The Case of the Turning Tide

Chapter 22

Frank Duryea stretched out in the rattan chaise longue in the solarium and gave himself to the solace of a cigar. It was that mystic moment when the cares of the business world are dissolved in a blue haze of aromatic smoke.

The maid, back on duty now, was getting ready to put dinner on the table. Milred, in a cool print dress that made her seem as clean and dainty as though she had been some choice bit of merchandise wrapped in cellophane, watched her husband speculatively. Her half-closed eyes gave to her face an expression of contentment and of seductive speculation.

Gramps Wiggins, bustling about in the suit of clothes he had dug out of the closet in the trailer, clasped a frosted cocktail shaker in his hands and shook it up and down with the vehemence of a big dog shaking a rabbit.

“What do you call it, Gramps?” Milred asked.

“Well,” he said, “rightly it ain’t got no name. Heard a fellow the other night crackin’ wise about his cocktail, said he called it the ‘Block and Tackle’ because you drink it, walk a block, an’ tackle anythin’. Well, this here cocktail, she ain’t like that. No, sir. You don’t need to walk no block, jus’ drink it an’ phss-s-s-s-t! You take off like a skyrocket!”

“You invented it?” Milred asked.

“Uh huh, an’ she ain’t got no inert ingredients in ’er. You drink this an’ you know you got somethin’. The taste is kinda disguised, but don’t make no mistake about it. She’s like these here women that look mild an’ housified, but boy, oh boy, oh boy!”

Duryea said, “I’m willing to try it, but I may have to go to the office this evening.”

Milred made a little grimace. “Again! Why don’t you let the sheriff work up that case?”

“Because I’m afraid he’ll arrest the wrong person,” Duryea said, “and then it’ll be up to me to go into court with a case that will backfire.”

“I gathered from the evening paper that a pretty black case was building up against this Moline girl.”

Gramps unscrewed the little cap in the spout of the cocktail shaker. “The way things look right now,” he said, “it hinges on that letter to them oil people. Stearne told the stenographer he was goin’ to leave so he could get it in the post office before five o’clock. That meant he’d have to leave the yacht by twenty minutes to five at the latest. If he didn’t mail that letter, it looks as though he got killed between five minutes past four and twenty minutes to five. An’ this here Moline girl was on the yacht an’ can’t prove where she was next until four-thirty. How’m I doin’, Frank?”

Duryea said, “Pretty good. As a matter of fact, Milred, I think I’ll have to put Gramps on the force.”

Gramps Wiggins looked up with a quick little birdlike jerk to his head. “You meanin’ that?” he asked.

Duryea laughed. “No.”

“I was afraid not.”

Duryea said, “You’d get fed up with it in ten days, Gramps. Nothing but a lot of routine. People commit petty crimes. Kids steal automobiles. Men drive while intoxicated. A burglary here and there. Occasionally some talented crook drifts into town and pulls a job. Mostly those people aren’t caught, but if they are caught, it’s nearly always a dead open-and-shut case.”

“How about murder cases?”

“Murder cases come along about twice a year. Mostly they’re emotional killings where a person shoots someone in blind rage, then goes and gives himself up, or commits suicide. It’s only once in a blue moon we have any real mystery murders.”

“Well,” Gramps said, “I guess p’raps I better make arrangements to just come back an’ work every blue moon. Here you are, folks.”

Gramps passed over the tray with the cocktail glasses. Milred tasted hers, then said, with a voice that held a faint trace of surprise, “Why, Gramps, it’s good.”

“Of course it’s good,” Gramps said indignantly. “What you think I been doin’ all this time, wastin’ elbow grease an’ good liquor on somethin’ that wasn’t good?”

Duryea said, “Tastes as though it had rum in it.”

“You just drink it,” Gramps said, “an’ don’t worry about it.”

“But it certainly tastes mild. You aren’t kidding about its having authority?” Milred asked.

Gramps Wiggins looked at her over the tops of his glasses. “Now, you listen to me, Milred. I’ve batted around this country right smart. Me an’ old John Barleycorn have had many a tough tussle. I ain’t never licked him, an’ he ain’t never licked me. Once or twice he’s had me down, but I ain’t stayed down. It’s just about been a draw so far. But I’m tellin’ you this here cocktail is old John Barleycorn’s ace in the hole. This is the thing he uses for his haymaker.”

“Well, I’ve certainly tasted lots of cocktails that seemed stronger than this.”

Milred turned to her husband. “What are you going to do about that Moline woman?” she asked.

“Darned if I know,” Duryea admitted cheerfully. “The sheriff wants to go ahead and charge her. I’m holding off for a while. There are some investigations I want to make. I’d like to go to Catalina tomorrow and check up on some things.”

Milred said, “Oh, take me.”

“It’d be a business trip.”

“I wouldn’t interfere. I just want to go along.”

He shook his head.

Gramps Wiggins said, “Tell you what you do, sis. You come along with me. I was thinkin’ o’ goin’ to Catalina tomorrow, an’ you an’ I can go along together. If your husband gets on the same boat, we can’t do nothin’ about that.”

“I might fly down,” Duryea said, smiling.

“Phooey,” Milred retorted. “There’s no fun in that. Why don’t you come along with us, get the thrill out of the boat ride, the tang of the salt sea air, see the different types of people? Then you’d have an hour or two over at Catalina after you’d finished your business, and you could really relax. You’ve been in the office too much lately.”

“Are you actually going?” Duryea asked.

“You heard Gramps ask me, didn’t you?”

Gramps said with a chuckle, “An’ when you ask a Wiggins to go some place, that’s all there is to it. No true Wiggins ever stuck around anywhere until he got into a rut. He’s a ramblin’ son of a gun, the original rollin’ stone.”

Milred asked her husband, “What are you going to investigate?”

Duryea said, “I want to check up on Mrs. Right and her brother.”

“Good heavens, Frank, why?”

“Oh, just a matter of routine.”

“Why not let the police do it?”

“I don’t want to give it that much publicity.”

“But why check up on them?”

Duryea said, almost musingly, “At around four o’clock Sun-day afternoon, something may have happened. Or perhaps I should say something had been planned to happen.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. No one seems to know. The Gypsy Queen had been intending to put to sea at three o’clock in the afternoon. The Albatross was at sea at three o’clock in the afternoon. Now, if it should appear that Pearl Right, in her brother’s speedboat, was also ferried out to sea at three o’clock in the afternoon, it would be — rather a coincidence, wouldn’t it?”

Gramps said, “Now you’re gettin’ somewhere, son. I been hopin’ the time would come when you’d call the turn on this here Joan Harpler. She’s had you plumb hypnotized, an’ she knows it.

“She’s a cute little package — too darn cute. Somehow, the way she tells her story about sailin’ around alone sounds awfully genuine and truthful when you’re listenin’ to her, but when she goes away an’ you don’t see those wide eyes anymore, an’ don’t hear that rich voice purrin’ words at you, but just remember the words themselves, they sound kinda fishy.”

Milred said, “I guess there really is something in that cocktail. It’s got Gramps started talking.”

“What do you mean?” Gramps demanded. “I’m always talkin’.”

“Telling me secrets about my husband’s office. He comes home and talks about the routine legal chores. Then you take two cocktails and I find he puts in his time talking with beautiful women and letting them put him in a state of trance.”

“You got somethin’ there,” Gramps said. “That there Harpler girl is purty as a picture, an’ this Moline girl is...”

“Oh, I’m not afraid of her,” Milred said. “Frank doesn’t fall for that type. Sophistication, glitter, and the flash of a shapely leg leave him quite cool, thank you; but let a good-looking girl put on the good-sport act, smile up into his eyes, give him a warm handclasp, and he’s a pushover.”

Duryea said, “So you’ve been using dictographs again, eh?”

“No, dear. Just studying you.”

“When?”

“Before I hooked you, silly. Don’t you know that a hunter always studies the habits of the game he intends to stalk.”

Gramps started to chuckle. “Heh heh heh. Betcha he thought he was sweepin’ ya right off your feet. Didn’t know he was just grabbin’ the bait an’ havin’ the hook sunk in him right up to the gills.”

Duryea sighed. “As though my job didn’t have enough disillusionment.”

The maid came to the door. “Dinner is served,” she said.

Gramps gulped down the last of his cocktail. “You listen to me, son. Don’t let that Harpler girl pull any wool over your eyes. When I’m cold sober, an’ think of her lookin’ at me with that little one-sided smile o’ hers, an’ those steady slate-gray eyes meetin’ mine, as though she didn’t have a thing to conceal, I say to myself, ‘Well, now, you may have to watch this Moline woman, but this here Harpler girl is all wool — virgin wool at that.’ An’ then I get a little bit swacked an’ get to thinkin’ over what she says an’ I’m tellin’ ya she don’t click. Decidin’ somebody was tryin’ to impose on her, so she takes a run out to sea. Afraid some man is gonna make a pass at her, so she locks him in his stateroom. She ain’t kiddin’ me none, Frank Duryea.”

The district attorney put down his empty cocktail glass, conscious of the fact that Milred’s eyes were on him, studying him thoughtfully.

“There may be something she’s concealing in connection with her private affairs,” Duryea said.

Milred said, “Yes, Gramps, we’re going to Catalina tomorrow — definitely. He isn’t to be trusted running around loose, not when he begins to get these complexes.”

They were halfway through dinner when the telephone rang, and the maid announced that Sheriff Lassen was on the line with some important information for Duryea. The district attorney went to the telephone and returned after a few minutes to face the expectant, eager eyes of Gramps Wiggins.

“I’m sorry, Gramps. It’s no go.”

“What?”

“Your theory.”

“What about it?”

“Those glasses have been in the water for some time.”

“What makes you think so?”

“The sheriff got in touch with the oculist who supplied both men with glasses. There’s not a chance on earth that that pair of spectacles had anything to do with either of them.”

“Why not?”

“The prescription is all wrong. The man who owned those spectacles had a left eye which required an enormous correction. The right eye was nearly normal. It’s an unusual combination. The sheriff feels certain they were dropped from some other yacht.”

“Well, what other yacht has been there in the last week?”

“Two or three. The sheriff’s checking up on them just to make sure.”

Gramps grinned. “Well,” he said, “it was a good theory while it lasted.”

“It was, for a fact,” Duryea admitted. “Your theories are all to the good. That diagram you drew of the way the boat swung around with the tide and the position in which the gun was found still indicates something. And the way you handled that third degree of Nita Moline was a masterpiece.”

“That Moline girl again,” Gramps said. “We keep comin’ back to her.”

“What about the place where the gun was found?” Milred asked. “I seem to be losing out.”

Duryea said, “I don’t know whether it’s the effect of the cocktail or the fact that the more I think of it, the more I realize how thoroughly logical and clever it was, but Gramps has darned near demonstrated that the gun was dumped over the side of the yacht sometime after the murder was committed. Now the question is, by whom?”

“Nita Moline?” Milred asked.

“It’s almost a certainty,” Duryea said.

Gramps Wiggins’ knife and fork clattered against the plate. “By gum,” he said. “I’ve got a theory!”

“No, no,” Duryea begged laughingly. “Not another one. Not until after dinner.”

“Yes, sir,” Gramps said. “I got me a damn good theory.”

“Well, what is it?”

“That Harpler girl. When Ted Shale saw her, she was standin’ on the deck o’ the yacht. Shale says she had on a bathin’ suit, an’ there was drops of water glistenin’ on her arms an’ legs. She coulda swum over to that other yacht just as well as not. An’ don’t forget one thing, son. The skiff that belonged to the Gypsy Queen was tied up at the float. That means someone had to leave that yacht sometime after the murders were committed. Now, if it had been a murder an’ suicide, somebody knew about it an’ was on the boat, an’ took the skiff an’ went ashore.”

“The Moline girl,” Milred remarked.

“No, it couldn’t have been her, because she found the skiff tied up at the float. It has to be one o’ two things. Either someone was aboard the yacht an’ rowed ashore, or someone in a bathin’ suit went over to the yacht, found evidences of a murder an’ suicide, ditched the evidence, for reasons best known to himself, an’ then took the skiff ashore so as to make it look like a murder. A girl in a bathin’ suit could have done that. A girl who wasn’t wearin’ a bathin’ suit couldn’t. Don’t go lettin’ this Harpler woman pull a lot o’ wool over your eyes, son. You’re young an’ impressionable, an’ you’re fallin’ for her.”

There was an unmistakable earnestness about Gramps’ plea.

Milred, watching him thoughtfully, turned to Frank Duryea. Under the scrutiny of her eyes, Duryea felt himself flush. The knowledge that he was flushing, added to his embarrassment and his color.

Milred said, without taking her eyes from her husband’s face, “Gramps, before you go, you leave the recipe for that cocktail right here. Mamma is going to need that in her business.”