Slack tide (16 page)

"No," he said, "and I'm not going to argue with you, Sam. But we've been friends a long time and I'm in a spot. So is Mrs. Kingsley. I don't think we had anything to do with her husband's death."

"So why get tough with me? If you didn't do it, if they don't arrest you, how can you get hint?"

"Because that's not enough any more. Maybe the autopsy wiU bear me out and maybe it won't, but either way we'U always be under suspicion unless the pohce learn the truth and can prove it. Until the case is closed, I'U always be a suspect in the minds of some people. Everybody in town will know about it, and I have to hve here. When my father and mother come up in another few weeks, how do you think they're going to feel?"

He hesitated. When there was no reply, he said: "All right, Sam. Tell the police what you want to and—"

"You think they'U come here?"

"Certainly they'll come here. You're a witness, aren't you? Just remember this: If you're holding out on me— and I still don't know why you should—and I find out about it, I'm crossing you ojff my hst for good."

Again he hesitated, and the resentment was still in the man's face and in the brooding eyes. But there was something more now, a look of puzzlement and, for the first time, uncertainty. When there was no reply, MacLaren turned and left the room.

DON MacLAREN had too much pride to inquire at the desk for Ruth Kingsley when he went to the Inn for dinner, but that did not prevent him from hoping that he would see her. He ate at his usual small comer table and, it being Friday, the weekend people had begun their influx and the room was quite crowded. He tried to keep his attention on his food, but he could not help glancing up each time someone entered. He spoke to those who spoke to him and passed the time of day with those who stopped for a moment at his table, but as the meal progressed his moodiness increased.

He left at a quarter of eight and stalked out of the lobby, his craggy face serious and his dark-blue eyes brooding. He spoke to no one but the clerk, who asked him if he had enjoyed his dinner, and continued down the slope to the boatyard. Here he wondered briefly when someone would come to take the Annahelle 111 away, and noted that the owners were now aboard several of the other cruisers. When he had questioned Larry Keats about the amoimt of gas and oil he had sold, he dismissed the youth and sat down on the bench by the showroom as was his custom.

But not for long. In order to forget Ruth Kingsley he turned his mind to other things, and again he was reminded of his talk with Sam WiUis. He had looked forward to teUing Ruth that they had a friendly witness, but now.

as remembered things came back to him, an odd sense of dissatisfaction began to worry him that had nothing to do with the girl.

The focus of this dissatisfaction was Sam Willis. He recalled the change that had come over the man's face when he pressed him for additional information, and the stub-bom denial that he had seen more than he would admit. WiUis had never been an easy person to get along with. Always independent and opinionated, he was at times obstinate and unreasonable. But he was seldom a reticent man, and MacLaren found it hard to understand why WiUis should have resorted to an attitude of sullen silence when MacLaren had pressed him.

That is why he rose a few minutes later and started upstream toward his father's house. It would be dark shortly. There was a very fine pair of glasses in his father's desk, similar to Sam's Navy binoculars but older. He knew they were eflFective at night because he had used them often when cruising. If they were not as good as Sam's it did not matter greatly, but he knew he could not be satisfied until he had tried them out; only then could he have any accurate idea of their range and e£Fectiveness. Once he had looked through them he would know better just what Sam WiUis might have seen the night Kingsley died.

It was still not dark when he reached the house, so he sat down on a single stone step which led to the porch. Below him, the yard, the inlet, and the river beyond with its network of spars and rigging were stiU visible against the darkening sky. Here and there lights began to show in the cabin ports of the sailboats moored beyond the inlet.

and far ojff to the right he saw the hghts had been turned on at the bridge.

He was reaching for his pipe when he heard the shots.

In that first instant as they came to shatter the silence, he thought there were three but he could not be sure. Because the first, a sharp cracking sound, seemed to merge with the more explosive report which followed simultaneously. A similar sound came almost immediately, and then the night was still again.

For another three seconds MacLaren sat right where he was because he was too startled and surprised to move. For perhaps one more second he sought some explanation, and then he was on his feet and turning toward the corner of the porch.

A strange sense of foreboding was working on him now, and he could feel the skin start to tighten on the back of his neck. For he knew where the shots came from. They had a muflfled quahty, suggesting that they had been fired indoors, and there was no other house near by except Sam's.

He roimded the comer of the porch in long strides, a sudden urgency goading him on. At the opening of the hedge he hesitated and glanced up, aware that there was some light in the room, that the window was part-way open.

"SamI" he yelled. Then, his voice rising as some new feeling of alarm spread through him, he tried again. "Saml Are you all right?"

When there was no answer, he waited no more but pushed through the opening, and ran across the narrow yard to the door. Not speculating now, not trying to un-

derstand what had happened, yet knowing somehow that something was horribly wrong, he opened the door and pushed inside.

He started to call out once more, but before he could do so, he heard a door slam at the rear of the house. As the sound came to him, he turned toward it automatically.

A feeling of fear began to work on him as he crossed the room and started into the kitchen. It was not an intimate personal sense of fear, and he had no thought that he himself was in danger. But there was a curious tinghng at his nerve ends and a growing tightness in his chest.

Three strides took him across the kitchen, and he opened the door and stepped out. In the quiet moment that followed he was aware that there was still some hght in the sky. He saw the narrow yard with its bare patches, the hedge, the tangled growth of wild cherry and scrub oak trees that lay beyond. A narrow, seldom-used path curved off into the dark under the trees, and he was about to take an impulsive step toward it when the shot came.

He heard the slug hit the side of the house a foot from his head before he heard the sound of it.

At no time did he see anything, and what he did was instinctive. He had been shot at before in Korea and his reflexes were good. Half expecting a second shot, he dropped instantly, and as he hit the ground, it came.

He heard the thud in the shingles above him, and he stayed right where he was, his nerves still tight but his mind working furiously. He tried to see along the path and could not. There may have been the sound of someone

moving in the brush, but he could not be sure and he did not hear it again.

For another half minute he lay still, his ears sharply tuned, his eyes watchful. When he decided to get up, he did not tarry. One continuous movement brought him to his feet and wheeled him toward the door and then he was inside the kitchen. He could hear the thudding of his heart now. He could feel the moisture in his palms, and for a moment or two he tried to flex some of the stiffness from his muscles. All this was pure physical reaction and it took him awhile to activate his mind, to reahze there had been no sound from the room upstairs.

In that same instant the odd fear struck at him again and he hurried to the narrow staircase and started up. The silence ahead of him served only to increase his apprehension, and he spoke once more as he reached the doorway.

"Saml"

The stillness around him wiped out the word, and he moved in, seeing now that the light came from a gooseneck lamp in the corner. The easy chair near the window was empty, and it was only when he had taken one more step that he could see why Sam WiUis had not made some reply.

MacLaren seemed to know as his glance focused that Sam would never make any reply. Even in the shadows cast by the chair and the magazine-httered table, and seeing at first only the profile of the gaunt, still face, he found the look of death in the crumpled body. Wilhs had fallen partly on his side and partly on his stomach, as if he had been trying to get out of the chair when the bullets hit

him. The ankle with its dirty-white cast was drawn up at the knee. The .22 rifle lay within inches of one outstretched hand and the other was tucked beneath his stomach.

For another long second, surprise and shock held Mac-Laren motionless as his horrified gaze absorbed the picture. Then he was moving, stepping round the table and kneeling beside the still figure. He shook a hmp shoulder. He reached for a hand that was as warm as his own, and even as his first two fingers sfid up the bony wrist, he saw the moist dark stains on one side of the shirt.

The two tiny holes were perhaps six inches apart and the stains were still spreading. His fingers were damp and trembling as they explored the inside of the hmp wrist, and he tried three different places before he understood that there was no pulse here, that Sam WiUis was dead.

MacLaren was not sure how long he stayed there on his knees, looking down at the man who had taught him so much when he was a boy. Time no longer had any significance. His mind was still stunned and there was only sickness and despair churning in his stomach and polluting his mind.

Very gently, he released the wrist. He found his handkerchief and dried his hands, and gradually, as his brain began to function, his eyes grew watchful, and that is how he happened to notice the other half-hidden hand.

At first he had only this ghmpse of something that did not seem to belong there. Leaning close now, and bending down still more so he could look beneath the twisted figure, he saw that the fingers were clenched around what seemed to be a greenish piece of paper. He did not remove this.

but he loosened the fingers enough to reahze that Sam Willis had died clutching a fifty-dollar bill.

It was a new-looking bill and MacLaren did not touch it. Instead he backed off and straightened, and his mind recaptured the scene in OHver Kingsley's bedroom. It was then that Neil Ackerman had remarked that Kingsley had brought ten thousand dollars in new fifty-dollar bills to the island, money which someone had apparently taken from the steel-lined drawer.

There was no rehef for MacLaren when his mind began to speculate. The sickness stiU festered within him as he began to understand what must have happened here tonight. The basis of his understanding was his assessment of Sam WiUis's peimy-pinching ways. Money had always been a dominant and motivating force in the man's make-up. A killer had tempted him and Sam Willis had weakened. He had bartered his self-respect for a price, and it had cost him his hfe.

It was easy now to imderstand his stubborn silence that afternoon. The scratch pad on which he had doodled the series of figure eights was still on the table, and it seemed apparent now that he had already made this eight o'clock appointment before MacLaren had stopped in that afternoon. That Sam WiUis had seen far more with his Navy binoculars than he would admit was now obvious. But he was a shrewd and calculating man, by nature suspicious, and as MacLaren wondered why he had not taken more precautions against a surprise attack, his glance touched the rifle.

Again he went to his knees and, not touching it, he

leaned down far enough to sniff the muzzle. He knew at once that it had been fired recently, and a picture began to form in his mind as he tried to re-create the scene.

He could see Sam sitting in that easy chair, perhaps with the rifle in his hand. He must have felt that he was safe, and there was only one thing that MacLaren could think of that might put him off his guard: the sight of money.

Whether or not there had been some argument here was not important now. The killer may or may not have had murder in his mind when he came, but it seemed certain that he had come with the possibihty in mind, otherwise he would not have brought a gun. He had come with a thick stack of new fifty-dollar bills. Perhaps he had fanned them out for Sam Willis's inspection. Knowing Sam, it was even possible that the man had insisted on counting them first.

It seemed equally obvious that Wilhs had seen his danger, because MacLaren knew that the first small cracking sound he had heard had come from the .22. Willis had tried to use the rifle, had in fact fired it. He may have come to his feet and tried to struggle, but it had been too late then. For with the sound of the rifle had come the heavier sound of a revolver or pistol. The second shot had been added insurance, but even in death Sam WiUis had managed to salvage something. He had fallen, one fifty-dollar bill in his hand, a hand hidden imderneath him so that it had gone unnoticed by the one who had brought it here.

And even this, MacLaren reafized, was not as careless

as it now seemed. The fact that he had been sitting on his porch, that he appeared beneath the window not more than a few seconds later to call up and annomice his presence, had given the killer no time to count the bills. Escape had been the paramount issue. Under the circumstances it was the natural reaction. As it was, he barely made it; he might still have been caught if he had not fired at his pursuer.

Still on his knees, MacLaren let his glance move on across the threadbare carpet. He saw the ejected shell from the automatic rifle and, just beyond, there was a brownish smear and a shver of what could have been a bit of dried mud or dirt. He did not wonder about this at the time because his mind had moved on and when he rose he picked up the binoculars, finding them heavy but beautifully balanced as he moved to the window overlooking the inlet.

It was still not dark enough to make a fair test of the glasses and estimate their value, but he focused them on a buoy beyond the mouth of the inlet and adjusted the eyepiece. He took a look at Kingsley's cruiser as it stood out clearly in the gathering dusk. He had started to lower the glasses when some bit of movement caught the comer of his eye. It was as he glanced toward the island house that he saw the moving figure.