A Touch of Death (Hard Case Crime Book 17)

  I built a fire in the cookstove and went up to the spring for a couple of buckets of water. It was full light now, and lovely, with bluish-gray smoke curling out of the stovepipe above the old shake roof and going off into the sky through the trees. I moved the car into the old shed on the far side of the house and closed the doors. Then I took an inventory of the food supply. Bill always kept the kitchen well stocked. There were a couple of boxes of canned stuff in the storeroom and some flour and miscellaneous staples in the cupboards. I opened a fresh can of coffee and put on the coffeepot.

  I sat down and smoked a cigarette, listening to the crackle of the fire and realizing I felt tired after being on the run all night. Drawing a hand across my face, I felt the rasp of beard stubble, and went over to the mirror hanging on the rear wall. I looked like a thug. My eyebrows and hair are blond, but when the beard comes out it’s ginger-colored and dirty.

  I rooted around in the storeroom until I found somebody’s duffel bag with a toilet kit in it. It held a safety razor and some blades, but no shaving soap. I used hand soap to lather up, and shaved. Then I put the shirt and tie back on. It was a little better.

  The coffee had started to boil. It smelled good. I poured a cup and sat down to smoke another cigarette. The sun was coming up now. I thought of all that had happened since this time yesterday morning. Everything had changed.

  I no longer worried about the fact that I was breaking laws as fast as they could set them up in the gallery. My only concern was that what I was doing was dangerous as hell and if I was caught I was ruined. But it was not even that which caused the chill goose flesh across my shoulders.

  It was the thought of that money, more money than I could earn in a lifetime. It lay somewhere just beyond the reach of my fingers, and I could feel the fingers itching as they stretched out toward it. Mrs. Butler knew where it was.

  And I had Mrs. Butler.

  It was nearly two hours before I heard her move on the bed in the other room. She was coming around.

  I’d better be good now. I had to be good to make this stick. I picked up the bottle of whisky and a glass, and went in.

  Chapter Five

  SHE WAS SITTING UP ON the bed with her hands on each side of her face, the fingers running up into her hair. It was the first time I had ever seen her eyes, and I could see what Diana James had meant when she said they were big and smoky-looking.

  She stared at me.

  “Good morning,” I said. I poured a drink into the glass.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. She looked around the room. “And what am I doing in this place?”

  “Better take a little of this,” I said. “Or if you’d rather have it, we’ve got black coffee.” I knew damn well which she’d rather have, but I threw in the coffee just to keep talking.

  She took the drink. I corked the bottle and went out into the other room with it. When I came back I had a basin of cold water, a washcloth and towel, and her purse. I set them on the table and shoved the table over where she could reach it. She ignored the whole thing.

  “Will you answer my question?” she said. “What am I doing in this revolting shanty?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Then you don’t remember?”

  “Certainly not. And I never saw you before.”

  “We’ll get to that in a minute,” I said. “Right now I just want you to feel better.”

  I squeezed out the cloth and handed it to her. She scrubbed at her face with it and I gave her the towel. Then I dug her comb out of the jumble of stuff in her purse. I watched her comb her hair. It wasn’t quite black in daylight. It was rich, dark brown.

  “How about some coffee?” I said.

  She stood up and brushed at the blue robe. I nodded toward the door and followed her into the other room. She sat down in the chair I pulled out for her. I poured some coffee and then gave her a cigarette and lit it. Then I sat down across from her, straddling a chair with my arms across the back.

  She ignored the coffee. “Perhaps you can explain this,” she said.

  I frowned. “Don’t you remember anything at all?”

  “No.”

  “I was hoping you would,” I said. “Especially what happened before I got here.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “And will you, for the love of the merciful God, tell me who you are?”

  “Barton,” I said. “John Barton, of Globe Surety. Remember? I’m from the Kansas City office, but they put me on it because I used to work out of Sanport and know this country.”

  I had to keep snowing her. She was rum-dum, but she still might be sharp enough to want to see something that said Barton, of Globe Surety Company. The thing was to give her the impression I’d already shown her my credentials but that she’d been drunk when she’d seen them. We wouldn’t mention that. It would be embarrassing.

  But she didn’t go for the fake hand-off. She came right in and smeared me. “I’ve never heard of a company by that name,” she said. “And I never saw you before in my life. How do I know who you are?”

  It was the longest, coldest bluff I had ever pulled in my life, and if I didn’t make it stick I was penitentiary bait. I felt empty all the way down to my legs.

  “Oh, sure,” I said. I reached back for the wallet in my hip pocket and started flipping through the leaves of identification stuff. I made a show of finding the one I wanted, and just as I started to pass her the whole thing, I said, “Can you remember anything at all about what he looked like? Even his general build would help.”

  She took her eyes off the wallet and looked at me. “Who looked like?” she asked blankly.

  “The man you said tried to kill you. Just before I got there.”

  That did it.

  She gasped. And just for an instant I saw fear in her eyes. Then it was gone. “Tried to kill me?”

  “Yes,” I said, still crowding her. “I realize it was dark, of course. But did he say anything when he lunged at you? I mean, would you recognize his voice?”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I was just up in my room—”

  “That’s right,” I interrupted. I put the wallet back in my pocket while I went on talking. “You were playing the phonograph, you said. And when I found you out there on the lawn you had a record in your hand. I don’t think you even knew you were carrying it, but I couldn’t get it away from you. You had a death grip on it. At first I couldn’t make any sense at all out of what you were trying to say.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember any of it,” she said. “Maybe you’d better tell me what happened.”

  “Sure.” I lit a cigarette for myself. “I had to talk to you. We’re trying to run down a lead our Sanport office dug up—but I’ll get to that in a minute. Anyway, I got into Mount Temple last night after midnight, and when I’d checked into the hotel I tried to call you. The line was busy. I tried again later, and it was the same thing, so I got a cab and went out to your house.

  “And just as I was coming up the drive in the cab I saw you in the headlights. You had run out the front door and were going around toward the garage. When I got over to where you were, you had fallen on the lawn. You had this phonograph record in one hand and your purse in the other. You were in a panic, and practically hysterical. I couldn’t make out what you were trying to say at first. It was something about listening to the music in your room by candlelight, and that you had looked around over your shoulder and there was a man standing behind you. I tried to calm you down and get the story straightened out, but you just kept saying the same thing over and over—that the man had lunged at you with something in his hand.

  “You didn’t seem to know how you’d got away from him, but when I suggested we go inside you started to go to pieces. Nothing could make you go back inside the house. All you wanted to do was get in the car and get away. I was afraid we’d wake the neighbors, so I went along with it. I drove, and tried to figure out what to do. I couldn’t
take you to the hotel or a tourist court there in town, of course, because you’d be known everywhere. You went to sleep, and I finally thought of this place. It’s a duck club I belonged to when I was in Sanport and I knew there wouldn’t be anybody out here this time of year. Maybe you could get some rest, and we could talk it over when you woke up. That’s about it.

  “I wish you could remember something about that man, though. If he was trying to kill you, he may get you next time.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. Her eyes were thoughtful.

  “Do you have any idea who he could have been?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Do you really think I saw anybody?”

  “Yes,” I said. Baby, I thought, if you only knew. “Yes. I think you did. You were under a terrible strain.”

  “I must have been.” She stared moodily down at her hands. When she looked back up at me she said, “You said you came to talk to me. What about?”

  “Your husband.”

  “Oh.” She sighed. “I suppose you want to ask some more questions. Or the same ones over again. I’ve told it so many times …”

  “Yes,” I said. I felt good. I’d put it over. “It’s been rough on you, and we hate to be the pests we are, but we’ve got a job to do. However, mine isn’t quite the same as the police’s. They’re looking for your husband.”

  “Aren’t you?” she asked.

  I studied the end of the cigarette. “Only incidentally.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll be frank with you, Mrs. Butler. My orders, first and last, are to find that money. Any way I can. We have to pick up the tab for it if it’s not recovered, so you can see where our interest is.”

  “I wish I could help you. You can see that, can’t you? But there isn’t anything I can tell you that hasn’t already been told.”

  I waited, not saying anything.

  She sighed again. “All right. He came home from the bank at noon that Saturday, said he was going to some lake in Louisiana, fishing, and that he’d be home Sunday night. I didn’t see any money, or anything that could have held that much money, but maybe it was in the car, if he had it. He didn’t take any clothes except fishing clothes, as far as I could tell afterward. I know he didn’t take a bag. Just the fishing tackle. I was a little worried when he didn’t return Sunday night, but I thought perhaps he had merely decided to stay over another day. And then, Monday morning, Mr. Matthews, the president of the bank, came out and told me—” She quit talking and just stared down at her hands.

  “You don’t have any idea why he would do a thing like that?” I asked.

  The hesitation was hardly noticeable. “No,” she said.

  I frowned at the cigarette in my hand, and then looked squarely at her. “Well, I’m afraid we do now,” I said. “It’s unpleasant, and I wish I didn’t have to be the one to tell you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was running off with another woman.”

  “No!”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Butler. But that’s the lead I mentioned, the thing our Sanport office found out. The girl’s name is Diana James, or at least that’s what she calls herself. She had an apartment in Sanport, and that’s where he was headed. She was going to hide him there.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “Unfortunately, it’s true.”

  “Then,” she said, “under the circumstances, don’t you think you’re just wasting your time talking to me? Apparently this James person is the only one who really knows anything about my husband.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not quite as simple as that. You see, he never did get to her apartment. And the only answer to that is a very ugly one.”

  She was watching me narrowly. “What?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Butler. But he’s dead, and has been ever since that Saturday.”

  She tried to get up from the chair, but her legs wouldn’t hold her and she slumped onto the table. I carried her into the other room and put her on the bed. In a moment her eyes opened. She just lay there looking up at the rafters. She didn’t cry.

  I went out to the other room and got the bottle. It had gone all right so far. She knew now that at least one outfit was wise to the fact that Butler had never reached the James girl’s apartment, and had guessed why he hadn’t. Maybe not the police, but the insurance company was working with them, wasn’t it?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I held out the drink. “This will make you feel better.”

  She sat up and brushed the dark hair back from her face with her hand. She drank the whisky and shuddered.

  “You must have suspected it,” I said. “After all, it’s been over two months, with the police in twenty states looking for him.”

  “I suppose so,” she said. “Maybe I just didn’t want to admit it.”

  I sat down in the chair and lit her a cigarette. She took it between listless fingers and forgot it.

  “You see how that changes the picture, don’t you?” I said. “We’re not looking for your husband any more. We’re looking for whoever killed him. That is, the police are, or will be as soon as they get the word about the James girl. What I’m looking for is the money. And that brings us to why I wanted to talk to you. You might be able to add something.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you might think of something that didn’t seem important before, but that might be significant now in view of this. Was there somebody who could have found out he was going to do it? Was there somebody who knew about Diana James? You see the jealousy angle, don’t you? I mean—he had one girlfriend that we know of, so there might have been another.”

  “I understand he was also married,” she said. “But go on.”

  “Believe me, Mrs. Butler, I don’t enjoy this either. But my orders are to find that money. The police are going to have their hands full trying to find a murderer, and building a case that’ll stand up in court.” I paused just a second; then I added, “I’m not interested in that angle of it.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. Let’s look at it objectively. Up to the point of recovering the money and prosecuting the man who stole it, our jobs overlap. But if the man is dead, he’s beyond the reach of prosecution, so when we get the money back we’re out of it. That may sound callous to you, but it’s only sound business. The police are paid to solve murders; we’re not.”

  I stopped. It was very quiet in the room.

  “You see what I mean, don’t you?” I said.

  She nodded slowly. “Yes. I understand perfectly.” She paused, and then added, “They must pay you well.”

  “Well enough. But, again, it’s strictly business, if you look at it in the right way. I don’t think your husband was killed for that money. The motive was jealousy, and the money didn’t have anything to do with it. That being the case, we’re not involved. We get back what belongs to us. We drop it. You see?”

  “And if you don’t get it back?”

  “Then it’s a different story. People’s emotional explosions don’t interest us until they start costing us a hundred and twenty thousand dollars an explosion. Then we’re in it up to the neck, and we get rough about it.”

  She nodded again. “Yes. I can see you would feel quite unclean if you ever became contaminated with an emotion.”

  “It’s a job. Like pumping gas, or being vice-president of a bank. If I want to be emotional, I do it on my own time.”

  She said nothing. She just continued to watch me.

  I leaned forward a little and tapped her on the wrist, “But let’s get back to what we were talking about. Catching your husband would have been easy, if somebody hadn’t killed him. We’d have had that money back by now except that a clear-cut case of embezzlement got loused up with some jealous woman blowing her stack. She’s just making it tough for me—and for no reason at all, because she didn’t want the money in the first place. And when I find out who she is I can make it tough for her. Or she
can get off the hook by being sensible. You see how simple it is?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It is very simple. Isn’t it?”

  She smiled. And then she hit me as hard as she could across the mouth.

  Chapter Six

  “NOW THAT I’VE ANSWERED YOUR question,” she said coolly, “perhaps you’ll answer one for me. What were you doing in my house?”

  It had been too sudden. Even without having your mouth bounced off your teeth, it was a little hard to keep up. “I just told you.”

  The big smoke-blue eyes were perfectly self-possessed now. “I know. You said I was wandering around on the lawn with a phonograph record in my hand, which isn’t a bad extension of the actual truth. So you must have been up there in my room when I was listening to the phonograph.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Certainly not. I know what I did. I went to sleep. And just in case you think I’m bluffing, I can even tell you the last recording I played before I dropped off. It was Handel’s Water Music Suite. Wasn’t it?”

  “How would I know?” I said.

  “You probably wouldn’t, at that. But just who are you? And what is your business, besides extortion?”

  I was catching up a little. “Don’t throw your weight around too much,” I said. “Suppose the police started wondering just why his car showed up right in front of Diana James’s apartment.”

  “Did it?” she asked.

  “You know damned well it did.”

  She shook her head. “No. But it does have a certain element of poetic justice, doesn’t it?”

  It was odd, but I believed her. About that part of it, anyway.

  “I’m beginning to understand now,” she said, studying me thoughtfully through the cigarette smoke. “How is the accessible Miss James? As bountiful as ever, I hope?”

  “She likes you too,” I said.

  She smiled. “We adore each other. But I do wish she would stop sending people up here to tear my house apart.”

  I remembered the slashed cushions. “So that’s who—”

  “You didn’t think there was anything original about it, did you? I can assure you that in almost nothing connected with Miss James are you likely to be the first.”