Ричард Деминг - Hit and Run

“I see.” Her brow puckered in a slight frown. “And you say you can get my car repaired safely?”

“Safely,” he assured her.

“How? I wouldn’t care to have some shady repairman work on it. All he’d have to do is check the license plates like you did, and he’d be all set for a little blackmail.”

“I said safely. Does your husband ever go out of town?”

“He flies to New York this coming Monday. A bankers’ convention. He’ll be gone a full week.”

“What time does he leave?”

“Sometime in the afternoon. I don’t remember the exact flight time. I’ll be driving him to the airport.”

“Fine,” Calhoun said. “You’ll be home by dark, then?”

“Oh, yes. Long before that.”

He said, “As soon as it’s dark Monday night, I’ll pick up the car and drive it to Rochester. I’ll switch plates and take it to a garage where I can get fast service. By the time your husband gets back from New York, your car will be back in your garage as good as new. Meantime, between now and Monday, I’ll arrange settlements with John Lischer and the other two car owners.”

She thought it over. Finally she said, “What is your fee?”

“Five thousand dollars,” Calhoun said.

She didn’t even blink. “I see. You’re a rather expensive man, Mr. Calhoun.”

He shrugged.

“And if I refuse to engage you?”

He said, “I have my duty as a citizen.”

“How would you explain to the police keeping silent thirty-six hours?”

“I’d phone and ask why they haven’t acknowledged my letter,” he said blandly. “I was quite drunk that night. Too drunk for it to occur to me I ought to tell the police at the scene I had seen your license number. But the very next morning I wrote them a letter. Letters can get lost in the mail.”

She nodded slightly. “I guess you’re in a pretty good bargaining position, Mr. Calhoun. But I have one more question. Suppose this John Lischer insists on as much as a five-thousand-dollar settlement? With your fee, that would run the amount up to ten thousand. Plus perhaps five hundred apiece for the other two car owners. Where do you suggest I get that much money?”

Calhoun looked at her in surprise. “With this home and with three cars in the garage, I assume you’re not exactly a pauper.”

“No,” she admitted. “My husband is quite wealthy. And I can have all the money I want for any purpose I want just by asking. The only catch is I have to tell what it’s for. I haven’t a cent of my own except a checking account that currently contains about five hundred dollars. I could get the money by telling my husband what it’s for, but if I did that, I wouldn’t need your services. I’m not afraid of the police. The sole reason I’m willing to engage you is to prevent my husband from finding out I wasn’t home in bed at the time of the accident.”

“Think up some other excuse. A charity donation, for instance.”

She shook her head. “My husband handles all our charity donations. There simply isn’t any excuse I could give him. If I told him I wanted a ten-thousand-dollar yacht, he’d tell me to order it and have the company bill him. He wouldn’t give me the money for it. I’ve never in my life asked him for more than a couple of hundred dollars in cash.”

Calhoun said, “Then hit your boy friend. Harry Cushman’s got a couple of odd million lying around, last I heard, and nothing to spend it on except nightclubbing and alimony.”

She looked thoughtful. “Yes, I suppose that would work. Harry wouldn’t want publicity any more than I would. Shall I ask him for a check?” “Cash,” Calhoun said.

“I’ll phone him as soon as you leave. Suppose you come back about this same time tomorrow?”

“Fine,” Calhoun said. It sounded like a dismissal, so he got to his feet.

She gave him an impersonal nod of good-by. She was leaning forward and reaching behind her back to untie the square knot when he walked out of the room.

After the private detective had departed, Helena Powers struggled for some time with the square knot he had tied in her scarf. It was too tightly drawn for her to get loose.

Giving up, she rose from the deck chair and pressed a button set in the wall. When the maid appeared, she said, “Bring me a phone, will you please, Alice?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the girl said.

She went away and returned with a plug-in phone extension. She inserted the plug into a wall outlet, then set the phone on an end table and looked inquiringly at her mistress.

“Thank you,” Helena said. “That’s all.”

When the maid had disappeared, Helena sat on the deck chair and dialed a number. A male voice answered.

“Harry?” she said. “I have to see you right away. Can you come at once?”

“There?” he asked. “It’s nearly two thirty. Your husband will be home in an hour.”

“You’ll be gone again before that. Have the taxi drop you on the back street and come in by the sun porch. I’ll be there.”

“This is foolishness,” he protested. “Suppose he comes home early? Can’t we wait until tonight?”

“Lawrence and I are going out together tonight,” she said in a patient tone. “It has to be right now. It’s important.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“There was a witness, Harry.”

He was silent for a long time. Then he said, “Be there in fifteen minutes.”

Helena was lying full-length on the deck chair when Harry Cushman stepped in through one of the open French doors. He wore gray slacks and a powder-blue sport shirt open at the neck to expose the upper part of a bronzed chest. With his flat stomach and well-developed arms, he looked extremely fit. He also looked extremely nervous.

Helena glanced up at him, rose, and casually offered her lips for a kiss.

After a hurried peck, he said nervously, “What’s this about a witness?”

“Untie me first,” she requested, turning her back.

“What?” he said. “Why?”

“The knot’s too tight. It’s uncomfortable.”

“Oh.” His fingers fumbled with the knot for some seconds before he managed to get it loose. Then he recrossed the two ends. “This lax enough?”

“Never mind retying it,” she said, pulling the scarf free and carelessly draping it over the phone. “I’m not finished sun bathing.”

She lay back on the deck chair, her firm, sun-tanned breasts exposed to the sunlight.

“My God!” Cushman said. “You can’t lie around like that with me here.”

“Don’t be a prude,” she said. “You’ve seen me totally naked.”

“Not practically in public. Suppose your maid walked in? Or worse yet, your husband?”

“Lawrence never left the bank before three P.M. in his life. And we’d hear Alice coming. The dining-room floor is tile. Sit down and relax.”

“You’re practically outdoors here on the porch,” he insisted. “People can see right in.”

Anxiously he scanned the outdoors through the screens on three sides of the sun porch. Noting how far it was to the street and to the nearest house, he was a little reassured, but not much.

“You can’t see indoors through screens when the sun hits them,” she said calmly. “I often lie out here without a stitch on. Are you going to sit down and listen to me, or waste time fussing about my nudity?”

Seeing he had no hope of winning the argument, Cushman took the only defensive action he could. He crossed to the table containing the phone extension, lifted the scarf, and hovered over her, ready to drop it across her bosom at the slightest sound from the dining room.

“All right,” he said fretfully. “Go ahead, so I can get out of here.”

“A private detective was here just before I phoned you,” she said. “His card’s lying next to the phone.”