It's a Sin to Kill (19 page)

T
HE SILENCE
in the room lengthened until it became almost unbearable. Ames could feel sweat trickling down his sides. He'd been under too much of a strain too long. He felt light headed. It was an effort for him to stand. He spread his feet and leaned his weight against the wall.

Helene Camden studied his face. “What tipped you, Ames?”

“You,” Ames told her.

“How so?”

“You've seen the girl I'm married to.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You'll pay for that.”

Camden was incredulous. “You've been in the house all this time?”

“Most of it,” the woman admitted. “Except for several little excursions that became necessary.”

Ames said, “It was you who slugged Mary Lou.”

Helene Camden lighted a cigarette and spoke through a veil of smoke. “That's right. It worried me when Tom told me she'd walked out on the inquest. I thought she might have spotted some loophole that we'd failed to cover, so I walked over to see what she was doing.” She brushed the veil of smoke aside. “Who'd ever think the little fool would miss one cup?”

“We only have six,” Ames said.

It was as if the blonde woman hadn't heard him. “For all I knew, it might retain some traces of chloral.”

Camden asked, “And Celeste?”

Helene made a gesture of annoyance. “That was a pity. I liked Celeste. But I was so excited over what I'd just had to do to Mrs. Ames that I forgot to lock the door. And when Celeste came into Tom's room to turn down the spread and
top sheet she found me lying on them, naked. She wouldn't take money for her silence. She said she was going to the police. I'd taken the knife from a box on the
Sally
, intending to use it on Mrs. Ames, but I decided it would look better if she drowned. I still had it in my purse. So when Celeste turned to leave the room, I used it on her.” She returned her attention to Ames. “Then when our captain made his dramatic escape, the police barricaded all the roads and I couldn't get off the beaches without being recognized.” Her voice was plaintive. “The way I originally planned it, I intended to be a long way from here by now.”

Ferris no longer looked dapper. His face was lined and haggard. “So what do we do now?”

Helene shrugged. “There's only one thing we can do. We'll come to that in a moment.” She looked back at Ames. “I made another mistake last night. I shouldn't have tried to knock you unconscious, but you were getting too warm to suit me. I wanted you in custody so the police would lift the barricades and I could get out of here. You knew last night?”

“It made me wonder,” Ames said. “Slugging a woman and slugging a man are two different things. You had enough strength to hurt me but not quite enough to knock me out. Then keeping on pulling a trigger after a gun is empty is a woman's trick, a hysterical woman's. When I read in a Tampa paper that Ferris claimed he'd grabbed the gun and shot me, I knew I'd been right in what I'd done.”

“And that was?”

“Spent a hundred and fifty dollars on three credit reports. One on Ben and one on you and Ferris. Ben came out okay. I wish I was worth what he's rated at. But all Ferris had was his yearly retainer from
helene camden, incorporated
. And
helene camden, incorporated
was bankrupt It owed several hundred thousand dollars in back corporation taxes and import duties. There was even talk of criminal prosecution. What tangible assets there were had been liquidated recently. So then I knew what had happened. You'd cashed in what you could and gotten out while the getting was good.”

“That's right,” Helene Camden admitted.

“You and Ferris have been planning this for months. I don't know where you got the woman you killed or who she was. I do know that posing as a benevolent party, you brought over quite a few displaced persons to work in your cosmetic plant. Possibly she was one of those.”

“You know a lot.”

“You'd be surprised,” Ames said earnestly, “how detailed a credit report you get for fifty dollars. Anyway, once you'd brought her down here, you planted her in the cabin of the
Sea Bird
, then went into your act with me.” He mimicked a woman's voice. “ ‘Oh, is that coffee I smell? I wonder if I might have a cup.' Then when I went in to get the pot to pour a second cup, you fixed the dregs I'd left in the cockpit. You've already explained about Mary Lou and Celeste. And that I think ties it up.”

“So it would seem,” Helene Camden said.

Camden looked at the gray-haired butler covering the group with the revolver Ames had dropped. He sounded shocked. “My God. Don't tell me you've been sleeping with Phillips too.”

Helene laughed. “No, dear. All Phillips is interested in is money. He was to have gotten a substantial sum, sufficient for him to retire on.” The aged butler glanced at her sharply and she corrected herself. “He is to get a substantial sum. It's Tom who's been the real boy friend for some time. For the same length of time the firm has been on thin ice. I've had to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. And then there were those goddamn taxes and unpaid import duties. We were afraid we might have to pull something like this sooner or later and we thought you'd make good window decoration and you did. You were just dumb enough to think I was crazy about you because I allowed you certain marital privileges.”

Ames looked at Ferris. “There are all types of pee-eyes, it would seem.”

Ben Sheldon asked, “And now?”

Helene Camden regarded him thoughtfully. “You shouldn't have stuck your neck into this, Ben. I rather liked you. So you're sixty; you're all man. And I've been a little afraid of you. As I recall, on several of our dates I let slip that I was in a bit of financial jam.”

“Yes,” the ship chandler admitted. “You did. That's why I thought Camden might be pushed for cash and I could get the
Sea Bird
cheap, but I never figured anything like this.”

Ferris patted the perspiration beading on his face. “So?”

The woman shrugged. “There's only one thing we can do. The way we planned this thing only one death was involved, but we're in so deep now that a few more black marks
against us can't possibly matter. You know what we have to do. But how to make it look logical? You're the lawyer. Think.”

Ferris poured himself some liquor and drank it neat. “All right. Here's the story. Ames came back with Sheldon to put the pressure on Hal. They forced him to sign the bill of sale for the
Sea Bird
for a fifth of its value, then attempted to take back the token money. Hal put up a fight and was killed. Fortunately, Phillips and I heard the shot and were able to avenge him. It isn't much of a story, but I think we can sell it to that dumb Cracker sheriff.”

The screen door opened a third time and Sheriff White walked in followed by a half-dozen of his deputies. Mary Lou followed the deputies and stood at the screen door.

“Might be you could an' then again mebbe not,” White said. He glanced at Phillips. “Don't try to pull the trigger of that thing, fellow. Ef you do you'll look worse than that blonde woman we picked out of the water. You'd be surprised what twelve or fourteen lead-nosed slugs can do to a man's face. They're most as bad as crabs.”

Phillips lowered the gun to his side, then his shaking fingers released it. His face began to twitch as if he were going to cry.

White pushed his hat back on his head. “The same goes for you, Mrs. Camden. You rich folks give me a pain where I'm too much of a gentleman t' tell you.” He picked the gun from the coffee table and dropped it in his side coat pocket. “Hell. Me and John and Sam have had this thing figured out for some time, ever since we checked with Baltimore. I've been honin' t' make an arrest all day.” He glowered at Ames. “But what with Charlie a-swimmin' an' a-boatin' all around the waterways, I was afeared he'd git his silly self kilt an' I wanted him alive t' testify against you.” White was indignant. “So I had t' wait ‘till he called up from the Flamingo Hotel in Tampa, his voice so awed you'd think he'd jist discovered the Book of Genesis.”

His face even more haggard and lined than it had been, Ferris said, “You've been outside all this time?”

Sheriff White nodded. “With a tape recorder pushed up to one of the windows a-takin' down everythin' that was said. I thought it might simplify things at your trial jist in case you should git absent-minded and not be able to recall some of the deetails.”

Helene Camden began to cry.

“You're two bodies too late,” White told her.

One of the deputies picked up the gun that Phillips had dropped. Mary Lou snuggled her hand into Ames's.

“Hi, mister.”

Ames squeezed the hand in his. “Right back at you, missus.”

Unable to control himself any longer, Sheldon asked, “How did I do, Bob?”

“You took your part off good,” White assurred him. “But I've still half a mind t' jug you for withholdin' guilty knowledge. You knew Mrs. Camden was havin' money troubles an' if you'd ‘a' spoke up at the inquest like you had a right to instead of figurin' how t' make a fast ten thousand dollars by buyin' the
Sea Bird
cheap, it might have opened a line of testimony that would've saved us a lot of trouble.”

“I'm sorry,” Sheldon said.

“You should be.”

Helene Camden stopped crying and wiped her eyes. She looked from Ferris to Phillips then back at Ferris. “We aren't any of us talking, understand? If we can have that damned recording barred, all the evidence against us will be circumstantial. And I have a half-million dollars to fight this thing.”

“I understand,” Ferris said. He didn't sound too hopeful.

Sheriff White took off his hat and sat on the other half of the divided divan. “Now there are one or two little things I'd like to clear up before I take you into town.”

Ames wasn't interested. He wanted to be alone with Mary Lou. “Before you start, Sheriff,” he said, “I wonder if — ”

White turned his faded blue eyes on him. “You wonder what?”

“Is there any charge against me?”

White debated the question. “N-no,” he decided. “I guess not.”

“And Mary Lou?”

“No. I never did think she kilt that maid. I was jist holdin' her in protective custody.”

“Then is it all right if we go?”

“I don't see why not.”

Ames gripped Mary Lou's arm and started out the door, and realized he had nowhere to go. Mary Lou had sold the
Sally
to Sheldon. He turned back and looked at the fat
ship chandler. “How's for selling me back the
Sally
, Ben?”

“What'll you give?” Sheldon asked.

“The fifteen hundred you gave Mary Lou.”

“Well, I dunno,” the fat man said. “The
Sally's
a mighty good boat. Seems to me I ought to make some profit. I can get three thousand for her easy. Maybe even thirty-five hundred.”

White was an old man. He was tired. He, too, had been under a strain. “Goddamn!” he exploded. “Stop hagglin' so I kin git on with my business. Sell him back his boat for what you paid for it or I'll still jug you for withholdin' pertinent knowledge.”

The fat man sighed. “Okay. Fifteen hundred dollars.”

“I'll give you the money in the morning,” Ames said.

He closed the door behind them and he and Mary Lou walked down the drive to the beach road without once looking back. The crescent moon was higher in the sky now but the stars hung just as low.

Neither of them spoke again as they walked down the beach road toward the basin. Two fellow charter boat captains were standing in front of Harry's Bar. The news had spread. Both men grinned at Ames and touched their caps to Mary Lou. “Hi, Charlie. Evenin', Mary Lou.”

Ames and Mary Lou returned the greeting then cut in between Murphy's drugstore and the Ways of Sheldon and went out on the sagging planking of the pier. The night was lovelier on the water. The basin reflected the moon and stars. The tide was running in and the
Sally
was straining at her mooring lines. Ames had never seen anything more lovely, with the exception of Mary Lou. He jumped down into the cockpit and lifted Mary Lou down.

He followed Mary Lou into the cabin and as usual forgot to duck low enough and bumped his forehead on the lintel.

It was cosy and intimate in the small cabin. Ames sat on the edge of his bunk watching Mary Lou move around the little galley, measuring coffee, looking to see if there were any cookies. Some day they might, or they might not, have a bigger boat. It was, Ames decided, immaterial. They had something much more wonderful. When the chips had been down both of them had believed in and trusted and tried to help the other.

Mary Lou came and sat on the bunk beside him. “About
that five thousand dollars, Charlie. The money that was planted on you.”

Ames slipped his arm around her waist. “What about it?”

“Do you think Sheriff White will give it back to you?”

“I doubt that. I doubt it very much,” Ames said.

Mary Lou played with his fingers. “Well, I was just thinking. Do we
really
need a bigger boat, Charlie?”

“No,” Ames admitted. “We don't. The
Sally
will do us for years. But what are you getting at, honey?”

Mary Lou said, “Well, they were kind of snippy at the club because I wouldn't work night before last, so I told them where they could put their job. And I told them that went for next season, too.”

Mary Lou continued. “Even after we give Ben back his fifteen hundred dollars, we'll still have fourteen or fifteen hundred dollars. And if we don't have to save for a new boat — ”

“What then?”

Mary Lou continued to play with his fingers. “Well, we aren't getting any younger, Charlie. We've been married for five years. And if we're ever going to have any children — ”