Start Screaming Murder

Chapter Eighteen

I placed my back against a pine trunk and backhanded sweat from my eyes.

I saw the leaping shadow of the dog leave the veranda. His toenails fell like spilled tacks on the driveway.

I let a hissing breath past my lips. He came quickly. I caught the glint of his eyes and teeth as the enormous dog bunched his muscles and sprang, a sound lower than a mere growl in his throat.

I had the urge to break and put the tree between me and the brute. Instead, I brought the club around.

The nearly petrified pine knurl met him straight on the schnoz. Better than three hundred pounds of the combined weight of dog and man were behind the impact.

Nino did a half somersault, crashing on his side in a thicket. Threshing, he gave a roar that would have done credit to a lion. He was really mad, as dangerous as a lion, if he got out of the thicket.

I heard no votes for giving him a second chance. I went in fast, while he was floundering. I swung the club and missed him.

The next time, I didn’t.

The pine knot popped him on top of the great, black head. He fell, shuddering. The shudder quickly passed, and he was as quiet as a new-born puppy after his first big dinner.

The big dog’s breathing rasped. I hadn’t wanted to kill him, hadn’t meant to. I was glad he was still alive. He wasn’t responsible for the job he’d been trained to do.

I heard the front door of the house slam shut. I plowed through the brush growing under the lighted window. The screen was old, rotten and I ripped it away.

I threw my leg over the sill, parting the wafting curtains. Emily Carton had grabbed the telephone on a nearby table. She was dialing frantically.

She threw a glance at me, dropped the phone, and ran for the door at the far end of the room.

I caught her as she was yanking the door open. With my fingers on her elbow, I swung her back. She stumbled, kept her footing, and came up short about ten feet away.

The eyes were blazing in the shriveled, skull-like face. Her thin, wiry body shook with rage.

“How dare you!” she screamed. “You insufferable...”

“I’m not going to hurt you, Mrs. Carton.”

“You’ll get out of here if you know what’s good for you! You’re forgetting that I’m Emily Braddock Carton! I’ll have you...”

“Shut up!” I said.

She did. Not because she was particularly afraid of me. She was dismayed at what she interpreted as my effrontery.

“I have never been treated...” she began.

“You were treated a lot worse in Cuba,” I said.

She gave me a stare. “I shall call the police, this instant.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “It might be best for all parties concerned. Might stop an assassination.”

She cooled visibly. She seemed to be listening, but the big dog was still out cold.

“What do you mean, Mr. Rivers?” Her breathing slowed. She was getting her anger under control.

“I’m not completely sure,” I admitted, “but I’m getting the picture.”

She turned slowly, as if looking for a place to sit down. The room was a long living room, furnished with heavy stuff that had been real luxury thirty years ago. Now the needlepoint and brocade were as faded as the curtains. The baby-grand piano, once white, had yellowed with age. The whole room had a feeling of rats’ nests snuggled in the corners.

“What picture is that, Mr. Rivers?” she asked with faint disdain.

“Your husband’s silhouette is in one corner,” I said. “Down about midway, a boat called the Sprite has been sketched in. There are several dollar marks scattered around.”

“Sounds like a most surrealistic painting.”

“That’s right. You never know what you’re going to see next — or the meaning of it.”

“Assuming there is a meaning.”

“Any time half a million dollars is involved, you’ll find a meaning, Mrs. Carton.”

“Half a million?”

“Of your money, Mrs. Carton.”

“Ridiculous!”

“You deny that you’re financing a plan to kill a man in Cuba — to have him killed as your husband was killed? You have nothing left in life, except the hunger for revenge. You’re a very rich woman, able to do something about it.”

“But I deny what you say.”

“Then you’re in grave danger yourself.”

“Equally ridiculous.”

I shook my head. “The schooner came here with a purpose. The Lessards, Scanlons, Kincaid and Smith were all a part of that purpose. If you’re not planning to put the finger on someone in Cuba, then we have to conclude that the hand which struck your husband down is reaching for you.”

“Really? Why?”

I shrugged. “The murderers, the expropriators always fear retaliation. They never feel safe. They are of the blood-purge school.”

“What are you trying to do, Mr. Rivers? Frighten me into hiring you?”

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry for you, as I’d be sorry for any woman driven half mad by the complete wreckage of her life. Disaster is especially difficult for a queen. But I’m not here for hire, just answers.”

“Too bad I haven’t got them.”

Beyond her, the lace curtains ballooned. I felt a breeze across my cheeks. I saw the change in her eyes as she looked past me.

I turned on eggshells, because I knew that’s the way I’d better turn.

Kincaid was standing in the doorway that gave to an adjoining room. His eyes were puffy, his shirt rumpled as if he’d been taking a nap. He’d opened the door noiselessly and entered without putting his shoes on.

He stood with a lithe looseness of body, the sharp angles and planes of his face without expression. His expression was reserved for the eyes under the high forehead. The gun in his right hand was centered on my middle.

“I’m very tired of you, Rivers,” he said slowly. His gaze moved past me. “How’d he get in, Mrs. Carton? Where is the dog?”

“Immobilized.”

“Rivers has a habit of immobilizing his enemies. But he’s all through with that now,” Kincaid promised.

“I was on the point of calling for you,” Emily Carton said, “when I realized he was coming through the window. I was afraid you wouldn’t be at your best, fogged with sleep, if I revealed you were here. I grabbed the phone to make Rivers think I was alone. I was certain our voices or ensuing commotion would awaken you.”

“Very clear thinking,” Kincaid said.

I had to agree. It was no wonder she’d managed an escape from Cuba with the world falling in on her. She was intelligent, capable, accustomed to command.

“What do I do with Rivers, Mrs. Carton?”

“We can’t have him found here. Take him to the Scanlon cottage. I’ll call you there. We shan’t be needing the cottage much longer.”

“We’re going ahead?”

“Yes.”

“Half a million is a fortune, Mrs. Carton.”

Her eyes burned at the thought of the loss. “Don’t remind me, Kincaid! We can’t take any further risks trying to recover the money. We’ll have to accept the loss.”

“We, Mrs. Carton? When I got in touch and braced you with the idea, the deal was...”

“I know what the deal was, Kincaid! I have another half million — and another... and another.” She was almost screaming at him. “Does that satisfy you?”

“Sure, Mrs. Carton. Business is business. If you keep details clear as you go along, there can’t be any misunderstanding.”

“We won’t have a misunderstanding,” Emily Carton told him, “so long as you do precisely as I say.”

“Okay, Mrs. Carton. Your word is good enough for me.” He motioned with the revolver. “How about we move out, Rivers? I’m sure Mrs. Carton has looked at your kisser long enough. Mrs. Carton, please take his gun. Then get my shoes.” She lifted my gun, tossed it on a chair.

She fetched his shoes and jacket from the next room. He slid his feet into the shoes without taking his eyes off me. She kneeled and tied the laces.

He slipped a flashlight from his jacket pocket when we were outside.

“To the left, Rivers. The back of the house.”

A black sedan of a low-priced make was parked behind the house out of sight.

“You in front,” he said.

As I slid under the wheel, he eased into the back seat. I felt the muzzle of the revolver touch the back of my neck.

“Take the bay road, and don’t break any traffic laws.”

As we rolled along with stars looking at themselves in the vast sweep of bay water, the revolver eased from my neck. But I knew it was there. And how quickly Kincaid would strike.

“Too bad you went to all that trouble, Rivers, and ended up without the half million bucks.”

“You think that was my motive?”

“What else?”

“How can you be sure I haven’t got the money?”

“Don’t try to string me,” he said. “If you’d found the money, you’d have stopped sticking your nose in.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“Not interested. If Mrs. Carton’s willing to write off the loss, so am I. Before dawn we’ll be at sea. We won’t care what happens on the mainland after that.”

He was saying that they’d have no fears from the mainland. I was the only person with the tip-off, the truth about the Sprite’s mission, for the authorities. Kincaid intended to see that the truth wasn’t told.

“Who is the man?” I asked.

“Man?”

“In Cuba.”

“Oh, there are a lot of head cheeses in Cuba, Rivers. There are big head cheeses and smaller head cheeses. The fellow we’re interested in is pretty much a chief head cheese. He got that way largely through what he did to R. D. Carton. Carton had trusted that guy with his life, too. Can you blame Mrs. Carton for feeling the way she does?”

I approached the turn-off, slowed at Kincaid’s bidding, and drove past the bait camp on the pot-holed asphalt road.

The outlines of the Scanlon cottage swam into the edges of the headlight beams.

As I braked the car in the corner of the sandy yard, Jack Scanlon came around the far side of the house. In the full glare of the headlights, he was sweaty, disheveled. His face had lost its lazy look. His black hair was lank, plastered to his forehead and temples with sweat.

“Who’s there?” he called, a touch of panic in his voice.

“Kincaid. Watch it. I’ve got Rivers in the front seat.”

Scanlon ran to the side of the car.

Kincaid said, “What’s the matter with you?”

“It’s Maria. She’s off there in a thicket. She won’t come out.”

“Well, go in and get her. A psycho wife is your problem.”

“I’ve tried. I can’t catch her.”

“We’ve too many other things to think about,” Kincaid said, his voice low and savage. “What’s she doing hiding like that?”

“We had a fight.”

“What about?”

“I’m going to leave the stinking cow,” Scanlon said. “I can’t stand her any longer.”

“You’re going to get her out of there,” Kincaid told him. “That’s what you’re going to do.”

“Listen, you can’t make me stay with...”

“I’m telling you, Scanlon.”

“And I’m telling you,” Scanlon said. “This whole idea has blown up.”

“No, it hasn’t.”

“Like hell. And I’m out, see? Count me out. The money’s gone. We can’t find it, and things have been getting hotter with every passing hour.”

“And your feet have been getting colder. But there’s money. Plenty of money.”

Scanlon looked at Kincaid’s shadow in the back seat. “What do you mean?”

“Mrs. Carton is taking the loss. Now you get your wife under control and head for the Sprite.”

Scanlon stood in an awkward position, forearm half-raised to his sweaty forehead. He turned jerkily, cupped his hands about his mouth. “Maria,” he said in a louder than normal voice, “I didn’t mean it.”

She didn’t answer.

“Maria... honest... I wasn’t myself. I didn’t mean those things... my nerves... They’re on edge from the pressure of the past few days.”

A rustling sound came from the thicket beyond the front yard.

“Please, Maria... I’m sorry... I’ll make it up to you, darling...”

Because she wanted so very much to believe, she believed.

She came slowly out of the thicket. Blocky, bovine, her drab hair stringing about her face, she came slinking forward. She was on her feet, of course, but she had the attitude of a person crawling on the belly.

“Jack... I couldn’t stand it without you.”

“I know, hon. I’m sorry.”

“When you threw those jewels back in my lap, I thought I’d lost you for good.”

“What jewels?” Kincaid muttered quickly.

With a bare turn of his head in the direction of the car, Scanlon said, “She had some jewels in a safe deposit box in New Orleans. She hopped over and back.” To Maria, he said: “I was just shook up, baby, from the waiting and all. You’ll never lose me.”

She held out her arms then and rushed forward. Scanlon, with a distaste she missed, put his arm about her shoulders.

“Okay,” Kincaid said. “Get moving.”

“How about Rivers?”

“I’m going to kill him,” Kincaid said.

Maria Scanlon started. Jack tightened his grip on her shoulder.

“Don’t you think about it, Maria,” Scanlon said. “Kincaid knows what he’s doing.”

A brief desire to help me showed in her eyes. But she yielded to the pressure of her husband’s arm, and they moved away in the night.