“But how?” he said.
“Give me a hand.”
They stood on either side of John Gannon and took his arms and started to lift him. Then they stopped, staring now at the dark stain well down the middle of the broad back, the darker stain on the cushion.
“All right,” Workman’s voice was quiet, resigned. “Better leave him as he is.” He took a breath, eyes moving to the telephone. “Better call Vantine and get the police. Tell them it’s a job for a coroner or medical examiner.”
He looked at the girl. He looked down at his own near nakedness.
“We’ll get dressed,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
Dave watched them go and then stood where he was, feeling numb and beaten and unable for a while to move at all. Gradually then he became aware of the sand in his shoes, the sweat-stained jacket that clung wetly to his back.
Rousing himself with an effort he slipped off the jacket and dropped it into a chair. Standing first on one leg and then the other, he emptied the sand from his Oxfords and then he went to the kitchen and took a quick swallow from a bottle of Bourbon. When he came back he went directly to the telephone and told the operator to get him the police station in Vantine.
CHAPTER FOUR
CAPTAIN VAUGHN, the acting chief-of-police in Vantine, was a loose-limbed six-footer with a tanned and weathered face and close-cropped dark hair. He wore a wrinkled cotton suit that bulged at each hip, and there was a gold badge on his shirt. Arriving at Seabeach with a motorcycle escort and plenty of assistance, he had asked Dave for a quick fill-in, listened to a partial corroboration from Workman and Betty Nelson, and then sent them into Dave’s room to wait. When, a half hour later, he opened the door and asked them into Gannon’s quarters, the body had been removed, the seat cushions had been turned, and there was only the open door of the safe to indicate anything had happened.
George Stinson, in his slack suit and sandals, was sitting in one corner, a bewildered look in his bespectacled eyes. A plain-clothes man leaned against the door frame, and two uniformed officers wearing cartridge belts and .45s stood waiting while Vaughn checked the registration cards of the tenants that Stinson had furnished.
“Two of these,” he said in his softly cadenced drawl, “have no license numbers, Mr. Stinson.”
“Yes.” Stinson nodded. “Mr. Tyler and the Lane couple came by bus. We often get them,” he added. “People who like to travel the roads but don’t want to drive. I understand it’s very comfortable.”
Vaughn gave the cards to one of the uniformed men. “Check these,” he said. “Don’t scare ’em, just find out if they saw anything tonight. We can’t hold all of ’em, but if you get anybody that’s doubtful I’ll talk to him. Maybe I’d better talk to the ones in the bungalows on each side here anyway.”
He walked over to the wall safe. “Kinda clever,” he said. “Who’d know it was here?” He glanced at Stinson, at Dave and Workman and Betty sitting on the settee.
“We all did,” Dave said, “except maybe Betty.”
“Oh, I knew,” she said quickly.
Workman looked at Dave. “Frank Tyler, too,” he said.
Only then did Dave remember the blond man and the scene that had taken place that afternoon. When Vaughn said: “Who’s Tyler?” Dave told him, giving what history he knew as well as what had been said earlier.
Vaughn turned to the other uniformed man. “Get him,” he said. He moved to the table to examine the things taken from Gannon’s pockets: keys, a wallet, cigarettes, three or four match folders, a handkerchief, some loose bills and change, a slip of paper which he unfolded.
“Play the horses much?” he asked of no one in particular.
“Constantly,” Dave said.
“Looks like he had a two-horse parlay going. Trumpter and Donnabelle.”
“Trumpter won,” the plain-clothes man said. “I don’t know about the other.”
Vaughn picked up the ring of keys. Stepping over to the safe he unlocked the inner door. Not bothering to take anything out, he glanced at Dave.
“I understand Mr. Gannon talked some of suicide. What can you tell me about that?”
Dave leaned back and took a breath. His head still throbbed. He felt hot and dirty, discouraged at his own failure, a little sick inside. It took quite a while to tell the story of Gannon’s trouble but Vaughn listened without interrupting. Only when it was over did he have a question.
“Who knew Gannon had been talking suicide?”
“Nearly everyone who was around him. Except”—Dave hesitated—“Frank Tyler. He didn’t get in until this afternoon.”
Vaughn thought it over; then said: “You were acting as a male nurse, but you’re not?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“Close friend?”
Dave considered this and replied as honestly as he could. “No, but I owed him plenty…. Gannon used to have a small trucking business,” he said after a moment. “My father was a bookkeeper for him. When he died I was in my last year at college and Gannon helped me finish because he liked my father. He helped me through Cornell Law School, helped me get a job with this law firm.”
He thought of other things as he spoke, of how Gannon, who had not gone to college, had liked to come to Cornell for some of the football games. He would come down to the fraternity house afterward, always in a big car, with his flashy clothes and his tough, hoarse way of talking. Comparing him then with the parents of the other boys had made Dave a little ashamed, and now the shame was on him like a sickness because of those secret thoughts which had been with him long ago.
“This time he needed the help,” he said, his tone bitter. “I guess I didn’t have enough to give him.”
Vaughn walked across the room, came back. “Who inherits? And how much?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re his lawyer.”
“I’m with the firm but I didn’t represent Gannon.”
Vaughn indicated the telephone. “Maybe you could call Boston and find out. It might be important.”
Dave looked at his watch and saw that it was after one. He said he would try to get one of the partners at his home, and put in the call. Then, as he sat down again, a new thought came to him.
“Resnik might know about the safe.”
“Sam Resnik? How would he?”
Dave told him. He said Resnik had driven up the day before with another man. Gannon had wanted to talk business so he, Dave, had gone into his room.
“And listened some?” Vaughn asked.
“I heard some of it without listening. It was about the Club 80. Gannon had an interest in it and—”
“He what? Since when?”
“I don’t know,” Dave said. “It was the first I’d heard about it. Later he asked me to draw up an agreement. I batted it out on the typewriter in Mr. Stinson’s office, made one carbon.”
“What was the substance of it?”
“It was a simple agreement to sell the Club 80 for $120,000.”
“To whom?”
Dave said he didn’t know. “I left a space for the buyer’s name and left the date blank. John said that would do until a detailed agreement could be drawn. After he’d read it he put it in the safe. He asked me if I’d ever had five thousand dollars in my hand and I told him no so he took out this stack of hundred-dollar bills and gave them to me.”
“Gave them?” Vaughn scowled.
“Let me hold them,” Dave said patiently. “He thought it was funny. He put them back in the safe.”
Vaughn went to it and began to empty the contents, piling the various papers on the table beside the things which had come from Gannon’s pockets. There were fifteen hundred dollars in new hundred-dollar bills but no package such as Dave had seen.
“These bills were older,” he said. “There was a paper band around them, initialed in ink.” He hesitated and said: “I think the initials were T.A.K. Maybe a bank teller wrote them.”
He watched Vaughn empty the sa
fe, aware finally that both the five thousand and the agreement he had drawn were missing. When Vaughn was sure, he gave Dave a moment’s silent regard; finally he shrugged.
“Maybe you know how Resnik fitted in the picture.”
“I had an idea John wanted to sell out and Resnik didn’t.”
Vaughn turned to the plain-clothes man. “Get him, Ed!”
Ed looked doubtful. “Sam’s across the county line.”
“He’ll come,” Vaughn said and then, as Ed went out, one of the uniformed officers came in with two men who occupied the bungalows on either side.
One was tall, gaunt, sleepy-eyed, and irritable. He said his name was Weaver and he came from Ashtabula, Ohio. Vaughn explained what had happened and asked if he had heard a shot.
“Yes,” Weaver said.
“When?” asked Vaughn with new interest.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Just that, mister. I drove down from Brunswick today. I shook the car half apart over those washboard roads to the border, had a flat, listened to three kids yacking in the back seat all day while the wife told me how to drive. We got here too late for dinner so we had to go to town and when we got back I went to bed.”
In his annoyance he managed to get all of this out in one breath and then he said: “I heard something, something that woke me. Could have been a shot, could have been a truck. Short of an earthquake I couldn’t be bothered by anything except sleep. I turned over and got some more. I was doing all right until your man came banging on the door.”
When further questioning revealed that the man knew nothing more and was interested only in additional sleep, Vaughn dismissed him and turned to the other man whose name was Bardell and who came from Plainfield, New Jersey.
Bardell was older, quieter, worried looking, but no more helpful than Weaver. He was traveling with his wife, daughter, and son-in-law. They had been to a movie and stopped on the way back for a drink. He thought they had returned about eleven thirty and neither he nor any of his party had been aware of any shot. At the moment his chief concern was that his wife, having learned about the murder, would insist on packing and moving out at once.
Frank Tyler was ushered in a moment later wearing slacks, a pajama top, and a very sullen look. Vaughn looked him over carefully, his expression indicating he did not care much for what he saw. When he was ready he told Tyler what had happened, reminding him of the quarrel that afternoon. Finally he looked through the papers on the table and located the proper agreement.
“The way I get it,” he said, “is that after Mr. Gannon had built the motel he hired Mr. Stinson to run it”—he glanced at the bespectacled manager—“and made him a bonus arrangement as an incentive. He assigned Mr. Stinson one fourth of the profits. He assigned his daughter another quarter—this was before she married you—and a few weeks before your accident, she re-assigned this interest to you.”
“That’s right,” Tyler said.
“According to this”—Vaughn tapped the agreement—“all you or Stinson could get while Gannon was alive was this cut of the profits. Upon his death, or upon sale of the place, Stinson and Gannon’s daughter—which means you—would get a fourth of the proceeds. You came here this afternoon hoping you could cash in on that quarter interest now.”
“Well, I thought—”
Vaughn cut him off. “All you were entitled to was a quarter of the income, and to make sure your share was cut down, Gannon called the president of the County Bank & Trust Company at his home and—in your presence—said he wanted to slap the biggest mortgage he could get on the place so that when the interest was paid there wouldn’t be so much profit for you to collect.”
He glanced at Dave for confirmation, got a nod, and then turned to Stinson. “Did Gannon tell you he was going to mortgage the place?”
“Well—yes.”
“When?”
“Before dinner. He—he said he wanted to cut down Mr. Tyler’s share as much as possible, but that he would make some other arrangement with me.”
“Did he tell you the bank might want to go over the books in the morning?”
“Yes. That’s why I was working on them all evening. So I could get them up to date.”
Vaughn grunted softly. “Now it won’t matter so much.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You won’t have to worry about the books. Things are different now.”
Stinson blinked. “In what way?”
“The profits aren’t going to matter so much. With Mr. Gannon out of the way you’ve got a quarter interest outright. You can sell that interest—if you can get anyone to buy—borrow on it or—”
“I don’t believe it.”
Vaughn looked round to see who had interrupted. It was Betty, sitting upright, her chin up and her glance defiant in a way that made Dave proud of her.
“Mr. Stinson would never do a thing like that.”
Vaughn gave her a tolerant glance. “That’s your opinion, ma’am. We’re not accusing anyone yet, we’re talking about motive.” He turned to give Tyler a long, silent look, then said: “You got what you came for, didn’t you? What Gannon refused to give you this afternoon.”
“Look here,” Tyler said, his tone blustering and his blond face unpleasant. “If you’re insinuating that I had anything to—” The sentence sputtered out in the face of Vaughn’s narrowed gaze and then the phone rang to punctuate it.
Vaughn answered, then handed the instrument to Dave. What followed made up a harrowing and unforgettable five minutes. For Mr. Ames, the senior partner, could not understand that John Gannon was dead, not from suicide, but from murder.
“Murder?” he said finally. “Are you sure? You say he was shot? By whom?”
“They don’t know yet.”
“But how could that happen? You were with him, weren’t you?”
“No, sir.”
“What’s that! But good God, man. That’s what you were down there for. Where did it happen? Where the hell were you?”
Dave explained as best he could. He could not bring himself to say he had fallen asleep because it was a nightmarish situation that he could not even understand himself.
“He gave me the slip,” he said lamely. “We were at this club and John was playing roulette and somehow he got out without my seeing him…. The police want to know if there was a will,” he said when he could, “and what the estate amounts to.”
“Certainly there was a will,” Mr. Ames said. “Drew it up three weeks ago.”
Then, as Dave listened to the provisions of that will, his dark-blue eyes widened and his jaw sagged. An odd emptiness gnawed at the pit of his stomach, and though he heard each word distinctly his reaction remained one of utter disbelief. When, finally, he hung up, he swallowed against that awful emptiness and shook his head bewilderedly. He took time to wipe the perspiration from his face and hands, aware that everyone was watching him. When he could he faced Vaughn.
“There was a will,” he said woodenly. “I didn’t know about it. He made it three weeks ago. There weren’t any relatives. He left everything to me.”
He paused, aware that the room was heavy with heat and absolutely still. Finally someone sighed. Vaughn’s lips twisted in what might have been a smile. Then, nothing changing in his voice, he said:
“What’s the estate consist of?”
“There was some insurance but he’d borrowed on it. I don’t know about bank accounts but Mr. Ames doesn’t think there was much cash. Aside from that there’s the motel and the Club 80, the building and grounds.”
“Building and grounds, hunh? Well, what do you know.” Vaughn rubbed a thumb along the edge of his jaw and tipped his head. “Speaking of motives,” he said thoughtfully, “you really had one.”
Dave did not protest. He did not even feel resentment at the inference because he knew it was true.
“You come in here and find Mr. Gannon in the chair and someone slug
s you—”
“I’ve got a lump to prove it too.”
“People have slugged themselves before,” Vaughn said mildly. “You’d be surprised how often they try it…. You say you chased someone but you didn’t see him. Neither did anybody else.”
“A doctor examined the body, didn’t he?” Dave argued. “He should have some idea when death occurred.”
“The doc guessed for me,” Vaughn said. “That’s about all I could expect and this shapes up like one of those cases where a guess isn’t enough. Between ten thirty and twelve is the way he put it.”
Vaughn might have had more to say but just then the screen door opened and Sam Resnik came in with the plain-clothes man.
If Resnik felt the heat he did not show it. He looked immaculate in his white dinner coat, his curly hair was neat, and his pale face was smooth and unworried. He looked the room over with his hooded eyes and put his hands in his jacket pockets, thumbs showing.
“Ed tell you?” Vaughn asked. “We’ve been finding out some things,” he added when Resnik nodded. “Like Mr. Gannon owning the Club 80.” He hesitated and said: “You and he must have had a deal.”
“We did.”
Vaughn tapped the papers on the table. “Should be an agreement here.”
“Should be,” Resnik said. “I can tell you what’s in it and save you some time. We were partners. He owned the real estate and I owned the furnishings. I operate. We split down the middle with me guaranteeing a thousand a month rent.”
“You got a lease?”
“For three years.”
“When does it expire?”
Resnik’s glance flicked to the agreement and came back. “The first of the month.”
Vaughn nodded, his gaze intent.
“That’s next week. Not much time, hunh? And I understand Gannon wanted to sell and you didn’t. What’s the agreement say about a renewal—or should we look it up?”
Resnik’s mouth tightened under the mustache but his tone was level. “It was up to Gannon. He could renew or not. In the event of his death I had the right to keep on at the same figure and for the same term, or take over at a fair appraisal.”
Never Bet Your Life Page 3