The Kissed Corpse (8 page)

Burke picked one up and looked at it thoughtfully. “Good work. They're .25's all right. Where did you turn them up?”

Jelcoe looked cautiously into the house and his right eyelid did a solo rigadoon. In a hoarse whisper he said:

“Don't spoil it. I want to spring these on her all of a sudden. She's resting on the back porch while I've been poking around. I reckon she didn't expect me to find the evidence hidden in a baking powder can in the kitchen.”

“Probably not,” Burke agreed. He dropped the bullet back into Jelcoe's hand with the others. “Have you found the pistol yet?”

“No. But I will. I figure she ditched it in the ravine after killing her husband. I'll have a search party comb every inch of the slope.”

Burke nodded absently. His mind seemed to be on somethnig else and I had a feeling that he wasn't particularly disturbed about Jelcoe's find. He said, though:

“Perhaps you can frighten her into admitting something by sticking these bullets under her nose without warning.”

I wanted to laugh. Burke has a way of saying things in deadly earnest, yet giving an impression, to one who knew him as well as I did, that he was laughing inside.

“Just my idea,” Jelcoe said emphatically. He turned back into the house with a stride as nearly a strut as his thin legs and rounded shoulders could manage.

Burke and I followed him into a large living room. Bearskin rugs were scattered on the floor, and at one end there was a huge fireplace of native stone. Rows of well-worn books filled the bookcases lining one side, and a long center table was littered with books and papers. A covered typewriter sat on a desk in one corner.

Up above was a narrow balcony with its balustrade strewn with bright shawls and Indian rugs. A triple row of shelves held an array of what-nots which I imagined Leslie Young had brought from Mexico. There was nothing in particular to give the room an air of disarray, yet the impression was given. As if Myra Young gave little time and thought to housekeepng.

Jelcoe wore rubber-soled shoes and had a catlike way of treading soundlessly. He reminded me of Slim Summerville in a burlesque. We followed him to a door leading onto a screened rear porch which gave onto a splendid vista across a small wooded valley. The stone gables of the magnificent Dwight mansion peeped through treetops on a small plateau beyond the valley.

Myra Young lay outstretched on a leather-cushioned glider. She wore a man's khaki shirt, faded riding breeches and well-worn boots. Her black hair was uncombed, her mouth sullen. Little lines ran down from the corners of it as if she spent many hours with desperately unhappy thoughts, during which her lips drooped. Her dark eyes were smouldering when she looked up from a book in her lap and saw Jelcoe standing in front of her. She didn't seem to notice us standing slightly behind him.

“I told you to go ahead with your detecting and leave me alone,” she flared.

“I'm all through.” Chief Jelcoe's voice was oily with certitude. “I believe you told me you didn't have a pistol?”

She tensed and then relaxed. “I did tell you that. And I haven't.”

“Then why are these hidden in your house?” Jelcoe palmed his find under her nose.

She glanced down at the brass cylinders and shrugged disdainfully. “Hidden?”

“In a baking powder can where you didn't think I'd find them.”

“It's no concern of mine whether you found them or not.”

“Is that so? Where's the pistol that they fit?”

“It was Leslie's pistol.”

“A .25?” Jelcoe leaned forward and his voice was harsh. “That's a lady's choice … not a man's.”

“Leslie bought it for me … for my protection when I was alone here while he was traipsing off God-knows-where.” Myra Young managed to put a sneer into the words without changing her facial expression.

“Ah! He bought it for you? Then you did own a .25 pistol? Why didn't you tell me that yesterday instead of denying it?”

“I don't own a pistol. I've never owned a pistol. Leslie bought the one those bullets are for.” She swung her legs off the cushions and sat up, seeing Burke and me behind Jelcoe. Her eyes narrowed and she said:

“Reinforcements, eh? Are the three of you going to try and beat a confession out of me?”

Jelcoe waved a bony finger under her nose. “Where is that pistol?”

“I don't know.” She stood up and her lips were twisted. Her hips filled out the riding pants, and the loose shirt didn't wholly conceal full breasts.

“Someone stole it three weeks ago. It disappeared after that Yates wench was here the last time. You might ask her where it is. She probably stole it because she was afraid I might use it on her … and I might have. Now, get the hell out of my house … all of you. If you want to accuse me of murdering my husband, get out a warrant and arrest me. Until you're ready to do that I don't want to see any of you around here again.”

Her face was white and her lips seemed swollen, drawn away from her teeth. Burke and I went out the front door into the sunlight while Chief Jelcoe backed away, protesting that she should be interested in helping discover who murdered her husband.

“Why should I be?” Her shrill voice carried out to us in the front yard. “I'm not weeping any tears over him. He got what he's been asking for. Whoever shot him probably had a good reason. Don't ask me to help you.”

Jerry Burke looked at me with twinkling eyes while Jelcoe backed hastily out the front door.

“She certainly doesn't give a damn who knows how she feels about the whole thing,” I suggested.

Burke nodded. “She's on the verge of hysteria. I'd say she isn't responsible.…” His voice trailed off into silence as Jelcoe came up, sputtering indignantly:

“She'll be a surprised widow if I do come back with a warrant. She was here by herself yesterday afternoon, with no alibi and every chance in the world to have pulled the job. A stolen pistol! I wonder who she meant by ‘that Yates wench'?”

“Miss Laura Yates,” Burke told him with a smile. “She lives in an apartment in the 3800 block on Tularosa. She's the last person known to have seen Leslie Young alive.”

Jelcoe's jaw sagged and both his eyelids did a hula dance. “Is she the one Young met up the canyon?”

Burke nodded. “Her apartment hasn't been searched for lethal weapons.”

Chief Jelcoe went trotting toward his car. Looking after him, I asked:

“Do you suppose he'll find the pistol?”

“Not in Laura Yates' possession. If she did steal a .25 automatic and kill her paramour with it, she's too cagy to leave it lying around for Jelcoe to find. Come on. We're going up the canyon where X marks the spot.”

As he drove down to the paved road he asked casually: “What do you make of her?”

I knew he meant Myra Young. It wasn't an easy question to answer. I honestly didn't know what to make of her. I said: “She doesn't bother to put on any outward semblance of grief.”

“She didn't yesterday … even when we first brought news that her husband had been murdered.”

“Yet, she's supposed to have been jealous of him,” I argued. “A woman isn't jealous of a man she doesn't love.”

Burke drove slowly, his expression one of preoccupation. “I got the idea yesterday that she has been hanging onto Leslie for some time, knowing it was a losing game … knowing that he cared, temporarily at least, for someone else. I felt, somehow, that it was more of a relief to her than anything else to suddenly realize that the struggle was ended and she didn't have to keep on trying to stave off what she knew was inevitable.”

There was a culvert just ahead. A gully flattened out into the wooded valley. We both knew that spot. Burke slowed crossing the culvert, turned to the right on a little-used road, drove into a clump of trees and stopped.

We looked around wordlessly for a minute or two. Then I said, “This is where Laura Yates met him,” more to myself than to him. The grass was badly trampled but there was still a rusty splotch of blood where Young's body had lain. I was still thinking that a man had been kissed, marked with a cross … murdered, when Burke said:

“No use wasting time here. Jelcoe and his human bloodhounds have been over every inch of the ground. If there'd been a clue, Jelcoe wouldn't have missed it. He does get the facts.”

He led the way beyond the shaded spot into bright sunlight. I stopped beside him, looking up the slope of the Young cabin. “It's much less than a mile straight down here from the house,” I pointed out.

Burke nodded, following my thought: “If she knew about this meeting place she could easily have followed him unseen, hidden in the brush and watched that last fatal kiss from Laura Yates' rouged lips … then let him have it after Laura had driven away.”

“What about the two-barred cross on his cheek?”

“That,” Burke admitted, “is just one of a lot of things I wish I understood.”

Up the other slope, to our left, was the low stone wall surrounding the Dwight estate. Gray stone turrets showed their tops above the wall.

Burke's eyes narrowed as his gaze went from the Young cabin across the ravine to the Dwight estate. He slid down the bank to the rock-strewn bottom of the dry wash and started following its winding course upward.

I moved along behind him without asking any questions. His broad shoulders were hunched forward and he moved as stealthily as an Indian scout. I didn't have the faintest idea what sudden thought had come to him, but I knew it was important and that I'd know in good time.

Thorny mesquite branches whipped our faces and the tiny fangs of catclaw bushes tore at our clothing. Not a breath of air stirred in the gully and the sun blazed down mercilessly upon us.

It was slow going, with Burke taking every precaution to make no sound. I followed just as cautiously without in the least knowing what or who he was stalking.

It must have taken us half an hour to cover much less than a mile when Burke suddenly stopped. Moving close to look over his shoulder I saw in front of him the unmistakable mark of footprints crossing the gully at right angles. They were jumbled and messy in the loose sand, pointing in both directions. Traces of an old path showed on each side of the gully, now overgrown with fresh foliage which showed distinct signs that the old path had been lately traversed.

While Burke stood there peering down at the footprints as though they proved something important, the thought came to me that we must be in an almost direct line between the Young cabin and the Dwight mansion. I thought that might be significant and was on the point of mentioning it to Burke when we heard the sound of approaching footsteps from our right.

Burke stepped backward without warning and the sudden impact of his heavy body almost knocked me down. He grabbed my arm and pushed me back cautiously around a bend where we were screened from view by the leafy branches of a mesquite. We stood close together, our eyes glued to the crossing, and the footsteps came closer by the moment.

I don't know whom I expected to see. Certainly not Myra Young.

But we both saw her clearly as she slid down into the gully, stalked across in her riding boots and climbed up the other side toward the Dwight estate.

She was bareheaded and her face was flushed; whether from the sun or from some inner emotion I could not tell.

We stood with the sweat dripping down from our faces until the sound of her footsteps died away in the afternoon stillness.

“What do you make of it?” I asked Burke excitedly.

He shook his head. “If the MUM case taught me anything at all it was never to indulge in a theory. Come on. You and I are going to pay Mr. Raymond Dwight an informal visit. Perhaps he'll serve us tea and crumpets.”

9

A two-lane concrete drive curved off the main road between magnificent granite columns. The upward sweep of rocky slope had been sodded to thick turf and expensively landscaped with exotic shrubbery and trees which God hadn't intended to bloom this close to the desert. The layout
looked
as though it might easily have set Dwight back a million bucks, and the upkeep on it must have swallowed up the income from a couple more millions.

It was a good half mile to the sprawling two-story mansion flanked by tennis courts, formal gardens, and even a palm-bordered swimming pool remindful of pictures you see—and don't believe—of Hollywood estates.

Burke parked in a semi-circular concrete area in front of the house and we walked down a path of marble flagstones leading beneath an arbor of climbing roses to a wide front porch with granite columns supporting a second-story balcony. The flagged walk turned off to the right and left just in front of the steps, and we paused there as we heard a shrill voice coming around from the right side of the house:

“But I saw her come. Just a few minutes ago. She's making up to Pops with her own husband not buried yet. It's goddamn indecent if you ask me.”

We couldn't tell whether the answering voice was male or otherwise. It was throaty and effeminate:

“That sun-bath technique looked like a decoy to me from the first. I had a hunch she knew all along that she was showing herself off in front of a telescope.”

“Pops wouldn't listen when I tried to tell him she was just giving him the old come-on. You know how he is when he sees soft meat.”

Jerry Burke's fingers were biting into my arm. He led me quietly along the walk toward the voices.

“She was smart enough to make him come after her,” the second voice drawled.

“And to stall him with a virtuous act until her husband was well out of the way. Then, she comes running.”

“What we need,” the effeminate voice suggested, “is another little drink.”

Burke kept going when we reached the corner of the house. Four huge oaks made a triangle of heavy shade over two figures lying belly-down on a Navajo blanket. A silver serving tray stood on the grass in front of them, holding four frosted silver julep cups and two empties. Their buttocks were toward us as we approached on the thick grass and it was difficult to determine which pair, if either, was masculine.