The Talmage Powell Crime Megapack Page 9

  Somehow a way must be found to keep hidden my disappearance from the funeral home, the fact that I still lived. That would take some doing. There was one man with the power to swing it. Lew Whitfield.

  Normally I could have walked the distance from the funeral home to Lew’s house in ten minutes. Today that movement required a full thirty minutes. I hurried as fast as I could. I knew that my absence from the funeral home might be discovered at any moment and an alarm raised. I passed few people. Dock workers. Fishermen. I got a glance or two from some of them, the kind of glance they might give a man who’s been out all night on a drunk and got in a fight.

  I was reeling on my feet when I arrived at Lew’s. His large, old frame house loomed against the red eye of the rising sun like a hulking barn. For three years Lew had promised himself to paint the place next summer.

  I walked around the side of the house to his study window. The window was open against the Florida weather, as I had guessed it would be. The screen, however, was locked. My head was spinning, and it took me a few seconds to figure a way out of that. Then I remembered the pen knife in my pocket. I used it to cut a small hole in the screen through which I could slip a finger and throw the hook latch.

  I pulled the screen out, crawled over the sill, and collapsed on the floor of Lew’s study. I was going again, back into that nether world of shadows. I clenched my hands and almost screamed aloud. I was slipping—slipping. The shadows were heavier. Sweat broke cold on my forehead. The effort of my exertion had been too much. Over me the shadows came.

  The blackout didn’t last long. I woke slowly, blind with that ache in my head. I could hear footsteps moving about overhead. A child came running down the steps outside the door, and from the back of the house I heard Marge Whitfield, “Breakfast!”

  I heard the scramble toward the dining room. Then the house was silent as the family ate.

  I pulled myself across the floor, up on the leather couch against the wall. I sat down with a deep sigh. Lew’s desk, as cluttered as my own, was across the room from me.

  * * * *

  Fifteen or twenty minutes passed before Lew came into the study. The door swung open, admitting him, partially concealing the couch. He closed the door. He was alone. He patted his stomach as if his breakfast had been the best; and then he walked to the window and stood looking out at the day, lost in thought. Perhaps he was thinking of the friend he’d lost.

  When he turned, he saw me.

  He had nerve. His face drained of color and his body went rigid, but he made no outcry upon beholding the apparition before him.

  He breathed out explosively, crossed the room, and reached out to touch my shoulder.

  “It’s really me, Lew. You’re not seeing things.”

  “But how, Doug? How?”

  “I don’t know myself, yet.”

  “I’ll get Marge, Vicky—a doctor.”

  “No, wait! No one must know, Lew, until we’re ready. Until I say the word.”

  “But, man, you may be dying.”

  “You’re probably right, but I’ll take long enough in the process. I have that feeling. That I won’t die until I find him.”

  He dropped to a sitting position on the edge of the couch beside me. “I don’t understand any of this, Doug!”

  “You thought last night I tried to kill myself,” I said, “but such a thought was the furthest thing from my mind. Somebody tried to murder me.”

  He found a cigar in his pocket with fingers that shook. Then he dropped one flat word: “Who?”

  “I don’t know. That is, I don’t know his name. I can’t think of anybody who would have done it—except maybe the man who’s been fooling around with my wife.”

  “So you know that? Although ‘fooling around’ might be a little strong.”

  I cut a quick glance at his face. “You mean you’ve known for some time?”

  “Nothing definite, Doug. Just talk I heard—behind your back.”

  I felt more than a little ill. “The old saying has some ground under it, then, about the husband being the last to know. You’re going to help, Lew. First, you’ve got to get hold of that undertaker. Next you’ve got to dig into—her recent past. Find the man. Find out if he’s the kind who might commit murder for a beautiful woman who will come into considerable material comforts and money through her husband’s death.”

  He made no move to interrupt as I tried to bring back everything that had passed through my mind last night. I told him of the growing distance between Vicky and me lately. I told him about the incident on the Bath Club terrace.

  “Thelma Grigby’s phone call only brought the matter to the forefront of my mind. Now we’ve got to lay a trap for him. He mustn’t know that his plan has failed—until it’s too late to do him any good.”

  Lew’s heavy face had taken on a greyness. “It might hold water,” he admitted. “It’s an old story. But what of Vicky?”

  “I have to know about her, too,” I said slowly. “She was pretty quick to tell the world that I’d killed myself. If she was covering for him,—I—I’ve got to know that, too, Lew.”

  “It’s a pretty hateful business,” he said, rising. “But we deal with hateful things every single day in our line.”

  “Then you’ll help?”

  “I’m your friend,” he said simply. “And I’m the D.A. I don’t know whether or not it’s ethical for me to hide you, to conceal the fact that you’re still living—I don’t have a precedent to establish the ethics of the case, do I? But if there’s a would-be killer in our town, I want to know it.” He hesitated. “It’ll take some fixing, Doug. With the undertaker, Charlie Markham—one or two others I’ll have to bring into the thing.”

  “You can do it,” I said.

  “I’ll try.”

  * * * *

  A little later that morning Lew got his family out of the house. I learned then that they’d brought Vicky over for the night. Marge and the kids were taking her home. I wondered what it would be like in that silent, empty house. What thoughts would pass through Vicky’s mind as she went from room to room, each with its own flood of memories?

  Lew brought me food; then he took me upstairs to a small back room with windows on two sides overlooking his side and back yards. There was a three-quarter bed in the room, a scarred bureau, a night stand holding a lamp, and a single boudoir chair.

  Next Lew brought a visitor up to the room, a tall, florid man who wore grey tropicals and a pince-nez. He was Doctor Hardy, and he knew the story and we could trust him, Lew assured me.

  I was silent during Hardy’s examination; then when he stood up and snapped his bag shut, I asked, “Do you know what happened to me? Can you explain it?”

  “Certainly,” he said. “You’ve been deeply depressed lately?”

  “For some time,” Lew put in. “He’s been working too hard.”

  “And of course you were deeply frightened when the shot rang out and the bullet struck you?”

  “Scared to death.”

  “That’s almost my precise diagnosis,” Hardy said. “Lying in your foyer last night you were in a state of very acute catalepsy, a nervous condition in which the power of your will and of sensation are suspended. It arises from prolonged depression and acute fright. It’s more common, in its less acute phases, than many people would think. Your condition was aggravated by the wound, of course, which came very close to killing you.”

  “A doctor examined me,” I reminded him.

  “Of course. But in a state of acute catalepsy no heartbeat was audible. No pulse could be felt. Your eye muscles had completely lost for the moment the power of contraction, of focusing; so your eyes responded to the doctor’s light exactly as a dead man’s would respond. That is, no response at all. In short, you exhibited several signs of death, and in the moment the doctor is not at all to blame for interpreting your state of suspended animation as he did. We’re human, too, you know. We make mistakes like the rest of the race, though often our mistake
s are never known—they’re buried.”

  With a smile and a last admonition that I should be in a hospital under observation, Hardy prepared to leave.

  I felt a lassitude taking hold of me, and then I slept.

  The sun was dying a crimson death in the gulf when I awoke. I was ravenous, but forced to wait until Lew should show up, as he did half an hour later. There were a dozen questions trying to spill out of my mind, but my first interest right then proved to be the food he brought. Once I started eating, I felt as if I would never be filled again.

  “I had to ring Marge in,” he said, watching me spoon up the last drop of the broth in the bowl. “She’s too much the homebody for me to succeed long in sneaking food up here and keeping the door locked. She was shocked, of course.”

  “And Vicky?”

  He hesitated. “We’ve found the man, Doug.”

  I tried to keep my voice casual. That was impossible, and the word quivered when it came out of me: “Who?”

  “Keith Pryor.”

  “The water-skiing instructor at the Bath Club.”

  Lew nodded, and a silence came to the room. I recalled Pryor to my mind. I’d met him when he’d first come to the club three months ago. We’d had him at our table two or three times for drinks. He’d danced with Vicky during a couple of our evenings at the club. He must have been every day as old as I, but he looked more boyish. Slender, but extremely well knit with wide shoulders. A lean, almost hungry face, topped with close-cut sun-scorched blonde hair. With his deep suntan, the brilliant white of his teeth flashed when he smiled, and he had an easy, relaxed air about him. On the whole he was the kind of man who would appeal to every lonely instinct in a woman.

  “Have you got anything on him?” I asked.

  “Only a little. He’s not exactly a gigolo, but he’s never made much money and he likes to live high. Two items on his record. A Jax woman had him arrested for making off with some of her jewelry, but in the end broke down in court and admitted she’d given it to him, as he’d claimed, bringing the charges later because he’d walked out on her. An assault charge in Miami. He punched an irate husband in the nose in one of the beach clubs. But the man’s wife testified for Pryor. Pure self defense, she said. Nothing at all between her and Pryor. Her husband was just a nasty-minded old man, she said.”

  “A nice boy. Does Vicky know any of this?”

  “Of course not! You listen to me, Doug! You’re hurt because she happened to look at another man twice in a weak moment. She’s never been alone with him, though they’ve met at the club and parties. Maybe she was lonely. You’ve been moody, depressed, you’ve neglected her.”

  “Dammit, Lew, are you for her or me?”

  “I’m for both of you, son, and don’t forget that!” he said in a rough tone. “But I want you to stop acting like the emotionally wounded little boy. You’re jealous and mad as hell, deep down, and in a way I can’t blame you. But just because Pryor’s made a play for her doesn’t mean she’d ever be a party to hurting you.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “You’re damn right I’m right. Now forget it. I’ve got things to do. I’ll see you in the morning. How’s the head?”

  “Better.”

  “Then take some more of those pills the doctor gave you and rest. That’s the thing you need most.”

  There wasn’t much time. Every meal I ate, every nap I slept brought the sands that nearer to a finish. We could not keep secret the disappearance of the body from the funeral home indefinitely. The time would come for a burial, for an official statement. Lew knew all that as well as I did. He knew how far he had his neck out.

  But there was, for me, too much time. Time in which to think, to picture Keith Pryor gradually making head way with Vicky—perhaps holding her in his arms. To watch them in the tortured eye of my mind standing close together. How many times had she lifted the warm softness of her lips to his? How many words thick with passion had he murmured to her?

  I tried to keep the pictures out of my mind.

  Lew came to my room the next morning with a downcast expression. She had seen Pryor last night. I knew that even before he spoke. They’d met on a downtown corner, gone to a dine and dance place in a cheaper section of town. They hadn’t come in until very late. The shadow that Lew had put on their trail had reported that they hadn’t danced much. They’d talked with people in the juke joint, drifted on to another in the raw section of town. They hadn’t been at all romantic, the shadow had reported.

  Good, I thought with grim satisfaction. Maybe it’s going sour between them, with death a black blight on their feelings. Maybe the husband, dead, stands between them now far more than the living husband had.

  Or perhaps he was simply playing it smart, biding his time, not rushing her.

  I sat there thinking about it a long time after Lew had gone. The pictures of him and her together came back more vivid than ever. I wondered how much more of this waiting I could endure.

  The second day passed, and I knew my nerve was going. I was cracking up and I seemed unable to halt the process. Lew wasn’t moving fast enough. He had found nothing conclusive. The second night his shadow had lost Vicky and Pryor across town in a section of cheap hotels.

  Lew was a worried man that night. He wouldn’t take his eyes off my face. He insisted on staying in the room until I had gulped the pills Hardy had given me.

  But I palmed them instead and drank the water as if I were swallowing the pills. I lay back across the bed, closed my eyes, and after a time Lew went out. I waited until I heard his footsteps fade downstairs; then I sat up, threw the pills under the bed, and began dressing. I didn’t put on my shoes. I wanted no echoing footsteps as I slipped down the rear stairs out of the house.

  I stayed in shadows and used back streets. I was still weak, and it took me thirty minutes or better to get from Lew’s house to my own. My place was dark, and I didn’t go in. I stood in the shadows of a row of royal palms across from the house watching, waiting. Expecting the two of them together.

  But she came alone. She swung the green sedan in the driveway, entered the house, and I saw lights flash on. She appeared in the living room window for an instant, going toward the phone alcove. I moved quickly across the street, into my own yard. I could see her through the window. She was across the expanse of living room, talking quickly with someone on the phone. Then a shadow, the shadow of a man, long, distorted, showed briefly against the living room wall. Before I could catch a breath the light in there snapped off, and then Vicky screamed.

  I hit the front door. It was locked. I fumbled for a key. A voice shouted from inside, “Stand back, or I’ll shoot her.” Sweat popped out on my face. I heard a door slam, and I ventured the key into the lock then. Another door slammed, and I tore toward the rear of the house. I heard the surging roar of the engine of the green sedan. I was hearing his words over and over, “Stand back, or I’ll shoot her.”

  I knew him. I’d recognized the voice.

  I hurled myself across the yard toward the driveway just as the big car careened out of the drive into the street with a scream of tortured rubber.

  I stood there a moment, gasping. Then I forced strength into my shaking legs and charged back into the house.

  My hands were shaking so badly I could hardly dial Lew Whitfield’s number. His phone screamed twice before anyone answered, and then it was Marge, not Lew. “I’ve got to talk to Lew,” I bellowed.

  “He’s not here, Doug. He just got a phone call from Vicky. He’s on his way over there now.”

  “He’ll be too late. Marge! Shoffner’s got her! He barreled away from here with her in my green sedan. Got that? Old man Wendel Shoffner, my yardman, has Vicky as hostage, at his mercy, in my green car. Call headquarters. Tell them to make it an all-car signal. That’s an order from the D.A.’s office!”

  She got it, she said, and I didn’t waste any more time. I slammed down the phone and pushed my reeling body back out of the house. The sec
ond car, the light coupe Vicky usually drove was still in the garage. There was a key for it on my ring.

  The sedan had disappeared by the time I got the coupe on the street. It had turned west, and I turned that way also. In the distance I heard a siren. Lew would get the call. A dozen cars would get the call. They’d pinpoint my home—and we would get him. But it would all be less than worthless if he harmed Vicky first.

  I heard another siren and then another. They were converging on the downtown area. I saw the swarm of cars when I skidded the coupe into Central Avenue. A fire truck rounded an intersection and clanged to a stop just ahead of me. Patrolmen were trying to move the crowds gathering on the sidewalk, and a searchlight threw its yellow tongue up the side of the six-story Parker Building.

  I’d stopped the coupe, but I couldn’t let go of the wheel when I saw that light snake its way up the face of the building. I knew then that he had her up there and we might never get her down alive.

  Somehow I crawled out of the car and was able to stand. I found Lew standing beside his own car. He was snapping orders. To firemen with a net. To the cops rigging a loudspeaker system.

  “For God’s sake, Lew, be careful!”

  He showed only brief, surprise at seeing me. “We’re doing that. Doug: If we wanted to take chances, we’d send men up after him.”

  I could see them now. Vicky and Shoffner, near the low parapet around the building roof.

  Shoffner’s voice rang out thin and high-pitched: “Go away! All of you go away, or I’ll push her over!”

  Lew’s shudder almost matched my own. “He’s cracked. He’s gone. Loony as they come. He’s Loren Sigmon’s father, Doug.” I stiffened. I had been the single eyewitness to Sigmon’s crime.

  Lew said, “He was probably out to get you from the minute he went to work for you. We found some dirt from your garden in your bedroom near the night table where you kept your gun. Ordinarily it wouldn’t have meant much to us—either you or Vicky could have brought it in—but to Vicky it suggested Shoffner. She remembered that Shoffner had been working in muck that afternoon, bringing it in for the flower beds. She slipped into his rooms, found some pictures of Sigmon in the old man’s things. She went to some of Sigmon’s old haunts last night and tonight with Keith Pryor. She was asking questions and must have got a few answers. She phoned me that she was certain of the old man’s identity. But before I could get to your house, he snatched her, found himself cornered, the street blocked, and dragged her in the building.”