Carnal Hours nh-6

by Max Allan Collins

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well…you’ll need to refund my father’s ten-thousand-dollar retainer.”

  “What?”

  “I think you heard me the first time, Mr. Heller.”

  “That was a nonrefundable retainer….”

  “Do you have that in writing?”

  “Well, no. How did you know…?”

  She smiled blandly. “I’m friendly with the head of my father’s household staff-a Miss Marjorie Bristol? She’s holding the carbon of the check my father made out to you.”

  I didn’t say anything. I may have moaned.

  “And,” she continued cheerily, “in his personal ledger, where he recorded the payment, he noted that your daily rate was to be three hundred dollars. He also made a notation that you’d been paid in advance, one thousand dollars for one day’s work. And I believe that’s how long you did, actually, work? Isn’t it, Mr. Heller?”

  I nodded. “That was three hundred dollars plus expenses, though.”

  She shrugged facially. “That’s fine. And if you put in enough days to exhaust the retainer, I’m willing to continue paying you at the same rate. Which I understand is top money in your field.”

  I sighed. “That’s correct.”

  “So. When would you like to head back to Nassau?”

  She’d beaten me; Nate Heller, tough guy, pummeled by a nineteen-year-old ballerina.

  “This afternoon will be fine,” I said.

  “Wonderful!” She reached in the pocket of her robe. “Here are your tickets…your room is waiting at the B.C.”

  She meant the British Colonial; I took the tickets, numbly.

  She sipped her orange juice. Looked out at the golf course, proud of herself.

  “Mrs. de Marigny…”

  “Nancy.” She smiled, and it was genuine enough.

  “Nancy. And call me Nate, and how did you know the police are botching the investigation? Did the Count’s attorney, Higgs, tell you?”

  She shook her head no. “I had firsthand experience with those Miami detectives.”

  I squinted at her. “Barker and Melchen? How’s that possible?”

  “They flew to Maine yesterday…they crashed the funeral, Mr. Heller.”

  “Nate. They crashed the funeral?”

  They crashed the funeral, and afterward they followed Nancy and her mother to the latter’s bedroom, where Lady Oakes collapsed in grief. They chose this moment to tell Nancy and Lady Oakes, in gruesome detail, their reconstruction of the murder as Freddie de Marigny supposedly committed it.

  She was tightly angry as she told me this; her brown eyes brimmed with tears that seemed of indignation more than sorrow.

  “The tall, good-looking one with salt-and-pepper hair…”

  “That’s Barker,” I said.

  She nodded. “Barker. He told Mother, stood at her bedside and told her, that Freddie had taken a wooden picket from a fence outside the house, and used it to batter and gouge Daddy senseless…this Barker even used his hands to demonstrate the motion, stabbing the air!”

  “Christ. How did your mother take this?”

  “She’s a very strong woman, very-but she became hysterical. Our doctor advised them to stop with their story, but Mother-through her hysteria-screamed to let them continue.”

  “How did you take it?”

  She spoke through her teeth. “It just made me mad. Mad as hell.”

  “Good girl. Go on.”

  Her eyes hardened even as a tear trickled. “Then Barker said Freddie splashed Daddy, who was still alive, with insecticide from a flit gun. And then…set him on fire-only the fire roused Daddy, who rose up, writhing in ‘horrible agony.’”

  Jesus Christ.

  “Even if it were true,” I said, “Barker is a sadistic moron, putting you and your mother through that hell.”

  She shook her head vigorously, as if trying to shake that awful story out of it. “I didn’t believe a word. I was just getting more and more furious. But it was a cold fury.”

  “That’s the best kind. Did those sons of bitches leave you alone then?”

  “No. Barker added a coup de grace: he said that four or five fingerprints of Freddie’s had been found in Daddy’s bedroom.”

  I shook my head. “I have to be honest with you, Nancy-that’s bad. Real bad.”

  She heaved a huge sigh and nodded.

  “Juries just love fingerprint evidence,” I said.

  “But the odd thing is,” she said, frowning, thinking back, “the other detective…the fat one? With the Southern accent?”

  “Melchen,” I said.

  “Melchen. He said, ‘No kidding? Fingerprints?’ It was obvious it was the first he’d heard of it!”

  I sat up. “What did Barker say then?”

  She shrugged. “He just shushed him, and they hurried out.”

  My laugh was hollow. “They fly up from Nassau on the plane together, they’re partners in this all the way, and Barker doesn’t even mention to Melchen that he found the accused’s fingerprints in the murder room?”

  She seemed confused, as well she should be. “What does it mean?”

  “Well, the bad news is they’re working up a frame.” Then I smiled. “The good news is, they’re incompetent dopes.”

  She was still confused. “But…why would they frame my husband?”

  “Could be plain old-fashioned bad police work. A true detective accumulates evidence until it leads him to a suspect. A lousy detective finds a suspect and accumulates only the evidence that fits that suspect.”

  “And even creates evidence?”

  “Sometimes,” I said, making two words of it. “Does Freddie have any enemies in Nassau?”

  She smirked humorlessly. “Quite a few, I’m afraid. He doesn’t play by the rules; he’s his own man, Freddie is.”

  “These clowns, Barker and Melchen, they were brought in by the Duke. What was your father’s connection to the Duke?”

  “They were friendly. David and Wallis are…were fairly frequent guests at Westbourne…even stayed there, for several weeks, when they first arrived in Nassau, while Government House was being redecorated to Wallis’ specifications. My parents attended many social occasions where the Duke and Duchess were present. Daddy and the Duke played a lot of golf together. And, of course, they had certain mutual business interests.”

  “Such as?”

  She winced in thought. “I’m not really sure. I know that Harold Christie and Daddy and the Duke were involved in some business deal or other…oh, and so was Axel Wenner-Gren. He’s a Swedish industrialist.”

  “Is that the guy who bought Howard Hughes’ yacht?”

  “The Southern Cross, yes.”

  “Axel Wenner-Gren.” I was sitting up again. “Isn’t that guy a Nazi? The Duke and Duchess got bad publicity having him chauffeur ’em around in his yacht. The papers were full of it-the American authorities wouldn’t let him dock, a couple times.”

  She was shaking her head and smiling at me like I was a kid who’d just repeated some wild, unbelievable schoolyard story. “Axel a Nazi? It’s preposterous. He’s a charming man, Nate.”

  “Well, if you say so.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I mean, it’s true that he’s been blacklisted from the Bahamas, and the United States, for the duration.”

  I snapped my fingers. “That’s what I thought! For suspected collaborationist leanings, right?”

  “Right,” she allowed. “But it’s nonsense.”

  “Where is the charming Axis what’s-his-name now?”

  “It’s Axel and you know it. Cuernavaca-sitting out the war on one of his estates.”

  I was grinning. “So there’s a Nazi in the woodpile…that’s real interesting….”

  “Nate-don’t bother going down that road. I know Axel isn’t a Nazi.”

  “How could you ‘know’ that?”

  Her gaze was boring holes in me again. “Because Daddy wouldn’t have been friends with him if he
was. Look-Daddy wasn’t very political…like a lot of wealthy people, he considered himself above politics, I suppose. But he hated Nazis. He’d sooner do business with the devil! He was active in all the local war efforts, and when Hitler declared war on Britain, Daddy immediately donated five Spitfires to the RAF! And he’s given his airfield to….”

  “Okay, Nancy…okay. You made your point. What about a guy named Meyer Lansky? Ever hear of him?”

  She shrugged. “No.”

  I described him to her. “Ever see anybody who looked like that come around to talk to your father?”

  “No.”

  “Any Americans come around who didn’t seem like somebody who’d typically do business with your dad? Somebody…suspicious. Somebody with bodyguards, maybe.”

  “A gangster or something? Hardly.”

  I didn’t want to get into it with her, but I wondered what interest, or connection, Meyer Lansky might have to the murder. Last night his questions had been pointed, and knowledgeable; so knowledgeable that I wondered if he might not have been, in an oblique fashion, warning me off the case….

  A knock at the door summoned Nancy, and I stayed and sipped my coffee, watching golfers golf, pondering Lansky’s possible warning. I heard Nancy’s voice, then another voice, but higher-pitched, and that of an older woman; both voices were raised in something approaching anger.

  I went to have a look. Probably none of my business, but I’m a snoop by nature and profession….

  “Mother,” Nancy was saying, “I did not sneak away. I left word where you could find me, and under what name, or else you wouldn’t have! Correct?”

  Lady Eunice Oakes was tall, handsome, dignified, and royally pissed off. She was also just a tad stout, with a firm jaw and thin wide lips, her hair of medium length and graying blond. She was in black, of course, but stylishly so, with a black fur piece, black soupdish hat and dark glasses and black gloves. Even her nylons were in mourning.

  “Don’t speak to me in that tone of voice,” Lady Oakes snapped. “I don’t appreciate having to come running after you…chartering a plane at all hours…”

  “You didn’t have to come ‘running after’ me, Mother. I’m of age. I’m a married woman.”

  “You would have to remind me of that.”

  Lady Oakes rustled in her purse-also black-for a hanky-white. She lowered her face into the hanky as Nancy tapped her on the shoulder.

  “Mother,” Nancy said, nodding toward me. “We’re not alone….”

  She put the hanky away and removed her sunglasses; her eyes, though bloodshot, were a clear, sky blue. Once upon a time, she could have given Nancy a run for the money in the looks department.

  Studying me, she said, not unpleasantly, “And who are you, young man?”

  A funny way to address me, since she probably only had five or six years on me.

  I told her, and expressed my sympathies.

  “You’re the detective my husband hired,” she said, and beamed. She strode over to me and offered me her gloved hand. I shook it, not knowing why this welcome was so warm.

  “You provided valuable evidence in the case against my husband’s murderer,” she said, “and I would just like to thank you personally….”

  “Mother-Mr. Heller is working for me, now. He’s going to prove Freddie’s innocence.”

  She let go of my hand as if it were something disgusting. She looked at me the same way.

  “I fail to see the humor in that,” she said.

  “Me either,” I said.

  “Mr. Heller,” Nancy said, “was paid ten thousand dollars to investigate my husband’s activities. I’m keeping him on the case. He’ll investigate, and prove Freddie’s innocence.”

  Lady Oakes smiled, and it was a sly, smart smile.

  “Am I to understand,” she said, addressing us both, looking from Nancy to me and back again, “that you intend to have Mr. Heller continue investigating…using up the money that your father paid him?”

  “Yes,” Nancy said, indignantly.

  “I think not,” Lady Oakes said. She looked at me. “I’ll speak to our attorney, Walter Foskett of Palm Beach, and fix your little red wagon, Mr. Heller.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You can’t both threaten me with the same lawyer!”

  “Mother,” Nancy began, and the two were arguing. Not yelling, but heatedly talking over each other’s words.

  I put two fingers in my mouth and blew a whistle that would have brought Ringling Brothers to a standstill.

  The two women looked at me, startled.

  “I have a suggestion,” I said. I looked at Nancy. “Your mother has a point. My client here, in a very real sense, is your late father.”

  Lady Oakes smiled smugly and nodded the same way. She folded her arms across a generous matronly bosom.

  “Suppose,” I said to Lady Oakes, “that I work for your daughter, on the following condition: if I find evidence of her husband’s guilt, I won’t suppress it. It goes straight to the prosecution-right to the Attorney General.”

  The widow’s smile turned approving; but Nancy was frowning, and said, “But…”

  “Otherwise,” I told the lovely Mrs. de Marigny, “it would be a conflict of interests. I’d be working against your father-who is, after all, my client.”

  Nancy thought about that. “Well, Freddie’s innocent. So you’re not going to turn anything up that would work against him.”

  “There you go,” I said.

  “And you’d answer to me,” Nancy said. “I’m your client now.”

  “Yes. With that one condition.”

  “Well…it’s acceptable to me,” Nancy said, uncertainly.

  “It’s acceptable to me, as well,” Lady Oakes said. She looked at her daughter with a softer expression. “We won’t be enemies, you and I. I’m championing my husband, and you are championing yours. I expect you to stand by him….”

  Now Nancy was getting teary-eyed again; she clutched her mother and her mother patted her, somewhat stingily I thought, but patted her.

  “All I need,” I said, “is for good old Uncle Walter Foskett to write up a letter acknowledging I’m working out my ten-thousand-dollar retainer-and that when it’s used up, my meter is still running, at three hundred dollars per day and expenses.”

  Lady Oakes smiled frostily at me. “That’s between you and your client.” She turned to her daughter. “I’ll see you in Nassau, my dear.”

  And she was gone.

  10

  The taxi deposited me at the International Seaplane Base on Biscayne Bay, just south of Miami, and I hauled my duffel bag toward what might have been a fashionable yacht club, with its manicured lawn, decorative nautical pennants, and stream of blue-and-white-uniformed flight crews. Along the seawall, sightseers-some of them tourists no doubt, but locals as well-were passing this dazzling sunny afternoon by taking in the spectacle of the awkward-looking yet streamlined black-and-silver flying boats as they streaked through the water, coming and going. The roar of engines and churn of seawater and noise of sightseers were more air show than airport.

  According to the bulletin board in the waiting room, my plane was on time. I knew Nancy de Marigny would not be joining me, as she was going out on a later flight; but I glanced around, wondering if Lady Oakes would be one of the thirty passengers taking the Caribbean Clipper to Nassau at one o’clock.

  She didn’t seem to be, which was fine with me. I didn’t dislike her-she was a smart, tough lady, if possessed of that superiority that comes of a shopgirl marrying big money-but the notion of being cooped up with her in the clipper cabin for an hour was less than enticing.

  Bag checked, ticket punched, I followed a small, stout, wide-shouldered man in Western shirt and chinos down a canopied walk that opened onto sunshine and the landing dock. I followed the hick down the few steps through a hatchway into the plane; turned out I had the seat across the aisle from him, and he smiled at me, an affable character who was probably a farmer or a ran
cher or something.

  He said, “First trip to the Bahamas?”

  He had a grating yet ingratiating voice; for a guy clearly in his mid-fifties-as the broad oval of his tanned, weather-beaten face attested-he had a boyish look. Behind gold wire-frames, his eyes narrowed as he smiled, and his longish brown hair, short and gray at the temples, was combed back carelessly.

  “Actually,” I said, “my second in two weeks.”

  “Oh. Go there often, do you? On business?”

  “It’s my second trip, period-but it is business, yes.”

  “Don’t mean to pry,” he said, with a smile, and he looked out the porthole next to him.

  The four engines started up, one at a time, the hatchway clanged shut, and the plane began to coast down the watery runway. It took the pilot half a mile of plowing down the bay, pontoons cleaving the water, till he got into position for the wind, and then the plane yanked itself forward into the sky. I looked out my porthole window, but it was washed with spray.

  The cabin was full, mostly men, business types.

  I leaned into the aisle and said to the hick, “Wonder how many of these guys are reporters?”

  He grinned. “On their way to cover the Oakes case, you mean? Probably damn near all of ‘em. Myself included.”

  “You’re a reporter?”

  “In a half-assed sort of way.” He extended a hand. “Name’s Gardner. Friends call me Erle.”

  “Nate Heller,” I said, and accepted his firm handshake. I rolled his name around in my head for a couple seconds, then said, “Not Erle Stanley Gardner?”

  “That’s right.” He beamed, pleased to have his name recognized. “Ever read my stuff?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I never read mystery novels.”

  “Not your cup of tea?”

  “More like busman’s holiday.”

  “Oh?”

  We were both having to work our voices up a bit, over the roar of the props.

  “I’m president of the A-1 Detective Agency in Chicago,” I said.

  His eyes slitted in thought. Then he pointed at me. “Nathan Heller! Damn. I should’ve recognized the name.”

  “Hardly.”

  He was shaking his head, smiling one-sidedly. “No, I should’ve. The Lindbergh case got you a lot of press. You damn near sprung Hauptmann!”