Mecca for Murder Page 4

  “Go on,” Davisa said. “You can clean the Springfield when Mr. Drum and I have finished talking.”

  Shrugging, Suzanne meandered off toward and through the small grove of plane trees. “If there’s anything I hate,” Davisa Lee Tyler told me, “it’s weakness. That girl is weak, Mr. Drum.”

  I said, “Where’s Fawzia?”

  “Examining the Gaza refugee clothing in one of the outbuildings. You haven’t told me you would like earning a thousand dollars.”

  “Who wouldn’t like to earn a grand?”

  “Good. I want you to see that Lyman doesn’t go on that Hajj next week. Do anything you have to.” Mrs. Tyler picked up the Springfield and worked the bolt. “Look at that,” she said. “There’s still a round in the breech. That Suzanne.” She set the rifle down again. “Well?”

  “Why don’t you have Moses do it for free?”

  “Because Lyman would know I sent him. I don’t want that. I don’t want Lyman ever to know. If you can keep him off the Hajj, he’ll forget all about this crazy idea. You’ll do it?”

  “What the hell,” I said. “I’ll give it a try.”

  “I’ll pay only if you succeed.”

  “That’s fair enough,” I said, and it surprised her. “But—”

  “But what, Mr. Drum?”

  “But keep your claws off Fawzia.”

  Davisa Lee Tyler smiled politely, turned around, showed me her back and made a scuffing motion with her right foot in the grass. It was the same motion a dog makes instinctively, covering up what he thinks is in need of covering. It told me more about Davisa Lee Tyler than two weeks alone with her on a desert island could tell. She knew it and I knew it and she didn’t care. That was part of what it told. There was Davisa Lee Tyler way up there and everybody else all the way down here.

  I grabbed her shoulder and when she said take your hands off me and I didn’t, she turned back in my direction with no expression at all on her face. “Listen,” I said. “Here’s why you’ll lay off Fawzia. If you don’t leave her alone, I’ll tell Lyman what you wanted me to do.”

  “Fawzia’s trying to break up my son’s marriage.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But you’re not. You don’t want either of them to take Lyman away from you, do you?”

  “I think you’d better go.”

  I shrugged. “With or without the assignment, Mrs. Tyler?”

  Suddenly she clapped her own hard hand on my shoulder and showed me her teeth. “I like you, Chester,” she said. “You’re frank. We understand each other. Of course the assignment is yours. To show my good faith, there’s a hundred dollars in it for you, win or lose. How’s that? I’ll write you a check after tea. That will be in about half an hour on the west patio. You’ll join us?”

  When I nodded and wandered off to see if I could find Fawzia in one of the outbuildings, Mrs. Tyler called: “Suzanne! Suzanne! You may come and clean the Springfield now.”

  I didn’t find Fawzia, but I did get to explore Tyler Acres. There were seven white clapboard outbuildings, two of them boarded up, three serving as guest houses, and two used for storage. In one of these were bales of old clothing all neatly trussed up and ready for shipment to Gaza refugees, but Fawzia had already come and gone.

  Outside a magpie crowed as magpies do, and went winging off toward Toano. I walked slowly back toward the main building, figuring it was about time for tea. I felt pretty good about being able to give Fawzia something for her fifty bucks after all. The sun was still high and hot and whatever clouds there were had gone to someone else’s sky.

  Then I started to run.

  There was a shot. The shot was followed by a scream. I reached the skeet house a running step behind Moses. The Springfield was outside on the grass. A trail of something wet and glistening led from the Springfield to the skeet house. A curious magpie drifted overhead.

  There was a skeet shoot on a bare table in the roofless skeet house. There was no other furniture except for a chair and a small icebox. On the wall was a canvas-covered telephone and next to it one of those magnetic pad and pencil dodads, minus the pencil. There was a box of skeets, opened, on the floor.

  Suzanne was on the floor too, her knees drawn up as if she had a stomach ache. She was still holding the magnetic pencil. Moses was bending over her, but stood up and turned around when he heard me come in. There was a bloody smear on Suzanne’s tan torso just under the right cup of the halter. In the dim light I couldn’t see anything more than a smear, but somehow I knew that it was bad. Moses shook his head, his sad eyes large and white in the gloom. “I’m afraid she is dead,” Moses said.

  I looked at the pad on the wall, within easy writing distance of the telephone. Something was written there. The letters were dark, the sheet of paper squeezed down under them, as if Suzanne had leaned all her weight on the magnetic pencil. She had written only three words and then there was a long dark pencil line which wobbled off the bottom edge of the paper. When I read the three words I knew why Suzanne had dragged herself, dying, into the skeet house.

  Suzanne had written: Davisa shot me.

  Chapter Six

  Moses drifted outside. I knelt beside Lyman Lee Tyler’s wife and lifted her hand and felt for the pulse. Her forearm was scrawny, almost fleshless. There was no pulse beat. Pretty soon Moses returned with a green canvas chaise longue cover. He made a whipping motion with it in the air and draped it across the dead woman’s body. He did it very well. Then he went over to the wall and looked at the pad. He reached up and got his fingers on the bottom of the first sheet of paper. He looked over his shoulder at me. The silence was the kind you would find between the stars.

  Finally he said, “You read it, mister?”

  “I read it.”

  His fingers remained where they were. “There would be an impression underneath anyway,” he said, his hand dropping to his side.

  Footsteps pounded across the turf outside. Fawzia’s head appeared in the doorway. Her eyes widened. She couldn’t see too well in the sudden dim light.

  “Where’s Suzanne? I thought she—” The violet eyes stopped on the canvas and the shape it covered.

  “Where were you?” I asked Fawzia.

  “Looking at the Gaza clothing. Is she dead?”

  I nodded. “Alone?”

  “Yes. Alone.”

  “Mo-ses!” Davisa’s grating voice called. “Mo-ses! The tea!”

  “Not with her?” I asked Fawzia.

  “I told you I was alone. How did it happen, Chet? I heard a shot.”

  “Mo-ses!” Davisa’s voice was closer now. “And who,” it said outside the skeet-house, “has been fooling with the Springfield? I heard a shot a while ago.”

  I went over to the wall and picked up the phone. After a while a bored voice said, “Ye-as?”

  “Give me the sheriff’s office in Toano.”

  There was a series of musical beeps, followed by three purring rings. “Sheriff,” a voice drawled.

  “I’m calling from Tyler House. There’s been a shooting.”

  The voice cackled and hacked phlegm. “Someone finally give it to the old lady?” it said.

  “I’m not joking,” I said. “Suzanne Tyler was shot and killed with a Springfield rifle.”

  “Christ Almighty,” the sheriff said. “I’ll be right down, soon as I call Homicide in Richmond. They always said to call them, if and when. You all better don’t touch anything.”

  I said we would not.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Drum,” I said. “A private detective.”

  “From Richmond?”

  “From D.C.”

  “Well, don’t play cop, Drum,” the sheriff said. “Be there soon.” He hung up.

  Davisa was on one knee near the canvas cover. She lifted up a corner and looked under it and let the corner drop. Her face was as expressive as the Indian head on a buffalo nickel. “Instead of the tea,” she told Moses, “we could all stand something stronger to drink. Couldn’t we?” He
r mouth smiled at Moses. Moses looked at the pad on the wall and looked at me. When I said nothing, he shrugged.

  We all went outside. The sun was going down in the west now, but it was still hot. Davisa looked at the Springfield in the grass and went for it.

  “Don’t touch,” I said.

  “What the hell do you mean? It’s my rifle.”

  Moses took her elbow and steered her toward the grove of plane trees. It surprised her. She looked at Moses and her eyes narrowed. She shook her elbow loose. She said, “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me again.”

  She went for the rifle again but I got there first. I stepped on the barrel, just in front of the trigger guard. I thought she was going to spit at me. I said, “Your daughter-in-law had time to write something before she died. On the pad on the wall.”

  Without a word, Davisa went back into the skeet house. She was there only for a moment. She came out wiping her thin lips on the back of her sinewy forearm. “That bitch,” she said. “I never would have thought she had the guts. I don’t think it was an accident. I think she killed herself deliberately. She used to talk like that. She used to say she would kill herself if Lyman ever left her. It’s more guts than she showed ever since I knew her. She was like mush inside. Pretty, but like mush.”

  Requiescat in pace, I thought.

  “It must have meant a lot to her,” Davisa said, “to pretend I had killed her. Well, it was a good try, but she wasn’t playing in luck today. Was she, Fawzia?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Fawzia said as, with silent acquiescence, we headed back toward Tyler House.

  “You were coming toward the house when the shot was fired. I saw you coming. I waved to you.”

  “I was looking at the relief clothing,” Fawzia said. “On behalf of Azaayim Bey, I want to thank you. It was more than we expected.”

  “You were coming toward the house.”

  “Oh, no. No, I wasn’t. I ought to know where I was.”

  “You whore,” said Davisa, and grabbed Fawzia’s wrist and twisted it. “Tell the truth. I don’t know why you’re lying. Why don’t you tell the truth?”

  I disengaged Davisa’s fingers with difficulty. The knuckles were white and as hard as bleached bone. “That’s enough of that,” I said, standing between them. Davisa sucked in her breath and followed Moses inside the house.

  “I could use a drink,” Fawzia said.

  So could I.

  Moses made double rye highballs for everyone, including himself. We sat down on high-backed colonial chairs around a spinning wheel. Moses sat behind the bar. When I finished my drink he mixed me another one. He went light on the soda.

  “Why doesn’t the sheriff get here?” Davisa said impatiently. “I want to get this dirty business over with. I can’t say I’m sorry. In the long run it will do Lyman a lot of good. He won’t weep over that girl.” She squirmed around in her chair and faced Fawzia. She smiled and said, “You think this removes the competition, don’t you? Well, you have another guess coming.” She finished her drink and put it down hard on a cobbler’s bench. The ice clinked. “Because I’m the competition, Fawzia. Do you understand that?”

  After Moses poured another round of drinks the telephone rang. It was a forest-green telephone and it went very well with the golden maple furniture. The receiver looked tiny in Moses’s enormous hand. He said, “Tyler residence” and “I do believe we were” and “One moment please.” He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Mrs. Tyler, it is the long-distance call you put through this morning.”

  Davisa’s face registered pleasant surprise. “I’d nearly forgot,” she said. “I’ll take it in the dining room, Moses.” She went quickly, eagerly through an archway. Moses waited until he heard her voice on the phone extension, then politely pressed the cradle down with his index finger and returned the receiver to it.

  I stood up and stretched. “Breath of air,” I said. Fawzia nodded. Moses looked at me.

  “It would make a rumpus if I stop you,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “The dining-room window is the big bay window near the trees.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and went outside.

  The casements on either side of the bay window were angled out almost perpendicularly. Sunlight gleamed on the aluminum screens. I stopped just this side of the window.

  “Yes, I’m waiting,” Davisa said. Her voice was clear and imperious. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted out on the hot, still air …

  “Hello? This is Davisa Tyler. How are you?… I’m glad you had a nice trip. Are you making the pilgrimage?… Splendid. I have something I would like you to do … You haven’t heard what it is. This call is costing me money, damn you. Don’t interrupt. Listen to me. The L.A.W.F.N.E. is important to you people, isn’t it? We have six Congressmen’s wives right now, and a lot of influential—… Very important. If you play ball with me, I’ll play ball with you. Fawzia Totah is going with an American party on the Hajj.”

  There was a longish pause while the other end talked. Then Davisa went on, “Do you know my son Lyman? He may go with her. I’m telling you this because I want you to do something to Fawzia, but I don’t want you to hurt my son. I’m going to keep him here if I can. I don’t want him to go, but there is the possibility that he’ll get away anyhow. You’re quite sure you know what he looks like?… All right. I don’t want Fawzia to return from her Hajj. You understand?”

  Her voice was perfectly controlled.

  “Well, understand this. Do you think I care about the L.A.W.F.N.E.? I don’t give a damn about it. But I built it into what it is, and don’t you forget that … Islam won’t perish if the league becomes moribund … I know one-seventh of the world is Moslem, you don’t have to tell me. But the league is the only active organization helping to sway public opinion in America, isn’t it? Don’t you want America on your side when the reckoning comes with Israel?… Now you’re being sensible. I know all about the Hajj. It will be easy on the Hajj. Half a million pilgrims, all dressed alike. In shrouds.”

  After another long pause, she continued, “Fawzia won’t mind.” Davisa chuckled. “A devout Moslem believes Mecca is the best place to die, anyway. Well, good-by.” She hung up. “Dumb fanatic bastard,” she said. A door closed. I looked through the bay window. The dining room was empty. Wisps of tobacco smoke still hung on the heavy air.

  Davisa was having another drink when I rejoined them in the living room. “No sign of the sheriff?” she said.

  “I went all the way down the road, too.”

  “Where is that man?”

  “Hear something now,” Moses said.

  We all listened. It was faint, but growing louder. A distant wail, as faint as banshees in an Irish-American’s memory.

  “The sheriff,” Davisa said. “Chester,” she added a moment later, curiosity in her voice. “They can’t make anything out of Suzanne’s note, can they?”

  “I don’t know. They might try.”

  Davisa looked at me expressionlessly, then got up and strode outside. Fawzia followed her. Moses picked up Plato and reluctantly brought up the rear.

  I picked up the forest-green telephone and the operator said, “Ye-as.”

  “How much did that long-distance call made from this number cost?”

  “I’ll connect you with the long-distance operator in Richmond, sir.”

  She did so. I repeated my question.

  “The charge was twenty-four dollars and fifty cents, sir, not including tax.”

  “What!” I gasped.

  “You spoke for five minutes, sir.”

  “Still!” I gasped.

  “The rate to ’Amman, Jordan, sir, is based upon the toll rate from Richmond to Beirut, Lebanon, plus the toll rate from Beirut to ’Amman, since we have no direct line to Jordan. The toll rate from Richmond to Beirut, Lebanon, is sixteen dollars for the first three minutes. The toll rate from Beirut to ’Amman, Jordan, is one dollar and five cents for the first three
minutes. You spoke for five minutes, sir.”

  “Maybe I should have called person to person,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Didn’t I give you the person-to-person rates? That is an additional four dollars and fifty cents.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “After all, you did call person to person, sir.”

  “To whom?” I snapped.

  “I am sure you know to whom you were speaking, sir.”

  “Just tell me,” I said.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir,” the voice said, losing interest. “If you wish, we can mail you a copy of the charges as recorded in this office. It will include a statement of the person-to-person rates, including the party called. We can mail it to the address at which your telephone is listed.”

  I hung up. Outside, the siren was silent now. I heard voices.

  Chapter Seven

  The sheriff was a big man with a red face, a puffy nose webbed with a fine network of purple capillaries, and a size seventeen sun-browned neck. His driver had a scrubbed, young look. He lounged against the fender of the sheriff’s Pontiac station wagon while the sheriff went with Moses to view the body and the note.

  He came back and asked Davisa in a neighborly voice if she had killed Suzanne Tyler. Davisa tried to sock him one, but he ducked out of the way, shook his big head at her and stared anxiously toward the northwest, which was toward Richmond. Twenty minutes later the homicide team arived with chalk, string, flash cameras and a sour-looking physician from the medical examiner’s office.

  After the sun set, a man from the county attorney’s office arrived in a black Chevvy. He went into conference with the sheriff and then took us aside one at a time—Davisa, Moses, Fawzia and me—and asked for our stories. He was a tall fellow, very thin, with brush-cut hair and thick, black-rimmed glasses. His face wore a guileless smile when I finished my brief story and he said, “We could hold all of you as material witnesses, if we wanted to.”

  “I guess you could.”

  The sheriff’s driver, who had doubled as stenographer for the county attorney’s man, asked Moses if there was a typewriter in the house. Moses said there was, and they went off to find it.