by Keene, Day
Thinking of the crowded court calendar, Keely nodded. “I might at that.”
Ames shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think I did. I mean kill her. I don’t even know she’s dead.”
“No one could lose as much blood as we found on that rug and live.”
“Even so. I don’t think I had anything to do with her.”
“What makes you so positive?”
“You know what Mrs. Camden looks like. I’m married to Mary Lou.”
“He has a point there,” State’s Attorney Keely admitted.
The plainclothesman who had gone in search of Celeste opened the door of the office. “The maid’s gone back to the beach, Sheriff. But there’s a guy here who says his name is Camden. He says he just flew down from Baltimore. And he has a lawyer named Ferris with him.”
White stood up and came around his desk. “Last chance, Charlie.”
Ames took off his white captain’s cap and ran a finger around the leather sweatband. His finger came away wet. “The last I remember, we were sitting in the cockpit of the Sally drinking coffee.”
“Show them in,” White said.
Camden was younger than his wife. His hair was black. He wore it long. He was six feet two and weighed two hundred pounds. His expensive gray flannel suit was moulded to his body. He looked more like a movie actor than an executive of a cosmetic firm.
White offered his hand. “Mr. Camden?”
Camden gripped the extended hand. “And you, sir?”
“I’m Sheriff White.”
“You’ve located Helene’s body?”
“Not as yet,” White admitted.
Ames studied Camden’s face. He didn’t like the man. His voice was too hearty. He showed too many teeth when he smiled. If the black-haired man was grief-stricken, he was concealing it well. Camden lit a cigarette and the office was perfumed with the fragrance of Turkish tobacco. “I was afraid something like this might happen if I permitted Helene to come to Florida alone.” He returned Ames’s stare. “This is the fishing guide who killed her?”
White said, “Let’s say we have considerable evidence tying him in with Mrs. Camden’s disappearance.”
The man with Camden introduced himself. “Ferris is the name. Tom Ferris. I’ve been Helene’s attorney for years. Sorry if we delayed anything. We took the first possible plane out of Baltimore after receiving your phone call.”
White said he was glad to know Ferris and introduced both men to State’s Attorney Keely.
Ames looked across the small office at Mary Lou. She was sitting straight in her chair again, pleating her handkerchief. Mary Lou didn’t believe him. She thought he’d two-timed her with Mrs. Camden. It showed in the tilt of her chin, the sullen set of her mouth.
Anger began to replace Ames’s fear. To the best of his knowledge, the story he’d told was true. He hadn’t been drunk. He hadn’t made love to Helene Camden. He hadn’t harmed her. He didn’t know how he had gotten into the cabin of the Sea Bird.
White concluded his brief conference with Ferris and Keely and Camden. “So that’s the way it stands. We know damn well he done hit. But we cain’t even book him until we find the body.”
Camden crossed to the chair in which Ames was sitting and stood with his bunched fists on his hips. “All right Start talking, fellow. What did you do with Helene’s body?”
“I didn’t do anything with it,” Ames said.
Camden’s right hand shot out and slapped Ames out of the chair. “Don’t give me that. You’re not fooling with a small-town sheriff now. You’re bucking helene camden, incorporated. If necessary, we’ll spend a million dollars to see you get what’s coming to you.”
Ames knelt on all fours on the oiled wood floor. Blood trickled from his slapped lips. He’d never felt so ashamed, so small, so put upon. His anger continued to grow. They had no right to treat him like this. He hadn’t hidden a thing. He’d tried to cooperate with White. But no one, especially an over-dressed bag of wind and that was all Camden was, was going to knock him around.
Ames got to his feet slowly. “Don’t do that again,” he warned Camden. “I don’t even know your wife is dead.”
Camden showed his too-white teeth in a smirk. “That’s your story. Talk, damn you. Talk.”
He struck out again, with his fist this time. Ames caught the blow on the palm of his left hand and hit Camden so hard his head bounced when it struck the filing case. The big man stood glassy-eyed a moment. Then he slid down the steel case to the floor.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Charlie,” Sheriff White said.
Ames stood with his legs spread, panting. “You’ve questioned me all day. Now book me or let me go. Like I just told Camden, I don’t even know Mrs. Camden is dead.”
The plainclothesman opened the door again. “There are two kids here to see you, Sheriff. Young Cronkite and Tommy Williams. They were netting mullet out at Sister Key and — ”
White waved him out of the office. “Tell them to come back. I’m busy.”
The policeman stood his ground. “I think you’d better see them, Sheriff.”
“Why?”
“Because according to their story, they just threw a mullet net over Mrs. Camden’s nude body.”
Chapter Five
THE HARSH white trouble light Sheriff White’s men had erected drowned out the feeble glow of the yellow ceiling light in the gloomy packing shed of Rupert’s Fish House. From where Ames sat he could hear the juke in Harry’s Bar. The box was playing You Like?
His set smile was tight. He didn’t like. He didn’t like what was happening to him. He didn’t like it at all, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Through the open doors of the packing shed he could see a steady procession of out-of-state cars carrying carefree tourists to the dog track, the stock car races and the various beach hot spots.
Two hundred yards up the beach, there were music and laughter. There was a moon. There were stars. Boys and girls were dancing. Boys were telling their girls they loved them. Girls were enacting pleased surprise, when they had planned it that way all the time. Life was warm and normal and human.
Here there was nothing but cold suspicion, the white glare of the trouble light, the ring of unfriendly faces, the canvas covered thing in the corner that once had been Helene Camden.
Ames fished a package of cigarettes from his side coat pocket and lighted one. His manacled wrists made the simple act difficult, but he managed. Ames supposed, in time, a man could get used to anything. Or could he? It was hard for him to think. His mind felt battered by the day of questioning. He wished he could change his story, if only to get some sleep, but he couldn’t. The last he remembered was drinking a cup of coffee with Mrs. Camden in the cockpit of the Sally.
Ames studied the faces of the coroner’s jury that Justice of the Peace Gilmore had impaneled. There were: Murphy, who owned the drug store; Jack Hayden and Bill Mayers, fellow charter boat captains; Mack Gore, who fished for old man Rupert; Mr. Thompson, who owned the Siesta Motel. They returned his look coldly. They, too, were male. They, too, had financial troubles. They thought he’d stayed with Mrs. Camden and then killed her — for five thousand dollars.
Ames looked for and found Mary Lou. it was nine o’clock, almost time for her to go to work. She’d changed from her street dress into an evening gown. She looked harder, older, than he’d ever seen her look. She stood just inside the door. A gray wisp of smoke curled up from the cigarette between her red lips, the lips he’d kissed a thousand times. Not even Mary Lou believed him.
That hurt most of all.
There was a thud of heels on the loading platform. Hal Camden and Attorney Ferris entered the packing shed. Both men had changed into light weight suits and two-toned sport shoes. Their faces looked strangely white, compared to the sun-bronzed faces of the local men.
Gilmore crossed the packing shed to meet them saying, “We’ll begin wit
h the identification, Mr. Camden.”
Sheriff White dropped his hand on Ames’s shoulder. “Last chance, Charlie.”
“You said that before,” Ames reminded him.
White persisted. “She made a play for you. You lost your head. You got stinking with her. Sometime during the party you quarreled. It wasn’t premeditated. You didn’t mean to kill her. It just happened.” The fingers on Ames’s shoulder tightened. “Hell. We’re all with you, boy. We know these things happen. You tell it like it was and there aren’t twelve men in Palmetto County who’ll send you away for more than ten or fifteen years.”
Ames looked back at Mary Lou. Ten or fifteen years. Ten or fifteen years away from Mary Lou. He was thirty now. He’d be forty-five when he got out of prison. He’d much rather go to the chair. He said: “The last I remember — ”
Sheriff White’s voice sounded weary. “Yes. I know. You were drinking a cup of coffee in the cockpit of the Sally.”
Ames forced a smile. “You’re just burned because Camden called you a small-town sheriff.”
“That could be,” White admitted.
In his capacity as coroner, Justice of the Peace Gilmore lifted the tarpaulin from the figure on the floor of the packing shed. The nude woman was no longer pretty. She’d been in the water too long. Her flabby flesh was bloated. Most of her face was gone. Ames repressed a shudder.
Gilmore folded the tarpaulin. “She doesn’t look so good, does she, Charlie?”
“No,” Ames answered. “She doesn’t.”
He looked at Mary Lou, then back at the nude body and felt better. He didn’t care how much evidence there was against him. He was damned if he’d been untrue to Mary Lou. The dead woman’s thighs were thick and ugly with broken veins. Her big breasts sagged. Her bleached hair was coarse and beginning to show black at the roots. Even allowing for the crabs and water bloat, she wasn’t pretty anywhere. A man married to Mary Lou who’d have anything to do with a bag like Helene Camden ought to have his head examined. It would be like getting up from a T-bone steak dinner to gnaw on a stale ham sandwich.
Gilmore looked at Camden. “Well?”
“It’s Helene,” Camden said.
“You’re positive.”
“I’m positive. I recognize the hair and ring and certain other physical attributes.” Camden knelt down beside the body and tried unsuccessfully to pull the ring over the swollen flesh. “You’ll probably have to cut it off. But when you do, be careful with it. That ring’s worth eighteen thousand dollars.”
He seemed more concerned with the ring than with the fact that his wife was dead.
Attorney Ferris took a paper from his brief case. “I happen to have the insurance policy with me.” He offered the paper to Gilmore. “Perhaps you’d care to check the description against the ring, Mr. Coroner.”
Gilmore shook his head. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Ferris.”
“Attorney Ferris or Counsellor,” Ferris corrected him.
Ames felt almost sorry for Gilmore and Sheriff White. Quite a few of the wealthy Northerners who had winter homes on the beach were stinkers, but Camden and Ferris were more obnoxious than most. Both men were smugly superior to the situation in which they found themselves involved. They were treating the sheriff and the coroner and himself, for that matter, like slightly moronic children.
The backs of Gilmore’s ears were red as he studied the list of names he’d compiled. “When the counsellor is before the court acting in a legal capacity, he will be accorded any courtesy forms of address to which he may be entitled.” Gilmore looked up from the list of names. “Will Miss Celeste Montigny please come forward?”
The French maid walked into the glare of the trouble light.
“You’re Mrs. Camden’s maid?” Gilmore asked.
The maid bobbed her head. “Oui, monsieur.”
Gilmore pointed at Ames. “You recognize this man?”
“Oui, monsieur.”
“You saw him board the Sea Bird with your mistress last night?”
“No, monsieur. I deed not.”
“When did you see him?”
“This morning, monsieur. Shortly after daylight. When I attempted to tell Mrs. Camden her Paris office was on thee phone.”
“Where did you see him?”
“Een the cockpit of the Sea Bird.”
“How was he dressed?”
Celeste looked at Ames for the first time. “Hee’s feet were bare. He had only his pants and cap on.”
“What did you think?”
Celeste was candid. “I theenk he ees a very nice looking young man. So, how you say, virile.”
A burst of laughter followed her statement. Even Camden and Ferris smiled.
Gilmore glowered at the spectators crowded into the packing shed of the fish house.
Celeste continued. “But I am also ver’ uneasy for Mrs. Camden.”
“Why?”
“Because the young man told me she was not aboard thee boat and I knew it was her intention to pass the night there.”
“How did you know that?”
“Mrs. Camden told me so. She told me she had a date with a ver’ handsome young charter boat captain and they were, under no circumstances, to be disturbed.”
“The bitch,” Camden said. “The blonde bitch.”
“What did you do then?” Gilmore asked.
Celeste said, “I returned to thee house and told Phillips, he ees thee butler, that Mrs. Camden was not aboard thee cruiser. He, too, was very alarmed. Together we searched the house. We had just finished when,” Celeste pointed at Ames, “thee captain there came to thee back door and demanded to see Mrs. Camden. And I became even more alarmed.”
“Why?”
“He had blood all over his small shirt. I told heem to go away. He would not. So I took a gun that ees kept een thee kitchen and fired at heem through the screen door.”
“And then?”
“I dialed the operator and asked her to connect me weeth thee sheriff.”
“I see,” Gilmore said. “Thank you, Miss Montigny.” He looked at Sheriff White. “What time did you get this call, Sheriff?”
“About seven fifteen,” White said.
“You proceeded directly to the Camden residence?”
“That’s right. When I got there the girl who has just testified told me the situation as she outlined it to the coroner’s jury, so I walked out on the pier and had a look at the cruiser.”
“Would you please describe to the jury what you found?”
“Well, the main cabin was a mess. You could tell right off that there’d been a party in it. There was a woman’s evenin’ dress an’ hose on one of the bunks, like she’d peeled it off in a hurry. Only one of the bunks had been slept in. There was an empty whiskey bottle rollin’ between the two bunks. But what concerned me most was that the carpet was sodden with blood and when I examined the head I found a pearl-handled .32 caliber revolver with two expended shells.”
“Recently expended?”
“Within a matter of hours.”
“What did you do then, Sheriff?”
“I asked the maid to accompany me to see if we could locate and identify the young captain she said she’d seen aboard the cruiser. The first place we went to was Harry’s Bar and she picked Charlie Ames out of the back booth.”
“He was alone?”
“No. He was with his wife.”
“Did he deny he’d been aboard the Sea Bird?”
White was fair. “No. Charlie admitted that right off. But he did deny any knowledge of how he’d gotten aboard.” The phrase stuck in Sheriff White’s craw. “He claimed and still does, for that matter, that the last he remembered he was drinking coffee with Mrs. Camden in the cockpit of the Sally.”
“And how far is the Sally berthed from the Sea Bird?”
“I’d say about five hundred yards, maybe a little more.”
Ames buried his face in his manacled hands. His story sounded foolish. He felt like a fool
. This was it. This was the big one and he didn’t remember a thing about it. He continued to hold his face in his hands as Sheriff White told about finding the money and two other Palmetto City officers testified to three important facts. His fingerprints matched the fingerprints that had been taken from the pearl handle of the gun. A paraffin test revealed that he’d fired a revolver recently. The blood on his skivy and shoes matched the blood on the carpet in the main cabin of the Sea Bird.
I must have killed her, Ames thought. God knew he’d wanted a new boat, for Mary Lou. It had been the first thing in his mind when he’d awakened. Still, how could he have been so stupid about it? And it did seem, unless a man’s mind snapped completely, he’d have some vague recollection of first quarreling with, then killing the woman.
Ames looked up as the officer finished and old Horace Lee was called on to testify as to the tides. In the opinion of the grizzled fisherman a body dropped over the side of the Sea Bird at approximately four o’clock in the morning would ride the current out-going tide about as far as the bridge before the change in tides swept it back into the upper bay and into the Blind Pass channel, where Buddy Cronkite and Tommy Williams had found it.
That should do it, Ames thought. He uncovered his face and straightened in the chair as Coroner Gilmore called his last witness.
“Now, if you’ll take the stand, Mr. Camden.”
Camden took his cigar from his lips. “Yes, Mr. Coroner?”
Gilmore said, “You’ve heard the testimony. And while I have no wish to intrude on your grief or cause you any further embarrassment, the entire circumstantial case developed against Captain Ames rests solely on one fact.”
“And that, sir?”
“In your opinion, was Mrs. Camden the sort of woman who would hold an illicit assignation with a man practically a stranger to her?”
