The Brass Cupcake

by John D. MacDonald

  She was trembling with anger. “And you might convince me, Furny. This time.”

  “That is good news, old girl.”

  “Come on and have a drink and then we’ll go swimming,” I said.

  “Delighted, old man.”

  Melody moved close enough to me to whisper a word to me that I was surprised to find she knew. Her eyes were like hot gray smoke and her shoulders were rigid with anger.

  Trumbull chattered as we all drank. The sun was hot and the Martinis were strong. Once Melody had her anger under control she reacted the way I might have expected. Everything Furny said was devastatingly funny. I got the cold eye every time I opened my mouth. She even hunched across the sand until she was a lot closer to Furny than to me.

  I gave her no sign of victory. Just a wide bland smile. Which, of course, made her even more furious than ever.

  Then we sat with our backs turned to the palms like good little boys while Melody changed to the yellow two-piece suit in which I had first seen her. Next Furny and I changed. We all went swimming. Both of them were smooth and good at it. I could make just as good time as they did, but I raised more of a wake. And I stayed close to them. Very close.

  “Get lost,” Melody said to me.

  “We’ve got to have a little private conversation, old man,” Furny pleaded.

  “Nothing’s private on an island,” I said. I stayed close. Finally Furny gave up and swam back in to shallow water. We all went up on the shore and stretched out in a neat little row. Melody in the middle.

  They chattered away. I waited them out. When at last the sun’s heat brought silence, I said, “Of course, Furny, you have to eliminate me too.”

  “What on earth is he talking about, darling?” Furny asked her.

  “He has fits,” she said acidly.

  “It’s funny how it starts, Furny,” I said. “You killed Elizabeth and you learned how easy it is. You made a little profit, but not enough. So I’ve set up the next step for you. What could be neater? A nice little island where nobody can possibly see you.”

  He sat up and peered at me. “Have you gone absolutely crackers?”

  “That lawyer of yours is no dummy. He’s given you the pitch. All Melody has to do is go through the proper motions and that codicil is as dead as Aunt Elizabeth. It will be an excellent idea for you, Furny, if she never gets to Boston.”

  He made a face at Melody. “Could comic books have done this to him?”

  “You’re as cool as they come, Trumbull.”

  “The man talks like a cop,” Furny said with mock astonishment.

  I grinned over at him, across Melody’s slim tanned body. “I am, friend, Deputy Chief of the Florence City police. That’s why I invited you here. It seemed like a nice place to pick you up.”

  Furny yawned. “Old boy, you can talk nonsense until the cows come home. I’m going to take a nap. And when I wake up, I’m going to be hungry.”

  He lay back with his back toward Melody.

  I saw the muscles of the brown arm and shoulder move and, like a fool, I didn’t get it. But when I heard the snap of rubber, I woke up fast. I made a despairing lunge across Melody, trying to get at him. My fingers touched his damp back as he rolled away and then came up onto his knees.

  “Now be good,” he said in an odd tone.

  The barrel of the little automatic glinted in the sun. On the sand lay the torn rubber sack that had protected the gun from the sea water when it nestled in the pouch of his snug swimming trunks.

  “Furny!” Melody said. “What are…”

  “Back off her, Bartells. Farther. Now sit facing me and hug your knees. Get beside him, Melly. About five feet away. That’s right.”

  “What are you…”

  “Melly, you are unspeakably dense. Kindly get it through that beautiful blonde skull that I’m going to kill you.”

  I felt dizzy with disappointment and dismay. The only thing I could think of was to save time for Melody, to get him talking.

  “Did you plan to kill Elizabeth?”

  He looked at me. “No. As a matter of fact, it was a rather stupid thing to do. I was in a sweat about money I owed. I had that quarrel with Melly and went home. I was afoot. Just by the greatest chance I met Elizabeth walking over to get me. She was quite excited. All the way back to her place she babbled about the people who had tied her up. I asked her why she hadn’t phoned the police. She said she wanted to show me something and get my advice.

  “I went up there with her. She unlocked the door. No one saw us. She had a coat on and she had rolled her pajama legs up to hide them. She had shut the safe again. She opened it and stood in front of it. I could see all that money. Money that I needed very badly. She was saying something about it being proof that Horace was in on it. I had been carrying a—sap, I believe you call them. I was afraid of thugs who might try to beat me up because of the bad check.

  “Suddenly I knew what I had to do. As she started to turn I hit her as hard as I could. I took the money, took her coat off, and hung it up. I took her slippers off and put them under the bed and rolled down the pajama legs. I picked up the things they had tied her with and then I looked around very carefully. I took the paste ruby off the dresser. I couldn’t see anything wrong with the picture. I let myself out, being careful not to leave prints. No one saw me leave. I tied the cords and things onto the sap and threw it out into the water, as far as I could.”

  I looked over at Melody. She was breathing harshly through her open mouth and her eyes did not waver from the small steady muzzle. It was a toy, but deadly as a cannon at that range.

  He smiled brilliantly, flash of white teeth against the tan.

  “But we are wasting time. All sorts of regrets, old girl. I’ll tow you well out into the gulf.”

  As he lifted the automatic and aimed right between her eyes, she gave a strangled sound and tried to lunge into my arms. The gun made a little snapping sound, hardly louder than a cap pistol. She dropped face down, Still reaching for me with the hand that had suddenly gone still.

  I rolled out of that awkward position and leaped for him. A line of fire was drawn down the back of my shoulder and then my hand closed on his gun hand. He clubbed me with the other hand, but I got his wrist bent back until I could slide my hand down and rip the gun out of his fingers. I threw it blindly away, just as he wrenched free. He got to his feet first and kicked at my face. His naked foot brushed my cheek and I dived forward to catch the other ankle in my hands and pull it out from under him.

  He went down on his back and I pinned him, astride him, my knees across his arms. I saw through redness, and then I couldn’t see him. The sun was beating on me and I was sobbing. It was the weariness of my arms that finally halted me. Then my vision slowly cleared and I could see his unconscious face. Not a face any longer.

  It was a red and meaningless thing, like a raw standing rib roast. A shard of the lower jaw bone, breathlessly white in the sun, protruded from his cheek. I thought he was dead. But breath bubbled in his throat. I climbed off him and looked at my darling, behind me on the sand.

  I crawled to her on my knees, panting with weakness. I touched the gold and silver hair, still damp from the sea. I rolled her over onto her back, and she was as limp as a rag doll.

  The eyes opened and this time they were the softest blue I had ever seen. They were vacant and wide and the knowledge slowly came back into them. Her mouth puckered up and her face screwed up. “My head hurts, Cliff. Gee, my head hurts.”

  What sense can you make when you laugh and cry at the same time? They don’t see men cry. When they do, it scares them. And I was the one being comforted.

  After a time she lay on her face and I gingerly parted the heavy hair. Near the roots it was clotted with blood. The gash wasn’t deep. It had stopped bleeding.

  She went and looked down at Furny for a long time. I expected her to wince or to be sick. She turned and stared at me calmly. “You did that when you thought he’d killed me, didn’t you
?” I nodded. Her fingers clawed into her bare thighs. “If he had killed you, I’d get a stone and I’d pound and pound and pound until there was no head at all.” It was pure savage. She meant it. Given the chance, she’d do it.

  “I didn’t want to kill him. The law, in its own way, is more sadistic than any death like that. Let’s get him into the shade.”

  He came out of it before the boat came. He tried to talk but we couldn’t understand what he was trying to say. He seemed to be pleading and the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut had a glitter of primitive alarm. The fine suave manner of Mr. Furness Trumbull was gone, showing that underneath he was a punk like any other. The court would undoubtedly fail to show premeditation. He’d be out again, someday. By then he’d probably be in his fifties—if he was lucky. For a man of his stamp, it would have been a kindness to kill him. When the ego went, the mind would probably go with it.

  We made him as comfortable as we could. We sat a few dozen feet away from him and waited for the launch.

  “You could have told me,” she said.

  “I’m not proud of myself.”

  “What’s this police business? Are you serious?”

  “Completely.”

  “We’ll… have to talk about that, Cliff.”

  “Indeed we will.”

  At last the launch came and the man swallowed his smile when he saw what we had for him. When we tried to move Trumbull he fainted with the pain. The man had a tarp in the launch. We slid him onto that and lifted him in. After we got to the dock it took thirty-five minutes for the ambulance to arrive. The driver taped my scratched shoulder. I made my calls and Harry got there just after the ambulance did. He reassured the launch owner that I wasn’t a dangerous maniac. He took Melody and me down for statements. We left the cold chicken and the beer with the launch man.

  We had a belated lunch in town with Harry and then went out to his house. During lunch Harry and I talked about plans for the department. Melody maintained an ominous silence.

  Angela was very shy and ill at ease with Melody. Melody, I could see, and I liked her for it, tried hard to put Angela at ease. The tiny living room was furnished with fat, shiny overstuffed furniture—the last thing you should own in Florida. It was dim and almost airless, despite the open windows.

  The shop talk went on. At last Melody stepped into a break in the conversation. “Let’s have a word from a rebellious minority,” she said. “Me, I don’t want to wheel laundry into the room, Cliff, but don’t I come in on this? I thought we were set. This big deal of being the wife of a Florence City cop doesn’t exactly intrigue me.”

  It fell into the silence like a stone. She felt it and blushed a little as Harry shifted uneasily in his chair. “I don’t mean that it isn’t a nice occupation,” Melody said, making matters worse, “but we’re not going to be in the sort of situation where you have to do that—sort of thing, Cliff.”

  I glared at her and she glared back.

  Angela, surprisingly, raised her voice for the first time. “I s’pose you got just barr’ls a money, Miz Chance.”

  Melody gave her a startled look. “Uh—yes, I guess you’d call it that.”

  Angela straightened her shoulders. “Good-lookin’ gal like you, with that money, kin git herself any number of poodle-dog men, lickin’ around, he’pin’ spend it, I’d say.”

  “Yes, but…”

  Angela went inexorably on. “Now, you want a man that’s a man, Cliff here’s good as most, but honey, you won’t get youself noplace tryin’ to make a poodle-dog man outa him. Man’s got things to do he has to do, and Harry always says Cliff is a good cop and right now Harry sorta needs him to he’p. You cart him on off an’ pretty soon neither a you got no respeck. No respeck a-tall. I’m pure talkin’ too heavy, but on’y because Cliff has been our friend a long time.”

  She got up with stiff dignity and walked out of the room into the kitchen.

  Melody looked over at me for a long time. She dropped her eyes. “A girl can learn something every day.”

  “So can I, Melly. Look. Three months here getting things lined up. Then I’ll take four months off, if Harry says O.K., and see how much of your dough we can unload in four months. Then back on the job.”

  Melody stood up. I would have thought her completely subdued were it not for the pixie glint in her eyes, the glint that promised future defiance, future battles when the making up would be the best part of it.

  “I guess that’s something for you men to decide,” she said softly. “I’ll go out and see if I can help Angie.”