“Harris, will you please listen to me? You’re mistaken—”
“Oh, no,” I said triumphantly. “Maybe she’s got you believing those lies too. Don’t defend her. You know it was all lies. And she is with me. Right here. I’ve got her out in the car. She broke into my room last night, and when I woke up she was leaning over whispering lies to me. I tried to make her shut up—”
“You don’t know what you’re saying!” Her voice was growing shrill. “It’s utterly impossible.”
She had turned the knife that Monday morning, but in the field of really exquisite deadliness she was an amateur. While she was sitting there listening to me say I’d just killed Marian Forsyth, Marian was standing at the next desk, talking to Barbara Cullen.
I dropped my voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
”You’ll hear from me. I’ll be in a foreign country, angel, where they didn’t hear the things she told about me, and I’ll send for you.” I hung up.
I went back to the bar, ordered another drink, and sat for ten minutes or so staring moodily at the mounted sailfish above the backbar mirror.
“Beautiful fish,” I said to the bartender. “You know, they catch a lot of those down in the Keys.”
He was so happy at having somebody to talk to again he did a clown routine. He picked up the bottle from which he’d just poured my drink, stared at it unbelievingly, and shook his head. “Pal, you’re right square in the middle of the Keys.”
“Lovely country,” I said. “Next time you go, you ought to take the whole family; they’d love it.” I got up and went out.
I went on towards Sugarloaf Key, still driving under forty. There were several problematical factors now, but I was sure I had plenty of time and didn’t want to make that turn off the highway until it was dark. A lot depended on when she decided to call the Florida highway patrol—if she did at all. It would be the logical thing to do. There was still a good possibility I hadn’t really killed anybody, but not much doubt that I was foaming mad and might at any minute. But Marian had insisted her first concern would be getting off the ship herself before it went down, and that she’d chicken out at the prospect of having to call and have her insane fiance picked up and spread all over the front pages before she had a chance to start disowning him.
But at any rate, she was going to have to tell somebody, and that somebody would call the Florida authorities. But the Okeechobee thing should have stuck in her mind; God knows I’d hit it hard enough. Of course, the operator would have said it was Marathon calling, but nobody ever paid any attention to that, and she’d said it to Mrs. English, anyway. The chances were there would be no alert in this area until they started picking up my trail, and I needed less than an hour now to duck into the hole and pull it in after me.
When I reached Big Pine Key I could see I was still too early, so I pulled off the highway, drove up a back road for a mile or so and parked, still facing away from the highway. Two or three cars went past. If they noticed me, so much the better. It would take a long time to search Big Pine; it was one of the largest of all the Keys.
When it was completely dark, I turned and went back. There wasn’t a great deal of traffic on the highway. As I began closing on the turn-off at Sugarloaf there was only one car behind me. I slowed and let it pass, and then made the turn. I speeded up, hurtling over the bumpy country road. In a few minutes I came to the trace of a road going off to the left, and in only two or three more to the openings through the wall of mangroves where boats could be launched. My headlights splashed against the pick-up truck. Aside from it, the place was utterly deserted.
The faint ruts ran on for another two or three hundred yards through heavy brush that scraped the car on both sides, made a sharp turn toward the water, and dead-ended among the mangroves. There was a narrow channel here, going through them to open water, but it was never used for launching boats because the underbrush and mangroves were so heavy on all sides it would be impossible to turn or maneuver. I stopped just above high tide, and cut the lights and engine. Impenetrable darkness closed in around me, and thousands of mosquitoes, and utter silence except for the faint lapping of the water. There was no surf, because of the shallow water and the mangrove islands farther out.
Getting out, I fumbled the key into the lock, and opened the trunk. When I’d located the flashlight, I turned it on, unfastened the boat, and lifted it down. I dragged it down to the edge of the water, put the oars in it, the concrete flamingo, the ball of cotton cord, and my canvas shoes. Taking out my khaki shirt, I wiped the steering wheel, dash, door handles, and trunk handle, and then rubbed and wiped my hands and fingers over them to leave a satisfactory number of unusable prints in case they did start to check.
I opened the whisky, took a drink of it, poured the rest into the water, and threw the bottle far over into the mangroves. Lifting out Justine’s shoe with the broken and dangling heel, I dropped it beside the rear of the car, under some overhanging brush, and checked it with the flashlight. It couldn’t be too obvious. I nudged it farther out of sight with my foot. Good. I dropped the other shoe in the boat. Closing the car, I pushed off. The water was quite shallow and I had to wade out several steps before I could get aboard.
I sat down and poled it out of the narrow channel with one of the oars. When I reached open water I threw the other shoe overboard. It would move around with the tide, and might or might not be found, but it made no difference. I turned off the flashlight and began rowing parallel to the shore, watching the dark wall of the mangroves. In a few minutes I could see the break in them, and pulled in to the beach. I switched on the flashlight again, and saw the pick-up truck. Pulling the boat up, I squeezed the water out of my trouser legs, took off the wet leather shoes, and put on the canvas ones. They had corrugated crepe-rubber soles.
I carried the flamingo up, unlocked the trunk, and placed it on the floor in front. Then the ball of cord, and the wet shoes. I put the oars in back, carried up the boat, and placed it on top of them. Carrying the flashlight, I followed the ruts on through the brush to the Cadillac. I walked towards the edge of the water, threw the light in, and could see the marks of the boat and my tracks on the soft bottom as I’d waded out. The leather shoes had left some fairly good imprints above high tide, also, and I walked down, leaving the distinctive track of the canvas ones on top of them in places.
I opened the trunk and took out the steel wrecking bar I’d bought. Slamming the lid down so it locked, I stuck the flat end of the bar under the edge of it and began prying upward. It was stubborn, and I had a large area of steel bent and chewed before the lock finally gave up and it flew open. Then I closed and locked all the doors, and used the end of the bar to knock in the right front window so I could reach the latch. I rifled the glove compartment, leaving everything strewn on the floor. Taking out the briefcase and my fishing clothes, I took one last look around with the flashlight to be sure I hadn’t overlooked anything, and walked back to the truck.
Standing in the darkness, with the mosquitoes chewing me, I took off his suit, shirt, and tie. I dropped the glasses in one coat pocket, bent the hat into a mass of straw, and shoved it in the other. I put on the khaki fishing clothes and the cap, transferred the money from his wallet to my own, put his back in his trousers, along with the cigarette holder, lighter, and his car keys. Taking the flashlight, I went down to the edge of the water and made a mark by which to gauge the ride.