A Touch of Death (3 page)

I went out in the kitchen and tried to convince myself I ought to have a drink. After looking at the bottle, I shoved it back on the shelf, losing interest in it. I never drank much, and I still had the sour taste of those others in my mouth. I thought of her. I thought of her on that towel. The hell with all dizzy women, anyway. The whole afternoon shot, I hadn’t sold the car, and I didn’t even get the consolation prize. No sale, no loving, I thought disgustedly, saying it so it rhymed. The whole afternoon shot to hell. It would probably have been pretty good stuff, too.

That bank balance couldn’t have been right. A hundred and seventy— I checked it again.

It was right.

I thought of Saudi Arabia, of 120-degree heat and sand and the wind blowing for two years, and wondered if I could take it. But before long it wasn’t going to be a question of whether I could stand it or not. I had to do something. I made less money every year.

You got your brains beat out for four years for seventy dollars a month plus your tuition and having some old grad pounding you on the back to get into the pictures after you’d scored from eight yards out in the last three seconds of play in the Homecoming game, and five years later the son-of-a-bitch couldn’t remember your name when you tried to send it in past the arctic blonde in the outer office.

I put a cigarette in my mouth, reaching for the lighter, and then let it hang there, forgotten. Half of $120,000...

I shrugged irritably. Was I going to start that again? Maybe I was going back to believing in Santa Claus. Diana James was just a victim of wishful thinking, trying to build something out of a half-baked theory. But still, she didn’t quite strike me as that kind of featherhead.

Why was she so sure? That was the thing I couldn’t see. It didn’t match up with the flimsy evidence of her story. And why hadn’t the police found him? Something rang there, too. They should have picked him up long ago, a big, good-looking guy like that with no place to hide. I didn’t know much about police work, but it seemed to me embezzlers should be the easiest of all lamsters to collar; the people who were looking for them knew too much about them. They’d have pictures of him, a complete knowledge of all his habits, everything. His car had been abandoned here in a city of four hundred thousand, and then he had vanished like a wisp of smoke. It could happen. But the odds were very long against it.

The whole thing was just crazy enough to make you wonder.

And the amount was too big to get out of your mind.

I cursed, and went back down to the car. I drove over to the library and asked for the back files of the Sanport Citizen. Beginning with the first of August, I worked back toward June. In the fourth paper I found another story on it. It was datelined Sanport, July 27.

NO SOLUTION IN BUTLER DISAPPEARANCE

After nearly two months of a nationwide manhunt, police announced today there has been no new light whatever thrown on the possible whereabouts of the Mount Temple bank official who allegedly absconded with $120,000 of the bank’s funds. Since the discovery on June 11 of Butler’s car, abandoned on a local street near the beach...

Well, there wasn’t anything new in that, except the fact that they definitely hadn’t found him.

I sat suddenly upright in the chair. The thing that had been bothering me all the time was just beyond my reach. I looked back at the story: “...Butler’s car, abandoned on a local street near the beach...” That was it.

That second clipping she had shown me, the one carrying the story about the car, had given the name of the street. It hadn’t sunk in at the time, but it had been bothering my subconscious ever since. I grabbed another bundle of the papers and began flipping hurriedly through them. June 14, June 13, June 11—it should be in this one. I shot my glance up column and down, across the front page. Here it was.

“The late-model automobile of the missing man was discovered early today abandoned near the beach in the 200 block of Duval Boulevard.”

I wondered why I had let it slide off the first time I’d read it. It was given right in Winlock’s ad, the thing that had taken me out there in the first place. The address of that apartment house was 220 Duval Boulevard.

I was beginning to have an idea why she was so sure Butler was dead.

She came down and let me in when I rang the buzzer. Neither of us said anything until we were back up in the living room. She sat down in the same place she’d been before, across the coffee table, and smiled at me, the eyes cool and a little amused.

“I wondered if you’d be back,” she said. “And how soon.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She lit a cigarette and looked thoughtfully at the smoke. “Let’s put it this way: If you didn’t have sense enough to see it, you wouldn’t be smart enough to be of any help. This is no child’s game, you know. And it could be dangerous as hell.”

“There’s one thing I’m still not too sure of,” I said. “And that’s why you’re so certain she’s the one that killed him and left his car in front of your apartment. Wasn’t there anybody else who could have known he was going to run off with you?”

“It’s not likely. And nobody but that vindictive bitch would have gone to that much trouble and risk of exposure just for the pleasure of letting me know. I mean, leaving the car right out front here. She would do that.”

“How about telling me the whole thing?” I said.

“Suppose you tell me something first,” she said coolly. “Do you want in this, or don’t you?”

“What do you think? I came back, didn’t I?”

“Not worried about breaking the law?”

“Let’s put it this way: Whoever’s got that money is outside the law himself, or herself. So he or she can’t yell cop. And as far as conscience is concerned, you can buy a lot of sleeping pills with sixty thousand dollars.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Who said anything about sixty thousand? I’m offering you a third.”

“And you know what you can do with your third. It’s half or nothing.”

“You’ve got a nerve—”

“What do you mean, nerve? I’m the one that has to go up there and stick his head in the lion’s mouth and search the place. You don’t take any risk.”

“All right, all right,” she said. “Relax. I just thought I’d try. A half it is.”

“That’s better. Now, tell me about it.”

“All right,” she said. “You know now why I’m so certain he’s dead. He has to be, or he’d have shown up here. Butler was no fool. He knew he didn’t have a chance unless he had a place to hide. So he and I worked it out. I got this apartment several months before he pulled it off. When he took the money and made the break he was to come here, hide in this apartment without even going out on the street for at least two months, until some of the uproar had died down and we had changed his appearance as much as possible. Then we were going to get away to the West Coast in a car and trailer, with Butler riding in the trailer. He’d turn up in San Francisco with a whole new identity. It was a fine idea, of course, except that he never did show up here. His car did, but somebody else drove it.”

“That’s right.”

“So you believe me now?” she said.

“Yes. Certainly. That was the thing that made the difference. The other story didn’t make any sense. As soon as it soaked into my head that you were the woman he was running off with— And, of course, if he didn’t show up here, it was because he couldn’t.”

“So the money’s still right there in the house in Mount Temple,” she said.

“That I’m not so sure of. Anybody might have killed him, for that much.”

“No. Nobody else could have known about it. But she did. The last time I saw him he was afraid she’d put detectives on our trail.”

“How long have you known them?” I asked. “Were you actually a nurse there in Mount Temple?”

“Yes. But that was last fall and winter. I’d been back here four months when he actually pulled it off.”

“He was pretty gone on you?”

“Maybe. In a way,” she said.

“You after him? Or the money?”

“Let’s say both. We believed in taking what we needed, and what we needed was each other. What do you want? Tristan and Isolde?”

“And now that he’s dead, you’ll settle for the money?” Then I changed it. “For half the money.”

“That’s right. What should I do? Throw myself off a cliff?”

“We’ll get along,” I said.

She crushed the cigarette out with a savage slash at the ashtray. “There’s another thing, too. She’s not going to get away with it. The drunken bitch.”

Well, I thought, I’ll be a sad...

“Get this through your head,” I said. “Once and for all. This is a business proposition, or I’m out, as of now. There’ll be no wild-haired babes blowing their tops and killing each other in anything I’m mixed up in. I thought you were tough.”

She glared at me. “I am,” she said. “What I mean is

she’s not going to get away with the money.”

“That’s better. Just keep it in mind.”

“Mount Temple’s about two hundred miles away,” I

said. “I can drive it in four hours.”

She shook her head. “You’ll have to go on the bus.”

“What do you mean, go on the bus?”

“Look. You’ll be in that house two days. Maybe three.

Where are you going to leave your car? In the drive?”

“I’ll park it somewhere else in town.”

“No. In that length of time somebody might notice it. The police might impound it. A hundred things could happen.”

I could see she was right. A car with out-of-town tags sitting around that long might attract attention. But the bus idea wasn’t much better.

“I’m supposed to get in there and out without being seen by anybody who could identify me afterward. The bus is no good.”

She nodded. “That’s right, too. We can’t be too careful about that. I think the best thing is for me to drive you up there.”

“Listen,” I said. “Here’s the way we work it. You drive me up there, drop me off in back somewhere where there s no street light, then come back and keep an eye on Mrs. Butler. This is Tuesday night. If the house is as big as you say it is, I’ll want two full days. So at exactly two o’clock Friday morning you ease by in back of the place again and I’ll be out there waiting for you. We’ll either have the money, or we’ll know it’s not there.”

“Right.” She leaned back in her chair and stared at me with her eyes a little cool and hard. “And just in case you haven’t thought of it yet,” she said, “don’t get any brilliant ideas about running out with all of it if you find it, just because I’m not there. You know how far you’d get as soon as the police received an anonymous phone call.”

She had it figured from every angle. “You’re sweet,” I said. “Who’d run off from you?”

“For that much money, you would. But don’t try it.”

“Right,” I said. “And while we’re on the subject, don’t try to double-cross me, either.”

I held my wrist under the dash lights and looked at the watch. It was three-ten.

We had left Sanport at midnight, after I had put my own car in a storage garage and bought a few things I’d need. I checked them off in my mind: flashlight with spare batteries, small screwdriver, Scotch tape, half a dozen packs of cigarettes. It was all there.

She was driving fast, around sixty most of the time. There was very little traffic, and the towns along the highway were asleep. We came into one now, and she slowed to thirty-five as we went through.

“It’s the next one,” she said. “About thirty miles.”

“You won’t get back until after daylight.”

“It doesn’t matter. Nobody knows me there. And Mrs.

Butler probably won’t be up before noon.”

“The police may be tailing her. Just on the chance she might be meeting Butler.”

“I know.” She punched the cigarette lighter and said, “Give me a cigarette, Lee. But what if they are? They don’t know anything.”

When the lighter popped out, I lit the cigarette and handed it to her. We were running through a long river bottom now, with dark walls of trees on both sides. I looked at her. She had put on a long, pleated white skirt and maroon blouse. She was a smooth job, with the glow of the dash highlighting the rounded contours of her face and shining in the big dark eyes.

I lit one for myself. “There’s one thing I still don’t like,” I said. “There may be a lot of that money in negotiable securities instead of cash. I mean, he was a banker and he’d know how to convert ‘em without getting tripped up, but we wouldn’t.”

“No,” she said. “He was going to get it all in cash. He was going to pick the time when he could get it that way.”

“Good,” I said. “God, that’s a wad of dough.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It would be a pretty good-sized briefcaseful, figuring a lot of it would be in tens and twenties. What kind of hiding place would you look for, if you had to stash it around a house?”

“It’s an old house,” she said. “A very old house, and a big one. The only thing to do is start at the attic and work down, taking it a room at a time. Look for places that appear to have been repapered recently or where there’s been some repair work, like around window sills and doorframes. Trap doors above clothes closets, in the floors or walls. And remember, she’s plenty smart. She’s just as likely to wrap it in old paper and throw it in a trunk or a barrel of rubbish. Take your time, and tear the house apart if you have to. She’s in no position to call the police.”

“We hope,” I said.

“We know.”

“All right,” I said. “But I still don’t want her to catch me in there just to see if we’re right. So I’ve been trying to figure out some way you can tip me off if she gets away

from you and you think she’s on her way home. I think I’ve got it. Call the house, long-distance, and—”

“But, my God, you couldn’t answer the phone if it rang. There’s no way you could tell who it was.”

“Wait till I finish,” I said. “Of course I won’t answer until I’m sure it’s you. Here’s the way. Call right on the hour. I won’t answer, so put the call in again at a quarter past, as near as you can make it. I won’t answer then, either, because it still might be a coincidence. But repeat it again, as near half past as you can, and I’ll pick it up. Just ask if Mrs. Butler is better. I’ll say yes, and hang up and get the hell out of there.”