Bring Back Her Body (10 page)

WHAT
had started out as a beautiful day turned sour for Cain. Getting no more out of Honor, he drove grumpily into town and loaded up with groceries and the various editions of the papers. He returned to find Honor gone and Lisa sitting on deck. He turned the groceries over to her and went through the papers. The murder had made the late morning edition.

When Lisa returned, Cain read aloud to her. The gist of the story was that the caretakers of Patton’s place had returned from a week’s vacation after midnight to have their headlights light up a coffin in the garage and in the coffin was the owner himself, dead. The house lights had been on but they went out suddenly; someone pulled the master switch and disappeared. The Harkness couple called the police but couldn’t trace the person or persons running away. A window had been forced but they saw no signs of robbery. Friends and acquaintances of the dead man were being questioned.

The afternoon paper had an interesting item concerning the fact that one Lisa Simms, a business partner of Patton, had disappeared. An eviction notice given her two days before by the aforesaid Patton explained the disappearance in part. She left no forwarding address. The article did not intimate that she was suspected yet.

“I will be,” Lisa commented.

Cain discovered that at a party at Pepe’s and later at a continuation of the same party, a fisherman, one Abel Cain (former University All-Coast basketball star) had had altercations with Patton.

“That came from the friends and associates,” Lisa said. “Now you’re in it, too.”

“I’m looking for the cops at any time,” Cain said. “But I suppose we can explain and …” He stopped.

“Lay ourselves open to a charge of breaking and entering,” Lisa said sweetly. “Or getting Paula into it. You’ll have to lie, Cain.”

“So will you.” He had the uneasy feeling that lying would not be too difficult for her.

“I’m going to disappear,” Lisa said. “Lend me your dinghy and I’ll go visit Honor for a while.”

“So I stay and lie to protect you, too, is that it?”

“Partly. Do you mind, Cain?”

He looked at her. She was not smiling but studying him quizzically. She was, he thought, a very attractive woman. She was a little … He could not quite find the word. She was gay and easy and not coyly modest around him. She was a good companion. But he realized that he didn’t know much about her. Not very much at all.

“I mind when I don’t know what I’m supposed to be protecting you from.”

“My own folly. Mistakes I made. Will that do?”

“Criminal?”

“That depends on interpretation,” Lisa said. She got up and walked to the rail restlessly and swung back, facing him. “I ask you to trust me, Cain.”

“Yet you aren’t willing to trust me,” he said.

She was silent a moment. “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” she said in surprise.

“Sure,” Cain said. “I trust you enough to lie for you. That’s my neck we’re perjuring. But you don’t trust me with what you’ve done. I know it’s something pretty big in your mind. Last night you were so scared the police would tag you, you were in a funk. Maybe you killed him. How do I know?”

“I was with you last night.”

“I don’t know when he died,” Cain said.

“Maybe I did it yesterday afternoon when Honor was here and I went for a walk,” she said. “Or maybe the night before — after you went to sleep on my shoulder, Cain.” She took a cigarette from her pocket and her fingers shook a little.

“I like you a lot, Cain.” Her voice was low, unsteady. “In my apartment when you went to sleep there after inviting Munger’s little apes to kill you — For what? Because you’d taken a job to find someone you dislike and you were going to stick with it. After you’d done that, I decided you were a guy worth helping. And maybe a guy worth wanting — permanently.

“And there are things I’ve done I’m ashamed of. If they come out you’ll think less of me.”

Cain didn’t like being crowded this way. But he said, “We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of. I can think back to when I was a kid and I blush right now at my own asininity. I’m not holy enough to make it matter whether I think less of you or not.”

“That goes on the assumption that you think something of me to start with.”

“Yes,” Cain said without inflection. “Or I wouldn’t have asked you here.”

Lisa’s smile was brief and pained. “I’m stubborn, Cain. You can’t get rid of me now without turning me over to the police.”

“I have nothing to turn you in for yet,” Cain said. He got up and walked as far away from her as he could get and then returned slowly. He said in his deliberate way, “I haven’t got much respect for the forces of law and order. Not that they aren’t occasionally competent. It’s what they represent: man’s need to police himself against his own nature. It doesn’t speak well for a civilized humanity, does it? That’s why I live alone.”

“This is no time to get philosophical,” Lisa said.

“You want to know why I’m doing this. I’ve been called an idealist. But I’m not interested in changing the system. For that we’d have to all get killed off and start with some other organism that didn’t have greed and stupidity bred into it. I’m lazy. So I say to hell with it and crawl into my hole.”

“And I come and try to get in too and there isn’t room, is there, Cain?” She smiled. “And now the police are coming to pull you out.”

“Yes,” Cain said, “and I’ll commit one of the human foibles I decry: I’ll lie to get myself back safely into it.”

“But you can’t lie for yourself without lying for me.”

Cain laughed aloud. “Trumped my ace. I didn’t intend to, Lisa. I just asked what I’m supposed to be lying to save you from.”

“Let’s just say that I publicly threatened Toby’s life.”

“I can imagine a lot of people have.”

“Lots,” she admitted. “But I don’t know of any but myself who tried and failed and did it so stupidly. Toby got proof.”

“Blackmail,” Cain murmured. Toby’s set-up had all the earmarks. Too many people who hated him stayed around him, served him.

“Yes,” she said. “Not money, not me. More subtle uses, you might say.”

She turned and went into the cabin. Cain stayed where he was, staring at the water and thinking of what she had said. Little ugly things that he couldn’t push away kept crawling through his mind.

When she came back, she carried her luggage. Cain watched as she got in the dinghy, started the motor, and then sat there, bobbing on the water and watching him.

Cain said, “You were ordered to tag me from Pepe’s?”

“One way or another,” she admitted. “You created an incident and made it easier.”

“And you were supposed to find some way to keep tab on me and report my actions. Was that eviction notice set up in advance?”

“Yes.” Her voice was low.

Cain said, “And you were supposed to maneuver me to Toby’s farm last night. When did you get that order?”

“When I went for a walk so you could talk alone to Honor.” She was silent a moment. Then she said, “I’m sorry as hell, Cain. That’s the way it was.” She put the motor into gear, and Cain watched her chug off, picking up speed, and then sweep wide around the point and disappear.

• • •

Cain was having iced tea, his feet on the rail, his face turned to admire the sunset when the police came. He heard the car, turned his head, and saw them, and turned away again. When they hailed him, he asked them aboard.

There were just two and Cain knew them both. The tall, graying man almost as thin as Cain himself was Lieutenant Wilson. The other, in uniform, was Bergen. He came aboard gingerly because of his bulk, clutching his inevitable shorthand notebook. They took chairs and refused Cain’s offer of tea.

“I read where Toby Patton was killed,” Cain said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

“You could have checked with us,” Wilson said. He lit his pipe.

“This is nicer than the city. You got a ride out here, didn’t you?”

“Nice place,” Bergen agreed. “How’s fishing?”

“I was going out later but you came,” Cain said.

“Eat canned tuna,” Wilson told him.

Cain said quickly, “Kitsap isn’t within your jurisdiction.”

“Let’s say we were asked to come in because Patton’s interests were primarily in the city,” Wilson said. “How long did you know him?”

Cain told him. Wilson asked, “What were
you
doing at a place like Pepe’s?”

“I’m a philosopher,” Cain said. “I like to observe people now and then so I can come back here and be happier.”

“Did you take Honor Ryerson along for observation?”

“She’s an astronomer. She’s trained in observation.”

Wilson smiled without much humor. He never seemed to have much humor. He said, “She’s under twenty-one.”

“So I get taken in for contributing to the delinquency of a minor?”

“It’s one way, Cain.”

Cain had an idea that Wilson was walking on eggs about now. Ryerson was wealthy and so subject to more respect than the average person — even in a homicide. The papers, he had noted, said nothing of Honor’s being at Pepe’s with him.

“Officially she wasn’t there, Wilson. I won’t admit she was.”

“What do you care about the Ryersons?”

“I like the girl; she’s intelligent. She has a good career ahead of her. She wasn’t involved. Why drag her in?”

“I won’t unless I have to.”

Cain had found out. He sipped his tea. Wilson said, “Why did you hit Patton?”

“He was making nasty remarks. I didn’t like his face.”

“Were you drunk?”

“No. I’d probably have killed him if I had been.”

“Cain don’t drink,” Bergen said. “Often,” he added.

“That’s why,” Cain told him.

“I understand that Miss Simms gave you a hand.”

“Honor was upset,” Cain said. “She isn’t used to brawls. Lisa Simms helped her.”

Wilson had apparently tired of fencing. “To the point where all three of you took off, after working Anse over. But you still ended up with Patton later.”

“Lisa — Mrs. Simms — suggested it,” Cain said. “I wanted to see what one of Toby’s parties really was like. We took Honor home first.”

“And went there to hit him again?”

“No, just to observe. The hitting was incidental…. He was drunk. He started it.”

“And his friends pitched in to help him.”

“Naturally. I spoiled their party.” Cain wondered how much Wilson knew, how much Curtin and the others had told the police. He decided it was about time he saw them himself.

“So you put him in a coffin. That was an odd thing to do.”

So he knew that much. “Well,” Cain said, “you don’t run across a coffin every day. It was handy, and I put him in it.”

“Did you stick a knife in him first?”

“I don’t like knives,” Cain said.

“Maybe Lisa Simms does.”

“She was busy cleaning up the odds and ends — Curtin and the others.”

“Patton was found dead — in a coffin. The same coffin.”

“A good deal later,” Cain said. “I put him in night before last. He was alive then.”

“He was killed sometime between then and early yesterday morning,” Wilson said. “He’d been dead a number of hours when he was found. The closest we can come is about eighteen hours.”

“Uhm,” Cain said. That made a lot of things different. “Is that public news?”

“Not yet.”

“Then why tell me?”

“To get your alibi.”

What Wilson had told him was new and interesting. Cain tried to think back but Wilson was talking again and he listened.

“Out of six people, Cain, I got enough of a story to know why you were at Pepe’s with Honor Ryerson, why you hit Patton, and why you went to his place on the island — and why you hit him there. I talked with Ryerson a few moments ago, too.”

“Then why badger me?” Cain demanded. “Or do you want to make the whole thing public?”

“Not unless we have to. Money has its privileges but sometimes they stop when it’s homicide.”

“Patton wasn’t worth stewing about.”

“Your opinion. Where did you go after you stuffed him into the coffin?”

Cain hesitated. He didn’t want Lisa dragged in at this point. Their apparent relationship would be duck soup for police and reporters. “Back for something to eat. We were hungry. I drove Mrs. Simms home and we ate there.”

“Where did she go after she was evicted?”

Cain shrugged. Wilson asked, “What did you do yesterday — last night, particularly?”

“Thought about things. I’m still looking for Paula Ryerson.”

“All day and evening?”

“Why not? I think slowly.”

“And you don’t know where Mrs. Simms is?”

Cain hesitated. He saw that he was working himself and Lisa into a trap. He said, “How confidential is what I tell you, Wilson?”

“Not at all if it leads to murder.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“I’m capable of keeping quiet.”

“I can provide an alibi for Lisa, if that’s what you want. But it’s a bit compromising.”

“That’s better. Go ahead.”

Cain had a hunch that Wilson had talked to Lisa and he tried to think how she would have done it. Her reputation would be regarded less by the lady than her neck, he was sure. He said, “All right, we stayed together after the party and all day yesterday and last night.”

“All the time?”

“There were a few moments when she wanted to be alone — people are funny that way.”

Wilson was not amused. “You were together all night before last, last night, yesterday and today?”

“Most of today. The rest is right.”

“That’s no alibi, Cain. You had to sleep some of the time.”

Cain grinned evilly. “Have you met Lisa Simms?”

“Yes.”

“Would you have slept, Wilson?”

Wilson tugged at his pipe. “According to her, you slept most of the time.”

“You know how women are,” Cain said. “Modest. Besides, if she could claim that she must have been there to watch me.”

“Why are you protecting her, Cain?”

Cain raised his eyebrows. “I’m telling you the truth, damn it. If it protects her, fine. If not …” He shrugged.

“You disliked him, too.”

Cain said slowly, “Meaning we could have killed him together?”

“It’s a possibility, Cain. I’m a policeman, remember. Even if I thought it absurd, I couldn’t overlook it.”