“Lawrence discovered the car damage,” she said calmly. “He knows my car killed that old man.”
Cushman’s jaw dropped. In a stupefied voice he said, “Good God! Does he know I was with you?”
Helena’s lip corners lifted ever so slightly. It wasn’t a smile so much as an expression of mockery. “Is that your only worry?” she asked.
He had the grace to look a little abashed. “Of course not,” he said. “You know my first concern is you. Has he called the police?”
She shook her head. “He can’t. He’s too tied up at the moment.”
“Tied up? With what?”
“Clothesline,” Helena said. “I mean he’s literally tied up. He’s in our basement.”
Unsteadily, Cushman crossed to an easy chair and sank into it. “I think I’d better hear this sitting down,” he said. “Just what happened?”
“I knocked him unconscious with a wrench,” Helena said serenely. “I didn’t have any choice. He had the phone in his hand to call the police, and I needed time to think. After I thought out what to do, I phoned Mr. Calhoun.”
Cushman only stared at her, too stupefied to make any comment.
“Mr. Calhoun came over at once,” she continued, in the same tone she might have used to give a woman friend a recipe. “Meantime I had tied and gagged Lawrence, and had made an excuse to send Alice home. We were in the garage when it happened, you see, so Alice doesn’t know anything about it.”
“Thank God for little favors, anyway,” Cushman breathed.
“Do you love me?” Helena asked in her normally flat tone.
Cushman stared at her. “You certainly pick odd times for romance.”
“It’s important,” she said. “Do you still want to marry me? There’s no point in continuing this conversation if you don’t.”
He regarded her curiously for several silent seconds, as though trying to decipher some meaning in the strange tangent at which the conversation had suddenly gone off. As he studied her, some of the puzzlement and worry disappeared from his face and her beauty again began to penetrate his consciousness. If his eventual nod wasn’t enthusiastic, it was definitely affirmative.
“You do still want to marry me?” she persisted.
“Of course,” he said. “You know I’m crazy about you. But I thought you wanted the status quo.”
“That’s hardly possible now, is it? The minute I untie Lawrence, he’ll head for a lawyer. Do you want to marry me enough to go to a little trouble?”
“Haven’t I already?” he asked. “Fifteen thousand bucks isn’t exactly peanuts. Not to mention the mental strain.”
“You’ll have to do a little more now, Harry. If you really want me. I want you to help me get a divorce.”
“How?” he asked. “Anyway, aren’t you a little confused? The important thing is to get you out of a felony charge. If we manage that, your husband will probably take care of the divorce. You just said the first place he’ll go when you untie him is to a lawyer.”
“My plan will free me of possible criminal charges at the same time it gives me a ground for divorce,” she said. “I don’t want Lawrence to get a divorce. I want to get it.”
He said dubiously, “Are you aware that the only divorce ground in New York is adultery?”
“It isn’t in Reno. Insanity is one of the grounds there.”
He looked at her blankly. “Insanity?”
“It’s quite simple,” she said. “I won’t have a bit of trouble proving Lawrence insane enough for commitment if you’ll cooperate in the plan. All you have to do is take his place on the plane to New York. It leaves in less than an hour.”
While he gaped at her, she drew a plane-ticket envelope from her bag and handed it to him. Then she handed him a pair of steel-rimmed glasses and said, “Here. Put these on. They’re Lawrence’s.”
Holding the glasses gingerly, he continued to gape at her.
“You’re almost exactly Lawrence’s height,” Helena said. “With a couple of towels padding your stomach, you’d be almost exactly his build. He has ten years on you, but you both have a full head of graying hair and a small gray mustache. With those glasses, you’d match his description perfectly. All you have to do is fly to New York in his place, then remove your disguise and fly back under another name on the next plane.”
He stared at the glasses, then back at her again. “But we don’t look a thing alike in the face,” he said stupidly.
“You don’t have to, so long as the descriptions match. The flight stewardesses won’t know either of you. Lawrence flies to Washington occasionally, but he hasn’t flown to New York in three years. You never fly anywhere. By the time the police make a routine check, several days will have passed and the stewardesses will all but have forgotten you. Even if they’re shown a photograph, it’s unlikely—”
“The police!” Cushman interrupted in a squeaking voice.
“Of course,” Helena said patiently. “The plan is this: Mr. Calhoun has agreed to hold Lawrence captive until the car is fixed—at no additional charge, incidentally. Then, after the car is back in the garage, he’ll transport Lawrence to New York City in a private plane owned by a friend of his. He’ll turn him loose in the city unshaven and in dirty clothes. What do you think Lawrence will do?”
“Head for the nearest police station and spill the whole story,” Cushman said promptly.
“Exactly. And how do you think the police will receive it?”
After considering this, Cushman said reflectively, “It won’t sound very plausible to them, I guess. They’ll probably do some checking before taking any action.”
Helena gave him the sort of nod teachers award to bright students. “And after checking, they’ll be convinced he’s crazy. The flight list will show he flew to New York as scheduled, and the stewardesses will verify his description. The assumption will be that he was in New York all the time, and his appearance will suggest that he spent his time getting drunk. When the police come to check my car, they’ll find it undamaged. Then I’ll announce that my husband has been suffering delusions about me for some time, and request his commitment to Gowanda. I doubt that under the circumstances I’ll have much trouble getting the commitment.”
“Maybe not for a period of observation,” Cushman said slowly. “But it’s hard to fool psychiatrists for very long.”
Helena almost smiled. “They’re as human as other people, Harry. What would your reaction be if you were a psychiatrist and one of your patients insisted a delusion was fact, when you had a police report stating it wasn’t fact. It will work, believe me. And the minute he’s declared insane, I’ll be off to Reno for a quick divorce.”
Thoughtfully rubbing his chin, Cushman sat with a frown on his face. From his expression, Helena couldn’t tell whether she had convinced him or not.
She was relieved when he said” in a contemplative tone, “You know, your plan’s just crazy enough to work.”
“Of course it will,” she said. She glanced at her watch. “Plane time is only forty minutes off. You won’t need a bag, Harry. Lawrence’s is in the car, all packed. You can check it in a coin locker at New York and leave it there. It will add just that much more proof of Lawrence’s arrival, if they ever check that deeply. You won’t need clothes of your own because you’ll be coming back tonight. Just stuff some towels under your belt and we’ll get started.”
Rising, he said, “I’d better check these glasses. Suppose I can’t see with them on?”
Putting them on he went to look at himself in a wall mirror.
“I can see fine,” he said in a pleased voice. “Things are just barely fuzzy.”
He made a tentative trip across the room, carefully avoiding furniture. He managed it without mishap.
“Now try some towel padding,” she suggested.
By now he was caught up with the idea of disguise. He entered the bathroom almost with enthusiasm and began pulling towels from a cabinet.
Helena hoped she c
ould maintain his enthusiasm long enough to get him on the plane. Fortunately time was too short for him to give the plan more careful consideration. If he thought about it deeply enough, it might occur to him to look up Nevada’s divorce laws in an almanac, as she had done just before she left her house.
She doubted that he would go through with the plan if he discovered that a spouse had to be proved insane for a period of two years before there was ground for divorce under Nevada law.
It also wouldn’t do for him to begin wondering why Bernard Calhoun had undertaken this additional risk at no additional fee; after all, the private detective had previously shown no tendency to perform his services gratis. Helena had taken a calculated risk. She had balanced the implausibility of her story against the certainty that Cushman would object to another fee increase. For she couldn’t risk a possible phone call by Cushman to the private detective to haggle over a new price.
Because Barney Calhoun was as yet unaware that Helena had additional duties marked out for him. Helena believed in taking things as they came. The most important factor in her plan was to get Harry Cushman in her husband’s place on the New York flight. And it didn’t bother her at all that she had been less than truthful with her lover to accomplish that.
Now she could work on Calhoun at her leisure.
8
Barney Calhoun spent a very quiet weekend. At noon on Friday Harry Cushman brought him two more sheafs of fifty-dollar bills. Calhoun took them and the original packet down to his bank vault, after transferring a thousand dollars to his wallet for expenses.
Then he relaxed for the remainder of the weekend, in expectation of not getting any sleep at all Monday night.
Monday morning Helena Powers disturbed his rest by phoning to make sure his plans were still in order. He was unable to get back to sleep.
At seven o’clock Monday evening she phoned again to tell him her husband had caught his plane and the way was clear for him to pick up the Buick.
“The keys in the car?” he asked.
“No. Stop at the house for them. Alice isn’t here and I’m all alone. No one will see you.”
“All right,” he said. “Expect me about an hour after it gets dark.”
In mid-July the sun didn’t set until after eight thirty, and it stayed light for another half hour after that. It didn’t get fully dark until nearly ten. Calhoun arrived at the Powers home at ten thirty P.M.
Helena Powers opened the front door to his ring. She was wearing a plain street dress and a pert little straw hat, and she carried a light jacket over her arm. Silently she locked the door behind him, then led him back to the kitchen, switching off lights as they passed through each room. On the kitchen table stood a small suitcase.
“You going somewhere?” Calhoun asked.
“With you,” she said. Her face revealed nothing.
Setting down his own bag, he looked at her in astonishment. “Why?”
“Because I want to.”
“I’ll be gone nearly a week.”
“I’ve made arrangements with Alice,” she said. “She thinks I’m driving up to my sister’s in Utica. I gave her a week off.”
“Suppose your husband tries to phone long distance and doesn’t get any answer?”
“He never phones. He just writes a card every day when he’s gone. And I never write back.”
Calhoun shrugged. “It’s your car. I guess you can ride in it if you want.”
He picked up her bag and his own, waited while she flicked out the lights and opened the back door for him. Then he waited again while she locked the door behind them.
In the garage he set down the bags and asked for her car keys. Silently she handed him a leather key case.
“Which is the trunk key?” he asked.
She pointed to one.
He slid it into the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. He tried it upside down, but it wouldn’t go in.
“The lock’s jammed,” he said.
Helena tried it with no more success. Finally she said, “I’m sure it’s the right key,” and looked puzzled.
“The devil with it,” he said. “We haven’t got that much luggage anyway.”
He tossed the two bags on the floor of the small back seat. The top of the convertible was still down, as it had been on the night of the accident. Calhoun put it up.
Apparently the only damage the car had suffered was to the body, because it drove perfectly. Calhoun noted with satisfaction that the gas tank registered three-fourths full; that should take them the two hundred miles to their destination without refueling.
The private detective didn’t anticipate much risk of their being stopped even in Buffalo by some cruising patrol car, because it was now six days since the accident and four days since John Lischer had died. A routine order would have been issued to all cars to look for a damaged green Buick, Calhoun knew, but he had ridden enough patrol back in his police days to be aware that by now this order would be filed away at the back of the minds of most cruising officers. They wouldn’t be out searching for the hit-and-run car to the extent of carefully looking over every green Buick they saw. Even if he and Helena ran into a police car and the officers noticed the damage, there was a good chance it wouldn’t register on them immediately that the car was green or that it was a Buick.
It also helped that it was now dark and that the damage was all on the right side. Simply by keeping in the righthand lane, Calhoun could prevent any cars passing in the same direction from noticing it. The only real danger was in meeting a squad car coming from the opposite direction; the front bumper was badly bent and the front right fender was crushed all out of shape.
To increase their odds, Calhoun stayed off the main streets as much as possible. His immediate destination was the Buffalo Skyway, which would spill them onto Route Five at the very southwest edge of town, and the quickest way to it was straight down Delaware from Helena’s house. Instead, Calhoun took an intricate course along the darkest sidestreets he could find.
Puzzled by the southwesterly direction of this maneuvering, Helena said, “I thought we were going to Rochester.”
“That was before I was accessory to a felony,” Calhoun said. “We’re going to Cleveland.”
“Cleveland! That’s two hundred miles!”
“Rochester garages will be looking for a bent Buick. Cleveland garages won’t. We should be there by four in the morning.”
Helena said, “You’ll need gas to drive that far. Is it safe to pull into a filling station?”
Calhoun glanced at the gauge again. “It’s nearly three-quarters full. We’ll make it.”
“The gauge doesn’t work properly,” she said. “I believe there’s only a little over five gallons in the tank.”
Calhoun slowed to a stop and looked sidewise at her in exasperation. “You might have mentioned that before we started. We could have drained some gas from the other cars.”
“You might have mentioned that we weren’t going to Rochester,” she countered with logic. “You have enough gas to make that.”
In silence he started the car again. After a moment she asked, “What are you going to do? Take a chance on buying some?”
He shook his head and continued driving. Helena said, “Now aren’t you glad I came along?”
“Why?” he asked.
“You wouldn’t have known about the fuel gauge. You’d have run out of gas on the highway somewhere.”
Calhoun made no answer.
He continued maneuvering southwest. Finally, after skirting the downtown section, he drove along lower Pearl Street and parked.
“Isn’t this where you live?” Helena asked, peering out.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll only be a minute.”
He left her in the car while he went inside. He returned almost immediately with a red-painted one-gallon gasoline can and a short length of rubber tubing. He tossed them on the back floor, then climbed back under the wheel and started the car.
“That
can sounded empty,” Helena said.
“It was,” he said tersely.
Deciding he wasn’t in a conversational mood, she lapsed into silence.
They were now only a block from the Skyway entrance. They made it without incident, and Calhoun breathed a sigh of relief. With traffic from the other direction widely separated from them, there was virtually no chance of anyone spotting their car damage while they were on the bridge. And once off of it, they would be nearly out of town.
But just as they drove off the far end of the bridge, they had a bad break. Up to this point they hadn’t seen a single radio car, but now, only a few blocks from the city limits and relative safety, one suddenly appeared coming toward them. As it cruised by, it blinked on its highway lights, then lowered them again.
With his heart in his mouth, Calhoun wondered if the two patrolmen in the car had noticed the damaged right front. In the rear-view mirror he saw them swing in a U-turn and start back. He had been traveling at twenty-five, but he risked increasing the speed to thirty.
A siren ground out a summons to halt.
For a wild moment Calhoun contemplated pushing the accelerator to the floor and racing it out. Then he realized there wasn’t any safe place to run. Straight ahead Route Five had only one turnoff, and it would spill them right into the most congested part of town. Past the turnoff the road ran like an arrow, without a curve or an intersection, clear to Lackawanna. If they tried that, the police would simply radio Lackawanna and a roadblock would be set up long before the Buick could get there.
Calhoun pulled over to the side of the road.
When the police car pulled up next to them, neither officer got out. The one on the right said, “Haven’t you got any dimmers on that thing, mister?”
At first his words failed to penetrate, because Calhoun was expecting some question about the smashed fender. Then he flicked his eyes at the dashboard and saw the small red light that indicated the highway. lights were on. His left foot felt for the floor switch and pressed it down.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t notice I had the brights on.”
Hit and Run Page 5
