It's a Sin to Kill Page 3

  “No.”

  “Are there any marks on you?”

  “No.”

  Mary Lou was practical. She blew her nose and said, “Well, sitting here worrying isn’t going to get us anywhere. The thing for us to do is to find out where Mrs. Camden is now and have a talk with her, ask her if she knows where this money came from.”

  She lit the burner under the coffee pot. “Are you too sick or can you keep a cup of coffee on your stomach?”

  Ames stood up, indignant. As always, he bumped his head on the low ceiling. He spoke through a blur of pain. “Goddamn it, Mary Lou. I wasn’t drunk last night. I wasn’t even drinking. Of course, I can keep a cup of coffee on my stomach. I’m not sick. I’m scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  When the coffee was hot, Mary Lou filled a mug and handed it to him. “Drink this. It may help.”

  Ames gulped the hot coffee. It tasted good. It melted the bitter film in his mouth and dissolved the lump in his stomach.

  Mary Lou put the wad of bills under the thin pad on the bunk. “For now. I only wished it belonged to us.”

  Ames drained the mug and set it in the small sink. “I don’t know if I do or not.”

  He followed Mary Lou into the cockpit of the Sally. The condensation had dried. The sun was high enough to be warm. The putt-putt of the two cycle motor that supplied water to the bait well reminded Ames he was due to shove off with a charter party at eight o’clock. Ames looked at his watch. It was seven forty-six. His “sports” would arrive any minute. The putt-putt sounded like it was laboring. Ames adjusted the carburetor and wiped his greasy fingers on the leg of his dungarees.

  “How about my charter party?”

  Mary Lou said, “Give it to one of the boys who is not booked. I don’t think the Falcon’s going out.”

  As she scrambled up on the pier, Ames caught a flash of slim well formed legs and satin soft thighs. His pulse beat a little faster. Most of his headache went away. Mary Lou had a prettier body than Mrs. Camden could possibly have. Mrs. Camden was forty, at least. She admitted to being thirty-five. She was currently working on her fourth husband. He’d had nothing to do with the blonde woman. Ames was positive of that. He hoped.

  He followed Mary Lou. Four boats down the basin Shep Roberts was sitting in the cockpit of the Falcon. His feet were propped on his empty bait well as he sat squinting under the brim of his dirty white captain’s cap at the hopeful fishermen on the high catwalk running the length of the pier that spanned the pass.

  Ames asked, “How’d you like a charter, Shep?”

  Shep spoke without turning his head. “Ain’t got no bait.”

  “You can use mine.”

  “How many in the party?”

  “Four.”

  “How much is the charter?”

  “Fifty dollars.”

  “What they want t’ fish for?”

  Ames said, “It’s their first trip out. I figured on taking them out to the grouper banks and maybe tying into a tarpon or two on the way back. There are still a few rolling in Bunce’s Pass.”

  Shep turned his head and spat tobacco juice over the varnished transom of the Falcon. “What you want t’ git shet of ‘em for?”

  Mary Lou compressed her lips. “We’ve something else we have to do.”

  Shep lowered his feet to the deck and pushed his cap back on his head. “Okay. I’ll take ‘em. Thanks.”

  Ames started on up the stringer and turned back. “Look, Shep.”

  “Yeah?”

  “About last night. Did you see me come in with my bait?”

  “I heard you.”

  “Did you see the Camden woman walk past on her way to the Sally. Did you see me walk back with her?”

  “That big blonde that owns the Sea Bird?”

  “That’s the one.”

  The charter captain shook his head. “No. I can’t say I did. I heard someone say something about her up at Harry’s this morning, but I turned in early last night.”

  Mary Lou looked at the man in the boat. “If you did see Charlie with her, you wouldn’t tell on him, would you, Shep?”

  “No,” Shep admitted.

  Ames guided Mary Lou up the stringer. “I wasn’t with her.”

  “Then how did you get in the cabin of the Sea Bird?”

  Ames’s head began to ache again. “I don’t know.”

  He looked up the basin to where the Sea Bird was berthed. There were two men on the Camden pier and one in the cockpit of the boat.

  Mary Lou shielded her eyes with her hand. “I don’t know the two men on the pier, but the man in the cockpit looks like Sheriff White.”

  Ames’s sensation of motion returned. He felt like he was running. A drop of sweat escaped the pit of his arm and zig-zagged down his side. It was an effort for him to breathe normally.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “You’ll see,” Mary Lou said.

  Harry’s Bar was crowded with its usual early morning rush of charter boat captains and commercial fishermen. Fat Ben Sheldon, the ship chandler, was bellied to the bar. He glanced up as Ames and Mary Lou entered, then closely studied his shot glass. A few of the men nodded but none of them spoke. The loud babble of conversation lowered, then died away completely.

  Mary Lou led the way to the back booth that served as an office to half of the captains operating out of the basin, because there was a phone in the booth.

  Ames sank, panting, on the worn leather. “I thought we were going to try to locate Mrs. Camden.”

  Mary Lou thumbed through the dog-eared phone book on the table. “We are.” She found the number she wanted and dialed it.

  “The Helene Camden residence,” a man’s voice answered the phone.

  Ames recognized the voice. It was the gray-haired man he’d seen in the kitchen, the one who had said his name was Phillips and that he was Mrs. Camden’s butler.

  Mary Lou said, “May I speak to Mrs. Camden, please? It’s very important.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Phillips said. “But that will be impossible. We’ve had some trouble here.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Mrs. Camden has disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Yes. From her cruiser, the Sea Bird. The police are here now.”

  Mary Lou looked across the table at Ames. “I — see.” Her voice was suddenly small. “Well, could you tell me this. Was Mrs. Camden in the habit of carrying large sums of money?”

  “Habitually,” Phillips said. He asked tardily, “To whom am I speaking, please?”

  Mary Lou cradled the receiver, still looking at Ames.

  His flesh felt as if it were crawling. The lump returned to his throat. He had to force his denial past it. “I didn’t. I couldn’t, Mary Lou. Not for five thousand dollars. Not for any amount of money.”

  Her young face was a mask of fear. She cried silently. “So you say.”

  Ames sat cracking his knuckles. Mary Lou’s fear was an ugly thing between them. This wasn’t happening to him. It couldn’t be. He’d had nothing to do with the blonde. He certainly hadn’t harmed her. Still, there were the five thousand dollars and the blood. And Mrs. Camden had disappeared.

  Harry appeared at the mouth of the booth. “You and Mary Lou want anything, Charlie?”

  Ames nodded. “Yeah. Bring us a rum and coke.”

  Mary Lou shook her head. “None for me.”

  “One, then,” Ames said. He found a single dollar bill in the side pocket of his dungarees and laid it on the table. “A double.”

  Neither of them spoke again until Harry returned with the drink, picked up the dollar and left.

  Angry now, Ames said: “Goddamn! You’ve got to believe me, honey. I — ”

  “Yes,” Mary Lou said. “I know.” The fear left her face. All she looked was tired. “All you did was drink two cups of coffee with her. In the cockpit of the Sally.”

  Put that way, it s
ounded silly. Ames wanted to pound on the table, pound on Mary Lou, make her believe him. He closed his eyes and forced himself to think. He’d invited Mrs. Camden aboard. He’d poured her a cup of the coffee he’d just made. They’d had a second cup. And he’d awakened in the cabin of the Sea Bird. With the big blonde’s evening gown on the opposite bunk, an empty whiskey bottle on the floor and five thousand dollars in the hip pocket of his dungarees.

  Ames’s anger drained slowly, like water hand pumped out of a bilge. He didn’t blame Mary Lou for not believing him.

  Still, to the best of his knowledge, what he’d told her was trae.

  The ship’s bell over the door struck metallically as someone opened the door of the bar. Sheriff White’s voice was loud in the sudden silence.

  “We’ll try here, first, Miss,” he said. “Take your time an’ look ‘em over careful.”

  “What’s the idea, Sheriff?” Harry asked.

  White told him. “We’re lookin’ for a man Mrs. Camden’s maid, here, saw aboard the Sea Bird. She says she’s seen him before, that he’s one of the charter boat captains, but she doesn’t know his name.”

  “Oh,” Harry said. “I see.”

  Ames pressed his back to the worn leather of the booth, listening to the click of the maid’s high heels as she moved along the bar. He wished he could make himself small. He wished he’d gone out on his charter trip. His neck felt stiff.

  “Here he is,” the maid said. “Sitting een thee back booth with a girl.”

  A deeply tanned, gaunt-faced man in his early forties, White loomed tall behind her. “Oh. You, eh, Charlie?” he said.

  Ames reached for his untouched drink and knocked it over. Mary Lou stood up to save her dress. Ames automatically wiped his wet fingers on his skivy.

  “Kind of a habit, eh, Charlie?” White asked, “I mean, wiping your fingers on your skivy. Looks sort of interesting from here.”

  Ames tried to speak. He couldn’t. The lump in his throat was too big.

  “You’re positive, now?” White asked. “This is the man you saw aboard the Sea Bird this morning?”

  “I am positive,” Celeste said.

  White laid a big hand on Ames’s shoulder. “Okay, fellow. Let’s go back to the Camden house. I want to talk to you.”

  “What about?” Mary Lou asked.

  “About Mrs. Camden,” White told her.

  Chapter Four

  WITH GROWING dark and the pull of the tide, the body moved again. The crabs and the small fish scurried away. More buoyant now, it started back up the bay then, caught by the pull of the current on the fringe of Sister Key, it slipped into the swash channel, spun lazily for a moment then floated slowly down Blind Pass, the other exit to the Gulf.

  A flight of gulls spotted it and swooped low, only to fly away screaming. A long-legged heron fishing in the shallows of the key regarded it with distaste. A large school of playful crevalle jacks using the swash channel to cross from one arm of the bay to the other buffeted it as they passed and set the body to bobbling. The motion attracted a swimming turtle. He climbed on the floating flesh, rode it for a short distance then lost interest and plopped back into the water.

  The arm that had been extended remained so, as rigor mortis became complete. There was a brief flash of fire and color as the last rays of the setting sun sought for and found the ten carat diamond in the ring now imbedded in the swollen finger.

  As the body reached the end of Sister Key and began the long journey to the Gulf via this new pass it was exploring, Buddy Cronkite and Tommy Williams, netting mullet out of season, saw something white in the water.

  Buddy, eleven years old, said, “Hit’s a sick baby porpoise. They always turn white and spotted jist before they die.”

  Tommy, age ten, was scornful. “Hain’t neither,” he insisted. “Hit’s a daid hammer haid shark.”

  To prove his superior knowledge, he waded out to the edge of the channel, whirled his weighted circular net and casting it expertly over the body, he drew it back into the shallows.

  One of the weights struck the extended hand and the dead woman turned in the water and lay on her back under the stout nylon netting.

  Buddy’s teeth began to chatter. “A daid hammer haid shark,” he whimpered. “Hit’s a nekid woman, without no clothes on, that’s what.”

  The net rope went slack in Tommy’s hand. The freckles on the bridge of his nose stood out in bold relief against the sudden white of his face. He tried to tug his net free and couldn’t. His voice was shrill.

  “Well, don’t jist stand there. He’p me git my net offen this thing.”

  Buddy, still frightened, proved he was a year older and wiser. “We won’t do no sich thing. We got t’ pull hit into the key an’ then go tell the sheriff. You got t’ tell when you find a daid one. Hit’s the law.”

  Buddy tugged tentatively at the net rope and changed his mind as the bloated body surged toward him. He dropped the rope and splashed through the shallows toward their flat bottomed skiff. “You pull hit in. You netted hit. I’ll go tell the sheriff.”

  Tommy secured the rope in his hand to a fish stake and splashed after him.

  “An’ leave me here alone with hit agittin’ dark? No, sir. We’ll both go tell.”

  • • •

  The room was small and poorly furnished with a desk, a steel filing cabinet, a few straight-backed chairs. Ames had never been so unutterably weary. He sat, acutely conscious of his best white shirt and blue pants, dangling his white cap between his knees, looking at Mary Lou.

  Not even Mary Lou believed him. She thought he’d stayed with Mrs. Camden, then lost his head and harmed her and stolen five thousand dollars.

  White sat back of the desk with the money in front of him. “How you feel, Charlie?” he asked.

  Ames told the truth. “Tired.”

  “It’s been a day,” White admitted. “You ready to talk yet, Charlie?”

  Ames returned the cap to his head. “I’ve been talking all day.”

  “And you’re still sticking to your story? The last you remember is drinking a cup of coffee with Mrs. Camden in the cockpit of the Sally?”

  “That’s right.”

  State’s Attorney Keely had been in Orlando. This was the first session he’d sat in on. “How much you got on him, Bill?” he asked White.

  White said, “Everything but the body.” He fingered through the papers on his clipboard. “The lab reports that the blood on his skivy and that on the carpet in the main cabin of the Sea Bird are both B RH Positive.”

  “That’s Mrs. Camden’s classification?”

  “We don’t know yet,” White said. “We’re hoping it’s one of the things that Mr. Camden can tell us.”

  “You’ve contacted him then?”

  “This morning. Long distance. He’s on his way down.” Sheriff White looked at his watch. “He should get in any time.” White continued: “We found this money under the pad of one of the bunks of the Sally. We found a gun in the head of the Sea Bird with two expended shells. Ames’s right hand shows powder burns. Mrs. Camden’s maid, a French girl by the name of Celeste, has positively identified Ames as the man she saw aboard the Sea Bird.”

  “I admit I was there,” Ames said.

  Neither man paid any attention to him. “Is the maid still in the station?” Keely asked.

  “I think she is,” White said. “I didn’t know if you’d get back t’night or not, so I brought her in to have her make a deposition.” He looked at one of the officers standing against the wall. “See if Mrs. Camden’s maid is still here, will you, Harry?”

  “Sure thing, Sheriff,” the plainclothesman said.

  White looked at Ames. “Look, Charlie. I’m just as tired as you are. You know without me telling you that you’re in a bad jam. The way I got it over the phone, Camden is the kind of guy who’ll spend a lot of money, if necessary, to nail this thing on you.

  “You’re a local boy. I knew your old man. I liked him. I like yo
u. I like Mary Lou. I’d hate to see you go to the chair. I know what these rich dames are like. I been sheriff twenty years. I could tell you things that would pop your eyes. Up north they may belong t’the D.A.R. and teach Sunday school every Sunday. But when they git down heah they’s a lot of ‘em throw away their morals with their girdles. They think jist because they got dough they can buy any husky young guy an’ for some reason they go strong for charter boat captains.

  “You want me t’tell you what I think happened?” White continued without waiting for Ames to speak. “Mrs. Camden’s had three husbands. She’s married to a fourth. That’s the tipoff right there. She was one of them nymphe. And your story about drinking coffee is a lot o’ crap. You’re a good-lookin’ guy, Charlie. You’re young. You’ve been around. Mrs. Camden knew Mary Lou works at the Beach Club until almost four in the morning. She showed up at the Sally with a bottle and a yen for you. You got stinkin’ drunk together. Then, afraid Mary Lou might come home earlier than you expected, you moved the party to the Sea Bird. You had a hell of a time. The condition of the cabin proves it. Then, like drunks will, you got to quarreling. You knew she had a lot of money. You want a new boat. You tried to get her to buy you one. But she was a good business woman and you weren’t that good.

  “She laughed at you an’ hit made you mad. You had a tussle. During it, she took her gun out of that little cabinet by the bunk. You tried to take hit away from her an’ hit went off twice an’ kilt her. You didn’t mean for hit t’happen but she was dead. You got scared. You did the first thing that come to your mind. You threw her body overboard, knowin’ the tide was runnin’ out an’ would carry hit out into the Gulf.”

  Ames said, tight-lipped, “Then I let her maid see me and I picked up five thousand dollars that was just lying around the cabin convenient and went right home and told Mary Lou about it. For God’s sake, give me credit for some sense.”

  Mary Lou leaned forward in her chair. “That much is true. Charlie came directly home to the Sally. He gave the money to me. And he wasn’t drunk. He was sick.”

  “How do you know?” State’s Attorney Keely asked.

  “He — told me he was sick.”

  White laid the clipboard on top of the money. “Sure. He told you.” The elderly sheriff looked back at Ames. “Why don’t you use your head, boy, and make this a little easier on all of us, yourself included? I doubt if the killing was premeditated. There was a drunken brawl. During it, Mrs. Camden was killed. Admit that much and I think maybe the State’s Attorney will accept a plea of second degree murder.” He looked at Keely. “How about that, Sam?”