The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

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.

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 blond 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 blond 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 bookends 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 a while, 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 step-mother’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 swum and come back here just before Allene and I rolled up.