Тэлмидж Пауэлл: The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories

“It wasn’t hard to figure out,” I said. “She’d come to the cottage to tell me it was all over between us. The shanty cracker girl was marrying the richest son in the county. But you didn’t cotton to that idea, did you?”

“Go on,” he said quietly.

“There’s little more. It’s all very simple. You sent Perry out of town to give you a chance to break it up between him and the cracker girl. Not much escapes your notice. You’d heard the gossip about her and the tramp artist. When you couldn’t find her in town, you decided to try my place. I guess you tried to talk her off, buy her off, threaten her off. When none of it worked, you struck her in a rage. You killed her.”

The old man stared blindly at the happy Great Danes.

“Realizing what you’d done,” I said, “you scrounged a rope, couple of cement blocks, and planted her in thirty feet of water.” I shook my head. “Not good. Not good at all. When the blocks sawed the rope in two, a nosy cop might find evidence you’d been around the place; a tire track, footprint, or maybe some fingerprints you’d left sticking around.”

He studied the frolicking dogs as if planning their butchery. “You haven’t named the vital element, artist; proof of guilt, proof that I did anything more than talk to her.”

“Maybe so,” I nodded, “but could a man in your position afford the questions, the scandal, the doubts that would arise and remain in your son’s mind until the day you die? I think not. So I helped you.”

His eyes flashed to me.

“I substituted a chain for the rope,” I said. “The cement blocks will not cut that in two.” I drew a breath. “And of course I want something in return. A thousand dollars. I’m sure you’ve that much handy, in a wall safe if not on your person. It’s bargain day, Mr. Tomlin.”

He thought it over for several long minutes. The sinking sun put a golden glitter in his eyes.

“And how about the future, artist? What if you decided you needed another thousand dollars one of these days?”

I shook my head. “I’m not that stupid. Right now I’ve caught you flat-footed. It’s my moment. Everything is going for me. You haven’t time to make a choice, think, plan. But it would be different in the future. Would I be stupid enough to try to continue blackmailing the most powerful man in the county after he’s had a chance to get his forces and resources together?”

“Your question contains a most healthy logic, artist.”

“One thousand bucks,” I said, “and I hightail it down the driveway in the wagon. Otherwise, I’ll throw the fat in the fire, all of it, including the chain about her ankles and my reason for putting it there. And we’ll see which one of us has most to lose.”

Without taking his eyes off my face, he reached for his wallet. He counted out a thousand dollars without turning a hair; chicken feed, pocket change to him.

I folded the sheaf of fifties and hundreds, some of them new bills, and slipped it into my pocket with care. We parted then, the old man and I, without another word being spoken.

The station wagon seemed to run with new life when I reached the highway. I felt the pressure of the money — the vital element — against my thigh.

The chain on her ankles had lured Tomlin, convinced him that he was dealing with a tramp interested only in a thousand bucks, so he had signed his confession of guilt by putting his fingerprints all over the money.

I didn’t trust the gross sheriff in Palmetto City. I thought it far better to take the vital element and every detail of the nightmare directly to the state’s attorney in St. Petersburg.

I was pretty sure the battered old station wagon would get me there.

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine , November 1968.

On the sun-kissed crescent of private beach adjacent to Uncle Joe’s luxurious Florida home, Biff sat on the enormous towel beside Reena’s relaxed, bikinied form. Lying on her stomach, she murmured a warm, sleepy sigh as Biff lazily rubbed suntan lotion on her perfect back.

They were a striking young couple, she with her leggy figure and jet-black hair and Biff tall, wide-shouldered, sinewy, his short-cropped blonde hair tousled from their swim.

With his eyes fixed on the rambling tile and glass home sketchily visible beyond the lush foliage of Florida landscaping, Biff said, “He’s really taking Aunt Ethel’s death hard. Moped in his room all day again today.”

“It’s all so tragic,” Reena murmured drowsily, “that your Uncle Joe was driving the car when they had the smashup that killed his wife. The poor dear blames himself. He wishes he’d been the one not to walk away.”

Biff’s mouth tightened, thinning away its usual expression of boyish petulance. “If he hadn’t, think of all the money we’d have now! He has no blood relation, except me.”

Reena’s large, violet eyes flashed open. “Biff, really!”

His gaze met hers. “You’ve thought about it, too. Don’t tell me you haven’t.”

Her drowsiness evaporated. She flipped about, sat up. “I’ve also thought about the penalty. No matter how clever, murderers do usually get caught, darling.”

“I haven’t the stomach for it, either,” Biff admitted. “But if cats are subject to multiple skinning, there’s more than one way to bury a man.”

Reena reached for cigarettes and paper matches, her slender hand trembling a little. “Buried alive... shut away somewhere... Is that a bit closer to what you mean?”

“He really is in a state. The right kind of push should send him over the edge. If he were declared incompetent and bundled off to a private sanitarium, my appointment as administrator would be little more than a formality by any court in the state. We’d have control of all his money. Neatly. Safely.”

Her eyes slanted in a conspiratorial glance. “Biff, you’re terrible.”

He matched her sly smile. “It wouldn’t be as if we were vicious,” he said. “He’s lived more than his own share of years, and with the wife he doted on for thirty-five years gone, he has nothing much left.”

Reena’s smooth brow crinkled. “It would take some doing.”

“But the price is right, and the opportune moment is now, while he’s suffering the aftermath of Aunt Ethel’s horrible death.”

Reena drew hard on her cigarette. “He wouldn’t be the only rich man for whom the doors never open.”

“Not by a long shot,” Biff agreed. “You pick the right place, cross the right palms, and Uncle Joe joins the forgotten stored-aways forever. Right off the top of my mind I could name at least four members of the Yacht Club who have antique, but oh-so-rich relatives tucked safely away in expensive sanitariums.”

Reena studied him. The small, frothy surf of the Gulf of Mexico made a salty whisper on the sand. A wheeling gull screamed.

“I could weep,” she murmured, “thinking of poor Uncle Joe rattling around in that lonely house with all its memories.”

“And its ghosts of Aunt Ethel,” Biff said.

Uncle Joe was one of those lean and wiry men with sandy coloration who seem to forget to age after they’re fortyish. His life had been energetic, productive, satisfying, until a week ago. Then everything had seemed to end in a grinding and tearing of metal. He’d swerved to avoid a kid driver who’d shot onto the highway from a side road; swerved, and lost control, and glimpsed a concrete bridge abutment materializing out of the night...

The car had been totaled, and Uncle Joe hadn’t seemed able to understand the miracle that had left him unscathed, except for a few bruises, while the life had been crushed out of Ethel.

When Biff and Reena came up from the beach at sunset, Uncle Joe was still in his room. He didn’t make an appearance until almost midnight. At that time, Biff was sprawled on a recliner in the Florida-room, sipping beer and watching a late TV show. Biff flipped the recliner upright as Uncle Joe brushed past him and turned down the sound on the TV.