The Surfside Caper (10 page)

The door of the bedroom swung open. Annette came through it. She was trying to hurry but she walked like someone fresh from a hospital bed. She stopped in the doorway, holding to the frame for support.

She looked at me. Then her eyes found Tibbetts. She moved slowly to him. She went down on her knees and drew his head up into her arms.

She said, “Lover. Darling. Baby.”

I had ceased to exist for her.

I stood there and watched a naked woman crooning over a little creep. I didn’t have enough left in me to be surprised. Or disgusted.

I sat down and poured myself some cold coffee. I lit a cigaret and thought about what Ingrid had said about Annette being in love with Tibbetts.

I wasn’t proud of myself for having knocked out a man two-thirds my size. I wasn’t proud of being bright enough to guess that if I sat here and listened Annette might say something worth hearing. I was less than proud of the idea I was hatching, of what I was going to do to her as soon as she stopped talking the way she was now.

I had to fight myself to stay in the chair, to listen to her. I don’t get my kicks from listening and looking through bedroom keyholes. And that was the way the scene in front of me was shaping up.

She wasn’t saying anything worth hearing. She was just dribbling words and touching Tibbetts the way he had touched her earlier. I began to wish I was anyplace but here. Listening to her was like eavesdropping on the gurglings of a cesspool.

But I was here. And Lieutenant Colton was outside somewhere. And he would still be looking for me. And he would keep looking until he found me.

Annette stopped talking. I got up and rescued Tibbetts’ gun. I put it in my pocket. I walked over to Annette and touched her bare shoulder.

I said, “You’d better get some clothes on. The police will be here soon.”

Her head came around slowly, as if my touch had started her waking up. Her eyes took a long time to focus on me. I repeated what I had said to her.

“Police?” she echoed. Comprehension began to register in her eyes. “You called them about me?”

I said, “They’re here about Milo.”

“Milo?” She sucked in her breath with a sharp hiss. “Oh my God! Milo!”

She rose slowly to her feet and walked into the bedroom. She seemed to have forgotten about Tibbetts for the moment. I went after her. She disappeared into a walk-in closet. She came out, wearing thin, peach-colored pajamas and an equally thin matching negligee. She went into the bath and shut the door. I stood and waited for her.

She came out with her face made up, her hair combed. The bright slash of lipstick on her mouth looked pitiful against the pallor of her face. She went to the bed and slid under the covers.

She said, “I don’t feel well.”

I said, “How could you, after the abuse you gave your body last night?”

“Don’t lecture me, damn it. I’m sick of being lectured.”

I said, “I know. You’d rather be slapped around. But don’t expect me to do it. I’ll leave that up to Tibbetts.”

“That was a filthy thing to say!”

I said, “Let’s stop wasting time, Annette. You can either talk to me or to the police.”

She still had a little fight in her. “Why should I be afraid to talk to the police?”

I said, “Maybe for no reason. But from the way you acted there in the kitchen, I didn’t think you’d want Tibbetts taken in for murder.”

“That isn’t true!” She was still trying but there wasn’t much fire left in her. Liquor, sleeping powders, and emotional explosions hadn’t left her much to fight with.

“It isn’t true,” she repeated. “You can’t involve him in this!”

I went to work on the idea I had hatched a few moments before. I said, “Why can’t it be true? Tibbetts knew I was coming here. And he knew I’d start prying into what was going on. So he arranged with that itinerant worker, Samuels, to kill me and make it look like an accident. Only Samuels missed. So Tibbetts killed him to keep him quiet. And he killed Milo too, because Milo was digging for information, trying to help you. And he found out too much. And when Tibbetts finished the job, he saw a chance to use it to frame me.”

She was staring at me, her eyes bright with fear. I said, “He killed to protect you. You knew it when you saw Milo’s body. That’s why you went off the deep end and tried to blot everything out with a bottle of brandy. And when that didn’t work, you took sleeping powders.”

She just kept staring at me, the fear growing.

I said, “Because you were bright enough to realize something Tibbetts didn’t, that his killing Milo solved nothing. It didn’t change your relationship with Dolphin at all. And that’s where the trouble is, between you and Dolphin.”

She said, “He knows that. If he had killed anybody it would have been Jacob.”

I said softly, “Jacob. You know Dolphin pretty well, don’t you?” I shook my head at her. “Tibbetts wouldn’t have killed Dolphin. Not here. That would only fave focused attention on Dolphin. And brought out all the things you both want to keep hidden.”

I had tried opening up Tibbetts by making out a case against Annette. I hadn’t had much success. Now I was trying to open up Annette by making out a case against Tibbetts. For a minute I thought she was going to be as hard to crack as he had been.

A
ND THEN
she wasn’t. She began to cry, deep gutty sobs that tore her loose inside. She whispered, “Melvin. Melvin darling.”

It took me a minute to realize that she was talking about Tibbetts. I hadn’t known his name was Melvin. I didn’t particularly care.

I said, “He can’t help you. Not any more. His killing Milo ruined any chance there might be of your keeping your mess covered up.”

She shouted hysterically, “He didn’t kill anyone. He couldn’t. He—he just isn’t the kind of person to kill anyone.”

She stopped shouting. She lifted her hands pleadingly. “Larry, that’s the truth. He didn’t kill Milo. Help me, please. Can’t you do something?”

I said, “What’s there for me to do now? I don’t even know what the killer was trying to cover up when he shot Milo.”

She looked down at the covers drawn over her. “I can’t tell you that.”

I said sourly, “Thanks for the help. Maybe you can tell me why you went riding with Dolphin. Or is that one of your precious secrets too?”

She whispered, “I don’t dare.”

I picked up the telephone. I said, “If you don’t tell me, you’ll tell it in public. On the witness stand. All about Dolphin. All about Milo. Why you hit the bottle the way you do. Why you gulp sleeping powders every now and then.”

I picked up the receiver as I talked. She said, “What are you going to do?”

“Call Lieutenant Colton and get him over here.”

“No, Larry, please! You can’t!”

I said savagely, “The hell I can’t. Right now he thinks I killed Milo. I can change his mind by handing Tibbetts over to him.”

She said dully, “I’ll tell you about Jacob.”

I put the phone down. She said, “He wants me to sell the Surfside to him, to a syndicate he’s formed.”

I said, “Is that the better offer you spoke about yesterday?”

“Yes. He offered more than Global Hotels.”

“When did he make this offer?”

“Not long after Nils died.”

I said, “But you weren’t interested or Global wouldn’t have made their offer. Why did you turn Dolphin down?”

“I just couldn’t see him taking over. Nils wouldn’t have wanted it that way.”

She was lying. I looked into her eyes and I knew suddenly that she didn’t give a damn what Nils would have wanted. She had never done anything because of Nils’ wishes; she had done everything for Tibbetts.

I said, “Is that why Dolphin came here? To try to get you to sell to him?”

She nodded. “That’s why he brought you here. He thought you’d help him talk me into selling to his group.”

I didn’t say anything; I was busy thinking.

She said, “That’s why I went for that ride with him last night. He insisted we talk over the matter. I didn’t want to take a chance on being seen with him here. So we drove away in his car.”

I said, “How long were you gone?”

“Not over twenty minutes,” she said. “I simply refused and he brought me back.”

She was still lying a little. I said, “Since when does Dolphin take refusals?”

“What else could he do?”

The door to the kitchen slammed open before I could answer her. I turned. Tibbetts stood in the doorway. A trickle of blood was running from the corner of his mouth. A big bruise on the side of his jaw had started to puff up.

He said, “Don’t talk to him, Annette. You don’t have to say anything.”

She said slowly, pathetically, “He claims you killed Milo. He says you’ll be arrested and tried and that I’ll have to get on the witness stand.”

Tibbetts said, “He’s bluffing you. He wouldn’t drag you through the dirt that way. He thinks too much of his precious Nils.”

I said, “Come in and sit down, lover boy. And listen to a few truths.”

He didn’t look at me. He walked slowly to the far side of the bed and sat down. Annette put out a hand. He took it gently.

I said, “I came here to fight for Annette because of Nils. That’s over. I’m fighting for myself now. I’m like most people. I’m a little selfish about my own life. I want to keep it. And I’m like a lot of people in another way, too. I don’t like to be made out a sucker. Especially not by a conniving female.”

Tibbetts started off the bed. Annette gripped his hand, holding him back. “I’ll handle this.” She turned to me. With Tibbetts here she seemed to have regained some of her old executive snap.

She said, “Just what do you mean by that name you called me?”

I said, “I mean that you never gave a damn about Nils, not before you married him, when you were married to him, or after he died.”

“I loved Nils. I still love his memory.”

I said a rude word. “You couldn’t love a man of Nils’ caliber,” I said. “It isn’t in you. You could only love the kind of creep that would give you what you want. A man you can wipe your feet on up to a certain point and then one who turns on you and beats hell out of you.”

I was making myself sick but I kept on. “When you were drunk in my cottage, I thought you had the idea I was Nils. I was wrong. You thought I was Tibbetts. That’s why you put on that stag show for me. He lets you get away with acting that way. He probably even likes it. Nils would have taken it just once. Then he’d have walked out.”

Tibbetts said, “I’m going to kill you, Flynn, if it takes the rest of my life.”

I ignored him. I said to Annette, “When you married Nils, you knew he was a sick man, a dying man. You wouldn’t have married him otherwise.”

She didn’t answer me. She didn’t have to. The truth lay in her eyes.

I said, “Why did you marry him in the first place?”

Tibbetts started up again. She pulled him down. She said, “No. I’ll tell him. I have to now.”

She said to me, “I married Nils to protect myself from Jacob.”

Suddenly I didn’t need to ask any more questions. Those few words had given me the answers. I knew now where Annette had been during the first year Tibbetts had worked at her father’s hotel. I knew why she drank heavily when she came back. I knew why she had tried to kill herself taking sleeping powders.

And I wished I didn’t know. I wished I could go back just twenty-four hours, back when I was on the jet for San Francisco. If I’d known then, I would have driven anywhere but to the Surfside.

I said, “You were one of Dolphin’s special girls ten years ago. You broke with him and went back home to your father. That’s when you met Tibbetts.”

She still didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

I said, “What does Dolphin have, photographs or movies?”

Tibbetts screamed, “Shut up, Flynn!” He jerked free of Annette and got to his feet. He still wasn’t in any shape. He could barely stand.

She said, “He hasn’t got either one.” She broke off and turned to Tibbetts. “Sit down. He has to hear this. Don’t make it any harder on me.”

He looked as if he would start crying. He sat down.

She said to me, “I fell in love with Jacob when I was eighteen. Do you know what it was like, working for nothing in a musty third-rate hotel? Squeezing pennies, cleaning up after cheap people, wanting nice things, wanting to go nice places, and meeting no one but the crummy salesmen who go to a place like we had? Have you ever been pawed by men like that? Jacob came into the hotel. I knew who he was. I knew he was there to get us to take some of his special ‘parties.’ But I didn’t care. My father refused and Jacob went to work on me. I knew why he did that too. I still didn’t care. He was rich, exciting. I went with him.”

Tibbetts had his back to us. He bent over and put his hands to his face. Annette said, “When he got tired of me, Jacob tried to turn me into one of his special girls. It should have been easy. He taught me to like the … the kind of thing I like now. And I tried to please him, hoping it would make him keep me around.”

Her voice dropped so that I had to lean forward to hear her. “It was one thing to be with Jacob. It was something else to be with just any man. I hated it then. And when Jacob wanted to take pictures, to put me in some of his shows, I left. I ran back home. I was afraid he might have me killed, but he didn’t bother me.”

She raised her voice again. “Except once. He came to the hotel; He showed me his account books, the ones that had a record of my earnings for him. He said that if I caused any trouble and had him prosecuted that would be part of the public evidence.”

I said, “If Dolphin has a weapon like that why would he need to come here to get you to sell the Surfside to him? Why would he have needed me to help him with the deal? If it’s so important to you to keep that part of your life hidden, why didn’t you sell when he first made his offer?”

“Because I stole those records from him and destroyed them,” she said.

I said, “Then what hold did he have on you that forced you to marry Nils for protection?”

Her eyes slid away from me. She said, “He just threatened to tell.”

I said another rude word. “What would Dolphin gain from telling about those days. He retired before you married Nils. He didn’t want to bring up his own past. He wanted to live it down. If he had anything on you, it wasn’t something that would reflect directly back on his early days.”

Tibbetts straightened up and turned around. “What more do you want from her, Flynn? Leave her alone!”

I said, “What do you think a tough prosecuting attorney will do to her when she spins a line of crap like this?”

She took a slow breath. She said, “When I stole the records, I was caught by one of his men. I had a gun and he tried to take it away from me. The gun went off in the struggle. The man died. Jacob has proof that I committed murder.”

Tibbetts screamed, “Shut up, damn it! Shut up, do you hear?”

He swung on me. “Why waste any more time, Flynn. She’s lying and you know it. She’s just trying to protect me with this bull. Because she knows I killed Milo Craybaugh.”

I said, “Why?”

“Not for the reason you gave. She hasn’t any past to cover up. I killed Craybaugh because she was going to marry him. I wanted him out of the way. I thought it would give me 2 better chance with her.”

He was standing up, waving his arms at me. Annette cried, “Don’t say that! It isn’t true.” She reached up for him. She caught him by the belt and pulled him down on top of her. I could hear them both blubbering love words at one another. I didn’t wait around to see what they would do next. I don’t go much for stag shows.

Besides I had something else to do. Something important.

I had to go find the proof that would put a killer on the hook where I was hanging now.

• • •

I opened the outside door. Dirty gray daylight sat cold and ugly in the trees. The morning fog had come in off the ocean. I took a step into it and stopped.

I was looking south, toward the mouth of the service alley. I could see a broad back covered with the dark blue of a police uniform.

I took two quick steps and ducked into the trees beside the doorway. I looked back. The policeman hadn’t moved. I turned and burrowed my way through the fog, following the path Tibbetts and I had used so long ago.

Branches wet with fog slapped me in the face. The damp earth balled up under my shoes, making me stop and scrape every fifty feet or so. I was sweating despite the cold dankness.

I came to the paths that led to my cottage and Dolphin’s. I stopped and moved more slowly. I kept to the right, making a wide swing that carried me to Dolphin’s
lanai.
I eased to the edge of the forest. I looked onto the
lanai.

It was quiet and empty. I expected it to be. Unless Colton knew who Dolphin was, he would have no reason to station a man here.

I slipped forward and over the low wall. I walked to the French doors. I tried them. They swung open. I stepped into the dim gloom of Dolphin’s living room.

Colton said out of the darkness by the far wall, “You make a perfect target there, Flynn. Just put your hands on top of your head. Carefully.”

He sounded happy with himself. I put my hands on top of my head. He came out of shadow and into the dim light. He had the smug look of a man who had outsmarted a tough opponent. I almost hated to bruise his ego.

I said, “You were smart enough to wait for me here, Colton. That means you know you got the wrong man.”

His grin was as happy as his voice. “If you’re talking about Jacob Dolphin, I know all about him.”

I said, “What did you do, go to a medium and communicate with Milo Craybaugh’s spirit?”

“I had a long talk with Dolphin,” Colton said. “He only left about five minutes ago.”

“Left! You let him go?” I was yelling again. I didn’t care now. My temper was about the only thing I had left to lose.

“Why shouldn’t I let him go?” Colton asked. He was talking in a reasoning tone, the kind an adult imposes on a child. “I had no reason to hold him. He accounted for his presence here. He had a legitimate right to leave.”

I said, “He told you he was here to buy the Surfside from Mrs. Lofgren?”

“He told me,” Colton said.

I said, “And did he tell you that Craybaugh was the only obstacle in his way? That Craybaugh knew he was coming and sent him anonymous notes threatening his life?”

“You’re wasting my time, Flynn. The Surfside has nothing to do with Mr. Craybaugh’s death. You killed him because he found proof that you broke Samuels’ neck.”

I said, “I thought that would be the way you’d dope things out.” I stared at him, wondering how I could get one simple, obvious idea through his dislike for me long enough for him to start thinking.

He said, “I’ve been up all night because of you, Flynn. I want to get some sleep. So start walking.”

I moved reluctantly toward the front door. My eyes were growing accustomed to the dim light. I noticed a difference in the room since the last time I’d been in it. None of Dolphin’s personal gear was in sight anymore. And suddenly the words Colton had used took on a new meaning.

I stopped near the door. I turned to face him. I said, “You told me Dolphin left. Do you mean he checked out?”

“That’s right. He’s gone to Nevada. To marry a lady. She was a friend of yours, I believe.”

He was enjoying himself thoroughly. He didn’t like me and he thought he was making me suffer. He could only be talking about Ingrid.