The Kissed Corpse (7 page)

I let them out for a run in the yard, went into the bathroom where the mirror showed a faint crimson stain still on my mouth. I went to work with a soapy cloth and had it cleaned off by the time Burke pulled up in front.

He and Laura were in the front room when I came out. They'd let the pups in, and Laura was squatting down with her full skirt spread out on the floor, making up to Tuck.

It was disgusting to see the way he squirmed and fawned on her when she petted him. Nip, though, came to me when I sat at a table and poured myself a drink. I've always thought she had more discernment and dignity than her frowsy mate.

Burke sat in the chair opposite me and told me to spill it. Laura played with the pup, pretending not to listen while I told Burke everything that had happened from the time I picked her up in the rain until we were brought into the Juarez police station, omitting only an explanation of the lipstick on my mouth, and, for Laura's benefit, not mentioning seeing him across the line.

When I finished, Burke got up and paced the floor slowly for a couple of minutes. He didn't seem to be disturbed … only curious. His eyes went to Laura several times, but she paid not the slightest attention to him.

He came back to his chair and sat down, got his pipe going. Laura was sitting on the rug and Tuck's head was in her lap, his eyes contentedly closed.

Jerry Burke turned his chair to face her and said: “Now, Miss Yates.”

“Your stooge has told you my part of it.” Her gaze met his frankly.

I poured myself another drink and kept quiet.

Burke frowned and asked: “How well did you know Leslie Young?”

“Quite well.”

“Enough so his wife was jealous of your intimacy?”

“I don't like your use of the word ‘intimacy'. Les and I were rather friendly.”

“Friendly enough for Mrs. Young to object?”

Laura laughed coldly. “That doesn't mean anything. Myra Young was jealous of Leslie's shadow.”

“When did you last see him?”

“This afternoon.” Laura's gaze was steadily on Burke's face.

“Where?”

“In the canyon, about a mile above his house.”

“Tell me about it.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “There isn't much to tell. We've met there often to avoid an unpleasant scene with Myra. I drove out in my car and he met me on horseback. He called me about noon, told me about the O'Toole note, and we arranged to meet. When we met he told me of the telephoned warning for him to stay away from the
hacienda
, which naturally made him more determined to go. It sounded interesting and I asked him to take me along. He agreed to pick me up in his car just the other side of Zaragoza. I was waiting for him when your friend came along and picked me up.” She nodded toward me with a half-smile.

“Leslie Young was alive when you left him this afternoon?” Burke persisted.

“Of course. Would I have been waiting out in the rain for a man whom I knew to be dead? Don't be absurd. You haven't told me …”

“You're telling me, Miss Yates. What time was it when you last saw Leslie Young?”

“About two-thirty. It was approximately three o'clock when I reached my apartment on Tularosa.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Almost two months … ever since I've been in El Paso. As a matter of fact, I came here from the east particularly to contact him.”

Burke puffed on his pipe and said: “Suppose you explain
that
.”

She shrugged her shoulders again. “There's nothing in our relationship that I have any reason to hide. I'm a free-lance writer … specializing in Sunday newspaper feature stories for eastern syndicates. About three months ago Leslie Young submitted an article to one of the syndicates which I represent. It contained interesting subject matter but was amateurishly done. The editor turned it over to me for a rewrite job and I had to get in touch with the author to clear up certain obscure points. His reply concerning himself gave me the idea that he would be a good source of material for future articles and I suggested collaboration. He welcomed the idea so I came here as soon as I was free to work up a series of Mexican articles with him. We worked together harmoniously until his wife got the idea that our relationship was more than a literary collaboration.”

“Was it?”

“No.”

“Is it your custom to kiss your collaborators when meeting them secretly?”

She wasn't at all disturbed. She answered serenely: “If I like them well enough … and if it will help me get material I need for an article.”

“Why did you spoil Baker's impersonation of Young before he had a chance to get a line on Young's murderer?”

Laura glanced over at me and spoke to both of us. “I'm sorry about that. I didn't know Les had been murdered. I didn't know why another man … a perfect stranger … was trying to pass himself off as Les. I felt I might earn the O'Toole gratitude by exposing the fraud at once … and might get a good feature yarn from her.”

“Do you know either of the Americans at the
hacienda
?”

She shook her head with a frown. “No. But the disguised roughneck who said he knew Mr. and Mrs. Young seemed vaguely familiar. Good clothes couldn't hide the piratical look he has.”

The telephone rang. Burke answered it while Laura got up after giving Tuck's head a farewell pat, and came over to stand close to me. Laura sat down in a chair close to me and looked as if she wanted to ask some questions, but I forestalled her by picking up the evening
Free Press
and glancing at the front page.

Jerry came back from the phone rubbing his chin meditatively. “It begins to tie up,” he said. “I've had the Mexican authorities checking on Michaela O'Toole. She is the daughter of an American renegade, Michael O'Toole, and her mother is a Maya Indian from Yucatan. She's a radical firebrand, an active leader in the Young Socialistic Movement of Mexico which has been clamoring for the nationalization of all the natural resources of the country. There's a link … some sort of a link … between Raymond Dwight, Michaela O'Toole, and Leslie Young's murder.”

“How and when was Les killed?” Laura asked.

“Shot through the head with a .25 automatic about a mile up the canyon from his cabin at approximately three o'clock this afternoon,” Burke told her bluntly.

“A mile up the canyon?” Laura dropped her air of bravado and self-confidence for the first time since I'd met her.

Burke nodded. “His horse was tied to a sapling and he had evidently met and talked with someone in a car.”

Laura looked at Burke, turned away quickly from his piercing eyes. For a moment she was silent, and I could tell that she was doing some fast thinking. After a while she said:

“Then … he must have been shot just after I drove away.”

“With your lipstick still hot on his mouth,” Jerry Burke agreed drily.

“Les was like that. He didn't believe in impersonal friendship between the sexes.” Laura also spoke drily but there was a faint flush on her cheeks.

“Did you see anything out of the ordinary? Did he say anything to indicate he might be in danger?”

“There was only the anonymous telephone call warning him to stay clear of the
hacienda
. He joked about that. He was sitting under a tree smoking a cigarette when I left him.”

“He was lying under the tree when Asa and the pups found him a little before four o'clock.”

“There goes a swell batch of feature material,” Laura said disgustedly, and I had the feeling that Young's death meant exactly that to her and no more.

Which shouldn't have mattered to me, but somehow it did.

“Suppose you run Miss Yates home?” Burke suggested to me. “I'll probably still be here when you get back … if it isn't too late.”

“It won't be late,” I told him, getting up. Laura went out with me to my car and told me she lived in the 3800 block on Tularosa. It was a fifteen-minute drive from my place and we didn't say anything during those fifteen minutes.

She pointed out an old frame house that had been made over into housekeeping apartments, and I pulled up in front. She got her overnight bag out of the back while I sat glumly behind the wheel.

She affected me in a perversely different way from any woman I'd ever met. I was tremendously attracted by her, and ashamed because I was. It was something I couldn't analyze. Just one of those things that
are
. I'm pretty sure she knew how I felt.

She came around to my side of the car and put her hand on my arm. “I'm sorry I spoiled things for you at the
hacienda
by speaking out of turn.” Her voice was warmer, more nearly human than it had been before.

“And I'm sorry the cops came in when they did.” I didn't know I was going to say that. I didn't know why I said it. Just one of those inane things that a man says and doesn't mean. Or … maybe I did mean it. Looking back, I guess maybe I did.

Her fingers tightened on my arm. There was that same pulsing warmth I had felt before. She said:

“I'll be seeing you. I'm going to do some personal checking on Leslie's murder.”

“Do you think it'll make a feature story?” I asked bitterly.

“It might.” She was gone down the path and a mocking laugh floated over her shoulder to me.

Burke was sitting in the living room when I got back. He got up and yawned when I came in the door.

“It doesn't add up, Asa.
Why
did Michaela O'Toole write that come-on note to Young?
Who
warned him not to go … and
why?
O'Toole and her political faction are ardently opposed to any payment for expropriated oil property … what's her hook-up with Dwight and Hardiman? How well did Dwight know Leslie Young?
Was
Young alive when Laura Yates drove away from the canyon this afternoon?”

I dropped moodily into a chair. “Why ask me? I'm not an oracle.”

“They are important questions, Asa,” he said. “It's a touchy business … digging into international relationships.” He looked moody and prepossessed, and I had the feeling that he was not talking to me, but to himself.

“What,” I asked him, “did you find out on your trip to the hacienda tonight?”

“Not a damned thing,” he admitted. “I was watching through a window and saw you jerked out and taken upsairs. And I overheard them phoning for the police to come for you, so I knew you weren't in any actual danger. That's why I motioned up to you to let matters take their course.” He yawned and got up, reaching for his hat.

“We'll be visiting McKelligon's Canyon tomorrow,” he said, starting for the door. “There are some questions I want to ask Mrs. Young
and
Raymond Dwight.”

8

Burke picked me up after lunch and we drove out to the canyon in his car. “I've been thinking about something,” I told him as soon as we started. “Someone at the
hacienda
must have
known
Young was dead … else why would they call the police to arrest us for murder?”

Burke shook his head. “The Juarez police had the murder report as a matter of routine. Michaela O'Toole called and asked them to investigate a couple claiming to be Mr. and Mrs. Leslie Young. From all reports, O'Toole is a shrewd woman. The note … the arrest … everything might be a ruse to throw suspicion away from herself … or someone else who is involved.”

I settled back on the seat while he drove unhurriedly north on Piedras Street. The McTelligon Canyon road takes off from the north end of Piedras, leading through a rugged slit deep into Franklin Mountains.

I couldn't get Laura Yates out of my mind. I kept wondering if she had a pistol and whether it was a .25. It recurred to me time and again that she had the best opportunity to kill Leslie Young of any one we had suspected so far. Yet, it was impossible to think of her as a murderess. She appeared to have nothing to hide, answered questions wholeheartedly.

But perhaps that was her way of covering up … just as Michaela O'Toole used cunning … and Mrs. Young openly admitting that she was glad her husband was dead. Then there was Hardiman … and Dwight.

I had them all on a merry-go-round together, trying to supply a motive for murder for each of them when I realized that we were on the paved road leading through the rugged canyon.

With an effort I forgot the murder to enjoy the desert plants and innumerable varieties of cacti blooming profusely along the sloping floor of the canyon, and the rocky walls which were brilliant splashes of color drenched by the afternoon sun. Here and there were turnouts leading to picnic spots, with rustic ovens and cabins nestled beneath clumps of trees along both slopes. Peace and serenity were everywhere and the mood of the hills came over me.

Then suddenly Burke swung off the highway on a narrow road which climbed up the hillside to a cottage of weathered logs in a clump of straggly oaks and jackpine. I came out of my peaceful musings and recognized the Leslie Young cabin.

Two cars were already parked beside the rough rock wall. One was a black Chevrolet sedan and the other an official police car which I recognized as Chief Jelcoe's.

Burke pulled up behind the police car and said with a slow grin: “Jelcoe is Johnny-on-the-spot, as usual.”

I saw the chief as I got out. He came to the front door and peered out when he heard us drive up. Sunlight glinted on his bald head and his eyelids started twitching in their peculiar and memorable way when he recognized me.

I went up the path and held out my hand, but he had eyes only for Jerry Burke. He nodded to me and spoke jerkily to Burke:

“I told you the answer would be right here, didn't I?” Crafty triumph showed on his thin face. “No use chasing all over Mexico when here's your murder case all in the bag.”

He held out his hand, palm up, showing half a dozen small brass cylinders with snubby lead points.