Ричард Деминг - Hit and Run

She had decided what to do. Lawrence Powers had been wrong when he accused her of having no imagination. What she planned might be considered illogical, but it certainly didn’t lack imagination.

Harry Cushman maintained a seven-room apartment on Elm-wood Avenue. When his doorbell rang at two thirty in the afternoon, he was surprised to find Helena standing in the hall.

“What’s the matter?” he asked worriedly. “I thought you were driving your husband to the airport this afternoon.”

She moved past him into the apartment, waited until he closed the door, then offered her lips for a kiss. He gave her a preoccupied peck and repeated, “What’s the matter?”

“Lawrence discovered the car damage,” she said calmly. “He knows my car killed that old man.”

Cushman’s jaw dropped. In a stupefied voice he said, “Good God! Does he know I was with you?”

Helena’s lip corners lifted ever so slightly. It wasn’t a smile so much as an expression of mockery. “Is that your only worry?” she asked.

He had the grace to look a little abashed. “Of course not,” he said. “You know my first concern is you. Has he called the police?”

She shook her head. “He can’t. He’s too tied up at the moment.”

“Tied up? With what?”

“Clothesline,” Helena said. “I mean he’s literally tied up. He’s in our basement.”

Unsteadily, Cushman crossed to an easy chair and sank into it. “I think I’d better hear this sitting down,” he said. “Just what happened?”

“I knocked him unconscious with a wrench,” Helena said serenely. “I didn’t have any choice. He had the phone in his hand to call the police, and I needed time to think. After I thought out what to do, I phoned Mr. Calhoun.”

Cushman only stared at her, too stupefied to make any comment.

“Mr. Calhoun came over at once,” she continued, in the same tone she might have used to give a woman friend a recipe. “Meantime I had tied and gagged Lawrence, and had made an excuse to send Alice home. We were in the garage when it happened, you see, so Alice doesn’t know anything about it.”

“Thank God for little favors, anyway,” Cushman breathed.

“Do you love me?” Helena asked in her normally flat tone.

Cushman stared at her. “You certainly pick odd times for romance.”

“It’s important,” she said. “Do you still want to marry me? There’s no point in continuing this conversation if you don’t.”

He regarded her curiously for several silent seconds, as though trying to decipher some meaning in the strange tangent at which the conversation had suddenly gone off. As he studied her, some of the puzzlement and worry disappeared from his face and her beauty again began to penetrate his consciousness. If his eventual nod wasn’t enthusiastic, it was definitely affirmative.

“You do still want to marry me?” she persisted.

“Of course,” he said. “You know I’m crazy about you. But I thought you wanted the status quo.”

“That’s hardly possible now, is it? The minute I untie Lawrence, he’ll head for a lawyer. Do you want to marry me enough to go to a little trouble?”

“Haven’t I already?” he asked. “Fifteen thousand bucks isn’t exactly peanuts. Not to mention the mental strain.”

“You’ll have to do a little more now, Harry. If you really want me. I want you to help me get a divorce.”

“How?” he asked. “Anyway, aren’t you a little confused? The important thing is to get you out of a felony charge. If we manage that, your husband will probably take care of the divorce. You just said the first place he’ll go when you untie him is to a lawyer.”

“My plan will free me of possible criminal charges at the same time it gives me a ground for divorce,” she said. “I don’t want Lawrence to get a divorce. I want to get it.”

He said dubiously, “Are you aware that the only divorce ground in New York is adultery?”

“It isn’t in Reno. Insanity is one of the grounds there.”

He looked at her blankly. “Insanity?”

“It’s quite simple,” she said. “I won’t have a bit of trouble proving Lawrence insane enough for commitment if you’ll cooperate in the plan. All you have to do is take his place on the plane to New York. It leaves in less than an hour.”

While he gaped at her, she drew a plane-ticket envelope from her bag and handed it to him. Then she handed him a pair of steel-rimmed glasses and said, “Here. Put these on. They’re Lawrence’s.”

Holding the glasses gingerly, he continued to gape at her.

“You’re almost exactly Lawrence’s height,” Helena said. “With a couple of towels padding your stomach, you’d be almost exactly his build. He has ten years on you, but you both have a full head of graying hair and a small gray mustache. With those glasses, you’d match his description perfectly. All you have to do is fly to New York in his place, then remove your disguise and fly back under another name on the next plane.”

He stared at the glasses, then back at her again. “But we don’t look a thing alike in the face,” he said stupidly.

“You don’t have to, so long as the descriptions match. The flight stewardesses won’t know either of you. Lawrence flies to Washington occasionally, but he hasn’t flown to New York in three years. You never fly anywhere. By the time the police make a routine check, several days will have passed and the stewardesses will all but have forgotten you. Even if they’re shown a photograph, it’s unlikely—”

“The police!” Cushman interrupted in a squeaking voice.

“Of course,” Helena said patiently. “The plan is this: Mr. Calhoun has agreed to hold Lawrence captive until the car is fixed — at no additional charge, incidentally. Then, after the car is back in the garage, he’ll transport Lawrence to New York City in a private plane owned by a friend of his. He’ll turn him loose in the city unshaven and in dirty clothes. What do you think Lawrence will do?”

“Head for the nearest police station and spill the whole story,” Cushman said promptly.

“Exactly. And how do you think the police will receive it?”

After considering this, Cushman said reflectively, “It won’t sound very plausible to them, I guess. They’ll probably do some checking before taking any action.”

Helena gave him the sort of nod teachers award to bright students. “And after checking, they’ll be convinced he’s crazy. The flight list will show he flew to New York as scheduled, and the stewardesses will verify his description. The assumption will be that he was in New York all the time, and his appearance will suggest that he spent his time getting drunk. When the police come to check my car, they’ll find it undamaged. Then I’ll announce that my husband has been suffering delusions about me for some time, and request his commitment to Gowanda. I doubt that under the circumstances I’ll have much trouble getting the commitment.”

“Maybe not for a period of observation,” Cushman said slowly. “But it’s hard to fool psychiatrists for very long.”

Helena almost smiled. “They’re as human as other people, Harry. What would your reaction be if you were a psychiatrist and one of your patients insisted a delusion was fact, when you had a police report stating it wasn’t fact. It will work, believe me. And the minute he’s declared insane, I’ll be off to Reno for a quick divorce.”

Thoughtfully rubbing his chin, Cushman sat with a frown on his face. From his expression, Helena couldn’t tell whether she had convinced him or not.

She was relieved when he said” in a contemplative tone, “You know, your plan’s just crazy enough to work.”