The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK® Page 16

  At first his words failed to penetrate, because I was expecting some question about our smashed fender. Then I flicked my eyes at the dashboard and saw the small red light which indicated my highway lights were on. My left foot felt for the floor switch and pressed it down.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t notice I had the brights on.”

  The cop nodded peremptorily and the car swung left in another U-turn to go back the way it had been going. With shaking fingers I lighted a cigarette before starting on.

  CHAPTER 8

  We had no trouble at the bridge. If the toll collector had been instructed to watch for a damaged green Buick, he wasn’t watching very carefully, because he didn’t even glance at our right front fender. Of course he approached the car from my side, but even then he couldn’t have failed to notice the damage if he’d looked across the hood.

  Then we were in Venice, Illinois.

  I took 66, driving along at a steady fifty-five so as not to risk getting picked up for speeding. We hit Springfield about eleven-thirty and I drove aimlessly up and down side streets for a few minutes.

  “What are you doing now?” Helena asked.

  “We need gas.”

  “We passed a station right in the center of town.”

  “I know,” I said. “But we’re not going to leave any record of a banged-up green Buick with Missouri plates stopping anywhere for gas. The alert won’t reach as far as Chicago for a mere hit-and-run homicide, but it’s sure to have gone this far.”

  Finally I found what I wanted. A car parked on a side street where all the houses in the block were dark. Pulling up next to it on the wrong side of the street, I got out, reached in back for my bag, opened it and drew out a length of hose.

  Helena watched silently as I siphoned gas from the parked car into the Buick’s tank.

  When we were on the way again she remarked, “I’d never have thought of that. I’m beginning to think you earn your money, Mr. Calhoun.”

  “Why so formal?” I asked. “My name’s Barney.”

  In the darkness I could see her looking at me sidewise. “All right, Barney,” she said after a moment.

  We stopped for gas once more in Bloomington, getting it by the same method. Then we didn’t stop again until we hit the outskirts of Chicago at seven a.m.

  As I began to slow down with the intention of turning in at a truck stop, Helena said, “What do we want here?”

  “Breakfast,” I said.

  “Shouldn’t we rent a couple of cabins before we do anything else?”

  “No,” I said. “We’ve got several more important things to do first.”

  By the time we had finished breakfast at the truck stop it was eight, and by the time we got far enough into town to begin to run into small neighborhood businesses, barber shops were open. I accomplished the second of the more important things we had to do by getting a shave.

  “Couldn’t that have waited?” Helena complained when I rejoined her.

  “I have to look respectable for my next stop,” I told her.

  Heading in the general direction of the Loop, I drove until I spotted a sign reading “Car Rentals.” I parked half a block beyond it.

  “Just wait here,” I instructed Helena. “When I come by in another car, follow me.”

  As usual she showed no surprise. As I got out of the car she slid over into the driver’s seat.

  The car rental place didn’t have exactly what I wanted, but it was close enough. I would have preferred a Buick coupe or convertible the same color as Helena’s, but the man didn’t have any Buicks. I settled for a Dodge coupe a shade darker green than the convertible. The rate was five dollars a day plus eight cents a mile, and I told the man I wanted it for a week. I gave him the name Henry Graves, a Detroit address and left a seventy-five dollar deposit.

  Only ten minutes after I had left her I pulled up alongside Helena in the Dodge, honked the horn and pulled away again. In the rear-view mirror I could see her pull out to follow me.

  I led her back to the southwest edge of town, found a street which seemed relatively deserted and parked. Helena parked behind me.

  In the trunk of the rented car I found a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. Helena watched with her customary lack of expression as I switched plates on the two cars.

  Then she said, “I don’t think I understand.”

  “Probably an unnecessary precaution, because I’m sure repair garages this far from St. Louis won’t be watching for a green Buick. But up here a Missouri plate stands out more than an Illinois one. Now when I take this thing in to be fixed, it’ll just be another local car. And on the off chance there’s ever a check to find out who it belonged to, the license won’t lead anywhere except to a car rental outfit and a non-existent guy named Henry Graves of Detroit.”

  Her lip corners quirked ever so slightly. “You think of everything, don’t you, Barney?”

  “I try to,” I told her. “I’ll drive the Buick now, and you follow me in the Dodge. Next stop is a repair garage.”

  She remained where she was. In her husky but slightly flat voice she said, “Let’s get settled in cabins first. I want a bath and a change of clothes.”

  “It won’t take an hour to locate a garage and make arrangements,” I argued.

  She shook her head. “We’ve been here over two hours now. I wanted a cabin at seven, but I waited while you fed yourself, got a shave, rented-a car and changed plates. I’m not waiting another minute.” She looked at me serenely and added, “Besides, they take your license number at tourist courts. We’ll have to drive in with the Buick.”

  She was right, I realized on reflection. We should have signed in somewhere before I changed the plates, as I didn’t want the Missouri plates which were now on the Dodge listed even on a tourist court’s records. Disconsolately I considered the prospect of having to change the plates back again, then decided it wasn’t necessary. There wasn’t much danger in letting some tourist court proprietor see the damaged Buick so long as it didn’t have its own plates on it.

  “You win,” I said. “Follow me again.”

  Helena shook her head again. “You follow me this time. I saw just the court I want when we came in on 66. Maybe you’re smart on some things, but I prefer to trust my own judgment on a place to sleep.”

  Shrugging, I climbed back in the Dodge and waited for her to start the procession.

  Helena drove nearly ten miles out of town on 66, passing a half dozen motels which looked adequate to me before pulling off to the side of the road suddenly and parking. I parked behind her.

  “Lock it up,” she called back to me.

  Winding the windows shut, I got out and locked the Dodge. When I slid into the Buick next to her, she pointed through the windshield toward a large tourist court about a hundred yards ahead on the opposite side of the road.

  “That’s the one. Isn’t it nice?”

  It didn’t look any different to me than the half dozen others we’d passed, except that this one had open front stalls for automobiles.

  “It’s lovely,” I growled. “Let’s get it over with.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The place was called the Starview Motor Court and advertised hot baths and steam heat. Since the temperature hovered around eighty, neither seemed like much of an inducement to me.

  Though it was probably an unnecessary precaution, I had Helena swing the car so that the left side was toward the office. With dozens of different automobiles driving in and out of the court daily, it wasn’t likely the proprietor would notice our green Buick convertible had changed to a green Dodge coupe a few hours after we checked in, but there wasn’t any point in deliberately calling attention to our smashed fender. Just possibly it would catch his notice enough to make it register on him.

 
; The proprietor was a sad-faced man in his fifties who had an equally sad-faced wife. They occupied quarters behind the small office. For some reason both of them went along to show us cabins.

  They were nice modern cabins, clean and airy and walled with knotty pine. The baths were large instead of the usual tiny affairs you find at most tourist courts, and contained combination bathtubs and showers.

  “We’ll take two,” I told the proprietor. “We’ll be here a week, so I’ll pay the full week now. How much?”

  He said the normal rate was nine dollars a day, but as a weekly rate we could have them for fifty-six dollars each. “With another fifty cent a day knocked off if you do your own cleaning instead of having maid service,” he added.

  Helena surprised me by saying she preferred to do the cleaning herself, which caused the proprietor’s wife to give her a pleased smile. Apparently the wife constituted the maid service.

  Helena stayed outside when I went back to the office to resister.

  I signed as Howard Bliss and sister, Benton, Illinois, and listed the Illinois license number registered to the Dodge. Then I paid him a hundred and five dollars.

  Our cabins were numbers six and seven. When I got outside again, I discovered Helena had backed the Buick into the car port between them while I was registering.

  “You could have left it in front of the cabins,” I said to her. “We aren’t going to be here long.”

  “We’ll be here at least a half hour. I told you I’m going to take a bath.”

  “Several tunes,” I said wearily. “Which cabin do you want?”

  She looked at both speculatively. The one on the right went with the car port we were using, because a door near the rear wall of the port led into the cabin.

  Helena said, “I’ll take the right one.”

  Getting her bag from the car, I carried it into the right-hand cabin via the car port door and set it on her bed. Then I got my own bag from the car and went into my own cabin.

  Inasmuch as I was going to have to kill a half hour anyway, I decided to take a cold shower myself. I took my time under the water, letting its coldness knock the tiredness out of my muscles and wash some of the sleepiness from my eyes. Twenty-five minutes later, refreshed and in clean clothes, I knocked at the next cabin door.

  “Just a minute,” Helena called. “I’m still dressing.”

  It was closer to ten minutes before she appeared, and meantime I stood out in the sun letting the heat wilt my collar and undo all the good a cold shower had done me. When she finally appeared she was dressed in a white sun dress, low-heeled sandals which exposed bare, red-tipped toes, and no hat. Her long hair was pulled up in a pony tail.

  Carefully she locked her cabin door-behind her and dropped the key in a straw purse.

  This time I drove the Buick.

  When we pulled up alongside the parked Dodge, I handed her the keys to it.

  “Instead of following you, suppose we arrange to meet somewhere?” Helena suggested. “I’d like to do a little shopping.”

  “You know Chicago?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Then we’ll make it somewhere simple.” I looked at my watch, noting it was nearly ten a.m. “The Statler Cocktail Lounge at two p.m.?”

  “All right.”

  “Be careful you don’t get picked up for anything,” I cautioned. “Even a parking ticket would put us in the soup with that Missouri plate on the Dodge.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  I drove off while she was unlocking the coupe door.

  I didn’t have any trouble arranging for the car to be fixed. I stopped at the first Buick service garage I saw.

  The chief repairman, a cheerful middle-aged man, carefully looked over the damage. “What’s the other guy look like?” he asked.

  “There wasn’t any other guy,” I told him. “My wife mistook a tree next to our drive for the garage.”

  He told me he could do the whole job, including a check of wheel alignment, in three days for approximately a hundred dollars.

  “That’s a rough estimate, you understand,” he said. “May vary a few bucks one way or the other.”

  I gave him the name George Seward and a South Chicago address a couple of miles from the repair garage. When he asked for my phone number, I said I didn’t have a phone and just to hold the car when it was finished until I picked it up.

  My business was all completed by noon and suddenly I was exhausted from lack of sleep and the strain of driving three hundred miles at night. I began to wish I had arranged to meet Helena at twelve-thirty instead of at two.

  There was nothing to do but kill two hours, however. I took a taxi to the Statler, had lunch and then slowly sipped four highballs in the cocktail lounge while I waited for her. She showed up at ten after two.

  “Want a drink?” I asked. “Or shall we go back to the court and collapse? I’m ready to fall on my face.”

  She looked me over consideringly. “You do look tired,” she said. “We’ll pick up a couple of bottles of bourbon and some soda on the way and I’ll have my drink at the court. Maybe we can get some ice from the proprietor.”

  My four drinks had relaxed me just enough so that I had difficulty keeping my eyes open. I let Helena drive.

  I was just beginning to drift off to sleep sitting up when the car braked to a stop, then backed into a parking place at the curb. I opened my eyes to see we were in front of a liquor store.

  Reluctantly I climbed out of the car. “You say bourbon?” I asked Helena.

  When she merely nodded, I went on into the store. I bought two quarts of bourbon and a six-bottle carry-pack of soda.

  When I raised the Dodge’s trunk lid to stow away my purchases. I was surprised to find the floor of the trunk was soaking wet. There hadn’t been any water on it when I had searched the trunk for tools to change license plates.

  But I was too sleepy to wonder about it much. Slamming the lid shut, I climbed back in the car and let myself sink into a semi-coma again. Helena had to shake me awake when we got back to the tourist court.

  I slept straight through until eight o’clock that night. Presumably Helena did the same, for when I finally looked outside to peer next door, her cabin was dark and the Dodge was still in its car port. She must have awakened about the same time I did, though, because she knocked at my door just as I finished dressing.

  She was carrying the two bottles of bourbon and the carry-pack of soda.

  “I thought we’d have a drink before we went out for dinner,” she said.

  I found two glasses in the bathroom, but the prospect of warm bourbon and soda didn’t appeal to me.

  “I’ll see it I can get some ice at the office,” I said.

  But the proprietor told me he was sorry, they had only enough ice for their personal needs. When I returned to the cabin, I suggested we have our before-dinner drink at the same place we picked to eat.

  “Maybe I can get some ice from him,” Helena said.

  A drink didn’t mean that much to me, but since she seemed so set on one, I didn’t argue. From my open door I watched as she moved toward the office. The movement walking gave to her body would have made a corpse sit up in his casket. It occurred to me the motel proprietor would have to be made of ice himself to refuse her.

  In a few moments she reappeared carrying a china water pitcher.

  She stopped at her own cabin door, said to me, “I’ll be with you in a minute, Barney,” unlocked the door and went inside.

  What she was going into her cabin for, I couldn’t decide, because when she reappeared a few moments later, she still carried nothing but the pitcher. Carefully she locked the door behind her and came over to my door. When she handed me the pitcher I saw it was full of cracked ice instead of
cubes.

  “What’s he have, an old-fashioned icebox?” I asked in surprise.

  “I didn’t inquire,” Helena said. “I just asked for ice.”

  We had two highballs each before going out to hunt a place for dinner.

  CHAPTER 10

  We dined at a place called the White Swan, a roadhouse about a half mile from the tourist court on route 66. The place had an orchestra and after dinner we alternately danced and sat at the bar until two a.m. And every time I took her in my arms, my temperature went up another degree.

  I got the impression the closeness of our bodies on the dance floor was beginning to have an effect on her too. Not from anything she said, for we did remarkably little talking during the evening, but each time we danced she seemed to move more compliantly into my arms and her eyes seemed to develop a warmer shine.

  When I finally drove the Dodge back into the car port, I was on the verge of suggesting she come into my cabin for a nightcap, but before I could open my mouth Helena jumped out of the car and entered her cabin by means of the car port door without saying a word to me.

  Then, as I sat there foolishly looking at her closed door, I experienced a terrific letdown. I was tempted to get angry, but on reflection I realized she hadn’t actually said or done anything to make me think she had been sharing my own cozy thoughts. Maybe she just realized the direction my thoughts were taking, and wanted to leave no doubts in my mind that our relationship was strictly a business one.

  Shrugging, I locked the Dodge and went into my own cabin.

  Five minutes later, just as I finished pulling on my pajamas, there was a knock at the door. I put on a robe and opened it to find Helena standing there with her suitcase in her hand.

  When I had stared at her expressionless face without saying anything for nearly a minute, she asked, “Aren’t you going to let me in?”

  “Sure,” I said, recovering my wits enough to step aside.

  Walking past me, she set the suitcase on a chair, opened it and drew out a nearly transparent nylon nightgown. Then she turned and, holding the nightgown out in front of her, examined it critically.