Ричард Деминг - Hit and Run

“It was the key to the trunk of Lawrence’s Packard you tried in the lock the first time,” she said calmly. “I had the Buick trunk key in my purse.”

“And that’s why you insisted on this particular tourist court,” he went on. “You wanted one with carports, so you could get him out of the trunk and into your cabin without being seen. You dragged him in through the carport door while I was taking a shower.”

She shrugged. “He wasn’t very heavy. A hundred and fifty. I weigh one twenty-five myself.”

Leaning forward, he put his head in his hands and mumbled, “Tell me the rest of it.”

Without a trace of emotion in her voice, she said, “While you were arranging for the Buick to be fixed, I located an ice house only two miles from here. I thought of ice because I knew he’d begin to smell after a few days if he wasn’t preserved. I had the man put four twenty-five-pound chunks of ice in the trunk of the Dodge. He also sold me an icepick. Then I came back here and carried the pieces in one at a time. I left the plug out of the bathtub so the melted ice would run away, and I’ve been adding fifty pounds a day. I got it while you were still in bed, when you thought I was out after coffee.” She paused, then added, “The burlap bags were in our garage at home. I put them on the floor of the trunk in case he bled any.”

Calhoun thought of something. “Good God!” he said. “All you borrowed from the motel proprietor was an empty pitcher. The ice for our drinks has been coming out of that bathtub!”

When her lip corners curled upward in the suggestion of a smile, he got to his feet, reeled into the bathroom, and threw up.

When he returned to the bedroom, he found Helena seated on the bed and serenely smoking a cigarette.

“Tell me how it happened,” he suggested dully.

“He was going to call the police,” she said. “It was all because he insisted on getting everywhere early. I was going to drive him to the airport. His plane didn’t leave until three thirty, so I planned to leave the house at two thirty. But he was all packed up and ready to go an hour before that. I intended taking the station wagon, figuring I’d make some excuse if he asked why I wasn’t driving the Buick. But Lawrence tried to be helpful. Without my knowing, he went out to the garage before two o’clock and backed the convertible out for me.”

She crushed out her cigarette and lighted another one. “He didn’t notice the damage at first. He’d got in and out on the left side, you see. When he came back in the house to tell me how helpful he’d been, I told him I wanted to take the station wagon. I almost got away with it. I sent him upstairs on a pretext and went out to put the Buick away and back out the station wagon. But he looked out an upstairs window and noticed the damage. And he guessed at once what had caused it. He used to read every inch of both papers, so he knew the police were looking for a green Buick. He didn’t even ask me. When he came back downstairs, he just looked at me in a horrified way and said, ‘Helena, you killed that old man.’”

She blew twin streams of smoke from her nostrils, creating a curious mental impression on Calhoun. With her immobile face and motionless body and the smoke issuing from her nostrils, she looked like a carved Oriental idol.

Tonelessly she went on. “There was no reasoning with him, Barney. He was the most self-righteous man who ever lived. It didn’t mean a thing to him that I might go to jail for months or even years if I was discovered. He was determined to call the police. We have five phone extensions, and one of them is in the garage. He marched over to it like an avenging angel and was dialing O when I picked up a wrench and hit him over the back of the head.”

Calhoun said shakily, “You can probably beat the charge down to manslaughter. A spur-of-the-moment thing like that.”

She gave her head a slow shake. “That didn’t kill him, Barney. It only knocked him out. He lay there for some time while I tried to figure out what to do. There was only one thing to do, of course. He would never have listened to reason. If I had let him live, I would not only have gone to jail; my affair with Harry would have come out and Lawrence would have divorced me without alimony. I’m afraid it’s premeditated murder. The second time I used the wrench quite deliberately.”

He said huskily, “Haven’t you any sense at all? Never admit that to anyone again. You want to end in the electric chair? And why’d you wait until now to mention all this? Why not before we started for Cleveland?”

“Because I wanted to make sure you’d help me get rid of the body,” she said serenely. “I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to dispose of it myself. And you might have backed out of the whole deal if you’d known about Lawrence.”

“Might have?” he said sarcastically. “What makes you think I won’t, anyway? I’m not an accessory to this yet. Suppose I just walk out?”

Helena yawned slightly. “Then I suppose I’d be caught. But I doubt that the police would believe you knew nothing about it. I’d tell them it was you who killed Lawrence, of course. And even if they didn’t believe me, they’d certainly never accept your story that you had nothing at all to do with it. Particularly after the motel proprietor identified you as the man who registered here as my brother.”

She was right, he knew. No policeman would ever believe he’d transported a body two hundred miles without knowing it, or that the woman he was traveling with had kept it on ice in her bathtub for three days without his knowledge. He had to save Helena in order to save himself.

If it was possible to save either of them.

He didn’t waste any time upbraiding her. In the first place it wouldn’t accomplish anything, and in the second place he didn’t think it would bother her in the least.

“Let’s go over to my cabin where I can think,” he said wearily.

Calhoun spent the next twenty minutes pacing up and down and chainsmoking while Helena calmly watched him and sipped a highball. He had one straight shot. He would have preferred a highball, but he refused to use any more of Helena’s ice.

Finally he stopped pacing and faced her. “Look,” he said. “I’ve figured out how to get rid of him, but before we even discuss that, we’ve got to plan a story to cover you. When your husband doesn’t show up on Monday, you’re going to have to act like a normal wife. First, phone his bank to ask if they’ve heard from him. Then on Tuesday wire convention headquarters in New York. They’ll wire back that he never showed, of course. Soon as you get that wire, you’ll have to phone the police and put on a worried-wife act. Think you can manage all that?”

She nodded indifferently.

“Then the hard part will start. First the police will discover he never caught that plane, so they’ll know he disappeared in Buffalo—”

“I thought of that before I killed him,” Helena interrupted. “He’ll be listed on the flight.”

Calhoun stared at her. “How?”

“It was only a little after one thirty when all this happened,” she said. “By two I had Lawrence stripped, his clothing hidden in the garage, and his body in the car trunk. Then I went back inside, told Alice I wouldn’t be home for dinner after I took Mr. Powers to the airport, and she could go home. I also told her I intended driving up to my sister’s in Urica the next morning, so she could take the week off. I had her out of the house by two fifteen.”

“How’d that get your husband listed on the plane flight he was supposed to take?” Calhoun asked.

“I haven’t finished. As soon as Alice left, I took Lawrence’s plane ticket over to Harry Cushman’s apartment. I picked him up and drove him to the airport. He flew to New York under Lawrence’s name, and took the next plane back under a different name. When the police start looking for Lawrence, they’ll start looking in New York.”