It's a Sin to Kill (16 page)

Ames swallowed the lump in his throat. Camden wasn't acting like he'd expected him to act. Either the man was a consummate actor or he had nothing to fear. He stopped backing and stood his ground. Down on the beach, when the maid's body had been recovered, Camden had denied having an affair with her. He naturally would deny such a thing. But he and Celeste could have plotted together. Celeste could have killed her mistress and arranged the scene to which he had awakened. Her surprise and fear on learning that Mrs. Camden wasn't aboard the
Sea Bird
could have been part of the act, as was the shot she had fired through the screen.

Camden was amused. “Now what's going through your bird brain?”

Ames told him. “Celeste. I think you were lying when you told White you weren't having an affair with her.”

“I suppose you can prove I was.”

Ames shook his head. “No.” He glanced at the framed picture of Helene Camden. “But if you were, I can imagine
what her reaction would have been if she found it out. She'd have cut you both off from the trough before you could open your mouths to deny it.”

Camden was even more amused. “And then I stabbed Celeste for fear she'd lose her nerve and give the game away.”

“Yes.”

“No,” Camden corrected him. “You forget. Tom Ferris alibis me from the time the inquest ended until an hour and a half after the time of death set by the local coroner.”

“It didn't take long to stab the girl. You could have said you were going to the bathroom.” Ames lost his self control and threw a hard right to Camden's face. “Talk, goddamn you, talk.”

Camden caught the punch on the palm of his hand and swung a hard left in return that rocked Ames back on his heels. “I've nothing to say,” he said. “But thanks for sobering me up. I don't like people who take punches at me. So I'm going to beat your face in. Then I'm going to turn you over to the law.” He accompanied the statement with a series of short rights and lefts that drove Ames back against the chest of drawers. “It was a good try, fellow, but it isn't going to work. If you think you can bluff me into sticking out my neck, you're crazy.”

Ames fought back desperately. He hadn't meant this to happen. He'd meant to be at the wheel and Camden had taken the plan away from him. He weathered the flurry of blows and fought his way out of the corner into which Camden had backed him.

The big man might have married Helene for her money, but he wasn't a coward. He continued to bore in, taking all that Ames could give him.

Ames took a low left to the groin to give a hard right to the jaw that caused Camden to gasp with pain and sent him reeling back into one of the twin beds. The bed caught his knees and he fell back on it. Ames was on him before he could get up, beating at his face with both fists.

“Talk. Admit you killed your wife or had her killed.”

Camden's head rolled from side to side. Blood ran out of his mouth. Ames got to his feet and stood panting, looking at the motionless figure. Now it all had to be gone through again. And time was running out.

He wiped the blood from his own nose with the back of
his hand. The silence in the room hurt his ears. He'd been through too much. It had gone on for too long. And he was still right where he had started, trying to climb a glass wall.

The throb of a motor attracted his attention. Ames opened the bedroom door and walked down the hall to the kitchen. The lights in the carport were on. Attorney Ferris was getting out of Helene Camden's car. The lawyer lit a cigarette and walked toward the kitchen door. Ames backed down the long hall.

When he reached the master bedroom he looked in. He'd done a better job on Camden than he'd realized. The big man was still unconscious, his once handsome face battered to a pulp.

From the kitchen Ferris called, “Hal!”

Ames walked on into the sunroom, an ugly thought nagging at his mind. Even if Camden were guilty, even if he'd been having an affair with Celeste, it still didn't explain how Celeste could have drugged the coffee in the cockpit of the
Sally
.

“Hal,” Ferris called again.

Ames walked on through the living room. He didn't want to talk to the lawyer. It wouldn't serve any purpose. He'd done all he could. The best thing for him to do was to go into town and surrender. He'd been a fool to make a break. He wasn't smart enough to solve this thing. He was just a blown out trumpet player turned charter boat captain and, more recently, goat for a killer. That was one of those bad breaks a man got. He'd have to take whatever a jury gave him while the guilty party went free. He'd been outclassed, outthought, outsmarted.

He couldn't run any further. He'd run as far as he could. Still, there was Mary Lou to consider. She was depending on him. He couldn't let her down.

Ames's headache was back again. Blood persisted in dribbling from his nose. His jaw was sore where Camden had punched it. He took another step toward the front screen door and stopped in the middle of his stride, the short hairs on the back of his neck tingling, as he realized that he was walking through the dark. The living room was no longer lighted.
Someone had turned off the lamp. Someone was in the room with him
.

Back in the unlighted hallway, standing in the doorway of the lighted bedroom, Ferris had discovered Camden. “For
God's sake, Hal,” he gasped. “What's happened to you?” Ferris' voice grew fainter as he entered the bedroom. “Hal!” He repeated, “Hal!”

Ames drew his almost forgotten gun from his pocket. His head turned slowly from side to side as if it were on a stiff swivel. Now that Ferris had stopped shouting, the only sound in the living room was the rasp of his own uneven breathing.

Ames's head continued to swivel from side to side. “Who's in here?”

There was a faint swish of silk. Something soft and almost soundless fell on the floor to his left. Ames turned and fired at the sound. He was aware instantly that he'd been tricked. The silk object was a thrown pillow and whoever had thrown it was behind him. He turned again and a hard round object that felt like a piece of pipe thudded against his head.

He tried to raise the gun and couldn't. His whole right side felt numb. Pain opened his fingers. He dropped the gun and fell on his hands and knees thinking,
This is what happened to Mary Lou
.

The swung pipe descended again, striking his shoulder. Ames cried out in pain but kept moving. The third blow struck his upper arm. For a moment Ames thought it was broken.

He forced himself on and fell against the screen door. It gave under his weight and spilled him out onto the patio. He got to his feet and ran. As he did, the gun he had dropped began to yammer almost hysterically, spraying the night around him with lead. Even after the cylinder was empty, the firing pin continued to click metallically against the empty shells.

Ames raced on across the lawn. At the edge of the water he stopped and looked back. The living room was still dark. No one had pursued him. He stood for a long moment waiting for the lights to come on and for Ferris to shout for the police.

When nothing happened, Ames was pleased. He felt better than he had at any time since he'd awakened in the cabin of the
Sea Bird
. He'd been on the right track, but he'd been pounding on the wrong man.

So now he knew.

Ames spat out a mouthful of blood. Then ducking under
the Camden pier, he walked back the way he had come. Halfway back to the fish house, he spotted a hobbling flashlight and the vague outline of a running man. Ames pressed his back to the bole of a water-killed palm and waited for the man to pass him.

He could have reached out and touched him. It was one of Sheriff White's boys, possibly the deputy who'd been staked out on the
Sally
. The deputy ran a few feet, then stopped and listened before running on again. Ames waited until the deputy reached the Camden pier before he moved on.

Ben Sheldon was no longer sitting on the loading platform of the fish house, but the fragrance of his cigar lingered. Ames looked across the basin at the
Sally
. There was no glow in the cockpit. The deputy he'd seen had been from the
Sally
. There would be more in a few minutes. A distant siren was wailing down the beach road. Tight little knots of men were gathered in front of Harry's Bar and The Fisherman's Lunch, looking up the road in the direction from which the shots had come.

He decided to chance the pier and crouching as low as he could, he walked along the line of bobbing fishing boats.

Shep was waiting where he'd said he would be. He cast off as soon as Ames had jumped down into the cockpit “Whereabouts now?” Shep asked.

Ames leaned against the live bait box, filling his lungs with air as he watched the shore recede. He knew what he wanted to do before he talked to White. He knew what he had to do before anyone would believe him. The roads and the causeways would be blocked, but the waterways were always open. The charter boat crowd and the commercial fishermen were always coming and going, at all hours of the day and night. Ames fingered the three bills in the still wet pocket of his coat. “How much gas you got, Shep?”

“Both tanks are full.”

“Think you could make Tampa by tomorrow morning?”

“Effen they ain't moved the channels since the last time I was there.” Shep swung the wheel over, hard. “You want t' go t' Tampa?”

“I'll give you a hundred dollars if you'll take me.”

“Put it.”

“It's a tough trip at night. You may rip the bottom out of your boat.”

“Could be,” Shep admitted. “We're apt t' get some wet then.” Still running without lights, he cut in his other motor. There was a surge of power. The
Falcon
knifed through the dark water under the draw of the bridge across the pass and headed for the open Gulf, where some ten miles out it could pick up the deep water channel running past quarantine into Tampa sixty miles away.

Ames's jaw was still sore. His arm hurt. Blood kept trickling from his nose. He wiped his nose with the sleeve of his coat and lighted a cigarette with fingers that still shook. “Thanks.”

“Jist don't mention money,” Shep said. “You concerned in that shootin' back there?”

Ames nodded. “Yes.”

“On what side?”

“I was shot at.”

Shep leaned out to spot the bell buoy marking the shallows off the hook. “Figured that. Who was a-doin' the shootin'?”

“I'm not quite certain,” Ames admitted. “But I think I know how to find out.” He braced himself against the rock of the boat as it knifed through the rip tides where the waters of the Gulf of Mexico joined those of Boca Grande Bay. “Look, Shep.”

Shep turned on his running lights. “Yeah?”

Ames wiped salt spray from his face. “If you wanted to use a man for a fall guy and get him from where he was to some other place without him raising a fuss or anyone seeing him — ”

“Yeah?”

“How would you go about it?”

“This happens in a boat?”

“Yes.”

“It's night?”

“Anyway it's dark.”

The grizzled guide debated his answer. “Well, first I'd talk nice t' him. I'd git him real interested in somethin'. Then when he wasn't watchin' I'd put somethin' in his whiskey or his coffee or whatever he was drinkin'. An' when he was snorin' good, I'd lower him over the side into a dinghy I'd brought with me an' row him right where I wanted him. Why?”

“That's what happened to me,” Ames said.

T
HE SIDEWALKS
of downtown Tampa were crowded with work-bound office employees, store clerks, minor executives and professional men. A steady stream of cars, three abreast, filled the streets. There was a continuous shrill of police whistles and a blare of automobile horns as the Latin-American citizenry acted as midwife to the new day being born.

Ames bought a morning
Tribune
from a boy on the corner of Franklin Street and moved on with the crowd. Palmetto City was a tourist town. It depended on its winter visitors for the bulk of its living. Tampa was a city. It had been a city when his grandfather had embarked from Port Tampa for Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American war. It had shipyards and cigar factories and heavy industry. Rusty and sleek freighters, banana boats, tankers, even a few passenger ships were warped into its docks from ports all over the world. It had an international airport serving the islands of the Caribbean and Central and South America. As much Spanish as English was spoken on its streets. There was a wide-awake feel to the town, unusual this far south. If it were possible for him to find out what he wanted to know, he could buy the information in Tampa.

There was a small restaurant in the next block. Ames sat at the crowded counter and ordered eggs and ham and buttered grits. The first thing he had to do was buy some clothes.

If Sheriff White had alerted the Tampa police, they would be looking for a charter boat captain wearing a tie-less white shirt, a blue serge suit, white sneakers and a white cap. His cap was on the bottom of Boca Grande Bay. Ames studied his clothes. Otherwise, he answered the description.

He read the paper while he ate his breakfast. He was big news even in Tampa, rather Helene Camden was. A reproduction of the framed picture he'd seen in the Camden living room took up a quarter of the first page. Most of the story was a re-hash of what he'd read in the Palmetto City paper Shep had had aboard the
Falcon
. Only one item was new. He read the Tribune's version of the shooting on the
beach with interest. It quoted Attorney Tom Ferris and Hal Camden verbatim.

According to Hal Camden, Ames was crazy. He had appeared out of nowhere and started to beat on Camden in an attempt to make Camden confess that he had killed his wife or had had her killed. Camden was virtuously indignant. He loved his wife very much. He had no reason, financially or otherwise, to want to see her dead. He had put up as good a fight as he could but Ames had beaten him unconscious.