The Kissed Corpse (18 page)

Burke shook his head, his eyes wary. “I don't know. We certainly can't eliminate him. But he just doesn't add up for me … yet.”

“It seems to me he's the only one who does,” I protested. “He had the opportunity and certainly the motive for tonight's job. He as good as admitted he had found and destroyed whatever documentary evidence Dwight was holding over his head.”

Burke nodded and said:

“There were five others with a possible motive and opportunity. Desta, Marvin, Michaela, Pasqual … and Laura.”

“I believe Hardiman lied about seeing Laura sneak into the house,” I stated emphatically.

“Possibly.” He gave me an odd glance, and I had an idea that in some little corner of his mind that wasn't chock full of serious contemplations, he was laughing at my vehemence. “However,” he resumed, “we know she was on the grounds at about the right time. Just as she was in the Young case.”

“Good God!” I exclaimed. “Can you sit there and tell me you believe a woman is responsible for two cold-blooded murders in succession?”

He smoked his pipe placidly. “Study the annals of crime,” he drawled. “There's a lot of truth in the old axiom that the female of the species is more deadly than the male. They have a way of going to extremes once they start something.”

“I can't believe it of any woman who was there tonight.”

“There's Desta. Don't you have a feeling there's something queer about her?”

“Plenty,” I agreed emphatically. “Though I don't know whether you're thinking of the same connotations as I.”

“U-m-m. Something unnatural and abnormal. Why, for instance, did she fly at Myra Young so fiercely on those two occasions?”

“A daughter naturally resents having her father carry on with another woman,” I said lamely.

“Nonsense. You're forgetting the sort of crowd that kid travels with. You can't actually believe she was shocked by a thing like that.”

“It did seem peculiar,” I admitted. “Which is just what that gal is if you ask me. What do you think she did when I took her outside to question her?”

“Don't tell me that she … er … took advantage of you?” A wide grin spread over his face.

“I was practically raped before I could get her back in. And it wasn't a normal sort of passion. I don't know how to put it, Jerry, but she's got a screw loose.”

He nodded. “Nymphomania … and maybe something else. Something we don't want to lose sight of. A father complex.…” His voice trailed off uncertainly.

I went to the liquor cabinet and came back with a bottle of brandy and two glasses. Burke watched approvingly as I poured two drinks. He took an appreciative sniff and said:

“It's good to get something like this after the fancy mixed stuff I drank out at Dwight's.”

I sat down and said: “We've gotten sidetracked away from the cross. It intrigues me, Jerry.”

“Crosses,” he corrected. “Three of them. One on Michaela's letter … one daubed on Young's cheek … and
this.
” He picked the silver cross up and looked at it.

“Does it look like the one you said Young showed you once?”

“Very much. An exact duplicate, as nearly as I recall. There must be some particular significance attached to the double bar.”

“The symbol of the double-cross,” I suggested jokingly.

“Maybe you've got something there.” He spoke seriously. “Could the symbol on Michaela's note been a warning for Leslie not to double-cross her? Or, had he already double-crossed her, and was the symbol a subtle warning?”

I said: “I still like Hardiman for a suspect.”

“Let's get down to earth and see exactly where we stand.”

“You said in the beginning that if you knew
why
Young was invited to the
hacienda
, you could deduce
who
wanted to keep him from going … and would know the murderer.”

He nodded stubbornly. “I still maintain that the invitation and the telephoned threat contain the vital clue to the entire affair. Let's examine what we know about the meeting at the
hacienda
. Why was Young invited?”

“Because Michaela wanted him to meet Dwight and Hardiman there.”

“Assuming the only connection between them was through her father, she would know Young's Communistic leanings and might reasonably expect him to bitterly oppose a crooked deal being put through—by a hated capitalist—at the expense of a government which is striving desperately toward socialism.”

“From that, you might infer that she asked Young to come because she thought he might throw a monkey wrench in the works … which further infers that
she
wanted to spoil the deal.”

“Exactly. That's perfectly in line with what we know of her political convictions.”

“But she's been helping to get Dwight and Rodriguez together,” I protested.

“Wait a minute. That's merely been an assumption. That's what she appeared to be doing. How do we know she hasn't been secretly working against it all along? Look at it this way: Hardiman puts the pressure on Rodriguez in Mexico City. Mexico is determined to avoid a quarrel with us over the oil payments. If a payment to Dwight will appease our State Department (as represented by Hardiman) it would be sensible for Mexico to accede to the demand on the promise that a single payment would suffice.”

Burke paused to sip some brandy.

“All that makes sense,” I agreed. “Mexico is torn by internal dissension and certainly wants no serious quarrel with us. Yet, it's physically impossible for her to pay for all the property she's expropriated. If paying Dwight's claim would satisfy our State Department, they would likely do it. But I still don't understand how Michaela fits into it.”

“She could have learned of the impending deal in Mexico City … and determined to prevent it if possible. By pretending to act as a go-between and getting into Dwight's confidence, she would be in a good position to break it up. She could make a pretence of helping him while all the time she waits for a chance to stick a knife in his back.” He paused abruptly, got up and paced back and forth.

It did make sense. It explained the hitherto inexplicable message to Leslie Young. It supplied, by God, a perfect motive for Dwight's murder.

“But it doesn't,” Burke said as though reading my mind, “explain Young's death … with the double-cross emblem marked on his cheek.”

I sighed and poured myself a little more brandy.

“Nor the shot Myra heard tonight,” Burke added.

“Do you think she actually heard a shot, Jerry?”

He looked puzzled. “I don't know. She must have heard something.”

“No one else did.”

“U-m-m.” He came to the table rubbing his jaw. “Perhaps she was listening for a shot … expected one. That would explain her hearing it while no one else did.”

“Or she might have had some foreknowledge of Dwight's impending murder … without knowing what method the killer would use. With her husband's death vividly in her mind, she would expect a second murder to also be committed with a pistol and her subconscious mind would magnify some slight sound into the shot she expected to hear.”

He said, “Maybe.”

“You've got something else on your mind,” I charged. “Don't hold out on me.”

He picked up his glass and sniffed the brandy. “It isn't anything I can explain. A feeling … a hunch.…” He lapsed into silence, staring at the floor.

“What about Laura Yates?” I asked, after a short interval.

“I don't know, Asa. Damned if I can figure her.” He shot me a keen glance. “You … could go for her, couldn't you?”

I tried to answer honestly. “I don't know. That is … well, I
don't
know. If things were different … but I can't help thinking and wondering … that lipstick on Young's mouth and the lipstick daubed on his cheek.…”

“Everything points to the feminine motif,” Burke agreed calmly.

“Maybe … maybe that's what we were meant to think,” I said excitedly. “Maybe the killer took pains to give it the feminine touch. That is …” I paused to straighten out my sudden thought, then went on: “Laura practically admitted kissing him just before he was killed. That accounts for the lipstick on his mouth. If the killer saw that … mightn't he heighten the impression by marking the cross on his victim's cheek with lipstick … just to confuse the issue and throw us off the track.”

“The only thing wrong with that theory,” Burke pointed out gruffly, “is that male murderers aren't likely to have a lipstick handy.”

“Still,” I insisted, “it's possible. And you always contend that we mustn't disregard any possibility no matter how remote.”

“Right you are.” Burke emptied his glass, stood up and slapped me on the back. “I have an idea tomorrow … or today, rather … will answer all our questions.”

He picked up the silver cross and stared at it with puckered forehead. “The double-cross! Could Young have been a double-crosser? And Dwight? We know Dwight would double-cross his grandmother for a Mexican
peso
. In fact, this deal with Hardiman as the goat was nothing more than a gigantic double-cross on all the other oil firms whose property was expropriated along with his … and on both governments. Dwight fits in all right. Not Young, though.” He shook his head, dropped the double-barred cross with a thump.

“It's late for an old man to be up, Asa. If we write finis to the case tomorrow we'll have to do a lot of stirring around. The brandy, beer, and the dog-food were excellent. Particularly the dog-food. You're a lucky pair of critters.” He bent to pat the dogs.

I went to the door with him. “Don't cross any bridges until you reach them,” he advised with his hand on my shoulder. “And don't make Jelcoe's mistake of believing things are what they seem. So often, things aren't.”

He sighed and I had a feeling that he was worried about the outcome of the case. Not about his ability to solve it … but what the ultimate solution would be, and (I was afraid) how the solution would affect me.

Which could only mean he hadn't wholly dismissed Laura from his mind as a suspect.

I stood in the lighted doorway and watched him stride down the path, get in his car and drive away. By God, I envied him his one-track mind and his utter lack of sentiment. He was like a machine while on a case. An intelligent, highly rational machine, but with no more human emotion inside of him than if he was actually made up of cogs and gears.

I wished to God I knew how to acquire his impersonal aloofness. It seemed to me it would be swell to be like that.

I was disgusted with myself, but I couldn't get Laura off my mind. I whistled to the dogs and took them over to the park. I wasn't sleepy. I felt as though I'd never be sleepy again. At least not until the case was ended and written into a book where I could forget it.

It was Hardiman of course. It had to be Hardiman. I pitied the poor devil and wished I could see some out for him … but there aren't any outs for murderers. I had no idea what he had done in the past to give Dwight a hold on him, but I was pretty sure he'd paid for it a hundred times, no matter what it was. Dwight was the kind of man who would have exacted the last pound of flesh from such a situation.

But there was some connection between Laura and Hardiman. Much as I hated to admit it, I knew there had to be. I knew Burke realized it, too.…

Tuck broke into a trot as we went up the walk. He leaped up the steps and over the threshold with a joyous little yap, while Nip hung back at my side, her neck hair rising.

I stopped in the open doorway and stared at Laura, who sat comfortably at the table with a glass of my brandy in her hand.

18

She appeared perfectly at ease, sipping my brandy and waiting to welcome me into my own home. I wasn't at all sure she wasn't a double murderess, yet her very coldness had a physical allure that did funny things to me.

Nip and I went in together and I heard my voice saying: “Oh, it's you?”

She nodded. “The front door was open so I just walked in and made myself at home.”

I circled her and poured a drink of brandy which I put down in one gulp. It didn't help very much.

I pulled out a chair and sat down, muttering: “Do you know Jerry Burke is combing the city for you?”

She laughed. “That's one reason why I'm here. He isn't likely to come back tonight, is he?”

“How did you know he has been here?”

“I've been crouched out behind the hedge waiting for him to leave for the past hour.”

My fingers went to the lump on my head. “You've done a lot of crouching behind my hedge tonight, haven't you?”

She asked: “What are you talking about?”

“You know damned well,” I flared. “You can't deny you slugged me or had me slugged to get Jerry's telegram.”

“I do deny it,” she said pleasantly.

I didn't actually believe her, but I let it go at that.

I took a sip of brandy and set myself to pull a fast one such as you read about in the best detective fiction. As I set my glass down, I asked:

“Why did you kill Raymond Dwight?”

I meant to put it so casually that she'd be caught off-guard and answer truthfully before she had time to collect her thoughts.

I'm afraid I didn't put it over very well. She was surprised, all right, but not enough to be caught napping. She sucked in her breath sharply and said:

“So, that's what all the rumpus was about? The cops guarding the canyon exit wouldn't tell me anything. Who killed him? How and when?”

“I'm asking the questions, damn it!” I scowled at her. “How did you get past the police cordon?”

A low chuckle came from her red lips. “I told them I was Mrs. Eloise Pelham on my way to a city hospital to give birth to my first baby, and I pulled a fake faint that had them embarrassed for fear I was going to do it right there. They didn't even make me get out of my car to check up on my silhouette, but gave me a motorcycle escort to the hospital and were awfully kind about the whole thing.”