Killing Town Page 16

  “The train from New York.”

  I leaned in. “Are you saying Lawrence Charles was on the same train as the murder victim?”

  He nodded, but waved it off. “Yes, but they weren’t traveling together. Lawrence had spent three days in New York at a convention for food cannery company executives. His father was there, too, but came home earlier in the day.”

  I was shaking my head. “Chief, Lawrence Charles and Jean Warburton may not have been traveling together, but you do know that she was his secretary, and by secretary, I mean she was laying him.”

  He gave me the non-smile again. “Hammer, we confirmed from witnesses that the wife was seen at the train station. Presumably she picked her husband up and took him home. We know that Jean Warburton was raped and strangled. Does that strike you as a husband and wife project? Like putting up the new blinds or painting the back porch?”

  “Not exactly,” I admitted.

  “And why, if the Warburton girl was his mistress, would Lawrence have to rape her? She’d just been in New York for the cannery convention. What do you think she was doing with her boss in his hotel room for four days? Taking dictation?”

  That sounded about right.

  He leaned forward and spoke softly, just between us. “Hammer, I have no doubt you were framed. And I have no doubt the fine hand of the late Lieutenant Henry Sykes arranged it. But the sex pervert who did the crime was probably some bum passing through… and you fit that bill, and I can see the Charles family— either the Senator or his son or both—putting that frame around you to keep any public inquiry from dipping into the unpleasant fact of father and son passing that girl around between them like she was a dish of mashed potatoes. It’s the kind of sick scandal that could take down a reputation, which even a man of the Senator’s standing couldn’t hold up. So you were just the fall guy. The patsy.”

  I sighed smoke. “Okay. Fine. I see all of that. But why did the Charles girl clear me? And why, besides my boyish charm, does she want to get hitched to me? And why, in God’s name, did the Senator and his son and the daughter-in-law welcome me to the family like my last name is Vanderbilt?”

  “You want an answer?”

  “Hell yes I want an answer!”

  “I have no damn idea.” He got himself out of the booth and looked down at me with an expression that might be described as fatherly. Of course, so could the look on my old man’s mug when he got out the razor strop.

  “Hammer,” he said, “why don’t you find someplace else to be? Someplace that isn’t just outside a multiple-homicide crime scene, for now. And by tomorrow? Someplace that isn’t my town.”

  He finally remembered his cigar, reached in and took it, stood there and re-lighted it and did something that threw me a little.

  He winked at me, and was gone.

  * * *

  Beat as hell, I got back to the hotel just after two a.m. I went into my room slow, with the .45 in hand, since after all it was no secret I was staying here. Right now I wasn’t sure who might have dropped by to wish me unwell…

  But nobody was waiting.

  I locked myself in and stripped down. The tub had a shower set-up, but I felt like soaking, and made it nice and hot, turning the bathroom steamy. I gently soaped my wrists where they’d been bound, and massaged my shoulders and arms where they had been given the salt water taffy treatment. Then I leaned back and relaxed and started to try to think things through. I had even more pieces now—everything I needed to put the jigsaw image together.

  Only I was too damn tired. My brain refused to do any hard work and, when I felt myself getting sleepy, I crawled out and toweled off and climbed between the sheets stark naked. If the maid ignored the DO NOT DISTURB sign, that would be her problem.

  The next thing I knew, somebody was knocking. Maybe it was the maid at that, because the knock was gentle, tentative. I looked at the bedside clock, and almost exactly twelve hours had passed—it was five after two, and afternoon sun was filtering around the edges of the shade I’d drawn.

  Also on the bedside stand was the .45, and I stepped into my boxers and took the gun with me to the door. Because it might not be the maid…

  I undid the bolt but left the night-latch and cracked open the door.

  Melba’s lovely face, bisected by the chain, looked at me with those gray eyes filled with concern, but the red wound that was her mouth had its corners turned up.

  “Oh, Mike! I’m so glad to see you.”

  I let her in. That I was in my shorts with a .45 in my mitt didn’t seem to register—she’d been around me enough to be used to that kind of thing.

  “I know you wanted me to stay at home,” she said in a rush, as she stepped into the room. The gray of her dress was darker than her eyes; with little black polka dots and a scoop neckline, it fit her like that green thing had back at the police station when she sprung me.

  “But,” she went on, “I was going stir crazy there, and just had to see you.”

  “Have you had lunch?”

  “No.”

  “We can go down to the dining room or I can call room service.”

  “Let’s stay here.”

  I called down, got dressed, and we sat beside each other on the bed and waited.

  “I heard my father and my brother talking,” she said. “I was so worried. They said that terrible policeman…”

  “Sykes?”

  “Sykes. That he and another ‘unscrupulous’ officer had been killed, and some gangsters from New York, too. And they think maybe you had something to do with it.”

  “What do you think?”

  Melba let out a little laugh. “Well, of course you had something to do with it!” Then she frowned. “Are those New York gangsters just going to keep coming, Mike?”

  “I think maybe I’ve discouraged them.”

  She sighed. “Good… But I’m beside myself, worried the police are going to come after you again. Maybe you should leave town. I can go with you if you like. If you even want anything to do with me now.”

  Room service came. The waiter set us up on a little table. I had a steak, baked potato and the trimmings with a beer. She just had a chicken salad plate with coffee. Always thinking about her figure. Who wasn’t?

  I put the trays of dirty dishes outside and when I came back, she was already half out of her clothes, stepping out of black pumps. She was no innate strip artist, like Jean Warburton in that sleeper car window; but she had a lot to work with, and just unveiling that creamy white body, set off by the white shoulder-brushing hair, the high, full breasts, the narrow waist, the swell of hips, was enough to get me out of my clothes and under those covers with her in record time.

  She liked it gentle and that’s how it was again. Slow and sensual, a song starting sweet, gradually picking up tempo—the warmth of her mouth, the stickiness of the lipstick, the feminine fragrance of her—notes perfectly in tune, played exactly right, the rhythm building but never wanton, a loving, lovely melody ending on a high note.

  We did as convention dictated and lay on our backs with the sheets draped under our shoulders and pillows propped behind us, and smoked our cigarettes—me a Lucky, her the girlish Marlboro. I’d been with my share of women, maybe more than my share, and often real beauties, like this one. But Melba was different. Special. A lot of women like it at least a little rough. Lust takes no prisoners.

  But this flower could only respond to a gentle touch, and that was fine with me, as long as I could control my impulses, because the rewards were generous.

  I had a feeling words romantic and sweet were about to come from the girl. Her expression, after all, was dreamy as her eyes looked skyward, or anyway ceiling-ward, following wisps of smoke doing a harem girl dance.

  “I’m releasing you,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  She turned toward me. Her mouth, lipstick gone, found mine and kissed me sweetly.

  “Releasing you,” she said. “I was wrong to demand such a price.”

>   “Marrying you, kid, is a bargain.”

  She touched my face. “I shouldn’t marry anyone.”

  “Why? There must be some poor slob out there looking for a beautiful blonde with millions of bucks. Maybe you aren’t trying hard enough.”

  She smiled a crinkly little smile, genuinely amused, but the eyes stayed sad. “I’m not fit, Mike.”

  “Come on.”

  “No. I’m not. I’m… damaged goods. No man should have to put up with me. I admit I’m surprised that you… I mean, you’re such a roughneck. Yet you do have tenderness in you.”

  “We need to talk about this.”

  “You being tender?”

  “No.”

  “About… what, then?”

  “About why you wanted to marry me. I think I know. No. I do know.”

  She shook her head, the blonde arcs of it swinging. “No. That’s impossible.”

  I leaned on an elbow. “Well, let’s start with the big picture. The undeniable part. You love your father, you love your brother, you love your family. They may be flawed, but all of us—most of us anyway—learn to love our family despite the flaws. Will you accept that?”

  She was frowning, as if I’d spoken in a foreign tongue. But after a few seconds, she nodded.

  I went on: “Your father is covering up something about the Warburton girl’s death.”

  She started shaking her head.

  I shook mine back at her. “Honey, I know she was your daddy’s mistress…”

  “She was his secretary!”

  “Right. His private secretary. And when he lost interest, or she got too demanding, he passed her over to your brother, who by all reports is a well-known rounder.”

  She looked away. But she didn’t deny it.

  “What exactly happened, I don’t know,” I admitted. “But your father, probably at your brother’s urging, fitted me for the now-famous frame. They wouldn’t have hung me on a wall, either.”

  Very quietly, she said, “They don’t hang people in this state.”

  “I was speaking figuratively, honey. Now let’s get literal. Let’s get to why you wanted to marry me after you cleared me.”

  Her smile was a little too honeyed as she touched my cheek. “Mike, you’re very sweet, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m not sweet, and I do know. Your father or your brother did something—something to do with the Warburton girl’s death— that puts one or both of them at serious risk. But you’re a good girl, a decent person, and you got wind of the frame-up and you couldn’t stomach it. You couldn’t be part of an innocent person going to jail and maybe the gallows… all right, the electric chair… even if you were just on the fringes, the sidelines.”

  Very softly she said, “Maybe… maybe that’s true.”

  “Here’s what else is true. The heart of it. The goddamn nub. Clearing me made you part of the cover-up.”

  “That’s simply ridiculous.”

  “No. You wouldn’t have known to clear me if you didn’t know about the cover-up, the frame. So that made you an accessory after the fact to murder and, yes, rape. Sooner or later I’d likely find that out. What other choice did you have? A husband can’t testify against his wife.”

  Her lips were quivering. Her eyes getting moist.

  I said, “And I was going to get a ten-thousand-dollar pay-off for the privilege of being your husband on paper. But there would be no consummation. No fun and games. We kind of double-crossed ourselves on that account, didn’t we, honey?”

  She flung herself at me, her arms hugging me, her face buried in my chest, tears flowing. I let her do that for a while.

  Then I eased her away and I held her eyes with mine.

  I made my voice as gentle as I could. “Now, Mel… I need to ask you a few things, and it’s not going to be pleasant.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Why, has this been pleasant?”

  I smiled just a little. “Very pleasant, before we started talking. But every marriage has talk in it. It’s not just fun between the sheets. And not all the talk is pillow talk.”

  She was sitting up in the bed, sheet gathered at her waist, her arms folded across her naked breasts. Her chin was lowered and she was shivering. It was not cold.

  “Honey,” I said, “I need to ask, and I need the truth. Is there anything about your father or your brother that would make you think one of them might be capable of rage? Violent rage.”

  She shivered some more. No answer. Not a nod or a head shake, either.

  “I need to know, baby. Would either of them be capable of strangling another human being?”

  She began crying again.

  I put my hands on her bare shoulders. “Or do you already know? Was it your brother? Did he strangle that woman?”

  She shook her head. It wasn’t her saying no—it was, I don’t know.

  I felt like a heel, but I had to press on. “What about… I’m sorry, darling, I have to ask. What about rape? Is Lawrence capable of such a thing?”

  She swallowed and she looked at me with eyes from which tears tumbled, her lovely face streaked with the stuff.

  “Yes,” she said. Her voice small but firm. “I know he is.”

  “Honey, how do you know?”

  “That… that’s how it always was with us,” she said. “Growing up…”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I was in the library the Senator used as his office in the Colonial mansion atop the Bluff.

  I’d left Melba at the hotel, not wanting her around when I had my little talk with her father, not even sure home was a safe place for her. The sun was down, the evening cool, with dark clouds chasing themselves across the sky while God’s belly growled as if hungry for sinners to smite.

  This time the patriarch of the Charles clan—casual in a loose-fitting tropical sports shirt, birds and flowers on a pale yellow background—was behind his boat of a desk. All he lacked was a captain’s cap. I’d pulled a visitor’s chair up. Though I’d said nothing specific about why I was there, he seemed to know instinctively that the comfy overstuffed chairs around the library’s central coffee table, with its stack of bestsellers, were not appropriate.

  And yet there was a social aspect—he had again summoned Eva to bring me a beer, though he already had a bottle of Old Grand-Dad going on the desk, half a tumbler of it before him when I came in.

  Mrs. Lawrence Charles was also dressed casually at home on a Sunday evening—white short-sleeved blouse, navy slacks, open-toed sandals—but in full make-up that fairly screamed her naturally pretty features. She didn’t even rate a “thanks” from her father-in-law this time, trundling in and out without acknowledging my presence.

  “Sounds to me, son,” he said, slurring a shade, “that you were a busy boy yesterday, after we spoke. I detect your fine hand in last night’s waterfront doings, do I not?”

  “You do,” I admitted, and took a swig of Rheingold from a pilsner. “The festivities were held in a warehouse of yours, by the way. I wonder if that’s significant.”

  His shrug was small yet exaggerated. He was pretty buzzed. “The late Lieutenant Sykes and I did business, time to time… but he was not doing my business last night.”

  “No, I figure he was just using that warehouse because he had access to it. Last night was about the money my army buddy stole from those New York hoods. They’ll back off now that four of theirs are dead, with two dead coppers tossed in for good measure, adding some heat.”

  The broad-nosed face, with the bushy eyebrows and pale-blue eyes, was home to an unsettling smile. “You do lead a lively life, son.”

  “Ernest, I seldom get bored.” I sipped beer. Always good to be genteel in a millionaire’s mansion. “But by now I think you’ll agree that you could find a better husband for your daughter.”

  Another small yet overstated shrug. “Meaning no offense… you were her choice, not mine.”

  “You know, I believe that. You raised a decent daughter, Senat
or… and I’m going to call you ‘Senator,’ since I don’t think the cozy son-in-law relationship is going to happen. Anyway, it just seems right.”

  He poured Old Grand-Dad. “Whatever pleases you, Mr. Hammer. And I would agree with your assessment—my daughter is a fine girl.”

  I nodded. “She is. I don’t know if I ever will marry, but if I do, I could hardly hope for a better wife. She’s smart, has a nice sense of humor and, like I said, she has a real streak of decency… which I’m a little surprised she picked up in this place.”

  He frowned, but his eyes were swimming. He drank more bourbon. “I don’t believe insults are necessary, young man. Remember, you’re a guest in this house.”

  “My apologies. But I’m not really a guest this evening—I just showed up and barged in.”

  “Point taken.”

  “Still, you did raise a wonderful girl, Senator. She learned that you and your son were going to stick me with a murder and rape charge, making it a cinch I’d get a bus to the slammer and a one-way ride on Old Smoky. She couldn’t abide that, so she pretended to know me, and got me a get-out-of-jail-free card. Only it wasn’t free, really—I had to marry the girl. Now, there’s a briar patch any sane man would jump into willingly. But why’d she do such a crazy thing?” I sat forward. “Because she knew she was an accessory to your crimes, and that if I married her, I’d never be able to testify against her.”

  His mouth worked for several seconds before anything came out. “I committed no crime.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe this is all your son. But I’ll just bet you committed plenty of sins of omission.” I waved a hand at the ceiling. “How could you not know that your precious boy was diddling his sister, your daughter, raping her night after night, again and again?”

  He said nothing. He poured more bourbon, hand shaking, though he got it all into the glass.

  I shook my head. “No, I won’t marry your daughter. She’s already released me. She knows me well enough now to understand I would never go along with this madness. Would you really sacrifice your daughter, and her future, to protect a son who is a rapist and a brute? A murderer?”

  He looked at the glass in his hand. “Lawrence is… is no murderer.”