Murder is the Pay-Off

by Leslie Ford

  “Wait a minute.” Carlson stopped him at the door. They stood there looking around. “That’s Janey’s?” He nodded toward the dressing-table in the corner by the window.

  “Sure.”

  It was torn apart as completely as any dressing-table could be torn apart. Even the box of face powder had been dumped out on the glass surface. The jewel box with its string of pearls, clips, and small trinkets was dumped out. The drawers had been emptied on the floor and the contents left there.

  “Janey’s coats?” He pointed to two coats with their pockets turned inside out, on the bed nearest the closet. Gus nodded. Carlson looked on around the room. The drawer in the night table between the beds had been turned over on Janey’s spread. The small top drawer in Gus’s chest where he kept collar studs and cuff links had been emptied on the top. Nothing else had been touched.

  Swede Carlson went across the room between the beds to the telephone, picked up the receiver, and dialed a number. “Get goin’, Gus,” he said. “We’re in a hurry. Lieutenant Williams. Carlson here, Bill. Good work on the print. Another job for you. At Blakes’ house. He’s been here again. Gone through the top floor front bedroom. Maybe there’s a print—he spilled a lot of face powder and it sticks like glue. If we’re not here use the back door. Any dime-store key’ll open it.”

  He put down the phone. Gus was pulling a suit out of the closet.

  “You got any answer to this one, Gus?” Carlson watched him get a fresh shirt out of the chest. “Janey brought something home from that party at the Maynards’. The fella killed Wernitz’s got to get it back. Looks like it ties him right in with the killin’. It’s somethin’ small, Gus. Small enough to go in this box of powder. It’s a dead giveaway, of some kind—or the killer thinks it is. He wants it bad.”

  Gus stopped a moment, thinking. He shook his head. “Nothing I know of. Better ask Janey.”

  “That’s what we’re doing right now. Get goin’, Gus. Time’s runnin’ out. What’s her mother’s number?”

  Gus gave it to him, pulled off his tie, and got out of his bloodstained shirt. He wanted to hurry, but he wanted to hear her voice. The voice he could hear over the phone was her mother’s.

  “She’s not there, Mr. Carlson. She went to the Sailing Club.”

  “She go by herself?”

  “No, she went with Orval Rogers. You’ll find her there.”

  Swede Carlson’s hand rested for an instant on the cradled receiver. Gus had headed silently for the bathroom. Carlson shook his head. So it was Orval Rogers he was burned up about. He listened to the water running as Gus got more of the muck off his face.

  “Was young Rogers at the Maynard party?” He raised his voice so Gus could hear him.

  “Yeah.”

  “I wish to God you’d step on it, son.” Swede Carlson said that to himself. He thought about all of it. Nobody with any sense could suspect old man Rogers’s son Orvie had killed a guy. But I ain’t got any sense, Swede Carlson thought. He looked at his watch and started downstairs. “I’ll wait for you in the car. Make time, will you?”

  There was no doubt in Gus’s mind that Janey was at the Club. Halfway up the companionway to the top deck— nobody spoke of stairs or upstairs in the bar at the Sailing Club in Smithville—he heard some dame yell, “There’s Janey! Hi, sweetie!” and the pack with her take it up in full cry. It was always the way. They always acted as if Janey was Doctor Livingstone just pulled in from a year’s trek in the bush. Old sorehead Blake, just in from a short trek out of the ditch. But he wasn’t really sore, not at anybody but himself, that is, and he was wondering how in the hell Swede Carlson thought he was going to get Janey out of the place without anybody noticing she was gone.

  “Get her out here, Gus. I’ll wait in the car. Don’t let anybody see you if you can help it.”

  Don’t let anybody notice he’d taken the fair-haired child away. Don’t let anybody notice the lights had gone off. He stopped by the tub of palms in the doorway between the circular bar and the long bank of slot machines curving around the corner across the winter-barred French doors to the open deck over the water. All he had to do was look for the biggest crowd. Janey would be right there in the center of it. Sure, you’re jealous as hell, Blake, but you don’t have to be a stinker, too, do you? And Carlson had also told him to keep his eyes peeled to see who else was there, who else that had been at the Maynards’ party the night before, if anybody.

  He saw her then. At least he saw a black velvet bow on top of some tow-colored hair as soft and shining as silk just fresh from the cocoon. He couldn’t see the rest because she was over on the curving banque behind the table and a lot of people were in front of it. He saw Connie Maynard’s back leaning forward on the table, Ferguson beside her, laughing too loud, needing a haircut. He felt up at the back of his own head. But then he wasn’t a banker with a barber’s date every other Saturday the way Fergie was. Fergie must have missed out today. John Maynard was there, his gray-white poll too magnificent for anyone ever to notice whether it needed a cut or didn’t. And Uncle Nelly. He was there, too, but he always looked like a weed anyway. The rest of the crowd, all except Orvie, and Gus skipped Orvie in his own mind, were people he didn’t know, guests and visiting yachtsmen in the Basin for the week-end, all of them, including the locals, a little high for that early. He noted it approvingly. It was a good idea—he could do with a drink himself, later.

  Dorsey Syms was just coming back from playing the machines. Martha Ferguson was saying, “Not a dime. Not even a cherry,” as a couple of people moved out so Dorsey could get back in his place beside Janey. Dorsey on one side, Orvie on the other. It was the way it had always been. It had a special irony at the moment. It was one of the things he’d gone over too many times, batting around the country roads, trying to get away from himself and everybody else. It was one of the reasons he’d married Janey. Just to show a couple of small town hot shots they couldn’t play fast and loose with a kid from the wrong side of the tracks even if her father was just a night watchman at the Rogers plant. He’d marry her and show the so-and-sos. It didn’t make any difference to him whom he married so long as it was a girl and she didn’t have buck teeth and a club foot. Blake, God’s nobleman. Big-Hearted Ben Blake. And he still might have been right about Dorsey Syms— if he hadn’t been wrong first about Janey. And how wrong could you be about Orvie? He’d been it, whatever its degree.

  But that wasn’t getting Janey out to Swede Carlson. He couldn’t go over and drag her out. He’d have to explain all about the cut on his face. And maybe she’d refuse to be dragged out, he thought uncomfortably. He hadn’t forgotten the way she’d turned tiger-cat in the kitchen that morning.

  He went over to the bar.

  “Scotch, Mr. Blake?” One of the barmen reached for his favorite brand. Gus shook his head.

  “No, Buck. I just want to get my wife out of there a minute. Will you go ask her if she’ll come over?”

  The barman was looking at the patch on his face.

  “Just a scratch.” Gus put his hand up to it. “I was going too fast on a bad road.”

  “Looked like you’d been in a razor party, there for a minute.” Buck grinned and raised the hinged section of the bar. “I’ll tell Mrs. Blake.”

  Gus watched him cross the noisy room. Something mixing up inside his stomach suddenly made his eyes twitch so that he had to swallow to get rid of a watery taste in his mouth. He was acting like a school sophomore crashing the junior prom. He knew that, but it didn’t help very much as he waited, trying to look his age, anyway. And there was no way at all of getting her out without anybody noticing. Buck was speaking to her. He saw everybody start, the ones with their back to him turn, the sudden movement opening up a path across to the table with Janey sitting at the end. She was bolt upright, both hands around her ginger ale, her small face already white, her lips parted a little, her blue eyes still widening, going from Mediterranean sky-blue to paler blue, gray-blue like a washed-out hyacinth. H
e saw her swallow, loosen her fingers twined around the glass, and get up, rigid as a wooden doll.

  They all started moving then. Connie first. She was halfway across the room to him before Orvie and the others on the banque between Janey and the end could move to let her past. And then it happened. She wasn’t coming. Gus saw her eyes flash from him to Connie and turn pitch-black, smudges like soot above her high pale cheekbones that were not pale now but a slow, bright pink as she stayed where she was, just getting ready to sit right square back down again. Gus held up both hands to stop all of them. Not only Connie but Martha Ferguson and John Maynard were heading for him. He grinned at them, waving them all back.

  “It’s my wife I want. Go back! The rest of you go back and have another drink!”

  “But Gus—your face!” Connie cried. She started toward him again.

  “My face is fine.” He managed a false hearty cheerfulness. “I just pushed it against some broken glass. That’s why I want Janey. I want something to eat and I want her to chew it for me. I’ll bring her back and tell you all about it.”

  He looked past them. Janey was half down on the seat, but she was coming up again, her eyes like anxious stars. He took a deep breath. At least she cared enough to worry about him getting hurt.

  “Will you come, please, Janey?”

  If he hadn’t made it sound as casual as he could, they’d all have seen he was begging her to come. It was the way he felt. He wanted to touch her, just once to see if she was still real. She didn’t look it, moving as woodenly as she was, her lips breathlessly open.

  “Gus!” she whispered.

  He took her arm. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m afraid I wrecked the car. The tires are shot.”

  Her hand was warm on his arm. He couldn’t tell which was trembling, her arm or his hand, as he guided her out and down the stairs. She still walked like a doll, her eyes wide open, fixed straight ahead of her. At the bottom of the stairs she turned toward the dining-room.

  “Wait a minute, Janey,” he said. “I’ll get your wrap. We’re not going to eat, we’re going to see Swede Carlson. He’s waiting out in his car. He’s got something he wants to ask you.”

  “Oh.” She stopped abruptly and stood there, her back to him, while he went over to the cloakroom and got her black velvet coat. He didn’t see her eyes screwed up tight like the little Dane’s when she was determined not to cry, or hear what she was saying to herself.

  “Stupid, stupid— I knew it was silly. I thought it was me. I thought for just a minute it was me he wanted. Not Connie. I thought that was why he pushed them back. I thought it was me he wanted.”

  He was there with her coat, putting it around her shoulders. When he took her arm again it was as wooden as her walk. She moved it before he could really get hold of it, reached forward and pulled the door open for herself. “Where is he?” She ran outside. “I see him.”

  Swede Carlson’s stationary figure down by the car under the willow tree looked blurred and enormous and black. It focused into shape and solidity as she ran up the drive, stumbling a little until she bunched her long skirt up in her hands and ran as fast as she could.

  Carlson opened the rear door for her. “Sorry to drag you out like this, Janey. Get in, will you? We want to talk to you a minute.”

  She slipped across the seat as close to the window as she could and settled there in a small dark huddle, the only thing visible the heart-shaped blur of her white face. She edged deeper into the corner as Gus got in beside her. Carlson got in, closed the door, and leaned over the back of the seat.

  “Janey, will you think carefully about this? What did you take away from the Maynards’ party last night?”

  He had intended to make some mild crack about Gus’s mucked-up face, but he forgot that, seeing her come tearing along leaving Gus behind. It was still in his mind, so that for an instant he missed the small involuntary gasp she gave when he asked her what she’d taken. Or almost missed it. He sharpened his gaze, trying to make her out in the dark corner. He could hear her holding her breath and see the white blob of her fist clutching the seat, holding tightly to it. A red warning light flashed on in his mind. Something here he wasn’t prepared for. This was the way Connie Maynard had reacted over there in her basement playroom. That he had planned. This he had stumbled onto. Maybe the two were tied together? He moved into a more comfortable position and changed his approach.

  “I been thinkin’ things over, Janey,” he said easily. “I got it figured this way. You must ’a taken somethin’—”

  “What if I did?”

  She sat bolt-upright out of her huddle.

  “It’s nobody’s business but mine. And I threw them away. I didn’t take them. I was going to, but I didn’t. I threw them down the bathroom drain this morning. I was going to— I was going to kill myself, last night. But I changed my mind. I’m—I’m not going to kill myself. Not for anybody! I don’t care anymore!”

  Swede Carlson’s thick hand planted itself quickly in the dark on Gus Blake’s knee. “Hold it. Hold it there,” it said. It felt violent protest give way to obedience and shuddering horror. Gus Blake relaxed. He sank back against the seat. Poor devil, Swede Carlson thought. Poor devils, both of them. But there was no time now.

  “Why, of course you’re not goin’ to kill yourself, Janey,” he said as she stopped to catch her breath. “What was it you took?”

  “Some sleeping-pills. From Mrs. Maynard’s drawer. When I was leaving. Mrs. Maynard wouldn’t mind my—”

  “She’d ’a minded an awful lot if you’d taken ’em, Janey.”

  Carlson thought fast. This was it. Connie knew. She must have seen her take them, she’d let it ride till she got out there in the dark and started thinking about it. But he didn’t want to ask either Gus or Janey where Connie Maynard was when they’d started home. He’d leave that for Miss Maynard to tell. The murdering little— And that explained the way she blew hot and cold—hot on some reason for getting Gus back to the Blake house, cold on the attempted burglary.

  “Listen, Janey,” he said. “Let’s forget that, right now. And you think, hard. Hear? There must have been somethin’ else you took. You think what you took there with you, and what else you had when you came away. Wasn’t there somethin’?”

  He could see her shaking her head. “No, there wasn’t! There wasn’t anything else!” she said passionately. “I didn’t have anything with me. All I had was my bag and my handkerchief and my lipstick and compact and two quarters. That’s all I took with me. And that’s all I brought home except—except the pills, and—and the thirty-two dollars and fifty cents I won on the jackpot. I know that was all, because I put the bag on the hall table and took out the money and the pills. I threw the pills on the floor, and my bag dropped—”

  She stopped, turning her head first to the right and then to the left.

  “But—there was something else.”

  She stared through the dark at Carlson.

  “There was the lucky piece. It fell out on the floor when I knocked my bag off the table. The lucky piece that came out of the slot machine.”

  Carlson’s hand was still gripping Gus’s knee. He moved it slowly up and let it rest on the back of the seat. “What lucky piece, Janey?”

  “I don’t know. It was just a lucky piece somebody had put in the machine by mistake, I guess. It came out with all the rest of the quarters. Jim Ferguson picked it up. It was gold. You know, gilded—gold-washed, I guess you call it. He—he made some joke about it and put it in my bag. That’s all. I don’t know who it belongs to.”

  Swede Carlson controlled his breathing and vocal apparatus deliberately. “Where is it now, Janey?” he asked.

  “In my bag.” She felt down in the seat beside her. “At least it was there. I haven’t taken it out.” She moved her slim hips and felt down on the other side of her by the window. “Oh—I didn’t bring my bag. I must have— when I got up, back there, I must have left it, or it dropped on the floor. That�
��s what I must have done. It was in my lap when Buck came and said—said Gus wanted me.”

  Carlson reached for the door handle. He let it go and turned again on the front seat.

  “You two go back now,” he said quietly. “You get your bag, Janey. If you can do it, don’t let anybody see you’re interested in it at all, hear? If it’s there, I want it and I want it quick. You bring it out, Gus.”

  “And if it’s not there?”

  “If it’s not there,” Swede Carlson said quietly, “I’ll be mighty goddam interested—but I won’t be surprised. It’s gettin’ to be somebody else’s turn to be surprised.”

  TWENTY

  “AND YOU TWO GO IN THERE actin’ like you’re speakin’, whether you are or not. I don’t want this gummed up, now.” Swede Carlson spoke brusquely and meant it when Janey pulled away from Gus trying to help her out of the car and started off ahead of him.

  She stopped and waited, not wooden but taut and very much alive. He took her arm again.

  “Janey—please! For God’s sake, Janey—”

  She wrenched away. “Stop it!” she said hotly. “I’ve told you I don’t care anything about any of you anymore. You or Connie or anybody else. And you might just as well hear the rest of it. I’ve spent all the money we ever had. I threw it all away—the whole thousand dollars. I blew it in on the slot machines. It’s all gone. There’s three dollars and forty-two cents left in the bank. Fergie told me so this afternoon. So leave me alone, do you hear me? You can go back to Connie. You’re always leaving me to go with Orvie, so you can go with Connie and I’ll just go with Orvie! I guess he’ll still be willing to marry me and if he isn’t I’ll find somebody else.”

  They were almost at the end of the asphalt drive of the clubhouse walk. Janey went ahead of him onto the brick. “Hello, Fergie,” she said sweetly. “You’re not going home this early, are you?”

  Gus came miserably on behind her. “Shoving off, Fergie?”

  “Yes,” Jim Ferguson said. He held the door open for Janey. “Martha’s staying, but I’m going along. I’m going duck-shooting with my son in the morning, so I thought I’d better turn in early. I wouldn’t want him to see me miss too many. And Martha won’t let me take any dog hair along when I’ve got a gun and the kids. So long, you two.”