At the little Tuxpan strip I lifted my bag out. I set it down and put my hand out. I said, “I’m sorry, Paul.”
He took my hand. His blue eyes crinkled as he grinned. “I’ve been slugged before and will be again. No harm done.” He sobered. “Do me one thing, boy. If Jill says so, Laura is in trouble. Try to keep your own nose clean. You get too excited. Just think before you jump. Can you do that?”
“I’ll try, Paul.”
“Let me know, hey?”
“I’ll let you know. I’ll see Spencer soon as I can. Maybe he can replace me if this trouble is going to take too long to clear up.”
The charter on the old AT was cheap. Maybe too cheap. Right after take-off the radio quit. The motor sounded on the verge of stuttering out all the way. It was not long before the Sierra Madre lifted up underneath us, and a good two hours before I saw Mexico City cradled in the hollow of the plateau, the volcanoes high and white beyond it, dwarfing the mountains south of the city.
I made my plane connections, got my papers stamped, checked with the American consul, and got to the airport with minutes to spare. My flight stopped at Monterrey and went on to San Antonio. The flight from San Antonio left at dawn. I hadn’t slept. I’d shaved in the men’s room and changed to a rumpled white suit. I kept wishing Jill had told me more. Trouble isn’t much of a word to go on. It can mean almost anything.
We came down out of the overcast over Lake Pontchartrain, passed the Air Force base, and let down into a still and breathless heat on a long strip at New Orleans Municipal. I grabbed a cab operated by a hairy little man and told him that I wanted speed. He made the turn onto Elysian Fields Avenue on two wheels and roared down through the morning traffic, hunched over the wheel, grinning like a fool. He gave the turn onto Rampart the same treatment and skidded to a shuddering halt right in front of the doorway. I gave him a five and waved away the change.
I gave one glance up at the little balcony and went up the stairs to the third floor, three at a time. I was calling her name before I got my head above the floor level. I stopped calling when I saw the little man.
Three apartments opened off the top hallway. Pale light came from a dirty skylight over the stair well. The little man was standing leaning against the wall near Laura’s apartment. I took the key out of my pocket and dropped my bag. For six weeks whenever I’d reached in my pocket and felt the key I’d thought of putting it in the lock and of Laura running toward me across the room, into my arms. The little man had a dusty-looking face, a dingy gray suit, an open collar, a straw hat shoved back off his forehead. He had a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. Soaking wet he might have weighed 130, gray suit and all.
Just as I shoved the key toward the lock he said in a mild tired voice, “Hold it, son.”
“What’s your trouble?” I demanded.
“You Bryant?”
“Yes. If you don’t mind, I …”
“Can’t go in there, son. Sorry.”
I took two steps over to him and glared down at him. “And just why can’t I go in there?”
“It’s sealed. Police orders.”
“Where’s my wife?” Marriage was so new that the word “wife” felt strange on my lips.
He bobbled his toothpick over into the other corner of his mouth. I saw that his eyes were a funny color—like still water, like nail heads. I heard heavy steps coming up the stairs.
“Your wife is dead, son,” he said in a tired and gentle voice. The world stopped turning and the sun stood still in the sky. I turned away from him. A uniformed policeman with a long sharp-featured face came into sight. Funny how every sense becomes so sharp at a time like that. The look of a long crack in the plaster engraved itself in the back of my brain. A mosquito had been mashed beside the crack. Maybe Laura had killed it. I could smell dust, varnish, dampness. I heard horns blaring at some distant traffic tie-up, soap-opera organ music on a radio on one of the floors below. I could hear the slow thud of my heart, the roar of blood in my ears, a tiny creak of belt leather as I breathed. Laura had ceased breathing. There was no more warmth to Laura. The long lovely legs were still.
I leaned my forehead against the rough plaster. I hit the plaster very, very gently with my fist in time to the thud of my heart. The knuckles were still a bit swollen from hitting Paul a thousand miles away.
“When? How?” I asked without turning. I whispered it, the way you tiptoe into a room where the dead wait for burial.
“Last night, son. Somewhere around midnight, as near we can judge. Somebody slugged her, wrapped a wire coat hanger around her neck, and twisted it tight with a pair of pliers. We don’t know who, yet. But I imagine we’ll find out. Heard you were on your way, Bryant. Figured you’d come right here. Been waiting.”
“Where is she?” I whispered.
“Police morgue. Been legally identified. You don’t want to see her.”
I turned then. “Yes, I do. There could be some mistake.”
“It’s not a good thing to remember, son.”
“I want to see her.”
We went down the stairs. I didn’t notice until we got to the police sedan that he had carried my bag down. He opened the door and tossed the bag in. As he got behind the wheel he said, “I’m Zeck, son. Lieutenant Barney Zeck. Captain Paris is right anxious for a chat with you.”
“Let’s go see her first, Lieutenant.”
The car was like an oven from sitting in the sun. But I didn’t feel warm. There was a coldness in me that no sun would reach. This was the one trouble I hadn’t thought of.
We went and looked at her. I made it out through the arch to the courtyard, where I was sick. Then we went to see Captain Paris. He was a big man, and he seemed to suffer badly in the heat. His white shirt stuck to his chest and there was heat rash all over his arms. His office had only one window. A fan on top of a file cabinet snarled as it turned from side to side, blowing stale hot air around the room.
We sat down and an old man with a bald head and a green eyeshade came in with a notebook and sharp pencils. He opened the book on the corner of the desk.
“I’ve been talking to Sam Spencer about you, Bryant. He thinks you’re a good man. Maybe too quick on the trigger, but sound in your field. How come that floozy got you on the hook, Bryant?”
I leaned across the desk at him, trying to get my hands on him. Barney Zeck got hold of my belt and yanked me back into the chair.
“That’s no way to act, son,” Zeck said in his weary voice.
“Then tell him to watch his mouth.”
Paris yawned and scrubbed at his prickly heat with his knuckles. “Let’s pick it up from the beginning. You met her seven weeks or so ago. Middle of May. What were the circumstances of your meeting this woman?”
“What’s that got to do with somebody murdering her?”
“Bryant, you just take that chip off your shoulder and be good. We want to find out who killed her, and we’ll do it our way.”
I slumped down in the chair and looked at my knuckles. “All right, Captain. I’d been back from Venezuela about four days. I was working at the Trans-Americas Oil offices in the Jefferson Building. Tram Widdmar, who owns the import-export business, was a friend of mine overseas during the war. Every time I’m in town we usually get together. The fifteenth of May was the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Sanderson Steamship Lines. They had a big party that night at the Bayton Hotel. Tram had a cocktail party for a big group out at his house ahead of time. I went with Jill Townsend. I met Laura Rentane there. She had come in that morning on the Sanderson Mobile from Buenos Aires. Bill French, first officer of the Mobile, brought her to the party. I saw her and fell hard.”
“Why?”
I glared at him. “Why does anybody fall for a girl? Even the way she looks now, you can tell how pretty she was.”
“So you ditched the Townsend girl and leeched onto the Rentane woman?”
“No. A group of us went to dinner together. And then to the Bayton. While I
was dancing with Laura we made a date for the next day. She told me she was living at the Bayton. After I got back to my room at the Willow House about three in the morning, I called her up. We met and went for a walk. We walked until dawn. Everything seemed to click. We got married on the eighteenth.”
“Ever notice the scars on her face?”
“Yes. The little ones at her temples. She was in an accident once.”
“I guess you could call age an accident. She put her age on the marriage-certificate application as twenty-four, Bryant. The doctor says thirty-five would be a better guess.”
“You’re crazy!”
“You were suckered. Somebody went through all her stuff with a comb, Bryant. There aren’t any personal papers of any description left in that apartment. Nothing. All we’ve had to go on is what she put on that application. She wrote that she was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. We got the teletype back a while ago. No record.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“We’ll be the judge of that. She had a funny accent. It didn’t come from Williamsport.”
“She lived abroad most of her life. That’s why. She was as American as you are, Paris.”
He pulled on his lip. “I was born in Toronto. Now we got another thing. Everything she owned is fairly new. A good bit of it was bought here. Everything else was purchased in Buenos Aires. Everything else.”
I stood up. “I think you’re wasting your time and mine too, Captain. Maybe it’s too hot for you. Maybe you’re bored. But I don’t get the point in building a big mystery about some maniac who broke into the apartment and killed my wife.”
“Maniac?” he said. “We happen to know that she has been scared green for the last week. Something scared her. We don’t know what. We’ve got the word of a reliable person for that. She had a chain put on the door of her apartment. The door wasn’t forced. Whoever did it, she let him in. She knew him. And no thief made that search. Thieves don’t dig around in jars of face cream and take the backs off pictures.”
I sat down. Zeck said tiredly, “Somebody was after her, son. And she knew it. And they got her. It’s that simple. So we got to know everything so we can find some motive. What do you know about her? Where did she go to school?”
“A private school in Switzerland,” I said dully. “She never told me the name of it. Her parents died in a French airline crash three years ago. They left her a lot of money. She traveled for the last three years. She said that she hadn’t had a very happy time until she met and married me, and that she didn’t want to talk about the past because it made her sad. I should make out like nothing ever happened to her until she walked into Tram’s house with Bill French.”
“What did she tell you about the scar along her ribs?”
“She said she was a tomboy when she was little. She was climbing a tree and fell and hit a stub of a broken limb.”
“The doctor says that scar is somewhere between one and three years old, Bryant. It’s a knife wound. Somebody tried hard, but hit a rib and skidded off.”
“How do you know it’s a knife wound?”
“From an X-ray plate I was looking at at eight o’clock this morning. The point of the knife is still in the rib where it broke off.”
I cupped my hands over my eyes. “It’s all … so crazy!”
He leaned toward me. His face was suddenly intent. “We’re waiting for word from the State Department, Bryant. She had to have a passport. It had to be in the name she was using—Laura Rentane. I’ve got a hunch there won’t be any passport on record, that she came in on forged papers.”
“Why do you think that?”
“She was awful anxious to get married, Bryant. Married to a nice sound local guy with a good reputation. Tossing her out of the country would be ten times as easy if she were single. Can you imagine what kind of an unholy stink you would make if they tried to deport her?”
“But that alone …”
“And did she have any good reason for refusing to go to Mexico with you? She might have had trouble getting a tourist card. Maybe whoever built her a passport didn’t build a birth certificate to go with it.”
“She wanted to get married because she was in love with me!”
“Because you’re so pretty?” he asked mildly. “We want to find out who she was. Finding out will maybe lead to who killed her and why. So you think of any little personal habits she had that might be recognized by somebody. There was no picture of her in the apartment. You got a picture?”
I frowned. “No, there wasn’t time. She promised to have one taken and mail it to me, but she didn’t.”
“Did she write you?”
I flushed. “Twice.”
Paris leaned back and put his pudgy fingertips together. “A doll like that not owning a picture of herself. Enough creams and lotions to stock a department store, and no picture of herself. The hair was one of the best dye jobs I’ve ever seen.”
“It was natural!”
“With those eyebrows and eyelashes? Don’t be a stupe any more than you can help, Bryant. How about her habits?”
“I don’t know what sort of thing you mean.”
“Food, sleep, reading, likes and dislikes. Anything.”
I flushed again. “It was a honeymoon, and a short one at that. We … ate at crazy hours. She liked to go for walks. She avoided fattening foods. I never saw her read anything. She laughed a lot.”
“Nothing yet. Keep going.”
“She could take cat naps at any time of day. She took a lot of baths and showers. Three and four a day. She said she always did that whenever she could. She could speak French and Spanish. She liked movies, but we only went to one. She said she’d see a lot of movies while I was away. She adored the color yellow. She wanted to keep up the tan she got on the ship. She used to spend hours on herself. Hair, nails, that sort of thing. She did exercises, twisting and bending and turning. She didn’t like …” I paused as I felt myself go red again.
“Keep talking. What didn’t she like?”
“Clothes. She liked to have the rooms warm enough so she could go without clothes. It was sort of … hard to get used to.”
“None of this is going to help much, Bryant. Can you think of anything she said that sounded funny, that possibly you didn’t understand at the moment and it makes better sense now?”
“Only one thing,” I said dubiously, “and maybe it’s nothing. She had a nightmare. She was moaning. I woke her up. She said something in a language I couldn’t understand, then switched to English. I asked her about it. She told me it must have been me doing the dreaming. We had a sort of spat about it. It sounded to me like German. She said that was silly because she couldn’t speak German.”
Chapter Two
Jill was sitting on a bench in the hall when I came out of Paris’ office with Zeck. She wore a pale green cotton dress and carried a big white purse. She was hatless, as usual. She jumped up and came to me, quick concern on her face.
She slung the bag on her shoulder and folded her fingers around my wrists tightly. “Dil, I’m so sorry. I’m so terribly sorry.”
I tried to smile at her. My eyes were stinging. She knew I couldn’t speak and so she turned to Barney and said, “Let me take him off your hands for a while, Barney. The man needs food.”
“We don’t need him any more right now, Miss Townsend. Where’ll you be staying, Bryant? They’ll be through with the apartment by late afternoon, but I guess you wouldn’t want to …”
“The apartment will be fine,” I said.
“You can leave your bag right here. I’ll drop it off. I got to go back there anyhow.”
“Thanks.”
He looked at me with those colorless eyes for a few seconds. “Take care, son,” he said softly and ambled down the hall.
We walked a block to a restaurant and took a booth in the back. “Better have a drink, Dil,” she said.
The waiter brought the bourbon. It went down and felt good. I reached ove
r and lit her cigarette. “It seems funny,” I said. “Like a dream. Like it isn’t happening. I keep thinking she’ll be in the apartment waiting for me, Jill.”
“I know,” she said softly.
“Like a wave. It flattens out and then comes back in a big crest and hits me. We had so little time together.”
She put her small warm hand over mine. “Order another drink, Dil,” she said.
I held my hands out, palms opposed, fingers spread. “I want the man who did it, Jill. He’s mine. He’s my baby. My hands want him so bad they burn.”
“Don’t think that way, Dil. Don’t!”
“How can I help thinking that way? Yesterday I got your letter. Tell me how you came to write it, Jill. Tell me everything about that letter.”
“After you eat. There’s time. Eat first. Don’t try to talk if you don’t feel like it.”
I ate three hungry forkfuls and then my throat seemed to close. I couldn’t touch any more. I smoked and watched her eat. A little girl with a good healthy appetite. Now and then she’d smile at me. Just a smile that said we were friends. Paul was wrong. It had never been any other way between Jill and me. In her mind or mine.
The coffee came. We both took it sugarless and black.
“All right, Dil. Let me go all the way through it. Laura didn’t like me. You knew that. I don’t think she liked any woman, or was liked by any woman. I didn’t want you to marry her. I thought she was cheap—not good enough for you. And I thought her frightening in a way. A suggestion of ruthlessness. Plus that look of petulance and discontent. Plus the way she looked at any man.”
“Now, wait. I …”
“I’m not just maligning the de—criticizing Laura without a point, Dil. You asked me to keep an eye on her. I tried, Dil. I called on her twice. The first visit was pretty cool. The second time I went she wouldn’t let me in. I could smell cigar smoke. She told me she was fine and there was no need checking up on her. I wondered who the man might be. I’m a snoop—by profession and, I’m afraid, by instinct. They came out an hour or so later. He was a huge blond man, not fat, just terribly big. They seemed to know each other well. They went to a restaurant in the Quarter and ate in the patio. Then they went back to the apartment. I’ve given his description to the police. He shouldn’t be too hard to find if he’s still in the city. A nosy old lady lives in one of the ground-floor apartments. She sort of looks after the place. She lodged a complaint against Laura, charging her with entertaining that man in her apartment at all hours. The police investigated. There was nothing they could act on.”
Murder for the Bride Page 2
