by Keene, Day
Camden looked at the canvas-covered figure on the rough board floor of the fish house. “I’m sorry but the answer to that question is yes. Helene was a very self-willed woman and given to sudden impulses. She did what she wanted to do, regardless of morals or convention. And as I told Sheriff White a few minutes after I got off the plane this evening, I was afraid something like this might happen if I permitted Helene to come to Florida alone.”
“Thank you, Mr. Camden.”
“Not at all,” the well-groomed executive said. He looked along his cigar at Ames. “I realize that this is only a coroner’s jury, but I hope they recommend he be held and when he does come to trial that they give the bastard the chair!”
There was a buzz of conversation as Coroner Gilmore charged the jury. It grew as the jury men conferred among themselves. Ames tried to get at his cigarettes again and couldn’t. His manacled hands were shaking too badly. He gave up the attempt and sat looking at Mary Lou until Mr. Murphy signaled to Coroner Gilmore that the jury had reached a conclusion. The buzz of conversation died. In the silence that followed the druggist said soberly:
“We find the deceased, Helene Camden, came to her death from two pistol shots fired by Charlie Ames and recommend that he be indicted for and tried for her murder.”
Sheriff White pressed his shoulder. “Let’s go, boy.”
Ames didn’t even hear him. He was watching Mary Lou’s slim back disappear into the night. Mary Lou didn’t believe him. She didn’t intend to stand by. She agreed with the coroner’s jury.
Mary Lou thought he’d two-timed her.
Chapter Six
THE NIGHT wind off the Gulf cool on her flushed face, Mary Lou walked down the wooden pier of Rupert’s Fish House, then down the shoulder of the heavily traveled beach road toward Harry’s Bar and Murphy’s Pharmacy and the basin where the Sally was berthed.
Charlie was in a jam, a bad one. Her personal feelings no longer mattered. So Mrs. Camden had dazzled Charlie with her money and he had lost his head and killed her. So? She couldn’t let him down now. She would have to do what she could for him. Charlie would need a lawyer, a good one.
There was a light in the office of Ben Sheldon’s Ways. Mary Lou stood a moment watching the stream of traffic, sucking her cigarette to a miniature torch. She also had to call the club and tell them she wasn’t coming to work. She couldn’t sing tonight. She couldn’t pretend that nothing had happened to her emotionally, not if her life depended on it.
No matter what he’d done to her, she loved Charlie. Mary Lou cried a little. Goddamn Helene Camden! Helene’s husband had named her correctly. Mary Lou hoped it was hot where she was, a lot hotter than it was in Florida.
There was movement on the platform of Rupert’s Fish House. A car door opened then slammed. A pair of headlights flicked on. A police siren wailed petulantly as the driver of the car tried to ease the big cruiser into the steady stream of traffic. A moment later, its red light revolving, scattering cars coming the other way like so many frightened chickens, the police car wailed past the clump of darkness in which she was standing. Mary Lou caught a glimpse of Sheriff White but couldn’t see Charlie. Charlie was probably in the back seat. White was taking him in to the Palmetto City jail.
Mary Lou realized her cigarette was burning her fingers. She dropped it in the sand, extinguished the spark with the toe of her shoe and walked in to talk to Ben Sheldon.
A big man in his early sixties, wearing a crumpled white Palm Beach suit, Ben Sheldon looked up from his desk. “I’m sorry, Mary Lou,” he said simply.
Mary Lou sat in the chair beside his desk. “Yes. So am I. But being sorry about it isn’t going to pry Charlie out of this jam. I’ve got to get him a lawyer. How much will you give us for the Sally, Ben? Cash money. Now. Tonight.”
The fat man picked a dead cigar from the ashtray on his desk and chewed on it thoughtfully. “Well,” he began, “the Sally’s in pretty bad condition. The bottom’s rotten, for one thing. For another, the engine needs a complete overhaul.” He shook his head dubiously. “Now look. I like you, Mary Lou. I like Charlie.”
“Get to the point,” Mary Lou said. “How much will you give for the Sally? Cash money. Now. Tonight.”
Sheldon continued to shake his head. “I couldn’t go for over fifteen hundred. And I doubt if I can resell her for that.”
Mary Lou opened her mouth to remind him he’d offered Charlie two thousand dollars for the Sally less than a week before and changed her mind. If Ben didn’t buy the Sally, no one would. He was right about the bottom being rotten and the power plant needing a major overhaul. It was, she supposed, human nature to kick a man when he was down and Charlie was down.
“I’ll take it,” Mary Lou said. “Make out a bill of sale and give me the money. I want to go into town and see what I can do about a lawyer the first thing in the morning.”
She lit another cigarette and sat with her eyes closed, smoking, while the fat man used two fingers to peck out a bill of sale on an ancient Oliver typewriter. When he’d finished he gave it to Mary Lou to sign and got the money out of the safe.
“Take your time ‘bout clearin’ out now, Mary Lou. Use the Sally t’night an’ t’morrow, if you want to, jist as if the Sally was still your own boat.”
Mary Lou signed the bill of sale and put the money in her purse. “Thank you. You’re generous, Ben.”
The fat man shrugged. “Business is business.”
Mary Lou snuffed her cigarette and walked next door to Harry’s Bar to call the Beach Club. Shep Roberts was drinking beer out of a bottle. He caught her arm as she passed him on the way to the back booth.
“I hear they elected to hold Charlie,” Shep said.
Mary Lou nodded. “Yes. They just took him into Palmetto City.”
An inarticulate man, Shep had trouble with words. He let his actions speak for him. Fishing in the pocket of his stained white dungarees, he laid a wad of crumpled bills on the bar. “He never done hit, Mary Lou. An’ here’s the fifty for that charter trip I helped him out on t’day. I want you should use it to help hire a lawyer.”
Mary Lou studied Shep’s seamed face with wet eyes. “Thanks. Thanks a lot, Shep. I won’t need the money. I just sold the Sally to Ben. But what makes you think Charlie didn’t do it?”
“He loves you,” Shep said simply. The inarticulate man found words. “Look. Charlie might cut a man to death. He might steal five thousand dollars. He might even shoot a woman. But he wouldn’t so low rate you t’ be found daid in baid with a bag like that Camden woman. I happen to know how Charlie feels about you.”
Mary Lou squeezed his arm. “Thanks, Shep.” She walked on swiftly to the back booth and cried in its privacy a moment before she called the Beach Club. She wished she had Shep’s faith in Charlie. Unfortunately, all the evidence was against him.
Back on the Sally again, she took off her evening gown and lay down on the hard bunk and stared up at the dark, wondering if she were at fault. Charlie hadn’t wanted her to work at the Beach Club. They’d quarreled about it time after time. Perhaps it had hurt his pride and that was why he’d done what he had done.
Men were funny creatures. But then, so were women, for that matter.
It was hot and close in the small cabin. She was too restless to sleep. Mary Lou lit the Coleman lantern and began to pack a bag for Charlie. He’d need several changes of underwear and some clean shirts and his shaving things.
She hadn’t realized before how few things Charlie really had. What little money he spent, he spent on her. And he’d been such a nifty dresser when he’d been playing with the bands. Of course, it had been his pride. She was still, more or less, in the business, but it had been a hell of a drop for Charlie, from a hot trumpet player in a name band to an unsuccessful charter boat captain.
Mary Lou laid the elephant bank on top of Charlie’s clothes. She’d deliver it with the fifteen hundred to him in the morning. She’d ask him to suggest a lawyer. And if what they had saved wa
sn’t enough, she would get more somehow.
Once started packing, she decided to clear out the Sally. Ben could have the old tub in the morning. What she couldn’t carry away, either Harry or Mr. Murphy would let her store in their back rooms.
The cooking utensils presented a problem. Mary Lou had decided to pack them in a paper carton. There were always cartons in back of the drugstore. She got one and returned to the Sally.
There wasn’t much to pack. A few pots, a few pans, a coffee pot, four plates, six cups and saucers.
Mary Lou stopped in her packing and looked thoughtfully into the small cabinet. Then she unpacked the utensils and dishes she’d packed.
There were six saucers but only five cups. One cup was missing. She lifted the pressure lantern from its peg and walked out into the cockpit. Charlie had a habit of leaving coffee cups strewn around. Half of the time he left his cup on top of the live bait well, even on the low roof of the cabin. But the sixth cup wasn’t in the cockpit. Mary Lou closed her eyes. She’d said:
That’s your story.
Yeah, Charlie had told her. I’d just come in from catching my bait. I was making a pot of coffee when she came out on the pier and asked how much I’d charge to skipper the Sea Bird down to the Keys then up to Baltimore.
Mrs. Camden?
Yeah. I said Yd have to think it over. Then she asked if she smelled coffee. I said she did. She asked if she could have a cup. I invited her to come aboard and I gave her a cup of coffee. And that’s the last I remember.
Mary Lou opened her eyes. It was fantastic. Or was it? To the best of her knowledge, Charlie had never lied to her before.
She fought a small wave of nausea. Whatever he’d done, Charlie loved her. And she’d walked out on him cold. She hadn’t even told him she was standing by. She’d been ashamed to in front of so many people. She’d been thinking of herself not Charlie. She had allowed her hurt pride to come between. Even when she’d walked out at the end of the inquest, she’d known she was going to stand by Charlie. But Charlie didn’t know. Right now he was sitting in a cell thinking he hadn’t a friend in the world.
Mary Lou looked down at the black water lapping at the sides of the Sally. She wished she was smarter than she was. What if someone had somehow doped the coffee and both Charlie and Mrs. Camden had been drugged? She wouldn’t put it past either Mr. Camden or Mr. Ferris. Both of them were cool customers with a bloated sense of their own importance. She knew. She had to fend off the advances of men just like them six nights a week at the Beach Club, younger men who had married or attached themselves to older women. Especially Mr. Camden. He’d have felt worse if his pet dog had been run over. He’d been much more concerned about his wife’s diamond ring than he had about her.
Mary Lou forced herself to think. The basin was unlighted. She might have come home any minute. She probably had come home a few minutes after Charlie had left the Sally with Mrs. Camden. The easiest way to dispose of a coffee cup one didn’t have time to wash thoroughly would be to toss it over the side.
On impulse, she slipped out of the housecoat she’d put on when she’d taken off her evening gown and lowered herself over the side of the Sally. The water was cold with night but the tide was slack and there was no pull to it Here the water was two fathoms deep. She doubled her body into a knot and dived. Her groping hands encountered bottom, nothing more. She broke water, filled her lungs with air and dove again, this time farther from the boat.
There was little debris on the bottom. The basin was scoured by the tides. Mary Lou dived a fourth, then a fifth time. On her sixth dive her right hand encountered a small hard object. She grasped it and kicked her way to the surface. There was no moon. The light from the stars was too dim for her to see the object clearly. Treading water, Mary Lou shook her hair from her eyes and felt the object with both hands. It was the missing cup. At least, it was a cup.
Here was proof of Charlie’s story. He and Mrs. Camden had been on the Sally. Charlie had made coffee. Then someone had thrown the cup that he or Mrs. Camden or both of them had used over the side of the boat.
Mary Lou swam back to the Sally holding the cup carefully in one hand. There were no trailing ropes. The transom was too high for her to reach. She swam ashore and walked back out on the pier, hoping she wouldn’t meet anyone. The water had molded her sheer scanties and bra to her body until they were merely an extra layer of flesh.
Back in the cabin of the Sally she set the cup on the small galley and examined it as she toweled her body. It was one of a set. It was the missing cup. She could tell because the bowl was glazed and there was a small chip in the handle.
As she toweled her hair, she started to cry and couldn’t stop. Charlie hadn’t been unfaithful to her. Every word of his story was true. She stopped crying and one corner of her mouth turned down. Someone thought they were a pair of rubes. Someone was playing them for chumps. Just because she worked at the Beach Club and Charlie was a charter boat captain.
She combed her hair and made up and put on her best dress, a combed white wool with a wide hand-tooled Guatemalan belt. She wouldn’t wait until morning. She’d take the cup to Sheriff White right away and explain where she’d found it. If Sheriff White refused to believe her, she’d go to the State’s Attorney. If he wouldn’t listen to her, she’d take a bus to Tallahassee and talk to the Attorney General. It could be that even after its twenty-four hour immersion in the water, the cup would contain some trace of whatever drug had been used on Charlie.
Mary Lou debated how to carry the cup then wrapped it in a dry towel and put it in the suitcase with the elephant bank and Charlie’s clothes. On second thought, she took the money from her purse and laid the fifteen hundred dollars flat on the bottom of the suitcase under Charlie’s clean shirts and underwear.
One by one, the lights along the shore were winking out as the residents of the bait camps and the small cottages on the pass and the owners of the big houses on the bay called it a night. Only the jukes and the Beach Club were still lighted and would be for hours. She could call a cab from Harry’s.
It was late, much later than she’d thought. Night was blending into early morning. The black waters lapping the sides of the Sally were beginning to gurgle and spin in little whorls around the creosoted pilings, gathering force and momentum as slack tide ended and the water in the bay began to feel the irresistible pull of the outgoing tide.
Mary Lou fitted a small knitted hat to her still damp hair and took a last look around the cabin to see if she had missed anything Charlie could possibly use. She couldn’t see a thing. She could buy him a carton of cigarettes in Harry’s with love from Mary Lou.
She brushed at her eyes with the back of her hand. She was damned if she’d cry any more. The time for crying was past. What she wanted was action on Charlie’s behalf. She meant to see that there was some.
From force of habit she locked the cabin of the Sally. Both she and Charlie always did. So did most of the charter boat fleet. Not that the tourists stole. But the charter boats were so quaint and the tourists were hell on souvenirs. Shep had caught one trying to lug off his compass.
Mary Lou set the suitcase on the pier and stepped up on the weathered planking. She’d almost reached the T, when she sensed or thought she sensed someone lurking behind a crooked piling.
She lowered the suitcase to the pier. Her voice was small. “Who’s there?”
The only answer was that of the gurgle of the tide and the uniform creak of the mooring ropes of the long line of unlighted charter boats.
It’s my nerves, Mary Lou thought. Her nerves were shot Small wonder. Perhaps she’d have a coke and rum in Harry’s while she was waiting for the cab to come out of town. The coke and rum that Charlie had offered her that morning.
She grasped the handle of the suitcase and started on again.
As she passed the crooked piling a white arm holding a short piece of pipe cut through the night in a short but vicious arc. The pipe struck the back of her head.
Too stunned to scream, still clinging to the suitcase, Mary Lou fell to her knees and the piece of pipe found her head again.
She continued to kneel in an attitude of prayer. One star of all the millions in the sky grew brighter than the rest. It grew in size and brilliance until it filled the sky. Then the star exploded in a shower of shooting sparks and all was dark and silence.
Chapter Seven
SHE WAS cold. She was tired. She would dive once more, then give it up as hopeless. It was, after all, a fantastic story. It wasn’t likely the cup would be on the bottom of the basin.
Mary Lou dived down and down in her quest. Her groping hands were unable to find bottom. The pressure on her chest increased until she felt as if she were being crushed. She opened her eyes on a wet black wall of water. She wasn’t diving. She was drowning.
Fighting panic and the invisible force hurrying her along in the wet black void, she forced her body to the surface. Her lungs felt as if they were bursting. She had to breathe.
She broke water and filled her lungs with air. One glance at the black silhouette looming still blacker against the night was enough to tell her she was in the center of the pass not far from the bridge. She wasn’t diving for the cup. She’d had it. Someone had knocked her out on the pier and rolled her body into the pass. Mary Lou fought to breathe. Her mind cleared slowly. She brushed her hair out of her eyes with one hand. Whoever had knocked her out hadn’t rolled her off the pier. They’d rowed her to the center of the pass. The tide wouldn’t have pulled her out of the basin this fast.
She stood a moment treading water, gulping air, glad there was no moon, hoping that whoever had hit her hadn’t seen her break water. The back of her head felt numb. Her wool dress was binding her legs. Her wide leather belt felt like it was cutting her in two. She could hear, or thought she could hear, the creak of muffled oar locks. Then the pull of the outgoing tide swept her under the pier.
Mary Lou caught at one of the great concrete pilings and the accumulated barnacles tore at her hands. A huge fish cut the water nearby, leaving a phosphorescent wake. She hoped it wasn’t a shark.
