Red Gardenias

by Jonathan Latimer

  She bent over and slapped Alice's face from right to left. It sounded like a paper bag bursting.

  She said, "I've been wanting to do that for a long time."

  Alice looked frightened, but she came out of her chair in a hurry, her head shielded by her left arm. "You..." she said, taking a step in Carmel's direction. She clawed at Carmel's face, left parallel red slashes on her neck.

  Carmel slapped her again, sent her back against the table. Both the whisky bottle and the seltzer siphon toppled, rolled across the table in unison, shattered on the floor.

  Alice fumbled for a weapon on the surface of the table, with both hands flung magazines in Carmel's face. She was sobbing, choking. She rushed at Carmel, grappled with her.

  For five seconds they wrestled, their eyes white and mad, their red mouths distorted, their faces close. Above the sound of their breathing briefly rose the music of a waltz, sweet with violins. Then Alice's tangerine-colored nails flashed in the light, tore more flesh from Carmel's neck. A second downward, clawing stroke broke the skin on Carmel's shoulder, tore off one of the evening gown's straps, half her white brassiere. She threw both arms around Carmel's neck, tried to wrestle her to the floor. Carmel bit her forearm to the bone.

  Alice's scream tortured Crane's eardrums.

  Freed from the encircling arms, Carmel hit out with her closed fist, moved up, hit again. Alice, caught off balance, fell back against the wall, slid to the floor, remained for an instant in a sitting position, then fell on her left side. Blood oozed from the bite in her arm.

  Carmel stood over her, watching her. She looked frightened. "She isn't...?" she began.

  Crane said, "The Hays office would never pass you like that."

  Without taking her eyes off Alice, Carmel pulled up brassiere and dress. "Look at her," she commanded. "See if she's dead."

  "I hardly think so." Crane got up and bent over Alice. "No. She's breathing."

  "Thank God!" Carmel sat in Alice's chair. "What a terrible thing!"

  "I've paid ten dollars for a seat at worse fights."

  "If I'd killed her... "

  Feet sounded in the corridor. Dr Woodrin and Ann appeared at the locker-room door. "Did someone... " the doctor began, and then caught sight of Alice. "My God! What happened?"

  "A little tussle," Crane said.

  The doctor knelt beside Alice, felt her pulse. He straightened her body, said, "Get me a pillow." Ann got two damp towels from the shower room, and he wrapped these around the girl's head. In the medicine chest Ann found iodine and bandages for the arm.

  Carmel, watching them, was so pale that Crane became alarmed. He thrust a glass in her hand. "Drink this."

  "I'm all right," she said.

  "What happened?" Ann asked.

  "They got into sort of a discussion," Crane said.

  Carmel said, "Alice was drunk."

  Dr Woodrin, from the floor, glanced at her with inquiring eyes. "It doesn't make any difference, anyway." He looked to Crane. "There'll be no scandal as long as we keep quiet."

  "I was going to call the newspapers," Crane said. "But..."

  Carmel interrupted him. "Will she be all right?"

  "Sure." Dr Woodrin looked boyish with his close-cut black hair and pink-and-white cheeks. "I think it's alcohol rather than concussion."

  Crane said, "You'd better look after Carmel's cuts."

  Ann found some alcohol, and the doctor bathed the scratches.

  Alice moaned and sat up. She looked at them with incurious eyes. "I don't feel well," she said.

  Dr Woodrin helped her to her feet, held her with an arm around her waist when she swayed unsteadily. "You'd better lie down for five or ten minutes," he said. "I'll give you some ammonia."

  "There are some cots by the showers," Carmel said.

  The surgeon led Alice to the back of the locker room. Ann looked at Crane curiously. "How come you're not scarred up?"

  "It was a private fight."

  Carmel said, "Not private enough, though." She turned her great eyes upon him. "You're not going to pay any attention...?"

  "She was tight," Crane said.

  "Thanks," Carmel said.

  Fairly sober again, Crane watched her admiringly. She had been accused of murder, adultery and a few other more or less destructive qualities; had finished a really first-class drag-out fight, yet her composure was perfect. That wasn't all that was perfect about her, either. It was too bad, he thought, that Alice hadn't lasted a little longer. She might have stripped Carmel naked.

  Dr Woodrin came back. "She'll be all right now." He looked at the door. "Hello! Who's this?"

  It was Williams. His button-bright black eyes were excited. "Mr Crane," he said.

  "What is it?"

  "Something outside I'd like to show you."

  "What?"

  "You better come. The doc, too."

  Something in his tone brought them all on his heels. Crane walked beside Ann along the corridor leading to the service entrance.

  She said, "Didn't I hear you say you weren't going to drink?"

  "I didn't drink very much." He had an idea. "Anyway, it was business."

  She didn't consider that a very good excuse. "I thought we were going to be nice to each other, too," she added.

  "We are." He tried to take her arm, but she pulled away.

  "Do you think leaving me alone for an hour to drink around with Carmel is being nice?"

  "It was Alice."

  "Do you have to call them by their first names?"

  "You call Peter, Peter."

  "That's different," she said angrily.

  Outside, bitter air stung their nostrils, made their heads ache. The moon was nearly full: its light silver on the dew-coated grass. In the distance, clear in the tranquil air, violins mourned over a tango, "La Cumparsita."

  "This way," Williams said.

  They passed along a dark passageway formed by parked cars, walking now on cinders. Their shoes made a crunching noise. The faces of the two women were like jasmine blossoms in the moonlight. Crane pulled his dinner jacket over his chest. It was cold.

  "Here," Williams said.

  They halted a few feet from a black sedan. For a moment Crane was conscious of something very odd about the sedan, but he didn't know what it was. Then three things came to his attention: the motor was running; a gray mist, almost like steam, was floating from the right rear window; a man was huddled against the right front door, asleep in the seat next to the driver's.

  He knew the man was not asleep.

  He could not tell, afterward, how long they stood there, watching the wispy mist above the rear window. It was the color of pine smoke. It was like air from the lungs on a cold day. It diminished and expanded; it was like very sheer gray silk; it was like cigarette smoke rolling from an open mouth.

  "I heard the motor," Williams said.

  Crane jerked open the front door, helped Dr Woodrin lift out the body. He held his breath while his head was within the car. He stepped aside after they had placed the body on the cinders, allowed the doctor to kneel by the head.

  Carmel's voice was out of tune. "Talmadge March!" she cried. Her voice made shivers run up and down Crane's back.

  Even in the moonlight Crane could see Talmadge's face was discolored. It looked purple, but he supposed in daylight it would be crimson. That was the usual color of carbon monoxide victims.

  Dr Woodrin stood up. "We'd better send for the coroner." His voice was matter of fact.

  Carmel said, "It's Talmadge's car—why isn't he in the driver's seat?"

  "I don't know," Crane said.

  With a last sigh of violins, "La Cumparsita" came to an end. The clubhouse filled with a hollow sound of handclapping. Carmel March's breath Wheezed in her throat. Crane went over to the sedan, put his head inside, turned the ignition key. He sniffed cautiously.

  Heavy, sweet, cloying, an odor of gardenias clogged his nostrils, made his heart pound with excitement.

  CHAPTER XV
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  Outside, at five o'clock, it was soot dark. The alarm clock was making a noise like a long-distance ring on the telephone, and William Crane hastily turned it off. He put on brown corduroy trousers and a gray flannel shirt, conscious of a frosty wind nipping his ankles.

  Downstairs, he found Williams frying eggs in the kitchen.

  "Where's Ann?" Crane asked.

  Williams handed him a note.

  Bill,

  I'll be back before noon.

  Have an idea.

  Ann

  "When'd she go?" Crane demanded. "I heard her leave about half an hour ago. It woke me up."

  "I hope she doesn't get in a jam," Crane said.

  The breakfast Williams cooked was swell. They ate five eggs apiece, using bread to sop up the yolk on the plates, and finished the entire pot of coffee.

  Crane sighed contentedly, said, "Maybe they won't come with Talmadge dead."

  Williams wiped his mouth with a checkered red-and-white dishcloth. "A thing like another death in the family isn't going to keep the Marchs from something important... such as duck shooting."

  "They're still pretending the deaths are accidents," Crane said. "I don't understand it."

  "Maybe they're scared not to."

  Crane led the way into the front room. "I better look at Talmadge's exhaust pipe, make sure a hose was on it. I didn't want to appear too interested last night before everybody."

  "I'll do it," Williams said.

  "And see if you can get any dope at the Country Club. Find out where Doctor Woodrin was just before you found Talmadge."

  "You think he's the guy?"

  "I don't know. A doctor might think of something like gas."

  "But what's his motive?" Williams wanted to know. "The only connection he's got with the Marchs is the Duck Club, which ain't worth anything and which he don't own, anyway."

  "Maybe he's after Carmel." A horn blew outside.

  "I'm going to watch him, anyway," Crane said. "So long." He paused at the door. "You might be trying to figure out why Talmadge wasn't in the driver's seat of his own car while I'm gone."

  Peter March was outside, looking as though he hadn't slept. He said they would pick up Woodrin and then his father. "Judge Dornbush is driving out by himself," he added.

  In response to their horn, Dr Woodrin stuck his head out the bedroom window of his apartment. "I'll be right down," he called. He had on a blue pajama top.

  Five minutes later they were talking to Simeon March. He was just starting breakfast. "I'll drive out myself," he said. "You go too fast, anyway, Peter."

  He didn't say anything about Talmadge's death. He didn't say anything to Crane, but he looked at him through his brown-sugar eyes and Crane knew he was fired. He knew it just as well as if he'd been sent a letter.

  Peter said, "We'll see you out there, Dad," and they left.

  Dr Woodrin drove. He drove very rapidly, but with great skill, and Crane remembered that he had once driven ambulances in the Oklahoma oil fields. Crane wondered what he would do when Simeon March really did fire him. It would be quite a disgrace. He wondered if Ann had found anything.

  He asked Dr Woodrin if there would be an autopsy on Talmadge's body. The doctor didn't think so.

  "Won't somebody talk to the police... or something?" Crane persisted.

  A gusty wind kept pushing the sedan to the left. Clouds obscured the sun; gray light flooded the countryside; the trees, the fields, looked as though they were being seen through sun glasses. It was still cold.

  "What could you tell them they don't already know?"

  "Well... about the bodies smelling of gardenias."

  Dr Woodrin smiled. "I'd like to see old Chief Auerbach's face when you tell of corpses smelling of gardenias. He'd have you locked up."

  The club was a farmhouse set on a knoll among hardwood trees. Just before the sedan turned off" the gravel road a sign said: Coon Lake—1 Mile. The country was rolling and quite heavily wooded, and the earth was a rich black.

  A stocky man in blue overalls met them at the door. "Good an' cold, Doc," he said. His face was like raw hamburger from the wind.

  Crane learned his name was Karl Johnson. He and his boys took care of the Duck Club under Dr Woodrin's orders. A black-and-tan hound kept at his heels. He led them into the house.

  In the clubroom, the result of the removal of a partition between the dining room and parlor of the old March house, were big chairs and two leather couches. The floor was bright with Indian rugs. In an alcove near the back was a small bar, and Judge Dornbush, his face pink, was pouring himself a whisky.

  Karl offered Crane a double-barreled.16, asking if it would be all right. He said, "Sure." Dr Woodrin got him some gloves from the locker room.

  Karl announced shooting positions. "The doc and you, Mr Crane, will go to Coon Lake. I'll paddle you out to the blind." He assigned Judge Dornbush to Woods' Hole and Peter to Mallard Lane. "I'll send Mr March down when he comes," he told Peter.

  Judge Dornbush had his gun in his hands. "Let's start," he said. "It's nearly seven." The gun had silver on it, and the butt was carved.

  Halfway down the knoll, the judge and Peter, with two of Johnson's boys following them, turned to the right, went away on a winding path through a patch of hardwood trees.

  Peter called, "Good luck."

  "Thanks," Crane said.

  Ahead, for miles, he could see woods and meadows and black patches of soil, and further a ridge similar to the one they were descending. Blue haze hung over the river valley; softened the reds and golds of the autumn leaves. Occasionally, a silver eye of water winked in the early sun.

  "Lots of pools down there," Karl said. "Every spring the river fills 'em up."

  Crane was surprised to find there was no marshland. The earth, even in the low places, was firm underfoot. It was very black and smelled of moldering leaves.

  "Should be catfish in those pools," he said.

  Karl shook his head."The water gets oily. It kills 'em."

  They came to a small lake. A shallow stream flowed like a tail from one end, gave it the shape of a tadpole. Grass grew near the shore and ten yards out there were weeds. The color of the water was strange; it was iridescent with blues and violets and greens.

  Karl pulled a brown canoe from some bushes. Startled, three crows left a golden maple, flew off" with protesting caws. The black-and-tan hound appeared from somewhere and tried to get in the canoe, but Karl drove him off with the paddle.

  The wind was cold and gusty by the blind on the other side of Coon Lake. Karl steadied the canoe while they got out, handed them their shotguns and three boxes of shells.

  "I'll go for Mr March." Karl shoved the canoe away with his paddle. "Be back as soon as he comes."

  The blind was the most elaborate one Crane had ever seen, built of cement and lined with pine. There were two stools in it, and Crane discovered his head was just even with the reeds when he sat down. In front of the blind two dozen wooden decoys floated patiently.

  Dr Woodrin glanced at his wrist watch. "Two minutes to seven."

  Crane shoved two shells in his gun and looked around. In back, about half a mile away, rose the bridge, covered with trees ranging in color from squash-yellow to tomato-red. A gust of wind made him turn up his flannel shirt.

  "We'll alternate shots," Dr Woodrin said. "You take the first one."

  "At what?" Crane asked.

  "There'll be something coming in pretty soon."

  They waited patiently for ten minutes. Crane was glad he had thought to put on wool socks. He heard two shots in rapid succession to the right.

  "Peter March," Dr Woodrin said, and added quickly, "Look out?"

  Two mallards, flying about two hundred feet in the air, came down the stream. They warily circled the lake, cocking bright black eyes at the decoys. They went down wind, then came slowly in for a landing. Crane stood up and nailed the drake.

  The hen banked and started for the left, but the doctor caught her
just as she appeared to be out of range. She tumbled head over heels into some reeds.

  "Good shot," Crane said.

  The doctor said, "Thanks," and put another shell in his gun.

  There seemed to be plenty of wild fowl around. Crane could hear frequent shots from the right and an occasional double from further away. He assumed this was Judge Dornbush at Woods' Hole.

  A flight of teal, coming hell for leather into the lake, startled him and he missed two shots. Dr Woodrin got one and missed his second. The teal were gone in a fraction of a second.

  "They're like greased lightning," Crane said.

  He did fairly well on further shooting, and in twenty minutes he had four mallards. Dr Woodrin had two teal and six mallards. They both had fired two shots at a flock of seven spoonbills without result.

  Crane began to feel familiar with mallard and teal.

  The mallard, he decided, was a smart guy. His eyes were always bright with suspicion, and more often than not he'd pass over a place that didn't look exactly right. He seemed to like the land, and often appeared from a cluster of trees.

  The teal, on the other hand, had nothing on the ball but speed. He was prone to snap judgments, and would race for an inviting piece of water without any misgivings. He could clear out in a hurry, though, when the shooting began.

  Five spoonbills appeared from the other side of the lake, circled overhead. Crane got ready to shoot. Two of the birds came down toward the decoys, but Crane held off, hoping all five would come in so Dr Woodrin would have a shot.

  "Go ahead," Dr Woodrin said.

  Crane brought down the first bird. Immediately after his shot, as the spoonbill tumbled toward the water, he heard a pinging noise and a sound like somebody driving a small nail with a hammer. Dr Woodrin, taking his time, got another bird.

  Crane felt, the hair rise on his neck. He felt alarmed about something, but he couldn't imagine what it was. He sat on his stool.

  "Coming in fast," Dr Woodrin observed.

  A moment later a good flock of teal slanted down at them. The doctor got one and Crane caught another with his second shot. He thought teal would be easier to hit if they were bigger. He heard the pinging noise and saw water spurt up almost directly in front of him. He blinked his eyes at the bubbles and sat down.