A Touch of Death (2 page)

She smiled. “Neither. Its in the garage back in the alley. You notice things, don’t you?”

“What’s the gag?”

“What makes you think there is one? Maybe I want two cars.”

“Do you?”

She looked me right in the face. “No,” she said.

I was burning. “What’s the idea of wasting my time?”

“Maybe I wasn’t.”

“No?”

“That’s up to you. I said we might make a deal. Remember?”

She went up the stairs and I followed her, remembering the long, relaxed smoothness of her on that towel. She put her purse on the table and tilted the Venetian blinds a little against the light. It was cooler in the apartment and almost dim after the glare in the street. When she turned back I was standing in front of her. I pulled her to me and kissed her, hard, with my hands digging into her back. But she wasn’t wasting my time then. I was.

It was all nothing. She rolled with it like a passed-out drunk and didn’t even close her eyes. They just watched me coolly. She broke it up with her elbows without seeming to move them, the way they can, and said, “That wasn’t quite the deal I had in mind.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I said.

“Nothing, I suppose, under the right circumstances. But I asked you up here to talk business. Why don’t you sit down? You’d probably be more comfortable.”

I was still angry, but there was no percentage in knocking myself out. I sat down. She went into the kitchen and came back in a minute with two drinks.

She sat down in a big chair on the other side of the coffee table and crossed her legs. She put a cigarette in her mouth and waited for me to leap up and hold the lighter for her.

The hell with her.

She shrugged and reached for the lighter on the coffee

table.

“What is it?” I asked.

She stared thoughtfully at me. “I’ve been trying to size

you up.”

“Why?”

“I’m coming to that. I think I can see you now. A little tough—and, what’s more to the point, a little cynical, as anybody would be who was a hero at eighteen and a has-been at twenty-five. You sold things for a while, but you sold less and less as time went by and the customers had a little trouble remembering who Lee Scarborough was. You can stop me any time you don’t agree with this.”

“Go on,” I said.

“There was another thing I kept trying to remember. I’ve got it now. You got in trouble your last year in college and were almost kicked out and nearly went to

jail.”

“So I smashed up a car,” I said.

“It was somebody else’s car. And the woman who was

smashed up along with it was somebody else’s wife. She was in the hospital a long time.”

“She got over it,” I said. “Without any scars.”

“Yes. I guess you would know that.”

“All right. Look. There’s a type of babe who chases football players. What’re we supposed to do? Scream for help? Or wear chastity girdles?”

She smiled. “You don’t have to defend yourself. I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to see how you fit in the picture. And I think you’ll do, on all counts. I want to make you a proposition.”

“I hope you have better luck than I did.”

“You take women pretty casually, don’t you?” she said.

“There’s another way?”

“Never mind. But do you want to hear what I asked you up here for?”

“Shoot.”

“Remember, I asked you how you’d like to make a lot of money? Well, I think I know where there is a lot of it, for anybody with nerve enough to pick it up.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “How do you mean, pick it up? Steal it?”

She shook her head. “No. It’s already been stolen. Maybe twice.”

I put down my cigarette. She was watching me closely.

“Just how much money?” I asked.

“A hundred and twenty thousand dollars,” she said.

It was very quiet in the room. I whistled softly.

She was still watching me. “How does it sound?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t heard anything about it yet.”

“All right,” she said. “I have to take a chance on somebody if I’m ever going to do anything about it, because I can’t do it alone—and I think you’re the one. It’ll take nerve and intelligence, and it has to be somebody without a criminal record, so the police won’t have their eyes on him afterward.”

“O.K., O.K.,” I said. I knew what she meant. Somebody who wasn’t a criminal but who might let a little rub off on him if the price was right. It was a lot of money, but I wanted to hear about it first.

She studied me with speculation in her eyes. “There’s a reward for the return of it.”

She was sharp. I could see the beauty of that. She was showing me how to do it. You thought about the reward, first; when you got used to that you could let your ideas grow a little. You didn’t have to jump in cold. You waded

in.

“Whose money is it?” I asked. “And where is it?”

“It’s just a long guess,” she said. “I didn’t say I knew

where it was. I said I think I know. You add up a lot of things to get to it.”

“Such as?”

She took a sip of the drink and looked at me across the top of the glass. “Did you ever hear of a man named J. N. Butler?”

“I don’t think so. Who is he?”

“Just a minute.”

She got up and went into the bedroom. When she came back she handed me two newspaper clippings. I looked at the first one. It was datelined here in Sanport, June eighth. That was two months ago.

SEARCH WIDENS FOR MISSING BANK OFFICIAL

J. N. Butler, vice-president of the First National Bank of Mount Temple, was the object of a rapidly expanding manhunt today as announcement was made of discovery of a shortage in the bank’s funds estimated at $120,000.

I looked up at her. She smiled. I read on.

Butler, prominent in social and civic activities of the town for over twenty years, has been missing since Saturday, at which time, according to Mrs. Butler, he announced his intention of going to Louisiana for a weekend fishing trip. He did not return Sunday night, as scheduled, but it was not until the bank opened for business this morning that the shortage was discovered.

I read the second one. It was dated three days later, and was a rehash of the previous story, except that the lead paragraph said Butler s car had been found abandoned in Sanport and that police were now looking for him all over the nation.

I handed them back. “That was two months ago,” I said. “What’s the pitch? Have they found him?” “No,” she said. “And I don’t think they will.” “What do you mean?” “I don’t think he ever left his house in Mount Temple. Not alive, anyway.”

I put the drink down very slowly and watched her face. You didn’t have to be a genius to see she knew something about it the police didn’t.

“Why?” I asked
.
“Interested?”
“I might be. Enough to listen, anyway.”

“All right,” she said. “It’s like this: I’m a nurse. And for about eight months I was on a job in Mount Temple, taking care of a woman who’d suffered a stroke and was partially paralyzed. Her house was out in the edge of town, across the street from a big place, an enormous old house taking up a whole city block. J. N. Butler’s place.” She stopped.

“All right,” I said. “Keep going.”

“Well, his car, the one they found abandoned here—I saw it leave there that Saturday. Only it wasn’t Saturday afternoon, the way she said; it was Saturday night. And

he wasn’t driving it. She was.”

“His wife?”

“His wife.”

“Hold it,” I said. “You say it was night. How do you

know who was driving?”

“I was out on the front lawn, smoking a cigarette before going to bed. Just as the Butler car came out of their drive onto the street, another car went by and caught it in the headlights. It was Mrs. Butler, all right. Alone.”

“But,” I said, “maybe she was just going to town or something. That doesn’t prove he didn’t leave in the car later.”

She shook her head. “Mrs. Butler never drove his car. She had her own. He didn’t abandon that car in Sanport.

She did. I’d swear it.”

“But why?”

“Don’t you see the possibilities?” she said impatiently. “He almost has to be dead. There’s no other answer. They’d have found him long ago if he were alive. He was a big, good-looking man, the black-Irish type, easy to see and hard to hide. He was six-three and weighed around two-thirty. You think they couldn’t find him? And another thing. When they run like that, ninety-nine times out of a hundred there’s another woman in it. Suppose Mrs. Butler found out about it, before he got away? He was going to have the money and the other woman, while she held still for the disgrace. What would she do? Help him pack his bag, to be sure he had plenty of handkerchiefs?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What about her?”

She shrugged and gestured with the cigarette. “Who knows who’s capable of murder? Maybe anybody is, under the right pressure. But I can tell you a little about her. This is probably an odd thing to say, but she’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Brunette, with a magnolia complexion and big, smoky-looking eyes. And a bitch right out of the book. Old-family sort of thing; the house is really hers. She also drinks like a fish.”

“You didn’t miss much while you were up there.”

“You mean the drinking? It was one of those hushed-up secrets everybody knows.”

“Then,” I said, “your idea is she killed Butler? And that

the money’s still there in the house?”

“Right.”

“Didn’t the police shake it down?”

“After a fashion. But why would they make much of a search, when he’d obviously got away to Sanport and then disappeared?”

“I see what you mean,” I said. “But there’s another angle. You say he was a big guy. If she killed him, how did she dispose of his body? She couldn’t very well call the piano movers.”

She shook her head. “That I don’t know. I haven’t been able to figure it. But maybe she had a boyfriend. She still had to get back from Sanport, too, after she ditched the car. And, naturally, she couldn’t come on the bus. Somebody’d remember it. A boyfriend fits.”

“I can see Mrs. Butler rates, in your book,” I said. “So far, she’s only a lush, a murderer, and a tramp. What’d she do? Dig up your flower beds?”

“Opinions are beside the point. This is for money. What we’re trying to get at is facts!”

“And all we’ve got is a string of guesses. Anyway, what’s your idea?”

“That we search the house. Tear it apart, if necessary, until we find the money, or some evidence as to what became of Butler, or something.”

“With her in it? Think again.”

“No,” she said. “That’s why it takes two of us. She’s here in town now, attending a meeting of some historical society. I’ll hunt her up, get her plastered, and keep her

that way. For days, if necessary. You’ll have time to dismantle the house and put it back together before she sobers up enough to go home.”

“What you’re really looking for,” I said, “is a patsy. If something goes wrong, you’re all right, but I’m a dead duck.”

“Don’t be silly. The house is in the middle of an estate that’d cover a city block, with big hedges and trees around it. There’s one servant, who goes home as soon as she’s out of sight. You could take an orchestra with you, and nobody’d ever know you were in there. The police may check the place once a night when nobody’s home, but you don’t have to tear off a door and leave it lying on the lawn for them, just to get in. The drapes and curtains will all be drawn. There’ll be food in the kitchen. You could set up housekeeping. How about it?”

“It sounds safe enough, for the price,” I said. I got up and walked across the room. “But I still don’t see it. All that stuff about her leaving there in the car doesn’t prove anything. Hell, maybe she was in it with him, and was just covering for him by ditching the car while he got out of town some other way.”

She shook her head. “No. I tell you he’s dead. And she killed him. That money’s still there.”

“I can’t see why you’re so sure,” I said.

“Then you don’t believe I’m right?” she said. “You don’t want to tackle it?”

I thought about the money. A hundred and twenty thousand. You couldn’t get hold of it all at once. It was too big. It had to grow on you.

I let it grow.

But, hell. She was crazy. In that whole story of hers there wasn’t one shred of evidence that Butler hadn’t got away with it. A lot of good guesses, maybe, but no concrete evidence. And if you were going to take a chance and start breaking laws like that, you had to have something more definite than a guess to lead you on. I

couldn’t see it.

“Well?” she asked. “How about it?”

“The whole thing’s a pipe dream,” I said.

“You’re passing up a fortune.”

I shrugged. “I doubt it.”

I tried another pass but she wasn’t having any, so I said, “See you around,” and shoved off. I punched Winlock’s buzzer on the way downstairs, but he still wasn’t home.

I got in the car and looked at my watch. It was after five. The whole afternoon was shot. I went home, picking up my mail on the way in through the lobby, and wondering how much longer I’d be able to pay the rent. It was more apartment than I needed, or could afford, in a new building with a lot of glass brick and thick carpets, over on Davy Avenue. I’d moved into it when I first went with Wagner Realty and was going to make a thousand a month selling houses in a subdivision. That was in May, and when they dusted off the old wheeze about a reduction in force three days ago, on the first of August, I was still working on the first month’s thousand. Maybe the demand for ten-thousand-dollar apple crates was falling off, or I was no salesman.

I sat down in the living room and looked at the mail. It was all bills except one letter on orchid stationery. I tried to recall who the girl was, but finally gave up and looked at the bills. The tailor called my attention very tactfully to $225 that I had apparently overlooked last month and the month before. There was another note due on the car. I shuffled through the others: two department stores, the utilities, and the kennel that boarded Moxie, the English setter. I checked my bank balance. I had $170.