Murder is the Pay-Off

by Leslie Ford

  “Swede Carlson!” She sat up again, her eyes blazing. “What did he come to the office for? What was he trying to pump me about your deal with Gus about the paper for? What—”

  “Just for the pleasure of seein’ you get in a swivet of some kind or other, honey, I expect,” John Maynard said gently. “Just to see what you did and didn’t know.”

  “He saw all right, then. Because I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t even know why he should come straight to you the minute Doc Wernitz gets killed. Or why—”

  “Because I happen to know more about Doc Wernitz’s affairs than most anybody else in Smith County, Connie.” John Maynard pushed his chair back from the desk. “Anybody but one man. And Swede Carlson.” He got up to his feet. “I didn’t realize Doc Wernitz was the sort of fella to take the chief of police into his confidence when he was gettin’ up ready to pull out of Smithville. It might ’a made a considerable difference if he’d been a little more communicative, in fact, Connie. It ain’t always a good plan to keep too many things to yourself. For instance—”

  He hesitated an instant. “I don’t much like to jump to any conclusions, but it’s my guess that if Wernitz had told everybody he wasn’t really pullin’ out of Smith County, all he was doin’ was pullin’ out of the gamblin’ end of it, because he’d made all the money he could ever use, and no family or relatives left any place for him to leave it to— and time runnin’ out fast before the big boys decided Smithville was fat enough territory for them to move in— if he’d told people that, I expect he might still be alive and enjoyin’ the sunshine down in Florida this winter, instead of bein’ down there in the dark like he is. He was always funny about the dark. Didn’t like it much. Hated it like sin and Satan, you might say if you wanted to tell the truth. So that’s why Carlson came to see me, honey.” But why not? Connie thought. After all, why not? Why shouldn’t her father know all about Doc Wernitz’s business. Her father was a lawyer. Lawyers didn’t pick their clients because they liked their table manners, or refuse them when they didn’t. He probably had a lot of people he did business for that he let in the back way. She was suddenly aware of her father’s eyes studying her face, and the amusement in them. Transparent again, no doubt. Just as Swede Carlson had said.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, honey,” John Maynard said. “Don’t start gettin’ your little back up again, because it don’t do anybody any good. Tomorrow I’m goin’ out to Wernitz’s with Carlson and Hugo Vanaman to look through his papers. Most people think Vanaman ain’t as savory a character as he might be, but he’s a smart lawyer. Wernitz used him where a savory character mightn’t ’a done the trick. Then maybe we’ll know more’n we know right now.”

  “You mean you don’t really know too much yourself?”

  “That’s right,” John Maynard agreed amiably. “Might say I don’t know nary a single blessed thing, in fact. So you just run along now. Jim Ferguson’s comin’ in a few minutes to talk about some business.”

  “Dad.” She’d forgotten about the bank and Janey’s checks, and what her cousin Dorsey had told her. It flashed back now. “Why did you do it? Why did you have to go and cover Janey’s checks? Why didn’t you find out who stole them and make them—”

  She put her hand up to her mouth and involuntarily took a step backward. “I—I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Dad.” She should never have let him know she knew about the checks—not because of her promise to Dorsey, which was unimportant, but because of himself—because of the way he was looking at her again. She shivered a little and moved back another step.

  “Who told you I covered Janey’s checks, honey?” His voice, still unchanged, stopped her before she could take the step that would get her to the door. She shivered again. “But don’t tell me.” He went on before she could speak. “You probably weren’t supposed to tell me anybody told you, were you, Connie?”

  She shook her head.

  “You talk too much, honey,” John Maynard said equably. “You got too much gab. Maybe someday you’ll learn. But you listen to me now—listen and keep your mouth shut. I know who took Janey’s checks. I know who took them, and where they are.”

  He stopped a moment to let it sink into her bewildered brain.

  “Now that’s enough, Connie. Enough and plenty. You go get yourself dressed. Decently dressed, I mean. Not that green rig you had on last night. It didn’t do you any good then and tonight you won’t need it. I don’t expect Gus is going to show up at the Sailing Club tonight. And the others’ll be coming—”

  “Others? What others? I’m not going to the Sailing Club tonight. I’m not going anywhere.”

  John Maynard looked at the clock again.

  “You’re going to the Sailing Club tonight, Connie. You wouldn’t want anybody to think you were all up in the air about what Swede Carlson told you, would you? Or tell people you’d got yourself so all worked up you forgot—”

  “Oh,” Connie said. She had forgotten.

  “You forgot you invited Jim and Martha Ferguson, and Dorsey and Gus, to dinner tonight, while Janey was saying goodbye to your mother, didn’t you? I expect you remember it now. You remember Gus said he had to go to the town meeting—so you invited Orvie to come and take Janey to the Sailing Club. So you could cut and go with Gus—or drop in at the town meeting after he got there. Well, you did it. And your mother invited your Aunt Mamie and your Uncle Nelly. Your mother’s a kind woman, Connie. She don’t like to see people be rude to anybody right in front of their faces, like you were to Aunt Mamie. Askin’ Dorsey right after Mamie had asked him to go to the town meetin’ with her when Gus mentioned it.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t hear her ask him.” Connie moved over to the door.

  “I’m sure you didn’t, honey. You were thinkin’ about yourself, not an old fool like Mamie. That’s what I’ve been tellin’ you. And somethin’ else, Connie.” He reached over and tapped the front page of the paper on the desk. “I’d just put down the phone when you came in. Well, it was the fifth time people had called me up, because they couldn’t get hold of Gus and old Ed had told ’em to call you. They called me instead.”

  Her face was a blank as she looked at him and down at the Gazette.

  “Old Miss Mattie Lewis that died last night had a lot of friends here in Smithville, honey. More’n I’ve got, and a heap more’n you’ve got or will have, the way you’re startin’ out not to make ’em. Miss Mattie’s family have lived in Smithville a long time. More folks in Smithville are interested in readin’ about Miss Mattie, and who her ancestors were, and about them givin’ the land for the Church and the Park, and startin’ off the first hospital, than care anythin’ about whether Doc Wernitz is alive or dead. They figure Miss Mattie did more for them than the fellas that operate or play the slot machines. And it was you, Ed tells me, that stuck her notice over on the back page. Gus never would ’a done that, honey. He’s got some kind of a heart inside him. That’s one of the reasons he’s a first-rate editor of a small-town newspaper. So run along, now—but you better try to think of somethin’ to tell your advertisers as well as your readers when they cancel on Monday. I told ’em it was out of respect for Miss Mattie— we didn’t want it alongside a murdered gambler. You take it on from there.”

  Connie heard Lawrence opening the front door for Jim Ferguson. “Hello, Jim,” she said. “Dad’s waiting in the library.”

  Her father’s final comment was still in her inner ear. “I’m not just bein’ hard on you, honey. I’d just like to beat a little sense into your pretty little fool head.” It was still there halfway up the stairs when she heard another car drive into the yard. She glanced at her watch. It was twenty-five minutes to six. Only an hour and thirty-five minutes since she’d left her desk to come home full of congratulatory self-pride. There’s darn little of it left now, she thought dismally, waiting there for Lawrence to answer the doorbell. It could be Gus, but she had begun to doubt any of her intuitions. They seemed always to turn out
to be wishful thinking, doomed from scratch. Then her hand casually resting on the mahogany banister contracted sharply on it. She recognized the voice at the front door, stepped back down a couple of steps, and leaned over.

  “Tell Chief Carlson my father is in a business conference,” she said curtly. “He can wait down in—”

  “He wants to see you, Miss Connie. Not your father.”

  “Me? What does—”

  She caught herself a second time. “Very well. Tell him to come in.”

  She turned and went down the stairs. If Chief Carlson wanted to see her he could; but she was on her own territory now and she’d been pushed around all anybody was going to push her for one day. The fleeting glimpse she caught of herself in the chrysanthemum-banked mirror showed a young woman of confidence, tight-lipped and determined.

  “What is it, Mr. Carlson?”

  “I’d like to talk to you a few minutes, if you don’t mind, Miss Maynard.”

  “Very well,” Connie said. She waited in the middle of the hall. “We’re having guests for dinner, so I hope it will be a few minutes. Go ahead.”

  “I’d just as soon talk to you here,” Swede Carlson said agreeably. “But I think maybe you’d prefer it was a little more private.”

  Her brows slanted upward. “I’m sorry. My father’s in the library and our guests will be in the living-room very shortly. There’s no place else, Mr. Carlson.”

  “That game room of yours?”

  As she hesitated he added affably, “I’d like a look at it anyway, if you don’t mind. Understand you had a party down there last night.”

  She nodded. He wasn’t going to call her transparent a second time. Keep your temper, Connie. She drew the door into the back hall open. If he wanted to see the playroom, he should have had her father show it to him when he was here before, but it would look odd if she refused to let him see it now.

  “Down here,” she said. She opened the door to the cellar steps and switched on the light. It looked bare and cavernous without a fire and with no people there. She led him down. “This is it,” she said curtly. “Will you sit down?” She took a match off the mantelpiece, put it to the Cape Cod lighter and stuck it under the newly placed logs. The room smelled like a bar, and stale tobacco smoke still permeated it. It always took a couple of days to air out after a party in the winter.

  She sat down on the yellow leather sofa, formally erect, her hands folded in her lap. “All right. What is it? I hope you’re not going to give me any more—”

  She stopped.

  “Any more of that corny rigmarole like this morning?”

  He looked at her coolly.

  “I just got a lecture on being rude, but if you want to put it that way, it’s fine.”

  Swede Carlson’s bleak, colorless eyes still rested on her.

  “I’ll make it very short, Miss Maynard. I’ve just got one single question to ask you. Last night, when you were all upset, you insisted on Gus goin’ home right away. Why? That’s all I want to know.”

  Connie Maynard’s eyes widened involuntarily. Whatever she was ready for, this was not it.

  “Why, I—I thought I told you.” She caught herself sharply. “We talked—”

  “I know we talked about it this mornin’, Miss Maynard. That was part of the corny rigmarole. Now we’re down to some brass tacks. You put on quite a show out there. Now, I don’t pretend to be much of a psychologist. That’s corny, too. But let’s say I figure it this way. You had somethin’ eatin’ you, out there last night, Miss Maynard. Sittin’ out in the dark alone in your car, it got worse instead of better. One of my boys said when he went out to give you your father’s message, you acted like you’d seen a ghost. He was sorry he’d scared you, but he thought you must have seen him come out the door.”

  “But that’s—that’s silly,” Connie said warmly. “It’s all a lot of cockeyed nonsense. He didn’t startle me.”

  “Look, Miss Maynard.” Swede Carlson’s smooth country voice caught a tough undertow. “I know a scared woman when I see one. What I want to know is why were you scared. You’ve heard of accessories before and after the fact, haven’t you, Miss Maynard?”

  “Of course I have.” Her cheeks flushed, her eyes snapped like the chestnut logs in the fireplace.

  “Okay, then. You wanted to get the hell away from there. The worst way. You were tired. You had to go home. But you didn’t go home. You didn’t drive home and let Gus walk. You took Gus to his house. You went in with him and stuck around. You—”

  “Oh. Janey, I suppose. You’ve been talking to Janey Blake.”

  “That’s right. I’ve been talkin’ to Janey Blake. I’m talkin’ to you right now. I want to know why it was so damned important for you to get to the Blake house last night.”

  And wouldn’t you be surprised if I told you. She didn’t say it aloud. It would give you another idea about little pansy-faced Janey. Then she felt a small cold hand touch her, warning her. It would give Swede Carlson another idea about her, too. She realized it sharply. Or maybe that was what he meant by accessory. If she knew Janey meant to kill herself and hadn’t tried to stop her— She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. But he couldn’t have known about her—and Janey hadn’t killed herself, anyway. This was a trap. He was on the other side of the political fence from her father. He was just trying to get something he could put away to use later. She blanked her eyes, looking at him steadily across the white rug between the sofas on either side of the fireplace, and shook her head.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said calmly. “It was just atmosphere, out there. It got me down. When I got away from it I felt all right. The lights were on at the Blakes’. I thought maybe some of our guests had dropped in on Janey and I could use a drink, too. That’s all there is to it.”

  “I wonder, Miss Maynard,” Swede Carlson said. “I hear a lot of people talkin’ around about things that aren’t any of their business. But they still talk, and usually there’s a good deal of truth mixed in what they’re sayin’. You can throw me out if I’m wrong, but the idea I get is that all things bein’ equal, you’d a damn sight rather spend the time alone with Gus Blake than with his wife and your guests. You left them mighty quick, last night, I hear, to go out with him to Wernitz’s. And if you figured they were in there, you must ’a figured one of ’em would take you home and not Gus.”

  “Aren’t you being rather insulting, Mr. Carlson?” Her yellow-green eyes contracted slowly as she looked across at him.

  “I’m just tellin’ you the local gossip. If it’s insultin’, don’t blame me. I’ve been watchin’ you, Miss Maynard. The way I figure you is that you know what you want and you go after it. Fair means or foul. And then you get sort of scared. Or maybe your conscience gets to botherin’ you. A lot of women are like that.”

  “Are they indeed, Chief Carlson?” She lifted her perfect brows. “You’ve learned a lot about people, haven’t you? May I ask what you think my reason for going to Blakes’ was?”

  “Sure,” Swede Carlson said. “Glad to tell you. In view of what happened there last night I figure you knew somebody was goin’ to break in the Blakes’ house. I figure you knew who it was and why they were doin’ it. That’s why you weren’t interested in the phone call out there at Wernitz’s. Maybe you’d agreed to keep Gus away long enough for ’em to go in and do what they were goin’ to do. I figure that sittin’ out there in the car, your conscience began to hurt like hell. You saw what murder was like, and it suddenly began to worry you—that who’d ever killed once could easily kill again. And I think that’s when you got what you call upset, Miss Maynard. That’s why you had to get Gus home so fast all of a sudden. I think that’s why you went inside when you got there—just to see what had happened. And when you found Janey alive, and you got all over your jitters, you started right back on the same track again. Does that answer your question, Miss Maynard?”

  Connie Maynard had straightened up and was sitti
ng rigidly erect on the yellow sofa, her dry lips parted, listening in a stupor of stunned fascination to the fantastic compound, half of it falsehood, half-truth. It was a ghastly net, being woven right in front of her—the truth as damning as the falsehood, the falsehood as damning as the truth.

  SEVENTEEN

  SHE MADE HERSELF STARE calmly and steadily back at him. As she let herself back against the leather sofa, the air forced out of the cushions covered the sound of her own slowly escaping breath.

  “You must be joking, Chief Carlson.” She spoke as evenly as she could.

  “I’m not joking and you know I’m not.”

  He watched her intently. He’d scared her, scared the living daylights out of her. There was something in it, then. In what part of it? What the hell was this woman really up to? Somewhere in what he’d said he’d scored a bull’s-eye. She’d folded her hands in her lap again and crossed her elegant legs. She probably didn’t realize she’d uncrossed them abruptly when he’d said her conscience had begun to bother her, out there in the car in Wernitz’s yard. But she was getting herself together again. There was even a queer, mirthless quirk at one corner of her mouth. Swede Carlson thought coolly. He hadn’t got all of what she was up to, in what he’d said, but he’d got part of it.

  “Is something funny, Miss Maynard?” he asked deliberately.

  “Yes. Or no. It depends. It’s not funny at all, really.” She got to her feet. “I do a kind act for a gal whose husband you think I’m trying to swipe, and I end up a suspect in a murder case. An accessory before or after, whichever way you take it. Is that funny? It doesn’t seem terribly funny to me. But I’ve had a rough day, so maybe I just don’t quite see it. If you haven’t any more—”

  She broke off, the color flooding back into her cheeks, as his bleak gaze moved away from her and rested on the slot machine in the far corner of the room. “And if you’re wondering where—”