Wife or Death (14 page)

“So, like I said, Janie Morrison was coming out of the Bettye Hat Shoppe this morning when she saw him leave the court house basement, and you know what's in the court house basement.”

“Well, of course I know! The police department.”

“So it looks like Chief Spile is still questioning him. Questioning him! I don't know why on earth they don't
arrest
him.”

That's me they're talking about, Denton told himself. It gave him the funniest feeling.

“I can't imagine, Ruth. You know my niece lives next door to Bob Harley, the cop. Harley's wife told my niece who told me that Ralph Crosby
wants
to arrest him, but Gus Spile doesn't think they ought to yet. Not enough evidence or something. I don't know how much evidence they want! Wife disappears, husband prints in his own paper that she's off visiting her parents, then her murdered body is found and he admits he made the story up about the visit—seems to me that's
plenty
of evidence!”

Denton could not quite place the voices. Against his will he kept listening.

The first voice said, “The story
I
heard is that he claims he thought she'd run off with some man, so he put that notice in the
Clarion
to stop gossip. That she was running off with a man I can well believe—the way that woman chased the men, she was practically asking her husband to shoot her. The tragic thing,
I
think, is George Guest. You know it wouldn't surprise me if he deliberately ran off the road—killed himself?”

This was one not even Denton had thought of. Leave it to the girls! He leaned back against the booth wall to hear better.

The other woman said, “Ruth, we were talking about that at the church supper only last night. You know how absolutely insane George Guest was over Corinne? Well, Martha Pruett's husband Joe was very close to George, and Martha said Joe says that if George'd learned about Corinne's love affair with Jim Denton, it could very well have driven him to suicide.”

And that's another one I should have anticipated and didn't, Denton thought in cold rage. At that moment, if he had had Mother Overton, fat Ellen Wright and skinny Nurse Olive Haber within reach, he would cheerfully have torn the tongues out of all three.

Rising, he turned and glared down into the next booth. They were unknown to him after all—two middle-aged housewives out for an orgy of calories and character-assassination.

He said, “Excuse me,” and the two heads jerked up, the round and heavily made-up faces with the pinched mouths registering consternation. “Does either of you ladies happen to know a good lawyer?”

“Lawyer?” the one called Ruth said, licking at her lips.

“Yes,” Denton said pleasantly. “If you haven't, you'd better find one fast. One familiar with the law of slander.” And, calling to his waitress, “I'll take my order here, please,” he walked over to the counter and sat down.

They were still sitting in the booth with flushed faces, eating furiously in silence, when Denton left.

So, on top of everything else, he was supposed to have driven George to suicide over Corinne! It must be all over town.

Well, Denton thought as he went back to his office, I've spoiled the day for at least two of them.

He locked up a little after 3 P.M. and made for the court house building again. He found Chief Spile alone in his office.

“Oh, Jim.” The police chief tossed Denton's house-key over. “Thanks for the key. You'll find I didn't take anything but your shotgun.”

He snapped the key back in his key-case. “Find any bloodstains, Augie?”

“We took a fair look around,” Spile admitted. “Jim, this is my job. You ought to know that. It don't mean I think you're guilty of anything. After all, I was the one talked Ralph Crosby into letting you walk around free till we know where we're going in this investigation. There's been quite some pressure on both of us to hold you, you know.”

“I know,” Denton said. “At lunch I had the pleasure of overhearing a couple of sinewy-tongued biddies wondering out loud why I wasn't behind bars. Maybe you ought to lock me up at that, Augie. The will of the people, and all that.”

“Oompch the will of the people,” the police chief said coarsely. Then he fussed with some papers on his desk. “Jim,” he said. “There is a way you could stop most of this talk.”

“What way is that?”

“Would you be willing to take a lie-detector test?”

“Whose cute little idea was that?” Denton asked sarcastically. “Crosby's?”

“Hell, no. You know lie-detector evidence ain't admissible in court. Crosby's against it on principle—”

“Principle.” Denton laughed. “He's against it because it would tell him I'm innocent, admissible or not.”

“Could be. But that's not my reason, Jim—and incidentally, it was my idea. Take the test and, at least as far as the folks in town are concerned, you're clear. That is,” Augie Spile fussed with the papers again, “unless you'd rather not.”

“I'll take it,” Denton snapped, “any time you say!”

“Swell, Jim.” The huge face beamed. “Matter of fact, I already made inquiries. Nearest expert is in Buffalo. Trouble is, he's all tied up for some time to come. But as soon as he's free … Say, that's fine, Jim, real fine. Well!” His great swivel-chair creaked as he leaned far back. “Oh. Doc Olsen phoned me.”

“I asked him to.”

“In view of what Doc says about your theory being medically possible—I mean of George's being murdered—I guess it's time I checked into some alibis for last Friday night.”

“Matt Fallon's and Norm Wyatt's, for instance?”

The police chief nodded. “What time is it?… Reckon I'll tackle Fallon first.”

“No time like the present, Augie.”

“S'pose not.” The chief sighed, placed both oversized hands on his desk top and pushed himself upright. “May's well come along, Jim.”

“I was just going to ask you if I might.” Denton felt a lift for the first time in days. “In fact, don't even bother calling a patrol car. I'll drive you over. And Augie—”

“Yeah, Jim?”

“Thanks.”

Matthew Fallon lived on the upper floor of an old frame house that had been converted into two apartments. The cartoonist answered the downstairs door in shirt sleeves.

“Chief.” He looked surprised. Then he spotted Denton and look embarrassed. “I've been meaning to call you, Jim. I'm sorry about Angel …” Denton murmured something and Fallon said abruptly, “Come on in.”

He led the way upstairs and into a long, narrow front room. Through a doorway they could see into his workroom, a cubicle cluttered with piles of reference magazines, comic books, newspapers, filing cabinets, pens, pots of India ink, T-squares and other paraphernalia of the commercial artist. The room was dominated by a drawing board to which a half-finished ink drawing was pinned.

“Sorry to interrupt your work, Mr. Fallon—”

“No, no, Chief, I was just going to take a coffee break, anyway. By the way, how about some?” When both men declined, the cartoonist said, “Sit down, sit down.”

They took chairs. Fallon spread his lanky frame across a sofa and took his time lighting a cigarette. Finally he asked, “What's up, gents?” in a too casual voice.

“You heard about George Guest, I suppose?” Chief Spile said.

“Say, that was rough, wasn't it? I tried to phone George that night, but he wasn't home.”

“Friday night?” Denton was surprised. “You spoke to Corinne?”

“Of course. She said she'd have George call me back soon as he got in.” Fallon grimaced. “I'm still waiting.”

Corinne hadn't mentioned that. Well, it was understandable. She had probably forgotten all about it under the strain of that long night of waiting.

“What time was your call, Mr. Fallon?” the police chief asked.

“Just after nine. I phoned the store first, hoping I'd still catch George, but there was no answer, so I figured he closed promptly. I was trying to get up a poker game.” He glanced at Denton, and embarrassment showed again. “I would have called you, Jim, but I'd heard about Angel—”

“I wasn't home, anyway.”

“Manage to scrape up a game, Mr. Fallon?” The chief smiled.

“Eventually.” Fallon kept glancing from Augie Spile to Denton and back again. “Arnold Long got here around eight-thirty, and we both got on the phone. It was half-past ten before enough hands for a decent game showed up.” He added with a rather forced laugh, “Say, why all this interest in my poker game? You starting an anti-gambling crusade in this town, Chief?”

“With all the graft I take?” Spile said, still smiling. “By the way, who-all was here?”

“Well, Arnold Long, myself, Joe Tederous, Andy Planter, Thad Sommers, Bart Tyson and Harry Gilbert. Seven—that's right.”

“Break up early, did you?”

“Early in the morning. About two A.M.”

And that lets Fallon out, Denton thought. And Long, and Thad Sommers, who had also attended the Wyatts' party.

“Well, that's fine, Mr. Fallon,” the police chief said, rising. “Guess we'll be running along, Jim.”

“Yes,” Denton said.

“Running along?” The cartoonist's hairy brows met. “I don't get this, I really don't.” He was on his feet now, too. “You haven't even told me why you came here. Or have you?”

“Now don't get your dander up,” Chief Spile soothed him. “It's just that George Guest visited somebody in this neighborhood before he cracked up Friday night, and we're checking out the people he knew around here—”

“Don't give me that!” Fallon was angry. “You didn't even ask me if he was here.”

“But you told us, didn't you? All right, did George drop in?”

“No! The last time I saw George was at the Wyatts' after the Hallowe'en Ball. Jim, what's this all about?”

Denton shrugged lightly. “Don't ask me, Matt, I'm only along for the ride. Oh, one thing, though.”

“What?”

“Did anybody take time off during the evening? To run out for a bottle, maybe? Or cigarettes—anything like that?”

“No. From ten-thirty to two A.M. all seven of us stayed in this room. You know, Jim,” Fallon said slowly, “I think I resent this.”

“Forget it, Matt.”

They left Fallon scowling. He did not even bother to see them out.

As Denton slipped behind the wheel, Augie Spile said, “You satisfied, Jim?”

“If it's true,” Denton said curtly. “I don't want to tell you how to do your job, Augie, but—”

“I know,” the chief said, without rancor. “I'll check the story seven ways to the ace. But I get the feeling it'll check out all right.” He sighed. “Well, I guess we'd better get on to Norm Wyatt's.”

Denton drove across the little bridge and swung into the Wyatt driveway. The garage doors stood open, as usual, but both cars were gone. Spile got out and rang the doorbell. No one answered.

“Nobody home,” he said, with obvious relief, getting back into the car. “I'll try him tomorrow, Jim.”

“And if he's not home tomorrow?”

“Man, you're a caution. Okay, Jim, if he's not home tomorrow I'll run up to the lodge. And if he's not at the lodge I'll track him down wherever he is, hell or high water. Will that make you sleep better tonight?”

“Lots better,” Denton said grimly.

“Then suppose you run me back to headquarters.”

Denton spent a gruesome evening at Gerard's Funeral Home. The casket was already set up in one of the visitors' viewing rooms, its lid closed. Denton did not have to ask Nelse Gerard why. The mortician's art could only achieve so much, and in Angel's case a Rodin was needed. There were no funerary Rodins within calling distance of Ridgemore.

Not to his surprise, a small army of people trooped in and out during the evening. Denton had all he could do to conceal his amusement at the disappointment in their faces when they saw the closed lid. No one visited for more than a minute or two. The evening consisted of frustrated curiosity and lip-service condolences. Those who stared at him accusingly he stared down.

He was very glad when it was over.

He wondered briefly about George Guest's body, and asked Gerard.

“Mrs. Guest didn't want her husband displayed,” the mortician said severely. “And our results were so gratifying, too.”

“Art for art's sake, Nelse,” said Denton, and left.

Corinne had not shown up.

17

Angel's funeral service on Tuesday morning was scheduled for ten o'clock.

Denton sat in the front row, between Ted Winchester and Amos Case. It was eloquent of the town's attitude toward him, he thought, that none of his friends present moved up to fill out the rest of the row. He saw the Long family, the Wyatts and Gerald Trevor, Matthew Fallon, Ralph Crosby and the rest … faithful unto death, O my Angel, Denton thought, and wished he were a telepathic stenographer so that he might transcribe what was going on in those fixed, uncomfortable heads. And how some of you bastards would love it, he inwardly laughed, if I were sitting here in handcuffs between two cops!

Just before the Episcopal minister opened his prayerbook, Denton turned for a last frank look at the co-mourners. Most of the well over a hundred persons present were either strangers to him or seemed only uncertainly familiar; and most of these were women.

Seated almost directly behind him were Ellen Wright—Fat Ellen—and Olive Haber—Skinny Olive—the political managers of most of Ridgemore's whispering campaigns and, he was positive, of the newest slander, the one about him and Corinne and George. Denton knew, from an item on his desk at the
Clarion
in another connection, that the Haber woman was currently on the 7A.M.-3 P.M. nursing shift at the hospital, so in order to attend she must have had to take at least the morning off. Ellen Wright, who had money, toiled not, neither did she spin; she could be anywhere anything was going on at a moment's notice, and she usually was.