Murder on the Purple Water Read online

  Murder on the Purple Water

  A Pat and Jean Abbott Mystery

  Frances Crane

  This book is specially for Charlotte and Ralph Boyden, Alex Brun, Jakie Key and Sig Pfeiffer, who answered with so much patience so many questions.

  Chapter One

  It was ten minutes past five that Friday afternoon in April when Gerald Deane sauntered across the cockpit of the charter boat Margaret and vanished down the three steps which led to the cabin.

  Once he stumbled slightly. He righted himself easily. Probably out of long practice, Captain Cy Martingale thought.

  Cy looked at the time. That was how it came that he could say definitely that the last time he saw Deane alive was at ten minutes past five.

  His long green eyes moved back to the purple water of the Gulf Stream. Deane had been drinking all day. He’d had a load on when he came on board shortly before noon. He had planed down from Miami this morning with Cy’s niece, Zada Corday. Cy had sensed at once that they hadn’t been invited, and Zada had got it straightaway herself, and all day long she had sat on the port bench being polite and aloof. It hadn’t been exactly a successful party, thanks mostly to Gerald Deane. Well, Deane had made a mess of everything, large and small, all his life. Cy thought back on the time when he was courting Katharine Ashe—Katharine was on board today too—and how her father, the old Commander who had retired in Key West, had said bitterly that there was something in every good girl that hankered after a rake.

  “And there isn’t a thing anybody can do, Cy,” the old man had said.

  Cy’s craggy features tightened and his eyes narrowed, but not against the glare of the purple water. History was repeating itself. The man was still Gerald Deane. But the girl was his own beloved niece Zada Corday.

  Zada was nineteen, exactly the age of Deane’s tall fair-haired daughter Julia.

  Julia was also on board. Katharine and Julia Deane, Gerald Deane, Zada Corday, Priscilla Braden, who had bought the old Ashe house when Katharine had to sell it four years ago now, Dixon Whitehead—the host—and that artist fellow Stephen Ashley. An odd group, sure enough. Also, two more than Cy Martingale liked to carry. He made it a rule never to carry more than five, and five was really too many. Zada and Gerald Deane had made seven. Nine, counting himself and Bob Fraser, the mate.

  Cy shot a quick look at Zada. She was sitting with her face turned away from the others. Her manner continued polite and aloof. In Zada that spelled trouble. She was half Spanish, and behind her young Madonna look—oval face, wide gray eyes, and shining smooth black hair—she had a fierce quick temper. Why had Zada taken up with Gerald Deane? Well, maybe because he stayed so handsome. He ought to look like a zombie, the amount he’d put away—Cy couldn’t remember ever seeing him without a skinful—but there he was, clean-featured, beautifully built, easy-mannered, charming. There was no gray at all in his pale thick hair. His skin was a deep healthy brown from the sun.

  Since his separation from Katharine, Deane had been living in Miami. Zada was singing in a supper club at Miami Beach. People liked her. She was sweet and unspoiled, they had said, she was different. She had a future, they said. But not, Cy thought apprehensively, if she got mixed up with Gerald Deane.

  “Don’t you think people look like fish?” Priscilla Braden said.

  Cy Martingale’s grim face relaxed. Mrs. Braden could be counted on to say the apt thing. Her flimsy remark obviously relieved much tension. Gerald Deane was probably on every mind aboard.

  Julia Deane was perched on the port gunwale beside mate Bob Fraser. In her jeans and white shirt, and with her long fair hair skewered up in a knot, Julia looked like a tall handsome boy. She had just arrived from New York, and her fine satiny skin had turned pink from the day on the water.

  “I hope I don’t look like a parrot fish, Priscilla.”

  There was laughter. Julia’s nose was short and straight and her chin round and lovable. Her mother, Katharine, was small and neat. Katharine’s face was triangular. Her hair was dark and her eyes were very blue. She had remarkably expressive eyelids. She was more interesting to look at than her tall daughter. But Julia had that fine pantherish grace and splendid coloring from her father.

  All at once everything was easier. It was good to have Deane out of the way. It was good to have tactful people like Priscilla Braden on board.

  Priscilla said, “I can see that my idea isn’t popular.” She wiggled the rod she was holding. “Oh, I wish I’d catch a fish! A big fish. A marlin, or a sailfish. I honestly think that if I once caught something bigger than a minnow I’d just go mad for fishing.”

  “Skipper!” Dixon Whitehead ordered Cy from the other fishing chair. “Take us where there’s fish.” He brandished a plump hand starboard. “Take us yonder.”

  “As you wish, Mr. Whitehead.”

  Cy spun the wheel and headed southeast, across the current of the Stream. Whitehead irked him. So what? he corrected himself instantly. The guy’s paying for the charter, so what. Still, he doesn’t have to act as if he owns me and the boat. I don’t like him. I don’t like his rubbery lips and beetle eyes and his curly, puffy black hair. Hell, what I really don’t like is the way he looks at young Julia. Why, Cy thought, why, Kathie has the same problem on her hands as I’ve got with Zada. I’ve been pretty dumb, he thought. And between Whitehead and Deane, he decided, anyone would prefer Deane.

  Cy looked at the clock. Ten minutes had passed since Deane went down to the cabin. God willing, he was asleep. Maybe he ought to have Bob Fraser take a look. Nope, better to let sleeping dogs lie. Maybe with luck Deane wouldn’t show up again till the Margaret was in her slip, her passengers off, gone away. Maybe Cy could get a moment alone with Zada before Deane woke up. Perhaps he would tell her what the old Commander had said when his daughter Katharine married Gerald Deane. Or, better, maybe Zada would be so disgusted after today, even without Cy’s saying one word, she would never look at Deane again.

  “Fish!” cried Priscilla Braden.

  Dixon Whitehead looked in the direction indicated and after a moment waved a proprietary hand to starboard. “Right where I told you, Skipper. Natch.”

  “Dix, you’re wonderful,” Priscilla Braden said. And there was a slice of rough irony in her voice that tickled! Captain Martingale.

  A school of sailfish had shown up at some distance on the starboard side. For a moment their bronze dorsal fins made them look like a flotilla of toy sailboats. Then they started leaping against the current, one after another, as if by some mutual arrangement.

  Excitement ran high. Julia Deane and Bob Fraser jumped up and stood watching the show the fish made. Katharine Deane and Stephen Ashley twisted around on the starboard bench for a better look. Katharine was a little nearsighted. She was the last to make out the fish. Whitehead reeled in his line to check the bait. Priscilla Braden got so excited she could hardly hang onto her rod. She offered it for takers. Even the sight of a sailfish gave her jitters, she said. Everybody except Zada reminded her that this was her big chance.

  Zada said nothing. She didn’t even glance at the sailfish. She was laying the temperament on a little thick, Cy thought. He did not say so now, of course. She would fly in a rage if he should, and cry, or maybe do worse.

  He started working the boat around to cross ahead of the fish. In his mind he got ready for what was just ahead. He looked again at the time. His glance ran over the boat to make sure everything was shipshape. He reminded himself again that there were more people on board than he liked to carry when fishing in the Stream. He hoped Deane would stay below. Seven customers meant using every extra precaution. Cy had insisted all day on only two fishing at a time. He’d had to stand out against Whitehead, who’
d demanded that he set up four swivel chairs in the cockpit instead of only two. Cy had kept the two extras in the cabin. Two stationary chairs were enough, specially when one of the party was a drunk, all set to fall overboard and drown, like as not, at some moment when he and the mate and the boat itself were tied up with a big fish.

  Everything was in place. That is, there was nothing lying around that anybody could trip over, though the sharp knife they used for cutting bait was lying on the shelf near the windshield. It belonged in a rack in the bait box.

  “Strike!” Whitehead yelled. He turned on Mrs. Braden. “Priscilla! Get your line in. I’ve got a big one. Reel in your line! Goddamn it, woman, get that line in!”

  “Oh, my goodness!” Mrs. Braden wailed. “Oh, my.”

  “I’ll get it, Mrs. Braden,” Bob Fraser said.

  Bob took over her rod and reeled in her line; then he stood by to help Whitehead bring his big fish to boat. Cy gave his whole attention to the boat itself, handling it with his utmost skill. He was sorry that Mrs. Braden hadn’t got the first strike but such regret was momentary. This was business. The important thing was to bring the fish to boat.

  An hour and a half passed before he remembered the knife. It was no longer on the shelf. He felt sure that Bob had put it back in the bait box.

  During these ninety minutes, three sailfish were hooked and worn out, and finally heaved on board the Margaret. Priscilla Braden caught one which, Cy guessed, would run to about seventy pounds. Julia Deane brought in a smaller one. The biggest, eighty-five to ninety according to Cy’s estimate, was Dixon Whitehead’s. The three sailfish made a splendid ending to an otherwise fairly uneventful day. There were mackerel, dolphins, red snappers, muttonfish and amberjacks in the fish box, but until this change of luck in the late afternoon no big game fish had even shown up in sight of the boat.

  After the sun had set, and the queer flash of vivid green which introduces the short tropical twilight had faded, Cy had a little verbal tussle with Whitehead because the latter didn’t want to go in. The fishing was good. Why go home? If we don’t, Cy was thinking, Deane will wake up and make more trouble. Also, Zada will miss her plane back to Miami.

  He wanted Zada to fly back without Deane. Or maybe she would stay the night in Key West with him and Maggie. Friday was her night off.

  Priscilla Braden decided it. “If we’re not home by eight o’clock I’ll certainly lose my cook.”

  The lines in, the tackle put away, Bob Fraser and Julia Deane went forward. They sat on the forward hatch, under the stars, smoking, their knees pulled up, talking like mad. The others, except Zada, drank scotch and soda. Cy Martingale usually accepted a drink at this time and Bob took over the wheel. Tonight Cy refused the drink and kept the wheel himself. Whitehead sulked, possibly because Julia was up there with Bob. Katharine was very quiet.

  Stephen Ashley was habitually silent. He was the kind, Cy thought, who is always a bystander. He was a tall, lean, quiet man, deeply tanned. He was not handsome, like Gerald Deane, but he had a face you liked instinctively.

  Even Priscilla Braden had little to talk about for once. She was tired. She said she had no idea what energy it took to bring in a big fish. Now that she had done it, she would just as soon never do it again, she declared.

  The Margaret rounded the dockhead and backed into her slip. Bob Fraser let down the anchor, came aft and made the line fast to the dock.

  “Don’t anybody go away till we weigh the fish and get some pix!” Whitehead said, as he clambered up the steps. There was a rack on the dockhead where the catch could be hung up for the photographs.

  “A little dark for pictures,” Julia said.

  “I’ve got flash equipment, Julia. Mate! Get the fish up on the dock. Here, you kids!” He was addressing a couple of boys who were hanging around hoping for tips. “Take these fish to be weighed. Only the biggest ones, mind. Mate, you go along and see that the fish are weighed properly and then put them on the rack. Pronto. We don’t want Mrs. Braden to lose her cook.”

  “Oh, Dix. I was joking, really. I don’t suppose I could lose Thomas and Annabelle, even if I wanted to, which I certainly don’t.”

  “Skipper, we want you in the picture,” Whitehead said.

  “Sorry,” Cy said.

  He turned his back on the activities astern to speak to Zada, who was hanging back, avoiding the group. “I hoped you would stay all night, Zada. Isn’t Friday still your night off?”

  “I’m pinch-hitting tonight for a friend, Uncle Cy.”

  “Well, come down soon. We miss you, Zada.”

  She didn’t say anything. She was a small girl, about the size of Katharine Deane, with the same sort of straight proud way of holding herself. She looked very sweet, very young.

  Cy forgot to take it easy. All at once the very idea that Gerald Deane could make her unhappy made him furious.

  “Zada, Gerald Deane’s poison!”

  She stiffened. He had made a mistake. But he kept on. “I hate to say this, Zada. But just twenty years ago, on this very boat, old Commander Ashe said there was something in a good girl that hankered after a rake. He was talking about his daughter and Gerald Deane. Deane isn’t any better than he was then, and he’s twenty years older, Zada.”

  “It’s her fault,” Zada said.

  “No,” Cy said.

  “You don’t understand,” Zada said.

  “I understand plenty. He spoiled her whole life. Surely you won’t let him spoil yours.”

  Zada pretended not to listen. She said, “When Gerald wakes up, Uncle Cy, will you tell him I had to run along in order to catch my plane? Thanks a lot.”

  Cy looked at the time. It was twenty-five minutes to eight. He said, now impersonally, “You’ve got just time enough, Zada.”

  “The worst rush will be in Miami. I’ll be a little late checking in, but I don’t have to go on till around ten o’clock. Tell Aunt Maggie I’ll come down again soon. Goodbye, Uncle Cy.”

  “Goodbye, Zada.”

  He was alone on the boat after she was gone. He watched her, in her white dress, disappearing in the darkness of the dock. He rolled himself a cigarette. For all their tenderness for each other, Cy and Maggie had been denied children. The little orphan from Spain, by way of Havana, had been most welcome. They had raised her with a watchful care above their own station. Zada had been schooled at the convent, where the winter visitors sent their children. The sisters had trained her voice. And for what? Nightclubs and men like Gerald Deane.

  Cy sat down in one of the swivel chairs. He looked at the water. The tide was coming in. The air was languorous but the wind was rising. There was a black cloud in the northwest beyond where the horizon still showed faintly pink from the sunset. In the east there would presently rise the full moon.

  Suddenly the boat gave a sliding movement away from the dock. The anchor had not caught. Cy got up and went forward to investigate.

  He was working with the anchor when Katharine Deane spoke, at his side.

  “I came back to ask you what we should do about Gerald, Cy?”

  Cy loved Katharine Deane. He thought her a truly good woman, like his own Maggie. He hated having her worry about this thing.

  “Bob and me can take care of him, Kathie.”

  “But where will he go?”

  “Where would you like us to take him?”

  “To a hotel,” she said. “A good hotel, Cy.”

  He said, “Maybe a good one won’t want him, Kathie. They can take their pick these days.”

  “Cy, here’s some money. I can’t bear to think of Gerald not cared for. Do the best you can.”

  “Never mind the money.”

  “But perhaps he has no money, and no luggage.…”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” Cy said. She folded the note and put it in her bag. Her face was twisted with anguish. He could see that even in the faint light which came forward from the binnacle lamp. He changed the subject abruptly. “It’s going to rain,” he s
aid. “They’re running the storm signals up at Curry’s. There’s nobody looking after that ketch on the other side of the dock. Comes a hard blow, and she’ll beat herself up.”

  Katharine let the change of subject pass. “I used to think the time would come when I no longer minded. You knew I’d left him? Finally, I acknowledged that I was licked. That was four years ago. I had had to sell the house. You know all that, of course. Priscilla Braden bought it more as a favor than anything else. Afterwards Gerald seemed to buck up. For a while he seemed to get hold of himself. He did a fine job for Priscilla Braden—I mean, doing over our old house and the grounds. She let him use all the money he wanted. He liked that. He got other jobs then to do in Miami. Everything looked fine. Only, it didn’t last.”

  It never does, with Deane’s kind, Cy thought. He said nothing. On the dockhead, sixty yards or so away, a flashlight blazed. For an instant he saw his party, standing beside the rack in front of the big shiny sailfish. Dixon Whitehead was standing next the biggest one, one of his short plump arms appropriating it.

  “Gerald never finished anything he started, except Priscilla’s house, Cy. The war meant shortages and he had a perfectly good excuse. He went on living in Miami. We’ve stayed in New York. I’ve got a job, and Julia has almost finished college. We’ve done all right. We were even almost happy, until today. Cy, why did he come here today?”

  “I don’t know,” Cy said. “Two days ago this guy Whitehead comes over in the dinghy from that yacht of his, and charters the boat for today. Well, Friday’s the day I don’t usually take a charter. Maggie is kind of superstitious about Fridays, and since you want one day a week to rest up and work around the boat, I take Fridays. But when Whitehead says the party is for you and Julia, and I haven’t even set eyes on you in four years, I says all right. He said Mr. Ashley was coming, and maybe Mrs. Braden. I didn’t count on Mrs. Braden. She don’t much like fish, but she’d taken out several parties this winter anyway. I didn’t count on Gerald Deane at all. As for Zada, I guess she was pretty surprised when she decided after we were on our way that maybe she wasn’t invited.”