The man and woman were watching me warily, thinking, no doubt, that Allene and I were a pair of drunks out celebrating.
There was just one word for the girl standing on the terrace: sleek. She was wearing a white play suit that was startling against her dark tan. She had a sultry looking face, with wide, red lips. Her hair was midnight black, cut with bangs. She was holding her hands at her sides in a sort of theatrical way, the way models do, pointing very slightly outward.
The man beside her was tall and athletic, dressed in an expensive T-shirt that was a riot of colors, cream-colored slacks, and tan sandals. His arms and face were freckled, his hair a crinkly, close-cropped, light blonde mass on his head.
He and the girl watched as I took the bottle from Allene’s lips. Allene sat up, mumbling a groan. Her lids fluttered. “I’m all right,” she said weakly, shaking her head.
I got out of the car. The strapping, young blonde experienced a tightening in his face. To put him at ease, I said, “The lady simply fainted.”
“That’s too bad,” the girl in the white play suit said. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
“Phyllis!” the man said, obviously annoyed.
“Oh, they’re all right, Baxter!” she said crossly.
Then to me: “We saw you carrying the girl to the car. We thought you might be drunk!” She giggled and made dainty, studied gestures with her hands. They were graceful long hands. She probably realized it. She probably made use of them with every word she said.
“Do you know the man next door?” I asked.
“Buddy? Sure,” Baxter said. “But Phyllis and I haven’t seen him around since we came in from our sail, if you’re looking for him—”
“I’m not looking for him,” I cut in. “Have you got a phone?”
Baxter frowned. “Yes, here in the living room.”
“I’d like to use it.”
Baxter looked annoyed. Phyllis told me to go ahead. They followed as far as the doorway, stood there, while I phoned. Maybe Baxter was afraid I’d carry off the ivory book ends on the table near the phone.
The Gulf beaches are not incorporated in the City of St. Petersburg, which allows the beaches to sell alcoholic beverages on Sunday and a later curfew for their nightspots. So I put in a call to Sheriff Ben Aiken. What I told him jarred a few morose curses out of him, and he said he’d be right out.
When I turned from the phone, Phyllis’ hands were fluttering about her throat. Baxter’s face looked tight — and somehow mean.
“Buddy Tomlinson is dead?” Phyllis said, as if it was simply too, too horrible for her to realize.
I was in no mood for details, and simply nodded. I went back out to the car and sat down on the running board on the shady side and lighted a cigarette. “Can I have one?” Allene said. I gave it to her.
“What will they do with him, Lloyd?”
“Take him to an undertaking parlor. I think Doc Robison has got the corner on that trade for the county.”
“I wonder who killed him?”
“I wouldn’t know.” I didn’t particularly care. I sat and smoked chain fashion, and at last Ben Aiken arrived.
There were two other men with Ben, but they were just faces. He was the whole show. He was a big, fat man, with a lot of gut hanging over his belt. His pants were even baggier than mine and his shirt was pasted to his big, sloping shoulders with sweat. He had a large, florid face with a tiny button nose in the middle of it, and a sweating bald head.
I sat there in the open door of the car, watching the house. I couldn’t see much, but I could hear Ben and the other two men working inside. Shortly the county coroner drove up. He was swallowed by Buddy Tomlinson’s bungalow.
After awhile, Ben Aiken came out. He came over to the car, questioned Allene and me. I told him the short, simple story of my finding Buddy Tomlinson. To keep myself clean, I told him why Allene had hired me. She was sitting on the car seat behind me, at a higher level, of course. When I brought her stepmother’s name into it, the toe of her shoe bit in my spine.
Aiken got nothing more out of her. He questioned the couple from next door. Phyllis’ last name was Darnell. She had been married, she said, but was a divorcée. Baxter’s full name was Baxter B. Osgood. Yes, he and Phyllis both had known Tomlinson. No, they hadn’t seen him since yesterday afternoon when they’d all been drinking at the Pelican Bar and Grill, half a mile down the beach. He and Phyllis had had a morning date to go sailing. They’d sailed and swam and come back here just before Allene and I rolled up.
When he’d finished with them, Ben motioned me off to one side. “You got any ideas on this thing, Lloyd?”
“No, I’m off it. I was supposed to warn Buddy Tomlinson off Emagine Buford. Now Buddy doesn’t need it.”
“You think the gal is holding anything back?” He cut a side glance at the car where Allene was still sitting stiffly.
“If she’s holding out on you, she’s holding out on me, too.”
Ben sighed and mopped his face. “May be one of them long drawn cases. I got to trace this Buddy Tomlinson backward, find out who he was, where he’s been keeping himself, in whose company, and so on. I might find a motive somewhere along the line.
“Funny kind of kill. You didn’t get a good look in there, did you, Lloyd?”
I hadn’t. But I didn’t say anything. I just stood passive and let Ben get it off his chest. I knew that in talking it in his confidential whisper, he was setting the details in his mind.
“Nothing in the whole bungalow had been hurt — except Tomlinson. You saw the wound in his face, Lloyd. He was shot in close. The side of his right palm was mutilated. Looked like somebody was threatening him with a gun. He made a grab for it and the shooting-started.”
“What does that give you?”
“Nothing much. It must mean he was shot with a revolver. Don’t need to tell a man like you that an automatic won’t fire with pressure on the killing end of it. Ejector won’t work, gun won’t cock, gun jams up. We’re hunting the slug. From Tomlinson’s cheek looks like a thirty eight. So maybe when I find out where he’s been keeping himself, who he’s been seeing, I might find out somebody who owns a revolver like that.”
“You need me for anything else, Ben?”
“I guess not.”
“Then I’m going back to Tampa. I’ll drop the girl in St. Pete. She’ll probably want to talk with her stepmother.”
“She won’t have much privacy,” Ben grinned. “There’s a phone in Tomlinson’s bungalow and I’m gonna have city Homicide look in on Mrs. Emagine Buford.” He mopped his face some more. “Hell to work in this heat. I’ll see you around, Lloyd.”
I got in the car and drove off. The last I saw of the scene, Baxter Osgood and Phyllis Darnell were still standing on Osgood’s flagstone terrace, watching Ben Aiken waddle his way into the Tomlinson bungalow. Somehow, they looked scared.
I drove Allene to the Morro Hotel, in the northeast section of St. Pete. The drive along Tampa bay was wide, beautiful, lined with fine houses and hotels. A few boats were out sailing on the bay, the small, white triangles of their sails tilted over in the light breeze.
The Morro was built like an old Spanish castle. When I braked before it, I saw a black car at the curb. Allene saw it, caught her lip between her teeth. She turned her face to me as she got out of the car. “I’d like to see you again sometime,” she said.
I looked at her for a minute. “I’ll phone you this weekend.”
She closed the car door, went running up the wide, palm-lined walk. She was staying here at the Morro with her stepmother, but I didn’t know the phone number and I decided I didn’t like to thumb through the phone books. It was just as well. I was twenty years her senior.