Murder on the Rocks. Talmage Powell

      

Murder on the Rocks

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1957 by Robert Dietrich

      Published by Wildside Press LLC.

      wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

      chapter 1

      IF YOU’VE BEEN AROUND WASHINGTON you’ll know Hogan’s, Main Avenue near the Municipal Fish Wharf. Draft beer, formica table tops, steel cutlery, and the best seafood north of New Orleans. The Negro waiters are faster than Japanese jugglers and most of them have worked at Hogan’s since before the war with Spain. The main room has maple paneling, linoleum floor tile, and a few game fish mounted on oak trophy plaques. The coral and dried starfish are for tourists who can’t leave town without a meal at Hogan’s to tell about at the next Lions’ meeting in Sassafras, Missouri. On the side next to the bait shop there is an open doorway with a script neon sign that spells Cocktail Lounge. Inside, there is just enough light to read a drink list in Braille if you have sensitive fingers, and that’s for the civil servants who crowd Hogan’s every noon in the hot months. White-collar workers from Agriculture and Interior and Labor and the Bureau of Engraving. Men and women with humdrum jobs, enough money to get along on, and a gnawing fear of loneliness.

      It was Saturday afternoon. Outside, on the sidewalk, you could broil whole swordfish, but Hogan’s air conditioner was a blessed wind from Bluie West. The time was three o’clock. I was finishing an order of Crab Norfolk, and I was on my fourth draft ale. I had worked late to finish a tax case and have the rest of the week-end free. My ketch was tugging at a Yacht Club buoy three blocks away, its icebox jammed with beer and cold cuts, and within the hour I planned to be tacking down the quiet Potomac, a line over the stern. Down past Mount Vernon, anchoring for the night in Gunston Cove.

      As the waiter cleared the table and brought apple pie and coffee, I began to relax. I had been working too hard; the end of the fiscal year brought a rush of tax problems, but now the bulk was over and for the rest of July I could slow the pace. My vacation was set for the last two weeks in August, and it looked like a peaceful summer.

      At three in the afternoon even Hogan’s was peaceful. From the cocktail lounge drifted the occasional tinkle of glasses and the strum of low conversation. I was alone in the restaurant except for a girl at the wall table. As I began to eat my pie I looked at her. Her profile was clean; she had high cheekbones that made little hollows in her cheeks, dark black hair that brushed bare shoulders, and skin that looked carefully tanned. Her fingers toyed with a chilled copper flagon of Pimm’s No. 1 Cup and, as I watched, she lifted it to her lips, drained it, and beckoned to the waiter. Then she took a cigarette from her handbag and lighted it. Sitting by herself she looked lonely and thoughtful, absorbed by some private trouble, or perhaps by loneliness itself. I would have written her off as a government secretary except for the dress she was wearing. It was made of Siamese silk, an iridescent blue-green color, and it was an evening dress. In Hogan’s eatery, At three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. And drinking Pimm’s No. 1 Cup. The combination was odder than red hair on a Bantu tribesman.

      It changed things. It made her someone’s doll. That or a nonconformist spirit with money enough to dress and do as she pleased. For a while I juggled the possible combinations, thought the hell with it, and finished my pie. I was fumbling with my money clip when she got up, lifted the copper flagon, and walked toward me. Her stride was measured and graceful—her carriage erect. Not stiff but poised, as though she balanced books on her head every day of her life. Putting the drink on the edge of the table, she smiled and said, “It’s awfully hot, don’t you think?”

      “Outside it is.”

      “Of course. I didn’t mean here. It’s very comfortable in here. In fact, almost too cool.” Her hand touched her shoulder.

      “It’s hot because it’s Washington. In July. Around Nashville it’s even hotter, and they say Tucson this time of year is enough to give anyone the fantods. Of course, south of the Equator the seasons are reversed. In Sydney, for example, it’s probably snowing like anything. Could that cover the weather?”

      She pulled back a chair, gathered the folds of her skirt, and sat down. She picked up the flagon, tilted it, and drank. Then she lowered it and smiled at me. A slow smile, amused and sultry and a little maddening. She said, “Probably you think I’m a pickup.”

      “I hadn’t thought about it much, but I’ll say this: if you’re a pickup you’re something way out of the ordinary.”

      “A thousand thanks.” She laughed then. An easy silvery laugh that parted white even teeth. Her chin tilted and the oblique angle gave her eyes an almond look. The iris was green, dark green, the eyelashes bigger than butterflies. As I watched, her face seemed to come into focus suddenly and I realized that somewhere, sometime, I had seen her before.

      The waiter brought my check and I laid a bill on his tray.

      Her face became serious. “You aren’t leaving?”

      “Tell me why I’m not?”

      She shrugged. “Because it’s so funny. You don’t know me and I know you. Aren’t you even intrigued?”

      “Let me guess,” I said. “Sure, you’re Mabel Snodgrass from Rocky Point Junior High. I recollect we used to throw spitballs at each other and all like that. Hi, Mabel.”

      The waiter brought my change. I let it ride and stood up.

      Her eyes followed me. She said, “You’re Steve Bentley. I told you I knew who you were.”

      “That’s mighty interesting,” I told her. “Where some fellows might blush all over at a quick make like that, it just makes me curious. Mildly.”

      “And you don’t know who I am?”

      “Should I?”

      She smiled again, stretching her arms lazily. “I’m Iris Sewall. Once I was Iris Calvo. Remember now?”

      I remembered. Her father was an Ambassador from somewhere in South America. I remembered endless society page photographs captioned Latin Beauty, and one in particular I’d seen on a Pusan billet wall showing her being crowned Queen of the President’s Cup Races. I sat down.

      She said, “I suppose I resemble a minor catastrophe today. Last night was a large party over in Warrenton and somehow I never got to bed.” She picked up the flagon and drained it. “The best thing seemed to be to keep on drinking.”

      “It scarcely shows,” I said. She looked fresher than a crisp dollar bill.

      “How nice. Jean said you could be gracious.”

      “Jean?”

      “Jean MacIntyre. You used to go with her. Only her name wasn’t MacIntyre then. It was Ross. Remember?”

      “Of course.”

      She nodded thoughtfully. “We were classmates at Fentriss, Jean and I. Best friends. I wore braces on my teeth then and I was keen on field hockey, so you wouldn’t remember me. It was years ago.”

      She signaled the waiter. I glanced at my watch and said, “Look, I—”

      “Don’t leave. I had hell’s own time finding you. After I made up my mind, that is.”

      “Miss Calvo,” I said, “or Mrs. Sewall, or whatever your name is, I’ve had a hard spring, a hard month, and so far a hard day. Please don’t complicate it by being devious. I shouldn’t be here at all. By now I ought to be halfway down Washington Channel with not a care in the world. I’m flattered you took the trouble to get in touch with me, and if it’s a tax matter I’ll be in my office after nine o’clock Monday morning. Could it keep until then?”

      “No,” she said abruptly. “It won’t keep at all. The fact that I came here to find you ought to indicate some urgency on my part.”

      “Maybe. Just how did you happen to know I’d even be here?”

      “I