It's a Sin to Kill Read Free Page B

shook his head. “I’m not giving you anything. Mrs. Camden isn’t here. Now go away. Please.”
    The black-haired girl came and stood beside Phillips. Tears were trickling down her cheeks but she was holding an efficient-looking small calibered automatic pistol as if she knew how to use it. She spat a stream of French at Ames. Ames looked at Phillips.
    â€œWhat did she say?”
    â€œShe said if you don’t go away she’ll shoot.”
    Ames began to protest “But — ”
    Celeste shot a hole in the screen and the steel jacketedslug shattered an ornate urn on the edge of the patio. Ames looked at the urn, turned on his heel and walked up the drive to the road.
    The
Sally
was berthed less than five hundred yards away but he could make better time on the road than he could by climbing fences and scrambling under piers.
    Morning was full now. The thin stream of cars on the beach road began to thicken. The land itself was merely a quarter of a mile wide spit of sand with the bay on one side and the Gulf on the other. Most of the land on the bay side had been dredged out of the bay.
    The pocket of swank homes ended and the hotels and motels began. Porters polished brass and raked the seaweed off the beach. Early rising tourists, their bodies strangely white, yawned out of their fifteen dollar a night motels and plowed doggedly through the white sand to the water.
    Look, Maw
, Ames thought grimly,
I’m in the Gulf of Mexico
.
    The Fisherman’s Lunch, The Spot and Harry’s Bar were all doing a good business. On the platform of Rupert’s Fish House, Matt Doyle and Tom Mercer were weighing in a nice catch of red snappers.
    Both men waved to Ames.
    â€œHi, Charlie.”
    Ames lifted his right hand. “Hi.”
    The single word rasped in his throat. He looked at the fingers of his raised hand, then down at the streaks on his skivy. The streaks matched the brown spot he’d noticed in the cabin of the cruiser. Brown in artificial light, that was. In broad daylight, both the spot and the streaks where he’d wiped his fingers were red.
    When he reached the basin in which the
Sally
was berthed, he cut in between Murphy’s drugstore and the ship ways next door and walked out on the sagging planking. The
Sally
was straining at her ropes. There was no light aboard. The thirty-two foot cabin cruiser looked small and cramped and shabby and incredibly old in comparison to the
Sea Bird
.
    To reach the
Sally
, Ames had to pass a half-dozen other charter boats. Those captains with a charter party were readying their gear. Several of them glanced up, self-conscious, but none of his fellow captains spoke. He’d beenright about the news spreading. They knew where he’d spent the night.
    He jumped down into the cockpit of the
Sally
, opened the cabin door and forgot to duck low enough, as usual, and banged his forehead against the lintel. The blow knocked the cap from his head. The pain felt good. Still wearing a low-cut green evening gown, Mary Lou was sitting on the edge of her bunk drinking coffee out of a thick white crockery cup. A slim brunette in her late twenties, she looked at Ames over the rim of the mug in her hand but didn’t speak.
    â€œI’m sorry, honey,” Ames said.
    He was. If he couldn’t square himself with Mary Lou, nothing would ever be right again. There were lots of women in the world but only one Mary Lou.
    The portholes were small. It was dark in the small cabin. It smelled of flesh and sleep and freshly boiled coffee and fish. The girl on the bunk continued to regard him with hurt gray eyes.
    Ames debated trying to kiss her. He decided it wouldn’t be wise. Mary Lou most likely would hit him with the mug she was holding. He pumped up the Coleman pressure lantern and lighted it. The bright glare lighted the cabin but failed to dispel the feeling of grayness.
    Ames looked back at Mary Lou. “I don’t suppose you