Blood on Their Hands (Mystery Writers of America Presents: MWA Classics)

by Brendan DuBois

  “It’s not for a nefarious reason, sir. Blake’s worried that the commandant will find out about her young man at Etaples.”

  He gave me a shrewd look. “I thought you girls had no time for anything but driving.”

  “Some do manage. Miss Turnball, for one.”

  “Excellent. I’ve been hoping to run into someone like you, Miss Knox. A lass I can trust who knows the people.” He lowered his voice confidentially. “Absent the company of your very decided commandant and equally decided friends.”

  “They are that, sir.”

  “Well, two ambulance accidents so closely together do raise uncomfortable questions. Only natural to feel besieged and close ranks. You knew her well, I gather?”

  “I did, sir.” I hesitated delicately, like the properly bred young woman I was, and he prompted me.

  “Distressing for you, naturally. But if you know anything that can shed light on this incident, m’dear, you must tell me. Ease the family’s grief.”

  “Yes, sir.” I coughed, murmuring an apology for a throat taxed by cold, damp, and other unpleasantness while weighing my words carefully. “Well, Turnip—Miss Turnball, sir—did talk to me. She was keeping company with Captain Brightman. I tried to warn her about regulations, but she was young, and fancied herself in love.”

  “I see. And did he return her feelings?”

  “She said so, General. But she did discover from the Times that he was married to an acquaintance of hers.”

  “Ah. So that was the way of it.”

  “Yes, sir. My brother was at school with Captain Brightman and served under him, so he couldn’t pretend to me that he was unmarried.”

  “Risky. You could have told her.”

  “I did, sir. But it had no effect. She thought I was carping on her idol out of jealousy.”

  “Awkward business. His wife has deep pockets and pull at the Palace.”

  “So I gather, sir. And I have reason to believe Miss Turnball was in the family way.” I had remembered the gypy tummy.

  “Not a new tale. Poor child.” He gave a gusty sigh. “Difficult to prove any of this, though.”

  “No, not especially. I expect if you search him and his belongings, you will find her letters. She was an indiscreet child, and Captain Brightman is, shall we say, sir, fond of trophies.”

  “Indeed. And if Miss Turnball was in the habit of writing letters to her uncle—” He fell silent and let the implication hang in the air between us.

  “Yes, sir. Awkward indeed, for Captain Brightman.”

  The guns stopped, the abrupt silence equally deafening, and our heads turned as one.

  “Ah. You will have to fill that ambulance soon, I regret to say.”

  “Yes, sir. I look forward to the day when I am out of work.”

  “As do I. Then perhaps your father and I can go bag some pheasants instead of more deadly game.” He sighed. “My best to him.”

  “I’ll tell him, sir, in my next letter.” Softer than the harsher business of Geoff...

  He saluted me, then marched to his aides milling by his car and barked a curt order. The commandant’s whistle blew, the shrill summons to our convoy, and the girls rushed out of the depot to their ambulances.

  I cranked the engine, my coughing matching the engine’s sputtering to life, the weather, tobacco, and the unaccustomed necessity of imitating the commandant on the telephone finally taking their toll on my throat.

  I climbed creakily behind the wheel. In the swarm of people and vehicles, I saw Captain Brightman pushed into the staff car by the two very stern Tommies. The self-confident voice unleashed a string of protests as they rumbled away.

  From my pocket I took out a fluttering of white ribbon, neatly snipped, and stared at it. The marker for the No. 8 turnoff. Because of the convenient “fainting spell,” the other half now rested in Brightman’s breast pocket, to be discovered by the ever-thorough military police.

  Blighty was right. The rules were changed here—especially for Turnip, who saw no sin in betraying the men who had suffered so much and gave us their trust; and for Blighty, who had sent Geoff out on the perilous line while he, safely removed from the guns and the carnage, plotted his next sordid rendezvous. He deserved not to fall in battle, as more honorable men were doing, but to be hung by the neck until dead.

  As the general had said, I knew my duty to my brother and my unit—and my Classics back at faraway Oxford. The Furies, pursuers of the murderer Orestes, were the daughters of Nox, or Night. Fitting my name, I had become a part of the black void all about me.

  How simple it was to take a young girl’s dreams of romance with an officer and twist them to one’s own advantage. Listening to her confidences. Suggesting the route for a secret rendezvous at the jolly hotel in Hardelot-Plage. Making a few adjustments to her brakes.

  Turnip was a casualty of war.

  As were we all.

  Repocketing the ribbon, I shoved the ambulance into gear and drove off into the dark.

  The Lady from Yesterday

  Jeremiah Healy

  I was lying on a chaise lounge by the pool at the Lauderdale Tennis Club, eyes closed, every limb in deep relaxation. It was one of those bell-clear mornings in early February that make believers out of the snowbirds who experience them. For somebody like me, who’d been on the pro tennis circuit until a chronic knee persuaded my thirty-something head to find it a more permanent home, the weather of South Florida was just the ticket, and the competitive level of the other members at the Club kept me sharp enough on the courts to still feel like a player.

  “Rory,” said Don Floyd’s voice from standing height over my lounge, “this lady would like to speak with you.”

  Of course, I also had to earn a living.

  Opening my eyes, I swung my legs over the edge of the chaise before standing myself. I’m nearly six-three, but I didn’t tower over the woman next to Floyd. He wore an impish grin that, even at eighty-plus, would warn wives that they wouldn’t want their husbands hanging out with him in bars. One look at his companion, and I could understand why Floyd was grinning.

  She was a stunner, in heeled sandals that helped the elevation, though I’d still have bet on five-seven or -eight barefoot. The big hair in crow-wing black probably benefited from a bottle, with heavy pancake and warpaint on the facial features. Her breasts pushed the envelope of whatever pink material the long-sleeved, bare-shouldered top was spun from, and her waist seemed cinched by the belt holding up lime green Capri pants that rippled when the woman changed stance from hipshot-left to hipshot-right.

  From behind sunglasses with reflector lenses the size of plums, she said, “Calhoun, you’re gonna advertise yourself as a private eye, the least you could do is leave word with the gate guard.”

  The Club has a strict security policy: nobody gets past the sentry box unless a resident in one of the eight condo buildings leaves the visitor’s name. “I didn’t get a call telling me someone would be coming.’’

  “Well,” said Don Floyd, his grin widening, “I think I’ll just leave you both to your business.”

  As he moved off, the woman looked around the pool area. I figured every male—and some females—would be focused on her, but she didn’t appear to notice.

  She said, “How’s about we move out of the sun, okay?”

  “Sure.” I gestured to the part of the patio under the porch’s orange-tiled roof.

  She preceded me, her rolling gait in the heels reminding me of the expression “poetry in motion.” But again, I didn’t have the feeling my potential client was conscious of it. In fact, to the extent you can read somebody behind opaque shades, I’d have said she was distracted.

  We were seated in the white resin chairs around the small, matching table before the woman said, “Monica Lewin.”

  I was thinking that the name would have been a cross for her, what with the Clinton scandal. But as she extended her right hand to shake, I noticed each vein on the back stood away from the bones as
the flesh sank between them, and I immediately upped her age from late twenties to high thirties.

  “Rory Calhoun,” I replied as we clasped briefly.

  “And that’s your real name?” Lewin withdrew her hand to hold the strap of a shoulder bag.

  “My mother had a thing for the movie star, to the point of even marrying a guy with the same last name. When I came along, I’m afraid the first—”

  “I don’t need your life story.”

  That stopped me.

  Lewin shook her head, took off the shades. Her eyes were darker than her pants, but not by much. “Look, I’m sorry, I...” Now she sighed, and I got a whiff of bourbon strong enough that I’d have said I was holding a glass of the stuff under my nose, even though the clock on the wall over her hair read only ten thirty.

  I said, “Want to tell me about it?”

  Lewin’s eyes now seemed more jaded than jade. “What, my problem, or the fact that I gargle with Wild Turkey?”

  I started to like her. “I’m guessing they might be related.”

  A nod this time. “That they are.” Now she resettled her butt on the resin chair, the pants squeaking a little. “Okay, the reason I asked about your name is I go professionally by ‘Monica LaMonica.’”

  “Professionally.”

  “I’m an exotic dancer. A ‘gentlemen’s club’ called Cottontail’s.”

  Driving north of downtown Lauderdale, I’d been by the place, though never in it. “Go on.”

  “You remember the headlines, last month?”

  “Afraid I’m not much for newspapers.”

  A slightly disgusted look. “Another girl from Cottontail’s was strangled on a cold night with her own scarf in the lot outside the club?”

  The penny dropped. “I remember some TV news on it.”

  “All right.” Lewin squared her shoulders now, as though about to deliver bad tidings. “Her name—stage name—was ‘TNT,’ which actually stood for her real initials, ‘Tara Nancy Tate.’ Only the animals at Cottontail’s had a different nickname for her.”

  “Which was?”

  “‘Two New Tits.’”

  Cosmetic surgery wasn’t exactly unusual in South Florida. “I’m not sure I see where we’re going with—’’

  “Where we’re going—” Lewin, realizing her voice was rising, glanced around at several people in tennis togs stopping to stare at her, then repeated more softly, “Where we’re going with this is, the cops think I was the one who killed her.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, well, that either makes you the best choice for me, or the worst.” The jaded eyes again. “You’re thinking I’m a flake, right?”

  Maybe Lewin’s clairvoyance came from a career looking out at men watching her. “Pretty close.”

  A grunt that wasn’t quite a laugh, but seemed to change her mood. “An honest man. I don’t run into many.”

  “Why do the police think you murdered Ms. Tate?”

  “My, my. Polite, too, aren’t we, doll?” Then she squared her shoulders again. “Christ, I’m slipping into role here. Okay, here’s the story. Tara was a natural, but a little small up-north, so she had a boob job.” Lewin closed her eyes a moment. “You know what’s involved?”

  “Roughly.”

  “Yeah, well, ‘roughly’ is the right word. Couple of years ago a friend of mine wanted one, made me promise to ‘be there for her.’” Lewin looked away, toward the pool where two girls maybe eight and ten were playing catch with a beach ball, laughing and squealing. “They painted her—naked—with this red stuff, maybe disinfectant or something. Then they...cut her, and pushed these implants—like yellow lily pads—through the slits. Only it was more shoving ten pounds into a five-pound bag, and I...I had to leave. Or throw up.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  After a moment, Lewin clucked her tongue. “But that’s what Tara was willing to go through to be a featured performer.”

  “Meaning a star?”

  “Star?” Another almost-laugh. “Yeah, that’s what she was, all right. Went around the country—well, the Southeast, anyway. Clubs all the way to Virginia, she said. But her husband was tied down here with a sick mother, so Tara did all the traveling on her own. Then she got tired of that, but not tired of the dancing. So she went up to Rocky, and said she wanted to—”

  “Rocky?”

  “Manager of Cottontail’s and tough as they come. Well, once Rocky got a look at Tara’s audition, that was it for me.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  The eyes went past jaded to just plain tired. “Tara replaced me as the lead act.”

  “The reason the police suspect you?”

  “That, and Tara—well, we had a little catfight that night before she got killed.” Lewin used one hand to push the opposite sleeve of her top halfway up her forearm. “She gave me these scratches, and I guess when the cops checked under Tara’s fingernails, they found enough of my skin for that DNA thing.”

  “You have an alibi for the time she was killed?”

  “No, but near as I can figure, that’s true for Tara’s husband—or widower, now, I guess—and the Professor, too.”

  “The Professor.”

  Lewin mentioned the college. “He’d come to watch Tara, and I mean ogle her. The other animals, they’d hoot, or even heckle. But Jason—what he called himself, and talk about miracles, turns out that was his real name. Anyway, Jason would just sit there...I don’t know, ‘in awe,’ maybe?” Now Lewin closed her eyes. “He’d even look at me that way, sometimes.”

  It was painful just to hear her say it. “I’m still not sure I see where I come in.”

  She opened the eyes, blazing now. “Look, Cottontail’s isn’t any palace like Solid Gold or Pure Platinum. It’s a run-of-the-mill strip joint. But it’s where I make my living. Or used to.”

  “This Rocky fired you?”

  “Didn’t have to. Publicity like we got from the killing? You think even the wives and girlfriends who don’t wanna know what their guys are doing some nights would let them come to a place tied to a murder? So we lost most of our regulars, and I’m dancing double shifts for nickels and dimes from tourists who won’t pay the freight at one of the better places.”

  “Why not move on to another club, then?”

  The fire in Lewin’s eyes nearly went out. “My age? I’m gonna start auditioning again?” A wave that took in more than the pool area. “All the managers want is flawless. Tits, legs, ass. Without the surgery—‘augmentation,’ liposuction—that’s just not realistic.” Now she sighed again, the bourbon scent seeming sour now. “Besides, they’d see me as this Jonah from a club where another dancer got murdered. So I need to prove somebody else killed Tara.”

  “Which is why we’re talking now?”

  “Yeah. I want off the hook and back to normal.”

  I shifted in my chair, felt my arms wanting to cross. The universal body language for “no.”

  Lewin said, “You’re not gonna help me, are you?”

  “It’s an open homicide. The police don’t take kindly to—”

  “I can pay.”

  “Wouldn’t change their mind-set.”

  Lewin rolled her shoulders this time, her breasts roaming inside the pink top. “But if I laid you, that’d change your mind-set?”

  I could feel a definite stirring below the drawstrings of my trunks. “Not that it isn’t tempting, but I try not to mix business with pleasure.”

  “Or lechure?” The grunted, almost-laugh a third time. “To be honest, me neither. One rule I’ve always had. But try telling the animals that.” Lewin shook her head—more her hair actually—and put the shades back on like they needed to be clamped in place. “At least you’re honest about it. Not like the jerk managers who audition you and then say with a smarmy smile that you’re not quite right for ‘our image,’ when what they’re really trolling for is the kind of ‘incentive’ that sexual harassment was supposed to stop. But that’s
another story.” She stood abruptly. “Thanks for your time, anyway.”

  I rose, and we shook hands to say goodbye. “I’m sorry, Ms. Lewin.”

  “Yeah, well, I got to look on the bright side, you know?”

  “Which is?”

  “You’re the first fucking guy in five years who’s called me Ms. Lewin.’”

  I had a tough match that afternoon at 5:00 p.m. against the number-three nineteen-year-old from Canada who was staying at the Club. His game consisted of a big first serve—or service, as Don Floyd and some of the other older members still call it—and booming topspin forehands. Nevertheless, I had the kid down 6-5 in the first set, when my own serve bailed. He went on to beat me in the tie-break, then cakewalked over everything I tried in the second set.

  Disgusted with myself after we finished, I spent half an hour in the hot tub, resolving to turn in early and carpe diem the next morning with an hour of serving practice on one of the back courts, maybe with Floyd watching to see if he could spot something mechanically wrong in what I was doing.

  In fact, fourteen hours later I was at the outdoor tiki bar overlooking the pool, about to order some wake-up coffee. Floyd, sitting on a stool with a newspaper in front of him, spotted me and beckoned.

  Sliding onto the stool next to him, I followed his finger again, pointing now to a headline in the Sun-Sentinel, Lauderdale’s major daily. It read second dancer’s death solves first, with a head-and-shoulders promo portrait of a smiling, younger Monica Lewin next to one of an even younger redhead captioned Tara Nancy Tate.

  Don Floyd said, “Wasn’t this Lewin the lady from yesterday?”

  Closing my eyes, I nodded.

  Detective Kyle Cascadden looked across his desk at me and said with a deep-South accent, “Heard about you from Lourdes.”

  Lourdes Pintana was the sergeant in charge of the Fort Lauderdale Homicide Unit. Cascadden and I were sitting in the unit’s large squad room, the high ceilings not doing much to freshen the moldy air. He wore a short-sleeve dress shirt with a same-shade tie, like a gangster from a thirties movie, but for the badge on the right side of his belt near a big, holstered revolver. Cascadden’s sandy hair, thinning and short on top, spilled in ragged curls over his collar in back.