Never Bet Your Life

by George Harmon Coxe

  He waited again before he spoke.

  “Willie’s a little hard to pin down. He’s got a lot of fingers in the pie.”

  “And he wanted to buy this place from John.”

  This time Resnik looked at him, his small neat mustache curving and his eyes opaque and fathomless.

  “You could ask Willie about that,” he said. “Willie ought to know.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  CAPTAIN VAUGHN sent a police car for Dave Barnum at eleven the next morning. He was taken to a small, ground-floor room in the county building to give his statement to a stenographer, and while he was waiting for it to be typed, he was escorted into the captain’s office, an airy, corner room overlooking the street.

  Vaughn welcomed him in his slow-spoken way and waved Dave toward a vacant chair. He was in his shirt-sleeves, the collar open at the throat and the gold badge putting a sag in the fabric at one side. He seemed in no hurry to talk and neither was Dave, so he sat there, watching the other’s dark, weathered face as he examined the cartridge shell in his fingers.

  “Found it last night at your place,” he said finally. “That makes it an automatic, probably a foreign one.”

  “You didn’t find the gun?”

  “We won’t. The ocean’s too close.”

  Vaughn tossed the shell beside the sheaf of papers that had been neatly piled on the roll-top desk. He clasped his hands behind his head and leaned lack to observe the street outside. That gave Dave a chance to consider the choice he had made when he failed to mention the empty capsules in his statement.

  He had done a lot of thinking since he had wakened, most of it tinged with resentment. He had relived in detail the night before, remembering the shock of finding John Gannon’s lifeless body, the humiliation of his talk with Mr. Ames when he could not explain how Gannon had managed to be alone. But what moved him most, what hurt so deeply, was the will that named him beneficiary and executor.

  It made him think of John Gannon in quite a different way and told him things he had never suspected. Recalling the secret feeling of shame he had felt when Gannon had called on him at college, remembering the tolerance with which he accepted this last association, and the superiority with which he had come to view it, he felt small and petty and horribly ashamed.

  Now John Gannon was dead and someone had gone to considerable trouble to make sure that he, Dave Barnum, was safely out of the way. It did not follow that the person who had drugged him was the killer, or even a conscious party to the crime but now, sitting there with all that resentment working on him, it seemed important that he do what he could to find out who was responsible.

  These were the emotional reasons which prompted him to withhold his discovery until he had a chance to follow along on his own, if only for a few more hours. That there was another and more practical reason for pursuing this course had become immediately apparent. For his lawyer’s mind had told him that by taking the empty capsules from the Club 80 he had largely destroyed their value as evidence. There was only his word to say where he had found them, which was worthless in itself since he himself was involved. Without corroboration he still could not prove that any drug had been administered.

  He stirred in his chair, his eyes morose and brooding like his thoughts. The movement caught Vaughn’s attention and when he turned he was ready to talk.

  “I’ve been doing some checking.”

  “On Tyler and Workman?”

  “On you, too, friend.” Vaughn ran his tongue inside his cheek, his eyelids drooping. “Your office says you didn’t know about the will.”

  Dave grinned crookedly. “Does that take me off the hook?”

  “Not quite. Because there’s always a chance that you did know about that will and the office only thinks you didn’t. I guess you forgot to tell me about the argument you two had in the Coffee Shop last night at dinner.”

  The statement made Dave blink because until this moment he had forgotten all about it. He shook his head. He said there hadn’t been any argument. He said he and Gannon had been getting on each other’s nerves the past couple of days and since Gannon was paying the bills he had a right to sound off if he wanted to.

  “The way I get it,” Vaughn said mildly, “is that Gannon said he was going to call your office this morning and have someone else sent down.”

  “He could have,” Dave said, remembering the mental cotton he had tried to stuff in his ears at the time.

  “There was something about changing his will too,” Vaughn said. “About having someone down to draw it up.”

  Dave remembered that too but it shocked him now to hear it put into words by a man who might be suspecting him of murder.

  “But I didn’t know I’d been named in that will,” he protested.

  “That’s what you say. That’s what your office seems to think.” Vaughn shrugged and his voice held the same even cadence. “But I have to consider the other possibility. As things stand you’ll own the club and half of the motel. I don’t know how much that would run to after taxes but it might be between one and two hundred thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money. Two days from now, if Gannon had lived and changed the will, you might have had nothing. That’s a motive the way I see it and I’m just telling you why you’re not off the hook.”

  He reached for one of the papers on his desk and went on as if there had been no interruption.

  “Tyler is an actor. I guess you knew that. From what I get up to now he’s got no record except some minor things—traffic violations, a disorderly conduct charge. Owes plenty of people and must’ve needed cash or he wouldn’t have had the nerve to come here and try to tap Mr. Gannon. Just what in particular he wants the money for I haven’t found out yet.”

  He put the sheet down and picked up another. “Workman seems okay. I haven’t been able to get in touch with the lawyers he claims he’s working for on this missing heir job”—he glanced at his watch—“but I should be getting through to them some time after twelve, our time. His record up to when he went in business for himself is all right. A cop on the Santa Monica force for four years. They say he’s smart, ambitious, plenty tough when he had to be. Shot up a “ couple of kids in a stolen car mixup. Caused a bit of a stink but no formal charges.” He hesitated and said: “Would you say that Gannon and Workman had ever met before?”

  Dave thought it over and shook his head.

  “What makes you think so?”

  “From the things that were said. I was there when they met. Workman went fishing with us four different days. I’m sure Gannon never even saw him before.”

  “Then,” said Vaughn, “the only way Workman could be figured, at least on the face of it, is that someone hired him to do the job…. I’ve got a timetable,” he said, and picked up some additional sheets.

  “I talked to the parking lot man at the club. He says Liza Drake drove Gannon home, dropped him off, and brought the car back.” He glanced up. “But you didn’t know that. You came back for it after we’d left.”

  “I didn’t know where else it could be,” Dave said.

  “And I forgot to ask, which may have been a mistake…. Also,” Vaughn said, “when you came back for the car you went into the club and had a drink and spent a few minutes in the back room.”

  Dave nodded, aware that the Vantine Police Department had been busy that morning, and his respect for Vaughn mounted.

  “Tyler, Workman, and Miss Nelson,” the captain continued, “arrived about the same time. Tyler had a motive and he had plenty of time to do the job. We haven’t got a motive for Workman yet but he had the time if he worked it right. There was five minutes at least when Miss Nelson was changing for the beach, probably more. She didn’t see him until he came to pick her up and I’d be willing to bet he could change faster than she could. It would only take a couple of minutes to go over to the bungalow and do the job.”

  “Stinson was around all of the time,” Dave said.

  “I’ve been thinking about Mr. Stinson
. Gannon was going to mortgage the place to cut down the profits Stinson says Gannon was going to make another arrangement so Stinson could still cash in, but that’s only what Stinson says. Maybe Gannon had a different idea. And those books Stinson had to get in order. Who’s going to know now whether there was a shortage or not?”

  Vaughn expected no answer and when he lapsed into silence Dave said: “Where was Resnik after eleven fifteen?”

  “Hah! Out for the air. Riding around.”

  “Who says so besides him?”

  “Miss Drake.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Says she was with him.”

  “She’s in love with him. She’d say what she had to say.”

  “Sure.” Vaughn nodded. “Miss Nelson’s testimony would put him on the spot but maybe Liza Drake could take him off. I don’t know. Sam’s been in and out of a lot of things. If he did the job it’s going to be hard to prove with what we’ve got up to now.”

  “So how do you stand?”

  “Not so good.” Vaughn ran his fingers through his dark, close-cropped hair. “We’re going to keep punching but the way it looks now we may have to play this thing by ear …”

  It was five minutes of twelve when Dave got back to his place and he immediately shucked off his jacket and opened a can of beer. Then, because John Gannon’s radio habits had become his own, he turned on the radio to get the noon news, checking as he did so to see that it was tuned to the right station. He had no more than settled himself when Betty knocked on the door.

  She wore one of the blue, white-trimmed dresses she used when working, and the sun burnished brightly the light-brown hair with its weather-bleached edges as she stood on the top step.

  “Mrs. Craft wants to see you,” she said. “She wouldn’t tell me why and she wouldn’t come here alone. I said I’d speak to you.”

  “All right.”

  “Now?” she asked. “I have to get back in a minute or two but if we could go now—”

  Dave snatched up his jacket and started across the lawn with Betty, not knowing just what to expect but not looking forward to the interview. For Mrs. Craft was small and neat and sixtyish and, in Dave’s opinion, a gossip. She had been at the Seabeach ten days and had wheedled from George Stinson a ten per cent reduction in rent on a weekly basis. She spent a great deal of time on the beach under her special umbrella—provided by the motel but claimed by her—knitting and doing cross-word puzzles.

  Dave had maintained, not maliciously but mostly to tease Betty, that Mrs. Craft had never been known to pass a window without trying to peek in and that, in addition, she was a secret drinker. Betty, who insisted on thinking the best of everyone—which was one of the reasons Dave loved her—defended Mrs. Craft by saying that if she seemed unduly curious it was simply because she was lonely.

  Now Mrs. Craft opened her door as they approached, smiling brightly behind her pince-nez and nodding them into the room. She wore a plain blue dress much too long to be fashionable and her blue-tinted gray hair was curled and secured by a net.

  “I told Betty,” she said when they were seated, “that I thought I should speak to you because you were a personal friend of Mr. Gannon’s. That’s true, isn’t it?”

  Dave agreed.

  “He was a gambler, wasn’t he?”

  “Well, at one time he was.”

  “Yes. And he owned that gambling place down the road.”

  Dave fidgeted uncomfortably. “He happened to own the property—”

  “It’s the same thing. I saw that—that woman bring him home last night, a man of his age.”

  “What woman, Mrs. Craft?”

  Mrs. Craft had trouble from time to time with her upper plate. Now she pushed it into place with her upper lip before she spoke.

  “I understand she sings at Mr. Gannon’s place.” She twitched her thin shoulders. “I do not like to speak ill of the dead, especially if he was a friend of yours, but I’m afraid Mr. Gannon was not a good man. Not a good Christian.”

  Dave felt the irritation rising in him but when he looked at Betty something in her eyes seemed to be asking him for tolerance.

  “Mr. Gannon had suffered a great personal tragedy, Mrs. Craft.”

  This sobered her for a moment and she lowered her glance.

  “His daughter, you mean? Yes, I heard about that. A terrible thing for any father, a tragic thing.”

  She put her shoulders back. She arranged her hands in her lap. “I did not mean to inject my personal feelings into the discussion, Mr. Barnum,” she said. “They are not important. The Sixth Commandment says, ‘Thou Shall Not Kill.’ The guilty must be punished.”

  She took a breath and leaned forward in a conspiratorial attitude. She waited for their attention.

  “Now you understand,” she said in a loud whisper, “I do not think Mr. Stinson had anything to do with this awful thing. I like Mr. Stinson. He’s a bright young man, polite and obliging and much too overworked, I’m sure. I just thought I should tell you that I saw him going into Mr. Gannon’s bungalow last night.”

  Somehow Dave was not ready for the disclosure and the words jolted him, not so much their message but the manner of delivery. A tightness began to work upon the angles of his bony face and his dark-blue eyes grew cold.

  “What time was that, Mrs. Craft?”

  “Just after eleven. I know because I had turned my radio off—I always do that promptly at eleven so as not to disturb the other tenants—and I was already undre—I mean I was ready for bed. And I was adjusting the shades and I just happened to see Mr. Stinson.”

  “You watched him enter the bungalow?”

  “Not at all,” she said stiffly. “I do not snoop, Mr. Barnum, nor pry into the affairs of others.”

  Oh, no, thought Dave.

  “I detest people who do. I merely happened to see Mr. Stinson walking toward the bungalow.”

  “How far away from the door was he?”

  “Why—perhaps two or three steps.”

  “Then you didn’t actually see—”

  She interrupted him with a shake of her head. She let him know by the set of her mouth that she was indignant and highly displeased with him.

  “I was not spying on Mr. Stinson. I assumed that he went to the bungalow because, walking as he was, there was nowhere else for him to go.”

  She said other things that Dave did not hear because he had drawn his own conclusion. Stinson had been walking toward the bungalow and Mrs. Craft had not actually seen him enter, not because she hadn’t continued to look, but because the angle of the building had cut off her view.

  “I thought I should tell you first,” she said, rising and adjusting the skirt of her dress, “because you were a personal friend. Betty has told me you are a lawyer. You could tell me whether I should go to the police. I’ve given the matter a great deal of thought but—” She shrugged and let the sentence dangle.

  “I’m hardly in a position to advise you, Mrs. Craft,” Dave said. Then to shock her a bit, he added: “Because I happen to be under some suspicion myself.”

  Her little eyes opened wide. She said: “Well” with a sort of explosive inflection.

  “Perhaps you ought to think about it a little longer,” he said as he opened the door. “Until you know what you should do.”

  Betty kept silent until they were approaching the Coffee Shop and then she stopped. “You weren’t very nice to her,” she said.

  “Nice to her?” Dave growled. “Why the—”

  She cut him off. She said he mustn’t say it, whatever it was. She gave him a small smile but she was standing close now and he could see the disturbed depths of her hazel eyes.

  “Do you have to tell Captain Vaughn?” she asked.

  “Probably.”

  “You practically advised her not to tell right away. Why can’t you wait?”

  Dave started to tell her that the comparison was not a fair one. He still felt responsible for what had happened. He wanted most of all to see t
he guilty one caught and, if possible, he wanted to feel he had a hand in that eventuality. But he did not know how to explain this to Betty without sounding corny. There was, however, no reason why he had to hurry to Vaughn; there were a couple of things he wanted to do first on his own.

  “You can’t make yourself think Stinson is guilty,” he said, “because you like him.”

  “It isn’t liking exactly. I’ve known him longer than you and I won’t believe it until I have to.”

  Dave said all right and then, wanting to change the subject, he asked her what her plans were for the afternoon.

  “It’s my afternoon off,” she said. “I’m going to Boothville.”

  “To see your dear old college pal.”

  She smiled and nodded. She said it was a hen party. Dinner and gossip and a movie….

  Captain Vaughn appeared after lunch. He spent some time in Stinson’s quarters and then went over to see Workman. When he stopped by the bungalow he gave no indication of what he had come for but he did offer one bit of information.

  “Workman was on the level on that missing heir case,” he said. “I talked with the lawyers handling the estate. Guy named Albert L. Colby. He hired Workman originally and when he died six months ago the lawyers kept him on. Only it ain’t a man he’s looking for but Colby’s daughter. Name’s Elise and, like Workman said, he gets five thousand out of it if he locates her. That’s all they’d tell me over the phone.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  STANDING WELL BACK of the Club 80 was a two-story frame building which housed storerooms and garages on the ground floor, and rooms for some of the help above. A railed stairway led to a gallery from which the rooms opened, and shortly after two o’clock Dave Barnum went along this to the door at the end.

  He knocked twice, peering through the screen, and when there was no answer he pushed into an airy, squarish room that was unmistakably feminine in character and not particularly neat. The ash trays had not been emptied recently; there were some dirty glasses on one window sill. The studio couch, which apparently doubled as a bed, had been made. Three decorative pillows had been fluffed out and propped along the wall, but articles of clothing and underclothing cluttered the spread, indicating that the owner might be at the beach, which was what he had hoped.