He didn’t answer because he was afraid his voice would shake. He merely closed the door, which till now he had been too stupefied to shut, locked it, and unsteadily poured out two substantial shots of bourbon.
The ice in the pitcher had all melted by now, but Calhoun needed his straight anyway.
When he turned around with the two glasses in his hands, Helena was in the process of slowly removing her stockings.
“What did you tell me that act was called?” she said. “A street strip?”
He gave her a dazed nod.
“Who knows but what Lawrence may divorce me someday and I’ll have to earn a living? See how I compare with Ann Devoe.”
Calhoun decided she won the contest hands down.
12
The next three days were like a honeymoon. They didn’t have a thing to do but wait for the Buick to be repaired, so they simply relaxed and enjoyed themselves. With Helena doing the housework, which consisted only of making the bed, emptying ashtrays, and washing out whisky glasses, they weren’t even disturbed by the proprietor’s wife coming in to clean. They slept till noon, then showered, usually together, had a leisurely lunch, and spent the rest of the day at one of the numerous beaches on Lake Erie.
Evenings they spent dancing and drinking at The White Swan or some similar roadhouse.
That first night Calhoun discovered that Lawrence Powers’ opinion of his wife was vastly wrong. Far from being frigid, she possessed an unexpectedly fiery passion. Calhoun reflected that women were different from men; it took a specific person to arouse a woman, whereas the average man could work up physical passion for nearly any attractive woman.
The idea was a little flattering.
Later, Calhoun could see that Helena’s attraction for him was almost entirely physical. Except for her beauty and her unexpected passion, she wasn’t a very stimulating companion. They had almost no conversation aside from routine discussion of their plans for the day and aside from such physical pleasures as sunbathing, dancing, drinking, and love-making, Helena didn’t have a single interest in life that Calhoun could detect.
Two things puzzled him. One was her disappearance for a short time each morning. He would awaken about eight A.M. to find himself alone, drift back to sleep, and a short time later be awakened again by her climbing back into bed. Her explanation was that she had to have breakfast coffee but didn’t want to disturb him, so she dressed and drove down the road to a diner alone.
The other thing that puzzled him was her ability to get ice from the motel proprietor. Both Wednesday and Thursday noon, as soon as she was dressed, she left the cabin carrying the china water pitcher and returned with it full of cracked ice. But when, on Friday, Calhoun happened to get dressed first and took the pitcher to the office while Helena was still under the shower, the proprietor gave him an irritated look and said that he’d already informed Calhoun once that he didn’t supply ice for guests.
When he returned empty-handed, Helena went off with the pitcher and came back five minutes later with it full. Calhoun came to the conclusion that with so many customers moving in and out, the proprietor must have forgotten that he was the supposed brother of Helena.
Friday afternoon Calhoun had Helena drive him to the Buick repair garage and discovered the convertible was all ready. The bill was three hundred and thirteen dollars.
“I had to put on a new bumper bracket,” the repairman said. “Could have straightened the other, but it would have left it weak. I put the old one in your trunk.”
“How’d you manage that?” Calhoun asked. “The lock was jammed last time I tried it.”
“Ain’t now.” The man demonstrated by inserting the key in the trunk lock and turning it. The lid raised without difficulty. He locked it again and handed Calhoun the keys.
Calhoun tried the trunk key himself, and it worked perfectly.
When he drove out of the service garage, Helena was waiting for him in the Dodge a half block away. He led the way to a quiet sidestreet, where they stopped long enough for Calhoun to switch plates back to the right cars. Then Helena followed in the Buick while he drove the Dodge to the car-rental lot.
He had thirty-four dollars coming back from the hundred he had deposited.
As they drove back toward the tourist court, he said, “We may as well start back tonight. We can have the car back in your garage by tomorrow morning.”
Helena didn’t say anything then. She waited until they were back in Calhoun’s cabin and he had mixed a couple of drinks.
Then she said, “There’s one other little job we have to do before we go back to Buffalo, Barney.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Drink your drink first, then I’ll show you.”
“Show me?” he asked, puzzled. “Why can’t you just tell me?”
“Drink your drink,” she repeated.
She sounded as though she meant he might need it. He looked at her dubiously, then drained his glass.
“All right,” he said. “I drank my drink. Now show me.”
She set down her own drink unfinished, took his hand, and led him to the door. Still holding his hand, she led him to her own cabin door, unlocked it, and drew him inside. Then she released her grip on him and locked the door behind them.
“It’s in the bathroom,” she said.
Now completely puzzled, he followed her. In the bathroom the shower curtains were drawn around the bathtub and a glittering new icepick lay on the edge of the washbowl. Without comment Helena drew the shower curtains wide.
Three damp burlap bags were spread over something bulky in the bathtub.
For a few moments Calhoun simply stared at the bags, the hair at the base of his neck prickling in anticipation of shock. Then he pushed Helena aside and lifted one of the bags.
Underneath, cozily packed in more than a hundred pounds of cracked ice, was the naked body of a man. He lay on his side, his knees drawn up to his chest and his back to Calhoun. The back of his head was oddly flattened and was matted with blood.
Calhoun let the burlap fall back into place, staggered out of the bathroom, and collapsed into a chair in the bedroom. Helena followed as far as the bathroom door, then stood watching him with curiously bright eyes as he stared at her in stupefaction.
Finally he managed to whisper, “Who is it?”
“Lawrence,” she said without emotion. “My husband.”
Calhoun closed his eyes and tried to make some sense out of the nightmarish discovery that Lawrence Powers, who was supposed to be at a bankers’ convention in New York City, was actually lying dead in an improvised icebox not a dozen feet away. Surprisingly, it did make sense. Like the tumblers of a lock falling into place, various oddities in Helena’s behavior that had vaguely puzzled Calhoun ever since they started the trip began to develop meaning.
Opening his eyes, he said in a dazed voice, “He was in the trunk all the way from Buffalo, wasn’t he? That’s why the key wouldn’t work. You substituted some other key so I couldn’t open the trunk, then put the right one back on the ring after you got his body out of the trunk and into your cabin.”
“It was the key to the trunk of Lawrence’s Packard you tried in the lock the first time,” she said calmly. “I had the Buick trunk key in my purse.”
“And that’s why you insisted on this particular tourist court,” he went on. “You wanted one with carports, so you could get him out of the trunk and into your cabin without being seen. You dragged him in through the carport door while I was taking a shower.”
She shrugged. “He wasn’t very heavy. A hundred and fifty. I weigh one twenty-five myself.”
Leaning forward, he put his head in his hands and mumbled, “Tell me the rest of it.”
Without a trace of emotion in her voice, she said, “While you were arranging for the Buick to be fixed, I located an ice house only two miles from here. I thought of ice because I knew he’d begin to smell after a few days if he wasn’t preserved. I had the man put four
twenty-five-pound chunks of ice in the trunk of the Dodge. He also sold me an icepick. Then I came back here and carried the pieces in one at a time. I left the plug out of the bathtub so the melted ice would run away, and I’ve been adding fifty pounds a day. I got it while you were still in bed, when you thought I was out after coffee.” She paused, then added, “The burlap bags were in our garage at home. I put them on the floor of the trunk in case he bled any.”
Calhoun thought of something. “Good God!” he said. “All you borrowed from the motel proprietor was an empty pitcher. The ice for our drinks has been coming out of that bathtub!”
When her lip corners curled upward in the suggestion of a smile, he got to his feet, reeled into the bathroom, and threw up.
When he returned to the bedroom, he found Helena seated on the bed and serenely smoking a cigarette.
“Tell me how it happened,” he suggested dully.
“He was going to call the police,” she said. “It was all because he insisted on getting everywhere early. I was going to drive him to the airport. His plane didn’t leave until three thirty, so I planned to leave the house at two thirty. But he was all packed up and ready to go an hour before that. I intended taking the station wagon, figuring I’d make some excuse if he asked why I wasn’t driving the Buick. But Lawrence tried to be helpful. Without my knowing, he went out to the garage before two o’clock and backed the convertible out for me.”
She crushed out her cigarette and lighted another one. “He didn’t notice the damage at first. He’d got in and out on the left side, you see. When he came back in the house to tell me how helpful he’d been, I told him I wanted to take the station wagon. I almost got away with it. I sent him upstairs on a pretext and went out to put the Buick away and back out the station wagon. But he looked out an upstairs window and noticed the damage. And he guessed at once what had caused it. He used to read every inch of both papers, so he knew the police were looking for a green Buick. He didn’t even ask me. When he came back downstairs, he just looked at me in a horrified way and said, ‘Helena, you killed that old man.’”
She blew twin streams of smoke from her nostrils, creating a curious mental impression on Calhoun. With her immobile face and motionless body and the smoke issuing from her nostrils, she looked like a carved Oriental idol.
Tonelessly she went on. “There was no reasoning with him, Barney. He was the most self-righteous man who ever lived. It didn’t mean a thing to him that I might go to jail for months or even years if I was discovered. He was determined to call the police. We have five phone extensions, and one of them is in the garage. He marched over to it like an avenging angel and was dialing O when I picked up a wrench and hit him over the back of the head.”
Calhoun said shakily, “You can probably beat the charge down to manslaughter. A spur-of-the-moment thing like that.”
She gave her head a slow shake. “That didn’t kill him, Barney. It only knocked him out. He lay there for some time while I tried to figure out what to do. There was only one thing to do, of course. He would never have listened to reason. If I had let him live, I would not only have gone to jail; my affair with Harry would have come out and Lawrence would have divorced me without alimony. I’m afraid it’s premeditated murder. The second time I used the wrench quite deliberately.”
He said huskily, “Haven’t you any sense at all? Never admit that to anyone again. You want to end in the electric chair? And why’d you wait until now to mention all this? Why not before we started for Cleveland?”
“Because I wanted to make sure you’d help me get rid of the body,” she said serenely. “I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to dispose of it myself. And you might have backed out of the whole deal if you’d known about Lawrence.”
“Might have?” he said sarcastically. “What makes you think I won’t, anyway? I’m not an accessory to this yet. Suppose I just walk out?”
Helena yawned slightly. “Then I suppose I’d be caught. But I doubt that the police would believe you knew nothing about it. I’d tell them it was you who killed Lawrence, of course. And even if they didn’t believe me, they’d certainly never accept your story that you had nothing at all to do with it. Particularly after the motel proprietor identified you as the man who registered here as my brother.”
She was right, he knew. No policeman would ever believe he’d transported a body two hundred miles without knowing it, or that the woman he was traveling with had kept it on ice in her bathtub for three days without his knowledge. He had to save Helena in order to save himself.
If it was possible to save either of them.
He didn’t waste any time upbraiding her. In the first place it wouldn’t accomplish anything, and in the second place he didn’t think it would bother her in the least.
“Let’s go over to my cabin where I can think,” he said wearily.
13
Calhoun spent the next twenty minutes pacing up and down and chainsmoking while Helena calmly watched him and sipped a highball. He had one straight shot. He would have preferred a highball, but he refused to use any more of Helena’s ice.
Finally he stopped pacing and faced her. “Look,” he said. “I’ve figured out how to get rid of him, but before we even discuss that, we’ve got to plan a story to cover you. When your husband doesn’t show up on Monday, you’re going to have to act like a normal wife. First, phone his bank to ask if they’ve heard from him. Then on Tuesday wire convention headquarters in New York. They’ll wire back that he never showed, of course. Soon as you get that wire, you’ll have to phone the police and put on a worried-wife act. Think you can manage all that?”
She nodded indifferently.
“Then the hard part will start. First the police will discover he never caught that plane, so they’ll know he disappeared in Buffalo—”
“I thought of that before I killed him,” Helena interrupted. “He’ll be listed on the flight.”
Calhoun stared at her. “How?”
“It was only a little after one thirty when all this happened,” she said. “By two I had Lawrence stripped, his clothing hidden in the garage, and his body in the car trunk. Then I went back inside, told Alice I wouldn’t be home for dinner after I took Mr. Powers to the airport, and she could go home. I also told her I intended driving up to my sister’s in Urica the next morning, so she could take the week off. I had her out of the house by two fifteen.”
“How’d that get your husband listed on the plane flight he was supposed to take?” Calhoun asked.
“I haven’t finished. As soon as Alice left, I took Lawrence’s plane ticket over to Harry Cushman’s apartment. I picked him up and drove him to the airport. He flew to New York under Lawrence’s name, and took the next plane back under a different name. When the police start looking for Lawrence, they’ll start looking in New York.”
He looked at her in wonderment. Finally he asked, “How’d you ever talk Cushman into doing a silly thing like that?”
“Silly?”
“Naturally the police will question the airline personnel,” he said patiently. “The minute they get Cushman’s description from the stewardess, they’ll know somebody substituted for your husband on the flight.”
She shook her head. “In the first place, neither Lawrence nor Harry is known on the New York run. Lawrence often flew to Washington, but almost never to New York. I know he hasn’t made the trip in three years. And Harry never flies anywhere. In the second place, though Harry is ten years younger than Lawrence was and twenty pounds heavier, a rough description of either would fit the other. Both have gray hair and small mustaches. Both are about the same height and build, except Lawrence was beginning to develop a paunch. Harry stuffed some towels under his belt to fix that. And he wore Lawrence’s steel-rimmed glasses on the plane. In the third place, the police won’t question the stewardesses too closely. Just enough to satisfy themselves Lawrence was on the plane.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Beca
use they won’t suspect murder. The first thing the police do when a banker disappears is request an audit of bank funds.”
She was right again, Calhoun realized. The probability was that the first premise the police would work on was that Lawrence Powers had disappeared voluntarily. And by the time a bank audit disclosed he hadn’t absconded with any funds, the trail would be too cold to pick up.
Calhoun said, “I still don’t understand how you talked Cushman into sticking his neck out.”
“He’s in love with me,” she said complacently.
He studied her broodingly, not satisfied with the answer. “Look, Helena, if I’m going to help cover up your murders, I want the whole story. Maybe Cushman’s in love with you, but he was in a blue funk over being accessory to mere criminal negligence. I don’t think he’d stick his neck out for first-degree homicide even for you.”
She shrugged. “Of course Harry doesn’t know Lawrence is dead.”
Again he studied her broodingly. Finally he asked in an exasperated tone, “What in the devil did you tell him?”
“You don’t have to shout,” she said. “I told him the truth up to a point. I told him exactly what happened up to the time I hit Lawrence with the wrench the first time. I didn’t mention finishing the job by hitting him again. I said I had knocked him unconscious and was holding him captive, tied and gagged, in our basement. I told Harry if he’d help me rig grounds for a Nevada divorce, I’d marry him as soon as I got it.”
“What kind of grounds?” Calhoun asked, fascinated.
“Insanity. That’s grounds for divorce in Nevada. I didn’t mention to Harry that the spouse has to be proved insane over a period of two years.”
“How were you supposed to prove your husband insane?”
She said, “I told Harry you’d agreed to help. I said we’d hold Lawrence captive until we got the car fixed. Then, after it was back in the garage, you’d transport Lawrence to New York in a private plane owned by a friend of yours and turn him loose in the city unshaven and in dirty clothes. When Lawrence took his story to the police, they’d think he was crazy. The flight list would show he’d flown to New York as scheduled, and he’d look as though he’d been on a several-day drunk. When the police came to check my car, they’d find it undamaged. Then I’d announce that my husband had been suffering delusions about me for some time and that I thought he was insane, and I’d ask a court to commit him to Gowanda State Hospital.”
Hit and Run Page 8
