“I’m Michael Shayne. A private detective from Miami.”
Mr. Pease took his hand firmly, but darted a quizzical glance at his wife as Shayne identified himself. “Maybe we’ll find out what it’s all about this time, Mother. We never did get it rightly clear what it was about Dick and Belle from the garbled-up things we heard about the other detective.”
She sniffed and said, “I never could understand why he didn’t come straight to us when we lived next door to them for years and could have told him anything he wanted to know.”
Shayne said, “You mean another detective from Miami has been around recently asking about the Watsons? What was his name? I know practically all of them in the city.”
“It was a few months ago,” said Mr. Pease, seating himself in the other rocking chair when Shayne gestured to it and lowered himself to the top step. “We guessed maybe Belle was wanting to get married again and had a detective looking for Dick to serve divorce papers on him. We never did get the other detective’s name rightly. Those he talked to in the neighborhood said he was the sneaky kind.”
“Is that why you’re here, Mr. Shayne?” Mrs. Pease asked eagerly. “I always said Belle wasn’t the kind to go very long without a man on the string, and the very worst thing Dick could have done to her was just exactly what he did. Left her high and dry, that’s what.” She chuckled amiably, wrinkling her eyelids at what was undoubtedly a most pleasant memory.
“Let’s get one thing straightened out the first thing we do,” said Shayne hastily. He produced the picture of Belle and handed it to the couple. “Is this a photograph of Belle Watson?”
They looked at it together, and both nodded their heads emphatically. “That’s Belle right enough,” said Mrs. Pease. “I recollect when she had that picture taken, Pa. It was in the summer. Just a month or so before it happened.”
“I remember, too,” Mr. Pease agreed soberly. He took a stubby pipe from his pants pocket and carefully loaded it from a leather pouch.
“Well, land sakes, Mr. Shayne, do tell us whatever you know about Dick,” said Mrs. Pease eagerly. “We’ve wondered and wondered. Such a nice man, he was. Deserving of better than Belle.”
“I hoped you’d be able to tell me,” said Shayne.
“You mean he never has shown up again and you’re still trying to trace him? You hear that, Pa? If Belle has got another man wound around her finger I bet she’s just near crazy not knowing where Dick is so she can sue for divorce. So she’s got two detectives looking for him now.” She chuckled again, folding her hands happily across her lap.
“Tell me all about them,” Shayne urged the couple. “What sort of people were they? What sort of lives did they live?”
“I guess you know Belle already if you’re working for her,” said Mrs. Pease. “Goodness knows what kind of lies she’s told you about Dick, she was that mad when he left her. But don’t you believe a word of it. If any man was ever driven away from his home it was Richard Watson. I’ve said it a hundred times and I’d say it right to her face if she was here now to hear me.”
“Now, Mother,” said Mr. Pease waving his pipe gently. “She did change a lot after it happened. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Kind of wilted, she was. And she did buckle down and take that secretary’s course and go to work.”
“After she’d spent the last of his savings,” Mrs. Pease sniffed, “and it was perfectly clear he hadn’t any intention of coming back to support her any more. She changed all right after she lost a good, steady provider and didn’t have his weekly pay-check to waste on drinking in bars and all.”
“Dick Watson was a fine steady worker,” Pease told Shayne. “Head bookkeeper for the Barnett Lumber Mills here in Atlanta. I guess you’ve heard of the Barnett family even in Miami.”
The name did strike a faint chord in Shayne’s memory. He wrinkled his brow and asked, “Was there something in the newspapers?”
“I guess there was plenty in papers all over the country when their little boy was kidnapped. They got the boy back and caught the kidnapper right after Dick left home. Police and FBI were even around here asking questions just because Dick had worked there so many years. It made Belle mad because the papers made so much of that and didn’t print any big stories about her husband leaving her. But I remember one reporter I talked to from the Constitution and she’d been after him to print a big piece and he shook his head and said to me privately that he wasn’t going to do anything to hound the poor fellow. Any man that was married to Belle, he said to me, he didn’t blame him one mite for walking out on her.”
“Now, Mother,” said Mr. Pease reprovingly, “Mr. Shayne isn’t interested in what any reporter said to you. Tell him about the Watsons when they first moved in next door and what led up to him walking out on her. I reckon that’s the kind of thing he wants.”
Shayne lit a cigarette and hugged his knees and listened patiently to the story of the Watsons as it poured from the eager lips of the elderly couple, interrupting now and then to ask a pertinent question to get the background clear in his mind.
In essence, this was the drab story of the decline and disintegration of a marriage as Shayne extracted it from the Watsons’ next-door neighbors.
Richard and Belle Watson had moved into the neighborhood and rented the five-room house next door in 1947 or 1948, while Belle was still a gay and (according to Mr. Pease) beautiful bride. Richard Watson had been of a different temperament from Belle, and the Peases tried to be fair by agreeing that it was difficult for a woman of her volatile disposition to settle down to humdrum housewifery, and they felt it was too bad there hadn’t been a child to give her roots, so to speak. Not that Belle had really wanted a child, Mrs. Pease averred strongly, but Dick was the type to have made a wonderful father. He was a good neighbor and a good citizen, one who paid household bills promptly on the tenth of each month, drove a respectable secondhand car to and from work, and spent his evenings at home puttering around the house and lawn. He was a friendly man, well-liked by his neighbors and a confidant of most of the youngsters in the block.
But Belle Watson, Shayne gathered, was a different kettle of fish. She was inclined to consider herself above her neighbors, though, goodness knows, the Peases didn’t know why, for she was a slovenly housekeeper and a discontented wife.
Things hadn’t been too bad the first year or so of their marriage, but after that Belle took to going out a lot in the daytime while Mr. Watson was at work, and there were many rumors and much speculation as to what she did while absent from home.
Mr. and Mrs. Pease were scrupulously honest in agreeing that there had been no direct evidence that Belle had been unfaithful to her wedding vows, but they did agree that no one could deny that she often returned late in the afternoon in a taxi obviously intoxicated; and the number of empty bottles that were known to accumulate in the Watsons’ garbage each week were definite proof that she also did a lot of drinking at home, because it was well-known that Mr. Watson was a strict teetotaller.
And she was known throughout the neighborhood as a nagging wife who was discontented with her husband’s modest salary and inclined to live beyond it; and it was the consensus that the poor man had been badgered and bullied by her into doing what he finally did on the quiet Sunday evening preceding Labor Day of 1954.
Because this was the most dramatic event that had ever directly impinged on the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Pease, they remembered every moment of that entire Sunday very clearly and insisted on describing the day in minute detail though Shayne did his best to hurry the telling along as he kept glancing at his watch and departure time for his plane grew closer and closer.
Richard Watson had stayed home all that day as usual, working around the yard some and passing pleasantries with the Peases as they rocked comfortably on their front porch, and there hadn’t been any indication they could see that he was nerving himself up to his final action that evening.
Belle, on the other hand, hadn’t been in evidence a
ll day. They knew she was at home, and could only surmise that she had been sitting in the house sullenly drinking by herself because she certainly was well along in her cups at dusk that evening when they observed Mr. Watson emerge from the kitchen door carrying a shabby brown suitcase in his hand, and she followed him out onto the back stoop, railing at him like a fishwife (though they couldn’t distinguish her words from where they were sitting in these very rockers).
But they did clearly see the husband stalk away from her and place the suitcase in the back of his shabby sedan parked in the driveway, and then back out carefully while she remained at the back door with her hair awry while she gesticulated angrily.
And he had glanced at them with a pleasant smile as he backed past on the driveway, and even lifted his hand in a sort of wry acknowledgement of their interest in the marital drama, but neither of them had the slightest idea that was the last they would ever see of Richard Watson.
But it proved to be the last anyone ever saw of Richard Watson.
He simply backed out of the driveway and drove away into the dusk, leaving a drunken wife and a rented house and a secure job behind him.
Belle never heard from him again. He and his secondhand sedan disappeared as completely as though the earth had swallowed him up, and goodness knows what had happened to him, and Belle kept saying she was sure he was dead and how much better it would be if she just knew instead of the awful suspense of not knowing, and in the beginning they sympathized with her, but later they got to thinking it was only the insurance money she was thinking about and wanted to collect ($2,500, it was … which the insurance company refused to pay without proof of death), and later they suspicioned that what bothered her most was being in the anomalous position of still being legally married without a man around to provide for her, and without being able to remarry.
So now, they were eager to know what the Miami detective knew about Richard Watson. Had he ever been found and were they right in guessing that Belle had hired him to find her missing husband so she could get a divorce?
Shayne parried their questions as best he could, evasively explaining that he hadn’t actually been retained by Belle, but that he’d heard indirectly that she had gone to another state to take a secretarial position in a bank, and it was well after five-thirty when he was finally able to break away from their questions and hurry out to the street to hail a passing cab to take him to the airport.
He made it with only minutes to spare and boarded the Tampa plane just as the stairway was about to be rolled away, and settled back in his seat for the return trip with a lot to think about.
12
So belle had not only committed perjury when she applied for a marriage license with Walter Carson in 1955, but it appeared almost certain that she had committed bigamy as well.
Of course, the Peases were not in a position to know definitely that she had not obtained a divorce in the meantime. Divorces are granted in some states for desertion, but not unless the other party was available to have papers served on him so he could answer the charge.
Shayne knew, of course, that there is a legal provision that a person can be declared dead by the courts after he has been missing for seven years, and also that there is some sort of Enoch Arden ruling that grants a divorce in case there is a strong presumption of death—such as a soldier being officially reported missing in action.
But neither of these provisions seemed to apply to the Watson case, and as the plane carried him back to Tampa, Shayne was morally certain that proof of bigamy was what Mrs. Barstow’s detective had dug up against Belle in his Atlanta investigation.
That was certainly something she would wish to conceal from her staid banker husband. No wonder the detective had reported to Mrs. Barstow that he was on the trail of evidence that would effectually stop Belle in her tracks and force her to give up her affair with Harvey Barstow. After learning as much as Shayne had today and realizing it was most probable she had committed bigamy, he would have used the extra money from Mrs. Barstow to complete his investigation by studying the records and ascertaining that no divorce had been granted to her prior to her marriage with Carson.
With that knowledge, an astute and crooked operator would be in a position to put on the pressure for plenty of money. Having never met Carson, Shayne could not accurately gauge what the banker’s reaction would have been to such knowledge, but it was reasonable to assume that no respected president of a small-bank would condone bigamy.
So this could well be the motive for murder. He had gone to Atlanta wondering if any secret about Belle’s past was sufficiently important for her to have arranged her husband’s murder to prevent his becoming aware of it.
And now he had bigamy for his answer.
If that was why Carson had made the appointment to see him, and if Belle had known that was why.
Until he knew the answers to these questions, Shayne knew it was utterly useless for him to theorize further. And with Carson dead, there was only one place he could go to get the answers.
That was back to Belle in Denham, and he settled back on the plane with what patience he could muster to await a further interview with the widow.
Dinner was served on the plane before it reached Tampa, and the only thing Shayne lacked in his belly was a couple of large-size slugs of cognac as he hurried to his parked car and began the drive back to Denham.
But he didn’t take time out to stop at a roadside bar to fulfill that bodily need. It would be late in the evening, now, before he could reach Denham and he didn’t want to postpone a second interview with Mrs. Carson for another night. There was no telling what Peter Painter had turned up during the afternoon in town, but it was certain that the bank employees would have told him about Shayne’s visit, and the fact that the redhead had reached town ahead of him would convince him that Shayne had been holding out information from the beginning.
That was enough on which to base a warrant for Shayne’s arrest, and he hadn’t the slightest doubt that it would be served the moment Painter or any of his men caught sight of him.
So he had a few hours, maybe, to get in under the wire ahead of Painter and solve the case before he found himself behind bars where he could never solve it.
He increased the weight of his foot on the accelerator as the black strip of macadam in front of him stretched straight out into the night in a southeasterly direction. He didn’t think Painter would expect him back in Denham even though he did know Shayne had engaged a hotel room there and left a suitcase in it. He did suspect, however, that the Beach chief would have arranged to have a guard posted at the Carson house to prevent his interviewing the widow (in case she hadn’t told him that noon that Shayne had already been there); and when he finally reached the crossroads where he had turned off the County road to Tampa earlier, he took the same road back past the Carson estate instead of following the main route into town.
A three-quarter moon had moved up over the horizon while he drove from Tampa, and he slowed after a few miles, peering ahead and seeking the dirt road that led up along the edge of the orange grove to the rear of the banker’s house.
He came to it finally, and turned off, switching off his headlights just as he made the turn, and slowing to a snail’s pace while his eyes accustomed themselves to the moonlight and the absence of white beams directly ahead.
He followed the rutted road as much by instinct as by sight, and soon was able to make out dimly-lit windows of the big house on the knoll half concealed by the grove of oak trees.
He remembered how the garage had hidden his car from the house for a short distance that afternoon when he drove away, and when a black hulk blotted out the house lights tonight, he slowed even more, bringing the car to a gentle halt just as he began to round the curve that brought the house into view again.
The night silence lay heavy on the knoll overlooking Denham as Shayne stepped out of the car onto the grass. He closed the door behind him with a gentle click and moved forward on t
he grass toward the terrace on the side of the big house.
Light shone dimly through curtained windows and the French doors onto the terrace, glinting on the aluminum of lounging chairs and outdoor tables, and as he approached, Shayne dimly made out the figure of a woman dressed in white relaxed at full-length in one of the long chairs.
He stopped for a moment at the end of the terrace, crouching to backlight the whole surface against the dim lights from windows and doors, and saw that the woman was Belle and that she was alone.
Her right arm lifted as he hesitated there, and he heard the clink of glass against a metal table-top as the arm lowered again. He straightened and moved forward along the edge of the terrace until he was opposite her, and then stepped up and forward so that he was looking directly down at her.
Belle made no movement, but her eyes were wide open, staring up directly at him without alarm and, so far as he could see, without surprise.
She said, “So it’s you back again, Red.” Her voice was thick with liquor and the words were softly slurred, but perfectly clear. “I thought you would be back.”
Shayne said, “I’ve been to Atlanta, Belle.”
He moved around behind her and pulled up a straight-back chair close to the table on which stood the martini pitcher and her glass.
She said, “You made a fast trip.”
Shayne lifted her glass and drank from it. From the taste, he judged it contained the same mixture of gin and nothing that she had been drinking that noon. He wondered how many pitchers she had emptied since he left her in the house with Painter.
He lit a cigarette and asked casually, “Did you tell Peter Painter that I had been talking to you?”
“The cute little detective from Miami Beach? I didn’t think it was any of his business, Red. Did you kill Walter?”
“That’s a hell of a question.”
Murder and the Wanton Bride Page 9
