I sat on the edge of the tub. Dishonor before death. And more effective with that popgun than she would ever know. Two shots, even with the barrel against the target, seldom kill two people. Her death was not as messy as her husband’s. Heart wounds give a tidier result. To prove a guess, I went to the shower stall. The soap was moist. There were water droplets on the shower walls. A big damp yellow towel had been put neatly on a rack. So, after she had heard Boone Waxwell drive off, she had dragged herself out of bed and plodded in and taken a shower, probably just as hot as she could endure it, scrubbing herself mercilessly. Dry off. Go take the pretty housecoat from the closet and put it on. Sit at your dressing table, and fix your hair and your bruised mouth. The mind is numb. Get up and walk through the house, room to room, turning on the lights. Stop and look at the snoring husband. Breadwinner, mate, protector. Pace some more. Reach deep for the rationalizations. Women have been raped before. It hasn’t killed them. There is a legal answer. Let the police handle it. Turn him in.
“Now let me get this straight, Mrs. Watts. Waxwell was there from ten something last night until two or three this morning? And you claim that during that time you were repeatedly raped, during that whole time your husband was sound asleep in front of the television set? And Waxwell was a client of your husband? And you had met him before? And he left his car parked at your house, a very conspicuous car, all that time?”
So she paces and tries to think clearly, and she knows that if she does nothing, Waxwell will be back. Next week or next month, he will be back, again and again, as he promised he would.
And that brings her to the thing she has been trying so desperately to force out of her mind. Had he taken her quickly, she could have merely endured him, been a helpless vessel for him. But he was so damned sly and knowing, so crafty and so patient that each time, even the last time, he had awakened the traitor body so that while the soul watched, the body gasped and strained to hungry climax, to dirty joy, grasping powerfully.
So she would pace and stop to look at the husband who had let that hunger in her grow so big she could betray herself. And then …
I found the note on her dressing table. Her personal stationery, monogrammed. A downhill scrawl with an eyeshadow pencil. “God forgive me. There is no other choice left. My darling was asleep and felt nothing. Sincerely, Vivian Harney Watts.”
On the other side of the room, beyond the plundered bed, the lowest drawer of his chest of drawers was open. Cartridges a-spill from a red and green cardboard box. Extra clip. Little kit with gun oil and collapsible cleaning rod. The shells were medium longs, hollow-point. So, with luck, the one she used on herself might not have gone through her to chip or stain the tub. I went back in and cupped the nape of her neck and pulled her up far enough to see. The back of the orange housecoat was unmarked. I made my gimpy hitching way out to the screened cage.
“She’s dead too. I have some things to do. I’ll try to make it fast.”
“D-Do you need help?”
I told him no. I went back and looked for signs of Waxwell. He would not go without leaving some trace. Like a dog, he would mark the boundaries of the new area he had claimed. But I found nothing, decided I needed nothing. First, on a table by the bedroom door, I made a little pile of things to take away. The note, the gun, the other things from the drawer that belonged with the gun. By the time I had gotten her half out of the tub, I wished I could depend on Arthur to help me with this sort of grisly problem. She was a very solid woman. She had not begun to stiffen. Death gave her a more ponderous weight. Finally I was on my feet with her in my arms. Her dead forehead lolled over to rest against the side of my chin. Carefully bracing the bad leg, and willing the bad arm to carry its share, I hobbled into the bedroom with her. I put her on the bed. Out across the backyard the morning was a pearl pale shade of gray. I closed the draperies. She was on her back on the bed. I grasped the hem of the housecoat and with one hard wrench tore it open to the waist. Fabric ripped, and the small white buttons rattled off the walls and ceiling. I tucked the bottom of the housecoat up under her, pulled it up around her waist. She lay in dead abandon. On the white of her hips and upper thighs were the myriad blue bruises left by Waxwell’s strong fingers. Begging silent forgiveness, I thoroughly tousled the black hair and, with my thumb, smeared the fresh lipstick on her dead mouth. She had gotten all prettied up to die. In the bedroom lights I could see little segments of dark blue iris where the lids were not quite closed. Sorry I ruined the housecoat. Sorry they’ll see you like this, Vivian. But you’ll like the way it works out. I promise you, honey. They’ll pretty you up again for burying. But not in orange. That’s a color to be alive in. To be in love in. To smile in. They won’t bury you in it.
I tipped the dressing table bench over. Using a tissue, I picked up a jar of face cream and cracked the dressing table mirror. I turned the other lights out, left just one of the twin lamps on the dressing table on, and shoved the shade crooked so that it shone toward her, making highlights and deep shadows on the tumble of dead woman.
I crammed the stuff from the table into my pockets. I left one light on in the living room, a corner lamp with an opaque shade. Day was beginning to weaken the lights. With my thumbnail I turned the sound control on the television until the hiss of non-broadcast was loud. We left. I saw no one on the way to the car, or when Arthur drove us back up Clematis Drive.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“She didn’t live long enough to have her chance to decoy him off his place. I’ve given her a chance to do it dead.”
On the north edge of town, up the trail, I had him pull over and park near a phone booth near the curbing, at a gas station showing only a night light. I had one dime in change. Just enough.
The sergeant answered by giving his name. I pitched my voice lower than usual. “Look, you want to do me a favor, you write down a license number, okay?”
“Give me your name, please.”
“I shoulda phoned you hours ago. Look, I can’t sleep. Maybe it’s nothing. But the thing is, I don’t want to get mixed up in anything. I don’t want to get involved, see?”
“If you’d tell me where you’re calling from.”
“Knock it off, Sergeant. Write down the number, hey?”
“All right. License number what?”
I gave it to him and said, “A white Lincoln convertible with the top down, this year’s maybe. The other two cars, I figure they belong there, see?”
“Belong where?”
“At this house I’m telling you about. The Lincoln was on the lawn over to the side. Listen, I’m just passing through and I don’t want to get involved in anything. When I get a little buzz on, I got to walk to clear my head, okay? So I went over and found some damn back street. I looked at the street sign later. Clematis Street, or Drive, I think. Yeah, it was Drive. I parked and started walking. You know, you walk around a couple of blocks, you feel better in the morning. Right?”
“Mister, will you get to it?”
“What do you think I’m doing? It was hours ago. Maybe around three sometime. I didn’t check close. Okay from this house comes this sound of a broad screaming. Honest to God, my blood runs cold. I’m right in front of the house. Then I hear a kind of sharp crack, not like a shot but sort of like a shot, and the scream stopped like her throat got cut. Maybe the crack was her old man giving it to her across the chops. What I did, I turned around and headed back to my car, and I made a mental note of the license number. You can tell the house because of the other two cars, one is a little light color Mercedes and the other is a tan Plymouth. Tan or gray. So maybe you should check it, I don’t know. I just got a feeling about it somehow.”
“And can you give me your name?”
“John Doe, Joe Citizen, Jesus, Sergeant, I just don’t want to get mixed up in anything. I don’t know the house number. I couldn’t see it. But it’s not what you’d call a mile long, that street.”
I hung up and got back into the sedan. “Now
can we go back?”
“Yes. Keep the speed down.”
Fourteen
Chook woke me at twenty minutes before noon, as I had asked. She sat on the side of the bed. I hitched myself up, flexed my right hand. Arthur appeared in the doorway, stood there watching me.
“How is it now?” Arthur asked.
“Better. It just feels asleep. The leg too. The hand feels weak.”
“She’s been coming in every half hour at least to see if you looked all right,” Arthur said.
“And you don’t look so great,” she said.
“I feel as if I’d been hung up by the heels and beaten with ball bats.”
“Head ache?” she asked.
I fingered the dressing, lightly. “It’s not an ache. It’s a one-inch drill bit. It makes a quarter turn every time my heart beats. How about the gun?”
“It was too rough to go outside in the dinghy,” Arthur said earnestly. “I got as far as the middle of the pass and dropped it there. Okay?”
“That’s just fine, Arthur.”
Chook said, “I guess … you didn’t know you were going to walk into anything so rough.” I interpreted the appeal in her eyes.
“Damned glad I took you with me, Arthur. Chook, between us we managed.”
“I was nearly out of my mind! Trav, I’m still scared. I mean now there’s no way to prove she did it, is there?”
“Waxwell killed them both. He didn’t pull the trigger. He killed them. And if his slug had hit a sixteenth of an inch lower … Wish I could have seen the bastard when he looked into the back end of that car. Nothing will go wrong, Chook. They’ll find enough to prove he was in the house. There’s a busted screen to show how he got in. And he isn’t a pillar of any community. How has the news been?”
“Like you thought, so far.”
I shooed them out, got into my robe and joined them in the lounge. I found I could manage an inconspicuous gait, if I kept it slow and stately. I put the big set on AM and cut the volume when a noontime used-car commercial over the Palm City station blasted on.
Their local news announcer had the usual airedale yap and the usual difficulty with long words. “This morning state, county and other law enforcement officials are cooperating in a massive manhunt for Boone Waxwell of Goodland on Marco Island, wanted for questioning in connection with the rape murder of housewife Vivian Watts of Naples and the murder of Crane Watts, her husband, a young Naples attorney. Based on an anonymous tip from a passerby who heard screams and what could have been a shot emanating from the thirty-thousand-dollar home on a quiet residential street in Naples in the small hours of the morning, city police investigated at dawn and found Mr. Watts in the living room, dead of a small caliber bullet wound in the head, and Mrs. Watts in the bedroom, the scene of a violent struggle, shot through the heart. The anonymous tipster gave police the tag number and description of a car he saw parked in the side yard at the time of the shot he heard, and the car has been identified as belonging to Boone Waxwell, Everglades fishing guide, who for some years has been living alone in a cottage over a mile west of the village of Goodland.
“When County police arrived at the Waxwell cottage this morning, they found the car reported as having been at the scene of the crime. Goodland residents state that Waxwell had another vehicle, an English Land Rover, as well as an inboard launch on a trailer. The truck and boat trailer are missing, and a thorough search of all waterfront areas is now under way. Goodland residents say Waxwell kept to himself and did not welcome visitors. They said he seemed to have ample funds, but could not account for how he had acquired them. Waxwell is about thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old, five foot eleven, about a hundred and ninety pounds, blue eyes, black curly hair, very powerful, and believed to be armed and dangerous. On forcing entrance to his cottage, police found quantities of arms and ammunition. He has been in difficulty before for minor acts of violence, and successfully fled on two other occasions to avoid prosecution, returning after those who filed the charges had dropped them.
“The preliminary medical opinion, pending a more detailed examination, is that Mrs. Watts, an attractive twenty-eight-year-old brunette, was criminally assaulted prior to her death. Waxwell apparently gained entry by forcing a screened door which opened onto the patio in the rear of the house. Time of death is estimated for both husband and wife as occurring between two and four A.M. today. Mrs. Watts will be remembered as one of the finer amateur tennis players on the lower west coast. A close friend of the family, not identified by police as yet, hearing of the double murder, reported that on Monday Mrs. Watts had complained about her husband being annoyed by Boone Waxwell over some business matter. It is reported that Crane Watts was the attorney for a land syndicate operation in which Waxwell had a minor interest.
“Authorities, fearing that Waxwell may have gone back into the wilderness areas of the Ten Thousand Islands, plan to organize an air search using the facilities of the Coast Guard, the National Park Service and the Civil Air Patrol. It is believed that.… Here is a flash which has just come in. The English truck and the boat trailer have just been found pulled off into deep brush near Caxambas, adjacent to a shelving beach often used by local fisherman for the launching of trailered boats. The effort to hide the vehicle and trailer seems to indicate that Waxwell sought to conceal his avenue of escape. This station will issue further bulletins as received.
“And now to other local news. The Fort Myers Chamber of Commerce today issued a statement regarding …”
I snapped it off. “I wish they’d got him,” Chook said.
“They will,” I said. “And he won’t have the money with him. He’s not that much of a damn fool.”
They both looked puzzled. “But it would take him only five minutes to dig it up and take it along,” Arthur said.
“Think of the timing. He thought I was dead. He risked stashing me in the car while he spent three hours with the woman. My guess is he tricked or scared her into saying I was coming by at eleven. Then he tied her up or locked her up while he played games with me. If she heard those sounds, she wouldn’t have recognized them as shots. He wouldn’t have told her he killed me. His style would have been to tell her he’d scared me off, probably. Okay, so he found the body gone. Either I woke up and got the hell out of there, or somebody took the body away. Whoever took it away hadn’t called the police. Or at least hadn’t had time. I think he would want to clear out until he could figure out what was going on. If I was dead, who could prove he did it? I think he was too sure of himself with the woman to think for a moment she’d charge him with assault. In fact, she’d be more likely to swear he was never there at all. If he got back to his cottage by three o’clock, which I think is a good guess—good enough for our purposes—he would be feeling easier in his mind every minute. After all, the woman had obviously enjoyed it. The husband had slept through it. He would have checked the three o’clock radio news. All quiet. So why would he complicate his life by carting all that money around with him? If he was picked up, how would he explain it? He thought then he would be coming back to his shack. It was better off in the ground. He’d take some with him, not enough to be awkward. By first light he could be way back in Big Lostman’s Bend country, setting up camp on some hammock back there. I saw the radio rig on that boat. It’s a big one, including an AM band. So what does he find out when it’s too late to go back for the money? Boone Waxwell is wanted for rape and murder. So we get to the money first. They’ll have the area sealed and staked out. So we run a bluff. If we find fresh holes in the ground I will be one very astonished McGee.”
“Bluff?” Chookie said uncertainly.
“Arthur looks very reliable and respectable. And I know he’s got the nerve for it.” Arthur flushed with pleasure. “So we do a little shopping first. I mean you two do. I’ll make out the list.”
There seemed to be an unusual number of cars and people in Goodland when we drove slowly through at two thirty, and we were stared at with open cu
riosity. There was an official car parked at the entrance to the shell road that led to Waxwell’s place. Two men squatted on their heels in the shade. One sauntered out and held up his hand to stop us. He was a dusty little lizard-like man in bleached khakis. He strolled back and stared in curiously. Chookie, secretarially severe in white blouse, black skirt, horn-rimmed glasses, hair pulled back into a bun, was driving. She rolled the window down and said, “This is the way to the Waxwell place, is it not?”
“But you can’t go in there, lady.”
Arthur rolled the rear window down. I was in the backseat beside him. “What seems to be the trouble, officer?”
He took his time looking us over. “No trouble. You can’t go in.”
“Officer, we’re working on a very tight timetable. We’re advance technical staff for network television. The generator truck and the mobile unit will be along within the hour. I’m sure they’ve cleared everything. We have to mark locations, block out camera angles and placement. I’d like to get it done before they get her.”
Bright Orange for the Shroud Page 21