Джеймс Чейз - There’s Always A Price Tag

I lit a cigarette while my mind raced.

Helen must have been nuts to have attempted to pull yet another stunt on the same lines. The National Fidelity Company of California was the biggest and most powerful insurance company on the Pacific Coast. It was a certain bet that they wouldn’t be carrying all the risk on that three-quarters of a million bucks. There would be other companies involved. It was one thing to threaten a small company the way she had done, but something else beside to tackle the National Fidelity.

I felt suddenly sick.

‘What’s biting you?’ Solly said, staring at me.

‘Nothing. I was thinking.’ I got to my feet. ‘Well, thanks for the information, Jack. It could be useful. I’ll let you have a hundred bucks when I’m passing. The rest of it will come if I can use the information.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I don’t want to know. Just let me have the money when you can.’

After Solly had gone, I went down to clean the car, and while I worked I thought over what he had told me.

If she was kidding herself that she could handle the National Fidelity as she had the other company she was in for a surprise. The National Fidelity would put her on the ball of its thumb and make a smear of her on a wall.

It seemed to me now that I should have to be content with the two thousand six hundred dollars that Dester had given me and write the insurance money off as an impossible risk.

My mind was still working on the problem when I took the car over to the house.

Dester came down the steps. He paused to light a cigarette before getting into the car.

‘Well, this is it, kid,’ he said. ‘There’ll be no rain check for today. This is my last trip.’

I didn’t say anything: there wasn’t anything to say.

He got into the car.

‘Let’s have the top down. We’ll go in there with the flag flying. I may as well show them I don’t give a damn.’

I put the hood down.

As I drove along the crowded streets towards the Studios, people stared at Dester. The blue-and-cream Rolls was a familiar landmark, and they knew who was in it. They knew too that this was his last day at the Studios. The gossip columns had been full of it this morning. I could see him in the driving mirror as he sat behind me and I handed it to him. He stared back at the staring eyes.

Maybe the guard sensed that this was an important occasion. Anyway, he had the gates open for us as we came up and when he saw Dester, sitting exposed to view, he saluted.

‘Front entrance today,’ Dester said, ‘and pick me up there tonight.’

I took him around to the front entrance and pulled up.

‘When you come back for me, bring a couple of suitcases with you,’ he said as he got out. ‘There’ll be some liquor to shift.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I watched him walk up the steps as if he owned the place and I admired his guts. The doorman hesitated, then opened the door for him, hesitated again, then touched his cap.

I turned the car and drove back to the house.

As I put the Rolls into the garage I saw the Cadillac was there, and that meant Helen was somewhere in the house. I suddenly decided it was time to have a talk with her.

I went up to the apartment above the garage and changed into my new suit. I didn’t intend to talk to her as a chauffeur: this morning’s conference was going to be on level terms.

I went over to the house.

I stood in the hall and listened, but I couldn’t hear a sound that told me where she was. I walked into the lounge. The cigarette-butts in the ashtrays and the used whisky glass on the bar told me she hadn’t been in there as yet. The time was twenty minutes to eleven. It was possible she was still upstairs. I left the lounge and walked up the stairs, taking care to make no noise. I paused outside her bedroom door and listened, then, hearing no sound, I turned the door handle gently and pushed open the door.

The bedclothes had been thrown back. On a chair by her dressing-table were her nylon underwear, her silk stockings and her girdle. The bathroom door was ajar. I could hear the shower going. I stepped into the bedroom, shut the door and walked over to one of the lounging chairs and sat down. I lit a cigarette, thinking that, two years ago, a guy with a weak heart had also sat in her bedroom waiting for her while she stood under a shower. She would find it a little harder to throw me out of a window if the idea entered her lovely head.

After five or six minutes of waiting, I heard the shower turn off. I could hear her moving about in the bathroom. Another five minutes dragged by, then she came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a yellow turkish towelling wrap.

We looked at each other.

She stood motionless, her hand on the door handle, her other hand holding the wrap in place. Her face, without make-up, was pale, but still beautiful. Her eyes were as hard and as cold as two pellets of ice.

‘Hello,’ I said and smiled at her.

‘What are you doing in here?’

‘I wanted to talk to you. It’s time we had a talk.’

‘Get out!’

‘I bet you didn’t say that to Van Tomlin when you came out of the bathroom.’

Her face remained expressionless, but her mouth tightened and that told me I had sunk one in that had shaken her.

She moved into the room, went over to the dressing-table and sat down. ‘You heard what I said — get out!’ She picked up a comb and began to comb her hair, her back half turned to me.

‘Not before I talk to you. We have a lot to talk about: your husband, the other night, your future plans, things like that.’

‘If you don’t get out I’ll telephone for the police.’

‘That’s fine. Go ahead and telephone them. They’ll be interested to hear how you tried to murder Dester the night before last. They get a big bang out of things like that.’

She laid down the comb, turned slowly and faced me. Her face now was chalk white. There was something half hidden behind the white flesh and the bone structure that sent a prickle up my spine.

‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me,’ I said. ‘That was a stupid move of yours. You should be grateful to me for stopping it. You should be very grateful.’

‘Are you drunk? What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean. You don’t imagine I would have stopped it if I had been sure it was foolproof, do you? But it wasn’t foolproof.’

She continued to stare at me.

‘You must be drunk,’ she said. ‘Get out of here!’

‘I know Dester has insured his life for three-quarters of a million dollars, and you want to get your hands on the money,’ I said. ‘You want that money so badly, you tried to kill him the night before last.’

That jolted her. She stiffened, and her face turned the colour of bleached bones. ‘That’s a lie!’ she said in a voice scarcely above a whisper.

‘You know it’s the truth,’ I said, watching her. ‘The night before last you decided to get rid of him, but I was in the way as all the other servants you have had have been in the way. Don’t think you’ve kidded me. I know how you have got rid of them so you could be alone with Dester. You thought you would have one more attempt to fix him, but you had to be sure I was out of the way. You left me stranded at the Foothills Club as you thought, and came back here and found, as you thought, Dester drunk and incapable. You were going to launch him in the car into the traffic and hope for the best. Only I wasn’t stranded and Dester wasn’t drunk and, besides, the idea wasn’t watertight.’

She looked away, reached for her comb again and began to run it through her silky, copper-coloured hair.

‘I knew you were going to be a nuisance,’ she said as if speaking to herself. ‘I knew it the moment I saw you. Well, what are you going to do about it? Tell the police?’