Master of the Game (46 page)

He cast off the lines and powered slowly out of the slip. He nosed into the wind to raise the mainsail and jib, and the boat fell off on a starboard tack. The wind caught the large sails and the
Corsair
surged forward. George headed out to sea. As they cleared the breakwater, they were met with a stiff force-five wind, and the boat started heeling, its lee rail running under.

“It’s wild and lovely,” she called out. “I’m so happy, darling.”

He smiled. “So am I.”

In an odd way, it gave George Mellis pleasure that Alexandra was happy, that she was going to die happy. He scanned the horizon to make certain no other boats were close by. There were only faint lights from afar. It was time.

He put the boat on automatic pilot, took one last look around the empty horizon and walked over to the lee railing, his heart beginning to pound with excitement.

“Alex,” he called. “Come look at this.”

She made her way over to him and looked down at the cold, dark water racing below them.

“Come to me.” His voice was a harsh command.

She moved into his arms, and he kissed her hard on the lips. His arms closed around her, hugging her, and he felt her body relax. He flexed his muscles and began to lift her in the air toward the railing.

She was fighting him suddenly. “George!”

He lifted her higher, and he felt her try to pull away, but he was too strong for her. She was almost on top of the railing now,
her feet kicking wildly, and he braced himself to shove her over the side. At that instant, he felt a sudden white-hot pain in his chest. His first thought was,
I’m having a heart attack.
He opened his mouth to speak and blood came spurting out. He dropped his arms and looked down at his chest in disbelief. Blood was pouring from a gaping wound in it. He looked up, and she was standing there with a bloody knife in her hand, smiling at him.

George Mellis’s last thought was,
Eve…

It was ten o’clock in the evening when Alexandra arrived at the house at Dark Harbor. She had tried telephoning George there several times, but there had been no answer. She hoped he would not be angry because she had been detained. It had been a stupid mix-up. Early that afternoon, as Alexandra was leaving for Dark Harbor, the phone had rung. She had thought,
I’m late. Let it ring
, and had gone out to the car. The maid had come hurrying after her.

“Mrs. Mellis! It’s your sister. She says it is urgent.”

When Alexandra picked up the telephone, Eve said, “Darling, I’m in Washington, D.C. I’m having a terrible problem. I have to see you.”

“Of course,” Alexandra said instantly. “I’m leaving for Dark Harbor now to meet George, but I’ll be back Monday morning and—”

“This can’t wait.” Eve sounded desperate. “Will you meet me at La Guardia Airport? I’ll be on the five o’clock plane.”

“I’d like to, Eve, but I told George—”

“This is an emergency, Alex. But, of course, if you’re too busy…”

“Wait! All right. I’ll be there.”

“Thanks, darling. I knew I could count on you.”

It was so seldom that Eve asked her for a favor, she could not refuse her. She would catch a later plane to the island. She telephoned George at the office to tell him she would be detained, but he was not in. She left a message with his secretary. An hour later she took a taxi to La Guardia in time to meet the five o’clock plane from Washington. Eve was not on it. Alexandra waited for two hours, and there was still no sign of Eve. Alexandra had no idea where to reach Eve in Washington. Finally, because there was nothing else she could do, Alexandra took a plane to the island. Now as she approached Cedar Hill House, she found it dark. Surely George should have arrived by now. Alexandra went from room to room, turning on the lights.

“George?”

There was no sign of him. She telephoned her home in Manhattan. The maid answered.

“Is Mr. Mellis there?” Alexandra asked.

“Why, no, Mrs. Mellis. He said you would both be away for the weekend.”

“Thank you, Marie. He must have been detained somewhere.”

There had to be a logical reason for his absence. Obviously some business had come up at the last minute and, as usual, the partners had asked George to handle it. He would be along at any moment. She dialed Eve’s number.

“Eve!” Alexandra exclaimed. “What on earth happened to you?”

“What happened to
you
? I waited at Kennedy, and when you didn’t show up—”

“Kennedy!
You said
La Guardia.”

“No, darling, Kennedy.”

“But—” It did not matter any longer. “I’m sorry,” Alexandra said. “I must have misunderstood. Are you all right?”

Eve said, “I am now. I’ve had a hellish time. I got involved with a man who’s a big political figure in Washington. He’s insanely jealous and—” She laughed. “I can’t go into the details
over the telephone. The phone company will take out both our phones. I’ll tell you all about it Monday.”

“All right,” Alexandra said. She was enormously relieved.

“Have a nice weekend,” Eve told her. “How’s George?”

“He’s not here.” Alexandra tried to keep the note of concern out of her voice. “I suppose he got tied up on business and hasn’t had a chance to call me.”

“I’m sure you’ll hear from him soon. Good night, darling.”

“Good night, Eve.”

Alexandra replaced the receiver and thought,
It would be nice if Eve found someone really wonderful. Someone as good and kind as George.
She looked at her watch. It was almost eleven o’clock. Surely he would have had a chance to call by now. She picked up the telephone and dialed the number of the brokerage firm. There was no answer. She telephoned his club. No, they had not seen Mr. Mellis. By midnight, Alexandra was alarmed, and by one
A.M.
she was in a state of panic. She was not sure what to do. It was possible that George was out with a client and could not get to a telephone, or perhaps he had had to fly somewhere and had not been able to reach her before he left. There was some simple explanation. If she called the police and George walked in, she would feel like a fool.

At 2:00
A.M.
she telephoned the police. There was no police force on the island of Islesboro itself, and the closest station was in Waldo County.

A sleepy voice said, “Waldo County Sheriff’s Department. Sergeant Lambert.”

“This is Mrs. George Mellis at Cedar Hill House.”

“Yes, Mrs. Mellis.” The voice was instantly alert. “What can I do for you?”

“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure,” Alexandra said hesitantly. “My husband was supposed to have met me at the house earlier this evening, and he—he hasn’t shown up.”

“I see.” There were all kinds of implications in that phrase. The sergeant knew at least three reasons why a husband could be away from home at two
A.M.
in the morning: blondes, brunets and redheads.

He said tactfully, “Is it possible he was detained on business somewhere?”

“He—he usually calls.”

“Well, you know how it is, Mrs. Mellis. Sometimes you get in a situation where you can’t call. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from him.”

Now she
did
feel like a fool. Of course there was nothing the police could do. She had read somewhere that a person had to be missing for twenty-four hours before the police would even start looking for him, and George was not
missing
, for heaven’s sake. He was just late.

“I’m sure you’re right,” Alexandra said into the telephone. “I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

“Not at all, Mrs. Mellis. I’ll bet he’ll be on the seven o’clock ferry first thing in the morning.”

He was not on the seven o’clock ferry, or the one after that. Alexandra telephoned the Manhattan house again. George was not there.

A feeling of disaster began to grip Alexandra. George had been in an accident; he was in a hospital somewhere, ill or dead. If only there had not been the mix-up with Eve at the airport. Perhaps George had arrived at the house, and when he found she was not there, he had gone. But that left too many things unexplained. He would have left a note. He could have surprised burglars and been attacked or kidnapped. Alexandra went through the house, room by room, looking for any possible clue. Everything was intact. She went down to the dock. The
Corsair
was there, safely moored.

She telephoned the Waldo County Sheriff’s Department again. Lieutenant Philip Ingram, a twenty-year veteran of the force, was on morning duty. He was already aware that George Mellis had not been home all night. It had been the chief topic of conversation around the station all morning, most of it ribald.

Now he said to Alexandra, “There’s no trace of him at all, Mrs. Mellis? All right. I’ll come out there myself.” He knew it
would be a waste of time. Her old man was probably tomcatting around in some alley.
But when the Blackwells call, the peasants come running
, he thought wryly. Anyway, this was a nice lady. He had met her a few times over the years.

“Back in an hour or so,” he told the desk sergeant.

Lieutenant Ingram listened to Alexandra’s story, checked the house and the dock and reached the conclusion that Alexandra Mellis had a problem on her hands. George Mellis was to have met his wife the evening before at Dark Harbor, but he had not shown up. While it was not Lieutenant Ingram’s problem, he knew it would do him no harm to be helpful to a member of the Blackwell family. Ingram telephoned the island airport and the ferry terminal at Lincolnville. George Mellis had used neither facility within the past twenty-four hours. “He didn’t come to Dark Harbor,” the lieutenant told Alexandra.
And where the hell did that leave things? Why would the man have dropped out of sight?
In the lieutenant’s considered opinion, no man in his right mind would voluntarily leave a woman like Alexandra.

“We’ll check the hospitals and mor—” He caught himself. “And other places, and I’ll put out an APB on him.”

Alexandra was trying to control her emotions, but he could see what an effort it was. “Thank you, Lieutenant. I don’t have to tell you how much I’ll appreciate anything you can do.”

“That’s my job,” Lieutenant Ingram replied.

When Lieutenant Ingram returned to the station, he began calling hospitals and morgues. The responses were negative. There was no accident report on George Mellis. Lieutenant Ingram’s next move was to call a reporter friend on the
Maine Courier.
After that, the lieutenant sent out a missing person all-points-bulletin.

The afternoon newspapers carried the story in headlines:
HUSBAND OF BLACKWELL HEIRESS MISSING.

Peter Templeton first heard the news from Detective Nick Pappas.

“Peter, remember askin’ me a while ago to do some checkin’ on George Mellis?”

“Yes…”

“He’s done a vanishing act.”

“He’s
what
?”

“Disappeared, vamoosed, gone.” He waited while Peter digested the news.

“Did he take anything with him? Money, clothes, passport?”

“Nope. According to the report we got from Maine, Mr. Mellis just melted into thin air. You’re his shrink. I thought you might have some idea why our boy would do a thing like that.”

Peter said truthfully, “I haven’t any idea, Nick.”

“If you think of anything, let me know. There’s gonna be a lot of heat on this.”

“Yes,” Peter promised. “I will.”

Thirty minutes later, Alexandra Mellis telephoned Peter Templeton, and he could hear the shrill edge of panic in her voice. “I—George is missing. No one seems to know what happened to him. I was hoping he might have told you something that might have given you a clue or—” She broke off.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Mellis. He didn’t. I have no idea what could have happened.”

“Oh.”

Peter wished there was some way he could comfort her. “If I think of anything, I’ll call you back. Where can I reach you?”

“I’m at Dark Harbor now, but I’m going to return to New York this evening. I’ll be at my grandmother’s.”

Alexandra could not bear the thought of being alone. She had talked to Kate several times that morning. “Oh, darling, I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” Kate said. “He probably went off on some business deal and forgot to tell you.”

Neither of them believed it.

Eve saw the story of George’s disappearance on television. There were photographs of the exterior of Cedar Hill House, and pictures of Alexandra and George after their wedding ceremony.
There was a close-up of George, looking upward, with his eyes wide. Somehow it reminded Eve of the look of surprise on his face just before he died.

The television commentator was saying, “There has been no evidence of foul play and no ransom demands have been made. The police speculate that George Mellis was possibly the victim of an accident and may be suffering from amnesia.” Eve smiled in satisfaction.

They would never find the body. It had been swept out to sea with the tide. Poor George. He had followed her plan perfectly. But she had changed it. She had flown up to Maine and rented a motorboat at Philbrook Cove, to be held for “a friend.” She had then rented a second boat from a nearby dock and taken it to Dark Harbor, where she had waited for George. He had been totally unsuspecting. She had been careful to wipe the deck clean before she returned the yacht to the dock. After that, it had been a simple matter to tow George’s rented motorboat back to its pier, return her boat and fly back to New York to await the telephone call she knew Alexandra would make.

It was a perfect crime. The police would list it as a mysterious disappearance.

The announcer was saying, “In other news…” Eve switched the television set off.

She did not want to be late for her date with Rory McKenna.

At six o’clock the following morning, a fishing boat found George Mellis’s body pinned against the breakwater at the mouth of Penebscot Bay. The early news reports called it a drowning and accidental death, but as more information came in, the tenor of the stories began to change. From the coroner’s office came reports that what at first had been thought to have been shark bites were actually stab wounds. The evening newspaper editions screamed:
MURDER SUSPECTED IN GEORGE MELLIS MYSTERY DEATH…MILLIONAIRE FOUND STABBED TO DEATH
.

Lieutenant Ingram was studying the tide charts for the previous evening. When he was finished, he leaned back in his chair,
a perplexed expression on his face. George Mellis’s body would have been swept out to sea had it not been caught against the breakwater. What puzzled the lieutenant was that the body had to have been carried by the tide from the direction of Dark Harbor. Where George Mellis was not supposed to have been.

Detective Nick Pappas flew up to Maine to have a talk with Lieutenant Ingram.

“I think my department might be of some help to you in this case,” Nick said. “We have some interesting background information on George Mellis. I know this is out of our jurisdiction, but if you were to ask for our cooperation, we’d be happy to give it to you, Lieutenant.”

In the twenty years Lieutenant Ingram had been with the Waldo County Sheriff’s Department, the only real excitement he had seen was when a drunken tourist shot a moose head off the wall of a local curio shop. The George Mellis murder was front-page news, and Lieutenant Ingram sensed a chance to make a name for himself. With a little luck, it could lead to a job as a detective in the New York City Police Department, where the action was. And so now he looked at Nick Pappas and murmured, “I don’t know…”

As though reading his mind, Nick Pappas said, “We’re not looking for credit. There’s gonna be a hell of a lot of pressure on this one, and it would make life easier for us if we could wrap it up fast. I could start by filling you in on George Mellis’s background.”

Lieutenant Ingram decided he had nothing to lose. “OK, you’ve got a deal.”

Alexandra was in bed, heavily sedated. Her mind stubbornly refused to accept the fact that George had been murdered. How could he have been? There was no reason in the world for anyone to kill him. The police had talked of a knife wound, but they were wrong about that. It had to be some kind of accident.
No one would want to kill him… No one would want to kill him…
The opiate Dr. Harley gave her finally took hold. She slept.