James Chase - Lay Her Among the Lilies

“If she knows something why didn’t they knock her off instead of keeping her in that home?” Kerman said.

“That’s what’s worrying me. Up to now all of them have been killed more or less accidentally, but Freedlander was murdered. That means someone is getting in a panic. It also means that Anona is no longer safe.”

Kerman sat up.

“You think they’ll try to get at her?”

“Yeah. We’ll have to hide her some place safe. Maybe we could get Doc Mansell to put her in his Los Angeles clinic and I’ll get Kruger to lend me a couple of his bruisers to sit outside the door.”

“Maybe you have been reading too many detective stories, too,” Kerman said, looking at me out of the corner of his eyes.

I kept the Buick moving at high speed while I thought about Freedlander’s killing, and the more I thought the more jittery I got.

We reached San Lucas, and I pulled up outside a drug store.

“What now?” Kerman asked, surprised.

“I’m going to call Paula,” I said. “I should have called her from ‘Frisco. I’ve got the shakes.”

“Take it easy,” Kerman said, and looked startled. “You’re letting your imagination run

away with you.”

“I hope I am,” I said, and made for the phone booth.

Kerman clutched my arm and pulled me back.

“Look at that!”

He was pointing to a stack of evening newspapers on the magazine counter. Inch headlines smeared across the front page read:

“Get it,” I said, jerked my arm free and shut myself in the booth. I put the call through to Paula’s apartment and waited. I could hear the buzz-buzz note of the ringing tone, but no one answered. I stood there, my heart thumping, the receiver against my ear, listening and waiting.

She should be there. We had agreed Anona wasn’t to be left alone.

Kerman came to stare at my tense face through the glass door. I shook my head at him, broke the connection and asked the operator to try again.

While she was making another connection, I opened the door.

“No answer,” I said. “She’s trying again.”

Kerman’s face darkened.

“Let’s get on. We have a good hour’s run yet.”

“We’ll do it in better time than that,” I said, and, as I was about to hang up, the operator came on and said the line was in order, but there was no answer.

I rammed down the receiver, and together we ran out of the store. I sent the Buick whipping down the main street, and as soon as we were clear of the town I opened up.

Kerman was trying to read the newspaper, but, at the speed we were going, he had trouble in holding it steady.

“She was found this afternoon,” he bawled in my ear. “She took poison after Salzer had

reported Quell’s death to the police. No word about Anona. Nothing about Nurse Gurney.”

“She’s the first of them to get cold feet,” I said. “Or else someone fed her poison. To hell with her, anyway. I’m scared about Paula.”

Kerman said afterwards he had never been driven in a car so fast in his life, and he didn’t ever want to go through the experience again. At one time the speedometer needle was stuck at ninety-two, and kept there as we roared along the wide coast road with, the horn blaring.

A speed cop came after us, but he couldn’t make the grade. He stuck behind for two or three miles, then dropped out of sight. I guessed he would phone our description through to the next town, so I swung off the main road and went pelting along a dirt road that wasn’t much wider than twenty feet. Kerman just sat with his eyes closed and prayed.

We arrived in Orchid City fifteen minutes under the hour, and that was driving. We had done the sixty odd miles in forty-five minutes.

Paula had an apartment on Park Boulevard, a hundred yards or so from Park Hospital. We roared up the broad boulevard and braked outside the apartment block with a squeal of tyres like hog-day in a slaughter-house.

The elevator seemed to crawl to the third floor. It got there eventually, and we both raced down the passage to Paula’s apartment. I rammed my thumb in the bell-push and leaned my weight on it. I could hear the bell ringing, but no one answered. Sweat was standing out on my face as if I’d just come out of a shower.

I stood away.

“Together,” I said to Kerman.

We lunged at the door with our shoulders. It was a good door, but we were pretty good men. The third lunge snapped the lock and carried us into the neat little hall.

We had our guns in our fists as we went through the living-room to Paula’s bedroom.

The bed was in disorder. The sheet and blanket lay on the floor.

We went into the bathroom and the spare bedroom: the apartment was empty: both Paula and Anona had vanished.

I rushed to the telephone and got though to the office. Trixy said Paula hadn’t called. She said a man who wouldn’t give his name had telephoned twice. I told her to give him Paula’s number if he phoned again and hung up.

Kerman gave me a cigarette with a hand that shook slightly. I lit it without being conscious of what I was doing and sat on the bed.

“We’d better get out to the Dream Ship,” Kerman said in a tight, hard voice. “And get out there quick.”

I shook my head.

“Take it easy,” I said.

“What the hell!” Kerman exploded, and started for the door. “They’ve got Paula. Okay, we go out there and talk to them. Come on!”

“Take it easy,” I said, not moving. “Sit down and don’t be obvious.”

Kerman came up to me.

“You crazy or something?”

“Do you think you’d ever get near that ship in daylight?” I said, looking at him. “Use your head. We’re going out there, but we’ll go when it’s dark.”

Kerman made an angry gesture.

“I’m going now. If we wait it may be too late.”

“Oh, shut up!” I said. “Get a drink. You’re staying right here.”

He hesitated, then went into the kitchen. After a while he came back with a bottle of Scotch, two glasses and a jug of ice-water. He made drinks, gave me one and sat down.

“There’s not a damn thing we can do if they’ve decided to knock her on the head,” I said.

“Even if they haven’t done it now, they’d do it the moment they saw us coming. We’ll go out there when it’s dark, and not before.”

Kerman didn’t say anything. He sat down, took a long pull at his drink and squeezed his hands together.

We sat there, staring at the floor, not thinking, not moving: just waiting. We had four hours, probably a little more before we could go into action.

At half-past six we were still sitting there. The Scotch bottle was about half full. Cigarette butts mounted in the ashtrays. We were fit to walk up the wall.

Then the telephone rang: a shrill sound that sounded sinister in the silent little apartment.

“I’ll get it,” I said, and walked stiff legged across the room and picked up the receiver.

“Malloy?” A man’s voice.

“Yes.”

“This is Sherrill.”

I didn’t say anything, but waited, looking across at Kerman.

“I have your girl on board, Malloy,” Sherrill said. His voice was gentle; it whispered in my ear.

“I know,” I said.

“You better come out and fetch her,” Sherrill said. “Say around nine o’clock. Don’t come before. I’ll have a boat at the pier to bring you out. Come alone, and keep this close. If you bring the police or anyone with you, she’ll be rapped on the head and dropped overboard. Understand?”

I said I understood.

“See you at nine o’clock then,” he said, and hung up.

Lieutenant Bradley of the Missing People’s Bureau was a thickset, middle-aged, disillusioned Police Officer who sat for long hours behind a shabby desk in a small office on the fourth floor of Police Headquarters and tried to answer unanswerable questions. All day long and part of the night people came to him or called him on the telephone to report missing relatives, and expected him to find them.