Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™ - 25 Classic Mysteries

He slipped his arms about her waist.

“Was the dinner okay, Eddie?”

“The greatest.” His lips nuzzled her neck, bringing a shivery little sigh from her. She wriggled comfortably in his lap, resting her head against his shoulder.

He let her have a moment of idyllic contentment; then he murmured against her hair, “Kitten, I’m darn tired of not being able to give you things.”

“You’re all I want, Eddie.”

“See what I mean? Girl like you, you rate the best. I want us to play on the sand at Miami Beach. Dine at Antoine’s. Shop for a bauble in a Parisian shop.”

She raised slightly and looked at him, their eyes inches apart. “What are you talking about, Eddie?”

“You and me, baby.” He kissed her quite suddenly, feeling her response of passionate longing. His own mind was more concerned with the immediate future than with this moment. Clara’s job in the courthouse hadn’t interested him, except as an incidental source of bread — until the recent murder of a girl named Nancy Chavez.

He broke the kiss lingeringly. “We can have all those things, Kitten, everything we’ve dreamed of, and we don’t have to necessarily rob a bank to do it.”

“How, Eddie?”

“You just make sure I’m on the jury when the Chavez case comes to trial. I’ll take care of everything else, and when the trial is over we’ll have so much bread you’ll think I’ve printed the stuff, believe me.”

She drew back, but not much. “I don’t understand, Eddie.”

“It’s simple. You’ve told me about your job and how the jury setup works in this state. First, a list of jurors is summoned, making up a jury pool. From this pool the jury clerk makes up the lists that will act as juries in the civil and criminal cases scheduled for trial in the courthouse before the various judges.”

“That’s about the way it works,” she said, “but I still don’t see—”

“Who is the jury clerk, Kitten? Who handles the papers, keeps the records, draws the jury lists from the pool?”

“I do, Eddie. You know that.”

“So I’m volunteering, baby, for a duty that most citizens try to duck. You add my name to the pool. Then you make sure I’m included in the jury for the Chavez trial. After that, who knows? Maybe a honeymoon to Hawaii.”

“Oh, Eddie!” A sob of happiness filled her throat. “Did I hear you say honeymoon?”

“Your ears don’t lie, Kitten.” He bruised her lips with a Bailey special. He knew he’d overrun the first objective. He was as good as sitting in the jury box already, hearing the indictment read against young Richie Wood for the murder of Nancy Chavez.

Eddie escaped Clara shortly before midnight. Instead of going directly home, he tooled his Toyota sports crosstown to a modestly fashionable apartment building. He thumbed the communicator button in the lobby half a dozen times before he admitted to himself that Joella Marlowe wasn’t home.

He gritted his teeth, glowered about the small empty lobby. Often when he had to take Clara in his arms, his mind would displace her with the lovely blonde image of Joella. Right now, he was stung with the thought of Joella living it up with some well-heeled creep while he’d had to make the scene with Clara.

Okay, Joella baby, he thought as he kicked the lobby door open, but you’ll be singing Eddie-boy’s tune...

The next morning at ten o’clock Eddie was in a corner booth in a downtown bar and grill. He drank coffee in nervous sips, his eyes riveted to the front door. Now and then he blotted his forehead with a purple-hued handkerchief.

The back-bar clock registered ten-fifteen when Baxter Wood appeared in the doorway and paused to look the bar over. Eddie recognized him instantly, from pictures splashed on television and front pages when Nancy Chavez was murdered.

Eddie stumbled in his haste to get out of the booth. He hurried over to the multimillionaire plastics manufacturer.

“Mr. Baxter Wood?”

“Yes.” The word was a guttural. Even in a cashmere suit and twenty-dollar necktie, Baxter Wood struck Eddie as a character who would be right at home in a lumber camp. The guy had a blunt, square face topped with a style-scorning crewcut the color of iron.

“I’m Eddie Bailey, Mr. Wood, the fellow who phoned you earlier this morning and suggested a meeting.” Eddie was sweating only a little. “Not many people in here this time of day. We can have all the privacy we need over there in that corner booth.”

When they were seated, facing each other, Baxter Wood waved the waitress away and folded his hands on the tabletop; they looked like sledgehammers.

“Okay, bub,” Wood rumbled in that bullfrog basso, “what’s it all about? You said enough on the phone to get me over here. Let’s hear the rap.”

“I got this idea from statements you made to the press when your son Richie was charged with the murder of Nancy Chavez,” Eddie said, “and because I know someone who could be used.”

Wood drummed the table with thick fingers, eyes spearing Eddie from under craggy brows. “I buy boys with slide rules to work my equations, bub: Right now I’m interested in Richie.”

“You said you’d fight to your last penny to free him,” Eddie said. “You won’t have to. I’m going to spare you that expense.”

Before Eddie was aware of movement, his lapel was clutched in a beefy hand, his midriff yanked against the table. The big, blunt face was only inches from his, the eyes steaming.

“Bub, if you got some evidence, know something the police don’t—”

Eddie somehow managed to smile his Bailey man-to-man, a quirk of the lips, a John Wayne tilt of the head. “The deal’s a lot cooler than that, if you’ll just stop manhandling me for a minute.”

Wood released his grip. Eddie eased back, brushing the wrinkles from his jacket. “This person I mentioned who could be used, she happens to be the jury clerk as well as a friend of mine.”

Eddie saw the warm shift in the steel-hued eyes.

“Well, now, that’s what I call interesting,” Wood said.

“I can guarantee you I’ll be on the jury, working for a verdict you and Richie want to hear.”

Wood rubbed his flattened lips with the knuckles of his left hand as he thought it over. “How much?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars, pocket change to you,” Eddie said, “payable the day Richie walks out of the courtroom a free man.”

“If he walks out free, how will I know it was your doing, that he wouldn’t have come clear anyway? I should pay you twenty-five grand for that?”

“It’s up to you, Mr. Wood, if you want to take that kind of chance. But for twenty-five thou you’ll know that he is free and that I was in the jury room. Like, you ever bought any better insurance?”

“Suppose the other eleven are a hard-nut bunch who want to railroad my kid?”

“They don’t come that hard, Mr. Wood. I’ll stick in there until Hell’s Angels are teaching Sunday School.”

“What if you’re excused during the impanelling of the jury and an alternate juror takes your seat?”

“With the deal made, would your lawyers excuse me?”

“Don’t act cute, bub! You know I’m talking about the prosecutor.”

“Mr. Wood, please,” Eddie sighed, “give me a little credit. When the prosecutor quizzes the jurymen, you think I’ll let him see anything other than an alert, open-minded young man without anti-Establishment hangups?”

A faint hint of friendliness tugged the corners of Wood’s mouth. “I swear, bub, I’m beginning to think you could pull it off.”

“Trust me, Mr. Wood.”

“But no money in advance, see?”

Eddie endured a small, inward groan, letting the hope fade of talking Wood into a binder.