David Alexander - Masters of Noir - Volume 2

“What is it?” she asked. “You look strange. Did you see Aunt Paula.”

“No,” I said.

“But you spoke to Dr. Vandam.”

“Yes,” I said.

She clutched urgently at my sleeve. “What happened, Scott?”

I ignored the question and asked one of my own. “Do you ever go to San Diego, Grace?”

Her forehead was puckered. “Occasionally. I have friends there. Why?”

“How about Charles? Does he ever go there?”

“I imagine so. It isn’t too far from Hollywood.”

“I’d like to talk to him. Where do you think he’s staying?”

“At the Selwyn, probably, on East 48th Street. What is it, Scott? Please tell me.”

“Later,” I said. “I want to think for a moment.”

I drove back to Manhattan too fast and too recklessly. When we reached our destination, I parked in the only space available, beside a fire hydrant.

We entered the lobby and Grace got Denney’s room number from the desk clerk. An elevator took us up to the eighth floor. I stood to one side when she knocked.

His voice came through, sounding cautious. “Who is it?”

“It’s me, Charles, Grace. Please open the door.”

No key could have opened the door so quickly. A smile of welcome was forming on his face. It died when he saw me and he started to slam the door shut. I hit it with my shoulder, driving him backward into the room. He tried to stop me but couldn’t.

His mouth hardened. “Now look here, shyster—”

Even in the lexicon of a mule skinner there is no epithet more calculated to make my blood go to the boiling point.

“A bit of chocolates,” I said to him. “Sent from San Diego, California, to the Vandam Nursing Home. Just an innocent box of chocolates.”

The words hit him like a physical blow. I could read the look of doom in his suddenly transformed face.

For a moment he stood rigid, the muscles pulling his face out of shape, and then he spun away from me toward a kitchenette at the rear. He had the bread knife out before I could grab him. He brandished it aloft, like a hammer in his fist.

Grace’s hands flew to her mouth, plugging up the scream which was forcing itself out.

I backed slowly away, talking to him.

“A box of chocolates,” I said. “You sent them to Mrs. Larsen, spiked with arsenic.”

He didn’t speak. His eyes were live coals, searing with hate. He stood motionless, the long steel saw-toothed blade glittering under the light.

“California has a community property law,” I said. “Each spouse is entitled to half the property. You knew that Grace was planning to get a divorce, and you poisoned her aunt so she would inherit without delay. But Vandam crossed you up. He kept the death a secret.”

Charles Denney moved then. He sprang forward and the knife made a flashing arc that would have laid me open like a side of beef.

I threw myself sideways and felt a burning flame along my arm. I stumbled and fell and rolled over on my back. Denney was over me now, breathing hoarsely, nothing human in his eyes. He raised the blade for a final thrust. But he waited a second too long.

My feet caught him at the pit of the stomach, with all the leverage of the powerful muscles a man has in his thighs.

Denney went up in the air and flew backward, crashing against the wall. I scrambled to my feet and reached him in a single jump. His eyes were glazed and I picked one up from the basement and threw it at him with all the strength I had. I never threw anything harder.

It nailed him along the side of his jaw and he toppled over with a grunt and lay still.

I kicked the knife away. “It’s all over,” I told Grace. “Take it easy.”

But she had no intention of fainting. “Shall I call the police?”

“If you please.”

It took almost an hour to set them straight on the story. When they finally released us, I took Grace’s arm and led her out to the elevator.

“Have I earned a fee?”

“You certainly have,” she said emphatically.

“Okay. I’m taking you home to collect.”

I felt pretty good. I didn’t even get mad when I found a cop downstairs writing out a parking ticket for my Buick.

I merely asked him to hurry.

I’m afraid to go home tonight.

I’ll go, of course. To a modern, lovely house on Coquina Beach overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. The beach is not the habitat of paupers.

A singularly beautiful and devoted woman waits for me there. Doreen. My wife.

We are ringleaders in a smart cocktail set. We get special service whenever we go into a beach restaurant. Everything has worked perfectly. No one on the beach suspects how we came into our money.

To an outsider I might well be a person to envy. Yet I would give five years of my life if I could escape going home tonight.

Doreen was unaware of the jam I was in when we went on that hunting trip together six months back. We had been married only a few weeks at the time, after getting acquainted during a business trip I took to Atlanta.

She was still pretty much of a stranger to me, and she was such an intense person I didn’t know how she would take the news.

We’d had a wonderful time on the trip. Few women would have taken the dark, tangled swamp, the south Georgia heat as Doreen had. Snakes, alligators, they didn’t faze her. Neither had the panther.

We were in Okeefanokee hunting deer. I’d struck the panther’s spoor in late afternoon. I’d wanted Doreen to turn back, but she’d looked at me strangely.

“Enos,” she said, “I never suspected you’d be afraid of anything. You’re big, ugly, direct, blunt, hardheaded, cruel — or is that only a front?” She finished with a short laugh, but there was a seriousness beneath her words.

“I’m not afraid for myself,” I said.

“Then never be afraid for me,” she said excitedly. “Come on, Enos, I want to see you get this cat.”

I jumped the cat twenty minutes later. As it came out of a clump of palmetto and saw grass I put a 30–30 slug in her. My aim was a trifle high. The panther screamed, pinwheeled in the air, and came at me, a crazed mass of fury and hatred.

Doreen stood her ground and waited for me to shoot the cat. When the beast lay still and prone, it was I who had to wipe sweat from my face.

Doreen walked to the cat slowly. Blood on the animal’s hide was already beginning to draw flies and gnats.

“See, Enos,” Doreen said, “some of it is still pumping out of her, the hot, red life. Wasn’t she beautiful in death?”

I shivered. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. Let’s get back to camp.”

We returned to camp and Doreen cooked our supper. Rabbit on a wooden spit and sourdough biscuits.

When we had eaten, we retired to our tent behind mosquito netting. Around us the swamp was coming to life. Its music was a symphony with tones ranging from the shrill of crickets to the basso of the frogs. The swamp rustled and sighed and screamed occasionally.

Doreen slipped into my arms. “You were wonderful with the cat today, Enos.”

Thinking of it, her breath quickened and I could feel her heart beating against me.

“I’ve shot ‘em before,” I said.

She pulled my chin around with her thumb and forefinger. “I don’t interest you a bit at the moment, Enos,” she stated. “What’s bothering you?”

“A business detail. Nothing for you to worry about.”

“I’m your wife,” she said. “Tell me.”

“All right,” I said looking directly into her eyes. They were large and dark. In the dim light of the lantern her pupils were dilated and as black as the glossy midnight color of her hair.

“I’m in trouble,” I added after a moment. “Serious trouble. I might even be yanked into prison.”