False colors (12 page)

"I'm the kind," I said, "that has a clean conscience."

"Yeah? You must have washed it out fast. Sit up, will you?"

I sat up and put on my shoes. "All right," I said. "What's on your mind?"

McCann looked at the cop. "What's on my mind, he says. Do you know of any crime we could ask him about?"

"Somebody tried to bump off a dame," the cop said, taking a practical view of things.

McCann turned back to me, and pulled out his thick notebook. "Name and address?" he said. I gave them to him, and he said, "Miss Raymond has got over the shock now. She remembers everything. Of course you know the spot that puts you in. So suppose you give me your side of it."

I said mildly, "I'm not going to take sides."

"What do you mean you're not gonna take sides? You're in a bad jam, fellow. Do you know what you could get for assault and battery with intent to kill?"

"Well, no. But I suppose I'll find out in court."

"Why did you do it, Meadows?"

"Why did I do what?"

McCann looked at the cop again. The cop took out his blackjack with his right hand and weighed it in his left. "If we worked him over," he said, "the stains wouldn't hardly show- on all this red stuff."

"Save it for tough drunks," McCann said wearily. "Look,

Meadows, I don't care who you know at the Hall, he won't get you out of this."

"I didn't think he would," I said. "The only guy I know at the Hall is a clerk in the Register of Wills office. He was very helpful when I had to look up a will a couple of years ago, but I don't think he'd want me to call on him for this."

"Are you gonna tell me your side of the story or not?"

"What good would it do me?"

"You might clear yourself."

"I thought only a jury could do that."

McCann said, "If you're gonna commit felonies, you better learn what happens. First somebody's got to make a complaint, either the victim or the police. If you got a good enough story, maybe we laugh off the complaint. Then the DA has to figure should he drop the charges or not. Then he goes to the Grand Jury and asks for an indictment, and the Grand Jury decides if there's enough evidence to send the case to trial. Then we go to court and have a trial. Anywhere along the line, if you got a good enough story, you can skip out."

"All right," I said, "let me try out my story on you. I came up here tonight to see Miss Raymond. The door was open and nobody answered my ring. So I walked in. She was on the floor in the living room. When I reached the doorway she stirred and looked up and started to scream. She wouldn't stop so I grabbed the phone and called the desk."

"That's better," McCann said soothingly. "Go on."

"You don't like it?"

"Sure I like it. But we got to have details. You called the desk and said that somebody had just tried to strangle Miss Raymond and—"

"You're starting to play rough," I said. "I didn't say a word about strangling. I told the desk they had a woman having hysterics up in 6B."

"Just a slip of the tongue on my part," McCann said.

"Just a slip of the noose, you mean."

"Don't take it that way. I want to help you."

"Good. How about recommending a red-hot lawyer?"

"Maybe you won't even need a lawyer if you come clean. Now the night before this, you was up here visiting Miss Raymond and it seems you wanted to play house and she had to threaten to call the management to make you leave. What about that?"

"I think you're wrong about me not needing a lawyer." "Things work out better if you play ball with the police." "In this case they might only work out better for the police." "Look, Meadows, you got to give me your side of the story." "Oh, no, I don't. I don't have to say a word. But you seem like a nice guy trying to do his job, so if it'll make you feel better I'll talk about the Schuylkill Expressway or the Philadelphia Wage Tax or some other subject of general interest." The cop said, "Do you have to take this from the guy?" "He'll loosen up," McCann said. "Let him think about it a while."

He walked around the room a few times, and then pulled up a chair and sat down facing me. He made several pages of notes in his book. He puckered his lips in silent whistles. He studied my face and made some more notes. Finally he took out the blue-green length of silk that had been coiled on the Rig beside Kay Raymond. He examined it thread by thread. He ran it slowly through his fingers. Then he tied a noose in it and slipped the noose over his left hand and tightened it around the wrist. He held up the free end and let his wrist dangle limply from the noose, as if it had been hanged.

"This is quite gruesome," I said. "How soon should I go to pieces?"

"You don't make me sore," McCann said. "Guys like you just make me determined. You ready to be sensible yet?"

"I'm being sensible. In the first place, I haven't been officially charged with anything. That means Miss Raymond hasn't directly said I attacked her. Because if she had, you wouldn't be questioning me here. You'd be taking me to the police station. So why should I defend myself against a charge that hasn't been made?"

"Wise guy," McCann said, disgustedly. "She'll make the

charge, all right. It's just that she's tired and confused, and I let her take a phone call that tired her out some more, and—"

"What kind of a phone call?"

"Where do you get oh 0 , asking me questions? And speaking of phone calls, I hear you got away with one a little before we showed up. What did you do, ask somebody to turn the heat on Miss Raymond or buy her off?"

"You have a nasty mind."

"Yeah. That's why I sometimes get the right answers. I—"

Somebody rapped on the closed bedroom door. The cop opened it, peered out. Then he stepped back and Kay Raymond waltzed in. She had draped a white silk scarf around her neck, probably to hide the marks left by the strangler. You might have thought she would be a bit superstitious by now about having silk scarves around her neck. But perhaps women have no time for any superstition that might keep them from looking their best.

"Oh, poor dear Pete," she crooned. "I'm so terribly sorry you've been suspected. I do hope you'll forgive me and put it down to the shock of what happened."

I stared at her and made fish-out-of-water sounds. Things were moving a little too fast for me.

"You wanna he down?" McCann asked me in a rasping voice. "That seems to be quite a jolt."

"Please be nice to him," Kay said. "He's had an awful experience."

"Hah!" McCann said. "I had the awful experience. No charges, Miss Raymond?"

"Of course not. As soon as I remembered things clearly, I knew that poor Pete didn't attack me. He probably saved my life."

McCann said, "And you got no idea who tried to choke you?"

"A burglar, I suppose."

"You want to give me a list of what this burglar took?"

"I don't think he could have taken anything before Pete frightened him off."

"How do you know?" McCann said. "You ain't had a chance to look around."

"I'm sure he couldn't have had time to steal anything," Kay said brightly. "But if I find anything missing, I'll let you know."

McCann closed his notebook with a snap, like an alligator missing a meal by an inch. "Okay, Meadows," he said. "I got a nasty mind and I'll bet I had the right answer. Come on, Joe. Let's clear out." He trudged heavily out of the bedroom with the cop following.

I shut the door so I wouldn't be overheard and turned back to Kay. "That was quite an act you put on," I said. "You never for one minute thought I was the strangler."

"Of course not," she said, giving me a smile that would have looked natural on one of her African masks.

"You were paying me back for last night?"

"Oh, partly."

"Who was it tried to knock you off?"

"That burglar you walked in on, of course. Don't forget you owe me something. When I started to come to, I saw him going for you with a knife. I'm afraid I got hysterical. But that screaming may have saved your life."

"Don't give me that burglar stuff. You know perfectly well who the guy with the knife was."

"I couldn't be less interested."

"He was tricked into coming here by a phone call. I trailed him. He went for me because he thought he was being framed."

"How complicated it all is," Kay said, yawning. "Really too much for poor little me."

"Was it a frameup? Did you fake those marks on your throat?"

"You're a suspicious creature, aren't you? By the way, I don't think we should stay in here any longer with the door closed. Your friends in the living room might wonder about us."

"Friends? What friends?"

"Nancy Vernon and Sheldon Thorp."

"Let me out of here," I said, heading for the door.

"Yes," she cooed, "you wouldn't want to worry Miss Vernon.

Such a sweet girl. Smart, too. Imagine her being clever enough to bring me a little gift."

That detective, McCann, didn't have a nasty mind at all. Just a practical one. Kay had been bought off. "I see it now," I muttered. "You've got your hands on that painting again."

"And this time," Kay said, "I also have my hands on a bill of sale. I always say it's better to be legal—if you can."

10.

I brushed past her and opened the door and went into the living room and found Nancy and Sheldon. Everybody else had gone. Nancy was sitting on the edge of the couch, her fingers laced together as if it was a struggle to keep them out of somebody's hair. Sheldon was studying the bronze animal mask from the Ivory Coast.

When I came in, Nancy jumped up and took a couple of quick steps toward me. Then she stopped and said, "Are you all right, Pete?"

"I'll live," I said.

Sheldon turned. "Hello there, old man. Hear you had quite an evening. All's well that ends well, what?"

He looked very poised and superior, and he made me feel like something a bum would throw away. "Let's not be so jolly," I said. "I'm not sure that anything has ended and I don't know what's good about it."

"You might at least thank Nancy," Sheldon said. "She went to a lot of trouble to get you out of this."

Nancy said, "But you ought to get the credit, Sheldon. After all it was your idea."

I was saying the wrong things but I couldn't help myself. "Thank you both very much," I said. "Now I will pack up my criminal record and go home, if nobody minds."

"Take it easy, old man," Sheldon said. "Whatever happened, nobody's going to hold it against you."

Behind me, Kay said in a hoarse but rather cheerful whisper, "If I can forgive him, you people should be able to. I don't suppose you'd all like to stay for a drink?"

"This late at night," I said, "I never touch cyanide."

"No, we'd better go," Sheldon said. "Although some time I'd like to drop in at your shop, Miss Raymond, and see if you have any more bronze masks like these. I did some hunting in Africa after the war and saw some of these masks being used in tribal ceremonies. Always wanted a few. But the beggars wouldn't part with them. Are you ready, Nancy?"

"I've been ready to leave ever since we set foot in the place," Nancy said.

We headed for the door and Kay opened it for us. "Thanks so much for the painting," she said. Then, before I could move, she leaned forward and kissed me. "Just to prove there are no hard feelings," she said.

I looked at Nancy and saw that Kay couldn't have been more wrong about the hard feelings. We took the elevator downstairs and Nancy said she wanted to go home. I wasn't sure whether she wanted me to trail along or not, but I stayed around anyway. We started walking toward Nancy's house on Delancey Place.

"How did you get in on this?" I asked Sheldon.

"Just by chance, old man. I dropped in at Nancy's house tonight, to see if anything interesting had happened since the painting was stolen. While I was there, you called. So Nancy told me the story and asked what we ought to do."

I didn't like the way he said "we." It was too possessive. "You told him everything?" I asked Nancy.

She jabbed an elbow warningly into my ribs, and said, "Yes, of course. I told him Kay Raymond tried to buy the painting yesterday afternoon, and that we suspected her of stealing it last night. And I told him how we got it back."

"Can't imagine why she wanted the thing so badly," Sheldon

said. "After all, it's only a smear of color. Do you have any ideas, Pete?"

Nancy's elbow nudged me again. Apparently she didn't want me to mention the faked Van Gogh. "I don't have any ideas," I said. "You never know what will appeal to a person."

"Well, anyway," Sheldon said, "when Nancy told me the story, I wondered if we could buy off that playmate of yours."

"Don't call her my playmate."

"All right, Pete," Sheldon said, chuckling, "I admit it didn't seem like play."

"Sheldon," I said, "we'll get along better if you'll quit giving me the needle."

"Suppose I don't want to get along better?"

"Oh, stop it, both of you," Nancy said.

"I'm sorry," Sheldon said. "Pete and I have known each other a long time. Now and then we get on each other's nerves. Go ahead and tell Pete how you had that brilliant idea about the painting."

"It was really your idea, Sheldon."

"Was it? I'd forgotten. Anyway, we decided it might be worth while to try to get Miss Raymond on the phone, and offer her that painting if she would withdraw any charges against you."

"And you gave me a key to the shop yesterday," Nancy said. "So we hurried down there and found the painting under your desk pad, the way you said, and telephoned that woman from there."

"She was willing to listen to reason," Sheldon said. "In fact, if we hadn't made the offer, I think she would have suggested it."

"So that's all there was to it," Nancy said. "Now what about you, Pete?"

"Why don't I make it easy for everybody to believe?" I said. "Why don't I merely say that I dropped up to see Kay and passion got the better of me and when she resisted I tried to choke her."

"Come on now, Pete," Sheldon said. "A few things may have

got the better of you during your life, but I don't think passion is one of them."