The Kissed Corpse (9 page)

They wore shorts which left nine-tenths of their suntanned skin uncovered. The back hair of the figure on the left was cut shorter than the one on the right and I guessed that one to be male.

I was wrong, though. She rolled over to squint at us and I saw that her breasts were covered with a triangular dab of silk which tied down to the front of her shorts and was held up by a narrow ribbon about her neck. She looked an unsophisticated sixteen and she wasn't disturbed or alarmed by our intrusion. She said: “For Christ's sake, look who's here, Marv,” and reached a slim arm out for one of the full julep cups.

Her companion turned sidewise on one elbow and looked at us. He had nothing over his chest, not even hair, and he looked a few years older than the girl. He had plump cheeks and a soft peevish mouth which gave forth the effeminate voice we had heard: “Who are they?”

“I wouldn't know.” The girl sat up crosslegged and buried her snub nose in the spray of mint sticking over the frosted silver rim. “Pops does have the goddamnedest visitors lately,” she went on with casual disinterest.

Marv turned his head and said sulkily: “Send them away. Can't we have any privacy?”

The blasé rudeness of the younger generation gives me the jitters. I'm past expecting courtesy from them but I haven't been around them enough to get used to being treated like a worm. I was getting ready to blurt something out when Burke squeezed my arm warningly and moved over to squat down in front of the julep tray.

As a souvenir of his cowpunching days on the Pecos, he has a way of putting his entire weight comfortably on his left heel while his right foot, flat on the ground and a little in front of him, easily balances him. He handed one of the full juleps up to me and took one for himself. Without looking at the girl, he said:

“We just dropped in to look for a murderer.”

The girl's blue eyes were strangely murky. She had long dark lashes and practically no eyebrows. She said:

“You can find damn near anything around this dump if you poke into all the ratholes.”

Marvin rolled over to look at us again. “What is it, a gag?” He wasn't wholly sober.

The julep was swell. Mellow Bourbon and powdered ice, with just enough sugar to blend with the pungent mint.

“Did either of you kill Leslie Young?” Burke asked casually.

The girl rapped knuckles against her forehead and frowned. “I don't remember all my victims but I can't seem to recall that particular name. How about you, Marv?”

He lifted the fourth julep from the tray and drank half of it before taking it from his mouth. That's no way to treat a decent drink but it seems to be one of the symptoms of youth to manhandle liquor. His lips twisted in petulant belligerence and he asked:

“Who are you fellows?”

The girl leaned forward eagerly. “I bet they're G-men. That's what Pops gets for sticking his fingers into politics and pulling out a prune like Hardiman. He laughed at me when I warned him that Les Young was a spy and would mess up any deal he tried to make with the Greasers.”

Burke took another sip of his julep. “Pops.… your father, I take it, being Raymond Dwight?”

She stared at him with her slaty eyes, plainly surprised. Her face looked like somebody had squashed it in by holding firmly to forehead and chin … like you'd work an accordion.

“Of course. Excuse me for neglecting the formalities. I'm Desta Dwight, and this sodden goof is Marvin Moore.”

“Delighted,” Burke drawled. He seemed to be amused, but you can never tell, particularly when he's on a case. “Meet Mr. Asa Baker,” he continued, pointing a blunt thumb at me.

Desta Dwight looked me over appraisingly. “Didn't you write a book once?” she asked bluntly. “Seems to me I read one by that name, and it stunk,” she told me candidly. “How come you picked out such a screwball to do your masterminding? Except for one of your eyes, you're much better looking. Jerry Burke! Christ Almighty! No wonder murders go unsolved around El Paso if the citizens depend on a dope like him to do their detecting.”

I grinned at Burke, who was filling his pipe and pretending not to be interested.

“I'll see if I can't imbue him with a brain or two,” I promised. “You knew Leslie Young, did you?”

She shrugged slim bare shoulders. “I met him … once.” She paused, her strange small eyes narrowing. “He tried to make me.”

“To make you what?” Burke asked interestedly. He had his pipe going, and he took it from his mouth and pointed it at her.

She exploded with shrill laughter. “What do
you
think?”

“I'd still like to know,” Burke persisted mildly.

“Let it pass,” I said hastily. “Tell me what you meant about Leslie Young and your father.”

“He was a red-eyed radical. He thought it was swell when the Spicks stole all Pop's oil wells. He hated the guts of anyone with a bank account. When Pops put on the pressure to get Hardiman and Senor Rodriguez together.…” She clamped her teeth together suddenly and did not go on.

“We're listening,” Burke told her.

“I'm not supposed to talk about that.”

“This is a murder investigation.”

“Don't tell them anything … except they might get the hell out and quit bothering us.” Marvin Moore finished his julep and swayed upright to his feet.

Jerry Burke put out his hand and said, “Wait,” as Desta Dwight started to get up. There was a note in his voice that made even that wilful child of riches settle back on her haunches.

“You don't like Mrs. Young, do you?” he asked her.

“Why should I like her? Sneaking over here to see Pops before her own husband's cold.”

“She seemed rather nice to me.”

“She affects all men that way.” Desta sniffed scornfully and got up. “It's the way she twitches her butt.” The girl yawned, arched her slim back, thrust small tight breasts against the silken triangle. “Look me up if you run any murderers out of their rat-holes.” With this parting shot she strolled off languidly with Marvin to a side entrance.

Burke knocked out his pipe and looked after her. “So, that's what they call a flapper.”

I laughed out loud. “You're hopelessly outdated, Jerry. Desta Dwight is to the Flapper Era what the flapper was to the Mauve Decade. The flappers were consciously proud of shocking their elders. The present generation simply doesn't realize it
is
shocking. The last I heard they were called ‘jitterbugs,' but I may be somewhat outmoded myself.”

Burke grinned mirthlessly. “Well … you'd better hunt yourself a streamlined detective.”

“I'm perfectly satisfied,” I told him.

“What did you make of the dope she spilled?” he asked.

“We already know Myra Young has sneaked over here. Now we have a daughter's suspicion that the widow has designs on her father. If Dwight is interested … as the girl intimated … it furnishes Myra with a nice motive for murder.”

“There was a mention that she had stalled off Dwight's advances previous to her husband's death,” Burke reminded me. “Raymond Dwight has a nasty reputation for taking a woman when he wants her. Perhaps Myra's refusal was on the level, and he had to make away with Leslie before he could get what he wanted. That would give
him
a motive.”

Burke paused and squinted up at the balcony where the telescope was mounted on its squatty tripod. “I'm curious to know just what can be seen from up there,” he said. He stepped back a few feet to get a fuller view.

“Why didn't you ask Desta? You might have had the luxury of a deep blush for her answer.” I grinned at him, but he replied in a serious tone:

“I didn't want them to realize I was interested. That kind will drop more information casually than under cross-examinaiton. Like the hint she dropped about Hardiman and the Mexicans.”

We went to the front door and Burke rang the bell. A pot-bellied butler in dark livery opened the door.

“We want to see Mrs. Leslie Young at once,” he said.

The butler blinked. “I believe she's in the drawing room with Mr. Dwight. I wouldn't wish to interrupt.…”

“That's all right.” Burke pushed past the butler's protruding abdomen. “We're the law and we're investigating murder.”

“Quite so, sir.” The butler sounded as though murder investigations were normal routine at the Dwight mansion.

“We'll see Mrs. Young as soon as she finishes her conference with Dwight,” Burke told him. “In the meantime, I want to have a good look through the telescope.”

“Very good, sir.” The butler snapped his fingers at a maid wearing a frilly apron, who was coming down the hall. “Show these policemen the telescope balcony.”

We followed her up a stairway leading off the hall, to double glass doors opening onto the balcony which was littered with lounging chairs and sun umbrellas. Burke said, “Thanks,” and closed the door behind me as I followed him out.

The balcony was high enough so it overlooked the tops of trees dotting the lawn in front of the house. A large telescope was mounted on a heavy tripod near the railing. Burke dropped into the leather-cushioned chair set conveniently behind it, leaned forward and squinted through the eyepiece. It was mounted on a knuckle-bearing which allowed it to swing up and down as well as around in a circle.

I stood behind him while he adjusted the focus and moved it back and forth over a small arc. He got up after a few minutes and motioned for me to have a look.

It was a powerful glass. Burke had it focussed directly on the flat roof above the screened back porch of the Young cottage. A rustic stairway led up to the roof from the outside. I felt as though I could reach forward and touch an outspread blanket on the roof, an open book lying face downward beside it, a water pitcher and a glass. The connection between sunbathing and a telescope was cinched, just as I had known it would be. Had there been a nude figure lying on the blanket every intimate detail would have been revealed to me … a mile away.

I swung the telescope downward, adjusting the knurled focussing screw as I did so. Treetops on the Dwight estate cut off the view about halfway down the slope from the Young cabin to the gully where Young had been murdered.

Watching me, Burke said: “I thought of that too, Asa. But it doesn't work. The crime couldn't have been witnessed through this telescope.”

I swung the telescope up and brought the city of El Paso vividly into focus. Sitting comfortably in that cushioned chair, one could clearly see the features of people walking in the Plaza; the glimmering serpentine of the Rio Grande seemed just over the brow of the slope, and the quiet Mexican countryside was clearly revealed.

Burke was pacing up and down puffing on his pipe when I got up. He gestured across the valley toward the Young cottage with a grimace.

“It's a hell of a note when a woman can't have privacy on her own roof out here in the wilderness.”

I said: “A certain type of man gets a kick out of that peeping tom stuff.”

“Men like Raymond Dwight?” Burke's jaws clamped his pipestem tightly.

I hesitated, trying to recall all the rumors I had heard about the private life of the oil baron. “That's hard to say. He has money enough to buy all the women he's wanted since his wife died.”

“Lots of men want what they can't buy.”

Without pretending to be a psychologist, I knew what Burke was getting at. It wasn't difficult to conceive aroused male passion at the small end of a telescope focussed on the naked body of Myra Young enjoying a sun-bath. Dwight had a reputation for going after anything he wanted with a ruthless disregard for human rights. If he desired a woman enough.…

Burke interrupted by train of thought. “There's no use wasting time guessing. Let's go down and ask him.”

He went inside through the curtained glass doors and I followed him downstairs. The butler was hovering anxiously around the foot of the stairs.

“We'll see Mr. Dwight now,” Burke told him.

“I thought you wished to see Mrs. Young, sir.”

“We'll take them both in our stride. Is the drawing room down this way?” Burke started down the richly carpeted hall.

The butler trotted along with a worried frown on his face. “I had instructions they were not to be disturbed, sir. Definite instructions.…”

“I'll take full responsibility. You needn't announce us. In fact … I prefer not to be announced. Show us the drawing room.”

“Here, sir.” The butler indicated closed sliding doors. “But, if I may offer a suggestion.…”

“Offer it,” said Burke genially, “and be damned.” He opened the sliding doors and stepped inside the long drawing room.

I was at his heels. The couple on the window seat at the far end of the room didn't hear us. It was like a movie close-up with the villain straining the woman to him while she futilely tried to push him away.

Jerry Burke cleared his throat when we were halfway across the thick rug.

Raymond Dwight came to his feet like a released spring, his dark face flushed with anger. Myra shrank back on the window seat, one hand going to the loose top buttons of her khaki shirt.

“What the devil does this mean?” Dwight's voice was a heavy bellow of rage.

“My name is Burke.…”

“I don't give a goddamn who or what you are. Get out of here!”

Jerry Burke set his big frame solidly as the millionaire stalked toward him with outjutted jaw.

“I'm the law, Dwight,” he said coldly. “Your millions don't make you exempt.”

Myra Young got up and came to Dwight's side. Her gaze rested on us scornfully. “It's the policemen I told you about, Mr. Dwight. The ones who came to my cabin and threatened me.”

Then she challenged Burke: “Have you a warrant for my arrest?”

“Not yet,” he told her evenly. “Chief Jelcoe is probably swearing out one for you. The charge is going to be first degree murder, Mrs. Young.”