This Game of Murder Read online

  After staring at her for a moment, he burst out laughing. She turned a deep red. She dropped the ball back in her pocket.

  “I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “You can stop feeling embarrassed. I think you’re cute.”

  “I think you have a perverted sense of humor,” she said, putting her nose in the air and moving on.

  But a moment later she glanced sidewise with a little smile on her face. When he grinned at her, she reached out quickly and gave his hand a small squeeze.

  “Still friends?” she asked.

  “At the very least, friends,” he assured her.

  At the clubhouse side entrance, which led to the locker rooms, they met Chief of Police Barney Meister coming out with a golf bag slung over his shoulder. The chief was a burly, moon-faced man of forty with a perpetually benign expression which concealed a remarkably shrewd mind.

  “Hi, Barney,” Marshall greeted him. “Anything new on the cat burglar?”

  Meister gave Betty a polite nod before saying, “This is my day off, Kirk. Can’t you newspaper guys stay off a man’s back just one day a week?”

  “I’m not asking for a press conference,” Marshall said reasonably. “I just asked a simple question.”

  The chief sighed. “I’ll give you a simple answer. No.”

  As the man moved on, Marshall said to Betty, “Barney’s a little sensitive on that subject, I guess.”

  “He should be. I think it’s ridiculous that the police can’t catch this man.”

  The “cat burglar,” as he had come to be called by the general public, had gotten his designation from a news story written by Kirk Marshall after his third break-in. For the past two months he had been terrorizing the residents of the Rexford Bay area by breaking into homes while the inhabitants were sleeping. Recently, when surprised by a woman who awakened to find him in her bedroom, he had struck at her with some kind of weapon which inflicted a deep shoulder gash. As the room was dark, she had been unable to describe either her attacker or the weapon, but the wound suggested that the burglar carried either a hatchet or short-handled axe.

  The burglaries had so far been confined exclusively to the Rexford Bay area, Runyon City’s wealthiest section, where the beach-front homes of the rich were strung along the shore of Lake Erie on both sides of the country club. Since the victims included some of the most influential people in town, the pressure on the police department to catch the culprit posthaste had been rather overwhelming.

  Marshall said, “They’re doing all they can. I happen to know Barney has an extra police car patrolling this area all night long.”

  They moved indoors and stopped again in the hallway in front of the women’s locker room. Betty said, “I’d hate to depend on our local cops for protection. I’ve been sleeping with a gun under my pillow ever since the attack on Mrs. Ferris.”

  “Oh? What’s Bruce think of that?”

  “He doesn’t know it. We haven’t been sleeping together for some time.”

  The marriage must be breaking up, he thought. They not only had separate rooms, but apparently little conversation.

  He said, “Hurry with your shower and I’ll buy you a day-cap.”

  “All right,” she agreed, and disappeared into the women’s locker room.

  The men’s locker room was only a few feet up the hall. Marshall had a quick shower and put on fresh clothing from the supply he kept in his locker. The soiled laundry he simply stuffed into his golf bag.

  Betty appeared from the women’s locker room at the same moment he stepped into the hall. She was wearing fresh shorts and halter and, in addition to her golf bag, carried a small zippered case which presumably contained the other shorts and halter.

  “That’s timing it nicely,” she said with a smile.

  They entered the barroom together and stacked their golf bags side-by-side against the wall. There were now a number of people in the room, and it wasn’t until they approached the bar that Marshall realized one of them was Betty’s husband.

  Bruce Case was thirty-six, with a wiry, well-muscled body and a darkly handsome face. He sat on a bar stool next to Doctor Emmett Derring, a thin, reedy man of about the same age who wore horn-rimmed glasses. Both had on old clothing and fishing hats.

  Young Bruce Case, Jr., sat at a table near the bar sipping a bottle of orange pop through a straw.

  A trifle coldly Betty said to her husband, “I didn’t expect to see you until dark.”

  “Apparently,” Case said with a glance at Marshall. “They weren’t hitting, so we beached the boat and came in for a drink.”

  Marshall said, “Hello, Bruce. How are you, Doc?”

  “Pretty good,” the doctor said. “Buy you a drink?”

  Bruce Case ignored the greeting.

  “I’ll have a beer,” Marshall said, seating himself next to the doctor.

  Betty sat next to her husband. Al the steward drew a beer and placed it before Marshall, then looked inquiringly at Betty.

  Before she could order, Case said to her, “I found Bud unattended down on the beach while you were off with your old boy friend.”

  Marshall turned on his stool to stare past Dr. Derring at the man. Betty flushed.

  “He was hardly unattended,” she said. “There’s a lifeguard.”

  “I don’t mind you catting around with your ex-lovers,” Case said, “but I don’t expect you to neglect your child to do it.”

  Other conversation in the bar died as everyone stopped to listen.

  Marshall said, “Just a minute, Case.”

  Betty got up from her stool and said to her son, “Come on, Bud. We’re going home.”

  “I haven’t finished my pop,” he said.

  Taking the bottle from his hand, she set it on the table and drew him to his feet. She didn’t exactly drag him across the room, but he had to hurry to keep up. Slinging the strap of her golf bag over her shoulder, she picked up the zippered case with her left hand without releasing her hold on her son’s hand. A moment later she was gone.

  Marshall got up, too. He said, “If you have anything to say to me or about me, Case, we’ll go somewhere private. Unless you prefer to get knocked off that stool.”

  Bruce Case turned to stare at him. When he saw Marshall’s set expression, his own belligerence died and he smiled a bit weakly.

  “I was mad at her, not you,” he said. “Sorry I made a damn fool of myself. Forget it and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “No, thanks,” Marshall said curtly. “I’ll forget it, but Doc’s already bought me a drink.”

  Returning to his stool, he drained his beer glass in two long gulps, politely thanked the doctor, got up to collect his golf bag and left.

  Chapter III

  When Marshall got home, he found his father reading the Sunday paper in the big front room. Jonas Marshall was an older version of his son, with a long, lean figure, still well-muscled at sixty, and a full head of iron-gray hair. As owner, publisher and editor of the Runyon City News, the town’s only newspaper, he was Kirk Marshall’s employer as well as his parent.

  Their father-son relationship was more congenial than their editor-reporter relationship. Jonas Marshall had definite ideas on what made a good newspaperman and he was a strict taskmaster. Someday he expected to turn the paper over to his son, and he wanted to be sure Kirk understood it from the ground up. Since he had gotten out of school nine years earlier, Kirk Marshall had worked at every job from copy boy to editorial writer. For the past five years he had operated as a roving reporter, and was considered the paper’s ace by everyone on the staff except his father. Jonas never seemed quite satisfied with his son’s efforts. As they were equally strong-minded, they often clashed on matters of policy.

  However, outside of the newspaper office, they had a quite cordial relationship.

  “Lydia called,” his father greeted Marshall. “She wants you to phone back. Your mother announced that dinner will be in twenty minutes, so if you plan to make cocktails, you’d
better hurry your dressing for dinner.”

  It was Kirk Marshall’s chore to mix before-dinner cocktails, and it had become such a ritual that Jonas Marshall wouldn’t have thought of taking over merely because his son arrived home a little late. It was typical that he had simply sat and waited for the family bartender to show up.

  Marshall carried his golf bag up to his room, fished the dirty laundry from it and dropped it into the bathroom hamper. His dressing for dinner consisted only of changing his rumpled cotton golf slacks for a pair of dress slacks, and changing his shoes. He was back downstairs within three minutes.

  His mother was standing before the stove when he entered the kitchen. Sylvia Marshall was a plump, matronly woman five years her husband’s junior. She was almost universally liked, because she was unable to find fault in anyone at all, but she was also universally regarded as a trifle addled, in a nice sort of way. She had vast trouble remembering faces, even occasionally regarding her husband and son with a puzzled expression.

  Marshall bent to kiss the back of her neck and said, “Hi, Mom.”

  Glancing over her shoulder, she smiled vaguely. “Oh, it’s you. I think your father is waiting for you to mix a cocktail.”

  “He usually is,” Marshall said, getting a tray of ice from the refrigerator.

  He mixed only two martinis, as his mother didn’t drink. He carried one in to his father, then carried the other into the den and dialed Lydia Harrison’s number.

  When her clear voice answered the phone, he said, “Dad told me you called.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I just wanted you to know Uncle George and Aunt Ruth drove back to Buffalo, in case you have any plans for me tonight.”

  He took a sip of his cocktail. “What do you feel like?”

  “Umm …”

  He laughed. “There’s a good show on at the State.”

  “You must not have heard me,” she said. “I said Umm …”

  “I’ll be over at eight p.m.,” he told her. “Shall I dress, in case you decide you want to go out later?”

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “I’m just going to be wearing perfume.”

  Back in the front room Jonas Marshall laid aside his paper and raised his glass in a silent toast.

  When both had sipped their drinks, the father said, “Read today’s paper?” He referred to the Buffalo paper, as the Runyon City News didn’t publish on Sunday.

  “Glanced at it,” Marshall said.

  “There’s a feature article on the cat burglar. Seems he’s attracting the attention of the big-city papers. Barney Meister isn’t going to like it.”

  “Why?”

  “The story isn’t very kind to the local police. Implies they’re a bunch of Keystone Kops whom the cat burglar has been running circles around.”

  “That’s hardly fair,” Marshall said. “Personally I think Barney is a pretty good chief. He’ll net this man before long.”

  “He’d better, before somebody gets killed. The man must be a psycho, carrying that axe or whatever it is around with him. What’s the score to date? About ten burglaries?”

  “Nine. But only eight losses. He didn’t get anything from the Ferris home. Left his pillowcase full of loot when he swiped at Mrs. Ferris with his weapon and ran.”

  Sylvia Marshall called from the dining room, “Dinnertime.”

  After dinner Marshall decided to take Lydia at her word and not dress. He drove over to her place wearing the same sport shirt he had donned after his shower at the country club.

  Lydia Harrison was originally from Buffalo and had no relatives in Runyon City. She had come there two years before, fresh out of college, to take a job in the advertising department of the Runyon City News. She lived alone in a three-room downtown apartment only a block from the newspaper office.

  She answered the door barefoot and wearing a quilted housecoat. She was a smaller woman than Betty Case, being only about five feet three and possessing a smaller bone structure. There was nothing delicate about her, though. She had a full, rounded figure and quite a robust chest. Her hair, eyes and complexion were all dark and her face rather plain. But she had such dancing eyes and such a vivacious expression, she gave the effect of being quite pretty until you took close inventory of her features.

  Closing the door behind him, Marshall said, “I thought you were going to wear just perfume.”

  “I couldn’t answer the door that way, silly,” she said. “Suppost it hadn’t been you?”

  She put her arms about his neck and kissed him on the lips. Then she released him and padded across the front room to the bedroom door, casually slipping off her housecoat en route. There was nothing beneath it but Lydia. At the doorway she smiled back over her shoulder and gave her round little bottom an inviting wiggle.

  One of the many things he liked about Lydia Harrison was her absolute lack of pretense. She had a healthy, uninhibited liking for sex and she made no attempt to shield her desires from him. In the early days of their relationship she had somewhat startled him, for she gave the impression in public of being rather demure. She still behaved quite conventionally in front of other people, but when they were alone she could be pretty earthy. When she had the urge to be loved, she seldom wasted time with preliminaries. She usually matter-of-factly announced her desire, sometimes in rather down-to-earth terms, then took off her clothes.

  When he reached the bedroom door she had tossed her housecoat over a chair and was lying on the bed. She assumed a rather lascivious posture and grinned at him.

  “Hurry up,” she said. “I’ve been panting ever since we talked on the phone.”

  He deliberately took his time undressing, getting some kind of mildly sadistic pleasure from her increasing impatience. He carefully hung his slacks and sport shirt on hangers in the closet, then neatly placed his shoes side-by-side on the floor and dropped his socks into them. Her expression became pleading when he slowly folded his undershirt and shorts before laying them on the dresser.

  When he finally approached the bed, she raised to a seated position, threw her arms about his neck and fell back again, forcibly pulling him down across her body. Her mouth, wide open, fastened on his, but first she whispered two short, earthy words.

  He obeyed her request …

  Later, lying with her head on his shoulder, he considered their relationship. Though she had gone with no other man during the two years they had known each other, and he had gone with no other woman, there was no formal commitment between them. She never spoke wistfully of marriage, or even inquired if he loved her. The word “love” had never been mentioned between them.

  There had been other women in his life since Betty, but never for this long a period. He always backed skittishly away the moment they began to hint at marriage, which sometimes was on the first date; and never, except in Lydia’s case, had it been more than three months after the first date. Because Lydia didn’t try to hem him in, he felt as though he were a free agent, even though they had become nearly constant companions.

  Sometimes he wondered if he was in love with her but, while he liked her tremendously, he didn’t feel the same overwhelming yearning for her he had once felt for Betty, and which he still occasionally felt in a much lesser degree when he thought back to their youthful romance. He told himself that he had outgrown such teen-age emotions and that it probably wasn’t fair to Lydia to expect her to arouse the same feelings in him at thirty-one that Betty had aroused when he was a teen-ager. Still the shadow of that overpowering passion hung over him, preventing him from surrendering himself completely to any other woman.

  The affair of that afternoon in the woods further complicated things. It not only completely changed the formal relationship of the past ten years between Betty and him, it made it seem probable that she would be a free woman before long. He knew Betty was a believer in conventional morality, and he was reasonably sure she would never have allowed him to touch her if she expected to stay with her husband.

  He won
dered what he would do if she left Bruce. His heart pounded at the thought of again having her to himself, yet he couldn’t quite imagine completely giving up Lydia.

  Maybe he ought to see a psychiatrist, he thought. It couldn’t be normal to be in love with two women at the same time.

  They spent the whole evening alternately making love and dozing in each other’s arms. Marshall had planned to go home about midnight, but they both fell asleep with the light on. The phone awakened them.

  The phone was in the front room. Lydia stumbled to it, still half asleep, and Marshall could hear her say, “Hello.”

  Glancing at his watch, he was startled to see it was three a.m. He bounced up fully awake and went to the doorway.

  “For you,” Lydia said in an abashed voice. “It’s your dad.”

  Even before he took the phone Marshall knew it must be something important, for his father wouldn’t have called merely to find out why he wasn’t home yet. He was beyond the age where his father would think of attempting to exercise any parental authority.

  “Yes, Dad?”

  Jonas Marshall growled, “It was very enterprising of you to arrange with the police desk to phone you at any time of the day or night when a story broke. It would have been even more enterprising to let them know where the hell to reach you, so your hard-working father could get some sleep.”

  “The police called?” Marshall asked.

  “Yeah. Pat Sullivan’s on the desk. There’s been a shooting out at the old Runyon place.”

  Marshall felt a chill move along his spine. That was Betty and Bruce Case’s home. Though both Betty’s parents were dead and the family home was now hers, no one in Runyon City ever referred to the landmark as the Case home. It was still “the old Runyon place,” and probably would remain that as long as it stood, no matter who occupied it.

  “Not Betty?” he said a trifle unsteadily.

  “The only information Pat had was that there had been a shooting. Better get out there.”

  “All right, Dad. Thanks for relaying the message.”