The Surfside Caper (9 page)

I had thought of Tibbetts some time before. I had hated to call him in then; I still felt the same way. But he was a better bet right now than a doctor, at least from my point of view.

I called him. He answered promptly. I said, “Mrs. Lofgren wants you in her office on the double.” I hung up.

I sat with Ingrid and watched Annette and listened to the minutes tick away. Annette showed no more signs of life than she had before.

Ingrid said suddenly, “What happens if she doesn’t wake up?”

I said, “Then I’ll have to get my answers from someone else. And I don’t have much time left. Colton’s bound to come here to check with Annette sooner or later.”

Ingrid didn’t get a chance to answer. The apartment door opened. I looked toward the living room. Tibbetts was coming in under a full head of steam. I said, “So I’ll find out the hard way, from him and from Dolphin.”

Tibbetts came into the bedroom. He looked down at Annette. I said, “Sleeping powders. Three of them. We tried egg whites and walking her. She doesn’t respond.”

He shouldered me aside. He pulled back the covers and laid his ear lightly to Annette’s breast. He straightened up. He didn’t ask me what I was doing there. I don’t think he cared right then. He paid no attention to Ingrid. He was wholly occupied with Annette.

He said, “Get me a towel dipped in cold water.”

I took the towel from the bed and soaked it in cold water. I gave it to Tibbetts.

He slapped the towel across her face, hard.

I said, “Take it easy. Rubbing her with it should do the job.”

He kept swinging the towel, harder, faster. He shouted, “She has to be awakened. She’s dead if she doesn’t wake up.”

His eyes were bulging, his face was red.

I yelled, “Take it easy!”

Tibbetts went on working. “I know what to do,” he shouted. “Don’t you think she’s done this before too?”

Color started into her cheeks. Tibbetts swung harder. I hesitated to interfere. He just might know what he was doing.

Her color deepened. Her eyelids fluttered. Tibbetts was panting. Sweat ran down his neck and under his collar. He was wound up like a mechanical toy. His arm rose and fell. The towel swished through the air, snapping viciously against her flesh. He was no longer whipping her face. He had started on her body.

Ingrid was gripping my arm. Each time the towel struck, she dug her fingers into me. She said finally, “Does he have to keep doing it now? She’s coming awake.”

I said, “That’s enough.”

Tibbetts ignored me. I grabbed him and pulled him away from her. He fought me, cutting for my eyes with the towel. The towel caught the corner of my cheek near the eye. I ducked back and crouched, getting ready to come at him underneath the snapping towel. I was wasting my energy. He forgot I existed. He swung back to the bed, the towel lifted for another strike.

He was talking to her now. His breath came out in thick, gusty grunts. “Dirty bitch! Dirty bitch!”

I stepped up behind him and chopped both fists down on the back of his neck. He fell forward, across Annette. I hadn’t hit him hard enough to knock him out. But I had managed to jolt him a little closer to reality.

He had stopped cursing her. He began to kiss her face.

I took Ingrid by the arm and led her quietly to the kitchen.

I
CLOSED
the kitchen door behind Ingrid. I said, “Get back to your room. This mess is going to get worse.”

“Go back to my room—just like that!” she said angrily. “And go to sleep, I suppose. You brought me here to help, and that’s what I intend to do.”

I said, “You can help most by clearing out. Tibbetts is taking care of Annette. She’s coming out of it fine.”

“She’s been out of it for some time,” Ingrid said. “I was watching her when you pulled Tibbetts away. She knew what he was doing to her—just what she wanted him to do.”

“For God’s sake!” I protested.

“I saw her,” Ingrid insisted. “And don’t be so shocked. Some women are like that when they love a man.” She didn’t sound particularly pleased about it.

I said, “You’ve got it backwards. She doesn’t love that creep.”

Ingrid made a snorting sound. “You need more help than you think,” she said bitingly. “Annette loves Tibbetts, all right. And she isn’t any more rational about it than he is.”

She calmly poured two cups of coffee. “I could tell you a lot more if you’d give me a chance to watch instead of trying to get me out of here.”

I said, “I don’t need any more help. I don’t know everything yet, but I know enough to know why Samuels and Milo were killed and why I’m being made the patsy. Samuels was hired to get rid of me. He fouled up the job, and he was killed so he couldn’t talk. Craybaugh was killed because he was trying to help Annette, in his own way. He found out a little too much and that made him dangerous.”

Ingrid still wasn’t happy with me. “That’s all fairly obvious,” she said cuttingly. “You know everything but what Craybaugh found out and who killed him.”

I said, “A few questions to Tibbetts and Annette and I’ll have those answers too.”

“What makes you think they’ll tell you the truth?”

I said, “They haven’t any choice now.”

Ingrid set one of the coffee cups closer to me. She said, “What if one of them murdered those men. Do you expect them to confess?”

I drank some more of the coffee. It was bitter. I said, “Don’t be so damned logical. You can’t help me any more than you have. So stay clear of all this. Get back to bed.”

She said scathingly, “All you’re going to do is go in and try to badger those two into talking. And they won’t. They aren’t in any condition to, either one of them.”

I said, “Fine. I’ll leave them to their Freudian play and go get the answers out of Dolphin. He’s the only other person who has any that will help me.”

She ignored my sarcasm. “That’s exactly what you should do.”

I said, “And while I’m hunting for him, I can spend my spare time playing hide and seek with Colton.”

Ingrid said, “I forgot about him.” She picked up her coffee cup and sipped thoughtfully.

I said, “Now will you stop doing my thinking for me and get out of here?”

She said almost absently, “Yes, of course, Larry.” She started for the door and stopped. “And I still want to help, even if you have acted like an awful bastard.”

She was smiling a little. She was trying to bring the light touch back to our relationship. Only, somehow, it wasn’t coming off. She was being altogether too amenable. She had changed her attitude too quickly.

By the time I was able to function through the fuzz of weariness clogging my mind she was out the door and gone. I took a step forward and stopped. Ingrid would have to take care of herself. I had more immediate problems right here.

I poured two cups of coffee and took them to the bedroom. It was empty. I could hear sounds from behind the closed door of the bath.

I set the cups down. I listened to her retching. It stopped. The shower came on. Annette gave the kind of shrill scream that meant cold water was hitting her. I went back into the kitchen and drank the rest of my coffee. I tried a cigaret. Barn straw would have tasted better.

The bathroom door opened. I waited a minute and then went back into the bedroom. Annette was stretched on her back on the bed. Tibbetts was bent over, rubbing her down with a huge towel.

Tibbetts stopped rubbing. He slipped an arm under her and helped her sit up. He took a cup of coffee and held it to her mouth. They both ignored me. She lifted both hands to the cup. She drank the coffee down quickly.

She said in a dim voice, “I want to sleep now.”

He laid her down gently and pulled the cover over her. He got up and watched while she closed her eyes. He stared at her for some time. Then he turned off the bedside lamp, picked up his untouched cup of coffee and walked wearily into the kitchen.

I followed him. He sat at the kitchen table and stared blankly at the cup of coffee.

I said, “Drink that.”

He didn’t stir. I said, “Drink it or I’ll pour it down your gullet.”

He picked up the cup. His eyes met mine. He was hating me again, but he wasn’t putting much energy into it. I said again, “Drink it. You’re going to need all the lift you can get when I start asking questions.”

He ignored me. He said, “What did you come here for, Flynn?”

I said, “To ask Annette some questions.”

He set the cup down. His hands shook. “Leave her alone!” he shouted at me. “Haven’t you done enough to her already?”

I said, “I haven’t done anything to her yet. But other people have. Including you.”

He glared at me. He opened his mouth to yell again. I said, “Don’t waste your time shouting me down. It’s a little late for that. It’s a little late for any kind of stall now.”

I leaned across the table. “You can’t cover her forever, Tibbetts. Once Colton starts thinking, it’ll be all over.”

He said in a soft voice, “Colton is looking for you, Flynn, not for her.”

He was through shouting at me. Now he was protecting himself behind a tough, hard shell of quiet. And he wasn’t going to be easy to crack open. But I had no choice. Time was running out fast on me. I could only keep slugging away at him.

I said, “I know what Colton’s doing. And I figured he’d contact you. And when he did, why didn’t you help him hunt for me. That should have been your ripe peach, Tibbetts, a chance to finish the frame you know Annette started to build for me when she decided to kill Milo.”

He rose to that. He started out of his chair. Then he settled back down. He sat sucking in deep breaths until he had himself under control again. He said quietly, “You’re out of your head, Flynn. Annette didn’t kill anybody.”

I said, “If you believe that, call the cops. Invite Colton here to pick me up.”

I moved around the table, putting it between us. I wanted to blow his calm apart, but I didn’t want to be in the way of the pieces when the explosion came.

I said, “I’ll tell you why you won’t call Colton. And why you didn’t help him find me before. You’re afraid of what I’ll say. You’re afraid of what he’ll find here.”

His facial muscles twitched, but he managed to hang on to his control. He said, “There’s nothing you could say would hurt anyone but yourself, Flynn.”

I said, “I think of something Colton might like to hear. Annette’s relationship with Dolphin, for one. He might like to know why she left her fiancé sitting around while she went for a moonlight ride with Dolphin. He might like to know what went on between them that caused her to come home and drink herself blind.”

Tibbetts said, “A minute ago you had her killing Craybaugh. Now you have her getting drunk instead. Make up your mind.”

I said, “This is the way I tell it to Colton when he finds me. She went off with Dolphin. Something passed between them that set her off. She went looking for Milo. She found him at Dolphin’s cottage. She found me there too. She listened to us talking. And she realized that Milo had dug up her secret. Then Milo flipped me over the
lanai
wall. That gave her a clear road. She moved in on Milo, picked up his gun and killed him. Then she took the gun and planted it in my cottage.”

Tibbetts said disgustedly, “Christ!”

I said, “Then she got herself high on the brandy. She started worrying. She realized that she hadn’t done herself any favor. If Milo was found at Dolphin’s cottage, there would be an investigation. Dolphin’s real identity would come out. Everything she’d been trying so hard to hide would be known. She would have killed for nothing.”

I drank some cool coffee from Ingrid’s cup. My throat was dry and getting thick. I said, “So she came to me. She planned to ask me to get rid of Milo’s body, to take it away from Dolphin’s. Only she found I’d already done the job.”

Tibbetts said acidly, “And in her relief she drank the rest of the brandy.”

I said, “She isn’t very stable, Tibbetts. You should know that better than anyone. She was doing fine until she saw the body. Then the impact of what she had done hit her. She tried to blot it all out the way she did before, by drinking herself blind. But you had to pump the liquor out of her. And there she was, still able to think about Milo. And able to realize that she hadn’t solved anything as far as Dolphin went. So she took the powders.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. He just looked at me for a long moment. I watched sickness crawl into his face and into his eyes. He said in a low, tired voice, “She didn’t try to kill herself, Flynn. You can’t make a case out of what happened here tonight. She’s done this sort of thing before. More than once. A long time ago I emptied half the sleeping powders out of those envelopes and put in soda.”

“Does she know that?”

“Hell, no.”

I said, “Then she thought she was taking a triple dose. Don’t try to tell me she was doing it just to get a good night’s sleep.”

He said, “She didn’t take over one. She never does. She empties the other two down the toilet and then throws the envelopes in the wastebasket so I can see them.”

I said, “For God’s sake, why?”

“I took her liquor away,” he said. “When I do that, she tries to hurt me, to punish me.”

I felt a little sick. I said, “If I were a psychologist I’d be crazy about your problems. But I’m not. I’m a guy with a homicide cop breathing down my neck. So let’s get down to cases. What started her on this brandy kick in the first place?”

“She was that way when I met her ten years ago,” he said. “I went to work in her old man’s hotel. She wasn’t there. But after a year she came back. She started drinking. At first I helped her get the stuff when her father locked her away from it. Then I saw what it was doing to her. I stopped helping. That was the first time she pulled the sleeping powder bit on me.”

I said, “That doesn’t tell me why she started drinking.”

“I never asked her,” he said.

I thought he might be lying. But I wasn’t sure. He had obviously fallen for her a long time ago. He just might be the kind of sucker who makes a wiping mat of himself for a woman and never asks any questions.

I said, “Did she quit when she married Nils?”

“She quit a long time before that.” he said. “She stayed quit until a little over a year ago. Then she started in again. Don’t ask my why. I don’t know.”

He said it too quickly. I knew now that he was lying, covering up for her. I knew, too, that I wouldn’t get a straighter answer out of him.

I said, “Did she tell you why she went riding with Dolphin tonight?”

“Why should she? That’s her business.”

I said, “Stuff that, Tibbetts. You think too much of her to stand by and see her tear herself to pieces like she is without trying to help her. You either knew she was going riding with Dolphin in the first place or you found out after she got back.”

He just shook his head. He had opened up for a minute. I had hoped he was going to stay opened up. But now he pushed his jaw out and clamped his mouth in a thin, tight line. He had said everything he was going to say.

I had one chip left. It wasn’t worth much. If building a case against Annette didn’t open Tibbetts up, I wasn’t sure anything I tried would do the job.

I said, “Can’t you get it through your head that it’s too late to cover for her? This is murder, Tibbetts. And murder always rakes up what’s in the bottom of the cesspool. Colton won’t ask for answers; he’ll demand them. And if you don’t give them to him, then he’ll go to Annette.”

I took a step toward the door. “Only I can’t wait for Colton to start in on her. I’m going to do it myself, now.”

His chair went over as he came to his feet. He said in a low, hurting voice, “Keep away from her.”

I put my hand on the door. I said, “I’m beat, but I’m not so beat that I can’t handle you. So don’t try to push me. You’ve got only two choices: start talking or sit here while she talks. I don’t give a damn which it is, but I want answers. The right ones.”

He took a step my way. He pawed under the lapel of his cheap suit. He hadn’t carried a gun there earlier, I knew. He might not have one now. He might be trying to run a bluff.

He left his hand inside his coat. He said, “You’ve got no choice, Flynn. You’re getting out of here. And staying out. What happens at Surfside is my job. I’ll handle it my own way.”

I turned the knob on the door.

He kept his voice low, “So help me, Flynn, if you walk into that room, I’ll kill you!”

His hand moved. I could see the butt of a gun. He hadn’t been bluffing before. And he wasn’t bluffing now. I looked into his eyes and knew that.

And he could get away with killing me. Colton wouldn’t mind at all. He’d probably give Tibbetts a medal for a job well done.

I didn’t wait around to find out what kind of gun he was carrying. I charged him.

I didn’t bother with the niceties of gentlemanly fighting. Not when a gun was being pulled on me. He twisted sideways, letting my foot slide along his thigh. I was more beat than I realized. My reflexes were slow. I went after him with both fists. He ducked away and putted me at the beltline with his head.

I grabbed for him. My hand missed his head and chopped down on his wrist. The gun clattered to the floor. I tightened my fingers just back of his thumb. I let my weight go. I went down. He came after me.

I doubled up a knee and let him ram himself on it. His breath went out in a gusty whoosh. I pushed, throwing him off. He hit a leg of the table and came up in a crouch. I got to my feet first. I stepped in and kicked him. My toe lifted him under the jaw. He hit the table again. This time he didn’t get up.