There was no police car in front or in the alley. Keeping close to the wall, I climbed the stairs and rapped lightly on the door. Either Beth wasn’t asleep or she was sleeping lightly. Almost immediately she asked, “Yes? Who is it?”
I took a deep breath and told her. “Charlie.”
A moment of silence followed. Then slippered feet scuffed across the floor and only a screen door separated us. A single beam of moonlight, flooding in through a hole in the vine that almost covered the porch, spotlighted her white face. I’d forgotten she was so pretty. Even with her cheeks stained with tears and dark lines under her eyes, she was beautiful. And one time she had loved me and I had thrown her away for a mess of Zo.
Pressing her nose against the screen she said, “You shouldn’t have come here, Charlie. The police were here not two hours ago and I promised Ken Gilly I’d call him if you did contact me.”
I said, “Then you know?”
She brushed a lock of red hair away from her forehead. “Yes. I know. It was in the papers.”
I got it off my chest with a rush. “I didn’t do it, Beth. I didn’t kill her. And I didn’t open your letter, I didn’t realize what it was, until after I’d reached the cabin. When I did read it, I told Zo I was coming back to Palmetto and you. And that was when it happened. Someone slugged me and shot Zo.”
She said, “And you expect me to believe that?”
I asked, “Have I ever lied to you, Beth?”
She thought a moment. “No. That’s one thing you’ve never done.” She unhooked the screen. “Come in. Come in before one of the neighbors sees you.”
Inside the room I tried to take her in my arms but she pushed me away.
“No. I want time to think. This may change things for both of us. What do you intend to do now, Charlie?”
I told her.
Beth said, “In other words, if you can evade the law and get out of the country, you’re going right back in the same old racket. You’re going to work for this Señor Peso again.”
I asked her what else I could do.
She told me. “Be a man. If you didn’t kill that girl there must be some way we can prove it.”
I asked her, “How?”
She shook her head. She was standing so close to me that one of her curls brushed my face. It was all I could do to keep from digging both of my hands in her hair and pulling her to me. “I don’t know,” she admitted. Then, woman-like, she persisted, “But there must be some way. Perhaps Mr Clifton could help us.”
He was the guy she worked for. I’d never liked him. Few of the local people did, even if they did trade in his store. A cocky little Yankee, he’d come to Palmetto City twenty years before and built an idea into the biggest business in town. He wouldn’t be undersold. If a fellow merchant ran a loss leader costing from two cent, Clifton would lose five to get the business. And he had.
From a two-by-four dry-goods store he’d branched out into a block-square four-story-high merchandise carnival, handling everything from apples to zithers. If you couldn’t buy it at Clifton’s, it wasn’t for sale.
I asked, “Why should he help us?”
Beth was frank about it. “Mr Clifton’s in love with me. He’s asked me to marry him. He even offered to buy the old house out on the island so I’d have some money and wouldn’t have to work while I made up my mind whether or not to divorce you.”
I said, “Oh, yeah?”
Beth put me back in my place. “You should get sore.”
The strain was beginning to get me. I sat down on the edge of the bed and buried my head in my hands. “Okay, honey,” I admitted. “I’m sorry. I haven’t got a beef. Not with the way I’ve loused up our lives.”
She sat down on the bed beside me. “Kiss me, Charlie.”
I said that after the way I’d treated her I shouldn’t think she’d want me to. Her lips inches from mine, she repeated, “I asked you to kiss me, Charlie.”
I took her face in my hands and kissed her. But it wasn’t the way I kissed Zo. It was more like I’d kissed her in front of the altar after the Reverend Paul had finished marrying us and the world was going to be our oyster. She was something sweet and beautiful and fragile. She was good. She was something that had been missing out of my life for a long time.
When I lifted my face, her eyes were shining in the dark and patting my cheek with one hand she kissed me back of her own accord. “It’s going to be all right, honey,” she told me. “I don’t know how we’ll do it. But we will make it right.”
A car purred to a stop in the alley. Heavy feet began to climb the stairs. A moment later there was a light knock on the door.
Standing up in front of me, Beth asked, “Yes?”
“It’s Ken again, Beth,” Gilly told her. “I’m sorry to disturb you but I thought you ought to know. Charlie’s been traced to a men’s store in Tampa where he bought a complete new outfit. We’re setting up roadblocks on the causeway and all roads leading into Palmetto City.”
“Oh,” Beth said. “Oh.”
Ken sounded tired. “I wish the guy hadn’t headed back this way. Heaven knows I don’t want to make the pinch. Charlie’s my friend. But what can I do?”
Beth suggested. “Maybe he didn’t do it, Ken. Maybe he didn’t kill that girl.”
Lieutenant Gilly was skeptical. “Yeah. Maybe. And maybe some day filet of grunt will sell for as much as snapper fingers. Well, Tampa only being sixty miles away, I thought I’d let you know. You want me to post a guard in the alley?”
Beth’s fingers tightened on mine. “No. I don’t think that will be necessary, Ken. Even if Charlie should come here I don’t think he’d hurt me.”
“No,” Gilly agreed. “Well, it’s just as well. I can use every man I have on the roadblocks. But if he should slip through and come here, you let me know now, Beth.”
He clumped on back down the stairs. A moment later the police cruiser purred off into the night. I could feel the cold sweat start on my cheeks. The boys were beginning to haul in the net – and I was in it. It wouldn’t be long now.
Beth sat back on the bed, all business. “No one ever comes in here but me, and I was going to suggest you stay here until after I’d talked to Mr Clifton. Now that’s out. When you don’t show up at the blocks, they’re going to know you got through and someone is bound to suggest the police search this apartment. There’s only one logical place for you to stay.”
I asked her where that was.
She said, “Out at the house. You know it and the island better than anyone else. An army couldn’t find you there if you didn’t want them to. Now, tell me the whole thing from the minute you were released from prison yesterday morning.”
I gave her a play-by-play description. But I still didn’t like the Clifton angle and said so. “You say the guy loves you. You say he’s asked you to divorce me and marry him. Well, what’s his reaction going to be when you tell him I’m in town? He’s going to reach for his phone and call the cops. The guy is a bargain hunter. And it’s a lot cheaper for him to turn me in to be burned than it is for him to pay for a divorce.”
Beth said I wasn’t doing Mr Clifton justice. He was really a very fine and a very honorable man. She shook her curls in my face. “Besides I’m not going to tell him you’re in town. You have to admit he is smart?”
I said I did.
Beth continued. “All I am going to tell him is that I don’t think you killed that girl and ask his advice on how to go about hiring a private detective to prove it.”
It didn’t sound too bad. The guy was smart. And Beth was right about the island. I could hide out on it indefinitely. “Well, okay,” I agreed. “But how are you going to contact me?”