It's a Sin to Kill (11 page)

“Mind?” Camden snorted.

Sheriff White sucked at the end of one of his mustaches. “That's right interestin', Counsellor. What's in my mind?”

Ferris said, “Celeste was a very pretty girl. She was young, vivacious. You resent the fact that you've had to arrest one of your own for Helene's murder. You'd much rather pin Helene's death on some damn Yankee who merely winters in Florida. Helene was a smart business woman but she'd been around a long time. She was beginning to sag here and there. So you're wondering if it wasn't possible that Hal had been having an affair with Celeste and if Helene hadn't caught him at it and threatened to divorce him. In that case, it would be very possible for Hal to want to see Helene dead. It would also be possible theoretically, that, having killed Helene and knowing that Celeste knew, Hal would get the wind up and kill Celeste to make certain she couldn't give evidence against him.” The lawyer lighted
an expensive Turkish cigarette. “Unfortunately for your supposition, Hal was in Baltimore when Helene was murdered.”

“Yes,” White admitted blandly. “I know. I checked on both of you.”

Camden's face became more mottled. “Oh, for God's sake,” he repeated. “How stupid can you get? Sure, I made a play for Celeste. Helene lighted wherever her fancy struck. If she could play house with fishing guides and the like, I didn't see why I shouldn't hold hands with the maid. But I got as far with Celeste as you're going to get with your nasty insinuations. She was a good kid, playing it straight. And all I got for the pass I made was my face slapped.”

Ferris' lips formed a thin straight line, broken only by the oval cigarette. It was obvious he was keeping his temper with an effort. “And last night Hal was with me from the time we left the inquest until approximately four-thirty this morning, a full hour and a half after the elastic time limit your erudite Justice of the Peace, acting in a capacity for which he is not qualified, has set as the time of Celeste's death.”

Gilmore dried his hands on his pocket handkerchief. “Well, I guess that tells me off.”

“So it would seem,” White said. He had trouble with the word. “What's erudite mean, John?”

Gilmore said, “Well, when I graduated from Stetson, erudite was from the Latin
eruditus
, past participle of
erudire
, to free from rudeness; polish; instruct;
e
— out, plus
rudis
— rude. Characterized by wide knowledge of a bookish kind; learned.”

Ferris gave him a sour look.

Half of the crowd had remained on the beach. The other half had returned to the end of the pier to watch Deputy Sheriff Sayers dive for the knife that had been in the dead girl's back. The group on the end of the pier cheered.

“Ken must have found the knife,” Keely said.

“He must have,” White agreed.

The deputy sculled his borrowed boat back to the beach.

“You got it, eh?” White asked.

“Yeah,” Sayers panted. He squeegeed water from his body. “But it took fourteen dives. There's a soft marl bottom out there.” He picked a knife from the foreward thwart and handed it to White.

It was an open clasp knife with a yellow bone handle
and a five inch blade, of the type known as Fisherman's Luck.

“It wasn't lucky for her,” Sayers said.

Ames wet his lips as he looked at the knife. Mary Lou felt his body stiffen. “What's the matter?” she whispered.

“It's my knife,” Ames whispered back. “The one I always keep in my tackle box.”

“How do you know?”

A lump formed in Ames's stomach. “I filed my initials on the handle.”

Holding the knife by the tip of the blade, Sheriff White studied the bone handle. “C.A.,” he read aloud. “That would be Charles Ames or could be.” He looked at Ames.

“This your knife, Charlie?”

The lump in Ames's stomach moved up into his throat. He was frightened and didn't know why. He couldn't have killed Celeste Montigny. He'd been in custody when she'd died. “It looks like my knife,” he said finally. “But anyone could have gotten at it. I seldom lock my tackle box.”

Still holding the knife by its tip, White laid it on the dead girl's skirt. “Well, it's a cinch you didn't kill her.”

The curious crowded even closer to get a better look at the knife. Ferris lighted a cigarette from the stub of the one he was smoking. The pungent tobacco smelled heavy and somehow out of place in the clean crispness of the rising sun.

“No,” Ferris said softly. “That would seem to be an impossibility.” He studied Mary Lou's face. “But if I may make a suggestion, Sheriff, an angle does occur to me.”

“What?” Sheriff White asked.

Ferris continued to study Mary Lou's face. “Mrs. Ames is obviously in love with her husband. Celeste was your best witness against him. Celeste testified at the inquest that Helene told her she had a date with a handsome young charter boat captain and they were under no circumstances to be disturbed. Celeste also placed Ames aboard the
Sea Bird
the morning Helene was killed. Without her testimony, all your other evidence against him is circumstantial.”

“So?”

Helene Camden's lawyer continued. “So Celeste's death is, to say the least, very providential for Ames.” Ferris' wry smile appeared again. “Think it over, Sheriff. Ames admits the knife is his. He says he kept it in an unlocked tackle box
aboard his own boat, I presume. That fact alone, coupled with Mrs. Ames's fantastic story about diving for a cup and having been struck on the head by a mysterious someone who tried to murder her by rolling her into the pass, would lead me to believe that just possibly Mrs. Ames knows more about this than has been brought out so far.”

“I see what you mean,” White said.

“Now wait a minute,” Ames said. “Don't try to involve Mary Lou in this.”

Ferris was smug about it. “I don't think much effort is necessary. A knife is a woman's weapon. Mrs. Ames had access to your knife. She knew Celeste's testimony would send you to the chair.” Ferris' voice turned cold. “So Mrs. Ames waylaid Celeste and stabbed her, then she invented this mythical someone who she claims attempted to kill her in the hope the local law would assume the same party killed Celeste.”

White tugged at his long mustaches. “Now, that's a right interestin' theory, Counsellor.” He turned his faded blue eyes on Mary Lou. “Women in love are hell. They do the damnedest things, also some mighty dumb ones.”

Mary Lou pressed against Ames. Her eyes were frightened. “No. Don't believe him, Sheriff White. Someone did try to drown me. A woman. And I didn't kill Celeste. I couldn't. I couldn't kill anyone.”

“That's your story,” Camden said.

Ferris continued coldly. “Celeste is dead. If the knife hadn't hung up in the rope, she'd be out in the pass by now, possibly following the same path Helene's body took, possibly washed out into the Gulf where it would never have been discovered and the only actual witness against Ames would have mysteriously disappeared.”

“It sounds to me,” Camden said.

Mary Lou pressed even harder against Ames. “No!”

Ames wished he could comfort her.

Celeste wasn't the only one who'd been stabbed. Someone had a knife in him, in Mary Lou and now they were beginning to twist the blade.

Ferris? Camden? Why?

He knew Mary Lou hadn't killed Celeste. It would never occur to her. She was incapable of the physical act. Still, if Sheriff White followed Mr. Ferris' line of reasoning, only one thing could happen. White would arrest Mary Lou on suspicion
of murder. A coroner's jury would find that the maid had come to her death at Mary Lou's hands and would recommend she be held and tried for murder.

The sun was high now and hot. Sweat beaded on Ames's face. He couldn't allow that to happen. Not to Mary Lou. He wished he was smarter than he was. He wished his head would stop aching. His awakening in the cabin of the
Sea Bird
seemed a thousand years ago. Ames felt as if he'd been swimming though slime and seaweed ever since, and now, at the end of his swim, he was being forced to climb a glass wall.

Ames studied the faces of the two men. Ferris, he decided, was just being a lawyer. He was just shooting off his mouth showing how smart he was. But Camden's utter lack of emotion was too casual. The widowed cosmetic executive was too unconcerned.

Ninety-three thousand dollars was a lot of money. Celeste had been a very beautiful girl. So Camden had been in Baltimore when his wife had died. He had been on the scene of the crime when Celeste had been stabbed. He said he'd found her body. Ames wished he could talk to Camden alone in a locked room for five minutes. So his wrists were manacled, he'd use his feet.

Without moving his head, the former trumpet player looked from Camden to the foot of the pier where Deputy Sayers' gun was still sandwiched in between Sayers' undershirt and uniform trousers.

Twin drops of sweat escaped the pits of Ames's arms and zig-zagged down his sides. His tired mind raced on. Ferris was right about White. The elderly sheriff was strictly small-town. White would follow the path of least resistance. If he and Mary Lou were both locked up, neither could help the other. The little money they had wouldn't hire two lawyers.

Ames's pulse beat a little faster. On the other hand, if he could get his hands on Sayers' gun and make a break, perhaps come back later and talk to Camden, it might be worth the gamble.

What had he to lose? Neither he nor Mary Lou had a chance as things were.

T
HE RISING
sun grew hotter. The sweet-sour smell of the tide flats lessened as the incoming tide began to lap at the sloped sides of the bay. The crowd of mixed locals and tourists moved in closer until they formed a tight little semicircle around the group on the shore. The fat woman in tight shorts explained to a newcomer:

“They think the girl in the bathing suit done it. It was her husband who killed the Camden woman, see? And the maid was a witness against him.”

“Kin you ‘magine,” the newcomer said. “Who's the young man in his shorts, the one sitting in the row boat?”

The fat woman was proud of her knowledge. “He's the deputy sheriff who dove for the knife. When they moved her it fell out, see?”

Phillips brought a sheet from the house and covered Celeste with it.

Sweat blurred Ames's eyes. He saw Shep Roberts and Ben Sheldon in the crowd. The fat man nodded. Roberts merely looked at him.

Sheriff White rolled his dead cigar between his lips. He sounded unhappy about it. “You make sense, Counsellor,” he admitted. “Of course, there's the five thousand dollars we found under the mattress on Ames's boat. The butler fellow, there, or mebbe it was the maid, said that Mrs. Camden was in me habit of carryin' large sums of money, but lessen you got the serial numbers money is hard to trace. Ames could claim he won it in a crap game or at poker. They's always a game goin' on. The charter boat captains an' fishin' guides an' commercial fishermen would rather gamble than fish.” He dropped his dead cigar on the beach and ground it into the sand with his heel. “No. Come t' think of it, without Miss Montigny's testimony we ain't got much of a case against Charlie.”

State's Attorney Keely started to say something and changed his mind.

Sheriff White looked at Mary Lou. “What you got t' say, Mary Lou?”

Mary Lou's eyes narrowed. “Don't you look at me that way.”

“You didn't stab her?”

“No. I never even spoke to the girl.”

Camden repeated what he'd said before. “That's your story.”

White turned to Gilmore. “You call in like I asked you, John?”

Gilmore nodded. “I did. Cody said he'd send out a car and some boys. They should be here any minute.”

Ames took a step toward the pier, then two more steps.

Camden came out of his alcoholic lethargy.

“Watch him,” he said sharply. “Ames is trying to sneak away.”

The wash of the tide had carried the rowboat in which Sayers was sitting about ten feet closer to the pier than it had been when Ferris had taken the body from Sayers. The youthful deputy stood up and walked through the ankle deep water. “Hey. Nix, fellow,” he called. “Don't give us no trouble.”

Ames quickened his pace, the crowd giving way before him.

Ames was passing Shep Roberts now. Gilmore called, “Stop him, Shep.”

“Stop him, yourse'f,” Shep said.

There was a note of alarm in White's voice. “Get him, Ken,” he called. “Quick. The damn fool is after your gun.”

The deputy splashed through the shallow water at an angle and came out on the hard sand of the beach between Ames and his objective. “Hold it right where you are, Ames,” he cautioned. “Blowing your top ain't goin' to do you a bit of good.”

The deputy attempted to grip one of Ames's manacled arms. Ames twisted sideways and brought up his arms. The chain that joined his wrists caught the deputy under the chin and snapped his head back.

Sayers staggered and sat down. Ames slipped the gun out from between its sandwich of clothes and held the butt with both hands. His manacled hands were so wet with sweat the heavy gun almost slipped from his fingers.

It was an effort for him to speak. “Let's stop right where we are,” he panted.

The tight little knot of men hurrying after him stopped as
if they were rooted to the sand. The fat woman began to scream. Sheriff White said, “You're makin' a big mistake, Charlie.”

“I'll chance that,” Ames said. “Give Mary Lou the key to these things.”

“And effen I don't?”

Ames was frank with him. “I don't know,” he admitted. “I don't know what I'll do.” Sweat trickled down his face. “But I wouldn't chance it if I were you, White. I didn't kill the Camden woman. Mary Lou didn't kill Celeste.” His throat was sore with the effort of speaking. “I've taken all I can. I just can't take any more.”