“Widow, nice sort of woman. Comfortably fixed. Ran a fair-sized farm. Came to the Harbor as a bride and... Don’t worry Jed, this one is in the bag. I know the killer, have the only road off the peninsula covered.”
“Yeah, passed your road block as I drove in,” I said, sitting on his polished desk. Although Bob dressed like a slob, he kept a neat office. “Okay, what happened?”
“About nine this morning Mrs. Buck phones me she’s having trouble with one of her farm hands — money trouble. Colored fellow named Tim Williams — only hand she has working for her now. Tim come with the migratory workers that follow the crops up from the South last year, but Tim and his wife settled here. Never had no trouble with him before, thought he was a hard worker, hustling around to get a full week’s work. Anyway, Julia asks me to...”
“Julia?”
“Come on, Inspector, look alive. Julia Buck, the deceased,” Moore said, slipping me his smug, idiot-grin again. “Julia asks me to come out at once. But she didn’t sound real alarmed... you know, like there was any immediate danger. I got there at 9:47 A.M., found her strangled. I would have come sooner if I’d known... No doubt about Tim being the killer — I have a witness. Don’t know why the County had to send anybody up here. Told them I can handle this.”
“Yeah, seems you have a nice package, with all the strings tied. Who’s...?”
“I’ll collar Tim before night.”
“Who’s your witness?”
“Julia had — has — an old Indian woman cooking for her — Nellie Harris. Probably the last of the original Island Indians. Nellie was in the kitchen, had just come to work, when she heard Tim arguing with Julia in the living room. Swears she recognized his voice, that Tim yelled, ‘It’s my money and I want it!’ and then rushed out of the house. Then she heard Julia phone me. Nellie went on with her house work — until I found Julia dead. And before you say it, Nellie ain’t near strong enough to have strangled Julia. There’s no doubt this Tim sneaked back and killed Mrs. Buck. Another fact: Tim’s disappeared — on the run. But there’s no way off the Point except through my road block. Guess you want to see the body — have her up the street in Doc Abel’s office.”
“Let’s see it.”
We walked up Main Street to this big white house, then around to the back. Being the Harbors sole doctor, Abel was also its Medical Examiner. The corpse was on a table, covered by a sheet. Doc Abel was busy up front with some of his live patients. Pulling back the sheet, I examined the bruises around Julia Buck’s once slender throat. Powerful hands had killed her. “Find any prints?”
Chief Moore shook his big head, seemed lost in thought as he stared at the nude body. Then he said, “Never noticed it before... I mean, when she was dressed... but for a woman her age, Julia had a real fine figure.”
I dropped the sheet, glanced at my watch. It was almost one and I hadn’t had lunch. Still, I wanted to get this over with, had a lot of paper work waiting in my own office. I told him, “I want to go see the Buck house.”
“Sure.”
Walking back down Main Street, I said, “I saw the Harbor’s one squad car at the road block, we’ll ride out in my car.”
“Naw, we’ll use mine,” Moore said, opening the door of a sleek white Jaguar roadster. As I slid in beside him he said, “Some heap, hey? Got a heck of a buy on this, dirt cheap.”
“Yeah, it’s a real load,” I told him, looking up the street at my battered Ford.
Five racing minutes later we pulled into the driveway of this typical two-story house, and when the Jaguar stopped I managed to swallow. There was a garage and a modern barn in the rear, all of it standing between two large flat fields planted in early potatoes. Everything shouted gentleman farming, the kind of grandfather-father-to son folding money the Point is known for. The fins of a Caddy were sticking out of the garage, while the inside of the house was a comfortable mixture of old and expensive contemporary furniture.
Nellie Harris wasn’t old, she was ancient — a tiny shriveled woman with a face like a tan prune. She was also stone deaf in her right ear. She calmly repeated what Moore had told me. When I asked, “Why didn’t you go into the living room to see how Mrs. Buck was?” the old gal stared at me with her hard eyes, said, “She didn’t call. I do the living room last. I went up stairs and did the bath and her bedroom — way I always do in the morning.”
“Have you any idea what this Tim and Mrs. Buck were arguing about?”
“Probably wages. Miss Julia was a hard woman with a dollar. Years ago when I asked her to put me in Social Security, so’s I wouldn’t have to be working now, Miss Julia threatened to fire me — all because it would mean a few more dollars a year to her.”
“Did you hear Tim return?”
“No sir. Nobody came until Chief Moore.”
I drummed on the kitchen table with my pencil. “Mrs. Buck have any men friends?”
“Her?” The wrinkled mouth laughed, revealing astonishingly strong, white, teeth. “I never see none. But then I wasn’t her social secretary.”
“Was she on friendly terms with other members of her family?”
“Didn’t have no family — around here. They had a son — killed in the war.”
I walked into the living room. There didn’t seem to be any signs of a struggle. I told Moore, “Where does Tim’s wife live?”
“I’ll take you there. Look Jed, this is an open and shut case and I have to relieve my men at the road block soon. Okay, come on.”
We did 80 miles an hour across a hard dirt road to a cluster of shacks. In late summer migratory workers lived five and six to a room in these. Now they were empty, except for a cottage across the road.
Mrs. Tim Williams was about 21, with skin the color of bitter chocolate, and if you discounted the plain dress and worn slippers, she was startlingly pretty. The inside of their place was full of new furniture, five bucks down and a buck a week stuff, but all of it clean and full of the warmth of a home.
Mrs. Williams was both sullen and frightened. She said she didn’t know a thing — Tim had left the house at six in the morning, as usual. She hadn’t seen him since.
“Did Mrs. Buck owe him any wages?” I asked.
“Well, for this week, but they wasn’t due ’till Saturday. Listen, Mr. Inspector, no matter what anybody say, my Tim didn’t kill that woman! Tim is a good man, hard working. He strong as a bull but gentle as a baby. Even if he angry, Tim wouldn’t hurt a woman. He never in his life took a hand to a woman or...”
“We’ll get him soon, see what he says,” Chief Moore cut in.
“Does your husband have a car?” I asked.
“Got us an old station wagon. Need it for the job.”
I asked a silly question: “You’ve no idea where your husband could be, now?”
She shook her head. I knew she was lying. I stood there, staring at her for a moment — thinking mostly of her beauty and her poverty.
Moore said, “Come on, Jed, I have to get to my men.”
On my way out I told her, “If you should... eh... just happen to see your husband, get him to give himself up. He’ll get a fair trial. Hiding out like this won’t get him anything, except more trouble, or a bullet.”
“Yes. I’ll tell him — if I see him.”
We made it back to the Harbor in less than four minutes. I tried not to act scared. That Jaguar could really barrel along. I told Moore I was going to eat, get some forms filled out by Doc Abel.
Chief Moore said, “If I don’t see you when I return, see you for certain at my road block, Inspector.”
I had a bowl of decent chowder, phoned the Doc and he said he’d leave the death statements with his girl — in a half hour. Lighting my pipe, I took a walk. The Harbor is a big yachting basin in the summer. Even now, there were several slick cruisers tied to the dock, an oceangoing yawl anchored inside the breakwater. There was a 34 foot Wheeler with CHIEF BOB’S in big gold letters on its stern also tied up at the dock. It wasn’t a new boat, about five years old, but fitted with fishing outriggers and chairs. I asked an old guy running a fishing station if the boat was Moore’s. He said, “You bet. Bob Moore is plumb crazy about blue fishing.”