The Suspicious Bride
by John C. Fleming and Lois Eby
A deed of dark violence can cast a pall on honeymoon happiness, even when it may be no more than a nightmare possibility. And when the bride is the daughter of a police officer—
I
The California sunshine was warm and thick; a slight breeze of buoyant, sparkling air moved restlessly through the palm trees. They were lying close together by the edge of Desert Spa’s gleaming pool.
A boy in white, starched coat brought an extension telephone from the Spa, plugged it in with practiced efficiency, tucked the receiver against Jerry’s ear. From the curve of his arm, Bina heard metallic buzzings that sounded vaguely like the voice of Jerry’s secretary, Lorraine.
Then he replaced the instrument, handed it back and tightened his arm around Bina. “Even on a guy’s honeymoon.”
“No!”
“The Hanlon deal’s cooking.”
“If it’s just a few days...”
“Weeks probably. Even months. Some nights.”
For a long time they lay without moving. Then he kissed her and sat up, reaching for his towel. And with this motion, the languor, the lovely drifting endlessness broke. Time rushed in upon them with a terrible pressure. And fear.
Bina sat up, expertly twisting dark hair into a loose circle, pinning it up. “Maybe,” she tried to keep her voice light, “I should stay out here until we find a house.”
“You can’t hunt houses in Beverly Hills from Palm Springs.” He was sliding her feet into wooden sandals. The old strain was back in his voice, almost hidden under a new man-of-the-house tone of command. “Look, angel, we had the most secret courtship in history — thanks to your father. From now on, it’s cards on the table.”
Bina walked beside him to the hotel office. “The papers,” she said tightly.
While Jerry paid their bill, the clerk handed her the Los Angeles papers he had been saving for her. “Back in the world again, huh?” he commiserated.
In their room, they went through the stack of papers carefully. And when they had finished, Jerry said, “I told you. You’re not scared to go back now, are you?”
Bina smiled at him uncertainly, “I don’t think so — not with you.”
There had only been two notices of their marriage. One in a gossip column: “Jerry Crevellin’s gone and done it, and we’re wishing him all happiness with the beauteous Bina (Ryan) — whose father is a real, live detective on the Beverly Hills Police Force, in case you didn’t know.”
The news account read: “Jerald Crevellin, prominent, young Beverly Hills broker, was married yesterday at Las Vegas to Bina Ryan. Miss Ryan was secretary to Mr. Crevellin’s aunt, the late Mrs. Clarissa Crevellin, well known social leader,”
Bina released her breath. “They don’t make it sound like we married too soon.”
“Only your dad counts months so hard.”
Bina couldn’t really blame Jerry for his bitterness toward her father, she reminded herself later as she drowsed contentedly beside her husband in the car, conscious of his strong hands on the wheel, his handsome, tanned face under the thatch of blond hair, bleached almost white from the desert sun.
The worry lines, too, that had bothered her, were smoothed away. It was a miracle, really, she thought, that he had ever wanted anything to do again with Detective Lefty Ryan or his daughter, Bina.
From the first moment, on that horrible night when the doctor’s call had brought the police and Bina to find Clarissa’s body still at the bottom of the stairs, Lefty had seemed to have it in for Jerry Crevellin.
It was Lefty, who had insisted on an intensive search of the house, finger printing, the works. Lefty, who had questioned and re-questioned Jerry in his office after Clarissa’s diary had fretted about his friendship with Dennis Moresby.
It had seemed to her that Lefty’s usual bluntness had a thrust of vitriol, as he faced Jerry. “Your aunt was a little worried about some of your friends. You did handle her investments?”
“I did.” Jerry had been magnificent about it, Bina thought, his voice unsteady from shock and grief, but his answers given quietly, without resentment. “I came from Boston several years ago when Aunt Clarissa offered to set me up in an office of my own, with her business as a starter.”
“You had a brokerage business in Boston?”
“It was a partnership.”
Lefty’s square fingers thrummed. “Couple of places in your aunt’s diary, sounded like she was wondering whether you were mishandling — or planning to mishandle — her money. Did you know that?”
Jerry met Lefty’s probing gaze firmly. “No, I certainly didn’t know it,” he said. “Or I would have checked everything over with her.”
“This Dennis Moresby she seemed to be upset over your seeing. He a stock broker too?”
“He is.”
“But you weren’t investing — or planning to invest — any of your aunt’s capital through him?”
“No.”
And then Lefty asked the question Bina had prayed he wouldn’t ask. “Did you know your aunt had her secretary checking up on you?”
Bina’s purse slid out of suddenly damp fingers. She stooped for it, avoiding Jerry’s eyes.
“No, I didn’t.” His voice was definitely startled.
Bina broke in then, spots of color on her cheeks. “She sent me to a few big parties. But I saw noth—”
“Was Dennis Moresby at any of those parties?” Her father turned on her sharply.
She glared at him angrily, but she knew better than to try an, “I don’t remember” on Lefty, who hated evasion as a plague. “Of course, Mr. Moresby and his wife were there,” she flared. “They are in the crowd that Mr. Crevellin is in. Mr. Crevellin was friendly with the Moresbys just as he is with thirty other couples.”
“No secret conferences?”
“No!” The denial burst out to cover her instant of hesitation. You couldn’t, she reasoned with quick defiance, call Jerry’s sitting with the Moresbys at a table in a crowded room secret. And their absorbing conversation could have been politics, or the weather!
But finally, it was the look on Lefty’s face when he came raging out of their rustic, canyon house the night Jerry drove Bina home after her long day of writing sympathy acknowledgments at the Crevellin house.
Jerry had asked to take her home dutifully, and then forgotten her, driving with jaw clamped in a pale and tortured face, a man suffering under the weight of things life had piled up against him. Finally, he had remembered to thank her for her sympathetic report on him in her father’s office. But he did even this absently, as though he was still too shocked by the whole affair to consider it real.
It was then they turned into the Ryan drive and Bina saw Lefty slamming out to meet them. She called a quick goodbye and jumped from the car, hoping Jerry would get safely out of range before Lefty reached the driveway.
But Jerry had not even noticed her father. He got out of the car politely to see her to her door — and Lefty knocked him down! Then, while Jerry sprawled, dazed, spitting gravel, Lefty had jerked him to his feet and shoved him back into his car like a criminal, with a terse threat.
“Get out of here and stay out! You’re not getting my daughter involved in a murder rap!”
No, she couldn’t blame Jerry. Bina moved closer to him in the car now, slid her arm through his. “Darling.”
“Uh huh?”
“You don’t mind...?”
After a minute, he kissed the top of her head. “If you call your father?”