Wake Up to Murder Read online

  DAY KEENE

  WAKE UP

  TO MURDER

  Complete and Unabridged

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

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  Copyright

  1

  IT was the first time I’d been in the death house. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the feel of the place. I didn’t like the smell. Even the hot Florida sun slanting in through the high-barred windows was somehow different. At that, it wasn’t exactly the death house. It was a row of three cells adjoining the death house proper.

  I transferred the sweet peas I was carrying to my left hand. The palm of the hand in which I’d been carrying them was wet with sweat. I wiped it on my trousers.

  The fat-faced guard explained, “We never keep dames inside, see?” He inclined his head at the steel door sealing the passage. “We got some plenty tough guys in there. And they’d blow their tops for sure if we put a pretty babe like Pearl in with them. And them not able to get at her.” He nudged me with his elbow. “Get what I mean?”

  I said I got what he meant.

  Two of the cells were empty. The guard unlocked the third cell in the row. The Mantinover girl was lying on her back with one hand over her eyes. The prison laundry had shrunk the grey denim dress she was wearing. It outlined the contours of her body. Her firm bosom rose and fell rhythmically with her breathing, straining against the cloth. As far as I could tell, there was nothing under the dress but her. Here and there perspiration stained the grey black.

  “Nice, huh?” the fat guard breathed.

  “Nice,” I agreed with him.

  His voice oozed out of his parted lips and crawled over the sleeping girl like a lustful cockroach. “Hey. Wake up, Pearl. There’s a guy from your lawyer to see you.” He looked at my pass from the front office. “By the name of James A Charters.”

  Pearl Mantinover sat up. She brushed sleep and hair from her eyes with the back of one hand. As she did, the skirt of her dress crawled up, exposing a patch of cream-colored leg. She saw the guard looking at her. She let him look.

  Six months in a cell had tamed her. She was no longer the black-haired vixen who had cursed the prosecutor up one side and blistered him down the other. Leaving nothing unsaid. That, in court. With a blue-nosed judge and a thin-lipped cracker jury looking on with jaundiced eyes. Paying more attention to Pearl’s admitted breach of the seventh commandment than they did to the facts in the case.

  It hadn’t helped her any. What burned me at the time, what still burned me, was that Mr. Kendall, for all he was supposed to be a top-flight trial lawyer, hadn’t attempted to explain her outbreak to the jury. I knew just how she felt, how any girl would feel under similar circumstances. Whether she’d killed Joe Summers or not, she’d gone to live with the guy because she loved him. And State’s Attorney Layton had called her a loose woman just one too many times.

  “How goes it, Pearl?” I asked her.

  Pearl smiled at me, wanly. She still had her cute little dimple. “Not so good, Mr. Charters.” Her big black eyes, the tilt of her chin asked the question.

  I shook my head at her. “I’m afraid it’s bad news.”

  “My appeal has been turned down?”

  “Yeah. And Mr. Kendall says that he’s gone as far as he can, that it’s up to the governor now.”

  A flash of her old spirit came back. “But I didn’t kill Joe. That awful woman next door was lying. She couldn’t have heard us quarreling. Joe was dead when I came home!”

  So what could I say? That I was sorry? I couldn’t do her any good. I wasn’t a big shot lawyer. I wasn’t any kind of a lawyer. I was only a lawyer’s runner. A glorified messenger boy. Kendall pointed a finger and I went. Go here. Go there. See if you can find a favorable witness to that accident on Fourth and Hibiscus last night. Take this brief over to Judge Harney. Go tell Pearl Mantinover that she has to die. Get me a ham on rye. And for God’s sake, put some mustard on it this time. For sixty-two fifty a week. This on my birthday. Me thirty-five years old. And lucky to have a job.

  I said, “I know it’s tough, kid. Plenty tough.”

  “How much time have I?”

  I told her, “Two weeks. And if I were you, Pearl, I’d get a letter off to the governor just as fast as I could. Write it this afternoon. Tell him your side of the story.”

  The light went out in Pearl’s eyes. She nodded. Without hope. “For all the good it will do.” She smoothed the goods over her breasts. “I am a b-a-a-a-d woman. No?” The corners of her mouth turned down. “I lived with the man I loved. Without a few words on a piece of paper.” She shrugged. “That I went to church every morning, that there was never any other man in my life, meant nothing. Because I danced and sang in a cafe, I am a bad girl. And Mr. Kendall didn’t even try to explain. He took my money and, if you ask me, he threw me to the wolves.”

  I repeated what I’d said before. “You get that letter off to the governor right away.” Then I remembered the flowers I’d brought and offered them to her. “Here. I thought you might like these.”

  Pearl buried her face in the sweet peas. When she looked up again, she was smiling through the first tears I’d seen her cry. Her voice was low in her throat. “Maybe it will still be all right,” she said, quietly. “There are some nice men in the world. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Charters. You are married, yes?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’m married,” I admitted.

  Pearl was still sitting on the bunk. She stood up and kissed me. On the lips. Without passion. Sweet. While her free hand fondled my cheek. “Tell Mrs. Charters, for Pearl, she is a very lucky woman.” She buried her face in the flowers, crying harder now. “Is one of nicest things that ever happened to me.”

  The fat guard glowered at me. I felt like a fool.

  “Your time’s up,” he said, sourly.

  I said, “Goodbye, Pearl,” and left.

  I was glad to get out of the place. Such a little thing to be responsible for all that had happened. Fifty cents worth of sweet peas.

  • • •

  It was a long, hot drive back to Sun City. It hadn’t changed in five hours. The waters of the Gulf and Bay were just as blue. The town still sprawled in the sun, an overgrown fishing village dotted with green benches and churches and swank hotels. The royal palm-lined avenues and acres of white beach still crawled with young folks, old folks, Bible thumpers, bolita ticket peddlers, tourists from forty-eight states and swaggering big league baseball players down to begin spring training.

  I parked in front of Kelly’s Flamingo Bar and had a hot dog and a beer for lunch, saving my appetite for night. May would have a big supper. She always did, on my birthday. Probably fried chicken and chocolate cake. Home made. With half-inch thick icing.

  I finished my beer and walked out. I crossed the street to the office. Kendall wasn’t in.

  “I don’t know where he is,” Mabel said. “He was gone all afternoon. Up until a few minutes ago. Then he went right out again. How did the Mantinover girl take it, Jim?”

  “How would you take it,” I asked her, “if you had two weeks to live and figured you got a bum deal?”

  Mabel was loyal to Kendall. For some reason, most women usually were. “Don’t you even intimate such a thing, Jim. For shame! Mr. Kendall did his best for her, his very best. You know he did.”
Mabel lifted her mental skirts from possible contamination. “Besides, Pearl wasn’t even married to Summers.”

  I turned in the doorway and lighted a cigarette. “Honey, if every woman in Sun City who ever slept with a man she wasn’t married to was due to be electrocuted in two weeks, there’d be so goddamn many women in the churches that the streets would look like the inside of an Army latrine.”

  Then I went in search of Kendall.

  He wasn’t at the Chatterbox or Mirror Bar. He wasn’t in either of the J.P.’s offices or at the police station. On the off chance that he might be in the law library, I dropped into the County building. It was after five by then. Most of the county employees were gone.

  Tom Benner, Judge White’s bailiff, was just locking the judge’s office. “Hi, there, fellow,” he hailed me. “I been hoping you’d drop in all day, but I almost gave you up.” He went back in, opened the file case in the outer office and took out a fifth of bonded Bourbon with a white tag on the neck of it, reading:

  To Jim: — Many happy returns of the day.

  The Boys and Girls in the County Building.

  Benner handed it to me.

  “How come?” I asked him.

  He grinned. “Who knows? Maybe we kind of like you.”

  It was the first time anyone but May had ever given me a thing. I choked up a little. “Thanks. Thanks a lot, Tom. Thanks to everyone who chipped in.”

  I asked if he could go for a drink. Benner said he could always go for a drink. I got two lily cups from the drinking fountain and uncorked the bottle. As I did, high heels clicked in the hall.

  Benner peered out, then grinned. “It’s okay. Pour on. It’s only Lou.”

  The click of high heels stopped. Lou Tarrent looked in the office door. She was a typist in the sheriff’s office. She wasn’t more than twenty-two, good-looking, vital, with home-grown legs and a body a Powers model could be proud of. Lou wasn’t a tart. Far from it. But it was rumored that if she liked you she would. And Lou liked me. I’d known it for some time. But being a married man, all I had done about it was be a little untrue in my mind.

  “Well! What gives here?” Lou smiled.

  Her smile was as nice as the rest of her.

  “It’s Jim’s birthday,” Benner explained. “Judas Priest, you should know. You gave a quarter towards the bottle.”

  Lou was cute. She winked at me. “Then here’s where I get it back.”

  I got another lily cup and poured three drinks.

  Benner lifted his cup. “Many happy returns of the day.”

  Lou pressed up against me. “Amen.”

  I liked the feel of her. I poured three more drinks. We drank them and I poured three more.

  Lou continued to press up against me. Her cup in her hand, she confided, “I really shouldn’t be doing this. I’ve a dinner date with your boss. We’re driving over to Steve’s Rustic Lodge. And he — ”

  Lou stopped and looked at the door. I turned to see what she was looking at. Kendall was standing in the doorway.

  Tall and dark, with silvering temples, he looked distinguished and smart. “You just get back from taking my message to that woman?”

  I didn’t like the way he asked it. Like I was dirt under his feet. “Why, no,” I said. “I’ve been back for over an hour.”

  He knew it all the time. He’d seen Mabel since I had. “I see. Drinking on my time, huh?”

  I got a little sore. “No. On my own time. It was after five when I dropped in here looking for you.”

  “You expected to find me in a bottle?”

  I counted up to ten before I answered. “Look, Mr. Kendall. Don’t ride me. I’ve done your dirty work for three years now. And I’m not kicking. I like my job. But — ”

  Kendall shook his head at me. “You don’t have a job any more, Charters. Not with me.” He slipped his wallet from his coat pocket and counted out some bills. He laid the bills on Judge White’s railing and put a fifty-cent piece on top of them. “There’s the week you have coming and two weeks in lieu of notice. Don’t bother to show up in the morning.”

  My slight whiskey glow faded. I began to sweat as I thought of the payments on the house, the range, the refrigerator. “Now, wait. Just a minute, Mr. Kendall. Please. What’s this all about? So I took a couple of drinks. The bottle was a birthday present. I — ”

  “It’s after five,” Kendall said. As if I didn’t exist. He tucked Lou’s hand under his arm. “We’d better get started I guess.”

  I started to catch at his arm and couldn’t. I would be damned if I’d beg. “Okay. If that’s the way you feel,” I said.

  Kendall walked Lou into the hall and down it to the door, the click of her high heels fading.

  “I’m sorry, Jim,” Benner said, and left.

  I picked the bills from the railing. The amount was right to the penny. One hundred and eighty-seven dollars and fifty cents.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. What was I going to tell May?

  It was a hell of a thing to happen on a birthday.

  2

  IT was cooler than it had been. The tourists holding down the green benches had shifted over to the north side of Center Avenue to soak up the last of the heat. I started to get into my car. There was a parking violation ticket on the wheel. I ripped it off and put it in my pocket. Another day, another dollar. Everything happened to me. James A. Charters, alias Joe Doakes. Push him around, boys. He likes it.

  I shot away from the curb too fast and almost rammed an Ohio car. I had to brake, but fast.

  “Why don’t you learn how to drive?” I asked the superannuated farmer at the wheel of the other car.

  “Why don’t you look where you’re going?” He knew the script, all right.

  I caught a red light at the next block. I mulled that answer as I waited for the light to change. It was a good question. I wished I knew where I was going. I wished I was going anywhere but home. Telling May that Mr. Kendall had fired me was going to be tough. The one hundred and eighty dollars would last for three weeks, but if I didn’t find another job during those three weeks — what then?

  I’d put the bottle in my side coat pocket. The neck of it was digging into my ribs. I uncorked it and took a drink. It could have been such a nice birthday. I thought of Lou. She was cute. But thinking about Lou wasn’t going to solve my problem. I had May to think of. There was no reason for both of us to worry. Maybe it would be best if I didn’t say anything about losing my job. I could give May the sixty-two-fifty to make the payments and run the house. Just as if nothing had happened. I could do that for three weeks. Then what?

  I kicked it around for two lights, both lights turning red in my face. I decided it wouldn’t be fair not to tell her. But I wouldn’t tell her as soon as I got home. I wouldn’t spoil my birthday dinner for May. She’d worked over a hot stove all day fixing a nice supper for me. The least I could do was to pretend to enjoy it. Then, later, when we were in bed, I’d tell her. That way I could take her in my arms and comfort her when she cried.

  I slowed the car as I turned down our street. As usual, there were a million kids on it. Playing ball. Jumping rope. Riding tricycles and bicycles and kiddie cars. Dragging wagons. Just jumping up and down and yelling. Having a hell of a time for themselves.

  I started to grin and couldn’t stop. It made me feel a lot better, just looking at the street. So it was a GI deal, it was still nice. It was like a picture postal card. A vividly colored card. With the accent on green and red and yellow. The kids were fat and healthy-looking. All the houses were similar but different enough to make each one stand out. The lawns and palms and shrubs were coming fine. And our lawn was the nicest of all. God knew that May and I had worked on it. The house looked swell, too. It was ours. I’d keep up the payments somehow.

  As I swung in the drive, Marty Fine, one of the frecklefaced Little Leaguers I’d been coaching on Saturday afternoons, rode by on his bicycle with a first baseman’s mitt dangling from the handlebars.

/>   “Hi, there, Mr. Charters,” he grinned.

  “Hi, yourself,” I yelled back at him.

  It was a little thing, but it made me feel better. Anyway, the kids liked me. And May. And the boys and girls in the County Building. Including Lou.

  I parked the car in the porte. May was in the yard, talking to Mrs. Shelly next door. She looked good, even from the back. Her crisp wash dress fitted her like skin. Her corn silk hair looked vital and alive. Her back was slim and straight. Her tanned legs were bare.

  She saw me drive in and waved. “Ah ha. The old man. I’ll tell you later, Gwen.”

  Gwen Shelly smiled, “Hi, Jim.”

  I waited for her to add, ‘Happy birthday.’ She didn’t. And Gwen knew what day it was, too. Because Bob’s birthday was the same day. Only in February.

  By the time I got out of the car May was standing in the porte with her face lifted to be kissed. “Hello, honey, I’m glad you’re home. Tough day?”

  Her lips tasted cool and fresh and sweet. “Not too bad,” I told her. I walked her up on the breezeway with my arm around her waist. “I spent most of it on the road. I had to tell the Mantinover girl that her appeal had been denied.”

  The corners of May’s mouth turned down. “Matt Kendall would pin a dirty job like that on you, the bum. How did she take it, Jim?”

  I shrugged. “How could she take it? The kid’s in the death house. She’s hooked.”

  “The poor kid,” May said. “It makes me sick to even think about it.” She patted the hand around her waist. “Supper will be ready by the time you’re washed, sweetheart.”

  May was ladling out gray-looking liver and boiled potatoes when I walked back to the kitchen. The liver even looked tough. May confirmed it.

  “I’m afraid the liver is tough,” she said. “It’s beef liver, not calf’s. With prices as high as they are, we simply can’t afford calf’s liver.”

  I could feel bile beginning to form again. That’s right, rub it in, I thought. Prove to me I’m a failure, that I can’t even buy a decent meal for my family.