Severed Key

by Nielsen, Helen

  “A woman’s intuition,” Howard growled.

  “A woman’s confusion,” Sigrid said. “I knew delivering the suitcase was important and I had failed. I didn’t want to go near any place where I was supposed to be. But I wasn’t afraid to go to Mr Keith’s apartment and that is what I did on Tuesday as soon as I read about Arne’s death. I telephoned first and no one answered so I took a cab. I found his name in the apartment registry and went to the elevators. The first elevator was up on the floor below Mr Keith’s. I waited for the next one and took it up to his floor. When I reached the floor the other elevator was waiting there, too. I found the apartment and was about to ring the bell when I noticed that the door was ajar. I pushed it open a few inches and looked inside. I could see past the kitchen and into the bedroom where two men were doing something with a woman on the bed. I opened the door wider and took a step or two into the room and I saw one of the men—a big man with very light hair—tie a cord or a belt about the woman’s neck and say: “This will keep that nosey detective busy for a while.” The other man laughed and I almost screamed because then I could see that the woman was dead. I ran out of the apartment and took the elevator down to the garage. Then I became afraid because I knew the men would leave the apartment and see where the other elevator had gone. I don’t know why it seemed so important. By that time I imagined that they must surely know I had seen them and would come after me. I took the elevator back up to the third floor and left it there, and then I took the stairway back down to the garage and hid myself in the back seat of an automobile. I was there for a long time, I think. I heard sirens in the street. Then, a little later, a big Cadillac drove in and parked near where I was hiding. The driver got out and started to move towards the elevator. I recognized Mr Keith and ran out to him.”

  “She told me what she had seen in my apartment,” Keith interrupted. “I had picked up the call on my car radio. I knew a homicide had been reported at my building but I didn’t dream it was in my apartment. When Miss Thorsen told me who she was and what she had seen I pushed her into my car and we took off fast.”

  “And you’ve been harbouring a material witness ever since!” Howard stormed. “Don’t you know anything about the law?”

  “That’s Simon’s department,” Keith said. “I only know how to keep a lady from being killed. And don’t say that it’s preposterous, Sandovar, because I’ve had time these last few days to check her story. There’s a luggage salesman in New York City who will identify you as the man who bought a set of ladies’ blue aeroplane luggage two weeks ago. There’s a porter at Kennedy who will never forget the twenty-dollar tip you gave him for carrying that luggage into the airline counter and checking it on to a plane scheduled to leave one week later. The whole thing’s obvious, isn’t it, Lieutenant. Cash was needed to oil the machinery and Sandovar couldn’t carry it because he was under surveillance by a government agency. Cerva couldn’t delegate a muscle to carry it because he’s always being watched. Sigrid Thorsen was the perfect courier. Nobody knew her. Nobody watched her. All she had to do was follow orders and have a week’s vacation at Sandovar’s expense.”

  “I doubt it would have been a week,” Simon said dryly. “Hannah’s didn’t last more than a few hours. When a man’s determined to establish a new power base he can’t take chances. Sandovar—what are you doing?”

  The light seemed to hurt Sandovar’s eyes. He had donned a pair of dark glasses some minutes earlier. Now he had taken a pill box from his pocket and was about to place something on his tongue. One of Howard’s men stepped forward and took it out of his hand. He tasted it and turned to the lieutenant with an expression of disgust.

  “Aspirin!” he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SUNNY WALKED ON the beach alone. It was almost high tide and she had to keep close to the rocky shore in places where the strand was narrow. The sun-bathers and surfers were far behind her. She avoided them purposely because their gay banter seemed childish and without meaning now. She caressed her new wedding ring as she walked as if it were a religious medal or a rosary. She was lonely and she wished that Bob would come.

  Suddenly there was a shout from above. She looked up and saw him loping along the cliff towards a break in the ledge where cement steps led down to a narrow cove. She waved and ran to meet him as he descended. They met and their bodies joined in a joyful embrace.

  “Is it all right?” she cried. “Are you really free?”

  “It’s all right,” Bob said. “I was really scared for a while but Mr Drake came into the DA’s office and started talking and everything just seemed to get clear. He had the old suitcase—the one you found in the seaweed—”

  “Oh, I wish I never had! Travis would still be alive if I hadn’t!”

  “I’m not so sure about that. He was too mixed up ever to find his head. Anyway, it’s not your fault what happened to him. Keeping the money we found when he opened the bag was all his idea. He wanted to be rich and live in Brazil. He scared me when he talked about it.”

  “Didn’t you want to be rich?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it would have been nice to be able to buy everything I wanted—but look what happened to Trav’ when he cut loose and started spending the money. I guess I really don’t want much that I haven’t got.”

  “But what have you got, Bobby?”

  “You. That’s one good thing that came out of it—us getting hitched. Unless you’re sorry.”

  “Sorry? Oh, no!”

  “Well that’s good because it looks like I’m going to be around for quite a while. Mr Drake said we might have to testify at the murder trial of those two hoods who killed the people in LA but he said not to worry about it because he’ll stand by us. And he told that DA how Travis John Wayned me when I tried to stop him from going off in that car and how I took him to where we had the rest of the money buried.”

  “In the old garage.”

  “You knew?”

  Sunny smiled with a wisdom beyond her years. “I knew you two had found something valuable. I didn’t know what it was but I hoped it wouldn’t hurt us. It hasn’t hurt us has it, Bobby?”

  “Maybe it’s helped us. Drake said he could fix me up with a full-time job, so we can get a decent pad and maybe I can go to night school later. I like that better than Brazil, don’t you?”

  “Much better. What do you think you’ll study in night school?”

  “I don’t know. Something so I can help people I think. Maybe law. Hey, how would you like that? Being the missus of a lawyer and answering the phone—This is Robert Henshaw’s office. Mr Henshaw is in conference now. Can I take a message?’”

  “Oh, wow! Listen to the big shot!”

  “Shut up! I’ll race you to the rocks.”

  “Okay,” Sunny said, “but if I find any more seaweed—”

  “We’ll split!” Bob said.

  One week later Simon sat at a table in the Las Vegas club where Wanda was making the last performance of her engagement. Jack Keith was with him and so was Sigrid Thorsen who was taking the Keith cure for a broken romance. Wanda stepped into the spotlight and looked out over the sea of faces until she saw Simon. He grinned and gestured towards his wristwatch.

  “How do you like that?” Keith said. “Married two hours and he’s already giving her directions for a speed up. Do you want to spoil the girl’s rhythm?”

  “That,” Simon said, “is the last thing I want to do. I was just reminding her that we have a plane waiting.”

  “Where are you going to honeymoon, Mr Drake?” Sigrid asked.

  “That’s top secret. Somewhere private where we can’t be reached by anybody for any reason whatsoever.”

  “Sounds like you’re taking that boat out to sea again,” Keith suggested.

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds that it’s nobody’s business.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Keith said. “But to tell you the truth, I was disappointed in the wedding ceremony. I thought Hannah would
be the maid of honour instead of Sigrid and she didn’t even show up. Is her nose out of joint?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she won’t be mistress of The Mansion any more. I can’t see Hannah Lee settling for anything less than top billing.”

  “You’re way off base, man. Hannah’s been pushing for this wedding longer than I have.”

  “Maybe so—but isn’t she the lady who says that fidelity is the curse of an impoverished imagination? She may be planning to get you back on the rebound.”

  “I think you’re mean!” Sigrid said. “You shouldn’t say such things after such a lovely wedding!”

  “Tell him, Sigrid,” Simon urged. “If he can’t get the idea in English try Swedish.”

  “With gestures,” Keith said. “I know just the place. I have a feeling we’re not wanted here.”

  Wanda finished her number to thunderous applause and took her bows. By the time she reached the table, Keith and Sigrid were gone and Simon waited alone.

  “Let’s go home,” she said.

  “That sounds nice, but the manager talked to me right after the show started. He wants you for another four weeks.”

  “No!”

  “At twice the salary.”

  “Simon—”

  “I told him we would think about it for thirty days—and he’s not to call us, we’ll call him.”

  It was dawn by the time they reached Marina Beach and completed the drive up to The Mansion. The town was still asleep. With luck they could change and get down to the boat without being delayed by wellwishers or reporters. But they had reckoned without Chester. He was in the kitchen preparing a wedding breakfast complete with champagne.

  “I had to cram for an exam anyway,” he explained, “and it’s about time I learned to cook.”

  “Is Hannah asleep?” Wanda asked.

  “I don’t know where Hannah is. She went to a house-warming last night and hasn’t come back.”

  “Bernardi’s?” Simon asked.

  “Who else?”

  On the way upstairs Simon paused at the landing where Hannah’s binoculars were still in place on the window sill. He got them in focus and located her ancient red Rolls parked beside Bernardi’s sports car in the driveway. He handed the glasses to Wanda.

  “So that’s why she didn’t come to the wedding,” she said. “Simon, look. The house is dark. The party must be over. No, there are lights showing in one wing. It’s such a different style house. I wonder what that wing is for.”

  “Don’t ever ask,” Simon said. “Knowing Hannah, it’s probably the bathroom.”

  If you liked The Severed Key check out:

  The Crime is Murder

  CHAPTER 1

  It was almost impossible to see the road. The rain bore down in a blinding curtain, parted only by the spasmodic arcs of the windshield wipers; and the feeble protest of the headlamps was all but canceled by deluge and darkness. Curran Dawes drove by instinct and memory. Every tortuous curve of the road as it corkscrewed its way up Pineview Bluff, was a challenge to both his nerve and the shuddering frame of his small sedan. And he drove hard, his time-tempered face grim in the reflection of the instrument panel, and his hands like steel on the skittish steering wheel.

  It wasn’t late as time is measured. The hands of the panel clock showed twenty-seven minutes before nine; but the road was empty tonight. Almost everyone who lived on the bluffs had gone down to the town auditorium for the climactic event of the Cornish Memorial Music Festival. But three important people were missing. Mere reflection on that fact sent Curran Dawes’s foot harder against the accelerator. It was flat against the floor boards when a burst of light shot around the bend just ahead. The brakes screamed, the small sedan careened crazily toward the ditch, spun about, and finally righted itself, but not before the light was gone and the source of the light, a wildly driven station wagon, had roared past into the black oblivion of the road behind.

  For an instant Curran Dawes hesitated, as if considering pursuit. But only for an instant. Three important people were missing from the auditorium, and he’d caught a hasty glimpse of only one face behind the windshield of the station wagon. That left two more….

  The road climbed higher and then laced off through the storm-drenched pines. There was no hesitation now. No doubt of which finger to follow. Minutes later the small sedan screeched to a stop before a huge, rambling house half-hidden by shrubbery and vines. But there was no hiding the path of light that fanned out from a door flung open wide to meet the wind and rain. The rain beat a hard tattoo on the gravel walk and bounced up brightly from the cement slab, but Curran Dawes didn’t pause to wipe his feet on the rubber mat in the front hall or to remove his raincoat and dripping fedora. He was no gentleman tonight, and no scholar. He ran down the bright hall. A blast of music came to meet him, reverberating through the awful emptiness of the house and beckoning him on to the open doorway of the study. Here the music became momentarily deafening as the deep throat of a huge cabinet radio caught the full orchestration of a haunting theme, sweet, sensuous, pleading, rising higher and higher toward inevitable triumph. Curran Dawes no longer heard the music. One unlatched French door was being battered by the storm. He crossed the room to close it, swiftly at first, then halting abruptly. For now he could see what lay just inside the windows. The wind had blown in rain and a few dead leaves. Autumn would be early this year.

  He stooped and picked one of the wet leaves from a lifeless face. He moved slowly now, like a man who’s finished running a race, and lost, and is trying to regain his wind. When he rose up again, his somber eyes caught on a moving object on the desk. The twin discs of a wire recorder still spun, but the microphone now dangled useless over the edge of the desk. He reached over and snapped off the control button.

  Across the room, the orchestra was concluding the theme that now rose and fell, rose and fell, like the ebbing strength of life, until nothing remained but the echo of sound. And then, after a full moment of silence, the startling cacophony of applause.

  “You have just heard the first public performance of this year’s Cornish Memorial Award composition, Nocturne Romantic, by—”

  The suave voice of the radio announcer was cut off abruptly. Curran Dawes looked up. Another intruder had made the journey through that open front door and down the brightly lighted hall. A woman wearing a wet beret and a dripping trench coat stood beside the console. She stared across the room toward the desk and came slowly forward.

  “Professor Dawes,” she began, “what are you doing?”

  Her foot, clad in a thick-soled brogue, struck a metal object on the carpet. She looked down. The overhead light glittered on the barrel of a small revolver.

  “Don’t touch anything,” the professor warned. “Perhaps you will be kind enough to make a telephone call.”

  The woman in the trench coat made no response to his words. She stood there staring first at the revolver and then at the body beside the desk. She seemed unable to comprehend what she saw.

  “It’s most urgent,” the professor insisted. “Please call Sheriff Elliot down in the town. Tell him a station wagon is racing down Pineview Road. If he hurries, he may be able to intercept it before it reaches the highway…. Well?”

  He had to speak sharply before the woman reacted. Even then she seemed dazed. She said nothing, but she did go out into the hall. Moments later he heard her voice on the telephone.

  Now Curran Dawes removed his hat and placed it, heedless of its dripping condition, on the desk. The light made a silver halo of his hair. His head bowed slightly, wearily. He was not a man eminently versed in police procedure, but he knew better than to disturb anything in the room. And yet, there was something he must know. He turned on the wire recorder again and set it at reverse. He allowed the discs to unwind for a few moments, and then switched the control to play. The first sound he heard was the music from the radio—that same theme that had lured him down the hall—and then he heard words, just
a few half-whispered words, barely audible against the orchestral background.

  Curran Dawes shut off the playback and switched the control to reverse again. This time he let the discs spin all the way back to the beginning of the story.

  Read more of The Crime is Murder

  Serving as inspiration for contemporary literature, Prologue Books, a division of F+W Media, offers readers a vibrant, living record of crime, science fiction, fantasy, and western genres. Discover more today:

  www.prologuebooks.com

  This edition published by

  Prologue Books

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

  Blue Ash, Ohio 45242

  www.prologuebooks.com

  Copyright © 1973 by Helen Nielsen

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-4132-9

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4132-2