Death by Surprise (Carolyn Hart Classics) (14 page)

I knew that he assumed we had come together. I wanted to get my piece out first, before Nichols spoke.

“I had an appointment with Miss Boutelle at eight o’clock. I rang the doorbell. She didn’t come so I knocked. That pushed the door open and her cat came running out. I thought that was odd. I called out and then I stepped into the foyer. I saw the mess in the living room so I walked in there—and found her.”

Farris looked from me to Nichols and back again. “You weren’t together?”

“No,” I said quickly, “but Mr. Nichols must have been right behind me.”

Farris turned to Nichols. “Did you see Miss Carlisle enter the apartment?”

“No.”

“So she could have been inside for some time before you came?”

“No,” I interrupted sharply. “I had just arrived. I only had time to find her and then I thought I heard a humming noise . . .”

“Humming noise?” Farris asked.

Nichols and I both told him and Farris was on his feet and out of the kitchen before we finished.

We heard him explode. “How the hell could you miss it?” he demanded. “What the hell else have you missed? Fritz, get over here. Get some pictures, fingerprint it, then bring it to me.

When he returned to the kitchen, he looked at me dourly. “You heard a humming sound?”

“I thought I did,” I said doubtfully.

“Funny. It was still running—and I couldn’t hear a thing.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Did you touch it?” he asked.

“No.” Sweat beaded my mouth. Had I polished it well enough the afternoon that I brought it here? “You can ask Mr. Nichols. He came in just as I found it.”

Nichols nodded agreement.

Farris looked at both of us with impartial dislike. “Machines don’t hum for a while then stop humming. If you heard it humming, it should still be humming.”

“Maybe I was mistaken.”

“But you found it?”

I nodded warily.

His dark eyes stared hard at me. “What is it, Miss Carlisle?”

I hesitated, but the answer seemed obvious. “I would guess that it is some kind of tape recorder.”

“You would guess that?”

“Yes.”

“Miss Carlisle,” he rasped, “let me give you a little advice.”

I ventured a small stiff smile. “Of course.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you were really doing here?”

I simulated surprise. “Captain, I’ve told your men the truth and I’m sure it can be verified at Miss Boutelle’s office. She was working on an article about the Carlisle family and I had an appointment to discuss it with her.”

“A friendly meeting?” he asked silkily.

I knew then that despite his craggy face and tough demeanor, he had a feline streak—and that would make him doubly dangerous.

“I never assume an interview will be either friendly or unfriendly until it occurs, Captain.”

His mouth twisted in disgust. “They must teach it in law school.”

“Pardon me.”

“This either-or crap.” Brusquely, he began to bounce questions at me.

“What time did you leave your apartment tonight?”

“Around twenty to eight.”

“What time did you get here?”

“A few minutes before eight.”

“Tell me exactly what you did, from the time you left your car.”

A stolid-faced young man with a stenographer’s notebook sat on a straight chair a few feet away. He was taking down everything that was said.

I’d better, from now on, remember what I said here.

I told it just the way I had to the patrolmen who arrived first.

“What did you touch?” Farris asked.

New ground here. Be careful, K.C.

“The front door,” I said slowly. “The lower leaf of the rubber tree plant.”

“Nothing else?”

I felt a touch of panic. Had I touched anything else that afternoon that I left the recorder? Oh God, the back door. There was no way I could explain prints on the back door! Then, sweet relief that left me limp, yet trying hard not to reveal any of the emotions that had swept me. I didn’t need to worry. I had worn gloves on Tuesday.

Had that instant of panic shown on my face?

Farris was waiting for my answer.

“I don’t believe,” I said slowly, cautiously, “that I touched anything else.”

“You don’t believe so?” he mimicked.

“No.”

He asked abruptly. “Do you know of any reason why anyone would kill Miss Boutelle?”

Reason? I knew several, but I looked at him blankly. “I’m sorry, Captain. I know nothing of Miss Boutelle’s private life.”

It was an oblique answer but he didn’t notice.

“Did you kill her?”

“No.”

He turned to Harry Nichols. I didn’t listen too closely. I knew what Nichols was going to say. I reviewed in my mind the answers I had made. I had better remember them, repeat them the next time the questions were asked.

Then Farris turned on me again, his tone sharp. He held out the letter Nichols had received. “What do you know about this?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“Exactly that.”

His face hardened. “You expect me to believe it’s some kind of coincidence that you find the body of a woman who has just written a threatening letter about your cousin?”

“My visit here had nothing to do with that letter.”

Farris glared at me, but I’ve been around too long to be quailed by a glance. He gave it up, finally, and turned back to Nichols.

“Is this letter the only contact you’ve had with Miss Boutelle?”

As Harry Nichols nodded, a plainclothesman brought the recorder in and handed it to Farris. “It was running. We stopped it.”

Farris took it. He looked at me for a long moment with dark suspicious eyes. “Shall we play it back, Miss Carlisle?”

“That’s fine with me.”

His index finger flicked the tiny button and we all could hear the tape whirring. It ran and ran and a tiny flag of excitement waved in my mind. By God, the tape had worked or there wouldn’t have been any tape to reverse. But I wasn’t supposed to know anything about this recorder or when it had begun to record so I tried to look merely interested.

Finally, the whir stopped. Farris pushed the play button.

Listening to the tape was an eerie experience. It opened with a bell clock chiming seven o’clock. Behind the soft bell tones, there was a ragged whistling noise that none of us identified for a long moment. Then, sickeningly, I realized we were hearing the gasping breaths of someone under great emotional stress. There was a sound of movement, impossible to define, hurried footsteps, the slam of a door.

The tape whirred on and on with no sound, only the faint hiss of its own movement.

Farris speeded it up, dropped it to normal when the doorbell rang. A door opened, then there was a long silence. A dull sound of movement, then, finally, a door slammed.

Again there was silence. Minute after minute of silence.

No voices. Nothing. I pictured Francine on the love seat, eyes bulging, tongue protruding.

The front door bell rang on the tape. It rang again, longer. Then a knock.

“Francine . . .” It was my voice, dying in shock.

Farris glanced at me.

My footsteps, hesitant, reluctant, faintly sounded.

“Turn around.” No mistaking that voice, that tone of command.

Farris let the tape run on until it picked up the sounds of the arriving police. When he turned it off, I attacked.

“I have told you the truth. The tape proves it.”

“You could have left and come back,” he replied.

He dismissed us then.

On the way out, I tried to see if there was anything lying about that looked like a manuscript.

Farris was coming along behind me. “Looking for something, Miss Carlisle?”

“No,” I said coolly, “I’m merely curious, Captain. I’ve never been this close to the scene of a crime before.”

I’m sure my answer confirmed Harry Nichols’s opinion of the Carlisles in general and me in particular, but Farris undoubtedly brought out the worst in me.

But Nichols was more interested in what he had managed to discover as we walked through the living room. On the steps outside, he asked, “Did you see the cassettes stacked in the bookcase behind her desk?”

In the milling confusion, I had missed that.

“They were labeled,” Nichols continued. “I would guess she worked on tape.”

That hadn’t occurred to me, though I suppose it should have from her actions at my office. Her search for a hidden tape recorder would indicate someone accustomed to using tapes. So the absence of a manuscript didn’t mean a thing. Francine may have taped for posterity all the dirt she had on the Carlisles and a police technician might soon be hearing all about us.

“That worries you?”

I would have denied it but he was too perceptive by far.

“I would be interested to know what’s on them,” I responded.

We were at the sidewalk now. We stopped, looked at each other and Nichols said abruptly, “I’ve got to get to a phone to call our police reporter.” He paused, then said slowly, “I’ll ask him to see what he can find out about the cassettes.”

Was he actually offering to help me? “I would appreciate that.”

Nichols frowned, his dark brows drawn tightly together. “There’s a bar a couple of blocks from here. We could get a drink and I’ll call him.”

A Carlisle having a drink with a Nichols. It had an unholy aura I couldn’t resist. I could find out more about the murder through Nichols and
The Beacon.
Of course, I’d better not forget who he was. He obviously guessed there was more to my appointment with Boutelle than I had revealed.

“I’d like a drink,” I said finally.

We took my car. Louie’s was a quiet neighborhood bar with Streisand and Simon and Garfunkel and Joan Baez on the juke box, a pocket out of yesterday. We were Harry and K.C. by the time we slipped into a back booth.

After we ordered, Harry went to the pay phone back in a dingy hall between the restrooms. I slowly sipped a margarita and debated trying to call Kenneth. But I needed to be careful. It might endanger Kenneth more if he knew about Francine’s murder when Farris came to see him.

I wished I had a legal pad with me. There is something so clarifying about laying out a problem on the familiar yellow sheets. And it would build a wall of words against the picture of Francine that hung in my mind.

I took a deep, deep drink.

When Harry slid back into the booth, he drank down half his drink before he said a word. “I got Paul Lowery. He’s our police reporter. He gets along with Farris. If anybody can find out what’s on those cassettes, it’s Paul.”

Then he stared at me, his face somber.

So he was going to help me.

I knew it would be better to leave it alone, but I had to know.

“Why are you helping me?”

For a long moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then, finally, he said wearily, “Life is damned odd. I would have sworn I would never do anything for a Carlisle. And yet . . .”

I waited.

He reached across the table suddenly, gently cupped my chin in his hand. “Goddamnit, you look so much like her.”

His hand dropped away. I was suddenly aware that I liked his touch and, at the same time, I was oddly offended. I was K.C. Carlisle and I looked like myself.

“Like who?” I asked distantly.

He didn’t notice my tone. He was staring down at the table, seeing things I could not.

When he talked, it was almost to himself. “She was a blonde, too. Tall and leggy. She was . . . she was beautiful and her eyes were dark like yours.” He looked up at me. “But different. She had trusting eyes.” His mouth twisted a little. “You don’t trust anyone, do you?”

It was closer to the mark than I would admit.

“I know that I . . . idealized her.” It was hard for him to say. I could hear the pain in his voice. “She was older than I, enough older that when mother died it was really Susie who raised me.”

He saw the total bewilderment in my eyes.

“My sister,” he said quietly. “My sister, Susie.” He cocked his head, studied me. “The resemblance is in the way you hold your head, the way you move. I don’t think you are much like her in personality. Susie was very outgoing and happy and . . . trusting.”

My margarita tasted even more sour than usual.

He picked up on it immediately. “But you aren’t that kind of person, are you?”

“No,” I agreed, “I don’t suppose I am an especially trusting person.”

“Susie was trusting. And it killed her.” He glared at me angrily and finished off his drink. “So what the hell am I doing here with you?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure.”

“I’ll tell you about Susie.”

I could have said I wasn’t interested. But I was.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“You’ve slept around some.”

It could have been offensive. Oddly, it wasn’t. He didn’t wait for me to answer. He answered it himself.

“Sure you have. You’re a beautiful girl. A normal girl. Times are different now. When Susie was growing up, in the late fifties, no one was open about sex.”

As he told it, it was a familiar enough story. A girl met an attractive older man. She fell in love with him. He was married. When she told him she was pregnant, he left town. Took his wife and went on a trip around the world.

“I understand he had a fine trip,” Harry said huskily. “Played polo in England. Even bought some new horses for his string.”

I knew then. I had heard a lot, growing up, about how well Uncle Bobby played polo.

“I didn’t know,” I said quietly. “I didn’t know.”

“She died the week before her twenty-third birthday,” Harry said brutally, “in a goddam cheap sleazy boarding-house on Sausalito Street where she had gone for an abortion.”

Now I knew why the Nichols hated the Carlisles.

I reached out, touched his hand tentatively. “I’m sorry, Harry. God, I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know?”

I shook my head. If others in the family had known, no one had ever told me. And somehow I doubted that Kenneth knew this about his father.

“Uncle Bobby was . . .” I shrugged. “I guess the Victorians saw life pretty clearly. They had the best word for men like Uncle Bobby. He was a rotter.” I hesitated, said gently, “Harry, he’s dead. He’s been dead for years.”