Murder Mistress Read online

  During the drive in the cab, she had held her vanity mirror handy. She kept watching to see if he followed as she powdered her nose and pretended to inspect herself. She couldn’t tell. The cars behind were many and so anonymous. Certainly, if he followed, he must be far back.

  But as Clay, once said — ’Never take chances. Never assume that you have covered yourself. In any questionable situation, act as though you are in serious danger of discovery and only the cleverest maneuvering will save you.’ So she had ordered the driver to proceed north along Biscayne until she told him to turn. That way she could watch awhile to be certain. And when she instructed him to go right at that random street and stop at that random house, it had been just another step in obedience to caution.

  Immediately after the cab had gone, she had cut through the backyard of the house, across the adjoining property to the next street and on up to the first corner. Then she had walked south two more blocks and west almost to Biscayne. She was now at the point where from the cab she had spied the bar.

  All the way the suitcase had been growing heavier. But what a beautiful, beautiful heaviness. Actually, a whole lifetime of lightness.

  The bar had an entrance on the side street and she had slipped quickly inside. Finding the phone booth at the far end of the dim interior, she had consulted the directory. Leaving the door open and squeezing the case partway inside where it touched reassuringly against her, she placed the coin and dialed.

  Now she gave her location and told the voice to send a taxi in all possible haste to the side street door. She would be watching.

  They must have radioed a cab floating not far away, for it was there in only a few minutes. She took the bag with her in the back seat and this time gave the driver a specific address.

  In less than ten minutes they were cruising the MacArthur Causeway towards the beach and she was looking over her shoulder across the bay at the sweetly blazing skyline of Miami, calm in the certainty that she wasn’t followed.

  They did not pursue the Causeway to the beach, but turned off where there was a narrow bridge which led to an island. On this island were many beautiful homes along several curving streets. The driver selected one and tooled the cab almost to its end. He paused before one of the least pretentious of the houses, a modern ranch-house design of beige stucco and redwood trim in complete darkness. She paid the driver and refused his offer of help with the bag.

  She went around the side and got the key from where it was wedged behind the gas meter. Then she returned to the front door. She was groping for the lock when the door opened swiftly. She went rigid with shock, then exhaled sharply.

  “Clay!” she sobbed. “I didn’t think you’d be back so soon. Thank God. Oh, thank God!”

  FOUR

  HE TOOK THE BAG and pulled her inside, shutting the door. The curtains were already drawn. He lighted a single lamp and turned. He was a tall man in his late thirties, broad shouldered, hard of muscle. He had dark red hair gone a little gray at the sides. Except for a nose which was slightly aquiline, his tanned features were strongly attractive. He wore slacks and a madras sport shirt. A small bandage was taped over his left temple. There was about him an air of refinement and command.

  Neither spoke. With a look of complete astonishment, he glanced from Valerie to the suitcase. She rushed towards him and they embraced. As he kissed her, he let one big hand follow the heaving curve of her breast beneath the green silk. He undid two buttons of the blouse, kissed her neck and shoulder, the top swell of her breasts. Again he kissed her mouth, then pushed her away gently.

  “You got the money!” he said.

  She smiled.

  “My God, what a woman! How did you ever do it?”

  “When you didn’t come, I guessed what happened.” She sank into a chair and lighted a cigarette with a trembling hand. “Only I thought it was worse for you. I begged a ride from a man. We stopped at the wreck and I sent him to find out. The convertible was there but you were gone. You said you were going to transfer the suitcase to the trunk of the Cadillac and drive off before anyone came. Since you were able to walk away from the crash, I assumed that you had the money and that either you had gone off with it on foot, or it was in the trunk of the Cadillac. It seemed stupid not to know for sure. So I gave this fellow my keys and sent him to open the trunk. I had to make it worth his while. There’s more to it. But the important thing is that you’re all right, darling. You’re safe and you’re all right! Aren’t you?”

  “I’m all right, yes. At least I am now.” He paced the room. “It just didn’t go the way we planned. After I left you, I drove until I spotted Marty coming the other way in the Olds, about two miles south of where we went off the road. I let him get out of sight in my mirror, then swung around and caught up. I pretended to be passing. I was counting on surprise — cut in and shove him off the road into a crackup, cut out again fast and stop. But I cut too sharp. I hit him with the right rear fender. Then our bumpers locked and I lost control. But I was set for some such emergency and my reactions were faster. He got the worst of it. He never knew who it was or what really happened.

  “I went off the shoulder and down into the gully. I smacked a tree and glanced off. That was when I hit my head. I blacked out and came to again. Blood was trickling from my head and pouring from my nose. All over me. I knew I’d have to hurry. The Olds had turned on its side. I stumbled over to it. Marty was slumped across the seat. He looked dead or unconscious. It was a nightmare in that crazy position, but I got the keys out of the switch and the bag out of the trunk. I put the keys back. Still no car had come along.

  “The Cadillac was banged up, but looked like it would run okay. There was room to back around and plough out of there. I tossed the suitcase in the trunk and tried to start. She turned over but wouldn’t catch. Just wouldn’t catch! I was ready to give up and go off with the suitcase on foot, when I saw lights on the highway. A patrol car pulled up. They must have been cruising not too far behind. They threw a spotlight on the Olds and began to swing towards me. I took the keys and ducked out the door on the other side. I crawled off into the trees and watched. Two cops came running down. They split up, each one taking a car. One of them began flashing his light around for me and I crawled in deeper.

  “Then the mob started to come. And another police car. It looked hopeless. Not a chance to get the money. Besides, I was weak and sick and drenched with blood. Dead giveaway if anyone got a look at me. It was a ridiculous risk to try for that suitcase.

  “There were empty cars down a side road. Some joker in a Pontiac left his motor running. I stole it. Went back to the roadhouse, pulled up to the door and looked in. You were gone. Must have passed you on the way. I beat it just as some big slob was coming out. I took the coast route and came home. I was sitting here in the dark, trying to figure an angle on that suitcase when you came up with it.”

  “What about the Pontiac?”

  “I drove it home, cleaned up and changed my clothes. Then I took it back to town, parked it and taxied out.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “Gloves. You hear anything about Marty when you were there?”

  “Not dead, evidently. But in the hospital. He won’t be around for awhile.”

  “Good! Oh God, Val, what would I do without you? Go pour us one on the rocks and then come and tell me the rest of it.”

  When she had left the room, he carried the suitcase to a chair and opened it. Slowly, absently, he began to finger the bills.

  * * * *

  Scott Daniels wheeled west at 36th Street and pushed for home. The tension and excitement under which he had been operating for so many hours had left him depleted. He was suddenly exhausted and there was in him a sense of complete failure. True, he had the equivalent of five weeks salary. But mentally he had already placed the five hundred in escrow pending proof of its real origin. Valerie wasn’t going to that much trouble to conceal herself unless he had been close to some tremendous secret, perhaps the s
ecret between the lines of the newspaper item. Close. But close wasn’t good enough. It didn’t buy your way out of semi-poverty which was compounded by the fact than once you had enough riches and success to make the present doubly drab in contrast. And the trip to New York had been a bust. A total bust.

  Milt Lundberg, in charge of TV productions at the Freeman, Pellett and Weber Agency, had been condescending on the phone. He and Debby Lundberg had been guests at their penthouse in Forest Hills, and the lakeside cottage in the Adirondacks — how many times? But now the bastard was downright patronizing as he spoke from that swivel throne in his office. “Didn’t know you were in town, old man. Who you selling for?”

  “It’s a vacation, Milt. If I had a sponsor, you’d be one of the first to know it. I’m not selling in this town. That’s what I want to see you about.”

  There was a beat of silence, pregnant with self-protective overtones. “Well now listen, kiddo — no can do today. Meeting with the brass in ten minutes. That’ll scuttle the morning. Lunch with some VP’s at CBS, two client conferences in the afternoon. That clobbers hell out of the whole day. Might be able to squeeze you in first of next week, though. Tell you what — check with Billie next Monday. You remember Billie, my secretary? Sure you do. Well, check with Billie, Monday AM. She’ll set you up with a time. Best I can do, baby. Okay?”

  Lundberg had elected not to remember that he had a fine apartment overlooking the East River where “friends” could be invited in the evening.

  “Hell no, Milt,” said Daniels. “It isn’t okay. I won’t be in town but two, maybe three days. We’ll skip it, Milt. You’re busy. I know just how it is.”

  “Well, now wait a minute, Scott. Just hold on a minute. Can’t let you get away, old friend and all …” Lundberg saving face while figuring the least. “I’ll stay over a few minutes. Invite you for dinner, but we have company. Come by the office at four-thirty sharp. Good enough?”

  Then Lundberg in his office, swiveling, doodling with a black and gold pen behind a cloud of cigar smoke. A tall, thin man, pale and parrot-nosed, hair dark and sparse, bushy brows over gray-green eyes of many moods, all of them shrewdly acquisitive in one way or another. Facets of a personality that went all too unnoticed in the mists of approval, in the time of the feast.

  “So you’ve got a good thing cooking there in Miami, eh, Scott? The star rises again — but now in the subtropic heavens.”

  “Very poetic, Milt.”

  “My God, I envy you, old man. Christ — if I could ever get out of this empire of soot and garbage, laze around on those clean beaches … Rum coolers and palm trees. A very good thing, buddy boy.”

  “Sure,” said Daniels. “A very good thing at a hundred a week.”

  “Well now, after all. It takes time, you know.”

  “Yeah. It takes time to build yourself up to a hundred and a quarter, tops. Come on down, Milt. Talk realities. I want out of a nowhere staff announcing job in Miami and back to the big-bundle, free-lance gravy here. It’s been a good sinless year now. That should be long enough for the soap-chip and toothpaste guardians of the air-lanes to forgive and forget.”

  The pen paused in stroke, was returned to the holder in the onyx base. Lundberg sat back complacently and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Scott. They seldom forgive, and they almost never forget. It’s one hell of a big family. But it’s a family. And the word travels. They know about you — from here to Podunk and Paducah.”

  “Crap! Come off it, Milt. That’s a generality. Sure, there are some who know … or guess. But the majority don’t. They knew nothing about me in Miami — except that I was once a big deal. I started clean.”

  “Then you were lucky. And my best advice is to stay there and build a new reputation.”

  “I came in here to ask you to give me a crack at something, Milt. Something small to start. You could do it. You could bend the right ears with the right words. ‘Scott Daniels is changed, Mr. Dobbs. You wouldn’t know him. He downs a very occasional beer. He hasn’t had a hard drink in over a year. Still one of the best announcers in the business. Let’s give him another whirl.’ That’s all you’d have to say. What about it, Milt?”

  Lundberg swung to the window and back. “I’d like to, Scott. But I can’t. They wouldn’t hear of it upstairs. I couldn’t stick my neck out that far. I sit in this chair. But I’m not fastened to it. See what I mean? If this was penny-ante, it would be different. But we’re playing with big money — thousands — millions. One goof and we might lose an account that would wipe out a whole department. I believe in you, Scott. But that’s not enough. Get a staff job on one of the nets here. Ease your way in. Then I’ll root for you.”

  “Fine, Milt. Thanks a lot. You’ll root for me when I’m practically home. Thanks a lot. And, of course, you’ll pick up the phone and get me that staff job for a start, won’t you?”

  Lundberg’s face closed. “No need for that kind of talk, Scott. I’m sorry. But I didn’t lift the bottle to your lips.” He looked at his watch. “Got to run, kiddo. Keep in touch. I might hear of something.”

  And over at the network stations — Carleton Lovelace at NBC: “My God, if we had anything at all, Scott, you wouldn’t even have to audition. But unfortunately we’re already overstaffed….”

  Bill Dickson at CBS: “… And I really am sorry we have a tight budget, Scott, because we need a man of your caliber … don’t doubt for a minute you’re on the wagon … has no bearing on the situation … drop in anytime …”

  George MacDougal at American: “… Of course, there’s the vacation relief job. Man we had got is sick and we’re on overtime. I might be able to swing it with Hartley on some kind of probationary basis. But it’s only good for about three months, fella, and you wouldn’t want that now, would you?”

  There was the small difference in phrasing, but all over town the sum total of the answers was the same — we don’t gamble on drunks, reformed or otherwise. Nothing for Scott Daniels.

  Not that he had ever been by any stretch of the imagination an alcoholic. He just bad a few drinks to “loosen up,” before he walked on stage for an important show. And then one time he forgot where to stop and overnight the loosening process had become plain free-wheeling.

  Essentially, it was a matter of premature advancement. He had too much talent and too little ego. His self-conception always lagged behind his ability — a dangerous situation in a profession where even an obvious mistake before the millions had to be carried off with such aplomb that the audience applauded the natural and graceful manner in which the performer fell flat on his face.

  Beneath the studied glossy front which Daniels had presented to the camera lens, he couldn’t overcome a devastating fear that he was being hurled too high, too fast. It was the presence of this fear, not the absence of talent, which had been his undoing.

  FIVE

  Daniels parked the car in the lot beside the building. Looking up two stories he could see that there was a light from behind the curtain of their bedroom window. After two AM and Myra still up, waiting. Or asleep with an open book in limp fingers.

  The moment he closed the door behind him, he heard the padding of bare feet down the hall. Scampering towards him, wearing one of his pajama tops that came to her knees, how tiny she looked without the lift of her high heels. Her auburn hair bounced along across her shoulders. Typically she had not put it up in the bobby-pinned ugliness which she knew he detested because he told her it made her small gamin face look naked as a light bulb.

  “I was getting worried,” she said against his shoulder, arms pulling him tight. “You said before midnight and — ”

  He kissed her gently. “Old faithful, still up,” he said. “God, it’s good to see you, hon. Sorry you worried. There were complications and no handy phones. Man, I’m beat! But talkative. Let’s get comfortable.”

  He began to walk with her towards the bedroom. “Where’s your suitcase, dear?”

  “Damn!” he said. “Left it in the ca
r. Never mind. It’s locked away and I’m too tired. Nothing I’ll need before morning.”

  In the bedroom he stripped down to his shorts and lay back against the pillows, smoking with an ashtray on his chest. She sat cross-legged, facing him. Her neat little features were made up with the same precise care she might employ if they were about to set forth for some grand and formal affair. All for him. Even in the absurd pajama tops, she managed to look smart and neat. In spite of the hour, her brown eyes were alert with interest.

  “All right,” she teased. “What complications? A complicated blonde?

  “No. A complicated brunette.”

  She laughed.

  “You think I’m kidding?”

  “Probably. But before you make me too jealous to listen, tell me about New York. What did Milt Lundberg say besides — no?”

  “It doesn’t seem important, now.”

  “Please?”

  He told her briefly about Lundberg and the others.

  “I hate them all,” she said.

  “Don’t bother. In a way, you can’t blame them.”

  “Smug, self-righteous little men.”

  “Self-protective,” he corrected.

  She lighted a cigarette and waved off the smoke with a gesture of annoyance. “It isn’t as if you were some incurable alcoholic, fresh from an institution. What do they want, signed affidavits? All you did was go off the deep end a few times. In that ulcer contest it could happen to anyone. Oh, I wish you had never accepted that ridiculous quiz show SEVEN COME ELEVEN. Even the name is silly. You had to be loaded to watch it, let alone conduct it. Actually, you almost turned it down.”

  “Almost,” he said. “I had a feeling about it. I knew I wasn’t ready. But how do you say no to a thousand a week? And especially to that little man inside you who forever after would be whispering that you’re a gutless wonder. How do you do that?”