The Talmage Powell Crime Megapack Page 7

  He turned slowly from the window. His gaze met Jean’s. “These tickets—now that it’s here—I’d make a lousy insurance salesman, hon.”

  “I know you would,” she said. Then her arms were about him, clutching him very tightly. She was laughing, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I’m alive again—”

  He said, “You know, it’s funny. But I feel the same way myself.

  KILLER BE GOOD

  Originally published in New Detective Magazine, December 1952.

  I was murdered at exactly eleven o’clock on a Monday evening. I am able to recall the time exactly because the tall clock in the foyer was striking the hour as I shoved the papers to the back of the desk and started up the long, dark stairway to the upper hall.

  There were many things on my mind that night. I wondered where Vicky was, for one thing. She’d said at dinner that she was playing bridge at Thelma Grigsby’s tonight. Was it okay with me? Sure, I said. I had some work to do anyway. She’d pouted prettily, her hair like spun gold about her face in the soft candle light in the dining room—Vicky always liked dinner by candlelight.

  “If only you could be a husband and an important man at the same time, Doug,” she’d said. “All this work and no play—”

  “Gives mama spending money,” I said.

  After dinner I went in the study. For a moment I stood looking at the desk. I didn’t want to sit down to it and face the mass of papers on it. I was tired, and I had that pain across my abdomen again. Maybe I was developing an ulcer. Was it worth it, the work and strain required to keep a few steps ahead of the rest?

  Then I pushed the smothered feeling aside, ripped the cellophane off a fresh package of cigarettes, and sat at the cluttered desk.

  I heard Vicky pass through the hallway and without quite realizing it I listened until I heard the car start in the driveway outside. The motor raced until it sounded as if it would throw a rod. Vicky had never been able to get a motor started smoothly.

  I heard the motor whisper away to an idle and the liquid, golden sound of her voice came through the open study window that overlooked the driveway.

  “Mr. Shoffner, we’ll cut some glads for the house tomorrow morning.”

  I heard the old, tired voice of Wendel Shoffner answer, “Yes, mum.” He was our gardener and general handy man. He’d been with us a month now, a tired, sagging man with watery blue eyes and baggy pants.

  The car engine raced again as Vicky left the driveway. Shoffner’s slow footsteps crunched by the window as he went to his room over the garage. I was still too taken with lassitude to get to work. Could we afford a glad garden and a man to keep it and the grounds up? Of course we couldn’t. You don’t live that way on the pay of an investigator attached to the office of the district attorney. But there are ways. You don’t have to act in an illegal manner, either. You just have to stretch a point here and there. Politics, some people call it.

  I told myself that I had to get rid of this feeling of depression, the nagging sense that I was caged and on a treadmill. I had to shake loose the insinuation in my mind that it was all for nothing. Life was still sweet, very much so.

  I wanted to live a very long time that night.

  Lew Whitfield phoned me about nine o’clock. He had been elected D.A. a year ago on a reform platform. He was a short, deliberate man, given to flesh and losing his hair. He smoked black cigars and lived with his slender, greying wife and six children in a rambling barn of a house. “Only place big enough to hold the brood,” he would explain. There were croquet and badminton courts in his yard. His lawn was like the hide of a mangy dog, scuffed bare of its pitiful, dried-up grass by the pounding of many childish feet. He romped with his kids until his balding head gleamed with sweat and his breath grew short, and they tumbled all over him when he went into the house to sit down. Through it all he moved as placidly as a good-natured elephant.

  “Going over the Sigmon brief, Doug?” he asked that night on the phone. A radio was blaring and a kid was screaming laughter in his house.

  “Just starting on it,” I said. The Sigmon case wasn’t particularly fresh or interesting. It happened a dozen times a day in different parts of the country. Loren Sigmon, a scrawny, underfed, cheap punk. His girl friend, after an argument, had tipped us that he was the boy we were looking for to clean up a filling station robbery. Maybe they made up and she, in that sudden reversal of emotion that takes hold of such women, told him that he’d better scram before the coppers came. Or perhaps she was still angry and threw it in his teeth that he was going to jail, when he showed at her place. He wouldn’t tell us about that. He wouldn’t talk about anything. But we had him. I’d gone to her place not quite in time to keep him from shooting her to death.

  Lew tried to tell me something about the Sigmon case over the radio and the noise of his children.

  Then he said, “It isn’t important. Put it aside and bring Vicky on over. We’ll have coffee after canasta.”

  “Sorry. Vicky’s out to win us a set of ashtrays or something at Thelma Grigsby’s tonight.”

  We hung up, and I rocked back in the desk chair, smoking and thinking. You live along for years, and then somehow you start doing that. Thinking. Questioning. What have I done with the thirty three years of my life?

  College, an investigator’s job with an insurance outfit. The war. And you remember the eruption of emotion that swept the country, the release from boredom, from the everyday treadmill that seems to have captured you. You return and meet Vicky and marry her. Then you set to work to build a future.

  Yet one night, without warning, without reason, you find yourself unable to work, sitting and thinking…

  I threw the pencil I’d been toying with on the desk. Dammit, I knew what was wrong with me. I was lonely. I wanted the sound of Vicky’s voice. I wished she were here to go with me to Lew Whitfield’s house. I wanted the noise of his kids, and Vicky’s eyes lighting as she looked at a dress Lew’s wife had made.

  “Marge, however do you do it!” Yes, I could hear every inflection of her voice in my imagination.

  Or perhaps she’d put her head next to the oldest Whitfield child, Sharon, over Sharon’s high school homework.

  And then later we’d leave the Whitfields and drive across town, the soft Florida night a caress in our faces. We might stop someplace and dance a few minutes. Then home—and the warm darkness.

  I was still very much in love with Vicky. That night I hoped we would have many, many years together.

  * * * *

  At ten o’clock the phone rang a second time. I was deep in some notes Lew had made on a joint at the edge of town which was taking, we thought, illegal bets. Minor, but important. You go after those things and splash them big to keep the public convinced of your worth as a public servant. You like to keep the voters saying, “No organized crime in our community.” In our case it was true, as true as in any place in the nation. This was saying a lot, considering that we were in a Florida resort town on the Gulf coast while right across the state from us on the Atlantic side lay a city which had attracted the Kefauver committee itself.

  On the second skirl, I picked up the phone. “Doug? Is Vicky busy at the moment?”

  I caught my breath. My hand went a little chill on the phone. The voice was that of Thelma Grigsby. Her bridge parties never broke up as early as ten o’clock.

  “She isn’t here,” I said. I hesitated. “Didn’t she stop by your place?”

  “Why, no. Was she planning to?”

  “No,” I said, surprised at how fast the word jumped out of me. “I just thought she might. I’ll tell her you phoned when she gets in.”

  “Doug—is anything wrong?”

  “Of course not. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, just a silly feeling the tone of your voice gave me.” She laughed. “Old worry bird, that’s me. We’ll be looking at you, Doug.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I replaced the phone and sat there looking at it for a mome
nt. It had never occurred to me to mistrust Vicky. She came and went pretty much as she pleased. But tonight my tired mind began asking questions. Was there something behind her absences during the past few weeks? Was this, tonight, a simple matter of her having changed her mind about attending the bridge party? If so, why hadn’t she returned home? There were several places in Santa Maria, movies, the homes of friends, where she might have gone alone, of course. But she hated to go anywhere for a good time alone.

  I found it hard to break the chain of thought, once it had started. She had taken an interest in water skiing recently, which occupied most of her afternoons. She was rehearsing a play with a little theater group, and that took several of her evenings. Had she really been at those places? Was there another man?

  The question cut through my consciousness with a pain as acute as physical torture. I couldn’t sit still any longer. I had to get up and walk about the study. The very silence of the house, the oppressive heat of the night ate away at me.

  It happened. Hell, it happened so many times every day that a man was a complete fool to think it could never happen to him.

  I’d never fooled myself into thinking that nine men out of ten who looked at Vicky wouldn’t like to take her from me. I’d never blamed them, and I’d never been of a jealous disposition. She had that natural animal magnetism that was felt the moment she entered a room. Blonde, golden, a tall, striking woman. She knew how to dress to advantage, but that attraction would have been felt had she donned a mother hubbard.

  Yet I had never once believed that any other man would ever succeed in stirring Vicky’s feelings to the point that would lose her to me. She was too damn forthright and honest for that. Or had I been simply too smug and sure of myself?

  I was frightened at the thought of losing her. I tried to reason myself out of my state of mind, but my reason would not respond to the reins.

  My reason became cold and clear and remembered a dozen little things. The far-away look in her eyes during the past few weeks. The rapt expression of her face. Sometimes I’d had to voice a question or statement twice. It was as if her thoughts, her interests were elsewhere at the moment.

  I recalled the night a week ago when I’d called for her at the Bath Club. She’d come into the club room with its long bar and bamboo tables and chairs, and when she’d seen me, sudden fright had flared in her eyes. She’d been out on the terrace, and when I’d suggested going out there, she had pleaded a headache and rushed me home.

  Who had been concealed by the warm darkness of the terrace? Whom had she been with out there?

  I ripped the next to last cigarette out of the package, lighted it from the one I’d smoked down. Bitterness had crept into my reasoning now. I had probably raised a brow myself at the situation some time or another. A man enwraps himself in the task of giving his wife an ever higher standard of living, leaving her lonely, more and more leisure on her hands, free to draw the assumption that she is unloved.

  With Bill Farnsworth and his wife it had been that way. And I recalled a remark I’d made to Vicky the night Bill’s wife had walked out on him, “Can you really blame her? How about him. After all he couldn’t expect her to become nothing more than a hot-house plant. She’s a flesh and blood woman.”

  Vicky was that, very much so. A flesh and blood woman.

  A light tap sounded on the jamb of the study doorway. I glanced up. Old Shoffner said, “Anything else I can do before I turn in for the night, Mr. Townsend?”

  I shook my head. He was looking at me closely, and I colored a trifle and stopped running my fingers through my already tousled hair.

  As he turned to go, my voice stopped him. “I suppose Mrs. Townsend is pretty busy with the garden these days?”

  He hesitated. “She works at it.”

  My gaze held the attention of his salt-and-pepper stubbled face. “Come in, Shoffner. Sit down.”

  “I’m really tired, Mr. Townsend. Been hauling muck for the flowers.”

  “You can spare another moment. I don’t get to see much of her, Wendel. I hardly know how she spends her days. Is there anything I could get, a gift to please her? Does she ever talk of anything she feels she missed?”

  He remained rigid in the doorway, twisting his dirty cap in his hands. “She doesn’t talk to me much, Mr. Townsend.”

  “I’d thought she would. She’s always so full of chatter, and out there gardening, I figured she might talk quite a lot. Her birthday is next month. I’d like to get her something very special.”

  “She hasn’t said anything about it. I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mr. Townsend.”

  I stood looking at him. He had a rather grim, seamed face, and I suspected that he knew the trend my thoughts were taking and recognized that I was offering him the opportunity to tell me anything I might need to know.

  “She probably stays busy with her friends,” I suggested.

  Shoffner nodded, and I said, “She knows a great many young matrons her age. I suppose they call for her in the afternoon to go shopping.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He was looking more uncomfortable with each passing moment. I waited for him to add anything he knew about the people who called for her when I was away. Perhaps the man who’d been on the Bath Club terrace had never called here, but Shoffner’s reluctance, the cold bead of his washed-out blue eyes was answer enough. He knew something. But he was not going to get mixed up in anything. He was thinking of his job and how hard it might be for him to find another at his age.

  “I’m really very tired, Mr. Townsend.”

  “All right, Shoffner. Goodnight.”

  He went away from the study and I heard the rear screen door slam behind him. I sat down again at the desk.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mind over Mayhem

  It couldn’t be true, I told myself.

  Vicky would never be unfaithful to me. Damn it, I almost wished that Thelma Grigsby hadn’t phoned tonight.

  I tried to concentrate on my work. I had done a ratty thing, trying to pump old Shoffner. Bringing out the family skeleton before a servant. Spying on Vicky, who was a part of me, without whom I never could live.

  I realized that I was exhausted. Conflicting feelings of shame and then anger—when I thought of a stranger on that dark terrace—beat at my mind. I would never give Vicky up; not as long as I thought there was any chance at all of continuing life with her. She must know that. She must realize the depth of my feeling. It seemed incredible, come to think of it, that she, who was so very kind and thoughtful, could do anything to hurt me.

  I rose from the desk. I thought, You’d better stiffen your spine, Townsend, and start thinking like a man. Vicky started life with you without too many material comforts. You had a small inheritance. You’ve invested wisely and well, thanks to politics, and the inside dope you’ve had. You could even take a year, two years off, and coast, putting Vicky first in your life. Quit working so hard, chewing so hard at the muzzle. Even if some joker has caught her in a bored, lonely mood, you can win her back.

  The clock in the foyer began striking eleven. I went out of the study, crossed the sunken living room with its square, modern furniture that Vicky had chosen.

  I was feeling better as I started up the stairway. I was glad I had lived this night with its introspection. I must admit that things hadn’t been right between Vicky and me for several weeks now. We’d grown distant. I would stop the drift in that direction; for tonight I’d experienced the sodden fear that would only be the beginning of my feeling should I ever lose her.

  I was almost at the top of the stairs. The upper hallway was hot and very dark. I fumbled for the light switch; and then I sensed that I was not alone. A rustle of cloth, a whisper of breathing, and I knew another presence was in the hallway with me.

  I was not afraid at first; no time for that. Only jarred to a sudden immobility. The instant of my indecision was my undoing. And then terror!

  The gun crashed and a tongue of flame lashed tow
ard me. It was quite close. A searing pain shot through my head and I had the swift sensation of a sickness like vertigo multiplied a thousand times. There seemed to be nothing beneath me except black nothingness. I fell, loose jointed and with a complete lack of control over my limbs. End over end, elbows bumping, legs flying like strands of rubber, I jolted all the way to the foot of the stairs, to the parquetry of the entry foyer.

  I jolted to rest with my limbs at awkward angles. I could feel no pain now. I could, in fact, feel nothing, except the wild terror that came with this feeling nothing.

  I tried to move, and could not. I was wrapped in a blackness, a helplessness that made of my body a lump of cold clay. Then I heard the footsteps coming down the stairs, and I seemed to know that they belonged to a man. A light fell on my face, and I guessed that my eyes were open; for I could see the light like the haze of a faint moon almost obscured by clouds.

  The light moved. He had moved. I heard his breathing, like two skeins of silk being rubbed together. I supposed that he was giving me a quick examination by the light of a flashlight. What he witnessed must have satisfied him. The light vanished, and after a considerable time I decided that I was again alone.

  As I became accustomed to this numb lack of sensation, some of the sickening fear of it left me. I was feeling no tiredness; no pain, as if in the next moment I might swoop off to some world beyond the stars. The images of my thoughts were possessed of that same peculiar weightlessness that had taken my body.

  Was this the experience of death? The question did not seem at all surprising to me right then, but very concrete and real. I doubt that I would have been surprised had several beings of this strange world floated forward to bid me welcome to their company.

  I was human, and therefore concerned first with myself. Next followed a flood of questions regarding the man who had shot me. I didn’t doubt that the murder had been a deliberate one. He had known I would turn out the study light, cross the living room with its dim night light and walk up the stairs.