Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

Then I returned to the car for the two anchors and the sash cord.

When I was finally reseated in the boat and ready to start, Helena still stood on the dock.

“Can’t I go along and help?” she asked.

“I’d never find this place again in the dark,” I told her. I looked at my watch, noting it was five of ten. “Pick me up at the boat livery at ten thirty.”

When she didn’t say anything, I glanced up at her. Maybe it was only an effect of the moonlight, but I imagined there was a look of disappointment on her usually expressionless face, as though I had refused her some pleasure she particularly wanted to enjoy.

“Ten thirty,” I repeated.

She merely nodded, and I started the motor and pulled away.

I headed straight out from shore at quarter speed for about fifty yards, then stopped long enough to light my lantern. I didn’t care to have the Naval Reserve pick me up for running without lights.

When I started up again, I opened to full throttle and held it until I was even with the farthest boats from shore, approximately two miles out. I didn’t want to risk calling attention to myself by going out beyond them.

There weren’t many boats out that far, perhaps a half dozen spaced several hundred yards apart. I cut my motor halfway between two.

There was no risk working under the bright glare of the Coleman lantern for since I could see nothing of the other boats except their lights, I knew it was impossible for them to see what was going on in mine. Working rapidly. I uncovered the body, cut a length of sash cord and tied one of the anchors around Lawrence Powers’s neck. The other I tied firmly to his feet after lashing his ankles together.

I was standing up in the boat and just getting ready to heave him over the side when a voice said almost in my ear, “Any luck?”

Starting violently, I lost my balance, made a wild grab for the side of the boat and sat down with a thump on the body. I took one wild look over my shoulder, expecting to see someone within feet of me, then drew a deep sigh of relief. There was a boat light slowly coming toward me, but it was still a good twenty yards away. I realized it was only the acoustic effect of sound traveling across water which had made the voice seem so near.

Since the two figures in the other boat were only faceless shapes to me, I realized they couldn’t see into my boat any clearer than I could see into theirs. Quickly I pulled the burlap sacks over the body and pushed myself up onto the rear seat next to the motor.

Only then did it occur to me I hadn’t even answered the other boat’s hail. Belatedly I called back in as calm a voice as I could muster, “Couple of small perch is all.”

The boat was now within ten yards, and I could make out the two men in it. The one in front was in his early twenties and the man operating the motor was middle-aged. The motor was barely turning over, which was the reason I hadn’t heard their approach. But they hadn’t been trying to sneak up on me, I realized when I saw a line stretching back from either side of the boat. They were moving at that slow speed because they were trolling.

They passed within three yards of me. As they went by, the middle-aged man said, “We ain’t having any luck either. We’re about ready to go in.”

Then they were past. Neither had glanced at the burlap-covered mound in the bottom of my boat.

I waited until I could see nothing of them but their light, then uncovered the body again, lifted it in my arms and heaved it into the water. It landed on its back, the sightless eyes peering straight up at me for a final second before it disappeared in a gurgle of bubbles.

I tossed the burlap bags overboard after it. Then, with shaking fingers, I lit a cigarette and drew a deep and relieved drag.

I was halfway back to shore before it occurred to me the old man at the boat livery might think it odd if he noticed my line wasn’t wet. Cutting the motor, I tied a yellow and red flatfish to my line and made a long cast out over the water. I knew the chance of getting a strike on an artificial lure at night was remote, but all I was interested in was getting the line wet.

My usual fisherman’s luck held. If I had been fishing seriously, I could have sat there all night without a single strike. But because the last thing in the world I wanted at that moment was a fish, I nailed a northern pike which must have weighed close to five pounds. It took me nearly ten minutes to land it.

Then I had another thought. I didn’t have an Illinois fishing license. And it would be just my luck to step out of the boat into the arms of a game warden.

So I unhooked one of the nicest northerns I ever boated and tossed it back in the water.

When I pulled in at the boat livery dock, the old man asked me, “Any luck?”

“A five pound northern,” I said. “But I tossed it back in.”

He cackled. I knew he wouldn’t believe me.

Helena had parked the car just off the highway on the dirt road leading down to the boat livery. She was sitting on the right side of the seat, so after tossing my fishing gear in the back, I slid under the wheel.

“Everything go all right?”

“O.K. I even caught a fish on the way in.”

“Oh? Do you like fishing?”

“Under ordinary circumstances,” I said. “It’s my favorite sport.”

“Then why didn’t you stay out a while?” she asked seriously. “I wouldn’t have minded waiting.”

The question solidified an opinion I had already formed. Beneath her beautiful exterior Helena was almost psychotically callous. The casual way in which she had borrowed ice for our drinks from the tub containing the corpse of her husband had convinced me of that. Her suggestion that I might have enjoyed a little fishing immediately after dumping the same corpse in Lake Michigan only confirmed my judgment.

I didn’t try to explain it to her. I just said, “I wasn’t particularly in the mood for fishing tonight.”

Back at the tourist court we had one more job. I set Helena to work scrubbing out the tub which had been her husband’s bier for five days.

Then I informed her there wasn’t any reason, now that her cabin was corpseless, that she couldn’t sleep in her own bed that night. She gave me a mildly surprised look, but she made no objection.

I didn’t think it necessary to explain that musing on her homicidal tendencies had begun to give me the feeling it might not be too safe to go to sleep in the same room she was in.

I locked my cabin door that night.

My last thought before going to sleep was speculation as to what Helena’s feelings would be when she stepped into that tub for a shower the next morning. Then I stopped speculating, because I knew it wouldn’t bother her in the slightest.

The trip back to St. Louis on Sunday was uneventful. En route I briefed Helena again on how she must behave on Monday in order to keep suspicion from herself. I elaborated a little on my original instructions and made her repeat them back to me.

“I’m to meet the plane Lawrence intended to come back on just as though I expected him to be on it,” she said tonelessly. “After it lands and everyone is off, I’m to check with the flight office and pretend to be upset because he wasn’t listed on the flight. Then I’m to wire Lawrence in care of convention headquarters in New York. When word comes back that the telegram isn’t deliverable, I’m to wire an inquiry to convention headquarters itself.” She paused, then asked, “But will anybody be there if the convention is over?”

“Conventions are always headed up by local people in the town where the convention’s held,” I told her. “Usual procedure is for the chairman to rent a temporary post office box under the convention’s name, then inform Western Union wires addressed to convention headquarters are to be delivered either to his office or home. He’ll have the same office and home after the convention.”