Night Walker (7 page)

Bunny held her course clear across the river mouth to the near shore before she smartly put her helm down, brought the jib across, and trimmed sheets for the upriver reach. A thirty-foot sloop was not much boat by Navy standards, but it was still several tons of wood and metal, and several hundred square feet of canvas; a handful for a girl to manage. Young grimaced slightly; he did not like competent, athletic young women, particularly
around boats; they always seemed to have a compulsion to demonstrate that they were just as good as men, or a little better. The kid was obviously showing off right now.

As she sailed past the big power cruiser moored at the Wilson dock, Bunny looked up at the house above. She must have seen him watching her from the window, because she raised a hand in greeting. Young hesitated, but it seemed better to wave back, and he did. The white sloop pulled away up the river, showing him the name lettered in gold leaf across the stern transom, too small to be read without glasses at this distance. He frowned at it, disturbed by a memory he could not immediately place.
Boats?
he thought, and then, with sudden understanding:
Of course! Boats!

A sound behind him made him turn, to see Elizabeth standing there, regarding him a little oddly.

“Well, I declare, you’re real friendly with the child!”

He glanced over his shoulder at the small white yacht now disappearing around the wooded point up the river, and he laughed. “What am I supposed to do when she waves at me, stick out my tongue? I’m supposed to be her old pal Larry Wilson, aren’t I?”

Elizabeth did not smile. “I wonder what she was doing out there at this hour of the morning.”

“Just sailing around, I guess,” Young said, and dismissed the subject. “Tell me,” he said, “where’s that wallet?”

“What?”

“The wallet. Your husband’s wallet. I had it in the hospital, with his keys and some other stuff. Where did it get to?”

“Why, it’s in the top dresser drawer, honey,” Elizabeth said. “What—”

He moved past her to the dresser, pulled the drawer open, and took the pigskin wallet over to the bed, sitting down to examine it. Elizabeth seated herself beside him.

“What is it, honey?” she asked in a worried tone. “What are you looking for?”

“I just got an idea,” he said. He found the snapshot and looked at it for a moment. “What’s her name?” he asked curiously.

“Why, you know that,” Elizabeth said, surprised. “You called her Bunny yourself.”

“I hope she wasn’t christened that.”

“It’s really Bonita,” Elizabeth said; and somewhat tartly: “That’s a kind of fish, isn’t it?”

“You’re thinking of bonito,” Young said with a grin. “Bonita what?” As he asked the question, he remembered Dr. Henshaw’s reference to ‘the Decker girl’ the day before, but there was no need to admit that he had been eavesdropping.

“Bonita Decker,” Elizabeth said. “Honey, why are you so interested in her, all of a sudden?”

He said, with some annoyance, “Damn it, if I’m going to be Larry Wilson, I ought to know my girlfriend’s name, oughtn’t I? Don’t start spitting like a cat just because I ask a few questions. Actually, it’s the picture I’m interested in at the moment. Watch now!” He separated a corner of the snapshot from the backing that had been so neatly cemented to it, and stripped the two small rectangles of paper apart with a flourish. “I spotted this in the hospital, but it had slipped my mind. Now, what’s the name of the Decker girl’s boat?”

“Why, she calls it the
Mistral,
I think,” Elizabeth said, clearly puzzled by this performance. “But what—”

Young turned the photograph over, somewhat dramatically, to display the list of names written on the back. Her eyes widened with quick interest, and she leaned closer to look. They studied it together, Young paying particular heed, this time, to the lightly penciled notations opposite each name, that he had skipped over in examining the list hastily in the hospital while the nurse was out of the room.

Shooting Star, p, 28, N.Y.

Aloha, sl, 42, Newp.

Marbeth, p, 32, N.Y.

Chanteyman, k, 32, Jacks.

Alice K., sch, 40, Charleston

Bosun Bird, sl, 25, N.Y.

Estrella, p, 26, Wilm.

Presently Young drew a long breath and straightened up a little. “Well,” be said, “it isn’t there. No
Mistral.
So much for that idea. I don’t know what it would have proved anyway.”

Elizabeth glanced at him. “Honey, I don’t understand. What is it?”

“It’s obviously a list of boats,” he said. “With descriptions.
Shooting Star,
power boat, a twenty-eight footer, hailing from New York.
Aloha,
sloop, forty-two feet, Newport...‘k’ means ketch, I suppose, and ‘sch’ is schooner. Jacks is Jacksonville and Wilm is Wilmington. That much is pretty clear sailing, I think. But what the hell it means is something else again.” He frowned. “There’s a connection somewhere. Your husband spent a lot of time on that girl’s boat last summer, didn’t he? I got that impression from what he told me.”

“He certainly did!” Elizabeth’s voice was edged. “I declare, I never was so humiliated in my life. I wouldn’t — wouldn’t have minded so much losing my husband to another
woman,
but to a nasty child and a sailboat!”

Young glanced at her. It amused him to say, dryly, “According to him, you weren’t particularly eager to keep him after that Washington business.”

She flushed. “Well, I certainly wasn’t going to let anybody think I sympathized with his politics. But — but he didn’t have to go ahead and make a fool of himself in public, spending all hours of the day
and
night—”

“Maybe he wasn’t making quite such a fool of himself as you thought,” Young said.

She glanced at him quickly. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s got to tie in somehow,” Young said. “He gets fired from the Navy Department for subversive activities. He immediately goes to work on the Deckers’ boat, designing, building, and sailing the thing. Did he give any reason?”

She moved her shoulders briefly. “He said — I don’t remember exactly. Something about taking up yacht designing in a professional way, and this was a start. He said a designer can make his reputation on one good fast boat that wins a lot of races; and
Mistral
was going to be it, for him.”

“Did he need the money?”

She shook her head quickly. “Heavens, no! There’s plenty of money, thank God; it’s the only thing that — that’s made my life here at all bearable, even before I learned — what he was doing.”

“You mean, he didn’t need his government job either?”

She shook her head again. “Oh, no,” she said. “He just started doing it during the war, and liked it;
anyway, that’s what he said. He said having money is no excuse for a man’s sitting around on his can all day; that’s the way he put it. I believed him; why shouldn’t I have? It wasn’t until they fired him that I — that I began to think of little things that had happened, phone calls, people he’d go out to meet in the middle of the night... I didn’t
want
to turn against him when everybody else — But he didn’t need my help,” she said bitterly. “He didn’t want it. He had — her.”

Young said, “She’s just a kid.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Honey, she’s not
that
young; she graduated from college last spring. I declare, I feel kind of sorry for her. She’s a spoiled rich brat with a lot of wild political ideas; and she’s had a crush on Larry since she was in diapers. I’ve had to listen to heaven knows how many stories about the way she used to trail him around when they were kids; he was six years older, of course. I don’t think she knew what she was getting into; I think he sold her a bill of goods.”

Young said, “Well, it sounds reasonable; but the question still remains, just what the hell was he after? What’s the name of the boat down at the dock?”

“Larry’s boat? That’s the
Amberjack.
”

Young glanced at the list again. “She’s not there, either. Yet here are the names of seven boats that he considered important enough, for some reason, to
keep with him, hidden in this fancy way. And he came here for his getaway, don’t forget that.”

Elizabeth looked startled. “Why, what does that have to do with—”

“Why did he take the risk of coming here, Elizabeth? Why did he want you to hide him here? Why did he show himself to you at all? He’d just committed a murder to make it look as if he were dead; why risk blowing the whole scheme apart by letting you know he was alive?”

“He said he wanted to make sure I identified the body—”

“If I’d burned up in the car as he’d planned, you’d have given the body one quick glance, lost your lunch, and then identified it as him on the strength of the wrist watch and belt buckle. Anyway, it was a better gamble for him than coming here to put pressure on you. No, I think he came here for another reason. I think he came here to catch a streetcar. A seagoing streetcar. All these boats mean something; and I think friend Wilson knew that one was coming here and was going to make you hide him out until it came to pick him up, after which he would either have taken you along or disposed of you in some plausible manner to keep you from talking. But he had to have a hiding place close by, because he didn’t know exactly when to expect his transportation. Small boats can’t keep an exact schedule; a storm will
keep them in port for a week —” Young’s voice trailed off. The list in his hand stared up at him:
Shooting Star, Aloha, Marbeth, Chanteyman
... Boat names were never long on originality, he reflected sourly.
Bosun Bird, Alice K., Estrella.

As he looked at the list, and remembered the character and suspected connections of the man among whose belongings it had been found, he began to see frightening implications in the commonplace names.
A bunch of small, innocent-looking pleasure yachts puttering up and down the coast under secret orders... You don’t know,
he told himself,
you’re only guessing.

“Damn it!” he said aloud. “I wish I’d never —” He did not finish the thought. The girl beside him did not speak. After a while he said uncertainly, “Elizabeth, we really ought to—”

“What?”

He did not look at her. “Let the F.B.I. know about this.”

“Honey,” she said softly, “honey, are you plumb crazy?”

“But listen,” he said, “we don’t even know how many there are! I mean, this list of seven. Hell, it doesn’t
have
to be all of them. He might just have scribbled down the names of the ones he expected to be somewhere in this area at this time. Suppose there are hundreds of the damn little—”

“Honey, stop it!” She was on her feet, facing him. “Stop it!” she snapped. “I declare, it’s a little late for you to get an attack of patriotism, isn’t it,
Lieutenant
Young?”

“But we can’t—”

“Oh, can’t we?” she cried, and before he could guess what she was about to do, she had snatched the picture out of his hand and torn it across. He came to his feet, reaching for the pieces, and she turned away from him and, as he grabbed at her, jabbed an elbow accurately and hard into his bruised chest. The pain took his breath away. He gagged and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, hugging himself, very close to being sick but distantly aware that she had run out of the room. He heard the toilet flush in the bathroom across the hall.

“Honey,” she said, returning, “honey, I’m sorry. I declare I didn’t mean to hurt you, but heavens, that silly conscience of yours—”

“It’s all right,” he said wearily. “It’s all right, Elizabeth.”

“You’re not going to—”

She was interrupted by a noise outside. Below the window, a car door opened and closed with a weighty, deliberate sound, although, preoccupied with their own affairs, they had heard no car drive up. Elizabeth wore a look of panic, and Young knew exactly what she was thinking: Dr. Henshaw was not
due to look in again until late in the afternoon. She caught Young’s arm and moved fearfully to the window beside him. Looking down, they saw a long black Packard sedan of prewar orgin standing in the graveled circle in front of the house. An impressive elderly lady, who walked with the aid of a heavy cane, was just mounting the steps to the front door.

As they stood there, frozen, the visitor gave three imperative raps on the knocker and stepped back, leaning her weight upon the cane, to look up at the house. They pulled back from the window quickly, before she could see them.

“Oh, Lordy!” The despair in Elizabeth’s voice took any humor from her whispered exclamation. “It’s old Mrs. Parr! What’s she doing here?” Then she turned on Young, grasping at him fiercely with both hands. “What are we going to do, honey?
What are we going to do?
”

The expression on her face startled him with its sudden naked terror; and he knew again the strong feeling of kinship that he had experienced before with this girl. It had become an emotion now, very close to tenderness; the affection and sympathy he could not help but feel for someone whose weakness he understood and shared, with the difference that his particular allergy — if you could call it that — did not react very strongly to an old woman with a cane.

He could not free himself from her without using
force, so he put his hands on her hips instead and pushed her gently back a little and held her steady in front of him.

“Easy now,” he said. “Snap out of it, Liz.” She stared at him blankly. “Who is she?” Young demanded. “What do I call her?”

Below, the knocker sounded again; and the girl’s body jerked at the sound.
“But you can’t—”

“What the hell did you hire me for?” he whispered. “Now wipe your nose and get that stupid look off your face, sweetheart! What do I call this ancient character? Brief me; fill me in! Is she an old friend of the family, or what?”

“She —” Elizabeth shivered, and released him, and drew her sleeve across her mouth. “She’s your — Larry’s—”

“Mine,” he said. “I’m Larry. Don’t forget it. Carry on.”

“She’s your aunt. I mean, she isn’t really your aunt; she’s some left-handed kin to the Wilsons that I never did get straight, but you call her Aunt Molly.
I
call her Mrs. Parr.” Elizabeth had recovered enough to be bitter about this. “That is, that’s what I call her when she can’t avoid letting me speak to her; it hurts any of the family to admit that I exist. I declare, I think they even blame me for what Larry — I can’t imagine what would make her visit — Oh, shut up, you old biddy!” she gasped, as the knocker rapped again.