“It seems open and shut,” Sergeant Martin said.
“It only seems that way, Sergeant,” said a dry, acidulous voice from the doorway.
Consuela stiffened. Greg Foster took a quick step back from the chair, his face suddenly white with shock.
Standing in the doorway was the bloody specter of Sibby Salazar. He was holding a handkerchief to a bleeding wound at the back of his head. His white linen suit was torn and stained with grass and dirt. His narrowed eyes were fixed on Consuela. She looked back at him, her eyes feverish — pleading, threatening.
“Only the good die young, my sweet,” Sibby said.
“Who are you?” Sergeant Martin asked.
“Sebastian Salazar, a house guest,” Sibby said.
“I... I told you Mr. Salazar had gone for a drive in his car, Sergeant,” Consuela said. The cords in her neck stood out.
“Mr. Salazar did not go for a ride,” Sibby said. “Mr. Salazar was headed for the trooper barracks to report a murder.”
“Murder!” the Sergeant said sharply.
“If you’ll take the trouble to search Mr. Foster I think you will still find a gun in his pocket. Even if he has tried to wipe it clean I think you will find traces of flesh and hair on its butt. My flesh and my hair, Sergeant. You see,” Sibby drawled, “Mr. Foster tried to kill me, too.”
“Too?”
Sergeant Martin took a quick step toward Foster who seemed to have gone into a trance. The gun was still in his coat pocket.
“You see, Sergeant,” Sibby said, “I was an eyewitness to the murder. I saw Mr. Foster go to the stable and wait there for Mr. Conrad.” Try to kill me, will you, buster? Sibby’s eyes said.
“Sibby!” Consuela whispered.
“Young Mr. Foster has long been infatuated with Mrs. Conrad,” Sibby went on coolly. “I suspected there might be trouble when I saw George Conrad go down to the stable. I followed — unfortunately arriving too late to prevent Mr. Foster from beating George to death with that tire chain and dragging him into the stall with the horse. Then I saw him strike the horse with the chain so that the animal, maddened by pain, would seem to have trampled George.”
“No!” Foster cried out.
Sibby shrugged. “I am no physical match for a man of Foster’s physique — especially a man in such a murderous mood. I waited for him to leave and then I ran for my car. But he must have seen me. When I was halfway down the mountain he rose up from the back of my car, put a gun to my head, and forced me to stop. Then he struck me over the head and launched the car through the guard rail and down the mountain side. It’s a miracle that I’m here, Sergeant. He hadn’t shut the door properly, and with the first lurch of the car I was thrown out. Apparently he didn’t notice that or I wouldn’t be here. The car is smashed to pieces, but luckily it didn’t burn. You should be able to find some of Mr. Foster’s fingerprints in the wreckage.”
Sibby looked at Foster. He wanted to laugh. The romantic idiot would play it noble to the very end.
Sibby’s narrowed eyes then turned to meet Consuela’s shocked and incredulous stare. He smiled. You can save him by telling the truth, his smile said. But you won’t. Your own hide is far too important to you. But from now on, Consuela, I control that hide and all that goes with it. You can’t use me, my pet, and then step on me like a bug.
Then Sibby played the scene out. He moved over and knelt in front of Consuela He took her burning hands in his. “I’m so sorry, poor dear Consuela,” he said. Sergeant Martin couldn’t see the laughter in his heavy-lidded eyes. “You and George — poor George — had so much to live for. But you know you can count on me, darling, to help you through it.”
Her lips moved and the words behind them must have matched the loathing in her eyes. But the words weren’t spoken, because Sibby pressed his cool fingertips against those lips.
“Don’t try to thank me now, my darling,” he said, the needle sharp as ever.
Death and the Skylark
by Roy Huggins
It wasn’t an easy assignment for Stuart Bailey, licensed private investigator. Glen Callister expected to be murdered aboard his ocean-going schooner on the voyage to Honolulu, and he was sure who was planning to do it — half sure, anyway. But while half a loaf may be better than no loaf in certain circumstances, half a solution wasn’t worth the $500 retainer that Callister had given Bailey — or even, for that matter, a plugged nickel...
If it hadn’t been for the yachts tied up at its long row of slips, the Los Angeles Yacht Anchorage would have looked like an abandoned fish hatchery. But the yachts were there, and as I went on down the floating boardwalk looking for the Skylark, I began to wonder if it wasn’t about time for me to raise my rates.
“The Skylark’s a fore-and-aft schooner,” the man at the lunchroom had told me. Which didn’t really help me very much. I wouldn’t have recognized a fore-and-aft schooner if one had sailed right through my living room.
But about halfway down the walk I slowed to look at a boat that seemed somehow different from the rest, set low and long in the water, with slender lines and two high masts, and woodwork that appeared to have taken the polish of loving hands for a century or so. I looked for a nameplate and couldn’t find one, but there seemed to be someone aboard, back at the stern.
I stepped down onto the narrower walk that ran alongside the ship and went on to the boarding ladder. Someone was there all right — a paunchy man in faded denims and a cork hat. He was sitting in a deep-sea fishing seat attached to the deck and reading a paper that looked suspiciously like the Wall Street Journal.
I waited to see if he’d look up, and when he didn’t I called out, “Could you tell me where I’ll find the Skylark?”
“This is it,” he said, peering down at me over his shoulder. He had the uneven, rumbling voice of a man who has grown fat in his fifties.
“I’m looking for Glen Callister,” I said.
“I’m Callister.”
“I’m Bailey. Thought you’d be expecting me.”
“Oh.” He stood up quickly and came over to the rail. “I was expecting a man more my own age. Don’t know why exactly. Come on aboard.”
I came aboard.
Glen Callister turned out to be a smaller man than he looked from the walk, only five feet six or less, with a barrel chest and legs that wanted to bow just a little. He shook my hand, gave me a pleasant smile that said he’d forgive me for being the wrong age, and suggested we talk down in the “main salon.”
The open companionway was about at the center of the ship, the cockpit just a few feet back of it. I went down the steps first and Callister gestured toward a door at the end of the passage. He squeezed past me at the door and opened it, and I followed him into a room that was as unexpected as crêpes suzettes at a picnic.
It was a large room filled with sun from a center skylight and the odor of fine scotch from a built-in bar. There were couches in soft beige on two sides of the room, a built-in refrigerator paneled in Philippine mahogany, a fireplace with a polished copper chimney, and a square grand piano attached firmly to one of the bulkheads.
Callister indicated one of the couches and carefully closed the door. He crossed the room and closed another door to what appeared to be the galley, came back to the center of the room, and glanced anxiously up at the half-open skylight. He took off the cork hat and sat down, running a hand through his silver-white hair.