And kill once more (19 page)

Kate and I walked a little and tried the deck chairs and walked some more and came back to the swing to spend some time just sitting. Finally she disengaged her hand and stood up, her fingers smoothing her blue dress in slow deliberation.

"Something is wrong, Marty. I'm not sure just what it is—is it last night, or something you've found out?" She said it quietly, her eyes going back and forth across my face in a half hurt, half wondering expression, making her look young—younger than she had a right to look. I walked her around to the far side of the swing where a small measure of privacy could be had.

"Look, baby," I said earnestly, "this is murder and we're right in the middle of it." I slipped both arms around her waist, locked my fingers. She leaned back against my arms and put her hands on my chest. Easy, boy, I told myself, don't let's get carried away again. I forced a smile.

"No one can say Marty Bowman is against romance, Kate, or that you aren't the girl to inspire it. But Toland has gone to Lancaster to talk to some people and when he gets back he will no longer be a man of thought. He'll be reaching for his handcuffs when he comes through that

door over there, and let's not kid about it, so—"

"What will he find in Lancaster, Marty?"

There wasn't any point in holding that one fact out any longer. "He will find, when he gets as far as a certain bar, that I was there last night with Sandy Engle. In itself, not too incriminating, but there were those daiquiris I had. Weak limeade, while loading Sandy with hard drink. And what will that look like?"

"But I don't understand, Marty."

"I bribed a barkeep to fill mine with lime and water. I wanted Sandy drunk enough to talk, without getting helpless myself."

"My God," she breathed. "It'll look as though you were deliberately getting Sandy drunk so—"

"Yeah, getting her drunk so—and he won't be thinking I had sex on my mind. You see how it is, baby? All I want to do is sit here by this pool of Engle's and think. No one is going to get Bowman out of this but Bowman, and he can't do it by playing house.". .

She stood on tiptoe and kissed me full on the mouth. "Marty, you're still holding out. I know it—don't ask me how, but I feel it someplace inside and if you can't tell me, or don't think you should, that's all right too. I'm going up and rest a while. If—if you think of something that will help, let me know because I'm just as worried as you are. I wish you'd believe that."

She turned and hurried around the end of the swing and up toward the house. I stepped to one side and watched until she went running up the steps, heard the quick tap of her high heels on the cement as she crossed the porch, and saw the door close after her. Then I found a lounge pad, tossed it down on the cement near the edge of the pool and assumed the horizontal.

Toland, Bowman and Widdle and everyone else who was trying to iron this out were on the wrong track, had followed the wrong star. Motive? Who has the most to

gain? It sounds good and it is good, but only if you can be sure who gained and how much. Here, it wouldn't work. Too many people had plenty to gain—the evidence had finally been destroyed, probably, and only the murderer was alive to say what it had been.

Maybe we should have settled first on the method used to kill George Engle. Toland had decided on strangulation, but I pulled Engle out of the pool and if he had shown any marks of being strangled I should have seen them. Or perhaps not, in the semi-darkness, and yet . . . well, surely a man's oxygen supply can be cut off in more ways than one. Now suppose. . . .

My fingers dipped into the warm water and I scooped up a handful, let it pour over the edge of my palm. Gas or poison would have shown up at the autopsy; Engle had neither. Suffocation, they had said. He couldn't breathe. And a dollar in his fingers, a silver dollar belonging to Bowman—yet George clutched it tightly at the moment of his death. Now how did he get it and why was it in his hand ... in the pool? I scooped out another fistful of water, saw the ripples spread over the surface of the clear warm water, saw the huge stainless steel drain grill below suddenly dancing and distorted as the ruffled water bent the light. It settled back to its oval shape again as the water became still. Two nights ago Engle had lain down there, fifteen feet of sparkling water washing over him as he rested on the bottom. . . .

And there it was.

There it was, like the flash of a color slide thrown suddenly on a white screen—Engle down in the pool and how he died and where my dollar fitted in.

Vaguely I became conscious that a soft whistle was escaping through my lips. I guess ^no one knows just how the mind works, how it makes certain connections, juggles the pieces into place and into a pattern we call thought. You work on a problem for days and make no

appreciable headway and suddenly you solve it, see the solution in one quick flash that, for lack of a better name, they call inspiration. And once the foundation is laid you can forge ahead with giant strides and alter and shape until the comers are rounded down and the finished result obtained. Suddenly I could almost see Engle as he had been in one of his last living moments, waving to me before going to work some more on his diving. I got up and looked around slowly, then whistled again and shoved my hands into my pockets and measured the opening in the cypress with my eye.

Death had come through that parting in the trees. Death had watched and waited, and beckoned to George Engle.

I struck a match and found my cigarettes. It was almost dark now, lights showing through the huge picture window of Engle's living room, but I wasn't hungry and if the air had cooled I didn't notice. There was much to be done and so little time. For an instant I felt the wind go out of my sails as I remembered that I still hadn't made a single stride toward finding out who had killed Engle, then felt my spirits building again, because having found the way was a large part of the battle. Now I could plan—could weigh and reject and bluff a little if need be. Now Marty Bowman was in the driver's seat.

Eighteen

Hands deep in my pockets again, I began to lap the pool, my mind squirming around for a way to break through the barrier. Marty Bowman had taken the pale and lovely Sandy Engle to town last night. He had brought her home about three sheets to the gale and feeling no pain, a fact that the Sheriff was going to make much of, but. . . .

Now there were five horses in the race, five possible names to draw from and the very least I could hope for was to have something reasonably good on the fire by the time Sheriff Toland returned.

It took another hour to work out an angle, a point of departure. I went to the house, hiked around to my room by the back way and started to wash up for dinner. A shower, a change of clothes, and I went down to the big dining room where, until two days ago, George and Sandy Engle entertained insurance prospects who were willing to pay premiums on policies that were never written. Engle's man, now in a white jacket, was setting up a buffet, something light and informal for the end of a hectic day. I went on through to the snack bar, looked carefully around the room, then walked over to the assortment of trays stacked vertically in a narrow cupboard. A heavy aluminum one, about cafeteria size, caught my eye and I took it out for close examination, then slid it back, scooped up a magazine, and went back through to the living room.

Mrs. Pilcher sat heavily in the center section of Engle's fancy davenport and across the room Elsa Doyle's well turned gams extended out from a newspaper resting on her lap. I crossed over, found a seat near Elsa, then moved my chair closer as she gave me a big hello.

"A busy man these days, this Bowman," she observed with a smile. "Lots of overtime. At night, yet."

"An honest day's work for a day's pay," I said with a wink. "You ever need an eye in a hurry, keep Gregory's agency in mind."

"And get a beach boy," she taunted, then softened it with: "I could easily do a lot worse though, couldn't I?"

You don't answer that kind of a question. I changed the subject. "You haven't been among us much, Elsa, since our host got wet the other night. No pay no work? You did call it a job, I remember."

"I've been busy, too," she said, and took the smoke I offered. "I brought a script along, hoping to get some time to go over the thing. It'll be my next and it looks good—will you go to see it, Marty?"

"I hope so, Elsa," I said evenly, "but as George said, there are plenty of pitfalls for show people. It's a precarious occupation, I guess—you're up one day and down the next. At least, that was George's theory the night he introduced us."

She blew a careful cone of smoke to one side and met my eyes. "Your memory is pretty good, Marty."

"Yeah. It makes sense. Living under glass, you rise and fall by the public's whim. Good publicity or bad."

"I'm not sure I follow you, Marty. Some of that George never said, I'm sure."

"Maybe," I said blandly. "I'm just hoping your next picture'll knock 'em dead and that I'll be there to see it."

She laughed suddenly, but without too much conviction, I thought. "Marty—you sound almost ominous. You think I'm going to let this mess affect my career?"

"It would seem like a good idea not to," I said carelessly, then asked, "Have you any idea who might have put that wire around poor Sandy, Elsa?"

She said she didn't and we went from there to other things. When Pilcher came into the room and added his poundage to the load on the davenport, I excused myself and went over for a chat with Dan. Elsa gave me a smile to take along but I caught her eyes in the mirror as I crossed the room and that bright red head was strictly alert, the newspaper forgotten on her lap.

Dropping down on the end of the sofa, I gave Pilcher my best grin and said, "Well, Dan, we'll be clearing here tomorrow, maybe. You'll be glad to get away, no doubt."

"Hell, yes, Bowman. Need you ask?" His eyes darted back and forth across my face, Mrs. Pilcher added her

puzzled look to the attack, and the expressions of both said they didn't quite understand what was going on, but weren't sure they liked it.

"Pretty lucky, weren't you, boy?" I said, and shook my head. "All of the literature Engle had assembled going up the flue like that. Mighty convenient, Pilcher."

He gave me a hard look, then let it fade. A sardonic smile took over. "Why, Bowman, what an imagination! As I told Toland, George and I were just good friends."

"You think the sheriff is buying that?"

"A hell of a lot I care, Bowman. He's either got to accept it or prove it isn't so."

"Except he seems to think some of the evidence wasn't burned," I said, my eyes on the tip of my cigarette. "It would certainly change things if that turned out to be true, wouldn't it? And even if the papers were burned since, if he knew what they^d said he could go to the original source and dig until he uncovered things—"

"Meaning?" Pilcher snapped.

"Never a thing, Danny, boy. That is if you're sure you're pure. How could anything hurt you?" I excused myself, got up and walked through to the dining room, and went to the buffet.

Cronk had come in and so had Kate Weston, and the Philippino passed me as he went to call the three from the other room. We made up our plates, trekked back through to the living room and sat around with our food balanced on the arms of our chairs. Widdle came through the doorway, a heaping plate in his right hand balanced by a mere cup of coffee in the left. He parked near me, set his groceries on the glass coffee table in front, and looked around the room.

"What's the word from the boss?" I asked casually.

He didn't answer, just took a bite of cold ham, carefully worked it over, then swallowed a time or two. "Bow-

man, it seems like you asked that same question before. You're sure on edge about when Toland comes and goes." "Everyone here is anxious to leave," I pointed out. "I simply wondered when he'd be around."

"Nobody else seems worried," Widdle said quickly. We ate in silence for a few minutes; then Widdle said, "Later tonight, maybe. He phoned from Newhall, and if it'll make you happy, Bowman, he's been talking to a lot of people in Lancaster today. He said to tell you."

"Thanks," I said sourly. "If he's trying to keep me awake nights he's doing a pretty good job. Tell him for me, next time he calls."

It drew a grunt from Widdle. I laid in a thin ham sandwich, coffee, and a baked apple and called it a meal. Across from me Kate Weston picked uneasily at her food, then pushed the plate aside and sipped coffee, her blue eyes catching mine from time to time and then turning away. She looked incongruously like a wall flower, a little girl who was being left out of things.

Cronk was more dejected tonight than before, probably because the full impact of his washed-out career as a radiologist was setting in. He sat, his chin almost down to his chest, his eyes listless behind thick glasses and spoke to no one.

I needed more time to work out details and I could do nicely without any company. Pushing my plate and cup toward the center of the tiny glass table, I stood up, took a slow look around the room, and went toward the terrace. The door closed after me and then opened again.

"Marty." It was Kate, and I turned to wait for her. "I'd like to talk to you a second. You—"

"Sure." I turned toward the pool again when she was beside me and we walked several steps in silence.

"Marty, have you—did you figure out who killed Sandy and George? I mean if you've found out and

haven't told me, I wish you would because I got you into this and we were going to work on it together, you said. That first night, or was it early morning after George died. Remember?"

"I remember," I said softly. I patted her hand, then took it gently off of my arm. "Baby, there is a lot to be said, but this isn't the moment. You trot back to the house like a good little chick and get some rest. I'll be seeing you later. Then we'll hash it over from the bottom up— but not now."

I turned away and walked down the strip of concrete and there weren't any steps going the other way. When I turned to pace around the pool I could see Kate still where I had left her. Finally she turned and went slowly toward the house. There was the silence of the water and from beyond the cypress came night sounds—wind sighed through the heavily shrubbed area bordering the flagstone path. I smoked and wandered aimlessly, and about ten trekked back to my room. I stalled the time it takes to smoke one cigarette, then went in search of Bob Widdle. I found him in the snack bar.

"Hello, Bowman," he said cautiously.

I gave him a friendly smile, then looked carefully all around. "Get ready for some music, Widdle," I said. "Bowman is turning stool pigeon. I think we're going to lose a customer or two before long. I get the feeling someone hasn't heard Toland's orders about staying on the grounds."

He eyed me suspiciously, then put his magazine down. "Not Bowman, though. He's staying close to the estate, I guess."

"He is. For sure, Widdle. I certainly can't afford to add any more to Toland's picture of me—it's black enough already. So now I've told you. It's your baby."

He looked me over again, weighing the information.

Finally he said, "Who, Bowman, when and where?"

"No idea, Widdle. But you could make sure by blocking the road. There's only one way out, unless somebody wants to hoof it." While he was thinking it over, I flipped the keys to Kate's Cad on the table. I said, "Take these and back the big wagon crosswise just below the apron. It won't be any trouble to seal off the road. You can keep the keys. Fair enough?"

He whistled lightly a moment or two, then fingered the keys as he watched me. "I'll do that, Bowman. You can come along, just to help." I said I'd be glad to and in a few minutes we had the moneybags special jammed sideways to the gravel, her big chrome bumpers within a yard of the embankment on one side and almost to the steep drop-off on the other. I got out and started toward the house but Widdle snapped the catch and opened the hood. Leaning under, he fumbled in the darkness, then went around to the other side. When he backed out he held a small part in his hand.

"Just in case you have a spare set of keys, Bowman, I'm taking the rotor out of the distributor. You can have it back if and when the Sheriff says it's all right for you to go." He paused, then added: "You see how it is, Bowman."

"Very sharp." I nodded and smiled. "Ah, there's one thing more, Widdle. It might be a good idea to round up the hands and make it clear that Toland instructed them to stay. That way, no one could claim they hadn't heard. Right?"

"I'll do that. In the living room. I'll call 'em down there now."

"Just to make sure," I approved, and didn't bother to tell him that we were talking about different things.

Back in my room, I slipped into bathing trunks, opened my grip and rummaged for Fred's stubby little .38, wrapped it up in the folds of a beach towel, pulled on a

robe, and went down to stand muster for Widdle's announcement.

"You are hereby reminded," Widdle said stiffly, after he'd assembled the group, "that Sheriff Toland left orders not to leave. Each is witness that the others have heard. No one is to go farther than the house or terrace. Now go back to bed."

He turned and went toward his station in the snack bar. Cronk looked his disgust and grunted, "How many times does he have to tell us?"

I kept still and waited for an opening. Kate looked from one to another and let her eyes stop on me momentarily, then looked away. Elsa Doyle tossed in a few well chosen and indignant words but they didn't lead where I wanted to go either. I had to kick it off myself.

"Happy dreams, boys and girls," I said cheerily, "and to many more happy days here in the hills."

"Not if I can help it," Pilcher put in. "The sooner I clear out of here the better. What's more, if I never see any of Engle's guests again it'll be weeks too soon."

Which was the type of thing I'd been angling for. "You will, though. All of you will."

A feather dropping on the carpet would have made itself heard. "We're different that way, Danny boy," I went on pointedly. "I like the guests here a lot—enough to want to see you all again. If Toland gets it settled in the morning and lets us go our ways you can still depend on a visit from Marty Bowman." I worked up a sarcastic smile, spread it over the five of them, and went toward the snack bar.

Widdle looked up when I came in. "Don't you ever sleep, Bowman?"

"And you, Widdle?"

"A wink here and there. Now what the hell are you doing?"

"Hungry," I said shortly. I built a pair of sandwiches,

drew a mug of steaming coffee, spilled a bit of sugar into it, pulled out and loaded the heavy aluminum tray, and went down to the pool. I laid my towel on a deck chair and set the food down, then touched a foot to the water. Already the coolness of the day was getting to it, a fact which didn't reduce its attractiveness as far as I was concerned. I took a couple from the diving board, swam a few lengths and crawled out for coffee and a sandwich.

And I listened. Sitting with my back to the water, I listened and thought about how things had been the night George Engle died. A planned murder, coldly and carefully done, but it wasn't that way with Sandy Engle. Panic showed through when Sandy was killed. Panic and the haste that follows in its wake, and with a little luck we could have someone on edge at the moment. Someone besides Bowman, that is, because I sure as hell couldn't claim to be cool and collected. I took my time with the first sandwich, sipped coffee, and then swam another dozen lazy lengths of the plunge. Pulling myself out on the deep end, I went back to finish my lunch. Face toward the house and path, the direction down which trouble would most likely come, I sat and sipped the now almost cold coffee.

And then, just barely audible behind me, there was a small splash in the pool.

The cup froze in my hand and I made myself stay glued to the deck chair against the desire to jump and run through the wall of cypress. To do that would prove nothing, would scatter and destroy the plans I'd put together. You can't convict anyone for tossing something into a swimming pool. I waited several minutes, then set the coffee cup down on the concrete and put the plate beside it. Turning toward the pool, I looked at the bottom and, shining there, clearly seen by the lights glowing below water line, was a cigarette lighter. Chrome or silver,

its detail still slightly distorted by the ripples not yet dead on the surface of the water. ' I took a deep breath, grabbed the heavy aluminum tray, and dove toward the cigarette lighter.

Nineteen

The cool water closed over me, the tray slid through edgewise like the diving planes of a sub and I kicked a time or two as I went down. Straightening out near the bottom, I headed for the cigarette lighter, but when the oval stainless steel drain grill was below the tray, a mighty downward current of water pulled the aluminum tray to the bottom and slammed it tight against the grill. I pried at the rim of the serving tray, knowing as I worked that I would never budge it, that a force of almost half a ton had clamped it over the drain. George Engle had seen a silver dollar on the bottom of the pool, a silver dollar that shouldn't have been there, and when he knifed down through fifteen feet of water that drain was open and Engle was pinned to its mouth. It had to be that way.

I shoved upwards from the tile bottom, broke surface and hauled myself out, slid a hand in to Fred's gun, with the towel still wrapped around it. I ran around the pool toward the opening in the cypress. Down by the valve— there I would find the answer. I hurried along the flagstones, then cut off into the shrubbery and slowed to a careful walk. They would have to wait by the valve, a hand on the heavy steel crank, and listen to the water draining out of the pool. Marty Bowman was supposed to be stuck to the bottom back there, sucked down and unable to free himself. And like the first class job they

did on Engle, the repeat performance would involve waiting a few minutes. Three, say, or maybe even five minutes after the slowing of the flow told them that their man was in the trap. Then turn the steel crank and close the valve and wait. A small amount of water was bound to leak past the human obstruction caught against the grill, and when enough flowed through to fill the pipe between valve and the body, the pressure would be equalized and the victim free—no longer pressed tight against the drain.

Still, just enough had gone wrong with Engle's execution to make it murder instead of the accidental drowning it was supposed to be. Engle had suffocated, instead of drowning, and I knew why.

Nearing the shut-off valve, I moved slowly, slipped from bush to bush as I closed. Working carefully, I made the fringe lining the cleared area and put enough head up for a look around. A shaft of moonlight caught the steel valve and there was no one near it, the crank handle was gone. Peering through the semi-darkness, I checked as best I could but there was no sign of anyone, no sound. Then a quick movement behind me, the sudden whisper of cloth as I tried to turn, tried to stand up. The heavy wump and momentary flash of pain surging through my head—then that long fall through black silence, the end of thought and feeling. . . .

Slowly the bush beside me took shape and my fingers closed on a handful of grass and dew. I closed my eyes and lay for several seconds more, the grass wet and cold against my bare skin, my mind bringing back the pieces and putting me in the world of reality. Opening both eyes again, I looked toward the valve. Fred's shiny .38 lay on the dew-wet steel pipe of the outflow and beside it, her red hair almost black in the half-light, stood Elsa Doyle.

I started to roll over but the redhead put a hand on the gun beside her.

"Hold it, Marty. Just stay put, please." I didn't like the sound of her voice. There was a lostness and a flatness in her tone that was somehow deadly on the night air. I took a quick breath and tried to jar her out of the dream.

"Look, baby, this won't get you any place. We're at the end of the trail—finished. You tossed my buck in the pool and sucked George Engle tight to the grill. He died there, and when you found those papers and knew Sandy had had a chance at them, you slipped a wire around her neck. That's murder, baby—no turning back, no dream to wake from, no director to yell 'cut' and end the scene on a coffee break. Hell, kid—this was for real. They're dead, Sandy and George, and your luck has petered out."

"But only you know, Marty. Only you." She didn't say it menacingly or with any particular anger.