Murder Is My Business (11 page)

They reached the top of the stairway, and she turned through curtained glass doors into a sitting room which was thickly carpeted from wall to wall and lighted with one tall floor lamp by the side of a silk-covered chaise longue. The room was done in pastel shades, cream and pink. It didn’t match Carmela’s temperament. It fitted the girl he had known ten years ago, before her father sent her off to Europe, a pathetic reminder of all the things Carmela Towne had been. He knew she had clung desperately to the soft beauty of her suite here on the second floor of the ugly stone house just as she had tried to cling to the love that had been denied her.

Shayne had a sour taste in his mouth as he looked around and let his gaze finally come to rest upon a low lacquered table beside the chaise longue gleaming in a circle of illumination from the floor lamp.

Hammered silver ice tongs lay beside a silver ice bucket. There was an uncorked bottle of Scotch and a silver siphon, and a tall glass held two inches of the amber liquid with three partially melted ice cubes floating in it. An ashtray was almost filled with halfsmoked cigarettes, and a second glass, unused, stood behind the ice bucket.

Carmela had stopped beside him just inside the doorway, her fingers still clutching his hand. She looked defiant and determined, as she said suddenly, “I need another drink — and you need one, too, Michael.” She let go of his hand and went to the low table beside the lounge.

Shayne stood where he was and watched her put ice cubes and whisky in the empty glass, then splash soda into it. He felt sorry as hell for Carmela Towne.

She had sent the servants away and settled herself here with whisky and cigarettes to wait. He didn’t think she had expected him. Now she was through waiting. Everything she did, every intonation of her voice, told of her defiant resolve to wait no longer for Lance Bayliss.

Yet he had just seen Lance drive away from the house. He remembered how Lance had looked at her in the hotel room that day, and he felt sorrier than ever for her.

She poured more whisky into her glass, sat down on the lounge, and beckoned to him, holding out the freshly filled glass. He went across and took it from her. She brushed her long hair back from her face and said, “I must look a perfect fright.”

Shayne said gravely, “You look very attractive.”

She trembled a little and put her hand on his arm. She said, “I’m glad — I want to look attractive for you, Michael. You see — I hoped you would — be nice — to me,” she ended in a nervous stammering voice.

She looked up at him and smiled, but her eyes were miserable. Shayne bent down and kissed her lips lightly, He said, “We’ve got all night. You’re not quite drunk yet.”

She said, “No,” and laughed. “Drinking does help, though, doesn’t it?”

Shayne took a long drink, set his glass on the table, and pulled up an ottoman and sat down. A silver cigarette box stood open on the table. He took two cigarettes from it and reached a long arm out to put one between her lips. She lay back and watched with halfclosed eyes as he struck a match. After he put the flame to her cigarette she said softly, “I’ve been lonely, Michael. So damned lonely.”

He asked abruptly, “How did your father take the news tonight?”

“I wasn’t here when they came for him.” She pushed herself up with both hands on the arms of the lounge. “Don’t tell me,” she said drearily, “you came here just to talk about Father and the case, Michael.”

“Was that all Lance wanted tonight?”

She winced, and her black eyes widened to stare at him. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, Carmela.”

She said vehemently, “I haven’t seen Lance — since today in your hotel room. You saw how he looked at
me then. He hates me. He thought he had caught us having an assignation.”

“I met Lance driving away as I came up.” She lowered her eyes until her long black lashes veiled them. “You’re mistaken,” she said. “Lance hasn’t been here. No one has been here. I waited—” She reached for her glass and emptied it without opening up her eyes, set it on the table, and folded her hands laxly in her lap.

“What do you think of Josiah Riley’s story?”

She twisted her mouth bitterly. “Do we have to talk about that?”

“I’ve got it on my mind,” Shayne confessed. “It’ll stay on my mind until you’ve answered a few questions — and I don’t want anything else on my mind when I kiss you again.”

“Are you going to kiss me?”

“Let’s talk about Josiah Riley first. Do you know him?”

She moved restively. “I used to know him quite well. Pour me another drink, Michael.”

He put ice and a lot of whisky in her glass, and a little soda. He put the glass in her outstretched hand.

“When he was working for your father?” he prompted.

“Yes. Just a little while before I went to Europe. I remember when he reported to Father that the vein had mined out, and how low Father was. And how angry he got when he investigated personally and discovered Joe Riley was mistaken.” She drank half the whisky from her glass and relaxed against the cushions.

“Do you think it was an honest mistake?”

“I think so. Father didn’t. He was convinced that
Joe hoped he would abandon the property so he could later buy it cheaply and pretend to rediscover the vein.”

“That has been done,” Shayne agreed.

“But not by men like Joe Riley.” She opened her eyes wide, but her voice was thick and lifeless. “I’m sure he was honest in his report.”

“All the more reason for Joe to hate your father for ruining him in the mining business.”

“He does hate Father. He has never tried to hide that.”

“What about his accusation today?” Shayne persisted. “What do you make of it?”

Carmela mumbled, “I don’t know. What does it matter what I think?” She lifted her head and finished the last of the whisky, carefully set the glass on the table, and fell back inert. “I’m getting drunk. Really drunk, Michael. I’ve never done that with any man before. I’ve always been afraid I’d act awful. You won’t mind, will you? If I get drunk and awful?”

Shayne said, “I won’t mind.”

“It’s good to just — let go.” Her black eyes were wide and staring again, covered with a film of tears. “I’ve held in — too long. I’ve always thought—”

“That Lance might come back?” Shayne supplied.

She nodded, closing her eyes and forcing two tears onto her thin cheeks. “I’ve been an awful fool, Michael.”

“You were a fool ten years ago.”

“And I’ve been one ever since.” She pulled herself up with an effort, and cried wildly, “I’ve kept myself for
him!
Do you know what that means? Do you know what it means to be a woman of thirty? I’m getting
drab. I’ve dried up inside,” she ended, and the room rang with her loud, angry laughter.

Shayne said quietly, “You’ve got a lot of years left, Carmela.”

Hysteria was added to her laughter. Her eyes were dry now, and shone with an unnatural glitter. “Not as many years as you think. Men aren’t attracted to old women. Look at you! What do you do? You sit there and argue. If I were a luscious blonde of eighteen, you’d be kissing me. Don’t deny it. You know you would.”

Shayne said grimly, “We’re still transacting business, Carmela. I told you I wanted to get the business over with first. Take a look at this.” He reached in his pocket for the snapshot of Marquita Morales and showed it to her. “Have you ever seen this girl before?”

She glanced at it indifferently, then with intent speculation. “It’s the girl who was with Lance in the taxi that day,” she began in a low, harsh voice that rose to a shrill pitch as she went on, “That’s what I mean! She’s young and pretty! If she were here alone with you, I’ll bet you wouldn’t be sitting at arm’s length from her. Would you? Well — would you?” She was sitting upright, swaying a little, and pointing a long thin forefinger at him.

Shayne sighed and replaced the snapshot in his pocket. “You were going to get drunk, remember?” He fixed another drink and put it in her hand.

She took a long drink and sat back listlessly. “I remember. I warned you, didn’t I, that I might be awful?”

He said, “You warned me.” The whisky bottle was almost empty. He put the stopper in the bottle and walked around to lean over her and look down into her upturned eyes. “You’ve got plenty on the ball, Carmela. Haven’t you ever heard that the best years of a woman’s life are the thirties? I’m going to kiss you, and you’re going to discover that everything is all right. You’re beautiful as hell, Carmela. Don’t ever start doubting that.”

Her eyes held his steadily. Her lips were thinned against her teeth. He bent his head and kissed her. A shudder rippled over her taut body, and she went limp. With his mouth still close to hers he said, “See what I mean?”

She touched his gaunt cheek with her fingers and pushed him away. Carefully setting her half-filled glass on the table, she looked up at him with glazed and staring eyes. “Help me — I’m so tired,” she whimpered.

“Sure, Carmela,” he said gently, and his eyes were bleak. He moved around and sat on the edge of the chaise longue beside her. Carmela’s head rolled back, and she closed her eyes. A little moan carried from her moist red lips. Then she sighed convulsively and lay very still.

Shayne got up slowly and stood looking down at her. The muscles in his face were set, and he drew in a long, rasping breath. Carmela Towne didn’t stir under his gaze.

He picked up her glass and drank the rest of her drink, then strolled across the sitting room to a closed
door. Opening it, he found a light switch on the wall.

He pushed the switch and flooded Carmela’s bedroom with light

He went back and gathered her up in his arms and carried her through the doorway. She was very light in his arms, and one of her furred mules slipped off and fell to the carpet. Easing her down on one side of the double bed, he turned back the covers on the other, then placed her on the sheet. He hesitated before untying the belt of her quilted gown and gently slipping it off.

She lay quiescent and breathed evenly. He pulled the covers over her and went out, closing the bedroom door.

He left the floor lamp burning in her sitting room and went downstairs. The front door was equipped with an inner bolt and a chain, a heavy lock with a night latch. He checked the night latch to see that it was on, then went out and pulled the door shut.

Most of the city of El Paso was stretched out below the front steps of Jefferson Towne’s house. The glitter of moonlight on water made a winding serpentine of the Rio Grande, with a cluster of yellow lights on the other side marking the Mexican city of Juarez.

Shayne sighed, and went down the marble steps to his coupé. He got in and drove away without looking back, idly wondering what he might have done had Carmela remained conscious. Given a chance at happiness, she could be a damnably attractive woman. He recalled his light words to Lucy Hamilton before he left New Orleans for El Paso, and made a sour grimace.

He had never felt as sorry for any woman as he did right now for Carmela, nor as disgusted with any man as he was with Lance Bayliss. He wondered if Lance had been in the house before he arrived, or if he had merely sat in his parked car without making his presence known.

He was a fool for considering Lance Bayliss at all, and was disgusted with himself and ready to go back to New Orleans where he belonged when he parked the coupé in the hotel garage and went up to his room.

Shayne read the morning paper with his breakfast in the coffee shop downstairs. It gave a full and fair account of Josiah Riley’s accusation and Jefferson Towne’s arrest, pointing out the discrepancy in time between the struggle Riley had purportedly witnessed and the time when Towne’s automobile ran over the body, and giving a full account of the bad blood between the two men without pointing out that this might be a motive for Riley to falsify what he had claimed to see on Tuesday afternoon.

On the second page there was a gruesome photograph of the corpse that had been fished out of the Rio Grande the preceding night. To make the morning edition, the newspaper photographer hadn’t had time to wait for the body to be fixed up any, and the bloated features in the picture were hardly distinguishable as those of a man. A complete description of the body was given, however, and the public was urged to view the remains at the city morgue that afternoon to try to identify the dead man. The news story did not venture any speculations as to why the body was stripped of all its clothing, nor was there any hint of a possible connection between the two deaths.

Shayne left the paper folded on the table when he finished breakfast. He found Chief Dyer in his office
at headquarters, and the chief didn’t appear happy. He greeted the detective with a surly grunt. “Why do you private dicks always try to complicate things?”

Shayne grinned and asked him what he meant.

“Trying to find a tie-up between an open-and-shut murder and an unidentified body,” Dyer snarled. “Spy rings and so on! Gerlach says you told him to look for a similar head wound on this new body. Good God, Shayne, do you think Towne’s gone in for wholesale murder?”

“What does Thompson say about it?”

“He says ‘No.’ There are neck abrasions, but death came from being beaten over the head with some blunt instrument.
Not
a single blow with a hammer.”

Shayne shrugged. “That would have made it too easy,” he admitted. “How long does Thompson give him in the water?”

Chief Dyer scowled, and waved his cigarette in its long holder. “You know how a medico is. With a lot of hedging and buts and maybes — from two to five days, and be damned if he’ll set it any closer.”

Shayne said, “Knowing the flow of the river, we can figure out some limits as to where the body could have been thrown in.”

Dyer shook his head. “I tried him on that, too. Nothing doing. Some bodies sink to the bottom and lie there for days. Others never sink at all. That’s no good.”

“Located any missing soldiers?”

Dyer shook his head dispiritedly. “That’s another blind alley. Fort Bliss hasn’t any reports on any. But
with all the men on furloughs and passes — and going through the city from other posts — it’ll be weeks before we’ll know for sure.”