The Wayward Widow

by William Campbell Gault

  His hand went under the breast of his jacket and came out holding a .38 something like mine. It was pointed at my chest.

  “If you’re here officially,” I said, ‘What’s wrong with phoning Headquarters? Maybe you lied to me. Maybe you weren’t reinstated this afternoon.”

  I couldn’t be sure, but it looked to me like his trigger finger was tightening. I decided I couldn’t wait to be too sure.

  The sound of the .38 was like a cannon in the room. Luckily, it was the sound of my .38.

  Shooting blind like that, from under the table, I couldn’t be sure where I would hit him, but the blast should be enough to throw him off.

  He went back, screaming, as the chair went over with the spasmodic reflex of his body. He was on the floor, still screaming, his gun ten feet away when I kicked it even further away and went to the phone.

  It had been a blind shot but I was glad it had hit him in the knee. That’s where it hurts the most.

  Ortega stood by the window in the small room, looking out at the dark night. Chief Slauson came in and said, “Miss Destry is talking more to my taste, now. She must think she can pin all of it on Purvis simply because he bought the arsenic.”

  “Do you know he bought it?”

  “Damned near. A garden supply shop proprietor near Ojai will swear he sold some to Purvis about that time. Of course, with juries what they are — ” Ortega turned from the window. “The shirt he buried in the slope below his house should be enough to get him for the Duggan murder. He can only be executed once.”

  “I like a clean file, Lieutenant,” Slauson said. Ortega nodded sadly. “A crooked cop — of all the crooks, the worst is a crooked cop.”

  “There aren’t many of them,” I said. “Not in California.”

  “One’s too many,” Ortega said bitterly. His hot eyes turned toward me. “And do you realize what corrupted him? Adultery, that’s what corrupted him. It killed Elmer and Hawley, too, his lust for this woman.”

  I nodded seriously. “That’s why it is very important, Lieutenant, to sleep only with women of the highest moral character.”

  He glared at me and Slauson said, “That remark wasn’t necessary, Mr. Puma. I’ve warned you before about baiting Lieutenant Ortega.”

  “Get him out of my hair, then. If he stops lecturing me, I’ll stop baiting him.”

  An officer came in and said, “Miss Destry is changing her story a little, Chief.”

  Slauson raised an eyebrow. “And what’s the new line?”

  “She claims Purvis poisoned Greene because he was jealous of him. Jealous of a sixty-eight year old invalid — that’s a new one, eh, Chief?”

  Slauson shook his head. I stood up. “Well, I guess you won’t need me any more tonight, will you? Would it be all right for me to put your name into my file of friendly references, Chief? You may not believe it, but I can use all the police references I can get.”

  Slauson nodded and smiled. “I’ll be glad to give you any kind of reference you want at any time, Joe. And thank you very much for all you’ve done up here.”

  He went out with the officer and Ortega still stood by the window. I said, “Good-by, Lieutenant. Good luck.”

  He turned and looked at me silently. Then he came over to shake my hand. “Good-by, Mr. Puma. I think you are a fine and honest investigator. I wish you would try to be a better man.”

  “I am one of the better men,” I said. “Lieutenant, what you object to is my being a happier man. Can you honestly and objectively think of me as immoral?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But good-by and good luck.” I went out and into the dark night. And fifty feet from the entrance to Headquarters, I saw this black car parked, this sleek Continental.

  My lady had sought me out. My lady of the highest moral character had come over here to tell me that the money didn’t matter; all that mattered was our love for each other.

  Her horn tooted quietly and she flicked the lights, and I turned that way, desire growing in me, the pressure building up. What a life we would have… .

  She leaned over to open the door on the curb side as I drew close. She said, “Get in, Joe. I want to talk with you.”

  “I knew you’d come around,” I said. “I knew you’d realize that I was different.”

  “Different?” she asked. “How?” I sat down and closed the door. “Honest. Not after your money. I have this honest passion for you, this thing the magazines call love.”

  “That isn’t what I wanted to talk about,” she said. “I wanted to say I think you’re wonderful. You’ve showed me that all men aren’t after my money. You’ve made me believe that.”

  “I’m glad,” I said. “We can do something about the money. We can establish an untouchable trust or something and — ”

  “And because you made me believe that,” she went on, “I’m here to say good-by.”

  I stared at her in the dark. “Good-by?”

  “That’s right. Thank you and good-by.” She put a piece of paper in my hand. “Here’s a check that will more than cover your bill, I’m sure. I’m driving to Los Angeles tonight, and taking a plane to New York tomorrow.”

  “Why, why, why?”

  “Because,” she said, “I had a letter from a man this morning, a man far away.”

  “The Neapolitan,” I guessed. “You got a letter from Naples.”

  “That’s right. And I’m flying to him. I never should have gone away from him. You proved that to me.”

  I tried to keep my voice casual. “So, good luck, kid. So it’s been a great lark, like you said. Okay, so good-by.” I opened the door quickly and stumbled out.

  “Joe,” she called, but I didn’t look back. “Joe, please — ”she called, but I kept walking into the dark.

  The bastard, I thought. The crummy, fortune-hunting, Neapolitan bastard. The dirty, lousy wop. I kept walking.

  THE END

  If you liked The Wayward Widow check out:

  Vein of Violence

  ONE

  JAN, ALONE, is usually more woman than an ordinary man can cope with, unreasonably mercurial, occasionally snobbish and always vocal. Jan in tandem with my Aunt Sheila is enough to make all sane citizens head for the cyclone cellars.

  My Aunt Sheila is skinny and long-legged, with a firm bust for her age and a great appeal for men of money and appetite. She claims to be thirty-seven, but I happen to know she’s forty-three. She has been married three times, courted often and conned never. Too many grass widows are overwhelmed with the appearance of wealth in a prospect; Aunt Sheila knows how to get a credit report.

  Well, anyway, she had been living rather quietly in La Jolla for a couple of years, an area as alien to her temperament as any I could imagine. Even Pasadena is livelier than La Jolla.

  And at a party up there one fine spring evening, she ran into Homer Gallup. Now what the hell Homer was doing in La Jolla is a question that will probably bother anthropologists for another century.

  Because Homer is a Texan, and almost exactly in the stereotyped tradition of the moneyed Texan, big, bluff and vocal. La Jolla is not hospitable to the type.

  I met him for the first time on a smog-saturated April morning in my office. I was sitting there moodily, balancing my accounts receivable against my accounts payable, a sad reckoning.

  The door to the hall was open and Aunt Sheila’s voice has remarkable carrying power. I heard her say, “It’s right along here somewhere, cheap little office — Poor Brock, he hasn’t a smidgen of business sense. Ah, here it is!”

  And she was standing in the open doorway, tall and trim and dressed in a light-yellow linen sheath. Her hair was more blond than orange this year.

  “Brock, baby — !” she squealed, and charged me.

  I stood up, clear of the desk, and opened my arms.

  I encased her skinniness in my impressive arms and a faintly incestuous urge glimmered briefly and was drowned in my more familiar emotions.

  She pulled away finally and turned to
the man who had followed her in. “Didn’t I tell you he was handsome, Homer?”

  The man called Homer was about my size, range-tanned and Texas-tailored, a genial white-haired man. He nodded smilingly.

  “You also said I didn’t have a smidgen of business sense,” I said to Aunt Sheila. “Because I heard it and so did everybody else on this floor.” I came around to be introduced to her companion.

  “You haven’t,” she said. “Jan has — but you — ugh!” She took a breath. “This is Homer Gallup, Brock. We were married in Las Vegas, Thursday.”

  I shook their hands, at a loss for words. I kissed Aunt Sheila once more. Then she stood more erectly and patted her flat tummy. “How about that?”

  “Some girdle,” I commented.

  “Girdle, hell!” she said. “That’s belly, boy, as we say in the Panhandle. Right, Homer?”

  My aunt has a great gift of acclimation, a cunning, chameleon ability to be one thing to each one, the thing he wants most. With most men, that’s easy.

  Homer nodded in agreement, a little abashed at the terminology.

  Aunt Sheila gushed on. “That’s what two years in La Jolla can do for you — starve you. Best damned town in the world for starving.”

  “Auntie,” I said patiently, “you were never fat.”

  “No, but I had some sag. Look at me now — thirty-seven years old and I wear a size ten.”

  “Shoe?” I asked.

  Homer laughed.

  And stopped laughing. Aunt Sheila does have rather large feet. Fashionably and aristocratically narrow — but long. She stared at Homer.

  He gulped.

  She said sweetly, “Tell Brock the remark you made about my feet last night, Homer.”

  “Naw,” he said. “Let’s forget it.”

  She turned to me. “He told me my feet were just right for stamping out grass fires.”

  I laughed.

  I had laughed alone. In the uncomfortable silence, I asked, “Staying in town long?”

  “We planned to,” my aunt said. “We thought we’d like Beverly Hills — until we drove into this smog this morning.”

  “We thought we’d buy a place,” Homer contributed, “and that girl friend of yours could help us pick furniture and we’d kind of get the feel of the town.”

  “Well,” I said. “Well, well, well-”

  My aunt looked at me suspiciously. “You don’t want me around, do you? One of my few living relatives and you don’t want me around.”

  “I love you,” I said. “I want you around. Look, it’s almost lunchtime — why don’t I phone Jan and we can have lunch together?”

  That started our afternoon. Jan said “Eeeee — yippee!” when I told her Aunt Sheila was in town. We arranged to meet her at Cini’s.

  There we floated a full Italian lunch on a sea of Martinis (for the girls), whiskey (for Homer) and two sedate beers for yours truly.

  Jan and my aunt chatted as they always did when together, Homer chuckled genially and I watched Jan carefully.

  She is an interior decorator, my Jan, and like my apparently giddy Aunt Sheila, she has a solid and active concern for the profit potential.

  Don’t get me wrong; I don’t consider it a flaw. It is a sense I lack, this instinct for the maximum dollar, but I don’t consider myself nobler because of it. Like the rest of us, Jan has to eat.

  Aunt Sheila had already told her that Jan “of course” would decorate any house the newly weds bought. Okay, there was my darling’s profit — promised. For me, that would be enough.

  But then they got to talking about houses and Jan said quite firmly, “There’s only one realtor in Beverly Hills who really knows the area.”

  I smiled. Jan caught the smile but didn’t blush. She looked at Homer levelly, all business, and went on. “I’ll call him as soon as we ‘re through eating and he can pick us up here.”

  Split commission, I thought. Jan doesn’t advertise it, but she also holds a real estate broker’s license. She would make a mint on the kind of decorating Aunt Sheila would order with that Texas money behind her. Was that enough for my Jan? No. There was a realtor’s commission waiting to be split.

  I said calmly, “Why don’t we look around for a house that isn’t listed? Why pay a five per cent bonus to some realtor?”

  Aunt Sheila shook her head. “It never works. I tried that in La Jolla. It’s always better, all around, to go through a broker.”

  Jan said sweetly and patronizingly, “You mustn’t listen to Brock, Homer. Brock is hopelessly naive when it comes to business.”

  Homer smiled in his genial way and said, “I’m like Brock. Business bores me. But I should think a girl in your profession would hold a real estate broker’s license. They aren’t hard to get.”

  A silence. Sheila was eating, Jan was staring at Homer doubtfully, Homer was grinning — and I was gloating.

  Jan looked at me and back at Homer. Sheila asked, “Why the sudden silence? What’s happened? Homer, did you say something rude again?”

  He shook his head, smiling.

  I said, “Homer has just given Jan some sound advice and she’s digesting it.”

  Aunt Sheila’s voice was ice. “I want to know what’s going on. Homer, I want to know right now!

  Jan’s chin lifted, but she said nothing.

  Homer appealed to me. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “Nope.”

  Jan took a deep breath. “But I did, I guess.” She looked at Sheila. “I was — crowding him. I’m ashamed of myself.”

  For a moment, the formerly festive spirit was dampened.

  And then Homer said, “Nothing of the sort. You call that house-peddler friend of yours and have him here when we’re finished eating.” He grinned all around. “C’mon, one more drink won’t hurt us.” He winked at me. “And I don’t mean beer.”

  Well, the hard stuff is not usually for me, but there was still a trace of coolness in the air and I owed it to Jan to help dispel what I could of that.

  So I ordered a double bourbon and raised my voice a little. By the time Jan’s broker friend arrived, we were almost back to our pre-lunch abandon.

  His name was Wallace Darrow, a rather handsome gent around forty, smooth and genial. He insisted on buying another round of drinks before we left. It was almost three o’clock before we floated out to find the newlyweds a home.

  It was a montage to me from there on, a confused memory of glass and redwood, Lannon stone and glass, fieldstone and redwood and glass, but always glass, glass, glass” ….

  Until Homer complained. “We’re not goldfish, Mr. Darrow.”

  Darrow sighed. “You’re not going to get away from a lot of glass, not in the new homes, Mr. Gallup.”

  “So show us some older homes then,” Homer ordered.

  Jan flinched and Aunt Sheila frowned. Wallace Darrow looked thoughtful, waiting for one of the girls to protest.

  Aunt Sheila was now looking speculative. Aunt Sheila, experienced in male attitudes and mores, was holding back her protest. My Jan, however, was looking sly.

  She smiled and said to winsome Wallace Darrow, “How about the Mary Mae Milgrim place, Wally?”

  “Mary Mae Milgrim — ?” Homer asked in awed wonder. “Is her house for sale?”

  Darrow nodded and his glance matched my aunt’s speculative look.

  I said, “It’s probably been for sale for thirty years, huh, Wallace?”

  He looked at me coolly. “Not quite.”

  “Twenty-five?” I suggested. “When was her last picture?”

  Wallace pretended he hadn’t heard. Homer said nostalgically, “Mary Mae Milgrim — there’ll never be another like her. I saw every picture she was ever in.”

  Jan said, “You could phone her, Wally, to find out if it’s possible to see the house today.”

  He nodded and smiled knowingly at Jan as Homer went over to inspect the view from the home we were standing in.

  Sheila said softly, “What’s going on?”r />
  Jan said, “Once he sees this monstrosity, he’ll stop talking about ‘older homes.’ It’s the most grotesque thing south of San Simeon.”

  “Girls,” I warned them quietly, “no shenanigans. I don’t want any manipulation of my old buddy Homer Gallup.”

  My Aunt Sheila said coolly, “We intend to protect him from himself. Stay out of this, Rockhead.”

  Homer turned from looking out the huge window and surveyed us all. “Where’d that peddler go?”

  Jan said, “He went to phone Mary Mae Milgrim.”

  “Great,” Homer said. He looked around the immense living room we were standing in. “What’s a lean-to like this go for?”

  “It’s listed at a hundred and ten thousand,” Jan said, “but I’m sure it’s open to an offer.”

  Homer laughed. “I’ll bet it is. Cripes, he can’t have more than two and a half acres here, and most of that hillside.” He shook his head sadly.

  Jan and Aunt Sheila exchanged scheming feminine glances and said nothing.

  Then Darrow came back, all smiles, and said Miss Mary Mae Milgrim would be delighted to show us her house.

  After all the yacking of the afternoon, this trip was comparatively quiet. Aunt Sheila and Jan were undoubtedly smirking inwardly, Homer looked adolescently expectant, and only another realtor would be able to guess what Darrow was thinking about.

  Off one of Sunset’s big turns, a pair of stone pillars flanked a driveway that led up towards the hills. We turned in and wound along a gravel driveway bordered by Lombardy poplars.

  And then, suddenly ahead, the Mary Mae Milgrim mansion was in sight. I’ll tell you no lie — it had pennants flying from its turrets. It had all the “B’s”: Battlements and balconies with balustrades. On the faded pennants, the proud “M” for Mary Mae Milgrim was still faintly visible.

  Jan looked at Aunt Sheila and Aunt Sheila looked sick. Wallace Darrow looked smug — and Homer looked at me.

  “Well, Brock-?” he said.

  “Terrific,” I said. “Magnificent. Worthy of the name of Milgrim.”

  “Ye gods,” Aunt Sheila whispered hoarsely. “It even has a moat!”

  The moat was dry and the chains connected to the timbered bridge were rusty, if immense.