And kill once more Page 6

  She didn't blow a gasket like I half expected her to. Instead she looked straight ahead, her arm still loosely

  through mine. I found my smokes, lit a pair, and passed one to her. She took it in silence and the ember glowed momentarily as she inhaled. When she blew the smoke out she said, "It beats me, Marty. Gregory's agency has a quarter-page ad in the phone book. Domestic, Marital, Criminal—every kind of service is listed. How come?"

  "I've been trying to figure. The way it looks to me is that Gregory pegged this one as a blank, Kate. Maybe he saw you drive up in seven thousand dollars worth of chrome and gray leather, put it alongside your story about a wife being held on the ranch, and came up with much ado about nothing. He's a money-minded citizen, Kate. He wouldn't let a fee escape without a struggle."

  "But what about his regular operators?"

  "You were choosey. You had to have someone who would look right in that pool of Engle's. Gregory has a good staff all right, but some of them are older and some of them are fat and one I know carries his teeth in his pocket except when his feet are under a table. You didn't want anything like that; you'd made it pretty plain. So the big man remembered Marty Bowman who had asked for a job a couple of years before, and there it is."

  "I seem to remember something about him writing checks to Bowman for twelve years," she said accusingly.

  "I guess you do," I said, and told her about my brother Fred and how I was tied in with the agency. I finished with, "I'm not very proud of myself. I guess everything except the actual words was a lie, Kate."

  We smoked in silence, our slow steps taking us a-long the tree-covered flagstone walk. The foliage was heavy enough to block most of the moonlight and had doubtlessly been set out to provide relief from the sun's heat during the day. At the end of the path we paused

  beside the huge valve which emptied Engle's pool into the lower reservoir and I put a foot on the iron crank that served as a handle and looked across at Kate.

  "Would you ask you what you're thinking if you were me?" I grinned.

  In the half light I saw a smile work its way into her face. "I might."

  "Good. I'll risk it. What's the word?"

  "We got into this mess together. Let's dig in and see if we can't work it out between us, Marty."

  "Thanks. Thanks for not putting it on the 'make the best of a bad bargain' level, Kate. And I hope you meant it, because I'm going to lay everything I can right out here in the open and start from there. You know the coin Toland keeps harping about? Well, I'm afraid that chick is coming home to roost. With us." Then I told her about the dollar and how it had been lifted from my dresser and planted on Engle. When I finished she took a deep breath.

  "My God. Anything else?"

  "No. Won't that do for a while?"

  "I'd say it would. But who would want to implicate you. Why?"

  "Probably it wasn't so much putting me in as it was getting somebody out," I said dryly. I turned my wrist up and shifted a bit until a shaft of moonlight filtering through the tree fell on the dial. "Almost three," I said. "And tomorrow could very well be a rough day. Shall we?" She ground out her smoke, I stepped on mine and we turned back toward the house. We passed a concrete park bench set under a tree and I thought Kate slowed a little. When we came to the next one she stopped.

  "Maybe we'd better get aquainted all over again, Marty. I'm trying to figure you out."

  "I'll help," I smiled. "I know the subject thoroughly." She sat down on the park bench and tilted her head

  back, her long yellow hair touching the trunk of a jaca-randa tree. I parked beside her and said, "Shoot."

  "Not a bad idea."

  "What? What's eating you, kiddo? Change your mind?"

  "No. Let's forget that for a while. Let's talk about you—and money."

  "That won't take long. I haven't enough to run the conversation past one short breath."

  She shook her head. "There it is again." She straightened up and turned toward me, her hand resting lightly on my arm. "Does everyone with a ten-dollar bill come under the heading of idle rich, Marty?" I frowned and she went on. "Maybe it's the car. Or an estate like this or—or a yacht, but there's something. Something big that you want pretty bad, Marty, and can't have. So everything you see is put in terms of what it cost. I— wish you wouldn't do that."

  I didn't say anything and the next thing I knew a warm hand was creeping into mine. I tightened my fingers over hers and said, "For instance?"

  "For instance 'seven thousand dollars worth of chrome and gray leather', Marty. Do you resent my owning that car?"

  "Hell, no. It was just a remark, Kate."

  "Sure. But it practically shouts your feelings."

  "One crack. One mention of money and—"

  "There have been others."

  "Name one."

  "Well, this afternoon Mrs. Pilcher was, as far as you were concerned, a pudgy character with a forty-dollar swim suit and a fifty-dollar corset. And before that there was the air-conditioning unit in my car. To me it's an appliance that cools the air; to you it was six hundred dollars. Why, Marty?"

  She was right, of course. Looking back I could see I'd been stacking everything up against the pile of green-

  backs it would take to buy it. I scraped around for an answer, and then I felt her other hand getting into the act. Soft fingers tracing the back of my hand holding hers.

  "Maybe it's the pool," I said slowly, "and the fact that I never seem to get any closer to building one as the days roll past."

  "Like Engle's?"

  "No. No, a commercial venture, Kate." And then I told her about how I'd planned to set it up some day. She listened and I talked about drainage and locker facilities and a bar with a sliding front that would close it off while the youngsters were splashing around during the day but which would be a very cozy feature indeed for party rental in the evening. It was almost three-thirty when I looked at my watch and we started back toward the house.

  "So you can see it'll take a lot of capital," I said. "A sizable investment. It's going to take Marty Bowman a long time to lay it away on a lifeguard's pay."

  "There's always the bank, Marty. Have you tried any of them?"

  "No," I said, and gave her a wry smile. "I've got sixty thousand stashed away in my account all right, only I've forgotten which bank it's in. Silly of me, wasn't it, but that's how careless we rich people get with our dough."

  She shook her head. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you've been in the sun too long."

  We came through the row of trees bordering the plunge. The pool was almost full now, and when I bent to scoop a handful of water it was quite warm. We walked in silence up to the house and around the back walk along the side toward the hill. At Kate's door we stopped.

  Our eyes met and she disengaged her hand, whispered

  a hasty good night, and was gone.

  I slipped into my own place with as little noise as I could, washed my face, undressed and sat down on the bed. One thing—I felt a hell of a lot better being on the level for a change. And it would have been damned embarrassing to Kate if it came out that she'd hired a detective to investigate her host. Now there was a chance to hide that whole side of the picture, keep it all from coming to light. I smoked in silence until the hands of the clock pointed four, then put on a robe, and went quietly through the house to the snack bar. I drew a cup of coffee and sat down to listen. Not a sound. I lifted the receiver of the telephone and heard the reassuring buzz in my ear. Then I dialed long distance and put in a call to my own place in Santa Monica.

  "I'll ring you back," the operator said cheerfully.

  "No, thanks. I'll just hang on," I said. I didn't want the bell on this end to arouse anyone. After several minutes I heard the rhythmic muffled sound as the local operator on the other end plugged in my phone, and then a sleepy hello came over the wire.

  Seven

  "Fred? Marty." I said, my lips close to the mouthpiece "Come out of it, boy. There have been developments."


  "Oh?" I heard him stifle a comfortable yawn. "What-samatter?"

  I didn't want to stay on the phone all night and knowing Fred I decided that the first thing was to get him awake. "The gent who owns that estate the blonde and I are visiting is dead. Murdered, I think, or at least it looks that way. And dumped into the plunge."

  "What the hell, Marty! You guys up there haven't been passing the punch bowl too often, have—" He broke off and I guessed he was finally all the way out of the fog. "Good Christ. What in hell happened?"

  "It hasn't changed any since I just told you," I reminded him softly. "Engle—George Engle, the guy who pays the bill on this layout is no longer with us. Since midnight. And you haven't heard the half."

  "I'll brace myself, kid. Turn it loose."

  I did. Talking with my face halfway down in the mouthpiece, I gave him the scoop, and it took a while. I got it all the way down to the dollar and what happened to that. "So can they get prints off of money that's been in the water, Fred?" I wanted to know.

  "If you were on that buck at all clearly and no one rubbed it off, you're still there, Marty."

  "And Toland will know it."

  "He will. As soon as he gets a report. And won't that be a pretty kettle of tuna. I'd better get in touch with Gregory. There's going to be a lovely smell when this one gets on the breeze. Him sending out an unlicensed operator and all. Cripes!"

  "We might be able to hold that part in," I reminded him.

  "For the love of God, try."

  "For sure, Fred. But in the meantime, how about turning the wheels at your end. I'll give you the names of all five of the guests. With Sandy Engle, his wife, that makes it an even half dozen. And you'd better not waste any time because when Toland begins to put all the pieces in place he's going to star me in the lineup."

  "It doesn't look good," Fred agreed.

  "You can play that record over," I said. "Hell, if I was Toland I'd be sweeping out a cell for Bowman before breakfast."

  Fred wrote down the names and said he'd see what

  could be done. I hung up, poured my cold coffee down the sink, washed the cup, put it away, and started to leave. As I went through the door something caught my eye. A cigarette butt near the door jamb. I bent down to look. It had a faint pink color, just a hint of lipstick as though the woman had already wiped off her make-up in preparation for bed, but enough remained to make a slight stain. When I touched the flat brown end where someone's shoe had stamped the butt out, the tobacco was still warm.

  Back in the darkness of my room I smoked and tried to decide who had been listening. At first it seemed that if Kate had come down she would have waited until I was through and maybe passed a few minutes. But I had given her name to Fred. She wouldn't particularly have enjoyed that part of our little conversation. And of course it could have been Sandy Engle, Mrs. P, or the babe with the smooth henna job. I puzzled over it for a few more drags, then ground out the ember and dropped off from the sheer weight of nervous exhaustion.

  It seemed I'd no more than crawled across the bed when the knock came. I rubbed sleep out of my eyes with the backs of my hands and sat up, then swung my feet over the side and felt around for slippers.

  The knock came again, strong and loud, and just a little official. "Yeah, be with you in a second," I called. I pulled on a pair of slacks and opened the door. Toiand's boy Widdle gave me a stern look, then stepped into the room.

  "Mr. Toland wants to see you. Right away. In the living room, Mr. Bowman."

  "Sure. I'll be with you as soon as I brush my teeth and comb my hair."

  "I'll wait."

  I turned back for a closer look, got a cool once-over from the second in command, and went toward the bath-

  room. Cold water splashed into the bowl. I dunked both hands under the stream of water and brought its cooling freshness to my face and neck, then squeezed an inch of toothpaste onto the brush and polished the ivories.

  "What's the occasion, Widdle?" I called through the open door.

  "Sheriff will tell you. Let's hurry it up, please."

  I rinsed away the toothpaste and grinned at the face in the mirror. If our boy Toland had ants in his pants already this morning I might not get another chance at the razor for quite a while. I voted myself time for a shave. Then I thought about the possibilities of my ending up in the bastille before this day was over and it seemed like a good idea to add a bath. I swung the glass door and flipped the shower handle.

  "Come on, Bowman. Let's go," Widdle complained. "I could have been down there by now."

  "It takes me longer," I said. "I wash." He came and stood at the bathroom door while I shucked out of pants, shorts and slippers and stepped under the spray. Ten minutes later I got into fresh clothes and followed Bob Widdle toward the living room. My coming made the turnout a hundred per cent. Toland got up when Widdle and I entered and motioned me into a chair.

  "Just taking a little concensus here, Bowman," the sheriff said easily, "on this and that. For instance, this heart ailment of Engle's. Some seem to have known about it, others didn't. Did you?"

  "No. I believe I explained that I was here as a friend of one of the guests. I didn't take his blood pressure."

  "Keep your shirt on, Bowman." His look might have meant anything. "So far we've established that only the doctor here knew. You others haven't heard it mentioned. Not even casually, sort of. No one—not even you, Mrs. Engle?"

  He looked around and no one said anything. Toland's

  thick fingers scratched the side of his face as his eyes went from person to person.

  "You keep forgetting the autopsy," I pointed out. "Won't a bad ticker show up?"

  "They're working—" Toland broke off with a quick glance at Sandy Engle. "We'll have that report directly," he said, "but I thought I'd just see which of Engle's friends he'd confided in. Know why? Because I had my office girl get on the phone early this morning and contact the doctors in Newhall. Not too many, you see, and she finally ran down a doc who's given Engle about three exams in the last two years. Engle was a health addict, it seems. Dieting for his waistline and all—regular check-up every six months. A Dr. Crandy was his favorite. And you know something? That secret about Engle's heart ailment was pretty well kept. Doc Crandy wasn't in on it either."

  Pilcher's jaw dropped open. "You mean—"

  "Exactly, gentlemen. If your Mr. Engle had a bad pump it got past his present doctor. Which leaves us with a problem, Dr. Cronk. Maybe this would be a good time for a few words from you. They'd make right interesting listening."

  Cronk cleared his throat. "Actually, Sheriff, it isn't ethical for me to discuss Dr. Crandy's qualifications—" He stood up and began to pace nervously across in front of the empty fireplace. "You see, I—"

  "Yes?" Toland prompted softly.

  "Well, there's more here than the heart ailment itself. That is—"

  He broke off again, but this time it was a legitimate stall. The Philippino had appeared and now nodded toward the sheriff. "A phone call, sir. This way. please."

  Toland scratched the side of his face again, then turned to follow the servant. At the door he stopped.

  "While I'm gone, doctor, maybe you could boil your

  discussion down a little and get it to where we can make some sense out of it. So far you haven't said a thing. Not a thing."

  Toland left with a severe look all the way around. Cronk collapsed on an overstuffed and stared moodily toward the blackened bricks of the hearth. I went over to Kate who was holding down one end of the huge leather lounge and parked beside her.

  "How'd you sleep, kitten?"

  "Don't joke, Marty. This looks serious. I'm thinking about what you said last night—" She lowered her voice and added—"about Dr. Cronk. His really being a physician, I mean."

  "And so?"

  "He's hedging a little. I'm wondering if maybe you weren't right. He just doesn't sound competent."

  I patted her hand and waited. When Toland came bac
k he had definitely heard some kind of word on Engle and it could have been important. Toland's weathered face had the expression you find on a poker player who's filled up a full house and is overdoing the dead-pan act.

  "And now, Dr. Cronk?"

  "I have decided to give you the facts, Sheriff," Cronk said slowly. "There doesn't seem to be any good reason for holding back any longer. I have made a great effort to spare this little lady additional pain." Here Cronk nodded sadly toward Sandy Engle, let his eyes fall to the carpet, and went on. "It was almost midnight when I heard the shout from the direction of the pool. I—we hurried down there, all of us arriving at about the same time, you might say. This fellow Bowman was bent over Engle. Naturally, being a doctor, I was called upon to render assistance, but as soon as I felt for a pulse I knew that George was dead. Now—George Engle was a strong swimmer. One of the best, considering his age, and kneeling there with my hand on his wrist, I—well,

  I felt that something was wrong—that it wasn't really an accidental drowning."

  "Uh-huh," Toland said softly. He fingered his pencil and shot a quick look my way, then turned back to Cronk. I felt Kate's hand tighten on mine and guessed that she had figured out what was coming. Marty Bowman was about to get the shaft.

  "You knew something was wrong," Toland prompted. "And then?"

  "It seemed best not to excite anyone more than they already were," Cronk said slowly. "Mrs. Engle was beside George and one could hardly add to her distress by shouting that he had been murdered. You can see that, Sheriff."

  "Go on, Doctor."

  "So I fell back on the quickest thing which came to mind. The heart. I simply announced that Engle had either died of a heart ailment or suffered an attack while swimming and drowned. Any other way of handling the situation would have warned the guilty person, perhaps even given him time to escape."