At first I’d been for just rolling Howard wheelchair and all into the ocean. But Lani had assured me it was better to make it look like murder and robbery for the very expensive ring he was known to wear. Less chance of a mistake that way, she’d argued, than if we tried to get tricky and outwit the police by faking an accident. And Howard’s upper body was exceptionally strong. Even without the use of his legs he’d be able to stay afloat and make his way to shore.
So at last we’d agreed on the revolver.
I looked up from my place in the shadows. Something was passing between me and the house lights. Two forms were moving through the night toward the pier: Howard Sundale hunched in his wheelchair, and Belson, a tall, slender man leaning forward, propelling the chair with straight arms and short but smooth steps.
As they drew nearer I saw that the lower part of Howard’s body was covered by a blanket, and Belson, an elderly man with unruly curly hair, was wearing a light windbreaker and a servant’s look of polite blankness. They turned onto the pier and passed over me, and I crouched listening to the wheelchair’s rubber tires’ choppy rhythm over the rough planks.
A minute later I heard Lani’s voice, clear, urgent. “Belson! Belson, will you come to the house for a minute? It’s important!”
Belson said something to Howard I. couldn’t understand. Then I heard his hurried, measured footsteps pass over me and away. Then quiet. I drew the revolver from its waterproof plastic bag.
Howard Sundale was sitting motionless, staring seaward, and the sound of the rushing surf was enough to cover my noise as I climbed up onto the pier, checked to make sure Belson was gone, then walked softly in my canvas deck shoes toward the wheelchair.
“Mr. Sundale?”
He was startled as I moved around to stand in front of him. “Who are you?”
Howard Sundale was not what I’d expected. He was a lean faced, broad shouldered, virile looking man in his forties, keen blue eyes beneath wind-ruffled sandy hair. I understood now why Lani hadn’t wanted me to risk pushing him into the sea. He appeared momentarily surprised, then wary when I brought the gun around from behind me and aimed it at him. His eyes darted for a momentum the direction of the distant house lights.
“For Lani, I suppose,” he said. Fear made his voice too high.
I nodded. “You should try to understand.”
He smiled a knowing, hopeless little frightened smile as I aimed for his heart and pulled the trigger twice.
Quickly I slipped off his diamond ring and wristwatch, amazed at the coolness of his still hands. Then I reached around for his wallet, couldn’t find it, discovered it was in his side pocket. I put it all in the plastic bag with the revolver, sealed the bag shut, then slipped off the pier into the water. As I lowered myself I found I was laughing at the way Howard was sitting motionless and dead in the moonlight, still looking out to sea as if there was something there that had caught his attention. Then the cold water sobered me.
I followed the case in the papers. Murder and robbery, the police were saying. An expensive wristwatch, his wallet and a diamond ring valued at over five thousand dollars the victim was known always to wear were missing. At first Belson, the elderly chauffeur, was suspected. He claimed, of all things, that he’d been having an affair with his employer’s wife and was with her at the time of the shooting. That must have brought a laugh from the law, especially with the way Lani looked and the act she was putting on. Finally the old guy was cleared and released anyway.
The month Lani and I let pass after the funeral was the longest thirty days of my life. On the might we’d agreed to meet, I reached the beach house first, let myself in and waited before the struggling, growing fire that I’d built.
She was fifteen minutes late, smiling when she came in. We kissed and it was good to hold her again. I squeezed the nape of her neck, pulled her head back and kissed her hard.
“Wait... Wait!” she gasped. “Let’s have a drink first.” There was a fleck of blood on her trembling lower lip.
I watched her walk into the kitchen to mix our drinks.
When she returned the smile returned with her. “I told you it would work, Dennis.”
“You told me,” I said, accepting my drink.
She saw the pearl handled revolver then, where I’d laid it on the coffee table. Quickly she walked to it, picked it up and examined it. There was surprise in her eyes, in the down-turned, pouting mouth. “What happened?”
“I forgot to throw it into the sea, took it home with me by mistake and didn’t realize it until this afternoon.”
She put the gun down. “You’re kidding?”
“No, I was mixed up that night. Not thinking straight. Your husband was the first man I ever killed.”
She stood for a moment, pondering what I’d said. After a while she took a sip of her drink, put it down and came to me.
“Did the police question you about the gun?” I asked her.
“Uh-hm. I told them it was lost.”
“I’ll get rid of it tonight on my way home.”
“Tomorrow morning,” Lani corrected me as her arms snaked around my shoulders. “And we’ll meet here again tomorrow night... and the night after that and after that...”
Despite her words her enthusiasm seemed to be slipping. That didn’t matter to me.
Lani was the first one at the beach house the next evening. It was a windy, moon-bright night, only a few dark clouds racing above the yellow dappled sea at right angles to the surf, as she opened the door to my knock and let me in. Her first words were what I expected.
“Did you get rid of the gun?”
“No.” I watched her eyes darken and narrow slightly.
“No?...”
“I’m keeping it,” I said, “for protection.”
“What do you mean, Dennis?” The anger crackled in her voice.
I only smiled. “I mean I have the revolver, and I’ve left a letter to be opened in the event of my death telling a lawyer where it’s hidden.”
Lani turned, walked from me with her head bowed then wheeled to face me. “Explain it! It doesn’t scare me and I know it should.”
“It should,” I said, crossing the room and seating myself on the sofa with my legs outstretched. “I wiped the gun clean of prints when I brought it here, then lifted it by a pencil in the barrel when I left here after you last night. Your fingerprints are on it now, nice and clear.”
She cocked her head at me, gave me a confused, crooked half-smile. “So what — it’s my gun. My prints would naturally be on it.”
“But yours are the only prints on it,” I said. “No: one could have shot Howard without erasing or overlapping them. Meaning that you had to have handled the weapon after the murder — or during. If that gun ever happened to find its way to the police...”
Her eyebrows raised.
“I could tell them I found it,” she said with a try for spunk, “and then it was stolen from me.”
“They wouldn’t believe you. And it isn’t likely that anyone would take the gun without smudging or overlapping your prints. What the law would do is run a ballistics test on it, determine it was the murder weapon then arrest you. What’s your alibi?”
“Belson—”
“You’d be contradicting your own story. And I doubt if Belson would come to your defense now. No one would believe either of you anyway. Then there’s that past you mentioned.”
I grinned, watching the fallen, trapped expression on her pouting face. A bitter, resigned look widened her dark eyes. When I rose, still grinning, and moved toward her she backed away.
“You’re crazy!” Fear broke her voice and she raised her hands palms out before her. “Crazy!”