A Touch of Death (Hard Case Crime Book 17) Read online

  “That’s the idea,” I said. I pulled the comb through her hair, sighted at it, and started snipping. I cut around one side and then stood off and looked at it.

  It was awful.

  It looked as if she’d got caught in a machine.

  “Let me see,” she said. She got up and went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I went with her. She didn’t explode, though. She merely sighed and shook her head.

  “If you were thinking of hair dressing as a career—”

  “So it doesn’t look so hot. I’m not finished yet.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong. Don’t cut straight across as if you were sawing a plank in two. Hold the comb at an angle and taper it. And let each bunch of hair slide a little between the blades of the scissors so it won’t be chopped off square.”

  We went back and I tried again. I’d left it plenty long intentionally so the first two or three runs at it would just be practice. I cut the other side and evened it up.

  This time I got away from that square, chopped-off effect, but it was ragged. It was full of notches up the side of her head. She looked at it again.

  “That’s better,” she said. “And now when you’re trying to smooth out those chopped places, the way to do it is to keep the comb and scissors both moving while you cut. Let the hair run through the comb. That way they’re not all the same length.”

  I tried it again. I got the hang of it a little better and managed to erase some of the notches. Then I combed it again and went around the bottom once more, straightening out the jagged ends. We went into the bathroom and took another look at it in the mirror. I stood behind her. Our eyes met.

  “It’s pretty bad,” I said. “But there’s one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You sure as hell don’t look like the pictures of Mrs. Butler.”

  “Remember, darling?” she said in that throaty voice. “I’m not Mrs. Butler.”

  “It’s a start,” I said. I went out and got the bottle of bleach. I handed it to her. “Mix yourself a redhead.”

  While she was working on it I cleaned up the rug. I rolled the cut-off hair in the newspapers and threw the whole works down the garbage chute.

  We were erasing Madelon Butler.

  No, I thought; she was erasing Madelon Butler. I had suggested it and started the job, but she was the one who knew how to do it. I could see her already getting the feel of it. She was brilliant; and she was an actress all the way in and out. When she finished the job they’d never find her. The person they were looking for would have ceased to exist. The coolly beautiful aristocrat would be a sexy cupcake talking slang.

  It was two-thirty. I tuned the radio across all the stations and found a news program. There was no mention of her or of the deputy sheriff. I wondered if she had been lying. Well, it would be in the late editions.

  She came out of the bathroom. She had finished shampooing her hair and was rubbing it with a towel. It was wild and tousled, and she looked like a chrysanthemum. I couldn’t see any change in the color.

  “It looks as dark as ever,” I said.

  “That’s because it’s still wet. As soon as it’s dry we can tell.”

  She raised the Venetian blind again and sat down on the rug before the window, still rubbing her head with the towel. In a few minutes she threw the towel to one side and just ran her fingers through her hair, riffling it in the sunlight.

  “I could use another drink,” she murmured, glancing around sidewise at me.

  “You live on the stuff, don’t you?”

  “Well,” she said, “it’s one way.”

  I went out to the kitchen and poured her another. When I handed it to her she gave me that up-through-the-eyelashes glance and said, “Thank you, honey.”

  She looked like a chrysanthemum, all right, but a damn beautiful one. And the pajamas didn’t do her any harm.

  “Practicing Susie again?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “How’m I doin’?”

  “Not bad, considering you’re riding on a pass.”

  She looked up at me, wide-eyed. “What do you mean?”

  I squatted down in front of her and ran my fingers up into the tousled hair at the back of her neck. “You’re trying to get in free. From what I hear of Susie, she talked like the rustle of new-mown hay because she’d been there and she liked it. But I’d be glad to help you out.”

  The eyes turned cold. “Aren’t you expecting a little too much?”

  “How’s that?”

  “Not even Susie could match your abysmal vulgarity.”

  “Well, don’t get in an uproar. I just asked.”

  “So you did, in your inimitable fashion. And now if you feel you have received an answer that is intelligible even to you, perhaps you’ll take your hand off me.”

  “This is Susie talking?” I didn’t take the hand away. I moved it. It wasn’t padding.

  “No,” she said. She put the drink down on the rug. “This is Susie.”

  She hit me across the face.

  I caught both her wrists and held them in my left hand. “Don’t make a habit of that,” I said. “It could get you into trouble.”

  The eyes were completely unafraid. They seemed to be merely thoughtful. “I doubt that I’ll ever understand you,” she said. “At times you seem to have what passes for intelligence, and yet you deliberately go out of your way to wallow in that revolting crudity.”

  “Let’s don’t make a Supreme Court case out of it,” I said, turning her arms loose. “It’s not that important. If you don’t want to put out a little smooching on the side, I’ll still live. That you can get anywhere. The geetus is the main issue, remember?”

  “You are a sentimental soul, aren’t you?”

  I stood up. “Baby, where I grew up you could buy a lot more with a hundred and twenty thousand dollars than you could with sentiment.”

  She said nothing. I started toward the door. As I picked up the car keys off the table, I said, “And, besides, look who’s talking.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “You’re the one who’s killed two people. Not me.”

  She stared at me. “Yes,” she said. “But even hate is an emotion.”

  “I guess so,” I said. “But there’s not much money in it.”

  I went out and got in the car and drove downtown. I didn’t have anything in mind except that I didn’t want to get rock-happy sitting around the apartment listening to her yakking. Why didn’t she get wise to herself? We were going to be there for a month together; it wouldn’t cost anything extra to relax and have a little fun out of it on the side.

  But maybe it was just as well, when you thought about it. No woman could ever do anything as simple as going to bed without trying to louse it up with a lot of complicated ground rules and romantic double talk and then wanting a mortgage on your soul. As long as we were mixed up in a business deal and tied to each other for a whole month, we’d probably be better off to go on barking at each other.

  I bought an afternoon paper and went into a restaurant and ordered a cup of coffee. “DEPUTY IMPROVED,” the headline said. Doctors expected him to recover. He still hadn’t regained consciousness.

  The rest of the story was the usual rehash, another description of Madelon Butler and the car, and more speculation as to what had become of the money Butler stole. They didn’t believe she could have got out of the area with all the roads covered; she must be holed up somewhere inside the ring. They would get her. She was too eye-arresting to escape detection anywhere. And there was the Cadillac. I thought of the Cadillac, and grinned coldly as I sipped the coffee.

  There was still no mention of Diana James, but that was understandable. Her body was in the basement, and the whole house had burned down on top of her. It had been only last night. They wouldn’t be poking around in the ruins yet. I didn’t like to think about it.

  I went out. The streets were hot an
d the air was heavy and breathless, as if a storm were coming up. I could hear the rumble of thunder now and then above the sound of traffic. I didn’t have any idea where I was going until I found myself standing on the corner out-side the marble-columned entrance. It was the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company.

  There was a terrible fascination about it. I stood on the corner while the traffic light changed and a river of people flowed past and around me. It was inside there; it was safe, just waiting to be picked up. In my mind I could see the massive and circular underground door of the vault and the narrow passageways between rows of shiny metal honeycomb made up of thousands of boxes stacked and numbered from floor to ceiling. One of them was bulging with fat bundles of banknotes fastened around the middle with paper bands. And the key to the box was in my pocket.

  Two blocks up, on the other side of the street, was the Third National. I could see it from here. Left at the next corner and three blocks south was the Merchants Trust Company. It wouldn’t take twenty minutes to cover the three of them. All she had to do was go down the stairs to the vault, sign the card, give her key to the attendant.

  People were jostling me. Everybody was hurrying. Two teenage girls tried to shove past me. They looked at each other. One gave me a dirty look and said, “Maybe it’s something they started to build here.” They went on. I awoke then. It was raining.

  I ran across the street and stood under an awning.

  Water splashed down in sheets. There was no chance of getting back to the car without being soaked. I looked around. The awning I was under was the front of a movie. I bought a ticket and went in without even looking to see what the picture was.

  When I came out I still didn’t know, but the rain had stopped and it was dusk. Lights glistened on shiny black pavement and tires hissed in the street.

  Newsboys were calling the late editions. I bought one and opened it.

  The headline exploded in my face:

  “YOUTH CONFESSES IN BUTLER SLAYING.”

  It was four blocks back to the car, four blocks of feeling naked and trying not to run.

  Chapter Sixteen

  YOUTH CONFESSES.

  What about Madelon Butler?

  But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t the big news. If they had caught that blonde and her brother, they had a description of me.

  I took the steps three at a time and let myself into the apartment. A light was on in the living room, but I didn’t see her anywhere. Then I heard her splashing in the bathroom. I dropped on the sofa and spread the paper open.

  I put a cigarette in my mouth but forgot to light it.

  Mount Temple. Aug. 6—A startling break in the investigation of the death of J. N. Butler came shortly after 2 P.M. today with the police announcement that Jack D. Finley, 22, of Mount Temple, had broken under questioning and admitted implication in the two-month-old slaying of the missing bank official, whose body was discovered Tuesday afternoon.

  Finley, ashen-faced and sobbing, named Mrs. Madelon Butler, the victim’s attractive widow, as the mastermind behind the sordid crime.

  I stopped and lit the cigarette. It was about the way I’d had it figured. Finley was the fall guy. I went on, reading fast.

  Finley, who was taken into custody early this morning on a country road some 50 miles southeast of here by officers investigating a tip that a car answering the description of Mrs. Butler’s had been seen in the vicinity, at first maintained his innocence, despite his inability to explain what he and his sister, Charisse, 27, were doing in the area. Both had tried to flee at sight of the officers’ car.

  Later, however, when confronted with the fact that other members of the posse had found Mrs. Butler’s Cadillac abandoned at a fishing camp at the end of the road on which they were walking, Finley broke and admitted being an accessory to the slaying.

  Mrs. Butler and an unidentified male companion had taken his car at gunpoint and fled early the night before, he said. Police have broadcast a complete description of the stranger.

  Well, there it was. I dropped the paper in my lap and sat staring across the room. But it wasn’t hopeless. They still didn’t have anything but a description. The only person who knew who I was was Diana James, and she was dead.

  I started to pick up the paper again. Madelon Butler came in. She was dressed in the skirt and blouse she’d had on last night, and was wearing nylons and bedroom slippers. She switched on the radio and sat down.

  Glancing at the paper in my lap, she asked, “Is there anything interesting in the news?”

  “You might call it interesting,” I said. “Take a look.” I tossed it to her.

  She raised it and looked at the glaring headline. “Oh?”

  “Look,” I said, “they just captured your boyfriend. Is that all you’ve got to say? Just oh?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t you think I might be pardoned for a slight lack of concern? After all, he tried to kill me. And he wasn’t my boyfriend, anyway.”

  “He wasn’t? Then how in hell did he get mixed up in it?”

  “He was in love with Cynthia Cannon. Or Diana James, as you call her.”

  “In love with Diana James? But I don’t see—”

  She smiled. “It does seem incredible, doesn’t, it? But I suppose there’s no accounting for tastes.”

  “Cut it out!” I said. I felt as if my head were about to fly off. “Will you answer my question? Or hand me back that paper? I’d like to know at least as much about this as several million other people do by now.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you.” The radio came on then, blaring jazz. She shuddered and reached for the knob. “Excuse me.”

  She turned the dial and some long-hair music came on, She adjusted the volume, kicked off her mules, and curled her legs up under her in the chair. Lighting a cigarette, she leaned back contentedly.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it? Don’t you love Debussy at this time of day?”

  “No,” I said. “Which one of you killed Butler?”

  Her eyes had a faraway look in them as she listened to the music. “I did,” she said.

  She was utterly calm. There was no remorse in it, or anger, or anything else. Butler was dead. She had killed him. Like that.

  “Why?” I asked. “For the money?”

  “No. Because I hated him. And I hated Cynthia Cannon. You don’t mind if I refer to her by her right name, do you?”

  I was just getting more mixed up all the time. “Then you mean the money didn’t have anything to do with it? But still you’ve got it?”

  She smiled a little coldly. “You still attach too much importance to money. I didn’t say it didn’t have anything to do with it. It had some significance. I killed both of them because I hated them, and the money was one of the reasons I did hate them. You see, actually, he wasn’t stealing it from the bank. He was stealing it from me.”

  I stared. “From you!”

  “That’s right. Both of them were quite clever. He was going to use my money to support himself and his trollop. I was to subsidize them. Ingenious, wasn’t it?”

  I shook my head. “You’ve lost me. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. You say this Finley kid was in love with Diana James, and that Butler was stealing the money from you. Are you crazy, or am I? The papers said he stole it from the bank.”

  She took a long drag on the cigarette, exhaled the smoke, and looked at the glowing tip. “The newspaper stories were quite correct. But I’ll try to explain. The bank referred to was founded by my great-grandfather.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I get it now. You owned it.”

  She smiled. “No. I said it was founded by my great-grandfather. But there were several intervening generations more talented in spending money than in making it. The bank has long since passed into other hands, but at the time my father died he still owned a little over a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of its stock. As the sole surviving member of the family, I inherited it.

  “Now do you understan
d? My husband owned nothing of his own, except charm. He was vice president of the bank by virtue of the block of bank stock we owned jointly under the state community property laws. But when he decided to leave me for Cynthia Cannon, he wanted to take the money with him. There was no way he could, legally, of course; but there was another way.

  “He merely stole it from the bank. And the bank, after all efforts to capture him and recover the money had failed, would only have to take over the stock to recover the loss. The search would stop. He would be forgotten. No one would lose anything except me.” She stopped. Then she smiled coldly and went on: “And I didn’t matter, of course.”

  I had forgotten the cigarette between my fingers. It was burning my hand. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Aren’t we all?”

  “But,” I said, “if you knew beforehand that he was going to do it—and apparently you did, some way—couldn’t you have just called the police that afternoon and had them come out and get the money back and arrest him?”

  “Perhaps;” she said. “But I resent being taken for a fool. And my patience has a limit. Cynthia Cannon wasn’t the first. She merely happened, with my assistance, to be the last. Before her it was Charisse Finley, who worked in the bank, and before that it was someone else.

  “I had borne his other infidelities, but when he calmly decided that I was going to support him and his paramour for the rest of their lives, I just as calmly decided he was going to die. After all, when you have nothing further to lose, you no longer have anything to fear.”

  “But,” I said, “I still don’t understand what that Finley kid had to do with it.”

  “That was a little more complex,” she said. “He came very near to being a tragic figure, but wound up by being only a fool. He probably regards himself as having been betrayed by two women, both older than he, but the thing that really betrayed him was that money.”

  “You’re not making any sense,” I said.