Hush Money Read online

  So here she goes:

  NUMBER ONE

  So Robin Fletcher was lying up one side of her mouth and down the other. It was easy for Robin Fletcher. Oh she was there all right up in Room 708, and maybe she was zonked like she said, or wasn’t, it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference. Because Robin Fletcher, even zonked, had been cool enough to (maybe) let Garcia have it in the eyeball, and cool enough to send me down more than one garden path. O.K. So suppose Karen was up there with her, looking out the window, doing what I don’t know, maybe making up poems, maybe talking, talking about Andy or Daddy Twink or her grandfather’s will, maybe even thinking out loud about what it would be like to end it all. Who can say, maybe even hanging out the window just to get the feel of it.

  So Robin Fletcher helped her the rest of the way.

  She had the motive, God knows. With one little push she could rid herself of one of her less favorite competitors and glom onto the wherewithal to make all her dreams come true. One little push. She had the cool too, that brand of Robin Fletcher cool which would have let her pick up the notebooks, the letter, and walk (not run) to the elevator, down and out, just like any old coed on her way to English 99.

  Which is where I came in.

  So Number 1 is for the Robin Fletcher fans, and let me tell you, Robin Fletcher’s fans, you could do a lot worse.

  NUMBER TWO

  Number 2 starts out the same as Number 1: with Robin Fletcher lying again. I guess it just came naturally to the girl. Suppose Robin Fletcher wasn’t there, but not ten miles away or fifty or a hundred or whatever it said in the friendly sheriff’s file. More like, say, a hundred feet give or take a few, and straight down. Suppose she even saw Karen take her dive, what would she have done next? Well you or me, maybe we’d’ve started hollering bloody murder, calling down the law and so forth, but Robin Fletcher? No sir. Robin Fletcher would have walked right in to the elevator and up, and probably she would have passed him on the way, Garcia say, or Gomez, or anyone who belonged enough in Karen’s life not to be noticed. (Not to be noticed? Hell, Jesus Christ Himself could have come and gone there, unnoticed, unless He started passing out the free samples.) And Robin Fletcher kept right on going, picked up her wherewithal before the law showed and then took off again to build up her alibi.

  Who knows? Maybe she even got him to hold the elevator for her.

  So Number 2 points the crooked finger at Big Daddy Twink Beydon, none other, he with the longest reach of all, with enough motive for a thousand murders and the cash to pay for them all and hush them up, and one in particular, buried back in his dark and dirty past, which would make Karen’s plunge one hell of a Bell Fruit Gum coincidence if you tried explaining it any other way.

  The more I think of Number 2, the more I think I’ll hedge my bets on the verdict if push ever comes to shove and Cage-to-Cage-to-Cage has to drop the pumpkin.

  NUMBER THREE

  Number 3? Well, if I’ve got to go for Number 2 for purely professional reasons, there’s still a tender spot in my heart for Number 3. It first came to me that Wednesday when I was signing my name on the dotted line, and if it sounded pretty far out when I heard it, I don’t know, maybe there’s some poet in me after all.

  Because Number 3 is for the poetry.

  Look at it this way. So Karie Beydon hated Twink, right? Hated him with every fiber of her scrawny body and always had, it was built in, so much so you’d have to say it had come to her straight down the chimney from her mother.

  Right?

  Right.

  O.K., so on her twentieth birthday, two years late (not that it mattered), she got the birthday card from dear departed Nancy, which only confirmed what she’d always known in her screwed-up head. It put the fuzz on the peach, so to speak, the poison on the needle. And she went to see George S. Curie III just like the letter told her to, and George S. Curie III showed her the will, and she told George S. Curie III right there and then that she was going to put it to Twink just like Nancy had.

  And maybe she even asked George S. Curie III what exactly had happened to her old man, her real one.

  I mean it stands to reason, doesn’t it? That she’d’ve been a little bit curious?

  And George S. Curie III told her. Oh not in so many words maybe, and she might have had to worm it out of him like I did, but he’d have told her. Just like he told me.

  So Karie went away and thought about it. And the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like she couldn’t put it to Twink just the way Nancy had. Because where would have been the poetry in that? No, she had to come up with something different, something of her own. Her own thing.

  And she did.

  There wasn’t any murder.

  Karie Beydon jumped.

  Do you see? That way nobody had to lie. Robin Fletcher could say, “She went out and I was too zonked to stop her.” Twink Beydon could say: “I want to find out what happened to my daughter,” and not be talking out of the corner of his mouth, only the side.

  And I could say: Maybe we’ll never know the whole truth and nothing but.

  Poetry.

  I’ll say this much. You pays your money and you takes your choice, but if Number 3’s the one and Karen Beydon did jump, then I’ve got to put in a good word for her here somewhere. Because the way it worked out, she sure did set it up for yours truly.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1974 by Peter Israel

  Cover design by Mimi Bark

  ISBN: 978-1-4532-9355-3

  This 2015 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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