Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 40, No. 4, April 1977

A Case for Curiosity by Wyc Toole

Charlie didn’t want the neighbors to know about his past. But when Vera Platt was found shot to death right across the lake, Old Charlie could not resist the puzzle presented by her death.

Charlie Johnson saw the flashing red lights of the police cars at the Anderson home about six-thirty in the morning. It was almost three hours later, however, before he, found out about the dead woman.

There were two reasons for this — one, pride — the other, stubbornness. Neither of which were real strangers to Charlie’s nature. So, considering the way things happened, it is surprising that he learned about her death soon enough to do something about it.

Perhaps this just goes to prove that curiosity is a stronger emotion than either pride or stubbornness. On the other hand, it may only tell something about Charlie. But whatever the case, he first saw the rotating lights while he was eating breakfast.

To most people, breakfast is a time for sitting and enjoying the morning meal. But, since Sarah died, Charlie used it as a period for wandering and snacking, for admiring the house, checking the yard, in general getting ready for the day ahead. That is why the lanky old man was carrying a half-eaten bowl of cornflakes and a luke-warm cup of strong, coffee in his big hands when he came out of the cool dark living room and squinted at the early morning sun.

Charlie liked this time of day. The world just waking up. The lake shining. Grass smelling green and warm. The sharp flat random sounds of jumping fish and birds starting to fly. All the familiar comforting sights and sounds of his forty years of living on the lake.

Forty years! Charlie thought. Don’t seem possible I been clean that long. I might get to heaven yet.

Getting to heaven worried Charlie. He was sure that was where Sarah was — so, that’s where he wanted to go. The trouble was there had been a time when he was young and angry and made his living killing people. A free agent working for anyone with enough money to pay his fees — a target that was mean enough and clever enough to make the hunt exciting and bad enough to make the police less than industrious in looking for the one that did it.

Sarah had changed all that and brought him to the lonely, sleepy lake in central Florida both to hide and live. Now he was old and Sarah was gone and he stood on the porch barefooted, wearing faded overalls and a clean blue work shirt, wondering if he would ever get up there with her. This lonely thought soon faded back among his other gentle memories and Charlie took in a deep breath of the fresh morning air and sipped his coffee.

Patches of his thick white hair were drying and starting — to escape in random tufts from the two handsful of water he had used to glue them down and his lined brown face was still shining from the sharp edge of the old straight razor he used. Flecks of shaving soap were stuck in the deep folds of his ear lobes, giving him a fresh clean fragrance, and his pale blue eyes were warm with an expression of satisfaction. The weather was beautiful and he felt it was going to be a fine day.

The sight of the red lights, however, changed his satisfied expression to one of intense curiosity. Such activity was not common in this quiet corner of the county. Only twice in recent years had he seen such a sight. Once when he had been forced to fall back on his old skills to remove a man that had come to kill his young neighbor and favorite of all people alive — Jan Semmes. This man had made a bad mistake and paid for it. The other, when the County Sheriff came to Charlie for help in solving a murder. Rumors of his strange talents were spreading through the area. Charlie did not like that too much.

Without taking his eyes off the rotating lights, Charlie bent slightly, carefully set the coffee on a low wooden table, shoveled another spoonful of cereal into his wide mouth and padded soundlessly over the wooden boards. Then he stood in front of the screen door, chewing thoughtfully and trying to make out what was taking place.

It was less than half a mile across the jutting finger of Lake Kachimee that separated his house from the Andersons’, but the distance was such that he couldn’t see too much. The cars looked like toys and the people moving around in the yard were little more than sticks of color. It was also hard to see because the lake was rippling gently under a soft breeze and the warm morning sun made the whole surface of the lake glitter and sparkle as if handfuls of diamonds had been scattered over it.

Charlie stood squinting across the restless water until the bright flashes hurt his eyes enough to make him turn away. Then he blinked, rubbed his eyes hard and gave up in disgust.

“Getting weak. Guess you’ll want sun glasses next!” he growled to his eyes, as if they were a separate person. “Well, you jus’ forget it. We ain’t that bad off yet. And whatever’s happenin’ ain’t none ’a our business anyway.” He spoke firmly, turning and walking back through the house and out into his small orange grove.

Twice more during the morning, curiosity pulled him back to the front of the house where he could watch the random activity still going on over at the Andersons’. But each time the heavy pride of old age drove him back to his oranges. “If anybody wanted you over there, they’d call,” he told himself sharply.

As the day wore on, however, he reached the point where he was too hot and bored with the routine work to fight off his curiosity any longer. Even Jan Semmes and her children were gone for the day. Finally, he gave up and, cursing himself for a senile old fool, Charlie walked around the house, down to the dock and climbed into his small fishing boat. The well-oiled motor caught with the first pull of the cord and he swung away from the landing in a shallow semicircle toward the Anderson house.

“Sometimes people don’t even know when they need you,” he assured himself, heading toward the excitement.

When Charlie killed the motor and coasted alongside the Anderson dock, Lester Gilman, the county sheriff was waiting for him. As he caught the line Charlie threw to him, Lester smiled around his cigar and said, “I been wondering how long ’fore you’d show up, Charlie.”

“Yeah, I’m like an old cat. Cain’t stand not to know what’s goin’ on.”

Lester stuck out his hand and pulled Charlie onto the pier, all the while chewing fiercely on the stub of his soggy cigar. As usual, his tie was pulled loose, his grey cowboy hat was pushed to the back of his head and his dark suit looked as if he had been living in it for at least a week.

“Then I might not be the one you want’a see, Charlie, ’cause I ain’t sure myself,” Lester admitted. “Looks like a suicide.”

“Then why didn’t you call me?”

“Probably would have,” Lester smiled, “but you get all bent out’a shape every time I do.”

Charlie glared at Lester, his thick white eyebrows hooding his pale blue eyes. “Only when you devil me with all that fool gossip ’bout me being some kind’a criminal.”

Lester shrugged and grinned. “You sure hold a grudge, don’t you? All I said was there’s a rumor in Miami that you were a big man in the mobs one time and you get all excited.”

“Well, wouldn’t you?” Charlie snapped.

“I don’t know, I ain’t never been big in the mobs.” Lester laughed. “Here, where you going?” he called as Charlie started to climb back m his boat.

“Home! Where I ain’t gonna he insulted by no small town sheriff. That’s where!”

“Come on, Charlie,” Lester pleaded. “Don’t get all het up. That stuff ain’t none’a my business and I need some help like you gimme with that golf course case.”

Charlie paused and crawled back up on the dock. “Aw-right”, Charlie agreed. “But don’t you make no more bad remarks about my character!”

“I promise!” Lester smiled.

Charlie eased himself down onto one of the dock pilings and said, “Whatcha mean it ‘looks’ like a suicide?”

The sheriff shifted the cigar butt to the other side of his mouth and said thoughtfully, “That’s about the only way I know to put it right now. There’s a lady up in the house with a bullet in her and the gun it came out of is in her right hand.”

“Where’s the bullet?”

“In her chest. Jus’ under the left breast. Got the heart. She died pretty quick.”

“That’s a funny place for a suicide shot, ain’t it?” Charlie said, “Most people go for the head. And there’s an awful lot’a water around here. Be a cleaner way to do it.”

“Yeah,” Lester agreed, “but who knows what goes through a person’s mind when they pull a fool trick like that.”

“Powder burns?”

“Plenty.”

“She leave a note?”

“Maybe,” Lester said flatly, spitting out a soggy piece of cigar butt.

“What the hell you mean, ‘maybe’? Lester, ain’t, you looked good at nothin’?” Charlie yelled.

“Course I have! But that don’t mean I got answers. You call this a suicide note? And you handle it easy!”

Charlie took the small piece of paper Lester handed him carefully by the edges and looked at both sides of it. One side was blank. The other had writing on it. The top and bottom of the page had been cut off above and below the beginning and ending sentences.

I’m sorry, the note read. I never meant for things to end this way, but I guess it has to be Charlie saw there was no period to end the last sentence.

“Ain’t much of a note, is it?” Lester asked.

“Shore ain’t,” Charlie agreed. “Where’s the rest of it?”

“That’s all there is,” Lester told him. “There were some ashes in an ashtray we’re checking that looked like she might have burned the parts she cut off. But why she’d do a crazy thing like that, I’m damned if I know.” Lester shifted the soggy cigar butt in his mouth and said wearily “Come on, Charlie. Let’s walk up to the house.”

The two men strolled up the dock and across the thick green lawn, one young, short, stocky and rumpled, the other old, tall, lean and rumpled.

“You ain’t mentioned the husband yet,” Charlie said thoughtfully. “Arid I know there is one. Bart Anderson told me he was renting his place to some newlyweds ’fore he and Beth left for Europe.”

“Oh yeah.” Lester nodded, “there’s a husband all right.”

“Where was he when the shootin’ went on?”

“In a motel. With a girl friend.”

“You’re kiddin’ me.”

“Not a bit,” Lester assured him. “He’s up at the house now.”

“Will he talk about it?”

“Talk! God, that’s all he does. That’s why I was down on the dock. I got sick’a listenin’ to him. You wonder how a woman ever gets mixed up with a man like that. He don’t even pretend to be sorry she shot herself. Says he feels bad, but they was gettin’ a divorce anyway.”

“Did he say how much alimony she wanted?”

Lester laughed. “Alimony! Hell, he ain’t got two nickels of his own. If there was any alimony gonna be given out, she’d sure as hell be the one to give it.”

“She had money?” Charlie asked interestedly.

“The man says three million. He can’t even sit still when he talks about it, he gits so excited.”

“So yesterday he’s broke and today he’s a. millionaire. Lester, that is a convenient suicide.”

“Charlie,” Lester said firmly, “I couldn’t agree with you more. But unless you got any better ideas than me, that’s exactly what it’s got to be!”

“Now, suppose you jus’ explain that remark.” Charlie snorted.

“ ’Cause nobody could git in the house to kill ’er. That’s why!” Lester insisted. “It was locked up tight from the inside.”

“Look, Lester,” Charlie said patiently. “With a key, you can get in any house. And if you don’t have a key, you can pick the lock. If you don’t like those ways, you can climb through windows. Don’t tell me nobody could get in.”

“Well, that’s what I am telling you,” Lester said firmly. “Every window and door in that house was bolted from the inside.”

Charlie paused and said thoughtfully to Lester, “That sounds pretty interestin’. Maybe we better sit down and you tell me what you know about this thing right from the beginnin’.”

Lester nodded and led Charlie over to a round white lawn table with a brightly colored umbrella in the center. It was on the edge of a large patio. Off to one side, a big outdoor barbecue pit was under construction. They sat down in uncomfortable white metal chairs and Lester pulled out a small notebook.

He scanned it for a minute, then said, “The dead woman’s name is Vera Platt. Two ’t’s’. She was thirty-eight years old, five feet six inches tall and weighed one hundred thirty-five. Brown hair, brown eyes, sallow skin. Rather a plain woman from her pictures. But she had a lot’a money.

“Her husband is a man named Willard Platt. He’s twenty-nine years old, six feet one inch tall and goes about one hundred ninety. Nice build, blond hair, grey eyes and a beach-boy tan. In fact, that’s what he was — a beach boy. Vera met him in Miami about six months ago. He was a life guard at one of the big hotels on the beach.

“After she got him dressed properly and hung enough gold on his wrists and neck to get his attention, she married him. Seems to be a case of her seeing something she wanted and buying it.

“She was a little greedy, I guess, and Miami had too many distractions for him. So she rented this place where she could have him to herself for a while. Or at least, that’s what Willard says.

“Problem was, he couldn’t stand the quiet and imported a little blonde to fill in the loose hours. He kept her in town in that new motel. About two weeks ago, Vera found out about his sideline and laid down some new laws. Willard says she needed him a lot more than he needed her, so he jus’ told her what she could do with her new rules and gave her his ultimatum. She could share, but she couldn’t own.

“He was so darlin’ and sweet, however, she couldn’t stand the thought of only sharing him and last night they had a big fight about it. Willard says she threatened to kill herself, but he didn’t believe her and walked out. Went to town and kept warm with his girl. She backs up Willard’s story and swears they were together from nine o’clock last night ’til they left the motel together this morning at five-thirty to come out and pick up his clothes.”

Lester chewed on his cigar and checked his notebook again.

“The two ’a them got here before six and couldn’t get in. The doors were all bolted from the inside. Willard says he poked around a bit and finally, through the front window, saw his wife lying on the floor in the living room. They drove back to that filling station over on the county road and called us. I got here at six-twenty.”

Lester closed the notebook and stuck it in his pocket. “I couldn’t git in either. There are three solid doors on the house and they were all bolted from the inside. All the windows — they’re those jalousie things that are too narrow to crawl through anyway — were also locked from, inside. I had to bust in the front door.

“Vera Platt was dead, shot once in the chest. She had a thirty-two revolver in her right hand that had been fired one time.”

“Was she dressed?” Charlie interrupted.

“Yes and no,” Lester told him. “She had on a full-length dressing gown, but nothing under it.”

Charlie nodded and Lester continued, “I found the note on a coffee table beside her. And now you know everything I do.”

“Which is all conflictin’!”

“Un-huh.” Lester nodded. “Everything about this mess points to a murder but the killing itself. Hell, if anybody got arrested for Vera Platt’s murder, I’d be the best defense witness they could get. That house was shut up tight and it’s the only way I could testify. In the short time I’ve known him, I’ve developed a real dislike for Willard, but I’m afraid it’s gotta come out suicide whether I like it or not.”

Charlie stood up and flexed his bare toes in the dry grass. “You mind if I look around some?” he asked Lester.

“No, you go right ahead. I’m jus’ gonna sit here and be discouraged.”

“By the way, Lester, who’s building the barbecue pit?”

“Willard says he was doing it, ’cause Vera wanted one. Says he’s damn glad he won’t have to finish it.”

Charlie nodded. “He sure is an honest one, ain’t he,” he told Lester as he walked away from the table.

For the next half hour Charlie wandered through and around the low, rambling home. It was a typical Florida lake house. Cinder block construction — three bedrooms and an attached garage. The windows were small and high with glass jalousies set in aluminum. The securing bolts were inside the house. None of them could have been removed and replaced from the outside.

There were only three ways into the house. Charlie was convinced no one could have entered there. The second way was through two huge sliding glass doors that faced on the lake. According to Lester, they had been locked and chained and a long metal rod inserted into the sliding groove as a blocking bolt.

Charlie satisfied himself the glass was intact and that there was no way to remove them from the outside. Obviously no one could have entered through them. The last way into the house was through the garage and then into the kitchen. But, you had to get into the garage first through a hinged wooden door that slid up into tracks set in the garage roof. It could not be tampered with from the outside and it had been bolted also.

Charlie walked onto the cool concrete floor of the garage and stood with his hands in the pockets of his overalls, thinking. It was a clean neat garage, holding a small foreign car, a few garden tools and a rough set of wooden shelves against the black wall. The shelves were covered with bottles, paint cans, tools, and the usual debris people move out of a house into a storage area. Charlie checked the tracks that held the garage door in place. Once he made certain they were solid and untouched, he wandered aimlessly through the connecting kitchen door into the house.

He was standing in the living room looking at the blood-soaked rug where Vera Platt had died when a smile crossed his old face. “Well, I’ll be damned!” he muttered. “Looked right at it and didn’t see it!” He headed out the front door in a loping run.

About ten minutes later, he walked back to the white lawn table where Lester was sitting and talking with a man Charlie had not seen before. They both stood up when he arrived.

“Charlie,” Lester said, “this is Mr. Holcombe. He’s Mrs. Platt’s brother. He just arrived and I’ve told him the way things look.”

Lester then turned to Holcombe and noticing the expression on his face said, “Mr. Holcombe this is Mr. Johnson. He may not look like much standing there in overalls and barefoot, but he owns this county and knows more about criminal investigations than any two detectives I’ve ever met. I believe he’ll back me up on the suicide verdict since he’s had a chance now to look around.”

Charlie smiled at Lester’s backhanded compliment and asked “Where do you live, Mr. Holcombe?”

“In Palm Beach. And, despite what you say and believe Mr. Johnson, my sister did not commit suicide. I warned her about that man, but she would not listen. Last night, however, she called and told me she was through with him. She asked me to drive up and help her move out of the house today. Believe me, there were no symptoms of suicide in her words. Only anger. That man Platt murdered. Vera!” he finished heatedly.

“Mr. Holcombe,” Lester broke in, “I know how you feel, but we have to deal with facts.” He turned to Charlie. “Now that you’ve been up there, you see what I mean about the house and how no one could have gotten in to kill her. Don’t you?”

“No,” Charlie stated firmly. “Mr. Holcombe’s right. In fact, he just gave me the answer to the last question I couldn’t handle. Platt did murder his wife and he did go in and out of that house last night. Come on up and I’ll show you how he did it. Then you can arrest him. I think he’ll talk plenty when you show him we’re as smart as he is.”

Charlie led the two men up towards the house. As they walked across the lawn he said, “As a matter of fact, looks to me like Platt’s been planning to kill ’er for some time. That’s why he started building that barbecue thing out by the patio. It bothered me when I first saw it. From all you told me, he didn’t seem the type to build an outdoor barbecue, no matter who wanted it.

“But the thing that really hung me up. for a while, was why would he kill ’er last night and then find the body so early this morning. If what I had figured out was right, he was smart enough to know he needed two or three days before he could be sure the plan would work. Now that Mr. Holcombe’s told me what happened last night, it’s obvious Platt lost control of the timing. He had to move fast and I suspect he wan’t really worried we would find anythin’ anyway. Probably figured the police around here wasn’t that smart.”

Lester took the soggy cigar butt out of his mouth and snapped, “I don’t suppose Platt could be expected to know there was a bigger crook around here than he is!”

Charlie chuckled at the rise he had gotten out of the sheriff and continued happily, “Anyway. Whether he was in the house when his wife called you, Mr. Holcombe, or he got there later — don’t make much difference. From the way she was dressed, I imagine it was later, when she was getting ready for bed. But whenever it was, he either heard, or she told him, she was leaving with you the next morning. He realized it was then or never for his plan. So, he went right to work.

“Since she wasn’t expectin’ it, I don’t think it was any trouble for him to get up close and shoot her. In the head might have been hard to manage, but not the chest. Easy to control where the shot went and plenty of powder burns that way. Must’a got a lot ’a blood on himself, but ’less he’s really dumb — and I doubt that — you won’t find the clothes ’til he tells you where they are. Nobody notices a single shot this far out in the country. So he had time to clean up and change clothes. Plenty of ’em in the house.”

By now, Charlie had led them into the living room. “He gets Vera laid out nice and proper with the gun in her hand and does the best he can for a. note. Probably used an old letter or maybe she wrote him a note she was leaving. Whatever, he cuts the parts off that don’t fit in and burns ’em in the ashtray. Bad as the note was, it qualified.

“Next he closes up the whole house, boltin’ all the windows and doors. In fact, I bet you’ll find he put, all those bolts and chains on, himself. I don’t ever remember Bart or Beth being that skittish ’bout being robbed.

“Last of all, he sets the lock on the kitchen door and pulls it shut behind him. It’s locked, but not bolted. He covers that one openin’ by boltin’ the garage door and the house is sealed. No one can get in. All he has to do is get out and he’s home free. If the house was shut up so nobody could get in, the only thing the law could find would be suicide. No matter how bad he looked.”

Charlie motioned for the two men to follow him. “Lemme show you somethin’ that might not work anywhere in the country but Florida.” He led them to the back wall of the garage, bent down and began to move the bottles and paint cans to one side of the lower shelf.

“Look there,” he said.

Lester bent down, stared at the wall and whistled. There was fresh cement holding four of the cinder blocks in place.

“See what I mean,” Charlie asked. “Bare cinder blocks inside the garage. Nine houses out of ten in Florida are built that way. No worry about messing up a paint job like in the house. Maybe he had those blocks already loose, or maybe he knocked ’em out right then. But one way or the other, he took out enough of ’em to make a hole he could squeeze through. Then, it was easy to reach back in and rearrange all this junk on the shelf to cover the area.

“ ’Cause ’a that barbecue pit he was building, he had all the material he needed to repair the wall. It was dark and he had plenty-’a time. Nobody roams around out here at night. He mixed up some cement and bein’ careful not to damage the shrubbery that covers the outside wall of the garage, he replaced the blocks, touched up the paint and went on back to the motel.

“You can still see the paint spots on the shrubs and grass. The paint’s that fast-drying kind but the cement takes longer. If Holcombe hadn’t been comin’, he’d ’a waited a day or two for if to set good. He jus’ didn’t have that choice. Also, he realized that it would be better for him to find Vera then let her brother do it. Not only would it be kind of a plus for him, but he could be around to talk enough to keep your attention on the doors and windows.

“Not a bad idea, was it!” Charlie said admiringly.

Lester never answered. He went out of the garage on the dead run to arrest Willard Platt.

Later, Charlie was sitting in his boat, a few hundred yards off the Andersons’ dock, fishing patiently, when Lester Gilman appeared and waved for him to come in. He started the motor, cruised slowly back alongside the pier, tied up his boat and climbed up on the weathered dock.

“Platt confess?” Charlie asked.

“Not right at first,” Lester told him. “But when that little gal of his finally realized she was getting mixed up in first degree murder, she really started talking. After that, he told us the whole thing. You figured it perfectly. Seemed kind ’a proud of his plan and pretty impressed we worked it out.”

“We!” Charlie yelped.

“That’s the official ‘we’,” Lester grinned. “Don’t forget, I’m the sheriff. I gotta get elected. Not you.”

Charlie said a very bad word, crawled back in his boat and took off for the center of the lake. He still needed one more fish for supper.

As the motor hummed rhythmically, Charlie’s mind wandered back in time, trying to remember what had happened to him in the past that helped him recognize Platt’s plan. “Must’a been Chicago,” he decided. “Not much difference in brickin’ a body in than brickin’ yourself out.”