It's a Sin to Kill (3 page)

The single word rasped in his throat. He looked at the fingers of his raised hand, then down at the streaks on his skivy. The streaks matched the brown spot he'd noticed in the cabin of the cruiser. Brown in artificial light, that was. In broad daylight, both the spot and the streaks where he'd wiped his fingers were red.

When he reached the basin in which the
Sally
was berthed, he cut in between Murphy's drugstore and the ship ways next door and walked out on the sagging planking. The
Sally
was straining at her ropes. There was no light aboard. The thirty-two foot cabin cruiser looked small and cramped and shabby and incredibly old in comparison to the
Sea Bird
.

To reach the
Sally
, Ames had to pass a half-dozen other charter boats. Those captains with a charter party were readying their gear. Several of them glanced up, self-conscious, but none of his fellow captains spoke. He'd been
right about the news spreading. They knew where he'd spent the night.

He jumped down into the cockpit of the
Sally
, opened the cabin door and forgot to duck low enough, as usual, and banged his forehead against the lintel. The blow knocked the cap from his head. The pain felt good. Still wearing a low-cut green evening gown, Mary Lou was sitting on the edge of her bunk drinking coffee out of a thick white crockery cup. A slim brunette in her late twenties, she looked at Ames over the rim of the mug in her hand but didn't speak.

“I'm sorry, honey,” Ames said.

He was. If he couldn't square himself with Mary Lou, nothing would ever be right again. There were lots of women in the world but only one Mary Lou.

The portholes were small. It was dark in the small cabin. It smelled of flesh and sleep and freshly boiled coffee and fish. The girl on the bunk continued to regard him with hurt gray eyes.

Ames debated trying to kiss her. He decided it wouldn't be wise. Mary Lou most likely would hit him with the mug she was holding. He pumped up the Coleman pressure lantern and lighted it. The bright glare lighted the cabin but failed to dispel the feeling of grayness.

Ames looked back at Mary Lou. “I don't suppose you slept.”

“Some,” she admitted. “Not much.” She studied his face and cried silently. “You might have wiped off the lipstick.”

Ames sat on the opposite bunk. The pad felt thin, hard, familiar. “I tried to. Look, honey.” He put his hand on her knee and Mary Lou slapped it away.

“Don't touch me.”

“Okay,” Ames said. “You know where I've been?”

“How could I help knowing? It's all up and down the basin.”

Ames swallowed the lump in his throat. “I didn't mean it to happen. I don't know it did.”

Mary Lou set her mug of coffee on the edge of the galley stove without rising from the bunk. “What do you mean by that?”

Ames's growing panic continued to mount. He had a feeling of wanting to run, looking back over his shoulder as Mrs. Camden's French maid had done on the Camden pier. He gripped the edge of the bunk until his fingers ached.
“Just what I said. I don't remember a goddamn thing except drinking coffee with her in the cockpit of the
Sally
.”

“That's your story.”

“Yeah.” The word was more an expulsion of air than a sound. “I'd just come in from catching my bait. I was making a pot of coffee when she came out on the pier and asked me how much I'd charge to skipper the
Sea Bird
down to the Keys then up to Baltimore.”

“Mrs. Camden?”

“Yeah. I said I'd have to think it over. Then she asked if she smelled coffee. I said she did. She asked if she could have a cup. I invited her to come aboard and I gave her a cup of coffee. And that's the last I remember.”

Mary Lou's eyes continued to look sullen. “Ha.”

“I mean it,” Ames insisted. His breathless earnestness gave force to his words. “When I stop loving you like I do, when I start stepping out on you, honey, I — ” He tried to go on and couldn't.

“You'll what?” Mary Lou asked.

“I just couldn't.”

“But you did.”

“No,” Ames said. He modified his denial. “At least I don't remember it.”

“All you remember is drinking a cup of coffee?”

“Yeah.”

The corner of Mary Lou's lips turned down as she stood up. She caught the long skirt by the hem, pulled her evening gown over her head and tossed it on the bunk on which she'd been sitting. She was wearing a strapless divided lace bra. She exchanged it for a stout cotton one. She took a street dress from the small locker that served as a joint clothes closet and put it on. Then, while Ames watched her in silence, she shook out her shoulder-length page boy bob and combed it. She opened her purse and powdered her nose and renewed her lips. Her lips renewed to her satisfaction, she dropped her lipstick back in her purse, snapped it with a sharp click of finality, tucked her purse under her arm and started for the door.

Ames asked, “Where are you going?”

A new freshet of tears carved small channels in the powder Mary Lou had just applied. “I don't know,” she said. She continued to cry silently. “But I'm not staying
here. It's bad enough, this happening, without you lying to me.”

“I'm not lying.”

Ames caught her skirt and Mary Lou slapped him.

“Keep your hands off me. I suppose you got lipstick on your face and skivy drinking coffee.” There was a small jar of
helene camden
cleansing cream on the shelf that served Mary Lou as a dressing table. She snatched the jar from the shelf and smashed it on the deck. “The blonde bitch would use indelible lipstick!”

A gob of cold scream from the shattered jar splattered the leg of Ames's dungarees. He picked it off, wiped his fingers on his skivy and returned his hands to the edge of the bunk. He was afraid and didn't know why. The lump in his throat was growing with his panic. He had to force the words past the lump. “On my face, it's lipstick. On my skivy, it's blood.”

Mary Lou turned with one hand on the knob of the companionway door. “Blood?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know it's blood?”

“I know blood when I see it. I've got it on the laces of my sneakers, too.” Ames gritted his teeth against an impulse to be sick. “The carpet in the cabin of the
Sea Bird
was soaked with it.”

Mary Lou leaned against the door. Some of the sullen look left her eyes. “You're hurt, Charlie?”

“No.”

“Then where did the blood come from?”

“I don't know.”

“Why didn't you ask Mrs. Camden?”

“I couldn't.”

“Why not?”

“She wasn't in the cabin when I woke up this morning.”

“She wasn't in the cabin?”

Ames realized he was panting. “No. Just her evening dress and hose and scanties. Inside out. Like she'd peeled them off in a hell of a hurry.” He wanted Mary Lou to believe him. She had to believe him. “But I didn't, Mary Lou. No matter how drunk a man gets, he remembers a thing like that. And I wasn't drinking.”

“There was liquor in the cabin?”

“Yeah. An empty bottle rolling between the two bunks.

And a whole cabinet filled with unopened bottles.”

“Mrs. Camden had gone to the house?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Her maid came out on the pier looking for her. There was a long distance call. From Paris. The maid seemed surprised when I told her Mrs. Camden wasn't aboard the cruiser. Then, later, when I pulled myself together and went to the house to ask how come, the butler said she wasn't there, that they'd searched every room in the house for her. And both he and the maid were frightened. And the maid shot at me through the screen door.”

“She shot at you?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Like I told you before, she was frightened.” Ames tried to swallow the lump in his throat and it bobbed up and returned with his Adam's apple. “And that's not the worst of it.” He tugged the thick wad of bills from his pocket and tossed it on the bunk on which he had been sitting. “When I put on my dungarees, I found this in my hip pocket.”

Mary Lou came back and stood by the bunk. The fat wad of bills unfolded and lay flat. A thick silence filled the cabin. The smell of the sea was stronger. There was a gurgling of water. The mooring ropes creaked with the pull of the tide. An outbound fishing boat whistled for the bridge tender to raise the draw span. The rusted barrier lowered. The warning bells on the bridge began to ring.

“How much is there?” the girl asked.

“I don't know,” Ames said. “I counted up to two thousand dollars and I didn't get half through.”

Mary Lou picked up the top bill. It was faintly speckled with dried blood. She opened her fingers and the bill fluttered back to the bunk. Her voice was small, “Where did you get all that money, Charlie?”

Ames released the bunk and used his hands to support his face. His words were muffled by his fingers.

“I don't know,” he said. “I haven't the least idea. Like I told you, it was in the hip pocket of my dungarees when I came to this morning.”

M
ARY
L
OU
sat on the bunk and counted the bills. “There are five thousand dollars here.”

Ames massaged his temples with his fingers. “So?”

“You don't know where this money came from?”

“No.”

“You're not lying to me, Charlie?”

“I swear I'm not.”

“You found it in a pocket of your dungarees when you woke up this morning?”

“Yeah. In my right hip pocket.”

“And you don't remember anything after drinking a cup of coffee with Mrs. Camden?”

“Two cups of coffee.”

“Was she carrying a purse?”

“I don't remember.”

“Did she say anything about money?”

“Just in connection with me skippering the
Sea Bird
up to Baltimore.”

Mary Lou fingered the bills again. “Hmm.”

Ames returned his fingers to the edge of the bunk. “Then you believe me?”

“I don't know,” Mary Lou said. She studied her husband's deeply tanned face. “You might cheat on me, Charlie, even loving me as you do, or say you do. That's the way men are. It's the way men are made, I guess.” Her wet gray eyes continued to search his face. “But I know you're not a thief. And you're worried, aren't you?”

“Yes,” Ames admitted. “I am.”

“How much blood was there in the cabin of the
Sea Bird?
”

“Enough. The carpet was soaked with it.”

“Splattered around? Like there'd been a fight?”

“No. Just on the carpet.”

“Do you remember fighting with anyone?”

“No.”

“Are there any marks on you?”

“No.”

Mary Lou was practical. She blew her nose and said,
“Well, sitting here worrying isn't going to get us anywhere. The thing for us to do is to find out where Mrs. Camden is now and have a talk with her, ask her if she knows where this money came from.”

She lit the burner under the coffee pot. “Are you too sick or can you keep a cup of coffee on your stomach?”

Ames stood up, indignant. As always, he bumped his head on the low ceiling. He spoke through a blur of pain. “Goddamn it, Mary Lou. I wasn't drunk last night. I wasn't even drinking. Of course, I can keep a cup of coffee on my stomach. I'm not sick. I'm scared.”

“Of what?”

“I don't know.”

When the coffee was hot, Mary Lou filled a mug and handed it to him. “Drink this. It may help.”

Ames gulped the hot coffee. It tasted good. It melted the bitter film in his mouth and dissolved the lump in his stomach.

Mary Lou put the wad of bills under the thin pad on the bunk. “For now. I only wished it belonged to us.”

Ames drained the mug and set it in the small sink. “I don't know if I do or not.”

He followed Mary Lou into the cockpit of the
Sally
. The condensation had dried. The sun was high enough to be warm. The
putt-putt
of the two cycle motor that supplied water to the bait well reminded Ames he was due to shove off with a charter party at eight o'clock. Ames looked at his watch. It was seven forty-six. His “sports” would arrive any minute. The
putt-putt
sounded like it was laboring. Ames adjusted the carburetor and wiped his greasy fingers on the leg of his dungarees.

“How about my charter party?”

Mary Lou said, “Give it to one of the boys who is not booked. I don't think the
Falcon's
going out.”

As she scrambled up on the pier, Ames caught a flash of slim well formed legs and satin soft thighs. His pulse beat a little faster. Most of his headache went away. Mary Lou had a prettier body than Mrs. Camden could possibly have. Mrs. Camden was forty, at least. She admitted to being thirty-five. She was currently working on her fourth husband. He'd had nothing to do with the blonde woman. Ames was positive of that. He hoped.

He followed Mary Lou. Four boats down the basin Shep
Roberts was sitting in the cockpit of the
Falcon
. His feet were propped on his empty bait well as he sat squinting under the brim of his dirty white captain's cap at the hopeful fishermen on the high catwalk running the length of the pier that spanned the pass.

Ames asked, “How'd you like a charter, Shep?”

Shep spoke without turning his head. “Ain't got no bait.”

“You can use mine.”

“How many in the party?”

“Four.”

“How much is the charter?”

“Fifty dollars.”

“What they want t' fish for?”

Ames said, “It's their first trip out. I figured on taking them out to the grouper banks and maybe tying into a tarpon or two on the way back. There are still a few rolling in Bunce's Pass.”