John D. MacDonald
Refund for Murder
After she had been out of the hospital for a week, Beth Talbott was able walk out in the garden behind her sister’s house. At first she had to lean heavily on Marian, but after a few days she could manage alone, walking slowly, easing herself into the striped deck chair, tucking the blanket around her legs.
Harry Palmer, Marian’s husband, enjoyed working in his garden. He had been able to create privacy by planting some high cedar hedges and, at the foot of the garden slope, had dug and cemented a wading pool for the neighborhood children, surrounding it with slightly formal flower beds. The red maples were beginning to be quite respectable trees. It was May, and the days were getting warmer.
It was enough merely to sit and become slowly stronger. She had always read a great deal. Now she had no desire to read. She watched the change of the flowers, watched the tree shadows.
She had suffered a depressed skull fracture, a coma close to death, intravenous feedings of glucose, hours of the most delicate brain surgery. It was odd, she thought, to imagine strangers’ hands doing precise and incomprehensible things to your gray brain cells. The bone wall had been broached, and the hands touched that part of you that was you, that part that made you Beth Talbott, an individual who thought and felt in a certain way.
The hospital days and nights had been scrambled in a crazy way, with time something that either leaped ahead of you, or dawdled behind like a sulky child. They had shaved her head completely, and as the bandages grew smaller, she could touch the horrid spikiness. But days passed, and the bristly hair grew longer, softened. It was still only an inch long, and she wore a turban fashioned from a scarf.
They finally let Marian tell her about Roger. It was anticlimax, because the nurses’ and doctors’ lies had been too transparent. She had become so certain of her suspicion she had thought that when at last she was told there would be no reaction. Yet she had held Marian’s hand, and Marian had cried out with the pain of the nails driven deep, and the nurse had deftly disinfected the tiny wounds.
It is odd to be told in late April that your husband died in February, that he has been buried for long weeks, that all the flowers are wilted and gone. She did not cry until night came, and then it was as if some other woman cried for a man Beth had never known.
With Roger gone she would no longer sense the whispers that had followed her as she walked with him. “Poor Beth,” the whispers said. “Poor Beth.”
Beth had a visitor on a warm Tuesday afternoon. Marian brought him out into the garden, introduced him as Mr. Crees. Marian went back into the house, and Mr. Crees pulled a chair up near Beth’s. He was an oddly square-bodied man, tall, with an office complexion. Beth thought the office pallor was subtly wrong, that the heavy features should be sun-weathered, the eyes filled with the look of distance seamen have.
His words were low, soft, carefully enunciated.
“Mrs. Talbott, I waited until I could be sure you were well enough to answer questions.”
“Is it about — the accident, Mr. Crees?”
He balanced a brief case on his knees, his large-knuckled white hands holding it firmly. There was a sudden look of primness and distaste about his mouth. “These days I have a peculiar reluctance to state my business. I’m with the Bureau of Internal Revenue, Mrs. Talbott. But not, I assure you, an appointee.” In that moment she was aware of rigid honesty carried to the point of fanaticism.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand why you’d want to talk to me.”
“You could call me a trouble shooter, Mrs. Talbott. I specialize in a particular sort of case. Right now I’m working out of the district office. I have here the joint returns you and your husband filed over the past three years.” He took out the three returns and held them out. “This is your signature, Mrs. Talbott?”
“Of course. There never was much income to report, you know.”
He looked down toward the wading pool, pursing his lips. “Improper returns fall into three general categories, Mrs. Talbott. First there is the unintentional mistake, either an error in arithmetic or in interpreting the instructions. Secondly, there is the matter of being too liberal with deductions. That borders on fraud, but as a general rule we merely collect the additional tax due plus the interest, without penalties. The third instance is the one in which income is not reported in full and the discrepancy is so great that it can be termed fraud. A discrepancy so great no one can make the assumption that it was an oversight.”
“If there was any income we didn’t report, it certainly couldn’t have been much, Mr. Crees. We lost our home last year because we couldn’t meet the mortgage payments. I have — I would have been married to Roger three years next month. During that period, he was often unemployed.”
Crees opened a small notebook. “Your husband held jobs as an insurance salesman, bill collector, door-to-door appliance salesman, salesman for a landscape architect, summons server, used-car salesman. Six jobs in all since you were married.”
“That’s correct, Mr. Crees.”
“Perhaps you fail to understand the amount of leeway I’ve been given, Mrs. Talbott. I’m prepared to compromise. If you care to state the true income during the period covered by these returns, I will see that the penalties are the minimum prescribed by law.”
“I guess I can find our copies in Roger’s files and go over my accounts. I paid our bills, when we could pay them. But if all the income wasn’t reported, I don’t see how it could amount to enough to be worth your time.”
“If you don’t see fit to state the true family income, Mrs. Talbott, I shall have no patience with you. At this time the bureau cannot afford to treat any fraud case lightly. I shall turn my findings over to the legal branch with the recommendation that you be prosecuted. Due to the — unsavory nature of this case, I think it is highly possible that you might spend some time in a federal prison. You see, when you signed these returns, Mrs. Talbott, you left yourself without a leg to stand on.”
It seemed to Beth to be some absurdly complicated practical joke. Yet she had always been aware, highly aware, of the attitude of others toward her. And though this man was soft-spoken and polite, she sensed he had contempt for her, that he despised her. She knew her dazed smile was vacant, idiotic.
“I just don’t understand,” she said.
“Please think over what I’ve said. I’ll visit you tomorrow, Mrs. Talbott.”
After he had gone, the sunshine seemed less warm. Marian came out. Beth told her about the interview, and in the telling she tried to make a joke of it.
Marian said, “Those gentlemen have no sense of humor, Sis. And I don’t think they make stupid mistakes. Could Roger have been getting money somehow?”
“And still let the bank take the house away from us? He’d never have done a thing like that!”
“Tomorrow get Mr. Crees to tell you more, Sis. Get him to tell you what he’s driving at.”
The next afternoon the sun had a brassy look, and the thunder in the distance was an almost continuous roll. Beth was in the living room when Marian let Crees in.
He stood tall and square in the doorway and nodded briefly. “I expected to meet your attorney, Mrs. Talbott.”
“Could my sister stay with me?”
“I’d prefer to talk to you alone.”
Marian gave an audible sniff and left the room. Crees sat by the windows, balancing the brief case on his knees. “What have you decided?” he asked.
“You’re going to have to tell me what you are driving at, Mr. Crees. I don’t understand. I told you that yesterday.”
The contempt in his voice was apparent. “Here we have an odd case. A man who can’t seem to hold a job. Do you know why?”