The smile got a little larger. “Yeah, that was me all right. It was Ollie’s idea, and it worked real fine.”
He sat on the side of the bed and took her hand. It felt awfully small and fragile to him. “Hymes was killed for the bank-job money, Bess. You’ve known that all along.” She tried to pull away from him but he held her firm. “You’ve had it stashed all this time, waiting for him to get out. Sam said Hymes was coming by this morning to ask him a favor. Hymes knew the Feds were watching him. Nine to five he was going to ask Sam to pick up the bank loot.”
She had stopped pulling away from him and was looking at him more somberly now.
“Hymes shook the Feds before going over to Sam’s. So whoever killed him didn’t follow him but was waiting in Sam’s hallway for him when he got there. Vern, how did Hymes get it?”
“.32, close.”
“Do you own a .32, Bess?”
Tears filled her eyes. “No, Bull — it can’t be.”
“Can you figure it any other way, Bess? Who else besides you and Hymes knew why he was going to see Sam this morning?”
Her thin lips began to tremble, repeating “No” softly, and then, “Carol, why?”
It was as though Carol was pinned to the bureau, her back hard against it. Her deep breaths seemed to shake her whole body and her face gleamed with sweat. “Why?” she shouted. “Why? Because I threw my life away nursing you, and all the time you had that money tucked nicely away for him. I heard you two talking, making plans. But what about me? What about me?”
Sam dug into his bank account and popped for a seven-course meal at Angelo’s for Bull and Chet. Bull went through the motions of celebrating, but he really wasn’t enjoying himself. He couldn’t shake the thought of Bess and Carol Warren.
The money had been kept in a storage locker on the north side. The Feds were happy as hell to get it back, and considering Bess’s health and age they weren’t going to be looking for any jail time. But Carol was doing her first night down at central lockup and the Red Cross had relocated Bess to a nursing home.
Did either of them deserve anything better? Probably not. But somehow he would’ve rather it had been Summers or Tucker who offed Hymes than the way it turned out.
A Glimpse of Evil
by John Lutz
It was by pure chance that Grayner had observed the murder...
Grayner hadn’t any idea how to decorate an old house. But he had bought a very old house as an investment in Sycamore Groves, a quaint little area not far from the city limits.
It was now nearly impossible to duplicate the ornate scrollwork, beamed ceilings, wide porches, and thick walls of these turn-of-the-century houses without the cost being something only an Arab oil sheik could afford. That was why Evers, Grayner’s financial counselor, had advised him to buy here rather than rent in the city. If a man had to pay an exorbitant amount each month just for a place to live, he might as well have an arrangement whereby he got at least some of that money back.
So Grayner had purchased a white-frame two-story home on the corner of Maple and Fairland. Though structurally sound, the house was in need of refurbishing and a woman’s touch. But Grayner had finally gotten his divorce the previous year, and he was unattached. As he drove his Ford compact along Maple Street he grunted. The home he’d bought would hardly fit anyone’s concept of a bachelor pad.
He turned the compact left onto Fillmore Avenue and continued toward the Thrifty Mart grocery store in Sycamore Groves’ small shopping area. Fillmore was a wide but at that moment deserted street, lined with homes similar to Grayner’s, only larger. Each house sat on a slight rise well back from the street. It was evening, and there were lights glowing behind elaborate lead-framed windows.
Some of the windows were wide and scantily draped, and as he passed a looming dark-frame structure Grayner noticed fancy green wallpaper and a glittering crystal chandelier. Maybe that was what was wrong with his dining room: plain beige paint on the walls, and the chandelier was one of those spindly old converted gas fixtures.
Grayner slowed the compact and began checking the windows of each house as he passed. One living room had a gold-framed mirror above a painted brick fireplace. There was a woman in a dining room the walls of which were adorned with rows of colorful mismatched dinner plates. The wall of another house had been completely covered with what appeared to be old brick. There was a man pointing the straight stem of a smoking pipe at a woman barely visible beyond some sheer lace curtains.
No, not a pipe. A gun!
The woman’s body twitched convulsively as she stumbled back out of sight. The man, stocky and dark-haired with a glistening bald spot, stared at the weapon in his hand, then down toward where the woman must lie. Grayner had pulled the car to the curb. He watched as the stocky man stared at a downward angle toward the woman, then out the window.
Grayner’s foot jerked from the brake and he drove quickly away, his heart keeping time with the racketing engine. The man hadn’t seen him, he was sure. And the tires hadn’t squealed as he pulled away from the curb, so he hadn’t been heard. He slowed his speed and repeated these assumptions to himself until he was reassured and felt safe.
Reasonably safe.
He continued in a daze to Thrifty Mart, checked out with three large tomatoes, diet beer, and a pound of inflation-priced ground chuck, realizing with some misgivings that he should have gone directly to a telephone and called the police. Suppose the woman hadn’t been killed with the first shot?
Then he told himself that even if he had called the police immediately, they wouldn’t have arrived at the house on Fillmore Avenue to prevent the man from finishing what he’d started. If murder was what he’d started. Perhaps Grayner’s eyes had tricked him, perhaps there was an innocent explanation — the man and woman were merely rehearsing for a play.
The incident had already become fuzzy in Grayner’s memory. Yet there was no doubt that he should tell the law about what he’d witnessed. He had an obligation. A murder could occur in pastoral Sycamore Groves as easily as anywhere else. By chance, Grayner might have been in the perfect spot at the precise time to witness such a murder. And it was his duty to play the initial role in bringing about justice.
He was feeling excited and rather noble as he returned home and dialed the number of the Sycamore Groves Police Department. A Sergeant Willoughby listened with mild interest to Grayner’s story, interrupting now and then in a bored voice to ask him to repeat certain pertinent facts.
“Murder, huh?” Willoughby said when Grayner had finished.
“It could have been.”
“What were you doing driving around looking in windows, Mr. Grayner?” The voice was heavy with accusation.
“Why — I was looking for decorating tips.”
After a pause Willoughby said, “Don’t they sell books on that kinda thing?”
Grayner felt seething anger threaten to boil to the surface. “Listen, I just happened to be driving to the store, wondering how I could decorate this new — this old — this house I just moved into, when it occurred to me I could look into the windows of the houses I was driving past and see what their owners did to the interiors. Is that a crime?”
“You say 323 Fillmore?” the sergeant asked.
“Yes,” Grayner said. “It happened about half an hour ago.”
“Where were you for the last half hour?” There was faint suspicion in Willoughby’s tone.