The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

by Deming, Richard

Again it started about 8:00 p.m., while Loretta was having a cup of tea at her kitchen table. At first she could hear only an occasional phrase as one voice or the other rose momentarily. The shouting didn’t begin until about half an hour later, when the sounds of battle became so loud that they distracted Loretta from the television program she was watching.

  She put up with it for another twenty minutes, but when it showed no sign of abating she went to the kitchen for the broom.

  Mrs. Garrett was screaming something about her husband’s sloppiness as Loretta raised the broom handle. Then, before she could drive it against the wall, there were three sharp thumps immediately followed by Mrs. Garrett shouting, “Some night I’ll make you eat that broom, you old hag!”

  Loretta stared at the broom in astonishment. For a wild moment she thought it had somehow leaped from her grip to pound against the wall of its own volition, then she realized no such thing had happened—the thumps had come from the other side of the wall.

  But if one of the Garretts had thumped on the connecting wall for some incomprehensible reason, why had Mrs. Garrett yelled at her for doing it?

  It didn’t take her long to figure out a possible answer. When she peered out her kitchen and saw that the Garretts’ carport was empty, it became the probable answer.

  Going to the Garretts back door, she unsuccessfully tried to peer past the edges of the shade drawn over the pane of glass in the upper part of the door. Unable to see anything, she knocked, at first timidly, then with increasing force. She really didn’t expect an answer, but it took her some time to get up sufficient courage to try the door. It was locked.

  All this time the argument in the kitchen raged on. While Loretta stood listening, Edward, the cat, nearly gave her heart failure by rubbing against her leg. Gazing down at him reminded her of the key she had forgotten to return.

  Returning to her apartment for the key, she let herself into the Garretts’ kitchen. Entering with her, Edward made a beeline for the front room.

  As Loretta had suspected, a tape recorder was on the kitchen table, playing back a tape.

  Loretta was familiar with tape recorders—the Welfare Department used them instead of dictaphones. Shutting off the machine, she studied the ninety-minute tape, then, returning it to the machine and switching to FAST FORWARD and periodically switching back to PLAY in order to check that she had not yet reached the end of the recording, she finally did reach it. It ended with the same scene as two Fridays previously, when John Garrett goaded his wife into slamming out of the house to go to the Coed Club.

  No wonder Garrett’s voice had sounded so calculating that night, Loretta thought. He had been recording the entire fight for replay. Now she understood why the man had been so concerned over how well she could hear their fights and how closely she listened. He must have been relieved to learn she paid as little attention as possible since that lessened the chance of her recognizing tonight’s battle as a replay.

  Her suspicion of John Garrett had not been from dottiness after all, she thought, with less relief than regret. Her regret was because she was quite sure it was too late to save Mrs. Garrett.

  Loretta visualized the probable sequence of events. Some time prior to 8:00 p.m., and probably immediately prior to it, Mr. Garrett had strangled his wife with a nylon stocking and loaded her into the back of their car. Then he had returned to the house long enough to switch on the recorder. By the time Loretta heard the first raised voices he must have been well on his way to MacArthur Park.

  She decided that his plan must be simply to abandon the car near where the other two victims were found, then return to the house by bus or taxi. Bus, probably, she thought—there would be less chance of his being remembered on a bus. He planned to get back before the tape played out, thus establishing a perfect alibi. No doubt he meant to stop by Loretta’s again to make sure she had heard his wife slam out of the house, then go on to the Friendly Tavern to complete his alibi by sitting there until it closed at 2:00 a.m.

  Loretta ran the tape back to the place it had been before she hit the FAST FORWARD button and switched the machine to play. Then she went back to her own apartment to use the phone.

  * * * *

  When John Garrett arrived home a half hour later, he found his next-door neighbor and two policemen waiting on the front porch. From inside his duplex, only slightly muffled by the closed front door, came the sounds of verbal battle between him and his wife.

  “Good evening, Mr. Garrett,” Loretta said in a tone of reproach.

  Licking his lips, he looked from her to the two policemen. In a desperate attempt to deny the obvious he asked, “Who’s that arguing in my apartment?”

  Both policemen ignored the question. The elder of the two intoned, “Are you John Garrett?

  “Yes,” Garrett admitted nervously.

  “Mr. Garrett, you are under arrest on suspicion of the murder of your wife, Angela Garrett. You are not required to make any statement, and if you do it may be taken down and used against you in evidence. You are entitled to legal counsel, and have the right to have an attorney present at all stages of the arrest, arraignment and trial procedure. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one may be furnished you at public expense.”

  “Murder?” Garrett said on a high note. “What makes you think my wife’s dead?”

  The older policeman said, “Because while you were on the way home by bus a couple of officers found her body in the back seat of your car where you had parked it at Seventh and Parkview.”

  Garrett stared blankly from one policeman to the other. “What made you look there?” he asked finally.

  “We figured it would be near where the other two bodies were found,” the older man told him. “Or, rather, your neighbor here figured that—and we agreed with her.”

  Loretta spoke up. “One of the evils of drink, Mr. Garrett, is that it muddles the mind. If you had been thinking more clearly, it might have occurred to you to erase the broom thumps from your recording.”

  MOTHER LOVE

  Originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, April 1981.

  Ostensibly Pamela Quillan purchased the island of Paraquito from General Alfredo Mendez because she wanted an isolated retreat to recover from the breakup of her sixth marriage. But the underlying reason was simply that she didn’t own an island, and when you are a chain store heiress with four hundred million dollars to ease your boredom, you can afford to indulge multi-million-dollar whims.

  General Mendez’s reasons for selling the island, whose ownership by his family traced back to a sixteenth-century royal grant by the king of Spain, was more apparent than Pamela’s reason for buying. Technically Paraquito, which was situated in the Mona Passage halfway between the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, was part of the Dominican Republic. After backing an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government of the Dominican Republic, General Mendez thought it discreet to unload his ancestral home and run for Europe before it occurred to the government to confiscate it. Pamela got it lock, stock and barrel for eight million dollars.

  Although supposedly subject to the laws of the Dominican Republic, for all practical purposes the only law on Paraquito for 400 years had been the decrees of the Mendez family, whose power rested on the simple economic fact that the Carib natives were living on and farming Mendez land, which put them in the same relationship to the island’s owner as that of medieval serfs to their barons. The Indians, still nearly as primitive as they had been when the first Spanish conquistadors landed on the island, were used to and accepted despotic rule.

  Pamela inherited this absolute power when she acquired title to the island.

  Although the initial idea behind the purchase had been to isolate herself from the outside world, Pamela quickly fell so in love with the island that she seldom visited the various other homes she maintained aroun
d the world, even after her marital scars healed. Paraquito possessed something increasingly difficult to find anywhere: a combination of unspoiled primitive beauty and all modern conveniences. The twenty-room house, surrounded by several smaller buildings that housed servants and livestock, was as up-to-date as a Hilton hotel, yet was within walking distance of primeval jungle.

  Pamela’s favorite spot became the tide pools on the coral reef off the north shore, clear across the island from the house. The south shore was an unbroken stretch of white sand beach. The northern shore was bounded by a solid line of towering cliffs that looked down onto a pounding surf. A single wide stream, fed by a central lake, poured through a gap in the cliffs, giving the only access to the reef. The tide pools were always full of fascinating things such as star fish, sea horses, sea anemones and baby octopuses, as well as a great variety of colorful shells. Pamela could spend hours investigating them.

  * * * *

  On her first visit she innocently suggested to her muscular young Indian guide that they take a dip in the relatively calm stretch of water between the reef and the cliff some hundred yards away. Paxhali gazed at her with his mouth open.

  “Shark,” he said finally. “Too many shark.”

  Frowning at the gently rolling surface. Pamela suddenly saw three large fins simultaneously emerge and race away in formation. Paxhali saw them too.

  “Great white shark,” he said. “All big fellow, maybe eighteen, twenty feet long. Sometimes grow thirty feet long.”

  “Are there any off the south shore too?” she asked apprehensively, thinking of the many times she had swum there.

  “Oh, no. Water too shallow. Deep here, also full of fish. No worry about swim off south beaches.”

  Learning that the lagoon was infested with man-eating sharks didn’t spoil Pamela’s enjoyment of the reef because it seemed apparent there was danger only if you went swimming. Because of the excellent fishing, the lagoon was always dotted with native canoes, which the sharks made no effort to molest. Pamela felt that if the flimsy canoes were safe, her fiberglass speedboat had to be.

  A small thorn in her garden of happiness was her discovery of the title the natives had bestowed on her. She learned of it the day Paxhali brought a shy teenage Indian girl to the house and asked Pamela’s permission to marry.

  “Why do you ask me?” Pamela inquired.

  “Because you are La Madre.”

  “I’m not your mother,” Pamela said indignantly. Only forty-two, and looking no more than thirty as a result of diet, exercise and plastic surgery, she resented the suggestion that she was old enough to give motherly advice.

  Looking confused, the young Indian guide said, “You are the mother of all, Señora.”

  “All who?” Pamela demanded.

  “Those on the island. I can no marry Wawaiya without you permit.”

  While being regarded as a mother figure by some 1200 Carib Indians didn’t particularly appeal to her, Pamela grudgingly found some humor in it. “All right, you have my permission,” she said. “When’s the wedding?”

  “At the new moon. Twenty day.”

  “Am I supposed to give away the bride?”

  “Wawaiya and I would be honor.”

  “All right,” Pamela said indulgently. “Give me a few days notice.” Later she inquired of Juan DiMarco why the natives had bestowed the La Madre title on her. Pamela had inherited the affable thirty-six-year-old bachelor from General Mendez, for whom DiMarco had served as overseer. In Europe the general didn’t need an overseer, but the island still did. DiMarco supervised the native farms and the fishing industry, handled the export of grain and fish, the import of needed goods, and generally ran the business of the island.

  “The natives are essentially children,” the overseer explained in answer to Pamela’s question. “The senior male member of the Mendez has been called El Padre for generations. You are the first female ruler Paraquito ever had.”

  “What do you mean, ruler?”

  “Don’t you understand that you have absolute power here, Pam? You could order natives whipped, or even shot, if you wanted to.”

  “That’s terrible! I would never do either!”

  “There’s nothing to prevent you being a benevolent dictator, if that’s your bag,” DiMarco said with a smile. “It will bemuse the natives, because the Mendezes were pretty despotic. But they’ll adjust to it. They’ve been adjusting to the whims of dictators for four hundred years.”

  “Don’t call me a dictator,” Pamela objected. “I just bought the island, not the people on it.”

  “You bought the whole ball of wax,” the overseer told her. “You may as well get used to reigning.”

  * * * *

  When Pamela was ready to come out of her self-imposed isolation, it was unnecessary for her to leave the island in order to rejoin the international jet set. She merely let it be known that she was back in circulation, and the Beautiful People came to her, the possession of 400 million dollars being a powerful social magnet.

  She started in a small way by scheduling what she whimsically called her “coming out party” for about two dozen of her closest friends. One of the invited guests was the internationally famous race car driver, Baronet Ambrose Harding. He was an old friend, but it occurred to Pamela that there was at least a possibility that their relationship would now ripen into something even more intimate. The baronet had been divorced from his second wife about the same time Pamela was shedding her sixth husband. He was about ten years younger than her, but all except her first husband had been several years younger. While she was not yet consciously husband hunting, she looked forward to seeing the baronet in his new bachelor status.

  All but a half dozen of the guests would arrive aboard various yachts. The other six, who all happened to be on the Riviera when their invitations arrived, were flying together from there to San Juan, where they were scheduled to land at 7:30 Saturday morning. Because Ambrose Harding was in that group. Pamela decided to go along when her pilot flew her private plane to meet them.

  Pamela and Juan DiMarco breakfasted together at six Saturday morning. Tom York, the pilot, had already breakfasted and was checking out the jet prepatory to taking off for Puerto Rico at six-thirty.

  They were just finishing breakfast when the distant sound of a drumbeat came from the interior of the island. There was no rhythm to the sound, merely being a series of discordant thumps, repeated several times.

  “What’s that?” Pamela asked DiMarco.

  He shrugged. “I don’t read the drums.”

  “Read them? You mean some kind of message?”

  “Uh huh. Louquo can read them.” He turned to the Indian girl who was just pouring them second cups of coffee. “Tell the criado principal to step in, Pahali.”

  The chief servant was a wizened but erect man of seventy. After listening to the drumbeat, he said that one of the natives of a village near the central lake had been bitten by a water moccasin.

  Pamela said in surprise, “I thought there weren’t any snakes on Caribbean islands.”

  “The moccasin is the only kind on Paraquito,” Louquo said with a curious air of apology. “What does La Madre wish to reply?”

  “Don’t call me that,” Pamela said irritably. “I’m not your mother. Why should I reply anything? Isn’t it just a news bulletin?”

  The old man shook his head. “The message is meant for you. It asks if you can obtain some white-man medicine.”

  “Don’t the natives have any treatment for snakebite?”

  “Yes, señora, for ordinary bites. But this was in the neck.”

  “Jesus,” DiMarco said. “We’ll have to get the poor devil to San Juan for antitoxin.”

  Frowning, Pamela asked Louquo how long it would take to get the snakebite victim to the house.<
br />
  “Two hours, perhaps, with the fastest canoemen.”

  Looking at her watch, Pamela said, “If the plane’s on time, we could be back by then.”

  Staring at her, DiMarco said, “You certainly don’t plan to take off now, before the victim gets here.”

  “I certainly don’t plan to let my guests cool their heels for two hours at the San Juan airport.”

  After gazing at her for several more seconds, the overseer said to the aged criado principal, “That will be all, Louquo,” then said to the maid serving them, “We won’t need you anymore either, Pahali.”

  When both servants were gone, Pamela said, “I take it you want privacy because I’m going to get a lecture.”

  DiMarco nodded. “About the facts of life on Paraquito. Will you get it through your head, Pam, that you are absolute ruler here, and as such have some definite responsibilities?”

  “I am not absolute ruler!”

  The overseer made an impatient gesture. “You are in the eyes of the natives. They’re used to despotic rule, and could understand harshness, or even cruelty, because a long line of Mendezes subjected them to both for four centuries. But the Mendezes, like most enduring despots, also took care of their subjects when the need arose, much as harsh parents rise to protect their children in emergency, even though they tend to abuse them other times. The natives are accustomed to regarding the island’s owner as a sort of all-knowing parent, which is why they labeled you La Madre. A cruel mother they could understand, but they would never forgive indifference.”

  “Why are you making such a big deal of it, Juan? I’ll be back in two-and-a-half hours at the latest.”

  “You don’t know that. The flight into San Juan may be late. The victim could get here in an hour and a half, anyway, instead of two. Louquo’s no canoeman. Believe me, it’s extremely important, not just for humanitarian reasons, but for your status on this island, that you wait.”