“Good–by, Frannie,” Jeff said sternly.
A little later I asked Jeff if he really meant to take Fran's five hundred dollars. He thought he might as well. She would probably just spend it on bubble gum. I told him I thought that he was underestimating a woman of seventeen. At seventeen a woman has all her faculties; that is, she's a woman. He said he agreed with me but, he said, let's not discuss this any further, let's go and see Mrs. Carleton's husband, Tom. We found Tom Carleton sitting on the steps of the side porch of his big, year–round house. The fears we had that he might rather see us at some later time he quickly dispelled. He needed someone to talk with, someone, preferably, who was not a friend of the family paying a duty call. We filled his need admirably, he insisted.
He said, “Joe Hinkle told me about you. He's glad you're around. Shall we sit here on the steps, or would you rather – ”
“This is fine,” Jeff said.
We sat down with Carleton. He was lean and tall and very attractive in a strong, rugged way. The wrinkles of good humor and laughter stood out now in his pale, somber face like tiny, drained stream–beds. He was in complete control of himself. It would be he who would console his wife's friends, not they him.
“I might have prevented it,” he said. Jeff said, “Almost anybody can always figure out that they – ”
“No,” Tom said, “this is real. You see, I haven't played much golf this year – in the past month none at all. I just went sour on it. Yesterday Janet tried to talk me into playing a round with her before dinner. We used to do that all the time. But I said no, and I wouldn't let her talk me into it. To tell the truth, she got pretty sore about it, in her funny way. Humorous way, I mean. She made some remarks about me and my fishing and fish in general that were classics. Lately, you see, I'd rather fish than golf. So Janet went to the club alone. When she didn't come back for dinner I didn't think anything of it. She often stayed at the club, especially when she was a little sore at me. I went to bed about nine. To get to Montauk Point for fishing by five, I have to be on my way at four. So I slept in my study – as I always do when I'm getting up early and don't want to waken Janet when I roll out of bed. That's how I got out of the house this morning without knowing she wasn't at home. I'd left my car in front of the house; I took for granted that Janet's was in the garage. But what I started to say was ... if I'd played golf with her as she wanted me to ... but I see your point, Troy. It's no good – that kind of figuring.”
“I don't suppose,” Jeff said, “you've had any time to think about who might have killed your wife.”
“Yes, I have. It doesn't take very many minutes to do a lot of thinking about a thing like that. Nobody could have wanted to kill Janet, no one had any reason to. Nobody had anything to gain in the way of money or anything. And as far as anyone hating her – well, Janet lived an ordinary, suburban life. You don't make enemies living like that. She ran the house, she played golf in the summer, bridge in the winter – she never did anything that would have made an enemy for her.”
“What about Fran Leslie?”
Tom Carleton looked at Jeff and smiled wanly. “I think,” he said, “that's a foolish question.”
“So do I, but I had to know that you thought so, too.”
“Frannie's been an embarrassment to me for years. I realize that you should take adolescents and their emotions seriously. But Frannie – there's nothing deep or psychological about her. She's a good, healthy extrovert. I spanked her when she was fourteen and if she hadn't enjoyed it so much, I would have kept on spanking her. No, Troy, nobody wanted to kill my wife.”
“I think,” Jeff said, “I know what you mean.”
“Yes. I mean that someone must have been gunning for Eddie Riorden. And Janet was killed because she saw who murdered Eddie.”
“Do you know where Eddie lived?”
“No. But the caddy master at the club would know.”
“We'll ask him – and thanks.”
Jamestown, Long Island, was as Colonial American as anything you saw on the way to Boston. There was a white church, a cannon in the square, a Town Hall beside the
Super–Market. The Riorden house was on the edge of the town – a two–story frame building, a yard without a lawn in front of it, a collection of shabby sheds and coops behind it. Eddie's sister answered Jeff's knock. She was a little younger than Eddie, a beautiful girl with shining black hair, dark eyes, an appealing mouth. There was no doubt she was Eddie's sister.
Jeff said, “We'd like to talk to you about Eddie – for just a moment.”
“Are you from the police?” She looked at me. “Or a newspaper ... or what?”
“We're working with the police,” Jeff said.
“I suppose you want to know who Eddie ran around with ... things like that?”
“Yes.”
“I'll have to tell you what I told the rest of them. We don't know. We hardly knew Eddie any more. He wasn't ever home, except to sleep. He just – well, drifted away from us lately. We didn't see him much, he never brought any of his friends home.”
“Who were his friends?”
She shook her head. “I don't even know if there was anyone special. I – I don't like to say this, but it's true. Except for the country club in the summer, Eddie spent more time in Andrew's Bar than he did at home. I wish I could help you, but ...”
“You have helped us,” Jeff said.
Andrew's Bar took up half the ground floor of a tourist hotel that apparently had never lived up to its original owner's hopes. There were only three cars in the parking space meant for twenty or thirty. The bar was not filled with vacationists sopping up before–lunch cocktails; four male natives were spending dimes on beers.
When the bartender placed our beers before us, Jeff said, “My name's Troy, I – ”
“Troy,” the bartender said. He glanced down at his group of four customers. They all looked at Jeff. “Troy,” the bartender said again.
“I've heard about you. You're helping Joe Hinkle with the murders.”
“Yes,” Jeff said. “News travels fast around here.”
“Yes, it does. A little place, Jamestown, but a nice place.”
The tallest of the four beer drinkers said, “We've just been talking about it, the murder.”
“I guess you all knew Eddie,” Jeff said.
“He was in here every night,” the shortest drinker said.
“He missed once a week,” the third one said. “The night of the midget auto races.”
“He came in then. Late, though,” Shorty said.
The third one nodded. “After I went home, I guess.”
“Well, more or less you could just about say,” the bartender said, “that Eddie was in here every night.” He turned to Jeff. “What's that got to do with the murder?”
“You've just been talking about the murder,” Jeff said.
“Naturally,” the bartender said.
“Eddie was a popular boy, wasn't he?”
“He was a sweet kid,” Shorty said.
“A sweet kid,” the third man said. “A great ball player, any kind of ball. He was going to go places if he ever got a break. He had everything to live for.”
“Everybody liked Eddie, I guess,” Jeff said.
A moment died away. Then, carefully, the bartender said, “Yeah, everybody liked Eddie. I can't think of a single exception to that rule.”
For the first time the fourth man spoke up, and he spoke up angrily. “The hell with it!” he said. “I can think of somebody who didn't like Eddie!”
“Now, wait, Mel,” the bartender said. “Take it easy.”
“The hell with it!” Mel said. “Listen here, Troy. George Carey didn't like Eddie and everybody here knows it!”
“George Carey,” Jeff said. “You mean the golf pro at the Country Club?”
“That's right. I've no idea what it was between Carey and Eddie, but – ”
“Mel,” the bartender said, “I'm not sure it's up to you to – ”
“Eddie's dead, murdered! Listen, Troy, for the past month or so Carey used to come in here – to see Eddie. They'd go back there to the corner table and talk – no, not talk, argue! We never could hear what it was all about and Eddie would never tell us, but it wasn't good. They got pretty hot, the two of them, Eddie and Carey. Well, the other night was the blow–up. For a minute it looked like they were going to start swinging at each other. When Carey went out of here he looked just about mad enough to – ”
“Now, take it easy, Mel,” the bartender said.
“Mad enough,” Jeff said, “to kill Eddie?”
“Yes, blast it! That's what I was going to say and I am saying it! Mad enough to kill Eddie! And Eddie was killed.”
We had seen George Carey around the club, of course, but we had never said more than hello to each other. He was a genial, nice–looking fellow in his forties. When Jeff and I walked into his little office in the caddy house, he knew at once why we were calling on him. He wasn't the sort of person you had to handle with care, and Jeff went straight to the point.
“We've just come from Andrew's Bar,” Jeff said. “We heard that you and Eddie Riorden nearly slugged it out a couple of nights ago. We didn't hear what it was you disagreed about – or maybe that isn't important.”
Carey thought that over for a moment. “It is important,” he said, “because I'm sure you're not going to find anyone else, anyone at all, who ever tangled with Eddie in the slightest degree.”
“Everybody loved Eddie,” Jeff said.
“He hadn't an enemy in the world.”
“That's true – literally.”
“But the other night you were ready to take him apart. That could mean that Eddie had one enemy in the world.”
“Yes,” Carey said. “That's why it's important you understand why I was fighting with Eddie.”
He opened a drawer of his desk; he found what he was looking for. He slid the letter out of its envelope and handed it to Jeff. Jeff held it so that I could see.
It was a short note, written without the aid of a secretary, on the stationery of Randall College, Randall, Ohio. It said: “Dear George; I've got everything set for your boy, Eddie Riorden. He'd better be as good as you say he is. In haste, Carl.”
“That's Carl Moss,” Carey said. “He coaches football at Randall.”
“He got Eddie an athletic scholarship,” Jeff said.
“Yes.”
“But Eddie didn't want to go to college,” Jeff said. “No matter how much you tried to persuade him, he wouldn't agree to go.”
“That's it,” Carey said. “I've known Eddie since he was caddying up here in his bare feet. He was quite a kid. He was the best high school athlete I've ever seen. For the last three years I've been after him to go to college. But he was tired of school, he said. Actually, he was lazy. I'm afraid Eddie was well on his way to being a bum. I decided finally to go ahead and get him a scholarship at my old school ... I thought maybe that would turn the trick. But it didn't. Eddie'd been slopping around for so long that his ambition was all gone. He used to avoid me here at the club. The only place I could corner him was at that bar. I talked myself hoarse to him, and the other night I lost my temper. It made me sore to see a boy like Eddie turning into a bum.”
“But you still liked him,” Jeff said.
“How could I help it? How could anybody not like Eddie?”
“Well,” Jeff said, “I guess that's that.”
“Even if it isn't,” Carey said, “I'll have to leave you now. Joe Hinkle seems to be holding a little meeting that I'm invited to.”
“We'll go with you,” Jeff said.
Hinkle was holding his meeting in the same room where we had seen him that morning. The meeting was a small, intimate affair. Carey, Jeff, and I joined Hinkle, Fran Leslie, Tom Carleton, and the club's woman champ, Arlene Miller. The meeting didn't look as though it had started; Joe Hinkle didn't look as though he wanted to start it. He was a morose, discouraged man.
“Troy,” he said, “tell me something.”
“Sure,” Jeff said.
“Tell me who killed them. So we can all go home.”
“I know how you feel,” Jeff said. “Did you find anything more in the thicket?”
“We found a lot. The two halves of a broken niblick, some empty bottles – mostly half–pints – a couple of old tin cans, a dozen or so trees, a watch that Mac Small lost seven years ago, a fifty–cent piece, and nine golf balls.”
“Did you find Mrs. Carleton's ball?”
“Not yet. We had to knock off because it was getting dark in the thicket. But frankly, I think we found everything there is in it.”
“But of course,” Jeff said, “you'll look some more tomorrow.”
“Of course. I'm nothing else, but I'm thorough.”
“Mr. Carleton,” Jeff said, “is there any chance that Mrs. Carleton wouldn't have been playing with one of her own balls?”
Arlene Miller gave a short laugh. She said, “Janet Carleton would no more think of using any ball but those special ones of hers than she would think of using someone else's clubs. Janet was a real golfer, not a Sunday player.”
“I see,” Jeff said. He turned back to Hinkle. “Have you found anyone who saw Mrs. Carleton playing her first nine holes?”
“Her last nine holes,” Arlene Miller said.
Hinkle cleared his throat. “I been all through that, Troy. Mr. Carleton says that, considering the time his wife left home, she would have been lucky to get much more than nine holes played before dark. It seems like she was the last one to start around. Nobody seen her park her car or tee off.”
“That isn't unusual,” Carey said. “At that time of day everybody at the club is either in the dining room or the bar. There's as much drinking as golf around this place, you all know that.”
“Anyway,” Hinkle said, “nobody saw her. She must have walked straight from her car to the first tee, or whatever you call it. Eddie must have met her there. He always caddied for her. He was probably waiting for her.”
“Somebody,” Jeff said, “the last person who left the club last night must have noticed Mrs. Carleton's car was still here. Why didn't they worry about her?”
“That was Also Frost,” Hinkle said. “He admits seeing the car. He also admits that after an evening at the bar here he never worries or wonders about anything. Nice fellow though, Also.”
“Well,” Jeff said, “I won't hold up your meeting any longer.”
“I wish you'd stay, Troy.”
“No, I couldn't add anything to the proceedings. Call me tomorrow, will you, if you find Mrs. Carleton's ball?”
“Why don't you come and help us?”
“I will,” Jeff said.
It was beginning to grow dark when Jeff and I left our cottage that night. It was very dark when we walked through the empty parking lot of the locked–up, deserted clubhouse. I followed Jeff through the gap in the hedge, then I stopped.
“Darling,” I said, “I won't go another step until you tell me where we're going and why.”
“Haila, if I told you, you wouldn't go with me. Come on now, quietly.”
I went on quietly. We walked across the start of the fairway of the first hole. We went another fifty yards and we were crossing the ninth hole's fairway. Then, in another minute or two, we were groping our way into the thicket. I could touch Jeff, but I couldn't see him. I held on to his jacket and shuffled blindly forward. Jeff stopped and sat down; he pulled me down beside him. He put his arm around me. But he didn't kiss me. I still didn't know what we were doing in this hell–black hole.
“May I smoke?” I whispered.
“No. From now on don't even breathe unless it's absolutely necessary.”
We sat there for so long that I began to be convinced that I had slept through a day and was not sitting through my second night. I was uncomfortable, cold. I was something else. I found Jeff's ear and whispered into it.
“I'm scared,” I said.
“Naturally,” Jeff whispered back.
That reassurance did me a lot of good. I wasn't cold any longer, or uncomfortable – I was just frightened. Jeff's hand touched my wrist and tightened on it. I stopped breathing. I had heard it, too.
Through the thicket something was moving toward us. It might have been slithering along on its stomach, it might have been edging along on two feet, or more – but it was coming toward us. Now a piece of foliage brushed my face as it moved back in place. The shuffling sound came closer, and then stopped.
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