without moving for a minute, then regally rose to her feet.
“Sorry I had to slap you,” I said. “But you were hysterical.”
Her eyes continued to glitter at me. The hysterical violence was gone from her to be replaced by a cold, implacable hatred.
“I’m going to put you in the electric chair,” she informed me with icy venom.
“We’ll hold hands there if you try it,” I said dryly.
She gave me a vindictive smile. “Do you imagine I care? I’ll gladly die in order to take you with me. For all practical purposes I died when George did, anyway. I hope we both roast in hell!”
She swept past me to a corner of the room and lifted a phone from an end table. She had dialed “O” by the time I reached her.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.
She glared at me without answering. I heard a voice on the phone say, “Operator.”
Helen said in a toneless voice, “Get me the police, please.”
The operator only heard the first two words, however. My fingers pressed down the cutoff bar before Helen could say more than, “Get me—”
Jerking the phone from her hand, I hit her on the jaw so hard, she flew halfway across the room to land in a sprawled heap. I dropped the phone back in its cradle and went over to kneel beside her. She was out cold.
Rising, I crossed to the Louis XIV sideboard, opened the door where the liquor was and poured myself a straight shot of bourbon. I used a cigarette for a chaser.
Then I started to pace, thinking.
I knew what I had to do before I started pacing, because there wasn’t any other solution. But I had to adjust my mind to it.
There were complications, though. When the police started investigating Gertie Drake’s disappearance, they were going to learn that I had been to her landlady inquiring about her, and had later dropped in to talk to her father. As long as only Gertie’s disappearance was involved, there had been no danger in that for me. By deliberately misfiling some document at the office and then making a to-do about it, I could make my story to the landlady stand up. And there was nothing suspicious about my dropping by to visit the folks of a fellow employee when I just happened to be in town. Anyway, the trail in that crime pointed too clearly to George Mathews for the police to pay much attention to me.
But if Helen were found murdered, they would know George Mathews couldn’t be guilty of that. Inevitably they would suspect some kind of connection between Gertie’s disappearance and Helen’s death. And that would focus their attention on everyone who had even the remotest connection with either woman. My inquiries about Gertie would make me one of the first suspects questioned.
I had been a cop myself long enough to know that in most homicide cases all the police need is a strong suspicion. More cases are broken in the interrogation room than are ever solved by clues and fingerprints. I felt I would probably be able to stand up under questioning pretty well, but I didn’t s
ee any point in risking it.
Of course there would be an investigation even if Helen merely disappeared instead of being found murdered. But it wouldn’t be the same sort. The police probably would suspect some connection between the two disappearances, but they wouldn’t be able to pin down what it was. They couldn’t even be sure that a crime had been committed. They would have to consider that she might have developed amnesia from the shock of her husband’s death, or had drowned herself in the lake because of grief. If I were questioned, all I had to do was deny even knowing Helen and they couldn’t even suspect me very seriously.
It would be much more dangerous if they were able to prove a corpus delicti.
Ergo: Helen must disappear without a trace.
24
STUBBING OUT MY CIGARETTE IN AN ASH TRAY, I KNELT next to Helen again and thumbed back an eyelid. The blow I had landed on her jaw had been a haymaker, and it looked as though she would be out for some time.
Going to the door, I peered out at the street. Sheridan Drive was well lighted and there was no one in sight. The house was set well back from the street, like all houses on the Drive. There were wide lawns studded with trees between the houses, too, so that after dark each home was fairly safe from neighborly observation. I judged that if I pulled my car into the driveway alongside the front porch, it would be easy to get Helen into it without being seen.
Setting the latch so that I could get back in, I went outside to get my car. When I had driven up, I had stopped in front of the house only long enough to make sure the porch light was out, then had parked a quarter-block down the street on the opposite side so that neighbors wouldn’t connect my car with the Mathews home and wonder why the newly made widow was having company so late. With only my dimmers on I drove into the driveway and parked next to the porch.
Helen hadn’t moved when I went back in. Checking her again, I decided she would stay safely unconscious for a time. So I set to work to tidy up. First I used my handkerchief to wipe fingerprints from everything in the room I could recall touching, not forgetting the liquor bottle and telephone. I was about to slip Helen’s shoes back on her when it occurred to me they would only give me something else to dispose of. Instead I carried them upstairs, located her bedroom and set them on the floor of the closet among her other shoes.
Body For Sale Page 14
