Hard Case Crime: Honey in His Mouth (22 page)

Doctor Englaster jammed the brandy bottle down in the sand beside him. “Stop it! That’s enough of that talk.”

Brother stood up and poured coffee in a cup. He tasted it. He poured the coffee out on the sand, and gave them a look of contempt. “Oh, you very normal people. I am going swimming.”

“Right after you eat?” Miss Muirz stared at him. “You will get a cramp.”

“I haven’t eaten, dear. Hadn’t you noticed? And I would certainly cramp if I ate anything you cooked.” Brother took off his clothes down to bathing trunks which he was wearing, folding each garment carefully and making a pile on the sand. In the pile between shirt and undershirt he placed the pistol. He walked across the beach into the surf and about thirty feet out took a graceful dive into a wave, beginning to swim lazily.

Doctor Englaster drank more brandy. “He is a little more nasty than usual tonight, isn’t he? I suppose he is beginning to feel all our waiting may not have been in vain, and perhaps that is good for his paranoia.”

They ate in silence.

From time to time Harsh glanced at the small pile Brother’s clothes made on the sand. “I wish he intended to use a bigger gun.” He reached out casually to lift the shirt and expose the small automatic. He inspected it a few moments. Then he took his handkerchief from his coat pocket and used it to keep his fingers from touching the little gun as he picked it up. “I sure wouldn’t want my prints on this thing.” Harsh turned the gun back and forth, looking at it. It really was quite similar, he thought, to what he’d seen of the cop’s in the back of the limousine. Not that he’d gotten that good a look in the heat of the moment, or a chance to give it a closer look since. “Twenty-five calibre, or twenty-two long rifle, one or the other. That shows how much I know about guns.” He knew Mr. Hassam and Miss Muirz were watching him with a motionless poised attention that had come over them when he picked up the gun. “Me, I would want it larger.” He put the gun back, picked up Brother’s shirt and dropped it over the gun, replacing everything the way he had found it, except for the fact that he had swapped the cop’s gun for that of Brother.

Harsh put his own handkerchief back in his pocket, Brother’s gun going with it. Mr. Hassam and Miss Muirz relaxed enough to resume chewing food. They had not noticed, he decided. He had gotten away with it. Mr. Hassam and Miss Muirz would have said something if they had noticed the switch of guns, he was sure.

Harsh removed his coat and spread it over the pile of unused firewood to make a backrest, careful not to let the gun in the pocket clank against the wood. “Grub made me drowsy.” He leaned back.

The two little automatics were remarkably alike. There had been no opportunity for a really close inspection to ascertain whether they were the same make, but they certainly looked similar enough to pass inspection at first glance.

And the important thing was, the one that could implicate him in a murder wasn’t in his pocket anymore. If it wound up implicating Brother instead, well, Harsh thought, like they say, couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

The beach fire, down to coals, threw no more light than candles. Harsh wondered if it was enough light for Brother to notice any difference in the guns when he returned. He hoped not. But he could not relax, thinking of the risk.

Presently Brother came swimming in strongly from the ocean and ran to the fire, scattering drops of water. He put on his clothes over his wet body, breathing with deep animal-like regularity while he did so. He tucked the gun inside his shirt without more than a glance. Then he sat down cross-legged by the fire and began to eat ravenously.

Harsh looked at Mr. Hassam. “You said something about a talk.”

“We have had it.” Mr. Hassam sounded tired. “I merely wished to be sure you had grown more comfortable than the last time we spoke about it with the fact that there was eventually to be a murder.”

“Was that all?”

“Yes.”

Harsh stood up and stretched. “Then I’ll see you folks in the morning. Okay?”

Mr. Hassam nodded. “I hope we have not said anything that will keep you from sleeping soundly.”

“Don’t worry about that. You knock off whoever you want to knock off, just so long as I get mine.”

The whereabouts of the two automobiles was important. Harsh settled that point on his way to the house. The underslung sports car and the older station wagon were under the carport at the side of the house. He took a quick look at the driving controls of the sports car. They did not look complicated, he thought, but then Vera Sue wasn’t the experienced driver he was. He began to worry about it.

The limousine was parked before the leaded glass marquee at the front door. He did not look inside, merely noted its position. As best he recalled, it was left there at night.

If anyone had found Goldberg’s body, obviously something would have been mentioned.

The upstairs hallways smelled faintly of flowers, furniture polish. At the end of the hall the windows spilled rectangles of moonlight on dove grey carpet. The sound of a sob arrested him and he stood motionless, listening. Surf whispered distantly on the beach, the coyote sound of distant bathers was audible. Birds quarreled briefly somewhere in the shrubbery.

He opened Vera Sue Crosby’s bedroom door. “For Christ’s sake!” Vera Sue was lying on the bed with an arm over her face. She did not remove the arm when he sat on the edge of the bed. He leaned down, kissed her mouth, getting a slight taste of Benedictine off her lips. “What’s the matter?”

She lifted the arm from her face, made a fist of her hand, and shook the fist angrily. “Stuck-up snobs, dirty bastards.” Her face was puffy and her eye enraged. “Telling me I couldn’t go down on the beach to eat with them.”

“Say, did they do that? I didn’t know they did that.”

“Why don’t you stick up for me, Walter?”

“I have been honey, but I didn’t know about this.”

She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “You stick up for me, Walter? Crap.”

“Honey, I do. I’m always thinking about you, you know that.”

She sniffled moistly. “The way it looks to me, you do plenty of thinking about that Miss Muirz.”

“Vera Sue, you want to know something, I’m scared of that dame.” Harsh kissed her once more. This time she kissed back. “I’m getting scared of the whole bunch of them, if you want the facts.”

“You follow them around like their puppy dog.”

“I been playing them along. I thought I had them suckered into taking up my photographic emulsion idea and putting it over big.”

Vera Sue sat up suddenly. “Walter! What the hell, are you trying to say your plans blew up?”

“Worse than that. Jesus Christ, worse than that.” Harsh looked into the hall and closed the door before he came back to the bed. “You know what I found out tonight? These people are a bunch of crooks, that’s what I found out tonight. And not our sort of crooks either.”

“I ain’t surprised.” She was not tipsy in spite of the Benedictine on her lips. “I ain’t surprised the least bit.”

“Well, I was.”

“Walter, the whole thing was too screwed up to be on the level. Couldn’t you see that?” She peered at him intently. “Walter! My God, Walter, you
are
scared! I can see it on your face.”

He nodded.

“Why? What have they done, Walter?”

“It’s not what they’ve done, it’s what they’re planning to do. They’re fixing up to murder a guy, put me in his place, and embezzle the guy’s money. Damn right I’m scared. Wouldn’t you be?”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “We got to be careful. They know I’m wise to their plans, and I got a feeling they won’t want me walking out of here alive.”

“Well, by God, I’m getting out. They don’t think I know anything, do they?”

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t put it past them to knock us both off. They’re desperate characters. They ain’t like Americans.” He held his head in his hands, pretending to think. She was falling right in with his plans. “We got two handicaps, Vera Sue. No money. No transportation.”

“Couldn’t we take the limousine, then abandon it later, Walter?”

“Huh-uh, honey. No good. That little sports car could catch up with the limousine in nothing flat.”

“Well, then what’s wrong with taking the sports job?”

“Can you drive it?”

“I looked it over a few times, and once I sat in it. Yeah, I think I could handle it, Walter. But what the hell, you would be going along, and you could drive.”

“What I was thinking, baby, you could take off by yourself, and I would stay behind and fix the other cars so they wouldn’t run, then take off myself on foot. We could meet later.”

They were quiet. Harsh hoped the two servants were on the main floor in the rear where they usually were this time of the evening. He glanced out the bedroom window and saw Mr. Hassam, Doctor Englaster, and Miss Muirz still beside the beach fire with Brother.

“Walter. About the no money... ?”

“Yeah?”

“I want to show you something.” Vera Sue got off the bed and moved to the door. “Walter, do you know anything about jewelry, whether it’s worth anything or not by looking at it?”

“What are you talking about?”

Vera Sue beckoned. “Come on. That Miss Muirz brought some stuff with her when she came the last time. I been doing a little snooping on my own, Walter. Come on, I want to show you.”

She drew Harsh down the hall and opened the door of Miss Muirz’s bedroom. “In these two suitcases.” Her voiced was husky with excitement. “Goddamn, if they’re real, Walter, we could come out of this with a stake.”

The first suitcase she opened was packed with small objects wrapped in tissue and cotton. She tore away the wrappings, uncovering a necklace, several brooches, a crown-like tiara. Diamonds, emeralds, platinum, the stones all very large. Like owl eyes, Harsh thought.

“Jesus God, Vera Sue.”

She fondled the jewel pieces. “You think they’re real, Walter? The other suitcase is full of the same stuff, too.” Excitement made the muscles ripple in her throat. “Is it costume jewelry, Walter, or the real McCoy?”

“It’s real, baby.”

“How do you know?”

“It figures. It belongs to the guy they’re planning to kill. They already stole it from him, and he hasn’t missed it yet, and won’t ever miss it if they murder him. Yeah, it’s got to be real. Say, if we take it and return it to the owner, we would be in line for a big reward.”

“Reward? Return it?” Vera Sue looked startled. “Oh, well, sure, I see what you mean. Yeah, sure, Walter.” She took a deep breath. “We don’t have to hand it back to the owner right away, though, Walter, do you think?”

“No, of course not. We can keep it and negotiate with the owner, or his insurance company, so we don’t get screwed out of a reward.”

“Walter, how much reward do you suppose we would get?”

“Hell, how do I know? Maybe fifty thousand dollars. I don’t know.”

He saw her eyes turn all whites. He should not have mentioned a sum like that, he thought, remembering the effect fifty thousand dollars had had on him.

“Walter, get a bed sheet.” Two spots of apple red grew on Vera Sue’s cheeks. “We won’t take the suitcases, they’d maybe be missed. We’ll dump the stuff in a sheet.”

He went to the door, listened, went out into the hall and silently on to Vera Sue’s room, where he whipped the orchid sheet off the bed. He stowed it under his arm, ran back to join Vera Sue. She was on her knees beside the suitcase. “I just hope to Jesus this is not costume junk. My God, maybe it’s just a salesman’s sample case of cheap trash.”

“It’s real, I’m betting on that.”

She snatched the sheet from him and snapped it out shoulder height, guiding it to the floor with swaying motions of her upper body like a Bali dance. She dumped everything from both suitcases onto the sheet. Tissue paper, jewelry, cotton, everything. Her breath came and went in spurts past the tips of small white teeth. “I wish to hell we had something to stuff in the suitcases.”

Harsh shook his head. “There’s no time for that. They’re right on the beach. We can’t get much of a start as it is.”

Vera Sue nodded reluctantly. “The first thing this Miss Muirz is going to do when she gets back inside is open the suitcases to gloat over the jewels. I know bitches like her, and I know that’s what she’ll do. And when she does, she’s going to squall like a hill panther, and we had better be gone from here.”

“All right. Let’s go back to my plan. You take the sports car, Vera Sue. I’ll put the other two cars out of commission and knock out the telephone, then take off north. That will split them up.”

“The jewelry better go with me, Walter.”

He stepped to her and without warning swung his fist. It landed on the side of her face. She slid to the floor with one leg folded under her and the other stretched out in front of her.

Harsh leaned over her. “That’s to pay you for the goddamn greedy ideas I can see you’re getting. You listen to me, baby. You double-cross me, you just try it, and what you just got is not even a small sample of what you got coming.”

No more than the tips of small teeth showed between her lips. “It may be you just made a mistake, Walter.”

“Like hell I just made a mistake. You try to cut me out of this deal, and I’ll break your neck. Now listen. Go to a hotel in Miami. Register and wait for me. The way you pick a hotel, you look in the Yellow Pages. You look at the list of hotels and count down five from the first, and go to that one. If you can’t get a room there, you make sure you leave a note for me. Say in the note where you did get a room. Fifth hotel down in the phone book, register or leave me a note. Got it?”

She drew in the leg that was straightened out and put the tips of her fingers on the floor. “You brutal son of a bitch. What do you think I am, stupid? I’m smarter than you, Walter. Least I can read and write better’n a ten-year-old.”

“Okay. Okay, baby.” He seized the bundle made of the knotted sheet and jewelry. “You want to play that way, I can take this stuff myself.”

She jumped to her feet and snatched the bundle. “No, I’ll do it. You just distract their attention while I get away.” Her eyes glowed like angry garnets. “And I’ll settle with you later for slugging me.”