Richard Deming - This Game of Murder

“You said you’d take it off,” she said in a whisper.

A moment later the garment was rolled into a ball and he had tossed it across the room. She pressed her bare body against his.

“Please don’t tease me any more,” she begged.

It happened several times more, but not because he was teasing her. When the final simultaneous spasm occurred, she continued to hold him tightly against her.

“Every time it’s like a brand-new experience,” she said dreamily. “Do you think people ever get tired of this?”

He kissed the end of her nose. “The day I get tired, I’ll enter a Trappist monastery. The hell with the out-of-town reporters.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not staying away to protect your good name any longer. If they make a thing of it, let them. I’m not designed for a celibate life.”

“Me either,” she said, rubbing herself against him. “Why don’t you stay the rest of the night?”

He did stay until six-thirty a.m. He got home while his parents were still sleeping and fell into his own bed. As it was Sunday and he didn’t have to get up, he slept until noon.

After dinner Marshall sat on the front porch with his father while he described what had occurred at police headquarters in the middle of the night. It was obvious to both of them that the cat burglar’s capture would have to be run as a front-page story the next day. Typically, Jonas made no mention of how he thought it should be handled. That would wait until Monday morning in his office.

“What do you suppose they’ll do with the poor devil now?” Jonas asked. “Try him or salt him away in the state mental hospital?’

“I don’t see how they could try him,” his son said. “He fits the definition of legal insanity. He doesn’t know right from wrong and he certainly doesn’t realize the nature of his acts.”

“Well, he’ll probably be as well off at Gowanda as he was in front of the City Hall. He’ll find people to talk to there. This certainly isn’t going to help Betty’s case. Do you think she still has a chance?”

Marshall looked at him. “Are you beginning to suspect she’s guilty?”

It was a few moments before his father answered. Finally he said, “If she were a total stranger I’m afraid I would have to believe she was. But loyalty is as marked a trait in the Marshall family as their notorious pig-headedness. And I’ve always been particularly fond of Betty. Are you still a bit in love with her after all these years?”

“I wish it were that simple. I can’t decide whether I’m in love with her or Lydia.”

Jonas raised his eyebrows. “You do have a problem,” he said, but he offered no advice.

They lapsed into silence, Marshall brooding over what he could do to improve Betty’s situation in some way, the older man also occupied with his own thoughts. Presently Marshall stirred restlessly and rose from his chair.

“I think I’ll take a wild stab by going to see Gail Thomas,” he announced.

Jonas looked up at him. “What do you think that will accomplish?”

“Nothing, probably. But I feel impelled to do something to try to help Betty. I have a sort of cockeyed theory I intend to follow up tomorrow, but meantime I can’t just sit. I’ll see you at dinnertime.”

He was dressed in just a sport shirt and slacks, but he didn’t bother to go inside for a jacket. Summer dress in Runyon City was informal even on Sunday afternoons, and you seldom saw a suit coat before nightfall in warm weather. He descended the porch steps, walked up the driveway to the double garage, swung the door upward and climbed into his car.

As he backed out of the driveway, his father called, “Will you be back in time for cocktails?”

“I wouldn’t let you die of thirst,” Marshall called back. “And I wouldn’t want you to strain your back lifting those heavy bottles yourself.”

The apartment at 126 Howard Street was only two blocks from where Lydia lived, but in a place the size of Runyon City two blocks can make a vast difference. Lydia’s neighborhood was a middle-income residential section where the only building on the street which wasn’t a residence was a church. Howard Street was dotted with second-rate taverns and small businesses. Gail Thomas lived in one of several flats above a laundry.

Marshall climbed the stairs alongside the laundry and examined name plates along the hallway until he found one reading: Gail Thomas. There was no bell, so he knocked.

“In a jiffy,” a feminine voice called.

About a minute passed before the door opened. The blonde was wearing a polka-dot Bikini with about as much material in it as in two neckties. She had a hip-length beach robe over it, but the robe was wide-open.

“You caught me—” she started to say, then halted and stared at him. “I thought you were my date.”

“Sorry,” he said. “We’ve never met, but I suppose you know who I am. May I talk to you for a minute?”

She regarded him dubiously, then shrugged. “If it won’t be too long. One of the photographers from a New York paper is taking me to the beach to shoot some pictures. He should be along pretty quick. Come on in.”

He followed her into a small combination living room-bedroom which had a sofa-bed against one wall, at the moment serving its role as a sofa. Off to one side an open door led to a kitchenette.

“Sorry I kept you waiting, Mr. Marshall,” she said. “I was just changing into my suit and I was bare naked.”

She was still nearly naked, he thought, glancing at the slim strip of cloth across her bust, which covered little more than her nipples. The lower part of the suit was no wider, barely concealing her pubic area and dwindling to shoelace width at the sides of her hips.

He felt automatic dislike for the girl, not only because of her part in Betty’s troubles, but because of the vindictiveness she had shown Betty at the hearing. But he had to admit she was well-endowed physically. She had a slim, small-boned frame, but her bust must have measured forty inches and must have required a D-plus cup. It was the more remarkable because her breasts thrust straight out without the least suggestion of sag, despite their considerable weight.

She must have been proud of them, for she made no attempt to close her beach robe. She didn’t ask him to sit, merely standing in front of him and waiting for him to state his business.

“I’m not sure just why I’m here,” he said. “Except that I believe Mrs. Case innocent and am doing everything I can to prove it.”

She emitted an indulgent little laugh. “Naturally, you being her boy friend. I read all about you and her in some of the out-of-town papers.”

“I’ve read a lot about you, too,” he said. “But I doubt that more than half of it was true. What do you think everything you read about my relationship with Mrs. Case was?”

She stopped to think this over, then said grudgingly, “They made up a lot of stuff about me all right. But you are her boy friend, aren’t you?”

“I’m quite fond of her, but we weren’t carrying on an affair behind her husband’s back at the same time he was carrying on one with you behind hers. Up to the golf game I had with her a few hours before Bruce was shot, and which the yellow journals made so much of, I hadn’t even spoken to her in private since the day she was married. We used to meet at social affairs occasionally and say hello, but that was the extent of our intimacy.”

“This on the up-and-up?” she asked with surprise.

“Why should I lie to you?” You don’t mean anything to me.”

“Then why are you trying to get her out of this?”

“For a number of reasons. I am fond of her. We were engaged years back, before she married Bruce, and while I wasn’t what you called her ‘boy friend’ while she was married to him, maybe I am again now that he’s dead. But the main reason is that I think she’s innocent.”