Slack Tide

by George Harmon Coxe

  The bathroom door was open about an inch when he returned to the bedroom, and he could hear the shower banging against the tub and curtain. He put the drinks down on a low table next to the chaise. A large vanity with three mirrors stood to one side of the table, and he saw that Carla’s discarded clothing had been piled on the bench. He also saw her leather handbag, and he noticed that the top was open.

  What MacLaren did then would never have occurred to him any other time. He was not even sure what he expected to learn from Carla, and why, exactly, he wanted to talk to her. It was just that, of all the people who had been on the island, he knew Carla Lewis best. She had been here most of last summer, and she had an assured but friendly manner that made her easy to talk to. Several times she had come over to the boatyard and sat around asking questions and talking to him, and there had been a few occasions when he had bought her a drink at the Inn.

  He thought he understood in a general way her status in the Kingsley household, and the things Ruth had told the police that morning helped to round out the picture his mind had formed. He was no more suspicious of Carla than anyone else, but from the things he had heard he understood that several people might have had a motive for slugging Kingsley and pushing his body into the water. Now, even as his mind explored such possibilities, his hands were busy.

  He found the stock certificates almost at once. They stuck up above the accessories in the bag and had been folded twice. There were two of them. When unfolded, the first one said that Carla Lewis owned five hundred shares of United Gypsum; the second said she also owned five hundred shares of Allied Steel.

  Because he did not follow the market regularly, MacLaren had only a rough idea of what these shares might be worth, but his curiosity was working now and he had the sense to turn them over. What he saw then gave him a somewhat different picture. For while the certificates were made out to Carla, she had endorsed them in blank on the reverse side, which meant that, since her signature had been guaranteed by a bank, whoever held the certificates would be able to sell them at any time.

  Still trying to understand just what this might mean, his fingers continued to explore the recesses of the bag. He found a pin-seal leather wallet with gold corners, a matching key case, a comb, compact, lipstick, perfume atomizer, tissues, gum, and at the bottom, another set of keys.

  These were the only things he examined closely, and he did so because they were so distinctive. Flat and thin, they seemed to form a matching pair, and he was at once reminded of his own set of safe deposit keys. The only difference was that these keys had no numbers of any kind nor any distinctive markings.

  He had them in his palm when Carla called to him, and his reaction had a reflex quality that was automatic. Not wanting to be caught and expecting the bathroom door to open that same instant, his fingers closed about the keys and he stepped back.

  “I’ll take my drink,” she said. And now the door opened another foot and her face appeared. Her black hair was tousled and damp at the edges, and she thrust an arm out that was bare to the shoulder.

  She took the glass he handed her and thanked him. “I’ll be out in a jiffy,” she said as the head and arm disappeared.

  MacLaren was afraid to go back to the handbag and replace the keys. He was not sure there was time for this and, on second thought, he was not even sure he wanted to replace them. That they were tied up in some way with Carla’s hurried trip to New York seemed reasonable. What he wanted to find out was just why the trip had been so imperative, and with this in mind he pocketed them as the door was flung open.

  She came out of the bathroom with a terry-cloth robe belted about the waist, the drink in her hand. She moved over to the chaise and flopped down, stretching her legs out in front of her and covering them with the skirt of the robe.

  “All right,” she said. “Now what do we talk about?”

  What indeed? MacLaren thought.

  “That was a quick trip you made to New York.”

  “Wasn’t it? That Mercedes really can move.” She took another pull at her drink. “There were some things I wanted to get.”

  “Did the police give you any trouble this morning?”

  “Not really.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said to stay around for a day or two. Until they had a report from the medical examiner.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any idea about what happened last night.”

  “None. All I know that I didn’t know last night is that you and Oliver had a light on the dock, and that Ruth hit him on the head with a piece of wood.”

  “Oh? The police told you?”

  She nodded, but when he realized she was not going to continue, he said: “What happens to you now? I understand you’ll get five thousand dollars.”

  “Eventually. Meanwhile I suppose I’ll have to start looking for another job.”

  MacLaren watched her take another sip of her drink, and now, remembering the things he knew about her and the things he had heard, he voiced a question on a subject he had never approached before.

  “Were you in love with him when you quit your airline job?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “I think I was.” She gave the question further consideration. “I guess I thought I was going to be the second Mrs. Kingsley. What I didn’t know was that Oliver’s taste ran more to blondes.”

  “Did you get over it? Loving him, I mean?”

  “I got over it.”

  “But you stayed on. You still liked him?”

  “Sometimes.” She hesitated, her brow furrowed. “More important, I was used to him. I liked this sort of life, and I was well paid for putting up with his idiosyncrasies. It gave me a chance to meet people who might turn out to be important to me. By that I mean potential husbands.”

  Again she hesitated. One edge of her robe had slipped somewhat to reveal a sliver of leg from ankle to mid-thigh. This served to remind MacLaren of other things he knew about her. For he had seen her in a bathing-suit, and in halter and shorts, and he knew that underneath the robe Carla had a well-rounded, deep-chested figure, strongly made and well co-ordinated. Her eyes, nearly as black as her hair, were intelligent under faintly upward-slanting brows. At the moment they held a thoughtful, faraway look, but he was already convinced that she had a mind of her own and the determination to get what she wanted. What she said next surprised him.

  “I finally found one,” she said. “A husband, I mean.”

  “Oh?”

  “A young army captain I met last year. He’ll be out of the service in six weeks. He’s in Germany now, but he has a ring in his pocket. He’ll be due in New York in about ten days. At least that’s what his last letter said.”

  “That’s wonderful,” MacLaren said.

  “I hope so.”

  He finished his drink and put his glass aside. He was about to rise when another thought occurred to him.

  “What do you think of Harry Danaher?”

  “Harry?” She considered the name and her tone seemed both disinterested and indifferent. “I think Harry’s out for what he can get. He never spends a dime. I guess he knows his job all right, but he’s got some idea about buying a charter boat down in Florida, and he keeps on pinching pennies while he’s getting his stake.”

  “How did he get along with Kingsley?”

  “All right, I guess. At first he was pretty independent about it. I mean, he said what he thought, and Oliver seemed to realize that he was not a person you could push around. But lately he seemed to have changed. I think something might have happened down in Florida last winter. I don’t know what it was and I’m only guessing, but this spring Harry has been toeing the line just like the rest of us. He’s got a little more of that—yes sir, no sir, right away sir, attitude.” She shrugged. “But maybe that’s because he realizes what a good thing he has and wants to keep on building up his savings account.”

  “You don’t like him much, do you?”

  “I despise him,” s
he said frankly. “Not because he’s the rough-and-ready type without much background and even less manners. But because of the way he acted toward me. He got the idea that because I lived with Oliver for the last couple of years I should be a pushover for him.”

  The edge of the robe had slipped a bit more and this time she noticed it. There was quite a lot of leg showing and she gave the cloth an impatient jerk to cover herself and then swung her feet to the floor and sat up.

  “He made one pass too many at me,” she said. “He tried it before and I wrestled with him a bit and let him know how I felt about him. It wasn’t so much what he did as it was his attitude, and this time I was furious. I swung at him, and”—her lip twisted in a small smile—“I hit him pretty good too. I thought he was going to clout me and I yelled at him. I told him I was going to tell Oliver just what had happened, that when I finished he wouldn’t have a job any more. I told him a lot of other things,” she said tightly. “He hasn’t forgotten it either. He’d like to wring my neck, and he knows I know it.”

  MacLaren could understand her resentment, but because he was more interested in more recent events, he said:

  “Last night Harry said he heard Kingsley’s outboard but didn’t see him. Do you believe that?”

  She thought it over a moment, her black brows bunching. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I don’t know what he saw, or what he did. All I know is that if there was a dollar involved, I wouldn’t believe Harry on a stack of Bibles.”

  She might have said more, but just then they both seemed to hear a sound of movement in the hall and they glanced toward the open door. An instant later Ruth Kingsley walked past, and Carla called to her.

  “Hi, Ruth,” she said. “Come on in.”

  Ruth stopped in the doorway but made no attempt to enter.

  “I just stopped by to pack another bag,” she said.

  “Pack a bag? Why?”

  “I’m going to stay at the Inn for a couple of days…. Thank you,” she said to MacLaren with a small nod, “for getting me the room.”

  “Well,” Carla said, taking no offense, “I can’t say that I blame you for not being too fond of us.”

  “It isn’t that, Carla. It’s just that I’ve seen too much of this place already.”

  “I’ll take you over when you’re ready,” MacLaren said. “I’ll wait for you down by the cruiser.”

  Carla had begun to rub the damp ends of her hair with the collar of the robe. Now she looked up at MacLaren, her head tipping slightly and her brows crooked.

  “She’s a nice kid,” she said. “She never should have married Oliver in the first place but”—she lifted one shoulder and let it drop—“what can you do? She had a few stars in her eyes and at the time Oliver had been on his very best behavior. You can’t blame her. You can’t blame that blonde Lucille. You can’t blame any woman because every single one of us likes to believe she has the special equipment that can handle any man in any situation, even someone like Oliver.”

  Her frown went away and suddenly she smiled. “End of sermon,” she said. “End of session. And thanks for the room service.”

  MacLaren grinned back at her to show that he appreciated her sense of humor. He thanked her for the drink and said he would like to talk some more but maybe they could do it another time.

  11

  HARRY DANAHER was sitting in the cockpit of the cruiser, his legs stretched out on the seat and the empty beer can on the deck. MacLaren stepped up on the catwalk and sat down on the edge opposite Danaher, his feet dangling. It was when his gaze scanned the cockpit and he saw the empty brackets at one side of the stateroom door that he remembered his visit to the cruiser the night before and the purpose of that trip.

  He had come here in the darkness in the hope of finding some possible weapon that might have been used to strike Oliver Kingsley down. Instead someone had popped him on the back of the head. Right after that he had found Ruth in the forward cabin, and since then the pressure of other things had kept his thoughts occupied. He still thought the idea had been a good one, and perhaps it was. He also understood that any search he might want to make would have to be postponed once more.

  For he knew very well what had once occupied the bracket. It was just the right size and shape to hold a hand fire extinguisher, one of the several on board. That this particular one was missing might mean that Danaher had taken it down for polishing. But since it would be within easy reach of anyone on the catwalk with violence in mind, it seemed more likely that it might now be resting on the bottom of the inlet.

  “Harry,” he said, pushing the thought farther back in his mind. “I want to ask you a question.”

  “Shoot,” Danaher said.

  “Do you know what happened over on the dock last night—between Kingsley, his wife, and me?”

  “Sure.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The cops told me this morning.”

  “You didn’t know anything about it last night? … You said you heard the outboard,” MacLaren added.

  “That’s right.”

  “You didn’t hear anything else?”

  “No. Because when I heard the outboard, I figured that Kingsley must be going after the girl, and believe me, when Kingsley blew his stack, it was a good idea to keep out of the way. I took a quick look around”—he waved to indicate the cruiser—“and started back for the house.”

  “I’ve got a theory that Kingsley was slugged right here,” MacLaren said, “or somewhere pretty close to here. I think he was either pushed into the water or fell in after he’d been hit.”

  “I guess it could have happened that way,” Danaher said. “But don’t look at me, pal.”

  “Who would want to kill him?”

  “Most anybody,” Danaher said without hesitation. “I think the guy was nuts. Instead of traveling around with a personal lawyer, he should have had a personal headshrinker.”

  MacLaren repeated some of the things that Ruth Kingsley had told him that morning about Ackerman. He spoke of the cigar-cutter the police had found the night before. Danaher said he had heard about it.

  “Ackerman admitted it was his but he said he lost it yesterday afternoon.”

  “You don’t happen to know if he had any recent trouble with Kingsley, do you?”

  “No.”

  “What about Earl Harwell? Did he have a motive?”

  “What’s a motive?” Danaher said. “What it would take for you to knock off a guy might not bother me a bit. You got to figure the individual, don’t you? Suppose I tell you what happened with Harwell, and then you can figure out if he had a motive.

  “In my opinion,” he continued, “Harwell was kind of a screwball. A moody guy, a sulker—at least since I knew him; maybe Kingsley made him that way. Anyway, from what I’ve read, I always got the idea that artists don’t care about painting commercial stuff; they only want to do real art, whatever that is. This Harwell don’t lit the picture. He don’t care a damn about serious art, except that he says it helps his technique. He decides he wants to do covers for the big magazines, advertisements, things like that, and his contract says he can’t, so he cheats.”

  “What?”

  “In the open, Harwell is painting serious so he can collect his dough when the two years are up, but on the sly he’s been doing illustrations lately. I understand he was in touch with a couple of agents in New York, and he had some photos made of some of his best stuff and the other day he gets an offer by phone. Some guy wants him to come in to New York for an interview and bring some samples. If his originals stack up with the photos he’s got himself an assignment. So what happens?”

  Danaher put his arm over the coaming and shifted his weight to one hip.

  “Kingsley overhears the phone call. He beats it up to Harwell’s room and finds the originals of those illustrations and comes down and burns them in the living-room fireplace—that was yesterday morning—and maybe Harwell would have killed him then if the rest of
us hadn’t been around. As it is he just walks out of the room. So you figure if that’s a motive, if Harwell was so burned up—not so much that the paintings are gone but that now he can’t follow up on the job—that he’d do a bit of murder if he got the chance and thought he could get away with it. And brother, the guy that did the job must have thought that. He must have been here when Kingsley came back, and heard what had happened with you and the dame on the dock.”

  “What about that blonde that came yesterday afternoon?”

  “Lucille? You mean that she could have slugged Kingsley?” Danaher sucked on his lips, straightened them. “Who can figure dames? She came here thinking she’s going to marry some big dough, and then she finds out she isn’t. Not for a while. Maybe she catches Kingsley down here after his dunking and he’s burning and they have a brawl and she socks him. It could happen.”

  He hesitated. “Same with Carla. She had a nice berth here and she seemed to like it. She could have been in love with him once, but if you ask me it was more the idea of marrying a couple of million bucks. Now what’ll she get? Five grand from the will; that’s all. I understand she’s planning to marry some army captain pretty soon, but like I say, who can tell about dames?”

  If what he said was true, it seemed apparent that Danaher did not know about the stock certificates Carla Lewis had in her handbag. MacLaren did not mention them, but as his mind went on, he remembered other talks he had had with this man. Here, where the light was good, he seemed to be in his early forties, a thick-bodied and muscular figure, but light on his feet, his face a little heavy in the jaw, and his amber eyes seldom showing much warmth, seldom still. He was easy to talk to, but his manner was calculating, as though forever weighing each action or decision and never forgetting the odds. Here, it seemed, was a man who kept one eye on the main chance and whose decisions had less to do with what was right and wrong than what would be best for Harry.

  MacLaren nodded as he considered the things he had heard. “So that leaves you,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Danaher said without resentment. “I’ll tell you how it is with me and maybe you can find a motive…. I got this job through a friend after Kingsley had a light with his captain last September. He wanted me to take the boat down to Florida while he took that South American cruise. I was there all winter, on my own except for about three weeks when Kingsley and the others came down. I get four hundred a month and found. And I mean found.”