to drive slowly, and it took me twenty minutes to reach the dirt track leading down to the beach.
As I drove down the narrow road with its low, undulating sand hills on either side, I examined the terrain carefully.
Again it struck me how odd it was that O’Brien should have been on this road. There was no cover on either side of the road, no trees or shrubs behind which he could have hidden.
I drove slowly on until I came to a disturbance in the sand dunes on my right. A large patch of ground had been trampled flat, and I decided this must have been the scene of the accident. I stopped the car and got out.
From where I stood I could see the sea and the beach some two miles ahead of me. The ground was flat with only slight sandhills, and no cover except the distant clump of palms where Lucille and I had been.
For some moments I continued to look around, but there was nothing to tell me more than I had seen at first glance, so I got back into the Pontiac. I drove down to the beach and pulled up within twenty yards of where we had parked last night.
The first thing I noticed was the tyre marks of the Cadillac, imprinted in the sand, and that gave me a shock. I saw also Lucille’s and my footprints leading down to the palm trees. This was something I hadn’t reckoned on, and I wondered if the police had been down here and if they had seen the tracks.
If we had left prints in the sand, then the man who had telephoned us, if he had really seen us on the beach, must also have left prints.
I started to hunt around for them, and although I covered the ground for a three-hundred-yard
radius there were no other footprints except mine and Lucille’s to be seen.
That told me two things: the police hadn’t been down here, and therefore they couldn’t have seen the tyre marks of the Cadillac and the man who had telephoned us couldn’t have been on the scene either. That set me another puzzle. If he hadn’t been down here, how had he known Lucille and I had swam together and then had quarrelled? After thinking about this for some moments, I decided the only possible way in which he could have seen us would have been from some distance away, and he must have watched us with the aid of powerful night glasses. That would explain why Lucille hadn’t seen him.
I spent several minutes wiping out the tyre marks in the sand. Then, walking down to the palm trees, taking care to walk in the prints I had made the previous night, I started back to the road, wiping out each print and also Lucille’s as I went until I once more reached the road.
I was sweating by the time I had completed the task, but it gave me a sense of security to see there were no tell-tale prints to be discovered if the police did decide to extend their search down here for clues.
Feeling at least I had taken every reasonable precaution not to be traced, I walked over to the Pontiac. As I opened the car door, I heard a car coming and looking around, I saw a yellow and red Oldsmobile turning the bend in the road and coming slowly towards me.
My heart gave a little kick against my ribs, and I waited, watching the car come, thinking if it had arrived three minutes sooner, the driver would have seen me wiping out the prints in the sand.
When the car was within a hundred yards of me, I saw the driver was a woman. She pulled up within ten yards of where I stood and she stared at me through the open window of the car. Then she got out.
She had on a scarlet dress, a small, white hat and white net gloves. She was slightly above medium height and dark: her face had the standard beauty of the Latin-American women you can see any day on the Florida beaches displaying themselves either as ornaments or as commercial propositions depending on who is looking at them.
She got out of the car with a display of long, tapering legs in nylon, smoothed her dress over solid, well- padded hips and stared at me, her black eyes intent and curious.
‘Is this the place where the policeman was killed?’ she asked, moving slowly towards me.
‘I imagine it happened farther up the road,’ I said, wondering who she was and what she was doing here. I’d say you’ve passed the actual place.’
‘Oh?’ She paused near me. ‘You think farther back up the road?’
The papers said he was killed on the road.’
She opened her handbag, took out a crumpled pack of Luckies, put one between her full red lips and then stared at me.
I took out my lighter and moved close to her. As she bent to dip the cigarette end into the flame I sheltered in my cupped hands, I smelt the perfume she had sprayed on her hair.
‘Thank you.’
She lifted her head and stared directly at me. At such close quarters I could see her heavy pancake make-up had been expertly put on and she had a faint black line of a moustache that gave her that sensual quality that most Latin-American women have.
‘Are you a newspaper man?’ she asked.
‘A newspaper man? Why, no. I just came down here for a swim.’
She turned her head and looked at the stretch of sand and stared at the smudge marks made while wiping out Lucille’s and my footprints.
‘Did you make those marks?’
‘You mean those marks in the sand?’ I tried to sound casual. ‘They were there when I came.’
‘They look as if someone has been trying to get rid of footprints.’
I turned to stare at the marks.
‘Do you think so? They could have been made by the wind. The wind can make odd patterns in the sand.’
‘Can it?’ Again I felt the dark eyes move over my face. ‘I passed a piece of ground that was trampled over about two miles up the road. Do you think that is where he was killed?’
‘It’s likely. I wouldn’t know.’
‘I’m not asking out of curiosity. I was going to marry him.’
I looked sharply at her, remembering one of the newspapers had said O’Brien was going to marry
a nightclub singer.
‘Oh, yes. I read this morning in the paper you were going to marry him.’
‘Did you?’ She smiled. It was a cold, bitter smile. ‘I don’t suppose you had ever heard of me before you read that in the paper. I’ve been in show business now for ten years. It’s not very encouraging that the first real publicity I get is when a man I planned to marry gets himself killed because he is too stupid to know any better.’
She turned abruptly and walked back to the Oldsmobile, leaving me staring after her.
She got in the car and U-turned. Then without a glance in my direction, she drove away fast in a cloud of sand and dust.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I
I had a sandwich lunch and then drove back to my bungalow. While I ate the sandwiches and on my way back, my mind was busy, but I didn’t come up with anything helpful. I was more convinced than ever that there was something very phoney about this accident. I was certain Lucille had lied to me about how the accident had happened. The situation had become more perplexing after I had looked over the ground. It was so obvious now she must have seen O’Brien as he was coming towards her. She could not have slowed down and she must have driven straight at him. With such an obvious set-up, she could expect no mercy from any jury, and it was even more obvious to me now why she was so anxious for me to take the blame.
But my immediate problem was what I was to do with the Cadillac. Sooner or later, if the police search was going to be as thorough as they claimed, they would find it in Seaborne’s garage.
