You’re Monte’s boy now, he thought
The sun felt hot on his face. The sea lifted him up and dropped him. He wondered if he would ever forget how Irene Sloade looked with her broken back and the sea pushing and pulling at her hair. He tried to decide whether Paul Sloade had killed her. Or if it had been an accident. Or if she had ended it herself. The world is made up of ifs, ands and buts, he thought. Don’t think about that. You’ve got your own troubles. Think of a way to get out from under Monte’s thumb. Think hard.
All you’re giving yourself is a headache, he told himself. After twenty minutes in the water he swam slowly back to the beach and walked into the house again. Sam Link’s car still had not returned. He went into the bathroom to shower and paused, listening to the snuffling sound of somebody crying in one of the bedrooms.
It was Lila. She lay across the foot of the bed, on her stomach, and the dark green window shades were drawn against the glare of the sun on the white beach. In the hot gloom Carmody saw her body was firm and slim-hipped, her skin smooth ivory. She made another choked sobbing sound as he stood in the doorway, and before he could retreat she sat up, rubbing her eyes with the backs of her fingers. She seemed entirely unselfconscious.
“Don’t you ever wear any clothes?”
“I thought I was alone.”
“Where are Sam and Robbie?” he asked.
“I don’t know. They took the car somewhere. I took a walk on the beach, and I just got back. Don’t go away, Bill.”
“You make me uncomfortable,” he said, looking at her.
Her voice was that of a child, surprised. “I don’t mean to.”
He went to the closet and opened it and saw some of her clothes hanging from wire hangers on the pole, intermingled with some of Robbie Ravelle’s. He felt a quick squirm of dismay and wondered why he should give a damn. It was none of his business. He looked at the labels on her dresses and heard her say behind him: “What are you doing, Bill?”
He took a thin silk robe from the closet and tossed it to her. “Put that on, Lila. Then you can tell me why you were crying.”
“I wasn’t crying.”
“It shows, Lila. Don’t be foolish.”
She tossed her long black hair back over her shoulder and looked at him defiantly. “I came off the wire, that’s all. And Robbie took all the sticks with him, the big shlump. The tea is dry in me.”
“Why do you smoke it?”
“Are you going to preach to me?” she demanded.
“No, but you ought to be home with your folks, not here.”
She laughed. “Billyreeba, the music man.”
“Your clothes are expensive,” he said. “I’m sure you have a nice home. Aren’t your parents worried about you?”
“They never think of me.”
“Where do they think you are, right now?”
She giggled. “In school.”
“In the summer?”
“It’s a special kind of school. For kids who get in the way, if you know what I mean.”
“Where is it, Lila? You ought to go back there.”
She got up off the bed and held the robe in front of her. She let go of the robe and then fell against him so there was nothing between them but the soft slithering silk caught by the pressure of their bodies. Her arms tightened around his neck and he felt her mouth against his chest.
“You’re nice,” she whispered. “Really nice. Not like Robbie. Robbie scares me.”
“Then why do you stay with him? Where did you meet him?”
“I met him in New York and I liked him and we had a lot of fun, but now I like you better, Billyreeba.”
A car door slammed outside.
Carmody reached up and tried to take the girl’s hands from around his neck, but her fingers were locked and he couldn’t pry them apart “Lila, let go.”
She bit his chest and laughed. “Are you afraid of Robbie?”
“Just let go,” he said.
The screen door whined and slammed.
Carmody pried one of her fingers loose and then another. She was amazingly strong. Finally he got both her hands unlocked and pulled them from around his neck and pushed her away from him and her silk robe slithered to the floor in a heap between them. At the same moment he heard a sound from the bedroom doorway and he turned his head and saw Sam Link and Robbie Ravelle. A strange sound came from Robbie. He lumbered forward into the room and lifted Lila, flung her to the bed where she fell and bounced and started to laugh in a low, giggling, throaty voice. Robbie turned back to Carmody and stared with flat silver eyes.
Sam Link said: “Hey, wait a minute. A doll is a doll. Slow down, Robbie.”
Robbie reached for Carmody and Carmody saw the move coming and tried to duck away from Robbie’s immense hand, knowing too much about Ravelle’s enormous strength to have any illusions about it. He didn’t move fast enough and Robbie’s hand became a fist that hit him like a pile driver in the stomach and Carmody doubled up and shot backward and hit the wall behind him with a thump that shook the house. Through the blur of his vision he saw Lila up on the bed, her face delighted. He saw Robbie come for him again and then Sam Link jumped between them, like a mouse trying to stop a charging elephant, and amazingly Robbie halted as Sam put his freckled hands on Robbie’s shoulders and shoved him back.
“Relax, Robbie. Your wire’s jangling. Bill hasn’t fooled with the doll. You know Bill wouldn’t fool with her. It’s the doll’s fault, and you should have got rid of her when I told you to. Grab a stick and dream it off now, y’know?”
Lila said in a plaintive voice: “Robbie, give me a charge, too.”
“Now everybody take it easy and listen to me,” Sam Link said. Carmody straightened slowly and carefully against the pain in his stomach where Robbie Ravelle had punched him. He drew in a deep and cautious breath. Sam Link said, grinning and jovial: “We been casing the neighborhood, all these potato farms and duck farms around here, and we heard talk that Paul’s wife was dead. So we got Monte on the phone and his gives us the word.” Sam rubbed his hands together and laughed and rubbed the big freckles on his naked scalp. He had a gold tooth far in the back of his mouth that glistened when he laughed. “That stupid Paul. He goes and knocks off his rich wife and now we got him, Monte says. It’s perfect, Monte says. We got him on the hip.”
Carmody sat down in a chair and lit a cigarette and watched Robbie throw clothes at Lila, who sat up on the bed and wriggled into them.
“One thing about Paul,” Carmody said. “He isn’t stupid. He wouldn’t kill his wife at this point of the game. Not just when we get there.”
Sam Link grinned. “Maybe he had it all set up and went through with it on schedule, that’s all.”
Carmody remembered last night and shook his head. “I don’t believe it. He didn’t kill her.”
“Sure, he did,” Sam said.
“I don’t believe it.”
Sam shrugged. “All right, so it was an accident. It’s still good. Monte wants to know what the thing is with the padlock that you almost spilled to the cops.”
Carmody said: “The padlock was off the gate at the end of the gallery. There used to be steps there, but they were gone and the gate was a temporary safety measure. The padlock wasn’t on it when I first saw it. Then when I climbed back up, there was a padlock on the gate again.”
“Who put it back?”
“Paul Sloade.”
“Then he’s the one who killed her.”
“No.”
“Bill, what’s the matter with you? Are you cozy with Paul Sloade all of a sudden?”
“I just don’t think Paul killed his wife. He’s not that stupid, to play into our hands right at this time. He was never stupid. I think he got panicky and put a padlock on the gate when he saw what it meant and when he panicked he played into our hands, but he didn’t make the original mistake of killing her last night.”
Sam Link slapped his bald, freckled head.
“If Paul didn’
t do it, who did?”
“Maybe it was you,” Carmody said.
A silence came into the dark, green-shaded room. The sound of the surf outside and the mewing of the gulls had nothing to do with the silence inside. Carmody sat on the hard wooden chair and waited while Sam stood still and thought. Lila laughed, and Robbie lit two marijuana cigarettes and gave one to the dark-haired girl and kept one for himself. The odor of burning hemp filled the green room. “No,” Sam said finally.
“Then it was Robbie,” Carmody countered.
“No.”
“What time did you get here, Sam?”
“It was after ten in the morning.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Never surer.”
They looked at each other. “Hell, then it was Monte Bachore,” Carmody said. “There’s nobody else.”
Sam shrugged. “Anyway, we got Paul on the hip.”
Carmody felt something new about Irene Sloade’s death. He felt it stirring in him, a slow acrid emotion that grew stronger and stronger as he looked at Sam Link’s shrewd little face and at Robbie’s monomaniacal concern with the girl. Irene meant nothing to them. Nothing as a person, as a human being. He recognized the dull pulsing in him as resentment, and anger. One of these men had killed Irene Sloade. He was suddenly sure that Irene had not fallen by accident, or jumped from the bluff deliberately. He was sure it was murder, and he was sure that the man who had murdered her was someone he had spoken to within the past hour. Robbie or Sam or Monte Bachore.
He stood up, not looking at any of them in the room.
“Where are you going?” Sam asked.
“Out.”
“Don’t go far,” Sam said. “Monte wants to talk to us.”
“All right.”
“Money, money, money,” Sam said. He slapped the side of his head. “Oh, brother. Oh, baby.”
Carmody walked out of the room and out of the house and stood on the beach, blinking in the glare of the hot sun. He started to walk down the beach and saw he was still in his faded khaki shorts and he laughed at himself and turned back to the house. Lila and Robbie were in the kitchen. Sam Link was stretched out on the living room couch, listening to the radio. Carmody changed his clothes, putting on a short-sleeved blue shirt and gray slacks and woven leather sandals. He took a fresh pack of cigarettes from his bureau drawer and his keys and his wallet, and counted the money in his wallet and saw he had more than two thousand dollars left, most of it in hundred-dollar bills. He went outside again and walked to the Beachcomber Bar.
Harry’s mouth was mournful under his tubby cheeks. There were not many customers in the place. He followed Carmody to the little warped piano in the back, and Carmody ran his fingers over the keys without making a sound and then sat down at a table near the window where be could view the yacht basin.
“You don’t look so good, Billy-o.”
“I’m all right. I guess I need something to eat.”
“On the house.”
Harry Corio quickly brought him a thick slice of roast beef and corn on the cob and stringbeans and a pot of coffee from the kitchen. Carmody didn’t think he could eat any of it, but when he started he didn’t stop, and Harry, after trying to talk about Irene Sloade, finally went away to attend to the other patrons on the veranda facing the beach. It was cool and shadowed in the back here. Nobody came over to Carmody to talk to him. Somebody put a nickel in the juke box and he listened to an old Harry James recording and felt something stir in him a little, but it was too small to bother with and the music was dead in him now and would remain dead for some time, he thought.
Somebody had killed Irene Sloade.
He knew she had been afraid of Paul Sloade and he knew Paul had married her only for her money; but he also knew that Paul was smart and that Irene loved him and as long as anybody is in love and thinks there is still a chance for happiness, that somebody isn’t going to jump off a cliff and end it all. It could have been an accident, actually, he had to admit to himself. Maybe she didn’t look where she was going. But then, who took the padlock off the gate? It wasn’t there and then it was there, and Paul Sloade had held himself together long enough to slip it back on the gate hasp before he went to pieces in the bathroom. And the act in the bathroom hadn’t been put on for anybody’s special benefit, either.
You’re thinking in circles, he told himself.
Somebody killed her, he thought
He poured himself another cup of coffee and watched the boats in the yacht basin and looked up and saw Martha Courtney coming in with Markham Dunning.
She was still dry-eyed, but she had changed her dungarees and shirt for a dark blue dress that was close enough to black to be appropriate. He saw the way her full, sturdy hips were emphasized by the red belt cinched around her tiny waist and he saw how she kept her head and chin high and proud. Her butter-blonde hair caught a ray of sunlight from a window as she passed and he saw the almost-white blaze that started from one temple, and he wanted to get up and tell her he was sorry for everything about her sister and for everything that was going to happen in the next few days.
He stood up and said: “Martha. Mr. Dunning.”
“We were hoping to find you here,” Dunning said.
“I thought you were going to New York.”
“Like you, I’ve changed my plans. I wouldn’t leave Martha now. I know this isn’t the appropriate time, but you might as well send your scores over to the hotel so I can read them.”
“Sure,” Carmody said.
Dunning had pulled himself together very well. There was a certainty and an aggressiveness about his lean head and face and body that hadn’t been there earlier. The man had a long aquiline nose and bony eyebrow ridges and gray brows. He looked sleek and calm and self-assured in his attentiveness to Martha. Carmody watched Martha sit down at the table and saw the way she moved in instinctive grace and beauty and he suddenly wanted her as he had wanted nothing else or no one else in all the days of his life.
“I’ll be all right now, Mark,” she said in a low voice. “I want to talk to Bill.”
Dunning smiled at Carmody and made a move as if to touch Martha’s hair with his hand and then he dropped his hand and went away. Carmody was still full of his desire for her and he reached across the table and put his fingers on her hand. Her gaze was direct and imperative.
“Bill, let’s not use all the trite words. I’ve heard so many of them in the past two hours. I know Irene was my sister and she died horribly this morning, but right now I don’t feel anything and don’t believe it and I want to talk about something else that may or may not be directly connected with Irene.”
“How long have you known Dunning?” he countered.
“Mark is an old friend of the family.”
“Of yours, or Irene’s?”
“Irene’s.”
“I’m glad of that,” he said. He poured coffee for her. “This may seem an odd question, but how well did you know your sister?”
“It’s not odd at all. I didn’t know her as well as I should. She was fourteen years older than me, after all. She was only just beginning to recognize me as an adult” Martha moved her hand from under his and continued to look at him with her direct gaze. “Bill, what is this thing you have with Paul?”
“It’s nothing.”
“I want to know more about it.”
“Paul and I were in the same prison camp together, in Korea. That’s all.”
“There’s more to it than that. What happened?”
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s over and done with and I want to forget it.”
“I’m sorry you won’t tell me about it. Will you tell me what Irene had to say when you last saw her?”
“She said she was in love with Paul and that he married her for her money.”
Martha nodded. “Yes, that’s true.”
“And she said she was afraid of him.”
“That’s true, too.”
“And that’s al
l she said.”
She looked up. “Who is Monte Bachore?”
Carmody looked away at the yacht basin beyond the window and then looked at Martha. “The man with the beard?”
“You know who I mean.”
“I hardly know him. Why do you ask about him?”
“I saw you talking to him, Bill. It’s the strangest thing. Within a minute or two after the news went through the hotel about Irene, he seemed to pop up and take charge of everything.”
“If he annoys you, throw him out,” Carmody said. “It’s your hotel now, isn’t it?”
“No. No part of it is mine.”
Carmody couldn’t conceal his surprise. “But your sister—”
“Irene owned everything here, lock, stock and barrel. My own money is in a trust fund. I get the principal when I’m twenty-five. It’s more than enough for me. But the only things I own around here are my car and my clothes and the sloop. Everything else goes to Paul.”
Carmody didn’t say anything.
“That’s all Paul wanted, isn’t it, Bill? Just everything Irene owned.”
“I don’t know.”
“Why won’t you tell me the truth about him?” she demanded.
“I don’t know the truth,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Bill,” she said.
He waited.
“Did Paul kill her?”
“No,” Carmody said.
“You sound so sure of it.”
“I’m not, really. It could have been an accident.”
“No. Irene was always very careful about herself.”
“She was despondent, then,” Carmody said.
“Damn it, Bill, what are you hiding from me?”
He was surprised by her vehemence. He saw the same anger in her that he had felt in himself a little while before, and he felt dismayed and disgusted with himself for temporizing with this girl when he wanted everything honest and open between them. Martha picked up her small blue suede bag. He arose from the table with her.
“I can’t stay here,” she said. “Will you take me for a drive?”
Harry Corio waved to them from the bar as they crossed the veranda. Then as they stepped outside into the afternoon glare of the sun, Carmody saw Monte Bachore and Paul Sloade on the boardwalk across the beach. Monte had changed his clothes again and now wore a seersucker suit and carried a black walking stick. Paul looked the same. Carmody wanted to turn back and get out of sight, but Monte saw him and gestured imperatively with the walking stick. “Excuse me,” Carmody said. “I’ll be right back.”
Say It with Murder Page 6