It's a Sin to Kill (2 page)

He had debated turning in or making a pot of coffee. He'd decided to make a pot of coffee. Then what had happened? His head continued to ache. His mouth had never been so dry.

Then what had happened?

He forced himself to think. Of course. Mrs. Camden had hailed him from the pier.

“Ahoy, the
Sally
,” she'd called.

Ames looked at the strand of blonde hair he'd wound around his fingers. Mrs. Camden was a bleached blonde. She was also a successful business woman. Something to do with cosmetics, he thought. A career girl, Mary Lou had called her.

Ames unwound the strand of hair and dropped it on the carpet. Mrs. Camden had been wearing a strapless white evening gown, with no need of any straps. He remembered distinctly thinking that the brittle blonde could give Jane Russell spades and still come out in front.

The big vein in Ames's throat began to throb.

“Ahoy, the
Sally
,” she'd called.

He had answered the hail. Mrs. Camden had been drinking but was in full possession of all her faculties. She'd wanted to know how much he would charge to skipper the forty-eight foot Camden cruiser, the
Sea Bird
, down the west coast to the Keys and up the east coast inland waterway to Baltimore. Her husband, Mrs. Camden said, was flying down next week. They both were much in need of a vacation. She'd thought it would be nice if she and Mr. Camden could return via the inland waterway.

That
, Ames thought,
is the trouble. The wrong kind of people have boats
. What he could do with the
Sea Bird
.

He looked around the cabin again. He was on the
Sea Bird
. Of course. He recognized the cabin from Ben Sheldon's description of the boat.

“It's the goddamnedest thing inside you ever saw, Charlie,” the fat ship's chandler had told him. “It's like a floating luxury hotel.”

It was all of that. Ames averted his eyes from the clothing
on the opposite bunk and patted at the sweat beading on his forehead. The question was how had he gotten aboard.

There was tangible evidence as to what had happened. Mary Lou was going to give him hell for it. It would serve him right if she left him.

He forced his mind back to the night just past. He'd told Mrs. Camden he couldn't quote her a price offhand, that such a trip would involve at least a month's time and the subsequent loss of a number of parties, that he'd have to think it over.

While they had been talking, she on the pier, he in the cockpit of the
Sally
, the coffee in the galley had boiled over.

Mrs. Camden had asked, “Is that fresh coffee I smell, Captain?”

He had admitted it was and asked her if she'd like a cup. She said she would enjoy a cup of coffee very much, so he'd invited her aboard. They'd sat in the open cockpit. Mrs. Camden had been more drunk than he'd thought. She'd had difficulty forming her words. But outside of exposing a spot of white thigh every time she crossed and recrossed her legs, the brittle blonde had been a perfect lady. Their talk had been strictly of business. She hadn't said or done a thing that remotely resembled a pass.

Ames wished he knew her first name. Feeling like a fool, he called, “Mrs. Camden.”

The suck of the tide and the creak of the mooring ropes answered him. He stood up and looked out of a porthole. Morning was gray in the sky. He could see the murky outline of a pier and beyond it, the black silhouette of the spacious Camden beach home rising out of its lush surroundings of phoenix and coconut palms.

There was no doubt about it. He was aboard the
Sea Bird
. The cruiser was moored to the Camden pier. How he had gotten aboard was another matter. Perhaps Mrs. Camden could tell him. But then where was Mrs. Camden? Ames looked back at the hastily discarded evening dress. The big vein in his neck continued to throb. Unless the blonde cosmetic manufacturer had other clothing aboard, she was feeling the cool of the morning.

Ames picked his cap and pants from the chair, put them on and walked aft. The big cabin opened into a smaller second cabin. It, too, was unoccupied. Angry now, he continued
aft and stepped out into the canopy sheltered cockpit.

Damn the big blonde for a bitch! She'd gotten him into a peck of trouble. He'd never be able to square this with Mary Lou. Still, how had he gotten aboard? The last thing he remembered was drinking a second cup of coffee in the open cockpit of the
Sally
.

A small eye of light bobbled among the trees and a woman started out on the pier. Ames waited with clenched fists on his hips. The blonde had probably gone for another bottle. Who did she think she was? Since when was she so hard up that she had to shanghai a charter boat captain? He'd give her hell, then he'd crawl back to the
Sally
and try to make his peace with Mary Lou.

“I was making a pot of coffee,” he'd say. “Mrs. Camden said she'd like a cup. I invited her aboard. We had two cups apiece.” Ames stuck there. Then what happened? He wished he knew. He'd have a hell of a time convincing Mary Lou that he didn't.

The woman hurrying out on the pier was wearing a flowered housecoat. The long skirt of her silk nightgown showed under the flowered material and swished around her ankles as she walked. When she was still a hundred feet away, she called:

“Mrs. Camden!”

Ames cocked his cap on the side of his head. Whoever the girl was, she wasn't Mrs. Camden. She was some years younger, for one thing. For another, she had black hair.

“Who are you?” Ames asked her.

The girl was holding a flashlight in one hand. She used her other hand to make sure her housecoat was fastened. “I am Celeste,” she said primly. “I am sorry if I intrude. But Madame's Paris office is on the trans-Atlantic phone. So would you be so kind as to inform Mrs. Camden they say the call ees ver' important.”

The girl wasn't asking a favor. She was making a statement.

Ames shook his head at her. “Mrs. Camden isn't here.”

The maid's eyes widened slightly. Her French accent was even more pronounced. “Mrs. Camden is not on the cruiser?”

Ames took off his cap and ran a crooked forefinger around the leather sweatband. His finger came away wet. “No,” he told the girl. “There's no one aboard but me.”

The girl raised the beam of her flashlight and played it
over his chest and face. Her tone was slightly incredulous as she repeated, “Mrs. Camden is not on the cruiser?”

“No.”

“Then where is she?”

“I don't know,” Ames said.

H
E LOOKED
up at the girl. The girl looked down at him. The silence between them lengthened. The drip of the condensation from the roof of the cabin grew more pronounced. Somewhere along the rim of the basin an outboard motor coughed anemically a few times, then settled down into a high-pitched whine.

“Oh,” the maid said. “I see.”

It was obvious she didn't. She clutched her housecoat tighter and switched off the now useless flashlight. In the growing light of morning she looked frightened.

“Oh,” she repeated. “I see.”

She hurried back down the pier toward the house, glancing over her shoulder from time to time as if she were afraid that Ames was following.

Ames returned his cap to his head. He felt like a damn fool. When he saw the Camden dame again, he'd tell her plenty. There were men on the other piers now. Several of them had seen him. It would be only a matter of minutes before everyone along the waterfront would know he had spent the night just past aboard the
Sea Bird
.

If he'd had the game he didn't remember it. But he'd sure as hell have the name. And when Mary Lou heard about it she'd pack her bags and leave.

He walked back through the smaller cabin to the master cabin in which he'd awakened. The cabin smelled strongly of perfume. The dryness in Ames's mouth extended to his throat. His throat contracted. He was frightened and didn't know why.

He picked the rolling bottle from the floor in the hope there was still a drink in it. There wasn't, but there were a half-dozen unopened rum and whiskey bottles in an open built-in liquor cabinet at the foot of the bunk.

Ames hadn't noticed the cabinet before. One thing was
for sure. The blonde Mrs. Camden believed in sinning deluxe. The corners of Ames's mouth turned down. He hoped he'd had a good time. He wished he remembered it.

He cracked the seal of a rum bottle with his thumb nail and allowed a quarter of a pint of rum to trickle down his throat. The rum wet the dryness and eased the constriction. Ames screwed the cap back on the bottle and returned it to the cabinet. The thing was done. There was no use poor-mouthing about it. The thing for him to do was get to Mary Lou and try to explain that he hadn't meant it to happen.

He picked his skivy from the chair and pulled it over his head. There was a brown splotch on the garment he didn't remember being there. Fish blood probably, Ames thought.

He rebuckled his belt and sat on the chair to slip his feet into his sneakers and a wad of something in the hip pocket of his dungarees pressed into his flesh. He fished it out and looked at it. It was a thick wad of bills folded once. The top note was a fifty dollar bill. So were the bills under it. Ames wet his second finger on his tongue and began to count. He counted to two thousand dollars and stopped. His mouth was dry again. He hadn't enough saliva to wet his finger. Still, over half the bills remained to be counted.

His hand shaking slightly, he refolded the wad of bills and returned it to his hip pocket. The blonde Mrs. Camden had a lot to explain. He debated taking another drink. He decided against it. He hadn't eaten since supper the night before. The one drink he'd taken was roaring in his head.

He stooped and tied his sneakers. The laces of his right one were gummed with some sticky substance. So was the deep maroon carpet on which he was standing. Ames wiped his fingers on his skivy and strode back to the canopy covered cockpit. Before he attempted to make his peace with Mary Lou, he wanted to talk to Mrs. Camden — now.

The stern of the cruiser was ten feet from the pier. He gave the forward rope slack then pulled on the aft ropes until he could scramble up on the wood. One of the fishermen on the next pier recognized and hailed him.

“Hi, there, Captain Ames.”

“Hi,” Ames said and walked rapidly down the pier to the palm tree studded lawn of the rambling Camden beach house.

The front door opening off a flagstone patio was closed. Ames walked around to the back of the house. There was a
second smaller patio, screened by purple bougainvillea and yellow allamanda. He could hear the French girl speaking. She sounded excited. Ames rang the bell then rapped impatiently on the wood of the kitchen door.

A small gray-haired man crossed the kitchen and looked at him through the screen.

“Who are you?” Ames asked.

The gray-haired man looked frightened. He said, “Go away, please.”

Ames rested his weight on one hand. “I asked you a question. Who are you?”

The man wet his lips by gnawing at them. “I'm Phillips.”

“Mrs. Camden's butler?”

“Yes.”

Ames realized he was breathing heavily, as if he had run a long way. It was an effort for him to speak. He said, “Tell Mrs. Camden I want to see her. And don't give me any crap about her not being in the house. I know better.”

The man on the far side of the screen had trouble swallowing the lump in his throat.

“Don't just stand there,” Ames said. He felt as if he were shouting. He was. “You heard me. Tell Mrs. Camden that Charlie Ames wants to see her.”

The man who'd said his name was Phillips shook his head. “I — can't.”

“Why not?”

“She isn't here.”

“You're sure?”

“We're positive,” Phillips said. “Celeste and I have just finished looking in every room.”

Ames's knees felt suddenly weak. He leaned against the jamb of the door. “Don't give me that.”

Phillips shook his head. “I'm not giving you anything. Mrs. Camden isn't here. Now go away. Please.”

The black-haired girl came and stood beside Phillips. Tears were trickling down her cheeks but she was holding an efficient-looking small calibered automatic pistol as if she knew how to use it. She spat a stream of French at Ames. Ames looked at Phillips.

“What did she say?”

“She said if you don't go away she'll shoot.”

Ames began to protest “But — ”

Celeste shot a hole in the screen and the steel jacketed
slug shattered an ornate urn on the edge of the patio. Ames looked at the urn, turned on his heel and walked up the drive to the road.

The
Sally
was berthed less than five hundred yards away but he could make better time on the road than he could by climbing fences and scrambling under piers.

Morning was full now. The thin stream of cars on the beach road began to thicken. The land itself was merely a quarter of a mile wide spit of sand with the bay on one side and the Gulf on the other. Most of the land on the bay side had been dredged out of the bay.

The pocket of swank homes ended and the hotels and motels began. Porters polished brass and raked the seaweed off the beach. Early rising tourists, their bodies strangely white, yawned out of their fifteen dollar a night motels and plowed doggedly through the white sand to the water.

Look, Maw
, Ames thought grimly,
I'm in the Gulf of Mexico
.

The Fisherman's Lunch, The Spot and Harry's Bar were all doing a good business. On the platform of Rupert's Fish House, Matt Doyle and Tom Mercer were weighing in a nice catch of red snappers.

Both men waved to Ames.

“Hi, Charlie.”

Ames lifted his right hand. “Hi.”