It's a Sin to Kill Read online

  IT’S A SIN TO KILL

  (Originally published as DEAD MAN'S TIDE)

  DAY KEENE

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  THE NUDE BODY lay like a swimmer in the water, face down, one arm extended. A south moon under, breaking through a rift in the clouds, found fire on one finger of the white, outstretched hand. The small fire glittered and twinkled and flared. Even the full force of the outgoing tide surging through the narrow pass, connecting the bay with the Gulf of Mexico, failed to extinguish it. It seemed to be imbedded in the dead woman’s hand, a last spark of life in the otherwise lifeless clay.

  For a time the body made good progress. It bobbled past the pier of the Beach Club and the swank homes on the rim of the bay. Gripped by the relentless tide, it glided past Bill’s Boat Basin and the dozen small bait camps that adjoined the basin. Here and there, on both sides of the pass, lights winked on as commercial fishermen and bait camp proprietors awakened to prepare for another day. A late returning shrimper chugged under one of the high arches of the bridge. Early fishermen parked their cars and rigged their tackle. Neither they nor the men aboard the shrimp boat saw the body.

  A small school of porpoise coming up to blow circled the body curiously and swam on.

  The body was headed under an arch of the bridge, out into the open Gulf with the next landfall Yucatan, when the tide turned. The moving corpse lost forward motion. It twisted and turned in a small circle, then came to rest against a barnacle covered bridge piling.

  Schools of small fish swarmed around it, only to be frightened away as the force of the incoming tide set it in motion again. Much deeper in the water now, only a strand of bleached blonde hair and one white buttock showing, the body floated back the way it had come, back past the boat camps, the boat basin, the sleeping estates, the Beach Club pier, into the even blacker if more tranquil waters of the upper bay.

  There the body snagged on a mangrove root rising out of a small sand bar and lost all motion. Schools of little fish immediately surrounded it. The crabs arrived singly and in pairs. It made no difference to them that the spark on the dead woman’s finger was a diamond appraised at eighteen thousand dollars.

  • • •

  For long minutes after he’d awakened, Charlie Ames lay looking up through the dark, listening to the suck of the tide, feeling the familiar motion of the cruiser, wishing the foul taste in his mouth would go away.

  We’ll have bacon and eggs and grits for breakfast, he decided. Perhaps Mary Lou might even whip up a batch of biscuits. When a man worked as hard as he did, he had a right to a big breakfast. Anyone who thought running a charter fishing boat was a lazy man’s job was out of his ignorant mind. Especially an old tub like the Sally. If it wasn’t the bottom it was the engine. If it wasn’t the engine, it was a bilge pump, a rotted rudder post, or a leak in the live bait well.

  He wished he could buy a new boat. Thinking about a new boat brought back the quarrel with Mary Lou. Mary Lou was hell determined to keep on singing at the Beach Club. She reasoned with feminine logic that if she could keep her job until the end of the season, they would be able to buy a new boat.

  Perhaps they could. But meanwhile he’d go through hell. Me knew what working in a place like the Beach Club entailed, especially for a girl as pretty as Mary Lou. He’d tooted a trumpet in similar spots all his adult life until his lip had gone bad.

  Ames sucked at his lower lip. The singing wasn’t so bad. Mary Lou liked to sing. He didn’t even mind her acting as hostess. It gave her a chance to wear pretty clothes. It gave her a taste of life, a nibble at luxury he couldn’t give her. If only the rich old goats who could afford to patronize places like the Beach Club would keep their hands and their thoughts to themselves. But they never did. Being in Florida seemed to tickle their ancient libidos. The rye and rum and Scotch they consumed came straight from the Fountain of Youth. They thought because they had money and a girl who sang torch songs on a bandstand was also employed to sit at their tables, they could paw and insult and proposition her with impunity.

  Some night he’d slug one of them and that would end the matter of Mary Lou working at the Beach Club. Ames felt a twinge of remorse. He was making something out of nothing. He was jealous. Mary Lou was a sweet kid and as straight as they came. He’d had no call to say the things he had.

  Ames was tempted to slip out of his bunk and into Mary Lou’s and tell her he was sorry he’d said the foul things he had. All she was trying to do was help him.

  He resisted the impulse. One thing would lead to another and both of them needed their rest. Mary Lou had probably come in with the dawn. He had a charter party at eight.

  The bunk under him dipped as the moored boat swung with the tide. Ames loved the motion. He loved boats. Even before his lip had gone, he’d never been a Harry James. Mary Lou was no Dinah Shore. And blown-out trumpet players and third-rate girl vocalists were a dime a dozen in Florida.

  Ames shuddered at the thought. If he hadn’t been born in a bait camp, if he hadn’t known the Gulf, if he hadn’t been able to buy the Sally, he’d probably be tooting with a nonunion combo in some piney-woods juke joint for five dollars a night and his drinks while Mary Lou entertained the bearded clientele with She’ll Be Comin’ Round The Mountain When She Comes — with both of them drinking too much and snapping at each other because life hadn’t turned out the way they had expected.

  This way they were at least secure. They had a home of sorts. When the charter business was bad he could always do some commercial fishing. If only he could afford to buy a boat that would attract the better class and higher paying deep sea fishermen.

  Ames lay dreaming in the growing light. Say a forty or forty-two foot cruiser. With a Diesel motor and a ship-to-shore phone and a forward cabin in which Mary Lou could stay out from underfoot, even on all-male charter trips.

  If only he could raise five thousand dollars, he could at least make the down payment on the type of boat he wanted. He had seven hundred put by. Ben Sheldon had offered him two thousand for the Sally. That made twenty-seven hundred. Figuring her salary and tips, Mary Lou had saved nine hundred and eighty dollars. That brought the total to three thousand, six hundred and eighty dollars. The Beach Club would stay open four more weeks. Mary Lou got fifty a week plus her tips. That meant at least another three hundred and a grand total of thirty-nine hundred dollars.

  Ames was sorry he’d quarreled with Mary Lou. She was right and he was wrong. She didn’t want to work at the Beach Club. She’d much prefer to stay at home and have babies. Except for what she’d had to spend on dresses, she’d saved every penny she’d made toward the boat.

  Another thousand dollars would do it.

  A tall man, well-muscled, Ames stretched luxuriously on the bunk. It was time to be up and doing. It was time to awaken Mary Lou. But the bunk had never felt softer. Ames was amused. It just went to show what being in love with a boat or a woman could do to a man’s mind. The thin pad felt like an innerspring mattress. He bounced slightly and springs gave under him.

  What the hell, Ames thought.<
br />
  He was lying on an innerspring mattress and there were no innersprings on the Sally.

  Ames called “Mary Lou,” softly.

  There was no answer but the surge of the tide, the creak of the mooring ropes and the swish of the water in the bilge. Ames sat up and swung his feet to the deck. It was carpeted and unfamiliar. The distance between the two bunks was wider than he remembered it. The opposite bunk also had an innerspring mattress and Mary Lou wasn’t on it.

  The sour taste in his mouth persisted. His head ached. His body felt suddenly hot. The air coming in through the graying portholes was no longer cool. It was difficult for him to breathe. Ames wanted a light. He had to have a light.

  He felt along the wall for the gasoline pressure lantern that illuminated the Sally. The lantern wasn’t where it should be. Then his groping fingers encountered a switch and a bright white light pushed the gray of morning back through the highly polished portholes.

  He was aboard a cruiser, but whatever boat he was on, he wasn’t aboard the Sally. This cabin was paneled in mahogany. It seemed to stretch an endless distance to a beveled mirror door.

  Ames looked at the bunk opposite the one on which he had been sleeping. A strapless white evening gown lay in a crumpled heap on top of the unrumpled spread, like some one had damn well wanted it off in a hurry. A pair of sheer hose turned inside out and a wisp of silk that was probably a pair of scanties lay beside the dress.

  An empty fifth bottle of bonded whiskey rolled between the two bunks with every rise and fall of the cruiser. Over the bunk in which he had awakened, a built-in ashtray was filled with cigarette stubs, half of which were stained with lipstick. The bunk itself looked as if it had taken a hell of a beating.

  Ames looked in the beveled mirror door and realized he was nude. He strode toward the mirror, hoping it was the entrance to the head. He was afraid he was going to be sick. He was.

  He stayed in the head a long time. The door was mirrored on both sides. His eyes were slightly bloodshot. He needed a shave. His sun-bronzed face and neck and chest were smeared with the same deep shade of lipstick as the cigarette butts in the ashtray. More, the lipstick had been personally and intimately applied.

  Ames turned on the tap in the metal basin and splashed water on his face and chest. It failed to erase the smears. The lipstick was indelible.

  Nothing had changed when he came out of the head. He was still alone in the cabin. The cabin was still paneled in mahogany. The empty whiskey bottle still rolled between the two bunks. The strapless evening gown and hose and wisp of silk still lay on the unused bunk.

  Ames looked and found his clothes. His skivy and dungarees and sneakers were heaped on a chrome and red canvas officer’s chair with his best white cap perched cockily on top of them.

  He sat back on the bunk and tried to think. He had a head. He’d been sick. Still, he couldn’t remember drinking. At least not heavily. There had been a time. When he’d been tooting a trumpet things like this happened often. Women, both single and married, were, it would seem, attracted to musicians. But it had been a long time since he’d awakened in a strange bed. He no longer drank to the point of blanking out. He didn’t do things like this. He hadn’t stepped out since he’d married Mary Lou. He’d had no reason to.

  There was a small strand of blonde hair on the pillow. Ames picked it from the indentation and subconsciously wound it around a sun-blackened finger as he thought back to the night before.

  He’d fished for bait until almost two o’clock. It had been after two when he’d pulled back into the slip in Bill’s Boat Basin. He had secured the Sally. He’d made certain the small auxiliary motor that furnished a constant supply of fresh sea water to the live bait well had been working.

  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.”