Murder with a Past

2

Smith was deft and quick with the whole thing. A local undertaker handled the town’s morgue cases. The man known as Crandall Cox lay under a rubber sheet on a table in the workroom of the Henshaw Funeral Home.

Smith’s touch on his arm guided Tully through the heavy sweetness of funeral flowers to the room at the rear. The mortician removed the sheet. Before Tully, in all his naked mortality, lay a stranger.

He was a medium-sized man with little fat bloats around the armpits. The flesh sagged all along the line of his jaw. His face was heavy-featured, almost coarse, with a thin, sporty mustache. The hair was black and wavy and came to a widow’s peak on the low forehead. There was one blue-black hole in the gray flab of his neck, just below the thyroid cartilage, like a misplaced third eye.

To Tully the late Crandall Cox looked like nothing human.

He tried to visualize Cox with unrelaxed flesh and blood in the tissues of his face, but it was impossible. Even in life he must have looked three-quarters dead — a slug out of some back-alley wall. To think of Ruth — cool, slim, dainty, delectable Ruth — in the arms of this cheap, gray-faced, slop-bodied, slobber-mouthed caricature of a man — made him want to laugh.

Tully looked down at him and thought, You ugly son-of-a-bitch, without any feeling whatever.

“Well?”

Tully turned. “What?” He had forgotten Lieutenant Smith.

“Well, do you recognize him?”

“No.”

“You’re sure, Dave?”

“Yes.”

Somebody opened the door and the flower-smell wriggled in.

“What’s the matter?” Julian Smith asked him, eyes on Tully’s face.

“It’s those damn flowers,” he muttered. “Let’s get out of here before I throw up.”

When they were seated in the unmarked police car, Tully stuck his nose out the window and inhaled.

“Ruth ever mention a man of Cox’s description?” the detective asked, starting the car.

“I can answer that one positively absolutely,” Tully said without changing expression. “No. How about taking me home, Julian?”

But as they drove off through the gathering darkness, Tully found himself thinking that Ruth had never mentioned much of anything about herself and her life before they had met.

He sat back and shut his eyes. He suddenly felt sleepy.

“Here we are,” Smith’s voice said.

Tully opened his eyes with a start. They were pulled up behind his Imperial in the driveway of the split-level that had seemed so safe and desirable only an hour ago. The sun had gone down, but the house was dark.

Tully reached for the door-handle.

Smith said, “If you hear from her, Dave, contact me immediately.”

Tully looked at him blankly.

“Any other course would be stupid,” the Homicide man said. “You realize that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Tully said.

“I’ll keep Ruth out of the papers as long as possible,” the detective said.

“Sure, Julian. Thanks.” Tully got out of the car. He was vaguely aware of Smith’s hesitation. He shut the door and the detective drove away.

Tully stood still in the middle of the dark yard. He felt very queer — uniquely alone, in a timeless time and a space without margins. Had there ever been a woman named Ruth? Or even a hill, and a house?

Tully shivered and went inside...

He sat in the darkness of his living room going over what Julian Smith had told him on the way to the funeral parlor. The man Cox’s body had been found this morning by a Hobby Motel cleaning woman. One of the bathroom towels showed powder burns and multiple bullet holes. The revolver had been wrapped in several folds of the towel to cut down the noise of the shot. He had been shot the night before.

Ruth’s face above the towel... the tip of her exquisite little nose dead-white, the way it got when she was furious...

Tully clutched his temples, but he could not shut out the picture of that imagined motel room, or the voices from his ears.

“Cranny, I told you I never wanted to see you again.”

“You won’t use that thing, baby. Remember it’s li’l ol’ Cranny? How’s about a drink? Come on, lover, what do you say?”

“You promised me, Cranny. You promised.”

“So I promised. So what? Here, have a slug of this...”

“Stay back! I warned you, Cranny. You shouldn’t have followed me. You shouldn’t have called.”

“You came running, didn’t you? You don’t fool me, Ruth. You and me always had a thing going for us...”

“I came for only one reason — to make you get out of here and leave me and my husband alone!”

“When you’ve got it made with this sucker and I can cut myself in?”

“No! I won’t let you do it. Not to him, Cranny. I love him... Stay back, I tell you!”

“Give me that gun—”

It ended there. It always ended there.

Tully leaned back and sighed, feeling a little better.

Ruth indulging in a cheap motel affair for its own sake was simply unthinkable. Especially with a slug like Cox. Yes, even if she had known Cox from somewhere, in the past. Maybe at one time he had been quite different; time and a dissolute life often worked like mold in a damp cellar.

The imaginary dialogue his frantic mind had whipped up could not be too far from the actuality; Tully was sure of it. Cox had been in a position to rake up something about Ruth, something that gave him a hold on her, and she had responded to his motel summons to settle it.

The gun was the giveaway. Ruth would never have taken the gun with her if she had meant to acquiesce in his wishes — obscene, mercenary or otherwise. A woman who intends to climb into bed with an old flame doesn’t come to the rendezvous with her husband’s loaded revolver.

It was funny how a thing like that — a conclusion so clear — could make a man’s spirits perk, even if the corollary was that his wife had committed murder. First things first, Tully thought wryly.

That long-eared bitch of an eavesdropper in the next room hadn’t heard a bedroom party going on. She wouldn’t have been registered at the Hobby in the first place if she was a decent woman. To Hobby habitués any evidence of a couple alone in one of the rooms would mean only one thing.

And another thing. Why, if the woman’s ears were so sharp, hadn’t she heard the sound of the shot? The towel could hardly have made an effective silencer; there must have been some report. Yet she had not mentioned the shot to Julian. Or having seen Ruth enter — or, more important, leave — Cox’s room next door. There was something off-beat in the apparent fact that Julian’s witness, a lone woman of prurient curiosity, would overlook the chance to catch a glimpse of the female of the supposed hot-pillow party as she sneaked out of the next motel room. True, the eavesdropper could have had to leave on a date, although no such thing had been mentioned. Or she could have left her room prematurely to cross the motel courtyard to the tavern for a drink, or a pickup.

But, somehow, none of it added up.

Tully felt a small stir, a faint animal warning. That woman would bear investigation...

He got up and put on the lights and went to his den and put on the light there. Then he stood over the telephone table and rapidly dialed a number.

“Yes?” It was Norma Hurst’s old-woman voice. Norma was not an old woman; the querulous, almost anile, tone was a recent development.

“Norma? Dave Tully.”

“Oh,” she said. She sounded disappointed. “How was your trip, Dave?”

“All right. Is Ollie there?”

“He’s still at the office, and he knows we have a dinner date, too...” He heard Norma begin to cry.

Through his own preoccupation, Tully felt the old helpless pangs of sympathy. Norma Hurst had been acting oddly for almost a year. The Hursts had had one child, a darling little tow-headed girl with flashing eyes and twinkling legs who was never still. To provide an outlet for her daughter’s energies, Norma had bought her a trike. One day the little girl was pedaling wildly down the wrong side of the road when a town garbage truck came around one of Dave Tully’s curves and ran over her. The child was killed instantly and horribly. It had taken three men to remove the broken, bloody little body from Norma’s arms. Norma could have no other children. She had spent the next five months in a sanitarium.

Tully had never forgotten the day Oliver Hurst had to go to the sanitarium to take his wife home. “Please come with me, Dave,” Ollie had begged. “I’m scared to death.” “Scared of what, Ollie?” Tully had asked his friend. “They told you Norma’s all right now.” “The hell they say,” Ollie had said bitterly. “I know when Norma’s all right and when she isn’t. If you ask me, she’s never going to be all right — I mean the way she used to be. Dave, I can’t get through to her — I don’t even know how to talk to her any more. She’s always been fond of you. Help me get Norma home.” Of course, he had gone. It had been an eerie experience. There had been no outward sign that anything was wrong, but some important ingredient of the old Norma was missing — gone, perhaps forever. Poor Ollie had sat holding her limp hand and chattering away like mad on the trip home. Her only response had been an occasional vague smile.

Tully said into the phone, “Don’t upset yourself, Norma. Ollie’s undoubtedly on his way home right now, or he’d have called you.”

“Why didn’t he call me anyway?” Norma wept. “He has no consideration, Dave. I’m so alone all the time — in this awful house—”

“It’s one of my best,” Tully said fatuously.

“Oh, you know I don’t mean that!” To his surprise she stopped crying, sounding angry. “It’s just that Ollie keeps avoiding me, and don’t tell me he doesn’t, Dave Tully!”

“I’ll tell you exactly that, Norma. He’s the most successful lawyer in town, and he’s carrying a tremendous work-load. He spends every minute he possibly can with you.”

Norma was silent. For a moment Tully thought she had simply walked away from the phone, as she sometimes did. But then, suddenly, she said, “What did you want Ollie for, Dave?”

It brought Tully back to his own troubles. “Oh, a matter of business, Norma. Would you tell him to give me a ring when he gets home?” He hung up before Norma could ask for Ruth.

Tully sat down at the phone to wait. If ever a man needed legal advice, he thought, it’s me right now. Ollie was a damn good lawyer. A little cautious, maybe, but give him time to think a thing through and he was a tough baby to beat.

Tully was still sitting there when he heard somebody moving around in the living room. He jumped up, heart racing. Ruth! Could it possibly be Ruth?

He ran into the living room.

But it was only Sandra Jean.

Sandra Jean was Ruth’s sister, and she used her older sister’s home as if her name were also Tully, instead of Ainsworth. She was busy at the cowhide-and-bleached mahogany bar when Tully walked in — so absorbed in fixing her Scotch on the rocks that when he said “Hi!” in her ear, she almost dropped the tall glass.

When Sandra Jean saw who it was, she said, “Don’t do things like that, you creep,” giving him one of her characteristic pouty-lipped, moist looks, and turned back to the bar. “You really bugged me, pops. Now I do need one with muscles,” and she added a full inch of Scotch to the glass.

“I thought it was Ruth,” Tully said. “Do you know where she is?”

“Probably having dinner out,” Sandra Jean said, sipping. She gave him a long-lashed, thoughtful look over the rim of her glass. “I guess she didn’t expect you home so early. I was kind of working the raised-eyebrow department myself when I saw the car and the lights on — I was just going to look for you when you gave me that verbal goose. But I needed this drink first.”

“You’re drinking too damned much,” Tully said.

“Yes, popsy,” Sandra Jean said. “You want to spank the naughty little sister?” She stuck her bottom out at him, laughing.

“Act your age, will you?” Tully sat down wearily.

He wondered only briefly what Sandra Jean was doing there if she had believed he and Ruth weren’t home. Ruth’s kid sister operated on a sort of emotional radar — “Obey that impulse!” was her motto. She had a key to their house, and if she were in the neighborhood and suddenly felt like a drink, the fact that no one was supposed to be home wouldn’t stop her. On the other hand...

She was still looking at him over the glass. Tully stirred uncomfortably.

He always had that feeling when he was alone with Sandra Jean. She made him conscious of himself. As if she possessed a secret knowledge, a quivering and unspoken something between them which shamed him, and amused her. The only thing that made it tolerable was his rueful conviction that Sandra Jean affected most men that way.

She turned from the bar and went over to the TV set and clicked it on, sipping all the time. Tully watched her a little warily. She was an attractive kid, all right. “Kid...” Some kid! In many ways she was like Ruth — the same clean-line legs, the same nipped-in waist, flow of hips, full shoulders; the same dramatic facial structure, wide-apart eyes, perfect little nose.

Ruth’s hair was a sun-drenched auburn and Sandra Jean’s was whatever color her frequent whims dictated — right now it was a kind of bangy Cleopatra black — but their real differences were vital, a matter of movement and gesture in carrying out the unconscious commands of their worlds-apart temperaments. If they walked across a room together, observed from either fore or aft Ruth walked like a lady and Sandra Jean like a belly dancer — with the same equipment. There was a smack of sensuality in every move the girl made, almost a naked carnality.

She’s going to give some man a hard time, Tully thought dimly. Andy Gordon, if she could wrestle the young nitwit out of mama’s clutch. And maybe a procession of others who, like the panting Gordon boy, would mistake Sandra Jean’s striptease personality for heaven-sent passion. Tully had long suspected that beneath his young sister-in-law’s steamy exterior lay a soul of ice.

The blast of the TV jarred him back to the present. He started to get up, but sank back when Sandra Jean turned the sound down low. She dropped into a chair opposite him, sprawling on the end of her spine, her long legs thrust out as far as they would go. She closed one eye and sighted through the amber liquid in her glass.

“Thought I’d wait around for Ruth and muscle in, if you two are going out tonight,” she said. “Lover-boy is dancing attendance on mama and left me at loose ends this evening. You don’t mind, do you?”

Tully said nothing. Ruth... He shut his eyes and massaged them with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.

Sandra Jean said suddenly, “Say, what’s the matter with you? Trip go sour?”

Tully opened his eyes. “Look, Sandra, don’t you have any idea where Ruth is?”

“No. Should I have? You’re looking kind of green, Davey. How about a slug of Scotch?”

Tully shook his head and shut his eyes again, wishing she would go away. His temples were pounding. Ruth... He tried desperately not to think.

And then a scent insinuated itself into his nostrils, a musky flower-scent that instantly evoked the funeral parlor and the waxworks figure on the mortician’s work-table. Tully’s eyes flew open. Sandra Jean was stooping over him, careless of the cleft exposed by her low-cut frock, her young breath hot on his face.

“Poor Davey,” she moaned, and she stooped lower and put her lips on his surprised mouth, and then she was kissing him hard and thrusting with her tongue.

Something devastating happened to Tully, a reflex of revulsion that made his big hands shoot out and grab the girl’s arms and shake her so violently that her head flopped back and forth as if her neck were broken. Sandra Jean yelped softly and dropped her drink; he felt some of the Scotch splash on his trousers. It was the expression on her face, however, that brought Tully to his senses. For a moment she had looked like a terrified child. He shoved her from him and jumped up.

“Don’t ever try that on me again, Sandra,” he muttered. “Ever, do you understand? Play your erotic games with Andy. I play for keeps.” Suddenly he felt ashamed. He turned around and said, “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

“But you did.” Sandra Jean’s moist pout was in evidence again. “You’re a brute, do you know that?” She actually wriggled. “Oooh, what a brute. I didn’t realize you’re so strong, Davey. Shake me again?”

“Oh, shut up,” he growled, and walked over to the window. In its reflecting surface he saw the girl staring at his back. Then she shrugged, picked up the remains of the glass, and went off to the kitchen with insolent hips.

The hell with her, Tully thought, staring into the darkness.

Where was Ruth? Why didn’t she come home? Or at least call?

Tully set his throbbing forehead against the cool glass...

It was the TV that made him turn around. The early evening newscast had come on, and the newscaster had mentioned the name Crandall Cox.

“Police have made no official statement yet about last night’s motel shooting,” the man was saying. “But just before air time this reporter learned from an authoritative source that a woman is being sought for questioning, the wife of a prominent local real-estate developer—”

In two strides Tully was at the set, wrenching the dial. The picture and voice faded swiftly.

“So that’s it,” a voice said behind him.

Tully whirled. It was Sandra Jean with a fresh glass.

“What’s it?”

“That’s why you’re acting so funny. It’s Ruth they’re looking for, isn’t it?”