The Price of Murder (18 page)

Once he was in his locked room, and deep in the leather chair, his mind began to function in the orderly way he depended upon.

No one had seen him go to her house. No one, he hoped, had seen him leave it. Because it was a self-service elevator, and there was no attendant on the front desk of the club after six, no one could prove how long he had been away from the club. As there was no note under his door, there had been no phone call and no visitor during the hour and a half he had been gone. He was certain no one had seen him in the heavy shadows where he had stood and watched them eat, and watched the man drive away.

The girl had been vapid and easily handled. He inspected his clothing and his shoes and found them clean of flour. He took the statement Bronson had written from his topcoat pocket, read it through again. It would have been infinitely damaging. He held it until the flame scorched his fingers, and dropped it into the toilet and flushed it. The girl had known about the money. Her death had been essential. Yet it would have been essential anyway, once he had the statement. Because the statement was a warrant for Bronson’s death. He wondered if he would have had the nerve to wait for the man and kill him also if she had not revealed that the man was ignorant of the statement Bronson had left.

The next step was to meet with Danny Bronson before he could get word of the death of his sister-in-law. It would have to be early. Before Bronson was up, and listening to a news broadcast. It was likely that he slept late. It could all go wrong if Danny Bronson was not at the camp. But again it was unlikely he would leave and
take a chance of getting picked up on the morning of the day he expected to receive the money.

Before going to bed he prepared three articles—a suitcase with enough books in it to give it a convincing weight, a note to leave at the front desk downstairs asking Harry to please call his office at nine and tell them he would be in a little later than usual, and a Belgian .32 automatic with a full clip. He had taken it from a hot-tempered client many years before, and knew it was untraceable.

He dressed hurriedly. He left the note on the front desk, carried the suitcase through the club to his car parked in the rear. It was a clear morning, a chill morning, smelling of the coming of winter. The automatic was in the right-hand pocket of his top coat. As he drove he rehearsed exactly how he would do it, and where he would do it, and how it would be.

He turned down the gravel road, rounded the curve by the woods and saw the camp ahead, the gray sedan parked behind it. He pulled in beside the sedan, raced his motor, then gave a prolonged blast on his car horn. He got out and put the suitcase on the ground beside him and waited. He gave another blast, picked up the suitcase and walked around the camp to the terrace. He laid the suitcase flat on the metal-topped table, stood slightly beyond the table, his hands in his topcoat pocket. He wormed his right hand into the black leather glove and found the trigger guard with his first finger.

Danny Bronson came out of the door, hair tousled, face thick and ugly with sleep. He wore a pale blue terrycloth robe.

“What the hell, Verney?”

“I brought it.”

“Hell it’s not eight o’clock yet.”

“Shall I take it away and bring it back this afternoon? Would that suit you better? Frankly. I don’t like driving around with that much money in the car.”

Bronson moved closer and touched the suitcase with his fingertips. “Where’s the good five grand?”

“Inside. It’s separately wrapped.”

Danny thumbed back the latches to raise the top. When both his hands were in sight, thumbs on the two brass latches, Paul Verney yanked the automatic out of his pocket and, from a distance of four feet, with arm outstretched, he shot Bronson full in the face. The shot made a feeble snapping sound in the open air. Bronson yelled harshly and staggered back, arms lifting. Verney fired at the broad chest. He felt coldly competent. He aimed at the left side of the chest. Bronson fell awkwardly. Verney stepped around the table. Bronson was looking up, face agonized, mouth working. Verney put the gun six inches from Bronson’s broad forehead and fired again.

 … and then he was bending over Bronson who lay quite dead on his back and he had the muzzle against the dead forehead and he was pulling the trigger and it was not working and his finger ached from pulling it so hard, and he did not know how long he had been there.

He straightened up. There was a hole beside Bronson’s nose. There was a stain no larger than a quarter on the left side of the chest of the blue robe. There were five holes in the tan forehead, and all could have been covered by a silver dollar.

 … and he was driving down the gravel road and swerved violently when the big convertible swung around the corner, and he put his right wheels in the shallow ditch. The car stopped opposite him and Drusilla Catton rolled down her window, leaned toward him and said with consternation, “What in the world are you doing here, Paul?”

“Dru,” he said quickly, “Dru, I’m so glad to see you. There’s something I must talk to you about. I … I’ll ride down to the camp with you.”

“But …”

“I’ve talked to Bronson. He … he was going to tell you but I can tell you.”

He got in beside her. “Goodness!” she said. “I’ve never seen you so upset. You’re actually dithering like a girl. Old solemn rock Verney. I guess you know about Danny and me.”

“Yes.”

“And maybe you want to give me a fatherly talk. I
hope to hell not, Paul. I happen to know exactly what I’m doing.”

“I suppose you know Danny is trying to blackmail me?”

She giggled. “I rather imagined he’d try that the moment he forced it out of me. Yes, I knew he was. Does it make you squirm, Paul dear?”

She parked behind the house. He knew she would see Danny the moment she walked around the house. A coherent and reasonable plan was beginning to form in his mind. It had looked lost for a time, but this could be even better. This could result in a better kind of deception.

He got out of the car as she did, and put the heavy leather gloves on quickly. As she started around the side of the house, he came up behind her. He took a single deep breath and locked his forearm across her throat. Her body spasmed with astonishing strength. He was swung off balance and he fell heavily, without losing his hold on her. When she tried to reach back for his face, he turned his face down behind her shoulder, his cheek against her back. Her struggle rolled them completely over. A sharp heel dug into his shin. He held her tightly. He felt her body begin to loosen. Her shoe scraped on the walk.

 … and he lay holding her, his arm cramped, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, and he had no way of knowing how long he had been there. It was difficult for him to unbend his locked arm. He got up and staggered weakly and caught his balance. As he left her, the body sagged onto its back. The bloated face was frightful, and he looked away from it. He listened to the sounds of the morning. A commercial airliner went over, already settling for the landing at Hancock. He suppressed the desire to run. They could see nothing from such a height.

He stood for a long time, planning just what he would do. He carried her into the house, dangling over his shoulder, arms around her slack legs. He sat her carefully on the edge of the bed, the huge bed, and let her fall back. It took him a long time to undress her. His hands in the leather gloves were clumsy, and the job was distasteful, and much more difficult than he had imagined it would be. He was going to put her into the bed and then,
remembering the violence of her struggle, he pushed her off onto the floor on the other side of the bed. Her head struck the hardwood floor with an impact that made his stomach twist.

He put her clothing away carefully.

In a small shed apart from the house he found what he needed. A length of heavy insulated wire, some cinder blocks. He carried wire and cinder blocks down to the dock and lowered them into the green rowboat tied up there. He got Danny under the arms and dragged him down, tumbled the body into the boat. He wired the cinder blocks firmly to Danny’s ankles, rowed out into the middle of the artificial lake. The water was glassy calm. The boat made a long wake. He lifted legs and blocks over the side. He pushed Danny into a sitting position on the side of the boat. The boat tipped and suddenly he was gone. Cold water was splashed into Verney’s face. The boat rocked violently, shipping some water. When it was still again he looked down. He could not see him. He rowed back and tied up the boat.

He went back into the house and looked for the keys to the gray sedan. He looked everywhere. He found them just as he was beginning to become frantic. They were in an ash tray on a table near the living room door. He took a last look around, and was glad he did. He hooked up a hose from the shed to an outside faucet and rinsed off the flagstones where Danny’s head had been, rinsed off the blood and flecks of tissue and a single curved fragment of bone.

He drove the sedan up the gravel road, watching the ditch carefully. When he saw a deep enough place, he backed up, then ran the car violently into the ditch. It shook him up badly, and he bit the inside of his lower lip. He raced the motor in gear until the back wheels were buried deep. He left the keys in it, got into his own car, rocked it until it came up out of the shallow ditch.

Verney was in his office by eleven o’clock. He told his secretary he had driven out toward Kemp to look at some property that might come on the market soon. She gave him the phone messages and said a policeman named
Spence had stopped in to see him at ten o’clock and said he’d be back later.

“Did he say what it was about?”

“No, sir.”

The man came back at quarter to twelve and introduced himself as Detective Spence of the Homicide Section. He was a spare man with scurfy hair and a long face so dry as to look dusty. Verney was relieved by his casual manner. Spence was pleased to accept a cigar.

“I want to ask some questions about a parole officer named Keefler who came to see you the other day about a visit you got from Danny Bronson.”

“Oh yes, of course.”

Verney told the story of Bronson’s visit, of his curiosity about the man and about the suspicious way he had acted. And he related his conversation with Keefler.

“We got Keefler locked up for murder.”

“Keefler! Indeed?”

“An oldie from way back. He got excited and spilled it to Sergeant Ben Wixler. We were talking to Keefler actually about the murder of Bronson’s sister-in-law last night.”

“Murder?”

“How could you miss it, Mr. Verney?”

“I’m afraid I did. I haven’t seen a paper yet and I haven’t heard the radio newscasts.”

Spence stood up. “It was about this same thing, we think. About the envelope, the same one he tried to leave with you. Wixler will get to the bottom of it. He nearly always does. Danny is about nineteen times as hot as he was yesterday.”

“This Sergeant Wexler thinks Bronson did it?”

“Not Wexler. Wixler. I don’t know exactly what he thinks, Mr. Verney. I know he wants to talk to Danny.”

“If you ever find out what was in that envelope, I would like very much to know, Mr. Spence.”

“We’ll find out. We always do. See you around,” Spence said, and drifted out.

Verney tried to compose himself after Spence had gone. There had been something peculiarly disquieting about the man. He had the air of utter casual confidence.

We always do.

He quieted himself with logical thought. Four people had known or could make a good guess at the contents of that envelope. Mrs. Lee Bronson, Drusilla Catton, Danny Bronson and himself. And he was certainly never going to share that knowledge with anybody.

In review he decided that he had moved quickly and deftly, and had improvised well. He had done something distasteful to him and yet necessary to his well-being. Three had died. A pretty, superficial, shallow young woman. A trashy older woman. A wanted man. There was no loss to society.

It would be well, he decided, to set up the date of his trip to South America.

Inspector Wendell Matthews sat at his ease in Ben Wixler’s office, chair tilted back, chubby knee sharply bent, right heel caught on the edge of the chair, hands laced around his right ankle. It was ten o’clock on the morning of Thursday, October eighteenth.

Matthews was a round man who, twenty years before, had barely met minimum height requirements. He had thinning brown hair, ice gray eyes and a small petulant mouth. He had the reputation of being a fusspot, an old lady who looked for dust in the corners and under the rugs, who looked for incorrect entries in the files, who was death on coffee breaks. The few in the department who knew him better knew that only the surface of his mind was occupied with departmental trivia. Ben Wixler and a handful of others had a good deal of respect for the quiet logic underneath.

They had been discussing the available facts in the Bronson murder, and Matthews had gone over the already bulky file.

“This could hurt you,” Matthews said.

“What am I doing that I shouldn’t do? What haven’t I done that should be done, Wendy? We’ve gone through that neighborhood thoroughly. Danny Bronson is as hot as anybody can be. It looks like we have to wait until he’s found.”

“You know what I mean, Ben. You read the papers. Professor’s wife slain. Huge manhunt for paroled convict. Mystery money figures in Bronson case. She was a sexy looking item, and she loved having her picture taken. So
all the wire services have picked it up. The deal of getting killed with the kitchen sink gives it that nice flavor of the macabre. Bucky Angelis, our fighting district attorney, wants in on the act.”

“I know. He was over. Offering all the manpower of his office and the Special Detail, or something. But what could I use them for?”

“Bad psychology, Ben. You should have accepted, and given them a make-work job.”

“Why?”

“Suppose Danny isn’t located? Then you’re up the creek. And it would be nice to be able to share the blame. Keep it to yourself, and you don’t have too much time left.”