The Good Old Stuff (30 page)

“I don’t think I can quite class that as a proposal. You and your mythical lieutenants!”

He grinned with a flash of white teeth against the deep brown of his face. “That’s where I got you, Taff. There is a Lieutenant Norris, and he is registered at the hotel, and he is from New York. But he’s on an extradition case. If I can’t give him something to get his teeth into by tomorrow night, he has to start back with his man.”

Dusk broke up the badminton doubles. The last set had been Guy Darana and June Luce against Georgie and Stacey Brian. Everyone had played in their swimsuits. Brian’s wiry quickness had made up for Darana’s advantage in height. Georgie was nursing a swollen underlip which, in some strange fashion, she had managed to club with her own racket.

All four were winded. Mick had wheeled the rolling bar out onto the edge of the court, plugging in the ice compartment at the outlet near the tennis court floodlights.

“Sometimes,” Stacey said, “it’s good to become bushed. When the infantry reluctantly let me go, I swore I’d never get
physically tired again for the rest of my life. Here I am, running around in the sun and beating on a cork with feathers sticking out of it.”

“Infantry!” Darana said with heavy disgust. “Why didn’t you pick yourself a branch?”

“Don’t tell me what you were, Guy,” Georgie said. “Let me guess. A fly boy. A hot pilot. A tired hat and nine rows of ribbons.”

“Not a hot pilot,” Guy said. “I pushed tired old transports and tankers around Asia. I was too big to fit into a fighter with any comfort. But old Prine here had the real deal. Warm food, good bed. All the luxuries. Of course they sank a couple ships under him, but the Navy was it.”

“How about Bill?” June asked. “What was he?”

“G-Two. Hell, I wish he’d come down out of his room and stop sulking.”

Taffy giggled. “You know what our jolly host did for his country.”

“Whatever it was, I bet it was a job smarter than the one Stace picked,” Guy said.

Before she could reply, Hewett came walking out of the gray darkness. “Sorry I blew my top,” he murmured.

“Quite all right,” Park said.

“You see,” Hewett continued, “if I lose my head I won’t get my cracks at whoever killed Lisa. I’ve got to stay calm. I have it all figured out. As soon as you know for sure, you’ll tell that lieutenant. But maybe I can find out for sure before you do, Falkner. And if I do, he might not stand trial, whoever he is. I’m beginning to get an idea.”

Stacey Brian stood up and shivered. “That wind’s getting cooler. Or have I got a chill just because there’s a murderer in the house? Goodbye, you people. I’m off for a shower.”

The group slowly split up until only Prine Smith and Park Falkner were left. Mick wheeled the bar inside. Prine Smith’s face was in shadow.

He said, “I can almost see your point. A dilettante in crime. Give you a purpose in life, maybe.” His tone was speculative. “But human beings aren’t puppets, Falkner. They take over the strings. They make up their own lines. I’ve done some
checking. You’ve had considerable violence here on your Grouper Island. Do you sleep well at night?”

“Like a baby.”

“I’ve been in the newspaper game longer than you’d think to look at me. I can smell violence in the air. Something is going to bust open here.”

“It’s possible.”

“What precautions are you taking?”

“I think that would be pretty valuable information to someone.”

“Don’t be a fool! You can’t possibly suspect me.”

Falkner was surprised at the trace of anger in his own voice. “Don’t try to judge me or my methods, Smith. Don’t set yourself up as an arbiter of my moral codes or lack of same. A girl died. There’s the justification.”

In the darkness he could sense Prine Smith’s grin as he stood up. “Glad to know you sometimes doubt yourself, Falkner. Maybe I like you better.”

He went off to the house. Falkner stayed a few minutes more.

Bill Hewett looked full into the eyes of his friend. The others were by the beach fire. Hewett knew that he had drunk too much. Falkner’s room wavered dizzily. He struggled for soberness. He said thickly, “You said you could tell me who killed Lisa.”

“I can.”

“What’s that you’ve got, a recorder? What have you been doing here? It seems to be a funny place to meet, the host’s room.”

“Yes, this is a recorder. I got here first. I made a tape on his machine.”

“You mean you say on the tape who killed her?” Hewett asked.

“That’s right. Here. Have a drink. Then we’ll listen to it. Together.”

“Can’t you just tell me?” Hewett asked plaintively. He tilted the glass high, drained it.

“Now I can tell you. I’ll turn the tape on. Like this.”

“Who is it? Who killed her?”

“You did, Hewett. You killed her. Can’t you remember?”

“What kind of a damn fool joke is this?”

His friend went quickly toward the door, opened it, glanced out into the hall. He turned. “Goodbye, Bill. Give my regards to Lisa. My very best regards. I think you might live another ten seconds—after that drink I gave you.”

The door shut softly. Hewett stared at the empty glass. It slipped from his hands to the rug, bounced, didn’t break. He put both hands to his throat and turned dizzily. The moon was bright on the small private terrace. He saw a brown arm, almost black in the moonlight, reach over the terrace wall, saw a man pull himself up quickly.

Hewett fell to his knees.

They were all near the fire, the ember glow reddening their faces. Mick was telling them how the lights went out in Round Five during his bout with John Henry Lewis.

Park came close to them. Mick looked over and stopped talking.

“What is it?” Taffy asked quickly.

“I’ve just told Norris to come over. The local police will be here, too. Our little house party is over, I’m afraid.”

Georgie Wane looked around the circle. “Where’s Bill?” she demanded.

“Bill is in my room. He’s very dead, and not at all pretty. Poison.”

He heard the hard intake of breath. Taffy said, “Oh, no!”

“Before he did it he left his confession. I think you might like to hear it. Mick, go on up and play the tape that’s on the recorder right now. Pipe it onto the front terrace. We’ll walk over there to listen.”

Mick went across the sand and into the darkness. They stood up slowly, full of the embarrassed gravity with which any group meets the death of one of their number. Taffy came next to Park in the darkness as they walked, her fingers chill on his wrist.

“No, Park. I can’t … believe it.”

They stood on the front terrace, close to the sea. The amplifier made a scratching sound. The voice that came was thin, taut with emotion. There was no need for the voice to identify itself.

“I can’t pretend any more. She said she was through with me. She told me she was fed up with neurotics. I had her meet me at the farm. Falkner trapped me about that. I took a shovel and coveralls. I came up behind her, struck her with the flat of the shovel blade. I carried her fifty feet into the woodlot and buried her there. I burned the shovel handle and the coveralls. I drove her car back and put it in the busiest lot I could find and tore up the check. I couldn’t face the thought of her going to someone else, someone else’s arms around her and lips on hers. I’m not sorry. Not sorry at all …”

There was a dry, rasping sound of needle on empty grooves and then silence as Mick lifted the arm.

“Crazy,” June Luce said softly. “Plain crazy. Gee, the poor guy.”

Sirens shrilled through the distant night, coming closer. Park said quickly, “Go on into the front living room, all of you. They’ll take the body out and then Norris will probably want to talk to you. I see no reason why it might not be simple routine.”

It was
a full forty-five minutes after the cars had swung across the private causeway and parked that Lieutenant Norris came into the front living room. He was a tall, stooped, sick-looking man, with a face that showed the lean fragility of the bone structure underneath. He wore an incongruous dark suit and his eyes were remote, disinterested.

“Let’s get it over,” he said. “You’re Smith? No? Oh, Darana. And you’re Brian. Okay, I got you all straight now. I
guess. I can question you all at once. Did Hewett seem depressed since you’ve been here?”

Several people said yes at the same moment.

Georgie said, “The guy was pretty antisocial. I thought it was because his gal had disappeared. I’ve been wrong before.”

“Now,” said Norris, “about this beach party tonight. Anybody see him leave?”

There was silence. Park said, “The sea was warm. About half the group were swimming from time to time. You couldn’t really keep track of any individual. I guess that at one time or another every one of us wandered off. I found Hewett, as I told you, when I went up to my room to change to dry clothes. It was getting just a little chilly.”

Prine Smith crossed his arms. “Let’s drop this patty-cake routine, shall we?”

Norris stared coldly at him. “What’s on your mind?”

“Hewett was drinking too much. That record sounds too sober to me. And I knew Hewett inside and out. I say nuts to this suicide angle. Lisa was his gal and she meant every look she gave him. I’m the only one outside of Bill and Lisa that knew the wedding date was set. I thought Falkner’s idea was a bust for a time, but I’ve felt the tension growing here. And now I think I know the angle.” He spun and took two steps toward Stacey Brian. “Come on, kid. Make imitations for the people. Show ’em how you can be Jimmy Stewart, or Edward G. Robinson—or Bill Hewett. Maybe you were Bill Hewett over the phone when you got Lisa to go out there to that farm. Bill never killed himself. He had more guts than anyone you know. For my money, Stacey, you got him up there to Falkner’s room, made the record yourself, and slipped him a drink with the stuff in it.”

Stacey Brian turned as white as a human being can turn. He came out of the chair like a coiled spring suddenly released. His fist spatted off Prine Smith’s mouth before Smith could lift his arms. Park leaped in and grabbed Brian from behind. He struggled and then gave it up.

“Will you be good?” Park asked.

Stacey Brian nodded. Park released him.

Stacey said in a level monotone, “Any guy who can think
up that kind of an angle probably did it himself. He was on the make for Lisa ever since the first time Bill brought her around. We all knew that. We didn’t tell the cops because we didn’t think he was a guy to kill anybody. Sure I make imitations. But if any of you think I did a thing like that, you can all go to hell in a basket.”

Norris drawled, “You guys can slap each other around until you’re tired. It doesn’t make no nevermind to me. I got my case solved, and I like the solution. Hewett smeared his gal and covered it nice. I got the dope today they found the body just like he said in the tape.”

“But, damn it, man,” Prine said, “can’t you see that Brian could put that on the tape and make it sound just like Hewett?”

Stacey said, “Smith, I don’t want to ever see you or talk to you or hear your name again as long as I live. I’m going back to New York just as fast as I can get there, and I’m packing my stuff and moving out of that apartment we got two months ago.”

“Good!” Smith said.

“You sound like a couple of babies,” Guy Darana said.

“He’s a slick one, he is,” Prine said. “He even did his imitations here for us, because he knew that if he didn’t do them somebody would wonder why he’d given up his pet party trick.”

Norris sighed. “I’m tired. You people are trying to foul up my case. Sleep on it, will you? Nobody leaves the island. I’ll be back in the morning. They’ve taken the body to town.” He looked around with a sudden, surprising, wry amusement. “Have fun,” he said. He turned and left the room.

Guy whispered to Georgie and then said to the room at large, “We’re taking a walk. The air is fresh out there.”

“Be back in half an hour,” Park said. “We’ll all meet at the enclosed patio at the rear of the house. I think that by then we’ll be able to talk calmly and iron out this trouble.”

“Never!” Stacey Brian said calmly.

“But you’ll give it a try.”

“If it’ll amuse you. It’s your party.”

Park walked off the terrace out into the night and sat in the sand, his back against the concrete seawall. He heard a sound
and looked up over his right shoulder. Taffy stood with her elbows on the wall, her head bent, her thick white hair falling toward him, a sheen in the pale moonlight behind her.

“He’s right, you know: Smith,” she said. There was utter sadness in her voice.

“Don’t fret, Taff.”

“The poor lost man. Poor Bill. This is a night for losing things. We’re lost too, you know.”

“How do you mean that?”

“I could go along with your plans before this happened, Park. I told myself you were doing good. But I really didn’t believe it. Now a boy is dead. And boys stay dead a long time. It’s been nice.”

He found her hand. “Trust me.”

“I want to. But I can’t. Not any more. Because this thing that happened is wrong. Norris is a fool. You’re being a fool too.”

“I don’t want to lose you, Taff.”

“But you did. When Bill died you lost me.”

“Old Taff. The world mother, the open warm heart for lost dogs and children.”

“Don’t make bright talk. Just kiss me and say goodbye like a little man.”