The Girl in the Punchbowl by Thomas B. Dewey

Author:Thomas B. Dewey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, detective, crime, sleuth, murder
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

At the Corrigan house, Sheila’s Cadillac was neither on the drive nor in the garage, and I had to ring the doorbell for admittance. The maid let me in.

“Where’s everybody?” I asked.

“Mrs. Corrigan and Mrs. Schofield went to San Diego,” she said.

“Oh,” I said.

“They said they’d be back for dinner, unless they stop off in Del Mar for the races.”

“I see. They won’t be back for dinner.”

“Will you have some lunch, Mr. Schofield?”

“No, thanks. If you have to be here just because of me, please take the day off, because all I’m going to do, I’m going to go to bed.”

“Thank you. If you don’t mind then—”

“By all means. Go right ahead.”

She started off and I said, “Was Mrs. Schofield—I mean, was she kind of maybe a little bit upset with me? Could you tell?”

She looked at something else.

“Well, sir, I couldn’t—”

“Come on, you can talk to me. I’m an old married man.”

“Well, she said, when they were leaving—”

“Yeah?”

“She said, ‘If my husband should happen to turn up, tell him to have a good time with Minnie the Mermaid.’”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Well, thanks for the message.”

“I’ll go along now then,” she said.

“Yup,” I said. “Have a little holiday. Watch out for the surf.”

“Oh, I never go swimming,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

I got a good grip on the banister and pulled myself upstairs. In the bedroom I took off my clothes. My bruised and aching bones, ligaments, and greater occipital nerves were singing fortissimo. Over them, faintly, I heard the maid leave the house. I crawled into bed and passed out almost immediately. The sensation was like falling from a great height into a barrel of molasses.

* * * *

The clanging of the telephone woke me. I lay still for awhile, thinking whoever it was would give up, but it kept on ringing and I dragged myself down the hall to Sheila’s bedroom to answer it.

“Nobody home,” I said. “Just me.”

“Pete—” It was Gary Corrigan.

“Oh, hello,” I said. “How’s everything around the courthouse?”

“I’m paying for the call,” he said. “You tell me.”

“I’ll be honest—I’ve lost touch with the situation. Suppose I just send your five hundred dollars back?”

“Come on, Pete.”

“All right, hang on.”

I told him, event by event, step by step. Harold Johnson’s violent death he took calmly, but he got pretty tense when I told him I had found Sheila on the scene. The tension eased off when I got into the IOU and the collection efforts by Charlie and Sam, and Sandy Blake.

“Poor Sheila,” he said. “What do you think, Pete?”

“There’s big muscle mixed up in it.” I stroked my sore ribs. “Maybe what happened—Johnson got in deep with this syndicate and they got after him, and maybe these two boys didn’t know their own strength. What I can’t figure out is why they didn’t come to Sheila first thing, instead of fooling around with Harold.”

“Is Sheila there? Could I speak to her?”

“Well—uh—no. She’s in San Diego. Jeannie went with her. They left me a note. I guess she went to get some cash money to pay this off.

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