Slack tide (11 page)

"Harry," he said, pushing the thought farther back in his mind. "I want to ask you a question."

"Shoot," Danaher said.

"Do you know what happened over on the dock last night—between Kingsley, his wife, and me?"

"Sure."

"How do you know?"

"The cops told me this morning."

"You didn't know anything about it last night? . . . You said you heard the outboard," MacLaren added.

"That's right."

"You didn't hear anything else?"

"No. Because when I heard the outboard, I figured that Kingsley must be going after the girl, and believe me, when Kingsley blew his stack, it was a good idea to keep out of the way. I took a quick look around"—he waved to indicate the cruiser—"and started back for the house."

"I've got a theory that Kingsley was slugged right here," MacLaren said, "or somewhere pretty close to here. I think he was either pushed into the water or fell in after he'd been hit."

"I guess it could have happened that way," Danaher said. "But don't look at me, pal."

"Who would want to kill him?"

"Most anybody," Danaher said without hesitation. "I think the guy was nuts. Instead of travehng around with a personal lawyer, he should have had a personal head-shrinker."

MacLaren repeated some of the things that Ruth Kings-ley had told him that morning about Ackerman. He spoke of the cigar-cutter the police had found the night before. Danaher said he had heard about it.

"Ackerman admitted it was his but he said he lost it yesterday afternoon."

"You don't happen to know if he had any recent trouble with Kingsley, do you?"

"No."

"What about Earl Harwell? Did he have a motive?"

"What's a motive?" Danaher said. "What it would take for you to knock ofiF a guy might not bother me a bit. You got to figure the individual, don't you? Suppose I tell you what happened with Harwell, and then you can figure out if he had a motive.

"In my opinion," he continued, "Harwell was kind of a screwball. A moody guy, a sulker—at least since I knew him; maybe Kingsley made him that way. Anyway, from what I've read, I always got the idea that artists don't care about painting commercial stuff; they only want to do real art, whatever that is. This Harwell don't fit the picture. He don't care a damn about serious art, except that he says it helps his technique. He decides he wants to do covers for the big magazines, advertisements, things like that, and his contract says he can't, so he cheats."

"What?"

"In the open, Harwell is painting serious so he can collect his dough when the two years are up, but on the sly he's been doing illustrations lately. I understand he was in touch with a couple of agents in New York, and he had some photos made of some of his best stuff and the other day he gets an offer by phone. Some guy wants him to come in to New York for an interview and bring some samples. If his originals stack up with the photos he's got himself an assignment. So what happens?"

Danaher put his arm over the coaming and shifted his weight to one hip.

"Kingsley overhears the phone caU. He beats it up to Harwell's room and finds the originals of those illustrations and comes down and burns them in the Hving-room fire-

place—that was yesterday morning—and maybe Harwell would have killed him then if the rest of us hadn't been around. As it is he just walks out of the room. So you figure if that's a motive, if Harwell was so burned up—not so much that the paintings are gone but that now he can't follow up on the job—that he'd do a bit of murder if he got the chance and thought he could get away with it. And brother, the guy that did the job must have thought that. He must have been here when Kingsley came back, and heard what had happened with you and the dame on the dock."

"What about that blonde that came yesterday afternoon?"

"Lucille? You mean that she could have slugged Kings-ley?" Danaher sucked on his hps, straightened them. "Who can figure dames? She came here thinking she's going to marry some big dough, and then she finds out she isn't. Not for a while. Maybe she catches Kingsley down here after his dunking and he's burning and they have a brawl and she socks him. It could happen."

He hesitated. "Same with Carla. She had a nice berth here and she seemed to like it. She could have been in love with him once, but if you ask me it was more the idea of marrying a couple of million bucks. Now what'll she get? Five grand from the will; that's all. I understand she's planning to marry some army captain pretty soon, but hke I say, who can tell about dames?"

If what he said was true, it seemed apparent that Danaher did not know about the stock certificates Carla Lewis had in her handbag. MacLaren did not mention

them, but as his mind went on, he remembered other talks he had had with this man. Here, where the hght was good, he seemed to be in his early forties, a thick-bodied and muscular figure, but hght on his feet, his face a httle heavy in the jaw, and his amber eyes seldom showing much warmth, seldom still. He was easy to talk to, but his manner was calculating, as though forever weighing each action or decision and never forgetting the odds. Here, it seemed, was a man who kept one eye on the main chance and whose decisions had less to do with what was right and wrong than what would be best for Harry.

MacLaren nodded as he considered the things he had heard. "So that leaves you," he said.

"Yeah," Danaher said without resentment. "I'll tell you how it is with me and maybe you can find a motive. ... I got this job through a friend after Kingsley had a fight with his captain last September. He wanted me to take the boat down to Florida while he took that South American cruise. I was there all winter, on my own except for about three weeks when Kingsley and the others came down. I get four hundred a month and found. And I mean found."

He grinned and said: "Like in Florida. I slept aboard and got my own breakfast, using stuff that Kingsley had to pay for, but I didn't have to eat lunch or dinner there. I could eat wherever I wanted to, so long as I was reasonable about it, and it all went on the tab which he paid. I brought the boat back last month—damn near froze too— and I've been getting room, board, smokes, all the liquor I can drink, plus that four hundred a month. Now, when

Ackerman settles the estate and sells the boat—which he probably will—I'm out of a job."

None of this seemed to add up to a motive so MacLaren said: "Did Kingsley give you any trouble?"

"No," said Danaher, "and I'U tell you why. The guys he used to jump were mostly cream puffs he foimd in nightclub bars. He knew if he slugged me I'd slug back."

"I heard it a httle differently," MacLaren said.

"Yeah?" Danaher's brows chmbed. "In what way?"

"I heard it was that way in the beginning but that since Florida you'd been more pohte to the boss. You did just what he said and always came up with that yes sir' when he spoke to you."

Danaher's gaze narrowed shghtly, but there was httle resentment in his tone when he replied. "You must have been talking to Carla."

"Why Carla?"

"Because she hates my guts. But at that, I've got to admit you have a point. I got in a little trouble in Florida," he said. "A traffic case. Kingsley squared it. He did me a heU of a favor and we both knew it. He wanted a little something for the favor, like he always did, so I was pohte. He stiU didn't push me around too hard, but he was the boss. I didn't want to get fired, and I didn't want to quit. I hked that four hundred a month and it was piling up for me. I guess I told you why I want it."

"So you can buy a charter boat."

"Right. I already got it picked out. I got sort of an option on it. Fifteen grand and it's all mine, and it don't have to be all cash either. I think half down will swing it."

He sat up and swung his feet to the deck as interest kindled in his eyes and he warmed to this subject which was dearest to his heart.

"A forty footer," he said. "Only nine years old and boy, she's got everything. A heavy transom, plenty of beam, twin Chryslers, a pulpit, and a flying bridge. Ship-to-shore, duplicate steering and engine controls, and a Sonar depth indicator. With that and a good mate," he said, "I'm in business for good. With things the way they are now I figure to stay in Florida all year round. And with that kind of a boat it'll be a cinch to get over to Bimini and Cat Cay whenever I get a party that has time and the dough for that sort of thing."

He seemed about to expand his subject still more when his glance shd beyond MacLaren and fastened there. With that he came to his feet, and MacLaren turned to find Ruth Kingsley heading their way, a small suitcase in her hand.

"I can take her over," he said to Danaher, and then he jumped down to the beach and was moving forward to take the bag. Danaher watched them go.

By the time MacLaren had tied up at the floating dock he was ready to speak of a thought that had been fermenting slowly in the back of his mind. He approached the idea obhquely by asking if she was stiU going to have dinner with him.

"Of course."

"But we don't have to eat at the Iim, do we?"

"No, but-"

"I've been thinking," he said when she hesitated. "Do you have a key to your town house?"

"Why, yes."

His next question was the important one and it was not based entirely on hope. There had to be a good reason for Carla Lewis's hurried trip to the city that afternoon, and the keys he had found in her bag were still in his pocket. He could only think of two logical places where she had gone. One was a bank; the other was the Kingsley house and the safe Ackerman had mentioned the night before.

"Your husband had a safe in the town house, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"Do you happen to know the combination?"

"I think so. Unless he changed it during the last month or so."

"Then you had access to it whenever you wanted to open it?"

"No. I could open the outer door, but he was the only one who had the keys to the inner compartment." The green eyes were frowning now, as though she did not understand why the subject was so important to him. "It was a very special compartment," she said. "It took two keys to open it—"

"Like a safe deposit box?" MacLaren prompted.

"Exactly. When we were first married and he wanted something out of it, he would ask me to open the combination lock, and then he would use the keys."

"What did he keep in it?"

"Well—there were some stock certificates, and a few bonds, and his mother's jewelry."

"Was it valuable?"

"Very." She hesitated. "At least the jewelry used to be there. I don't know for sure just what is there now."

MacLaren took the keys from his pocket and held them out in his palm. "Did your husband's keys look anything hke these?"

"Very much like them." The frown deepened and her brows were warped. "But I don't understand—"

Again MacLaren interrupted. "I'd Hke to see if they fit," he said. "I'm not going to tell you where I got them—yet, but if they fit I will."

He took a quick breath and went on hurriedly as some new excitement stirred in him. So far his hunch had been right, and he had also been lucky about other things. Now, because it was important that he sell the rest of the idea, he went on quickly as the confidence grew in him.

"Would you be game to ride into the city with me?"

"Oh—do you think we should?" she asked. "The police said I was to stay here."

"I know what they said, and I guess technically we'd be disobeying orders. But we could make it in less than two hours on the Turnpike. We could stop somewhere for dinner and probably be back here by eleven o'clock or before. . . . Please," he said when she continued to hesitate. "I think it could be important."

"Well—" She hesitated, some of the doubt still there. When he realized this he gave her no chance to reconsider.

"Good girl," he said. "I'll take you over to the Inn and be back for you around six."

He stepped to the dock with her bag and then gave her

a hand. He said she was not to worry. If anyone asked her where she was going, all she had to do was say that she was going out for dinner.

They tximed off the Turnpike near the state hne and had dinner at a place MacLaren knew, and it was just nine o'clock when he turned into this street in the east seventies and found a parking-space across from the house Ruth pointed out to him.

The recessed door she unlocked a minute later had a heavy antique look and MacLaren closed it behind him while she snapped on the hall hght. There was a closed door on the immediate right, and the hall itself led past a carpeted staircase that mounted along the left-hand wall. The doorway at the end stood open and MacLaren got a glimpse of a pohshed table and chair, suggesting that this was the dining-room, with the pantry and kitchen somewhere beyond.

When he had followed her to the second-floor landing and she had turned on another hght, he saw that this hall was divided. One part led to the stairs to the floor above; the other skirted the balustrade to lead to two rooms at the front of the house. Now, pointing to the open doorway at the rear, she said:

"That's the drawing-room. We go this way," she added, starting for the rooms at the front. "That's what we call the sitting-room"—she gestured toward the doorway at the left—"and this is the study."

She turned into this doorway and flicked a wall switch just inside. MacLaren was right behind her when she en-

tered, and she stopped so suddenly that he almost ran into her. He heard her small gasp and saw her shoulders stiffen. Not understanding what had happened, his glance moved on and he got a quick pictmre of a paneled room with its desk and leather chairs and the book shelves separating the two windows. He was about to ask what was the matter when he saw the mirror on the wall to the right.

Normally this oblong mirror would have stood snug against the wall. Now it stood out at right angles, hanging from some hidden hinges to disclose the wall safe that had been recessed behind it.

More important, the door of the safe had also been swung back. From where MacLaren stood it had a crooked look, and he stepped quickly round the girl, knowing now that it had been opened by force.