Crime of Their Life

by Frank Kane

  Marla dropped the receiver back on its hook, grinned at Robin.

  “I’m almost twenty-one and you know it,” Robin told her.

  “I know it and you know it,” the roommate told her. “But Jerome doesn’t. And he can’t take any chances. If it did turn out that you were San Quentin quail—”

  “You don’t think he’ll fall for it?”

  Marla checked her wristwatch. “It’s 10:30 now. You’ll hear from him before lunch.”

  It was exactly 11:47 when the phone rang.

  “Robin?” Marc Jerome’s voice was wheezy, as though choked by the fat of his jowls. “This is Marc Jerome.”

  “I’ve been trying to reach you,” Robin told him.

  “I know, kid, I know. But I’ve been busy trying to get some things lined up for you. Big things.”

  “Such as?”

  “A test, for one thing. Can you be at the studio on Monday at nine? I think I have just the part to get you under way.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Good.” The producer worked on sounding enthusiastic. “And about that party, kid. You’ll understand why I can’t make it? You won’t need any lawyer doing business with Magna. I’ll be watching out for your interests. Okay, kid?”

  “Whatever you say, Mr. Jerome.”

  The screen test was successful, and so was Robin over a period of years. But then came the day when options weren’t picked up, a couple of bad Broadway plays and a television series that never got beyond a pilot, and Robin Lewis faded from the Hollywood scene.

  She had met Delmar Rose, captain of the Queen Alexandra, on the cruise she had taken to forget Hollywood. He had been easy to be with, found her company exciting and had invited her to his cabin.

  After the fiascoes she had encountered in Hollywood bedrooms, the maleness of the captain had appealed to her. There were no apologies, no self-abasement. The captain was all man and made her feel like a woman. There were no strings attached, no empty protestations of love. It was a man and woman who understood each other and enjoyed each other. On that basis, it became a semiannual event for Robin Lewis to book passage on the Queen.

  “You’re a man of the world, Johnny. So is Delmar Rose and so is Carson Eldridge. Would my past matter that much to you?”

  Liddell considered, shrugged. “What a woman did before she knew me wouldn’t count. What would count is how she handled herself after she met me.”

  Robin Lewis looked relieved. “I think most real men would feel like that.”

  “You can’t judge how one man will react by the way others do,” he warned. “Eldridge and I travel in different social circles. And I don’t have a daughter whose opinion has suddenly become very important to me. But I’m not worried about you, Robin. You’ll land on your feet.” The actress nodded. “I always have.” She studied Liddell’s face. “I’m not worried about me either, but I am worried about you.”

  “Why?”

  “Delmar told me you’re investigating Landers’s death. To find out if it was suicide. I’m sure it wasn’t. Landers wasn’t the kind of a man to kill himself. You only had to talk to him for a few minutes to find that out.”

  “I don’t think he was either.”

  Robin nodded her head. “That’s why you must be very careful. If it wasn’t suicide, it might have been murder. And if it was, whoever did it won’t hesitate to murder again.”

  Liddell sighed. “It’s practically unanimous that I’m going to walk back from this cruise with an anchor tied around my neck. And to think I always had the impression that a sea voyage was good for the health.”

  CHAPTER 14

  In the presidential suite, Alvin McDowell was still waxing indignant over the affront to Richard Nixon at the tea dance.

  “Damn parlor pinks, that’s what they are,” he sputtered. “How do they expect these spies or anyone else to have any respect for the vice president of the United States if they don’t have?”

  Myra McDowell sat in front of the make-up mirror over the dressing table, jabbed with the tips of carefully manicured fingers at the shellacked waves in her blue-white hair. “Ex.”

  McDowell, temporarily sidetracked, turned to her. “Ex what?”

  “Ex vice president.”

  “Just a technicality. He was the vice president when they spit at him, wasn’t he? He’d have been president now if he didn’t make an ass of himself on that idiot box, wouldn’t he? It’s the principle of the thing. In the old days, we would have sent a couple of companies of Marines in there—”

  “That was in the old days, Alvin. Now stop getting your blood pressure up. You know what the doctor told you about getting into political arguments.” Myra leaned forward, examined her face in the slight magnification of the make-up mirror. She reached for a pair of tweezers, plucked out a coarse hair that was sprouting from a mole on her chin. “And for goodness sake, don’t let Conway needle you into an argument at the table tonight. I think the captain’s getting a little sick of you two bickering back and forth.”

  “The man’s an ass,” McDowell blurted. “Him and his crazy theories. He’s supposed to be a businessman, but if he had his way we’d go bankrupt giving money away to a lot of spic nations that hate our guts. If he hadn’t married into the Garrett Agency, he couldn’t be a ribbon clerk. That’s the trouble with these gigolos who marry money. If he had to work twenty hours a day since he was fifteen like I did—”

  Myra sighed. “Please, Alvin, not again. I’ve heard that story at breakfast, dinner and supper for the past fifteen years.”

  “Well, it’s true. I made mine the hard way so I know the value of a dollar. He got his the easy way —”

  “Marrying her is the easy way?” The woman sniffed. “That upstart! Actually thought the captain would move us out of here to make room for them. Where did she ever get the idea, I wonder?”

  “Purser tells me the Garrett Company does a lot of business with the line and —”

  Myra tilted her head to the side, studied the effect of the bluing on her hair. “Do you think they put a little bit too much blue in it at the beauty parlor today, Alvin?”

  McDowell paused in his search for his ready tied bow tie, favored the deep blue of his wife’s hair with a jaundiced eye. “Never could figure out why women spend so much time in beauty parlors. Most times when they come out they look like they didn’t get waited on.”

  “Where else could you catch up on all the news? Did you know that new passenger we picked up in Barbados is a detective?”

  McDowell eyed his wife for a moment. “Who says so?”

  Myra shrugged elaborately. “I don’t know who says so. I just heard some of the people in the shop discussing it. Now why do you suppose a detective would be on board?”

  “Probably checking up on some of the mister and missuses. There’s plenty of them look to me like they never saw a parson. Not together, leastways.”

  “You’re always suspecting someone or somebody, Alvin. My guess is he’s trying to find out what happened to that poor man who went overboard during the storm.”

  “Seems pretty damn obvious to me what happened to him. He drowned. Unless he was half fish,” McDowell growled.

  “That Eldridge girl was in there today. From the looks of things she was getting the whole works.”

  “She doesn’t need a beauty parlor. She needs a miracle.”

  “I don’t know. She has that handsome young officer dancing attendance every night.”

  “That’s a real love affair, that is. Between Weston and the old man’s dough. If I was Eldridge I’d run that young gigolo off, but good.”

  “Maybe you would and maybe you wouldn’t. Eldridge isn’t going to find it easy to get that girl off his hands unless it’s somebody like the Weston boy,” Myra told him. She stood up, twisted and turned in front of the mirror, examined her corseted figure from all angles. “When we get home, we’re sure going to have to go on a diet.”

  “What do you mean we?” McDowell snort
ed. “You put on the fat and I get put on the diet. What the hell kind of sense does that make?”

  In the stateroom on B deck, two doors removed from the now closed beauty salon, Third Officer Lawrence Weston was straightening his tie, examining his appearance in the lavatory mirror. He flattened his hair over his right ear with the palm of his hand, nodded his satisfaction with the over-all effect.

  He walked out into the stateroom where Meg Corbett lay sprawled on her bunk. She watched him from under heavy-lidded, carefully made-up eyes; a cigarette dangled from her full lips, a thin spiral of smoke twisting toward the half-opened porthole. She wore a silk slip that made no attempt to underemphasize her assets; her feet and legs were bare, her red hair a metallic tangle on the pillow.

  “My, don’t we look pretty?” She took the cigarette from between her lips, studied the carmined end. “Now we spend the rest of the evening running around after the Eldridge kid like a pet poodle in heat. And I’m supposed to hang around this hot box waiting until you get her tucked in bed. Right?” She rolled her eyes up from the cigarette to his face. “You want to know something? I’m getting pretty damn sick of this bit.”

  Weston sighed. “You knew the score on this thing right from the beginning, Meg. We decided to play it this way. You wouldn’t want me to back away from it now?”

  “And what if I do?”

  The third officer shook his head. “It wouldn’t make sense. Her old man has money he hasn’t even folded and he’s ripe for somebody to take it away from him. Why not us?” He walked over, sat on the edge of the bunk, ran his fingers through her hair. “You don’t think I like it, do you?”

  “You sure could fool me, going back for more every night.” She pushed his hand away. “Maybe her old man does have money, but I don’t know if this routine is worth it. We’re doing all right. A couple of more cruises and we can quit.”

  “And do what? You run a beauty parlor on the side and we live in a flat some place?” He shook his head, hit his chest with the side of his hand. “Sorry, baby, that’s not for me. Look, don’t be crazy—”

  “Don’t you be crazy.” There was a new, hard note in her voice. “And that’s what you would be if you figured you could give me the brush.”

  “What’s getting into you anyway, Meg? Whoever said anything about giving you the brush? All I’m asking is for you to string along for a couple of months. Just long enough for me to make her so miserable her old man will be willing to pay anything to get rid of me.”

  “I still think we can get along without the old man’s loot.” She took a last, deep drag on her cigarette, rolled over to crush it. She rolled back onto her back, looked up at him, oblivious to the fact that her slip had hiked up, baring an expanse of thigh. She made a halfhearted effort to pull it down, gave it up. “You want to get your hands on some of his money the hard way, that’s up to you. Just as long as you remember that we’re partners.”

  She got up off the bunk, walked over to the lavatory door, giving her hips a little more wiggle than was necessary. She turned with her hand on the knob. “You won’t mind letting yourself out. My hair needs washing.” She walked into the lavatory, closed the door behind her.

  Weston stood for a moment, staring at the closed door, wondering why he had let himself get as deeply involved as he was. Although her red hair palpably came out of a bottle, she had the kind of temper that made him quail.

  In the beginning, Meg Corbett had set her sights higher than a third officer and for most of her first voyage on the Queen she had ignored him completely. This had made Larry Weston all the more eager and anxious. When it became obvious to Meg that Jack Allen, the cruise director, was willing to play house, but laughed at her when she tried to move in, she explored other pastures. The purser, with his fat sweaty hands, with his organized efficiency and his uncanny habit of always being right, frightened her off. The second officer had a wife at home and was forever flashing pictures of his brood of children.

  Although Weston was only third, and was fairly low on the totem pole in prospects, he had youth, a refusal to be rebuffed and unfailing good humor. When she finally decided realistically that he was her best bet, she reversed her field and to his delighted astonishment literally opened the door for him to walk in. It wasn’t until he was in too deep to back away that he realized how possessive she was, how violent a temper she had and how dangerous she could be. But even then, weighing these faults against the assets which filled her slip, fore and aft, he had continued to mount the pursuit, getting in deeper and deeper.

  Yet this wasn’t what Larry Weston was after. He had entered the Merchant Marine Academy with the conviction that he would like life at sea, that it would provide unlimited opportunities for romantic interludes with rich and generous beauties, maybe even a chance to parlay his snappy uniform into a profitable marriage.

  But the stern reality was that uniform or no uniform he was considered little more than a flunky by the passengers. Instead of being sought out by rich and beautiful women he was more often than not assigned to keep a basket case company and to make her cruise a, memorable one. And the worst part of it was that they weren’t even rich, but were, for the most part, stenographers and file clerks realizing a lifetime ambition by shooting their entire savings on one fling.

  At least that’s the way-it was until now. Fran Eldridge was certainly no beauty, but there was no doubt that she was rich. And she was crazy about him. He was probably the first man ever to give her a rush, and while he had to close his eyes and hold his breath when he did, he was sure that he was the first man ever to kiss her. With the exertion of a little effort, he could turn her into a slave for life, so grateful for a few pats on the head that she’d lick his hand. It could work out surprisingly well—if it weren’t for the complication of the involvement with Meg.

  He walked to the door, opened it a crack, satisfied himself that the companionway was empty. He let himself out, closed the door behind him.

  Meg walked out of the lavatory, toweling her damp hair. She was wondering how far she could push Weston with safety. Ever since he had started making time with the Eldridge kid, she had been worried that he was slipping out of her grasp. She balled the towel, threw it into the lavatory, walked over to a small desk built into the wall.

  She found some stationery and an envelope in the top drawer, sat down and started to write. When she had filled the sheet with a large, childish scrawl, she leaned back, read it and nodded her satisfaction. Then she folded it and stuck it into the envelope and scribbled Miss F. Eldridge on it and sealed the envelope.

  Tom Conway sat slumped in the armchair in cabin de luxe 69 on the lower promenade deck and listened to his wife on her favorite subject.

  “You know I had my heart set on the presidential suite. We’ve had it before and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have it now.”

  Conway sighed. “The McDowells got their reservations in first. You couldn’t expect them—”

  “The McDowells.” The sniff that accompanied the two words expressed its own opinions. “Giving it to them was adding insult to injury. I wouldn’t mind if it was somebody important, but that grease monkey and that awful woman of his! Just sitting there, lording it over me. I don’t know how much longer I can put up with it.”

  “I don’t think she’s so bad. But he’ll drive me crazy if he doesn’t stop telling the story of his life.” He reached to the table for a cigarette. “However, since there’s nothing we can do about it, why don’t we drop the subject?”

  The thin waspish woman whirled on him. “I don’t intend to drop the subject. In intend to take it up with the officials of the steamship line when we get home. I also intend to let them know that we got no co-operation whatsoever from the captain.”

  “What the hell do you expect him to do? He didn’t make the reservations; he don’t like McDowell any better than I do. He’s got us sitting at his table, hasn’t he?”

  “That’s the least he could do. Considering all the
business we give this line we’re entitled to more consideration. And I intend to get it.”

  Conway stuck the cigarette in the comer of his mouth where it waggled when he talked, touched a match to it. “The Britannia Line won’t go out of business if we pull away from them. What the hell do we give them? We run twelve contests a year, send the winners on a fifteen-day cruise and write it off as advertising and promotion. You and I take two or three cruises a year. You think the line’s getting rich on that?”

  “That’s ten or twelve more passages than the McDowells pay for. If McDowell was paying for anybody’s passage like we are for the Doyles, he’d be bragging about it all over the trip. But us, we —”

  Conway winced. “You want to have the Doyles around our necks for the rest of the trip? It’s been gruesome enough as it is.”

  “I know, I know. You’d rather be in Las Vegas where you could be ogling a lot of half-naked girls. What’s the matter, isn’t the attention you’ve been getting from that Polack hostess enough for you?”

  “She’s not a Polack, she’s a Swede.”

  “Whatever she is, she’s out for trouble. And if I catch you sniffing around her, I’ll see that she gets plenty of it. And you, too.” She eyed him hostilely. “My mother always warned me that you were marrying me for my money. And she was right.”

  Conway leaned the back of his neck on the chair, blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling.

  “Well, wasn’t she?” the woman demanded.

  The man reluctantly brought his eyes down from the ceiling to meet her glances. “If I did, I’ve earned every dollar of it.”

  The thin woman’s eyes flashed. “Don’t you get smart with me, Tom Conway. Everything you have, you owe to me and I won’t have you forgetting it.”

  “I never get a chance to,” the man conceded.

  “You’ve been getting pretty flippant lately,” Laura Conway snapped. “I hope you don’t think you got that vice presidency because you’re such a hot-shot advertising man. You know why you got that vice presidency.”