Hit and Run

by Deming, Richard

  After a moment in which the private detective teetered on the brink of violence, the anger in his eyes faded to contempt. Almost with indifference he thrust Cushman back into his chair. Then he swung around, crossed the room to a stationery desk, and unlocked a small drawer. He lifted from it the banded sheaf of fifties he had received from Helena only a few hours previously, and tossed it into Cushman’s lap.

  “Blackmail’s a word I don’t like,” he growled. “Get the hell out of here while you can still walk.”

  Cushman gaped up at the bigger man. In a shaken voice he said, “Now wait a minute, Calhoun. You can’t leave us in this spot.”

  “I said get out,” Calhoun rasped. He started toward Cushman’s chair again.

  “Hold it,” Cushman said, raising one hand, palm out. “I’ll withdraw the word and apologize, if you’re so touchy. Don’t go off half-cocked. We need your help.”

  Calhoun stopped before the chair and looked down coldly at the seated man. “Then pay for it. The fee is fifteen grand, and I don’t haggle. Take it or leave it.”

  “We’re going to take it,” Cushman said in a placating tone. “You can’t blame a man for fussing a little over an extra ten thousand. I’ll bring it here at noon tomorrow.”

  Tentatively he held up the sheaf of fifties. After staring down at him for a moment, Calhoun ungraciously jerked it from his hand and returned it to the desk drawer.

  Cushman looked relieved. After his original reaction, the man’s expression of relief bemused Calhoun. He wondered why Cushman had put up such a fuss in the first place. The amount couldn’t be important to him; he had been left more money than he could possibly spend in a lifetime. Glancing at the beautiful Helena, Calhoun suspected the man was beginning to wish he’d never heard of her. He could tell by the way Cushman looked at her that she held a terrific fascination for him, but his expression suggested he was beginning to wonder if she was worth the complications she was bringing into his life.

  The private detective didn’t care what the man thought so long as he came up with an additional ten thousand dollars.

  Cushman and Helena left a few moments later. Helena offered Cushman a lift, and he said she could drop him at the Statler Hotel.

  The Statler was only a few blocks from Calhoun’s apartment. The private detective wondered if that was Cushman’s real destination. Or had he picked it because it was the nearest taxi stand, and at the moment he wasn’t anxious for his mistress’s company any longer than necessary?

  6

  It was nearly five P.M. when Helena Powers drove the station wagon into the garage. She got out and studied the Buick convertible parked close against the wall. Although she knew the damaged right side couldn’t be seen with the car parked as it was, she couldn’t resist checking each time she entered the garage.

  Alice was in the kitchen preparing dinner. When Helena came in the back door, the maid said, “Mr. Powers is in the front room, ma’am. I told him what you said.”

  “What did he say?” Helena asked.

  “Nothing. Just sort of frowned, like he does.”

  Helena pursed her lips. Lawrence Powers was an indulgent husband in some ways, but a difficult one in others. He had an even, though rather cold disposition, and was rarely guilty of anger. In financial matters he was generous, never refusing his wife anything she desired, yet at the same time he required an exact accounting of everything she spent. Similarly he was generous in allowing her to spend her time as she saw fit, but insisted on her plans being orderly. Provided she gave him advance notice before he left for the bank in the morning, and explained just what her plans for the day were, he never objected to her not being home when he returned from work. But he was a creature of habit, and surprises upset him. He liked to find his wife home when he expected her there. He was somewhat of an indulgent tyrant. Though he rarely objected to anything Helena did if she had mentioned it in advance, he almost automatically disapproved of anything she did without at least his tacit blessing.

  Helena had left the message with Alice that one of her friends had phoned that a dress she particularly wanted was on display at Herrod’s, and that she had run downtown to get it. She expected her husband to be a bit sulky about this departure from routine, but she’d had to leave some excuse and this one had the double virtue of being both plausible and uncheckable.

  Lawrence Powers was pouring a Manhattan from a cocktail shaker when she entered the front room. He was a tall, slim man with the beginnings of a paunch, a full head of graying hair, and a hairline mustache of the same color. He had a round, not handsome but not unpleasant face, and wore steel-rimmed glasses. He was twenty years his wife’s senior.

  Helena gave him a wifely kiss, which he accepted rather coolly, and said, “Sorry I wasn’t here when you got home, dear, but I was afraid the dress would be gone. As a matter of fact, it was.”

  “Couldn’t you have phoned the store and asked them to hold it till tomorrow?” he inquired.

  “I don’t have an account at Herrod’s,” she said. “Besides, I didn’t think of it.”

  “How did you happen to take the station wagon instead of your convertible?” he asked. “I bought it for you to use.”

  When in a fault-finding mood, Lawrence Powers had a tendency to make any departure from normal routine sound like a major sin. His tone was almost accusing. For an instant Helena thought he had discovered the damage to the Buick, but a quick look at his face reassured her. He was merely enumerating her errors one at a time.

  She asked equably, “Is there another drink in that shaker?”

  Unsmilingly he poured her a drink. Picking it up, she said, “Please don’t be angry with me, Lawrence. All day I wait for you to come home, and when you do I like things to be pleasant. The dress was important to me.”

  “I’m not angry,” he said. “But I don’t make many demands on you. One of the few is that I like a cocktail waiting when I get home from work.”

  Helena raised her brows. “I told Alice to fix a shaker as soon as you got home.”

  “Oh, she made the Manhattans,” Powers said a bit petulantly. “But you know I don’t like to drink alone.”

  This wasn’t true. If he had known in advance that Helena wouldn’t be home, he would have cheerfully had a lone drink while he waited for her to return. She knew that his displeasure stemmed solely from not having been consulted. She was too wise, however, to point out that she frequently wasn’t there to mix him an afternoon drink.

  She merely said, “I’m sorry, dear. I won’t disappoint you again.”

  He thawed a little then, having made his point and having extracted an admission of fault from his wife. By dinner time he was completely over his sulk.

  After dinner they repaired to the front room, as usual, for coffee. The ritual was always the same. Mornings, over his coffee, Lawrence Powers read the Courier Express from front to back, skipping nothing but the ads, the comics, and the sports section. Over his dinner coffee he read the Buffalo Evening News with equal thoroughness, and Helena was expected not to speak until he was finished. He didn’t restrict himself to silence, however. He carried on a running commentary about the items in the paper. Helena rarely looked at a newspaper. She didn’t have to. She got most of the news merely by listening to her husband.

  He was on an inner page when he announced, “See that hit-and-run victim died today.”

  Helena’s breath stopped. Then she inquired in a tone of only polite interest, “Who was that, dear?”

  “Old fellow named John Lischer. Paper says he was seventy-nine. Run down on Court Street early Tuesday morning by a speeder who didn’t stop. Drunk, I imagine. I must have read you the item at the time.”

  “I don’t recall it, dear.”

  Powers grunted. “Catch him eventually, of course. They know what kind of car he drove. Sideswiped a couple of parked cars and left some paint and a bumper guard. It was a green Buick.” There was a pause, then he repeated, “Green Buick,” and looked up with
a slight grin. “You have an alibi for two thirty A.M. Tuesday, Helena?”

  “You tucked me in at eleven P.M. Monday night, dear,” she said in a calm tone. “Remember?”

  “Sure, but how do I know you went to sleep after I went to my room? Did you?”

  Her husband’s attempts at humor never convulsed Helena. His present attempt made it difficult for her even to summon a dutiful smile. Her rare smiles were never more than slight liftings of the lip corners. This one was hardly visible.

  “Perhaps I sneaked out to meet a lover after you went to sleep,” she said. “You do sleep soundly, you know.”

  And it was convenient that he did, she thought. Like all his habits, Lawrence Powers’ habits of sleep were regular. He slept from eleven P.M. to seven A.M. every night of the year, including weekends and vacations. He slept heavily, without stirring, and almost nothing could waken him, not even alarm clocks. It was one of Helena’s few marital duties to get her husband up mornings.

  His sound sleeping gave her considerable freedom to go where she pleased after midnight. She could be fairly sure even a ringing phone wouldn’t awaken him, and she never even had to exercise much caution in leaving the house or returning. For nearly four months she had been meeting Harry Cushman after midnight two or three times a week, and as yet hadn’t even come close to getting caught.

  Powers chuckled at the unlikely thought of Helena’s having a lover. Turning the page, he said, “Well, they’ll catch whoever it was, of course. Hope they give him the limit. I haven’t much sympathy for a hit-and-runner.” He read in silence, then said, “Well, well. Old Grombsy has retired from the school board finally. About time. He’s been in his dotage for years.”

  Helena said, “I think I’d like a brandy with my coffee, dear. May I pour you one?”

  Powers looked up in surprise. Helena rarely suggested a drink, though she was usually agreeable if the suggestion came from him.

  “All right,” he said. He studied her more closely. “You’ve lost a little color, my dear. Aren’t you feeling well?”

  “Quite well,” she said, rising and moving to the liquor cabinet. “It’s just the heat, I think. My blood thins out.”

  She poured two thimbles of brandy and carried one to him. As soon as his face was buried in the paper again, she quickly tossed hers off, quietly poured another, and set it on the end table next to her chair. Absorbed in the paper, Powers didn’t notice.

  The weekend passed slowly for Helena. On Friday Harry Cushman phoned to report that he had delivered the additional money to Calhoun. She had no opportunity to see Cushman over the weekend, however, and time always dragged heavily when she had to spend a long period in the company of her husband.

  On Monday Lawrence Powers went to the bank in the morning despite the fact he was scheduled to leave for New York City in the afternoon. He told Helena to expect him home for lunch. This gave her an opportunity to phone Calhoun to make sure plans were unchanged. The private detective assured her that they were the same, and that he would pick up the car after dark that night.

  Lawrence Powers was one of those men who arrive everywhere early. Although his plane wasn’t scheduled to leave until three thirty and it was only a twenty-minute drive to the airport, he was packed and ready to depart by one thirty.

  From previous experience Helena should have been on guard against what happened. But she was too busy mentally rehearsing her explanation for driving her husband to the airport in the station wagon instead of the convertible for it to occur to her that she might have to sidetrack his officious helpfulness. She was first aware of danger when he strode in the back door just as she entered the kitchen from the front part of the house.

  He announced cheerfully, “I pulled the car out for you. Ready to go?”

  She subdued her first impulse—to dart to the kitchen window and stare out. With apparent unconcern she walked to it and gave the car in the driveway a seemingly casual glance. She didn’t even blink when she saw it was the green Buick. Powers had swung it sidewise to the rear of the house, so its damaged side couldn’t be seen from the kitchen window. Apparently he had both entered and got out of the car by the lefthand door, and hadn’t noticed the damage.

  In a calm voice Helena said, “I meant to take the station wagon, dear. The convertible has a funny ping in the motor.”

  Powers raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t notice it.”

  “It doesn’t start until you reach about thirty miles an hour. I didn’t want to bother you with it. I meant to take it into the garage tomorrow, after you were gone.”

  Picking up her bag from the kitchen table, she started toward the door. When her husband followed, she opened her bag as though searching for keys, then stopped in the doorway, blocking his way.

  “I don’t seem to have a handkerchief, Lawrence,” she said over her shoulder. “Will you get one from my bureau while I put the convertible away and pull out the station wagon? Alice is upstairs, and can show you where I keep them.”

  With a husbandly grumble, Powers turned to perform the chore. Helena went on out the back door and slipped under the wheel of the convertible.

  She was slipping the key into the ignition lock when her husband’s impatient voice called from above, “Helena!”

  Glancing up, she saw that he was leaning from an upstairs window. She said nothing, merely waiting to see what he wanted.

  “Which kind of handkerchief?” he inquired in a loud voice. “One of those fancy ones, or one you can blow your nose on?”

  “A plain one, dear,” she called.

  She started the engine, her gaze still upturned. She knew that from his elevated position he could see right across the car, and she hoped that by keeping her gaze fixed on him she could keep his fixed on her face. But as the car began to move, his expression suddenly changed. At first his eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed again in shock and understanding.

  Dropping her gaze, she drove the convertible back into the garage.

  She had climbed from the car and was waiting quietly between it and the station wagon when Powers stormed into the garage. He was carrying his grip in one hand and a small plain handkerchief in the other. He dropped the grip on the garage floor, walked around behind the convertible, and squeezed into the narrow space between it and the wall. After staring at the damaged side for a moment, he backed out and rounded the car again to confront his wife.

  In a horrified voice he said, “Helena, you killed that old man!”

  Without inflection Helena said, “There are lots of green Buicks.”

  With his eyes fixed on his wife’s face in shocked wonder, Powers slowly shook his head.

  “Someone must have stolen the car and brought it back after the accident,” she said. “You know I was in bed at eleven that night.”

  Slowly he shook his head again.

  “I thought perhaps one of Alice’s boy friends did it,” she said. “I was afraid to mention it to you, because I knew you’d insist on firing her and calling the police. And she’s too good a maid to lose. I was going to have it fixed while you were gone.”

  Powers’ shoulders slumped. In a weary voice he said, “You don’t even have imagination enough to think up a good story. What have you been doing? Cruising the bars alone after I’m asleep? Or meeting a lover?”

  She said nothing, merely continuing to gaze at him without expression.

  “Don’t you have any emotion at all?” he asked, violence in his tone for the first time she remembered. “God knows there’s never been any passion in you. But you might at least look sorry for taking a human life.”

  She continued silent.

  “Or do you have passion for other men?” he inquired bitterly. “Do you find men who can stir you on the streets at two thirty in the morning? Is that what you were doing?”

  When she still made no reply, he brushed past her to the bench at the rear of the garage. The Powerses had five phone extensions, and one was in the garage. He picked up the phone.r />
  Moving behind him, Helena said, “What are you doing, dear?”

  “Phoning the police,” he said, and dialed 0.

  Helena didn’t argue or plead with him. She knew her husband well enough to realize it would be useless. Having a direct mind, she took direct action.

  She lifted a heavy wrench from an assortment of tools lying on the bench and brought it down on the back of her husband’s head. He fell to his knees, tried to support himself by grasping the edge of the bench, then lost his grip and collapsed face down.

  Helena lifted the dangling phone and replaced it in the cradle. Carefully she laid the wrench back exactly where it had been. She walked without hurry to the door of the garage and ran her gaze over all the rear windows of the house to make sure Alice wasn’t watching from one of them. Satisfied that she wasn’t, Helena pulled closed the sliding door on one side until it blocked Powers’ prone body from view.

  Then she returned to her husband and stooped over him. He was unconscious but breathing regularly, and she judged that he was not seriously hurt. She also judged, by the lump already forming on the back of his head, that he would stay unconscious for a time.

  She rose, took a cigarette from her bag, lit it, and contemplated the unconscious man moodily. For ten minutes she stood without moving, thinking steadily. Then she carefully stepped out the cigarette butt and bent over him again.

  She had decided what to do. Lawrence Powers had been wrong when he accused her of having no imagination. What she planned might be considered illogical, but it certainly didn’t lack imagination.

  7

  Harry Cushman maintained a seven-room apartment on Elm-wood Avenue. When his doorbell rang at two thirty in the afternoon, he was surprised to find Helena standing in the hall.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked worriedly. “I thought you were driving your husband to the airport this afternoon.”

  She moved past him into the apartment, waited until he closed the door, then offered her lips for a kiss. He gave her a preoccupied peck and repeated, “What’s the matter?”