The chief introduced us. Her name was Allen Buford.
“Lloyd,” Henry Fayette said with a small, tired gesture of his hand, “Miss Buford wants us to do something about her stepmother and a chap named Buddy Tomlinson. You might repeat the details, Miss Buford, to Lloyd as you told them to me.”
She sat on the edge of her chair, hands in her lap, and gave me the details. Her voice was calm, even, but it was belied by the cold fire deep in her eyes.
It was about the average sordid mess. This Allene Buford’s father had been a fairly wealthy man. Allene’s mother had died ten years ago, and her father had re-married six years later, all of which was normal enough. But the sordid part began when the old man died. In his will, he left provisions for Allene to have an income, not too large. The bulk of his fortune, Emagine Buford, Allene’s stepmother, was to hold until the girl was thirty — seven years from now.
“My father seemed to have some foggy idea that I wouldn’t be capable of handling almost a million dollars until I was at least thirty.”
“And what happens then?” I asked her.
“Emagine is to come into two hundred thousand. I am to have the rest of the money.” Her face tightened, and I leaned back with a sigh, knowing that now we were getting around to the sordid part.
Emagine Buford and her stepdaughter had come south for the winter, to St. Petersburg, the resort city across the bay from Tampa. She had joined the throngs, a woman who had outlived her responsibilities. Who had nothing but time, money, and restlessness on her hands. She’d met Buddy Tomlinson. From Allene’s description, he was one of those boys who had perpetual youth, a husky physique that, at forty-five, was still trim, a disarming smile, coal black hair, and one of those little-boy faces.
The fact that she was almost fifteen years Buddy’s senior hadn’t worried Emagine any. “She’s like a school girl,” Allene said, “with her first beau. She’s buying bathing suits and evening gowns and seeing Buddy Tomlinson constantly.”
“And where do I enter? What do you want me to do?” I looked at her over the flame of my lighter as I touched it to a fag.
Allene looked steadily at me. “I want you to mark up Buddy Tomlinson so he’ll never be handsome to any woman again!”
A second or two ticked away. She saw the old man about to speak. “Of course,” she said, “I know you can’t be hired to do that. But I know Buddy’s trying to marry Emagine. He has plenty of chance of success. My money is melting away fast enough in her keeping, and if Buddy marries her, there won’t be anything for me when I’m thirty!”
“Could Tomlinson and Emagine manage that?” I asked the old man.
“You know anything can be managed with enough money and the right lawyers,” he stated flatly.
“But it’s my money!” For the first time a bit of panic showed in Allene’s face. “He was my father; he made the money. Now it’s my money! You can’t let them do that to me!”
“Will you wait outside for a minute, Miss Buford?” Fayette asked.
The girl looked at him, then got up and went out of the office.
“Lloyd,” Fayette said when she had closed the door behind her, “I want you to drive over to St. Pete with her. This is a sort of personal thing with me. I’ve known Emagine Buford for a long time. She used to live in Tampa. Then she went north to work, met and married Ollie Buford. Since she’s been back in Florida I’ve visited her a time or two at her place in St. Pete. That’s why the girl came here to us, I guess. Emagine’s going through a phase in her second childhood, to my way of thinking, but I don’t want anything to happen to her. I want her to have a chance to wake up. See what kind of man Tomlinson is. See if he’ll scare. Then scare him.”
“I’m flat,” I said.
He grimaced, pulled out his wallet, hesitated, and handed me the lone twenty from the worn leather sheath. “Use my car. It’s parked in back of the building. See Buddy Tomlinson, phone me back, and take the rest of the day off.”
I said thanks. When I left his office, he was punching tiny holes in his desk blotter with the tip of his letter opener.
The girl rode with her head slightly back, catching the breeze that blew in the gray sedan. Her hair rippled. Her lips were parted a little as she looked out over the bay. “Tomlinson has a beach place,” she said. “On Coquina Key. We’ll probably find him there.”
That was about all the talking we did. But I kept looking at her. She wasn’t beautiful. Yet there was — something.
Coquina Key isn’t the real name for the island, but we’d better call it that. It’s one of that long chain of islands west of St. Petersburg, all connected by bridges and causeways, that separate Boca Ceiga bay from the Gulf of Mexico.
We drove through the snarled, slow traffic of St. Petersburg, took the Central Avenue causeway, stopping once at the toll gate and then driving on across the white, four-lane parkway that had been pumped up out of Boca Ceiga bay. Then we were on the keys.
The islands are a lot alike, long fingers of land stretching north and south for miles, but just wide enough crosswise to separate Boca Ceiga from the Gulf. Where they’re settled, the keys are built up heavily, with cabanas, frame boat houses, frame cottages, and a development here and there of bungalows. But in the unsettled stretches, the islands are desolate, white sand and shell and, closer to the boulevard, grown over with weeds, scrub pines, cabbage palms, and palmetto. Over the whole put a vast blue sky, torrid sun, surround with sparkling blue water and whispering surf on the white beaches, populate with easy living people, put a fleet of fishing boats in the inlets, with a fine cabin cruiser at a private pier on a private beach here and there — and you’ve got the picture.
Toward the lower end of Coquina Beach we turned off the boulevard on Sunshine Way. The street was wide, white concrete, curving gently toward the cluster of squat bungalows half a mile down the island. It looked like a brand new development, the white land so clean it was barren. Here and there small Australian pines and royal palms had been set out.
Buddy Tomlinson lived in the CBS — stucco over cement block — near the end of the street. The whole row of houses was painted a light pink. I opened the car door. Allene opened hers.
“Hadn’t you better wait out here?”
“No,” she said, “I’m coming in.”
I shrugged and we went up the walk together. I rang the chimes on the oak-stained door. Nothing happened. In the bungalow next door I could hear warm laughter, and in the background a radio playing softly.
I rang four times in all. Then I walked around the side of the bungalow and looked in a window. I looked away quick, closed my eyes for a second. The first thing I saw when I opened them was Allene’s profile. She was standing close to me, looking through the window, as I had done.
“He’s dead,” she said calmly.
I didn’t ask if it was Buddy Tomlinson crumpled in there in the living room. The description fitted like a glove. Allene had her wish. He’d never be beautiful to any woman again.
“Well,” Allene said, “we won’t have to worry about him any longer.” Then her eyes rolled up in her head. Her face was very white. And before I had time to think, she was keeling over.
I caught her, carried her out to the car. There was a half empty pint in the glove compartment. I figured that ought to bring her to. “You,” I told her limp, form, “are one hell of a funny sort of dame!”
I was tilting the pint bottle to Allene’s lips when a nearby male voice said, “Anything wrong?”
I looked at the bungalow that was next door to the one in which Buddy Tomlinson lay dead. I remembered the music and casual laughter I’d heard.
Now the music was silenced. A man and woman stood together just outside the screen door of the bungalow, on the small, hot flagstone terrace. I noticed the screen door behind them was one of those fancy jobs with a huge, white silhouette of a flamingo on it.