Wake Up to Murder Page 11

  Lou looked at the floor, embarrassed.

  I needed a drink. I poured one from the decanter on the bamboo coffee table.

  Mrs. Landers continued: “How much rent do you think I pay for this apartment, Mr. Charters?”

  I said, “Plenty.”

  She smiled. “Eight hundred dollars a month. And that’s the year round, whether I’m here or in Paris or Bermuda. And this is a dump compared to my apartment in New York and my beach home in Bermuda.” She thrust her ringed hands under my nose. “For what matter, what do you think these rings are worth?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  She looked at the rings. “They’re insured for forty thousand.” She brushed the air with the back of her hand. “But all that is immaterial. What I’m getting at is this. Whatever I am or have been I’ve always been high-priced. So how much do you think this Cass Hardy person would have to lay on the line to get me to risk a perjury rap by giving false testimony against a girl I rather liked and felt sorry for?” Mrs. Landers answered her own question. “There isn’t that much money in Sun City. No. When I put my hand on that Bible in the Palmetto County courtroom and testified as I did, I was doing what I was sworn to do. I was telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  I protested, “That can’t be so.”

  “Why can’t it?” Mrs. Landers asked.

  I told her. “Because I worked on this building when it was remodeled into the Casa Mañana Apartments. And the walls are a foot thick. You couldn’t possibly have heard what went on in the next apartment.”

  Lou said, “We stopped in A7 and experimented. Jim told me what to say. Then he went into the bedroom and closed the door, while I stayed in the living room and said, ‘No. Please don’t shoot me.’ I said it loud. Then I whacked a board with a stick. Six times. And Jim couldn’t hear a thing in the bedroom.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Landers said. “I see.”

  She got up from the chair in which she was sitting. As she did the edges of her white robe parted, briefly. All she had on under it were lace-trimmed black step-ins and a bra. At sixty-five, she still had a pretty body. When she was a young woman her body must have been beautiful. She still had a certain wanton air about her, the same something that Lou had.

  “Come on: Let’s go in the bedroom,” she said. “I want to show you something, young man.” She appraised me thoughtfully with her tired old eyes. “And it isn’t the something I might have shown you forty years ago. So the young lady is welcome to come, too.”

  Lou and I followed her into the bedroom. It was almost severely simple, compared to the living room. Its north wall abutted the south wall of the bedroom in A7. The window was open and the still rising wind was fluttering the drapes.

  I leaned on the tile window sill and looked out. There was no balcony under the window, but I could see the bougainvillea-overgrown balcony under the bedroom of A7, less than fifteen feet away.

  “I see,” I said sourly. “You’re going to claim you heard Pearl’s voice through the open bedroom window.”

  Mrs. Landers shook her head. “No. All the time the Summers and I were neighbors, I don’t believe I heard a half-dozen words come out of their window. In the first place, as you ought to know if you worked on the remodeling, the apartments are air-conditioned, and the Summers usually kept their bedroom window closed, especially during the summer months.”

  I’d forgotten the air-conditioning.

  Lou looked puzzled. “Then I don’t see — ”

  Mrs. Landers opened a door leading into an oversized bathroom. There was the usual stool and basin and tub. Plus a comfortable-looking easy chair.

  Mrs. Landers sighed. “I spend a lot of time in here. Believe me, getting old is a hell of a deal. Especially for a woman. You can only smoke so many cigarettes, eat so many times a day, play so many games of solitaire, read so many books, drink so many shots of Scotch. And I used to be bored to tears until I discovered this bathroom.” The gracious hostess, she motioned to the edge of the tub. “Sit down. And be patient, Mr. Charters. We shouldn’t have long to wait.”

  I sat on the edge of the tub. As I did, a woman’s voice said, “Ha.” Right over my head. “Don’t give me that crap. You had to go to the John. That’s a laugh. You were making a play for that cigarette girl. Be honest. Admit it.”

  A man’s voice answered her. “Oh, for God’s sake, June, go to bed and sleep it off. Do we have to go through this every time we go to a night club?”

  Mrs. Landers settled herself in the easy chair. “That’s the couple in D6. On the top floor. They’re usually the first ones in of an evening. They’re from Akron, Ohio. He’s in the rubber business there.”

  I sat looking at the vent. I remembered now. When the Rolyat had been remodeled, some of the bathrooms had been done away with, others had been shifted to connect with a three-foot-square air vent that ran from the basement to the roof. And by some freak of acoustics the bathroom in A6 had become a sounding box.

  Lou took a deep breath. “You heard Pearl and Summers quarreling through that vent?”

  Mrs. Landers smile was cold. “Just as plain as if I’d been in bed with them.”

  I said, “In bed with them?”

  She explained, “When they left their bedroom door open, I could hear almost everything they said and did.” She licked her withered lips. “And believe me, they did plenty. Just before they quarreled. You chose to champion the wrong woman, young man. Pearl came home a half hour before she said she did. They were lovey-dovey right up to the quarrel. What they quarreled about, I don’t know. They had the door closed part of the time. Then I heard her in the bathroom. Summers obviously kept a gun in there, because I heard him call, ‘Hey, nix, you, that’s loaded.’ Then he said something I couldn’t catch because of the echo. And Summers began to plead. He said, ‘No. Put down that gun. Please don’t shoot me.’ Just as I testified in court. Then the little bitch shot him six times. As fast as she could pull the trigger.”

  Mrs. Landers told it well. It was almost like seeing it happen. Lou leaned against the bathroom wall, her palms flat against the tile. I could feel the blood pounding in my wrists. My collar was too tight.

  “Then what happened?” Lou panted.

  Mrs. Landers’ smile was thin. “Then she was smart enough to run to the hall door, pretend that she’d just come home and begin to blubber, ‘He’s dead. My Joe is dead. Someone has killed my Joe.’”

  Mrs. Landers lighted a cigarette. “Nice of you to drop in. Call again, Mr. Charters.”

  14

  THE terrace was still lighted, but the drop lights over the pool and the concealed spotlights on the ground had been turned off.

  “They turn them off at eleven o’clock,” Lou said.

  I said, “I see.”

  Both of us were just talking. To keep from thinking. I felt depleted, let down. I didn’t know what to do now. If what Mrs. Landers had said was so, and I saw no reason to doubt her, Tony Mantin had died for nothing. And I had nothing to take to Cade Kiefer in exchange for his help in locating Kendall and May.

  When we reached the Ford, Lou asked, “Do you want me to drive?”

  I said, “I will.”

  I helped her into the car, then turned and looked back at the Casa Mañana, Mrs. Landers’ bedroom window was still lighted. The one next door was dark. They looked like a pair of eyes, one open and one closed. In the waning moonlight, the thick-trunked purple bougainvillea looked like a huge snake crawling up the wall to the balcony.

  “What are you thinking, Jim?” Lou asked.

  “That I must be a poor judge of women,” I said. “I’d have sworn that Pearl Mantinover was telling me the truth when she said she didn’t kill Joe Summers.”

  Lou’s voice was bitter. “On some women it’s hard to tell.”

  I walked around the car and got in back of the wheel.

  “Now where are we going?” Lou asked.

  “I don’t know,” I told her. />
  As we pulled out of the drive, the same car that had followed us to Casa Mañana Apartments turned on its lights and fell in behind.

  “Anyway, we still have our tail,” Lou said.

  I glanced up at the rear vision mirror. “So I see.”

  I considered pulling off onto the shoulder of the road and waiting for the other car to come abreast. Maybe Lieutenant David would know if Kendall had a boat and if he did, where he berthed it. If he knew he might tell me. On the other hand, considering the wild goose chase I’d led him so far, Bill David might decide that giving me rope wasn’t going to get him anything but mileage. If he decided that, he might lower the boom, figuring he could do better with me in the middle of a circle in the back room of the station. I could almost hear his soft drawl.

  ‘Now come, come, Charters. We know why you killed your wife and Mr. Kendall. Because she was cheating on you. What we want to know is what you did with their bodies.’

  Then I’d say, ‘May wasn’t cheating. And I didn’t do anything with their bodies, because I haven’t killed anyone.’

  And Lieutenant David would drawl, ‘Oh, yes. I forgot. The blood came from Tony Mantin. Whose name isn’t Mantin, but Meares. Now what was it you were going to do for Tony, Mr. Charters?’

  I stopped the car and got out and was sick by the side of the road. Dead or alive, there was nothing I could do for the lined-faced little man in the white suit now. Pearl had lied to me. Mrs. Landers had heard her quarreling with Summers. She had heard Joe plead for his life. From a box seat surrounded by plumbing. And because I’d had a screw-ball idea, because in my drunken glow I’d wanted to right all the wrongs in the world, Tony Mantin was dead. Killed in self-defense by Kendall, who hadn’t known what the hell Tony was talking about, when he had burst in and accused him of throwing his sister to the wolves.

  I thought of something and felt in my coat pocket.

  “You want a handkerchief?” Lou asked.

  I shook my head. “Thanks, no, I have one. I was just feeling for my gun.”

  “What gun?”

  “A .38 I had when I left the house with May. I haven’t thought of it since.”

  “It’s gone?”

  I nodded at her. “Yeah.”

  Lou took a lipstick and a mirror from her purse and retouched her lips in the map light. “I’m afraid you’re not much of a Lone Ranger, Jim.”

  “No,” I agreed with her, “I’m not.” I stood looking back at the headlights of the other car. It had stopped when I did and pulled off on the shoulder of the road, a half block behind us. “I guess I’m not much of anything.”

  I thought to myself, except a fool. Forty-eight hours ago I’d just been another guy. With a job that paid him sixty-two-fifty a week. Now I was in wrong with Cass Hardy. Undoubtedly Cade Kiefer would hold me at least partly responsible for Tony Mantin’s death. And when Lieutenant David did arrest me, he would question me for hours, trying to make me admit something I couldn’t. And all the time Kendall would be taking May farther and farther away. Kendall had to run now. It wouldn’t matter to Cade Kiefer why he had killed Tony. The fact would be sufficient.

  I got back in the car. “Did you ever feel, Lou, as if you were moving through a nightmare and if you could only yell out or wake up, everything would be all right?”

  “Lots of times,” Lou said. “How do you feel now, Jim?”

  I said, “A little better.”

  Lou sat closer to me on the seat, her arm warm against mine. “Where are you heading for now, Jim?”

  I said, “I’m trying to think. There’s no use going to Lieutenant David. He won’t believe me. Besides, I have a feeling that as soon as I stop moving, he’s going to pick me up and throw me in a cell. Going to Kiefer now would be worse.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of the ten thousand dollars. He’ll probably think Kendall and I killed Mantin in cahoots, rather than give it back.”

  “Oh,” Lou said. “I see.”

  I reached the cut-off to the causeway and turned left.

  “You’ve decided on something,” Lou said.

  I nodded. “Yeah. I’m going out to Eddie’s.”

  “Why?”

  “A lot of the charter-boat captains hang out there. Maybe one of them will know if Kendall has a boat and where he keeps it.”

  “Oh,” Lou said. “I see.”

  I wished she’d move over on the seat. I tried not to feel her arm against mine, but her sitting as close as she was excited me. Even worried as I was about May. And it wasn’t a nice excitement. It was low. Very low.

  I turned on the radio to break the tension. Some huckster was peddling a chewing gum guaranteed to make a lush smell like a deacon. When he signed off, the local announcer came on, with one of those five-minute news spots. Most of it was national news. Then he came to me.

  “Of local interest,” the announcer said, “is a new and tragic development in the mysterious shooting in the palatial beach home of Attorney Matthew Kendall this evening. According to a police bulletin just handed me, the body of Anthony Mears, also known as Tony Mantin, was discovered just a few minutes ago in a rowboat adrift on Boca Ciega Bay. The boat was discovered by a crew of commercial fishermen netting mullet a few hundred yards off the tidal flats extending from the Kendall property. Mantin had been shot three times in the chest. Police believe he was killed with a gun found in the boat with the body, a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson registered in the name of James Charters, an employee of Mr. Kendall.”

  I waited for him to say more. He did. But not about me. He started talking about the freak wind that was causing considerable minor damage in the greater bay area.

  I turned off the radio. It was suddenly warm in the car. I’d never been so warm. I wiped my forehead and the palm of my hand came away wet.

  Lou’s fingers bit into my arm. “You lied to me? You killed Mantin, Jim?”

  “No,” I panted. “That’s more of Kendall’s work. He wants the police to arrest me.”

  I got suddenly heavy-footed. The Ford roared across the causeway at fifty, sixty, then seventy miles an hour. I couldn’t explain it, even to myself. It was something in my mind. I had to lose the car behind me.

  Lou said, “The louse. The dirty louse. Now Kiefer will be on your tail. And he plays rough, they say.”

  I swerved around an Iowa car and back in line just in time to avoid a head-on crash with a car coming the other way. Then I was on the beach highway, the tires squealing on the curves, my foot pressing the gas pedal to the floorboards.

  Lou screamed, “Slow down, you fool. You’ll kill us.”

  She made a grab for the wheel. I slapped her away. I knew what I was doing. There was a turn-off a mile down the road. I wanted to make it, if I could, before the car behind us picked us up again. I heeled into the turn-off on two wheels, slammed on my brakes and slewed in between and behind a thick clump of Australian pines.

  The pines formed a thick screen between the Ford and the beach highway. I doubted if Lieutenant David knew the old road was there. I had found it by accident one day when I’d been chasing down a reluctant witness in a case Kendall was trying.

  One by one a half-dozen cars passed the turn-off and disappeared around the bend just beyond. Two of them were traveling fast enough to be following someone. Either one could be the car that had trailed me all evening. It was too dark and they were going too fast for me to identify the occupants.

  Lou was still breathing hard. She said, “I’m sorry I grabbed your arm. I see now what you were doing.”

  I said, “Forget it.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m still going to Eddie’s,” I told her. “As long as the law or Kiefer leaves me free, I’m going to keep on trying to find May.”

  Lou was silent a moment. Then she said, “Remember what you said before, Jim?”

  “About what?”

  “Women.”

  “What about them?”

  Lou played with the knot in m
y tie. “You said you must be a poor judge of women. And since then I’ve been wondering.”

  “About what?”

  “Your wife.”

  Lou’s fingers moved up to touch my cheeks. “How do you know she’s true to you? How do you know she didn’t go away with Kendall of her own free will?”

  I explained about what Gwen had told me.

  Lou laughed softly. In my ear. “Her best friend. Naturally she’d tell you that Matt didn’t get to first base. But, believe me, Jim, I know. Matt Kendall isn’t the sort of man who’d waste a month trying to make the team. Either you play ball with Matt Kendall from the start or he wants nothing to do with you.”

  “Stop talking like that,” I said.

  Lou played with the lobe of my ear. “You say May had the ten thousand dollars in her purse?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She was waiting outside for you. And after you found Mantin’s body and called down to her, she answered that she was coming right up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But she didn’t arrive?”

  “No.”

  “You think Matt Kendall grabbed her just before the lights went out and he made his attack on you?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I think.”

  “You heard her scream?”

  “N-no,” I admitted. “I didn’t.”

  Lou stopped fondling the lobe of my ear. “I’d scream if somebody grabbed me,” she said. “Believe me, I’d scream as loud as I could. And so would any other woman. Including your precious May.”