“Please.”
She really had the guy wrapped around her little finger. He was so nuts about her it oozed out all of his pores.
“Well, all right,” he said finally. “But let’s have an understanding, White. If we do go out to the island and find nothing in the old house to substantiate your fantastic story, you will turn yourself in to Lieutenant Gilly as soon as we return to the mainland and allow the law to take its course. Is that understood?”
I said it was.
He said, “Then you go ahead to the yacht basin. Mrs White and I will follow.”
I passed a half a dozen cops on my way down to the basin. One or two of them glanced at me casually but none of them attempted to stop me.
His boat was a thirty-eight-footer, double cabin, with a flying bridge. He knew how to handle it, too. If he hadn’t been a successful merchandiser, he’d have made a good fishing-boat captain. What’s more he knew the bottom of the channel like the lines in his well-kept hand. Easing the nose of the cruiser in between the rotting pilings of what once had been a pier, he made it possible for Beth to step ashore without even getting her feet wet. I helped him tie up to a piling, then followed him ashore.
Seen in broad daylight the old house looked better than it had in the moonlight. There was nothing wrong with it or the path or the clearing that a few dollars and elbow grease wouldn’t make right again.
The first place I went was the kitchen. But the coat I’d left on a chair was gone, and with it the gun that had killed Zo.
Clifton was impatient. “Well, let’s get on with it,” he said. “Let’s see this fabulous attic.”
As I led the way up the stairs, he asked if I was armed. When I said I wasn’t he said:
“Then it’s a good thing that I brought a gun with me.” He was openly skeptical. “Heaven knows I wouldn’t want to face an attic filled with wetback desperadoes without a gun.”
I paused on the second floor for a deep breath, then walked up the attic stairs and threw the heavy door open. The floor was thick with dust. There were no built-in bunks against the wall. The walls were lined solidly with the antique furniture that various Whites had discarded over a period of a hundred years.
Beth began to cry.
Clifton was silent a moment. Then drawing his gun, he motioned me back down stairs to the second floor. “I was afraid it would be like this,” he admitted. “But what in the name of time did you hope to gain by telling us such a fantastic story?”
I asked him why the gun.
“You’re not mentally right,” he said. “You can’t be.”
I lighted a cigarette and leaned against the jamb of one of the closed bedroom doors. “That can be,” I admitted. “Heaven knows I’ve made a mess of my life. But tell me this, Señor Peso. Did you ever see a Florida attic that had been closed up for three years that wasn’t covered with cobwebs?”
His voice shrill, he asked, “What was that you just called me?”
I said, “Answer my question. No. You never did. You could get the men who were in here last night out of the attic and onto the mainland. You could rip out the bunks and move the old furniture back. You could cover the floor with dust. But you couldn’t replace the cobwebs. That’s something only a spider can do.”
He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. “You’re crazy. You’re out of your mind.”
I said, “We’ll leave that up to the law. And while the law is at it, I want them to check your whereabouts at the time that Zo was killed. I doubt you have an alibi. You can’t have. Because you were the guy who shot her and dusted me with a gaff hook.”
His voice grew even shriller. “And just why should I do such a thing? What was my motive?”
I nodded at Beth. “My wife. She was the one thing you couldn’t get at a bargain. You couldn’t buy her. But you could buy me. That’s why you sent Zo to meet me. That’s why you deposited the thirty-six grand to my account. That’s why you had Zo steam me up about heading straight for Cuba and Shrimp Cay. That’s why you were at the cabin, to make certain she had me in tow.
“And everything went just fine until I read Beth’s letter and told Zo it was no dice, that I was heading back to Palmetto City and Beth. It was you to whom Zo cried out just before you shot her. Shot her because you saw another way to accomplish your purpose. With me back in a cell at Raiford waiting to be burned for murder, I couldn’t very well return to Beth. And, in time, you knew you’d get what you wanted.”
He laughed. “A jury would howl at that story.”
I said, “Okay. Let’s test it. Let’s go back to the mainland. I’ll tell my story and you tell yours.”
He shook his head. “No. I’m afraid we can’t do that. I’m a prominent man in Palmetto City and my business enemies would be certain to try to make capital of this.”
I said, “You mean you’re afraid that the Feds might look at your invoices and begin to wonder where you’re getting some of your goods that you’re able to sell for less than your fellow merchants pay for it wholesale. Hell. It’s been right in front of my nose all the time. No one but you could be Señor Peso.”
The little man sighed. Then looking at Beth he said, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” she asked him.
He said, “That I can’t allow such a scurrilous story as this to be bruited about. I’m very sorry, my dear. I’d hoped to make you very happy. But now –” He thumbed the safety of his gun.
I said, “It won’t wash, Clifton. One dame on a gun is enough. Besides, just how do you intend to explain our bodies?”
His eyes overly bright, he said, “That’s simple. I’ll tell the police the fantastic story you told me. Then I’ll tell them when I called you a liar, you saw that you were trapped and shot your wife and committed suicide.”
It was still as death in the old second-floor hallway. A chorus of dust particles were dancing in the sunlight streaming in the front window. Clifton lifted the gun in his hand and the door of the bedroom behind me opened and Ken Gilly stepped out in the hall saying:
“I wouldn’t, Mr Clifton. With all your dough, you’ve got a much better chance hiring a high-priced lawyer.” Ken cocked the big gun in his own hand. “Of course if you insist.”
Around us the doors of the other bedrooms opened. There was an officer in each one, one of them a police stenographer who was still scrawling curlicues on his pad.
Clifton wasn’t a fool. He dropped his gun. “You win,” he said looking at me. “You’re smarter than I gave you credit for being.” He looked at Ken. “Well, let’s get back to the mainland so I can contact my lawyers.” His smile was thin. “But you haven’t a damn thing on me but some foolish conversation.”
Putting his gun away, Ken rubbed thoughtfully at the knuckles he had bruised beating at least a portion of the truth out of Matt Heely after I had gone to him with my story, directly from the hospital.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said slowly. “A little of this, a little of that. A guy talks here. A guy talks there. And the first thing you know, it builds into a conviction.” He waved his hand at the stairs. “Take Mr Clifton away, boys. We’re going to give him a bargain, board and lodging free for nothing.”
When they had gone, Ken turned to me, offered me his hand.
“Welcome, Charlie.” He brushed my nose with the tip of one finger. “But keep that clean now, fellow. Hear me?”
I said I did and intended to.
Then he was gone and Beth and I were alone and she was in my arms.
“I love you, love you so, Charlie,” she whispered.
Swede had been right about a lot of things. He’d told me:
“A man can starve a dame. He can cuss her. He can beat her every night and twice on Sunday and she’ll still think he’s her personal Marshall plan in a silver champagne bucket. But only if she knows she’s the only woman in his life.”