Bright Orange for the Shroud (27 page)

I hung up and got back into the sedan. “Now can we go back?”

“Yes. Keep the speed down.”

Chook woke me at twenty minutes before noon, as I had asked. She sat on the side of the bed. I hitched myself up, flexed my right hand. Arthur appeared in the doorway, stood there watching me.

“How is it now?” Arthur asked.

“Better. It just feels asleep. The leg too. The hand feels weak.”

“She’s been coming in every half hour at least to see if you looked all right,” Arthur said.

“And you don’t look so great,” she said.

“I feel as if I’d been hung up by the heels and beaten with ball bats.”

“Head ache?” she asked.

I fingered the dressing, lightly. “It’s not an ache. It’s a one-inch drill bit. It makes a quarter turn every time my heart beats. How about the gun?”

“It was too rough to go outside in the dinghy,” Arthur said earnestly. “I got as far as the middle of the pass and dropped it there. Okay?”

“That’s just fine, Arthur.”

Chook said, “I guess … you didn’t know you were going to walk into anything so rough.” I interpreted the appeal in her eyes.

“Damned glad I took you with me, Arthur. Chook, between us we managed.”

“I was nearly out of my mind! Trav, I’m still scared. I mean now there’s no way to prove she did it, is there?”

“Waxwell killed them both. He didn’t pull the trigger. He killed them. And if his slug had hit a sixteenth of an inch lower … Wish I could have seen the bastard when he looked into the back end of that car. Nothing will go wrong, Chook. They’ll find enough to prove he was in the house. There’s a busted screen to show how he got in. And he isn’t a pillar of any community. How has the news been?”

“Like you thought, so far.”

I shooed them out, got into my robe and joined them in the lounge. I found I could manage an inconspicuous gait, if I kept it slow and stately. I put the big set on AM and cut the volume when a noontime used-car commercial over the Palm City station blasted on.

Their local news announcer had the usual airedale yap and the usual difficulty with long words. “This morning state, county and other law enforcement officials are cooperating in a massive manhunt for Boone Waxwell of Goodland on Marco Island, wanted for questioning in connection with the rape murder of housewife Vivian Watts of Naples and the murder of Crane Watts, her husband, a young Naples attorney. Based
on an anonymous tip from a passerby who heard screams and what could have been a shot emanating from the thirty-thousand-dollar home on a quiet residential street in Naples in the small hours of the morning, city police investigated at dawn and found Mr. Watts in the living room, dead of a small caliber bullet wound in the head, and Mrs. Watts in the bedroom, the scene of a violent struggle, shot through the heart. The anonymous tipster gave police the tag number and description of a car he saw parked in the side yard at the time of the shot he heard, and the car has been identified as belonging to Boone Waxwell, Everglades fishing guide, who for some years has been living alone in a cottage over a mile west of the village of Goodland.

“When County police arrived at the Waxwell cottage this morning, they found the car reported as having been at the scene of the crime. Goodland residents state that Waxwell had another vehicle, an English Land Rover, as well as an inboard launch on a trailer. The truck and boat trailer are missing, and a thorough search of all waterfront areas is now under way. Goodland residents say Waxwell kept to himself and did not welcome visitors. They said he seemed to have ample funds, but could not account for how he had acquired them. Waxwell is about thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old, five foot eleven, about a hundred and ninety pounds, blue eyes, black curly hair, very powerful, and believed to be armed and dangerous. On forcing entrance to his cottage, police found quantities of arms and ammunition. He has been in difficulty before for minor acts of violence, and successfully fled on two other occasions to avoid prosecution, returning after those who filed the charges had dropped them.

“The preliminary medical opinion, pending a more detailed
examination, is that Mrs. Watts, an attractive twenty-eight-year-old brunette, was criminally assaulted prior to her death. Waxwell apparently gained entry by forcing a screened door which opened onto the patio in the rear of the house. Time of death is estimated for both husband and wife as occurring between two and four
A.M
. today. Mrs. Watts will be remembered as one of the finer amateur tennis players on the lower west coast. A close friend of the family, not identified by police as yet, hearing of the double murder, reported that on Monday Mrs. Watts had complained about her husband being annoyed by Boone Waxwell over some business matter. It is reported that Crane Watts was the attorney for a land syndicate operation in which Waxwell had a minor interest.

“Authorities, fearing that Waxwell may have gone back into the wilderness areas of the Ten Thousand Islands, plan to organize an air search using the facilities of the Coast Guard, the National Park Service and the Civil Air Patrol. It is believed that.… Here is a flash which has just come in. The English truck and the boat trailer have just been found pulled off into deep brush near Caxambas, adjacent to a shelving beach often used by local fisherman for the launching of trailered boats. The effort to hide the vehicle and trailer seems to indicate that Waxwell sought to conceal his avenue of escape. This station will issue further bulletins as received.

“And now to other local news. The Fort Myers Chamber of Commerce today issued a statement regarding …”

I snapped it off. “I wish they’d got him,” Chook said.

“They will,” I said. “And he won’t have the money with him. He’s not that much of a damn fool.”

They both looked puzzled. “But it would take him only five minutes to dig it up and take it along,” Arthur said.

“Think of the timing. He thought I was dead. He risked stashing me in the car while he spent three hours with the woman. My guess is he tricked or scared her into saying I was coming by at eleven. Then he tied her up or locked her up while he played games with me. If she heard those sounds, she wouldn’t have recognized them as shots. He wouldn’t have told her he killed me. His style would have been to tell her he’d scared me off, probably. Okay, so he found the body gone. Either I woke up and got the hell out of there, or somebody took the body away. Whoever took it away hadn’t called the police. Or at least hadn’t had time. I think he would want to clear out until he could figure out what was going on. If I was dead, who could prove he did it? I think he was too sure of himself with the woman to think for a moment she’d charge him with assault. In fact, she’d be more likely to swear he was never there at all. If he got back to his cottage by three o’clock, which I think is a good guess—good enough for our purposes—he would be feeling easier in his mind every minute. After all, the woman had obviously enjoyed it. The husband had slept through it. He would have checked the three o’clock radio news. All quiet. So why would he complicate his life by carting all that money around with him? If he was picked up, how would he explain it? He thought then he would be coming back to his shack. It was better off in the ground. He’d take some with him, not enough to be awkward. By first light he could be way back in Big Lostman’s Bend country, setting up camp on some hammock back there. I saw the radio rig on that boat. It’s a big one, including an AM band. So what does he find out when it’s too late to go back for the money? Boone Waxwell is wanted for rape and murder. So we get to the money first. They’ll have the area sealed and staked out. So we
run a bluff. If we find fresh holes in the ground I will be one very astonished McGee.”

“Bluff?” Chookie said uncertainly.

“Arthur looks very reliable and respectable. And I know he’s got the nerve for it.” Arthur flushed with pleasure. “So we do a little shopping first. I mean you two do. I’ll make out the list.”

There seemed to be an unusual number of cars and people in Goodland when we drove slowly through at two thirty, and we were stared at with open curiosity. There was an official car parked at the entrance to the shell road that led to Waxwell’s place. Two men squatted on their heels in the shade. One sauntered out and held up his hand to stop us. He was a dusty little lizard-like man in bleached khakis. He strolled back and stared in curiously. Chookie, secretarially severe in white blouse, black skirt, horn-rimmed glasses, hair pulled back into a bun, was driving. She rolled the window down and said, “This is the way to the Waxwell place, is it not?”

“But you can’t go in there, lady.”

Arthur rolled the rear window down. I was in the backseat beside him. “What seems to be the trouble, officer?”

He took his time looking us over. “No trouble. You can’t go in.”

“Officer, we’re working on a very tight timetable. We’re advance technical staff for network television. The generator truck and the mobile unit will be along within the hour. I’m sure they’ve cleared everything. We have to mark locations, block out camera angles and placement. I’d like to get it done before they get her.”

“The shack is sealed, mister.”

“I don’t have to get into the shack. That’s up to the lighting people. That’s their problem. We’re setting up the outdoor shots and interviews, officer. And we’ll lay some cable so it’ll be all ready for them to hook on.”

Arthur was very earnest and patient. He wore my bright blue linen jacket, white shirt, black knit tie. I yawned and turned a little more to make doubly certain the man would see the CBS over the breast pocket of my work shirt. Mailbox letters from the five and ten, backed with stickum. Gold. I hoped he had noticed the same letters on the big tool box off the boat, resting on the floor beside my feet.

I said, “Hell, Mr. Murphy, let em sweat it when they get here.”

“I don’t like your attitude, Robinson. They depend on us to do a job.”

“I was told no kind of reporters at all,” the dusty deputy said.

“We are
not
reporters, sir!” Arthur said indignantly. “We’re technicians.”

“And you don’t want to git into the shack?”

“We wouldn’t have time if we wanted to,” Arthur said, and looked at his watch. My watch. A gift I never wear. It tells the day, month, phase of the moon, and what time it is in Tokyo and Berlin. It makes me restless to look at it.

“Well, go on ahead then, and you tell Bernie down there that Charlie says it’s okay.”

Bernie was on the front steps, and he came out with a shotgun in the crook of his arm. He had one of those moon faces which
cannot look authoritative. And when he found out Charlie said we were okay, he was delighted to be so close to the mysterious functioning of something he watched every day of his life. Too delighted. The gold letters and the reel of cable were symbols of godhead, and his smile was pendulous and permanent. We could not sustain the myth of locating proper areas to ground the equipment with Bernie hovering over every move. Chookie took him away from the play, notebook in hand, easing him back to the porch to get his expert opinion on who would be the best people to interview, and who had known Waxwell the longest, and what other interesting places were there in the area where the mobile unit could be set up.

I’d had them pick up another length of rod, and Arthur had sharpened both of them with the file from the ship’s tool supply. I picked two likely spots, and with Bernie out of sight, we each began an orderly search pattern, working out from the initial probe, an expanding checkerboard pattern, six inches between the deep slow stabs into the moist earth of the open area in the grove.

“Trav!” Arthur said after about twelve minutes. I took him a spade. It was eighteen inches down, a super kingsize special bargain glass jar that had once held Yuban powdered coffee and now held three packets of curled new bills. The jar went into the car trunk, tucked back behind the spare. I moved to the border of his area. Six feet from the first find I struck something that felt metallic at about the same depth. Prince Albert tobacco can that had once held a pound and now held three more curled packets. Put it with the jar. Fill the holes. I checked my watch. We worked as fast as we could. I could not move well yet. Arthur was faster. We covered a continuously
expanding area. When the total elapsed time was forty minutes, I said, “Knock it off.”

“But there could be …”

“And there might not be. And we want to get out with what we’ve got. Move!”

As planned, he sank a rod deep, and I taped a cable to the exposed stub. We put the other rod down ten feet away, ran cable from it back toward the cottage, and I wired the two ends into the impressive heavy duty receptacle they had picked up in a hardware store.

We drove out. Chook, eyes on the narrow road, said, “I knew the time was running out. You didn’t get anything, did you?”

“Not what we expected. Just a token. Sixty thousand.”

She hauled the car back from the brink of a damp ditch. She stopped at the entrance. Arthur rolled the window down. “We’re all set, thanks,” he called. “We’re going to go out now and check with Project Control, officer. These things change very rapidly, depending on the news breaks. At least, if they do decide to use that location, it’s all set for them. I personally appreciate your cooperation.”

“Glad to help out, mister.”

“If there’s a change of plan, don’t worry about the gear we left there. It shouldn’t be in anyone’s way, and somebody will be through later on to pick it up.”

Out on the main road off the island, heading toward the Trail, Arthur began to giggle. And it became infectious. And soon we were all roaring and howling, with, for Chook and Arthur, a potential edge of hysteria in it. Gasping, we told Arthur Wilkinson he was superb. He was big media, through and through.

“Next let’s try a bank job,” Chook said. And we were off again.

In the interest of avoiding any unfortunate coincidence, we turned north on 951 before we reached Naples, then west on 846 to come out at Naples Park Beach eight miles north of the city.