Blood on Lake Louisa Page 9

  “I’ve invited Celia to stay with us for a while,” Mae told me as she helped my plate. “It’s too lonesome for her in that house by herself.”

  “You don’t mind, do you?” Celia asked. “I’ll try not to be too much trouble.”

  “I’m an old fool not to have thought of it before,” I assured her. “Mae is always doing something to show she is the real brains of the family.”

  “The brains didn’t work so well this morning, Will. Tell him about it, Celia.” I looked up from my plate.

  “It may mean nothing at all, Doctor. I have been straightening up the house, and going through some of Daddy’s things. He had seventy dollars in his wallet which he had left at the house. In another pocket of the wallet I found a ten dollar bill. I didn’t think anything about it until this morning, when I went shopping with Mrs. Ryan. We stopped in the bakery next to the bank to get some things, and they didn’t have any change. I took the bill into the bank to get it changed, but Mr. Nevers, the teller, wouldn’t accept it. What Mrs. Ryan means is that she can’t figure out why Daddy should have carried around a ten dollar bill when he obviously knew it was counterfeit.”

  13

  The meeting of the County Commissioners was a long drawn out affair, and I am afraid my attention wandered more than once from the business in hand. I sat daydreaming about my narrow escape in the Simmons house, and automatically voting for payment of an endless list of items read out by the County Clerk. Forman Spence was a member of the Board, too. We walked down the Court House steps together when the meeting was over. He came back to my car as I was about to drive away and stood leaning in through the window.

  “I’ve been picked as a juror on the Salmon inquest,” he remarked nervously. “It’s been put off until Crossley gets back tomorrow. I suppose you’ll be a witness.”

  “Certainly. If anything more happens around here, I’ll have to give up my practice entirely.”

  “You ought to be glad they haven’t accused you, Will. That remark of yours last night, about the watch, turned loose a hornet’s nest on my business. That ape, Sanderson, seems positive that the store’s connected with it in some way. Every time I walk down the street I feel like one of Pete’s deputies is following me. What did they say to Tim and Bartlett after I left?”

  “Oh, nothing much. They wanted to know where each of them had been on the fifteenth. Bartlett said he followed Reig in order to find a good place to hunt. They went out on road two. No place near Louisa. Marvin is the one that puzzles me. Why is he so close mouthed?”

  The jeweler leaned closer to me and lowered his voice. “I think it’s on account of the bank. You know there have been rumors that it wasn’t in the best of shape. I knew Mitchell pretty well, and he was worried to death before he was killed. I’m trusting to your discretion, Will. Don’t mention that to anyone.”

  I drove home with a lighter heart than I had known in days. Forman’s mention of the bank had cleared up Marvin’s silence for me in one stroke. I had been groping around trying to find out something that was perfectly obvious. I knew he was attorney for the bank. What was more natural than that he should have had to make a secret trip in its behalf? Banks had been closing up all over the State. Perhaps the very mention that Marvin Lee had been in negotiations with out-oftown bankers would start a run on our local institution which could never be stopped. And all the while the words of the Chief Deputy kept running through my head: “It’s possible that he has an A-l explanation of why he went away, and why he talked to Mitchell. Maybe he’s just trying to act suspicious—.” I walked into the house to find the subject of my thoughts seated in the living room talking to Mae and Celia.

  “Hello, sleuth-hound,” he greeted me, airily. “How did the grand search of Lake Louisa pan out this morning? Did you put the minions of the law to the blush?”

  “How did you know I was out there?” I demanded rather testily.

  “Your charming wife, my dear Doctor. Never confide in your wife if you would keep a secret from a scheming attorney. Not only did I ferret out that you had gone clue hunting with Ed Brown, but I deftly persuaded her to invite me to dinner, and then told her that I wouldn’t come unless she cooked me chicken and waffles à la Ryan. Have you any objections?”

  “Plenty! I just get things fixed up to spend an evening with the prettiest girl in the State, and you blow in and spoil everything. Life is like that. So I guess you might as well stay.” I settled down comfortably in my chair, and selected a cigarette from the glass jar on the table, then: “Where were you this morning? I phoned your office when I got home. The girl told me you hadn’t been in.”

  I was sorry as soon as I said it. Marvin had been laughing and jolly, but at my question his face sagged into hard tired lines. Celia noticed the change, too. She stroked his cheek once with the back of her hand before he replied.

  “I drove to Lakeland today.” And after a slight hesitation. “I wish you wouldn’t mention it to anybody. Unfortunately my ordinary routine has suddenly become a matter of great importance to the police.” He pushed the refractory lock of hair up out of his eyes. “I’m sick to death of explaining—explaining—explaining. First Pete and Ed Brown, then Sanderson, and now you start. I thought I might get a little rest here.”

  “Why Marvin! “ Celia broke out, but I interrupted. “He’s right, Celia. My question was a thoughtless one. He has had enough of it to upset anyone. Come on. The things are on the table. Let’s eat.” Marvin’s justified annoyance was lost in the bustle of getting seated and attending to endless piles of Mae’s fairy-like waffles. I came to a very definite decision during the meal. I did not believe that Marvin had anything to do with either of the murders, and I determined to give him all the information in my possession before he went home that night. I might be violating Pete Crossley’s confidence in doing so, but I had reached a stage where I did not care. If, by any stretch of the imagination, I could figure that the young lawyer was guilty, then he already knew everything that I knew. If he was innocent, then he was entitled to all the help I could give him.

  After dinner we settled down to an evening of tenth of a cent contract bridge, Mae and I taking on the young couple. Two hours of desultory playing on my part served to convince my wife that my mind was not on the game. At eleven o’clock she asked me to settle the three dollars we had lost, excused herself, and went up to bed taking Celia with her. I stirred up the fire and made an excursion into my small operating room to unearth a bottle of really good Scotch which I kept against emergencies. I produced ice and seltzer from the kitchen, and returned to find Marvin sitting with his face buried in his hands.

  “Here’s your medicine, young man,” I poured a good two fingers into the glass and gave it a splash of soda. “Put this under your belt and quit nursing your head. It’s becoming a habit of yours. I’ve got something upstairs I want to show you. I’ll be back in a minute.” I made a hurried trip upstairs, kissed Mae good-night, and secured the Miami papers from the drawer where I had left them in the afternoon, not forgetting the one in my coat. Marvin was fixing another drink when I got back to the living-room. He looked much better.

  “Hail to a great physician!” He held the glass up to the light. “You’ve cured a man with a sick mind by giving him a drink that didn’t taste like it came out of a lamp. Has your practice fallen off so that you’ve decided to become a newsboy? Why all the papers?”

  “I found them stuffed in the bottom of a broken down chair in the old Simmons house this morning. They must be of importance because if it hadn’t been for Ed Brown’s quickness there would have been two more customers for Amos Pryor.”

  “Let me get this straight, Doc. Are you trying to tell me that someone attempted to kill you both out there?”

  “I don’t know what else to call it. They took a pot shot at us with a shotgun when I tried to take the papers from the room. Ed saw the barrels of the gun coming through the window and promptly tackled and rolled me out of the way. It was touch and go
.”

  Marvin leaned back in his chair and locked his hands behind his head. “Before I look at the papers will you go over your trip from the time you left the house until you returned? I want to get the whole thing clear in my mind. It may be of the utmost importance to me.” He did not move as I tried to give him every detail of the trip. I omitted, however, to make any mention of the gun the Deputy had found, or of the remarks he had made to me on our way home. When I had finished Marvin half turned his head and looked at me for a long time.

  “Is that all?”

  “No, it isn’t. Ed Brown found Bert Nelson’s shotgun buried in the orange grove back of the house. He said that it made things look awfully black for you.” I stopped and applied a match to my cigarette with a trembling hand. “He also explained to me in detail how it would have been possible for you to have killed Red Salmon— and to have followed us out to Louisa this morning—if you had a boat.”

  The gray eyes flickered. “I didn’t think they were fools. I knew somebody in the Sheriff’s office would figure that out shortly—about getting out to Salmon’s, I mean. I thought they were on that track when Sanderson asked me where I’d been during the afternoon. It won’t be long now until I have a boat.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing exactly. Just wait and see. How did Brown account for my dodging Cass Rhodes?”

  “By jove, I never thought to ask him that.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference. It all fits together nicely. I made it a point to find out that Cass left Salmon’s shack shortly after two o’clock—which would give me ample time to commit my bloody deed. Did Ed say anything else?”

  “Only that you might have buried the gun yourself, and that you might have a good explanation of where you had been, and just wouldn’t say because you wanted to make the case look too black to be real.”

  The attorney sat bolt upright in his chair. “There’s a thought for you, Doc,” he almost shouted. “That never originated in the thick head of a Deputy Sheriff. That’s perfumed with the sweet smell of Carl Sanderson, our genial State’s Attorney. He’s already thought this case out so far ahead of me that maybe I can use his own stuff to beat him. Say, that would be rich! I’ll let him frame up his pretty prosecution, then I’ll agree with it all and use it for a defence. You’re lucky you’ll be called as a witness when I’m tried, Doc. It will be interesting.”

  “I hope to God it will never come to that, Marvin. Think what it would mean to Celia. She could never stand it.”

  “Oh yes she can, Doc. I’ve already prepared her for it. She thinks the same way as I do—that I’ll be arrested for the double killing within the next few days.” His manner changed. The gray eyes opened wide and took on some of the fighting glitter I had noticed when he was defending a case. “Did Celia tell you about the ten dollar bill she found in her father’s wallet?”

  “Yes. She mentioned it at lunch today. Do you think it’s of any importance?”

  “I don’t know,” he studied his finger nails thoughtfully. “There has been quite a flood of them let loose in the State. Mitchell was talking to me about them not so long ago. The race tracks have been stuck for plenty. I think the bill Celia has came into the bank in the deposit of a Miami bookmaker. Mitchell toot it himself for some reason. Of course it may have no significance at all.” He looked at me guilelessly. “And then again it may be one of the real reasons why David Mitchell was killed. Now let’s have a look at those newspapers.”

  14

  We moved closer to the lamp on the table and I spread out the Floridian which bore the date of the shooting. Marvin studied with interest the columns of figures written in the margin of the real estate advertisement. Then he jotted them down in his pocket note book and asked me to make a copy of them too.

  “At least I can prove from my handwriting that I’m not guilty of writing those,” he said, when he had finished. “Do they mean anything to you?”

  “It occurred to me that they might have something to do with the ad on which they are written.”

  “Commissions?”‘

  I nodded. “The first and the last in the first column are ‘j 94.00’ and there is an ‘18.80’ opposite each of them in the last column. Couldn’t the ‘J’s’ stand for a type of lot?”

  “That isn’t worthy of the man who found these papers.” He smiled. “The letters are plain enough, Doc. They’re merely an abbreviation for the months. See? They start with June and run up to January. The ‘18.80’ may be a commission. It’s exactly twenty per cent of ninety-four dollars.” He made a quick calculation on one of my prescription blanks. “All the figures in the last column are twenty per cent of the first.”

  “I figured that out mentally as soon as I saw it,” I said disparagingly. “Even if I did miss the months. The small letters threw me off there. Why didn’t the writer use capitals?”

  “Uneducated, Doc. Look at those figures. You can see how laboriously they were written. No sir, no real estate salesmen made those calculations.”

  “But all real estate salesmen don’t write as well as lawyers. Lots of uneducated people broke into real estate during the boom. You’ll have to admit that the figuring is correct.”

  “And you’ll have to admit there are plenty of niggers working in the saw mills who can’t write their own names, but every one of them can figure his time out correctly to the last penny.”

  “What are you trying to prove?”

  “That the person who wrote those figures on the paper was first, uneducated.”

  “All right. He was uneducated. What then?”

  “Secondly, that he was engaged in some sort of business where he received or paid commissions, and that he had been in the business eight months, or longer. Right?”

  “It sounds all right the way you put it. But you haven’t disproved my real estate idea.”

  “You’re butt-headed if nothing else, Doc. There have been some cheap lots sold in Florida, it’s true. But I don’t think you’ll find that the company who is advertising there has any as cheap as seventy-eight dollars. That’s the amount opposite September.”

  “I’m not butt-headed,” I protested. “You just hadn’t convinced me before. I’ll agree with you now. He wasn’t in the real estate business. I don’t see that those figures prove he was in any business. How do you know he wasn’t checking up a bank balance. He has subtracted the last two columns from the first. Maybe the first is deposits and the last two are lists of his canceled checks.”

  Marvin looked crestfallen, but only for a moment. “The twenty per cent, Doc, the twenty per cent. A man doesn’t draw an even fifth of his deposits out every month, does he?”

  I was waiting for that. “Not unless he happens to have a savings account in the bank and wants to deposit a stated amount in it every month. He might then.”

  “By George, you may have hit it.” The young man gazed at me admiringly. “If you’re right it might be worth my while to check up in the bank and see if they can find an account with a January 31st balance of four hundred and eighty-six dollars and eighty cents. We could locate the person for sure if the withdrawals corresponded with the rest of the figures. It’s a long shot, but I’ll try it tomorrow.”

  “You don’t think there is any use trying to trace those papers?”

  “Utterly hopeless. There is no way of telling whether they were bought at a news dealer’s or received by mail. I don’t suppose the mysterious visitor will return to the Simmons house on the fifteenth of March after what happened on his last visit. Pete will probably have it watched anyhow. What do you think he was doing there?”

  “I don’t think there is any question that he had a definite reason for going there every month on that date.”

  “Yes. It looks like it was a standing appointment. It’s almost a certainty that he met someone else there. He didn’t go just to read his papers in peace. The figures seem to indicate that whoever he expected to meet was late on the fifteenth. Our constant
reader must have finished his paper and then turned to figuring to pass the time. It’s a point you might mention to Crossley when you give him the papers.”

  “I certainly will. It’s the best thing you have brought up so far. Are you going?”

  He had risen to his feet and stretched prodigiously. “Yes. I’ve got another day of explaining tomorrow. Salmon’s inquest you know. Have you been summoned?”

  “Not yet. I’ll go anyhow. Where is it to be?”

  “Pryor’s Funeral Parlors at ten o’clock. I’ll see you then.”

  I walked out on the front porch with him and stood there awhile after he had driven away. Of the many strange things that ensnared us all in the death of David Mitchell, one of the strangest, to my mind, is the fact that the Miami Floridian, of February 15th, which we had scrutinized so carefully for an hour, was bought on the day of the murder by Marvin Lee himself.

  The weather had turned much warmer heralding the early Florida spring. The fog of the morning had totally disappeared. Overhead the stars were steely points. The moon was bright, and lit up the path from the porch steps to the gate, painting the ground with black velvet patches around the trees bordering the walk. I drew in a few breaths of the scented night air, and went back into the house, latching the screen door behind me.

  In the living room I gathered up the Floridians we had left on the table, finished part of my drink which remained in the glass, and turned out the lights. The headlights of an automobile on the road which passed the house briefly illuminated the room. I was idly conjecturing the identity of the late driver on my way upstairs when I heard Mae call me. She sleepily told me that Celia was occupying the guest room at the back of the house, and that I would find my things laid out on my bed. I kissed her and went on to my own room, returned the papers to the drawer where they had been before, and in twenty minutes was fast asleep.

  There are three telephones in my house, one in the living-room, one in Mae’s room, and one which stands on a small taboret beside my bed. By throwing a switch at night I can cut off the bells on the downstairs phone and the one in Mae’s room, so that when I get a night call it will not arouse everybody in the house. When I had the device installed I thought that it would enable my wife to escape some of the hardships of being married to a small town practitioner, but the ringing of the bell in my room seemed to awake her just as effectually as when all of them were turned on.