Murder by the Book (6 page)

“I hope,” Pam said, “he put in a good word for us.”

Jefferson said, “Now listen, Mrs. North” and then, suddenly, smiled at her.

“Very good word,” he said. “Seems you've been—well, helpful several times. Very helpful. Said—let me remember—‘When they're around, things seem to turn up. Useful things.' He said …” Jefferson paused. Jerry thought it possible the pause was to select. “‘Get them to help, if you can.' He had a message for you, Mrs. North. He said, ‘Tell her not to get herself killed.'”

“The idea,” Pam North said. “Have I ever?”

“You've come too close,” Jerry said. “And Bill Weigand's got a nerve.” He looked pointedly at Deputy Sheriff Jefferson, who merely waited for him to continue. “We're not detectives,” Jerry said, uttering familiar words with familiar emphasis. “Not any kind. Also, we're on vacation. Also—”

“Of course, dear,” Pam said. “The sheriff understands. You said ‘one or two things' had come up, Mr. Jefferson?”

“—we'll only be here for—” Jerry said, and had a feeling that neither Pam nor Deputy Sheriff Jefferson was listening to him, that both were merely waiting for him to finish talking.

Jefferson waited a moment longer, apparently on the chance that Jerry might resume.

“Well,” Jefferson said, when Jerry did not, “for one thing—a small thing I guess—it isn't Miss Payne. It's Miz Payne.”

The distinction was not instantly apparent. Then it was; Pam phrased it. She said, “Oh. Missis Payne.”

“That's it,” Jefferson said. “Miz Payne. She and her husband are separated, or something. Hard to find things out on Sunday. By telephone. Going to run Monroe County into charges. People from up North come down here and—” He paused. He shook his head.

The rest, Pam thought, didn't really need saying. Come down here and get themselves killed—that would be part of it. Separate life and death by some fourteen hundred miles; the life which alone can explain the death, when the death is murder. Tie a bronzed young man, who like any other would prefer to spend his Sunday on a beach, to the end of a telephone wire.

“I will say,” Jefferson said, “the New York people are cooperating—your friend, Mrs. North. Everybody.”

Jerry felt that he was floating by, unnoticed.

“Seems Dr. Piersal worked with the police a good deal,” Jefferson said. “It's almost, I got the idea, as though somebody had killed a cop. Know what I mean?”

He looked at Jerry North this time. Jerry felt as if he had been, for the moment, salvaged, or, at any rate, taken in tow. He said, “Yes.” He said, “He was deputy medical examiner for a while. Testified as an expert at trials.”

“Yes,” Jefferson said. “So they feel he was sort of one of their own. Which helps. Miz Payne turns out to be the daughter of some people named Coleman.” He looked at notes on his desk. “Mr. and Mrs. Peter Coleman,” he said. “Mean anything to either of you?”

They looked at each other. Jerry said, “No.”

“Coleman was a patient of Dr. Piersal's,” Jefferson said. “Couple of years ago, Coleman died. Mrs. Coleman filed a civil suit, charging malpractice. Came up last fall—”

“I remember,” Jerry said. “Didn't remember the names. Jury found for the doctor and the judge—”

“Lambasted Mrs. Coleman,” Jefferson said. “That's it. Made an example of her, as they say. Embarrassing to the lady. That was—let's see.” He looked at notes to see. “October,” he said. “In December, Mrs. Coleman had what they call a nervous breakdown.”

He looked at Mr. North. He looked at Mrs. North.

“You've met this Mrs. Payne,” he said. “What kind of a woman is she? Kind that might—fly off the handle?”

The Norths looked at each other. There was, Pam thought, a bit more to this tall and tanned youngish man—this youthfully handsome, youthfully open-faced young man—than met the eye. He was a young man with a pump. Their minds were, he hoped, wells. If we're going to say no soap, Jerry thought, this is the time to say it.

“She's very shy,” Pam said. “Afraid she'll be—hurt. Ridiculed. Laughed at. Antagonistic. I don't think it's more than—”

“Not very well balanced?” Deputy Sheriff Jefferson suggested.

How does one balance a person? A person met, so briefly, during a game? A person who said “Sorry,” too often; who said little else?

“You see what I'm getting at,” Jefferson said. “You say she's afraid she'll be ridiculed. Her mother was, pretty openly. Then her mother had this breakdown. Apparently, now Mrs. Payne's having some sort of trouble with her husband. If—say she's a little off her rocker—like her mother is maybe—”

“I don't think that at all,” Pam said. “Do you, Jerry?”

There was still time to say he was sitting it out. Not as much time as there had been. A little time.

“If you mean,” Jerry North said, “do I think she's got a persecution neurosis, I'm not a psychiatrist. But—

“But,” Jerry said, “she did seem very tense. Very tied up inside. So tied up inside, so knotted up, that she thinks everything is against her, everybody against her. I don't know what a psychiatrist would call it.”

“Yeah,” Jefferson said. “She could narrow it down, couldn't she? Figure everything had fallen apart, that the world had it in for her, and blame it all on Piersal? Looneys get funny notions. Do funny things. After all, she maybe thinks Piersal killed her father. It was because of Piersal that this judge chewed her mother out in public. And then her mother cracks up and—”

“If people cracked up from being criticized openly,” Pam said, “half of Jerry's authors—”

“Not half,” Jerry said. “We get some damned good notices.”

Jefferson looked at them and blinked slightly.

“I don't know what made her crack up,” Jefferson said. “Maybe she's thinner-skinned than an author, Mrs. North. Anyway, it's what Mrs. Payne might think, isn't it? True or not. Take her father. He died of something—I don't know what—that Piersal diagnosed correctly and treated properly. That's what's true, apparently. But his wife didn't think so, and maybe his daughter doesn't.” He sighed. “What we get down here,” he said, “are mostly simple ones. Man kills his girl friend. Or the other way around.” He sighed again, nostalgic for simple, familiar things, like lovers who bashed one another.

“And,” Jerry said, “she followed Piersal down here and stuck a knife in him? Because she blames him for her father's death and what's happened to her mother?”

“Could be,” Jefferson said. “Could be she didn't know he was going to be here and saw him and—had an impulse.”

“Haven't you asked her?” Pam said. “You could put it tactfully. ‘Mrs. Payne, did you happen to stick a knife into Dr. Piersal this morning?'”

“She's not at the hotel,” Jefferson said. “Doesn't mean a damn thing, probably. Maybe she's at the Aquarium looking at the fish. Maybe she's on one of the tour trains, looking at us Conchs. Maybe she's out on the public beach. Maybe she doesn't know that Piersal's been killed, even.”

“You're looking for her?”

Jefferson sighed again. He said Key West wasn't like New York. He said they didn't have a hundred men to turn loose on it—to turn loose on anything. Or ten men. He said the city police had a description of her and if they ran across her—“when they're not tagging cars”—they'd tell her the sheriff's office would like to see her.

“And the old man's out in that boat of his—” Jefferson began, and his telephone rang. He said, “Sheriff's office. Deputy Sheriff Jefferson.” He listened. He said, “That's a note, Tommy.” He said, “The hell he is.” He said, “I sure as hell would, Tommy,” and listened further and said, “Yeah,” and hung up.

“City police,” he said. “Picked up a con man Miami wants. Man who says his name's Worthington, only it isn't. Miami says he's named Bradley and used to be a lawyer in New York, and got out of stir a year or so ago after serving time on a manslaughter rap.”

The Norths' attention was polite.

“And,” Jefferson said, and his voice was pleased now, “here's one for the book. It was Dr. Piersal's testimony sent him up. State expert. Bradley said it was one way, and Piersal proved it couldn't have been—anyway, convinced the jury it couldn't have been.” He paused again. “Something,” he said, and now satisfaction was evident in his tone, “about the angle of the knife. The knife Bradley used that time.”

The Norths considered.

“Of course,” Pam said, “clichés get to be that way because they earn their keep.” They both looked at her. Jerry felt his right hand creeping upward toward his head, where there is hair to run bewildered fingers through. “A stitch in time,” Pam said, “probably does save nine. And it's no doubt true about rolling stones.”

Deputy Sheriff Ronald Jefferson looked at Pamela North with widened eyes. Jerry could see the young man's hands tighten on the edge of his desk.

“Revenge is sweet,” Pam said.

Jerry took fingers from his hair.

“But it may be only prejudice on my part,” Pam said.

Jerry put them back.

“It's just,” Pam said, “that I've never really been able to believe in it. It seems so—unreasonable.”

“Murder is unreasonable,” Jerry said, and Pam shook her head.

“Not murder,” she said. “It can seem to make sense, I suppose. It's murderers who are unreasonable.”

“I tell you, Mrs. North,” Ronald Jefferson said, “you've lost me, I guess.”

Pam felt she had been clear. She did not, on the whole, see how she could have been much clearer. Which meant, of course, that there was no reason to go on with that.

“Mr. Grogan will be pleased,” Pam said. “If it is this Mr. Bradley. Or Worthington or whatever. Murder is bad enough for a hotel, probably. But if it's guest by guest it's probably worse. Mr. Worthington and Mr. Ashley were staying somewhere else.”

Jefferson admitted there was that. He said that it had, all around, been a bad day for poor Grogan, what with that Mrs. Upton added on.

“What Mrs. Upton?” Jerry said, and got ready to stand up. It began to look as if they were out of it.

“You hadn't heard?” Jefferson said. “Mrs. Tucker Upton. She was a guest there, too. Found dead this morning. Husband found her. He'd been in Miami. Only, it was just a heart attack in her case.”

5

The Norths went the long way round from downtown Key West to The Coral Isles—went up Truman Avenue until it was Roosevelt Boulevard, went around the island's upper tip and down, still on Roosevelt, beside the ocean. The sandy public beach was wide there and people were scattered over it; children ran over it. Now and then, from it, people waded into the Atlantic. It looked, Pam said, very hot, but the Norths are not baskers in the sun. It was, Pam said, too bad about Mrs. Upton, whoever she might be.

Jerry parked the rented car and they walked up the curving drive to the entrance of The Coral Isles. Paul Grogan was just inside, talking to a gray-haired man of medium height, who wore a dark business suit. Grogan's usually animated face was subdued. He nodded sadly to the Norths; even his hair, Pam thought, looked less than usually optimistic. The Norths went to the newsstand and that morning's New York
Times
had arrived. They turned from the stand, Jerry sagging a little under the weight of the
Times
, and Mr. Grogan walked toward them. He said, “Glad to see you got back all right.”

It sounded a little as if they had, fortunately but unexpectedly, returned from survived perils. Jerry shifted the
Times
to the other arm. He said, “Back?”

“Understood the deputy sheriff …” Grogan said. “That is, that you—er.”

“No,” Pam North said, “we haven't been arrested yet, Mr. Grogan.”

“I didn't for a moment—” Grogan said.

Pam said, “Of course not. He just wanted to ask a few questions. For the record. They always do, you know.”

“Er,” Mr. Grogan said. “Does he seem to be getting any place?”

“There's a Mr. Worthington,” Pam said. “Only his name's Bradley. One of the men you—chased out yesterday. The men Jerry was about to bet with. On a sure thing at Hialeah. Mr. Jefferson seemed quite hopeful about him. It seems Dr. Piersal once put him in jail. For killing somebody else with a knife.”

“I hope he's right,” Grogan said. “Although the pier's supposed to be used only by—” He stopped. “Of course,” he said, “people can just wander in. I don't deny that.”

“Murder,” Pam said, “compounded by trespass. But it's better than if it was a guest, isn't it? I mean, for the hotel?”

“I guess so,” Grogan said. His spirits did not seem to rise appreciably. “Of course, people get the notion we let just anybody wander around the grounds—”

“Especially,” Pam said, “with knives.”

Jerry sighed. He put the
Times
under the other arm.

“We were sorry to hear,” Pam said, “that somebody else had died. A Mrs. Upton.”

Grogan looked at her.

“I'm sorry,” Pam said. “The sheriff told us.”

“It discourages people,” Grogan said. “They come down here to—er—play in the sun. They don't like unpleasant things to happen. They—er—check out.”

“We won't mention it to anybody,” Pam said. “It was her heart, the deputy sheriff said.”

“That's what her husband says, and he's a doctor. He's the one I was talking to when you came in. Broken up about it, of course. Especially since he wasn't here at the time. Keeps feeling that he might have done something—says there wasn't anything anybody could have done but still—Well, you know how people are. Told him Piersal had looked in on her and—” He stopped again, this time as if his own words had startled him.