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Overview
A quiet construction engineer in Denver, Colorado, Charlie Dell doesn’t need any complications in his life. But his wife, Irma, insists they take in her younger sister, Lois, as a matter of duty. Charlie bristles at the thought of having a seventeen-year-old girl around . . . until he gets one look at Lois.
She’s a far cry from the buck-toothed kid Dell remembers, and more than willing to indulge in a little sin with her sister’s husband. Insane with passion, Dell starts cutting corners at work in order to find time alone with her. But actions have consequences—deadly, serious ones—and the further Dell goes to cover his tracks, the darker and more dangerous his path gets.
“This is a taut, matter-of-fact novel—simply and powerfully written.” —The Nashville Tennessean
Praise for Brett Halliday’s Mike Shayne Mysteries
“[Mike Shayne is] one of the best of the tough sleuths.” —The New York Times
“Unlike anything else in the genre.” —L. J. Washburn, author of For Whom the Funeral Bell Tolls
“Raw, ingenious storytelling . . . Pure pleasure.” —Shane Black, creator of Lethal Weapon and writer/director of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, on Murder Is My Business
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504019316 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MysteriousPress.com/Open Road |
| Publication date: | 10/13/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 312 |
| Sales rank: | 844,747 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Charlie Dell
By Brett Halliday
MysteriousPress.com
Copyright © 1952 Coward-McCann, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1931-6
CHAPTER 1
Lois was seventeen that fall she came to live with us. Fourteen years younger than my wife and a full generation wiser. You'd never have guessed they were sisters from their looks and the way they acted. Irma was born in 1913 and her formative years were the twenties. But Lois was born in 1927. If you don't think that makes a big difference, try talking to the youngsters of that era.
I didn't want Lois in our house, but Irma thought it was her duty to take her sister in after their mother died. Irma was hell on duty. It's always seemed funny to me, but most of her generation turned out that way. After kicking over the traces in the twenties. Especially the girls — the ones who'd kicked highest. A sort of turning backward to the stern precepts they scoffed at during adolescence. Maybe some sort of self-flagellation, or feeling of atonement, or some other silly neuroticism I don't pretend to understand.
At least, that's the way it seems to me it was with Irma. I think she felt, vaguely, that she owed some sort of debt to society. It cropped up in a lot of little ways after we were married, and it was manifest by the time Lois came to live with us.
As I say, I didn't want Lois. We were getting along all right in Denver. Just the two of us, in our bungalow on South Race Street that was more than half paid for. We did have room for Lois. An extra bedroom that Irma had planned for a nursery when I built the house in 1931 on an FHA loan, but I didn't see any reason why we should turn that over to a seventeen-year-old girl and disrupt our lives just because she was Irma's sister.
"Why doesn't she stay with her aunt in Chicago?" I asked Irma. "She can keep on going to the same high school where she has all her friends, and your aunt has plenty of room for her. We can help out with money for her board."
Irma had just come back from her mother's funeral. She hadn't put on mourning, but she did wear a grim expression and ever since I met her at the train she'd been stand-offish. To make sure I wouldn't forget she was in mourning, I guess. She shook her head and deepened the three vertical lines on her forehead in a frown and said, "You don't understand, Charles. Lois needs someone nearer her own age to look after her. Someone she can talk to and who'll understand her. I can't leave her in Chicago."
We were sitting in the living room. I'd opened a bottle of beer after we got back from the station, and Irma was sitting across from me in the blue chair she liked. She was smoking a cigarette and sitting very erect in her traveling suit and a girdle that was a little too tight for her. She was always well fleshed, and during the past few years she's been getting a little solider and bulkier all the time.
Her feet were planted close together in front of her chair and her legs were straight up and down and at right angles to her thighs.
She wore sensible, low-heeled black shoes tightly laced with small bows at the top and a roll of flesh showing above the bows. Her ankles and wrists were thick but there was a nice swell to her calves. Her suit was the short length they were wearing that year, a little bit tight about her hips, and the hem of her skirt just hit the tops of her knees the way she was sitting. I was directly across from her, lounging back on the settee. She was my wife and I'd been sleeping alone for three weeks. I took another gulp of beer and said, "Do we have to argue about it right now? Wouldn't you like to get out of those tight clothes and lie down a little while before dinner?"
"We don't have to argue about it at all. Everything is arranged. Lois is coming next Thursday."
"Just like that, huh?" I was mad. More at her for disregarding my hint than because she had invited her kid sister to live with us without asking me. God knows why a wife acts like that after being married to a man for a dozen years. Irma knew what I wanted, all right.
That thought was in the back of my mind and it made me madder still. The consciousness that she knew perfectly well what I meant but didn't care enough to take the hint. If she had, there wouldn't have been any argument. I really didn't care about Lois. I didn't know her then.
What made it worse was my knowing that Irma could be as passionate as I. Especially after three weeks alone in Chicago. But she was going to choose the time. She was going to sit there, prim faced, and beat me down with logic and reasonableness about Lois until I agreed the girl could come to Denver. Then Irma'd go out in the kitchen and get dinner and we'd eat it, and then, when she thought the proper time had come, she'd undress and allow me to show her a good time.
My beer didn't taste good. She went on talking calmly. "You forget that Lois is seventeen. She's fully developed and has all sorts of grown-up ideas. Heaven knows what may have already happened with that wild high-school crowd she's running around with. I certainly don't trust her in Chicago with no more intelligent supervision than Aunt Geraldine can give her."
"Sex rearing its ugly head so early?" I guess I sneered a little.
Irma tightened her lips. "There are so many problems with a young girl."
"You mean you're afraid she'll get in trouble if you're not around to shoo the boys off?"
"I wish you wouldn't say crude things like that, Charles. What's in the refrigerator for dinner?"
"Why beat around the bush?" I asked angrily. "That is what you mean, isn't it?"
"That's not a nice thing to suggest, Charles. Lois is my own sister."
"Don't forget you weren't an angel at her age. I don't see —" "We won't discuss it further tonight if you're going to adopt that attitude." Irma put out her cigarette and got up.
I finished my beer. It still didn't taste good. I watched to see if she'd unbutton her jacket and go back to the bedroom. If she did, I'd wait a few minutes and stroll back about the time she got down to her slip. I'd come up behind her and kiss the soft spot between her shoulder and neck and put my arms around her and cup my hands over her big, firm breasts. And she'd stiffen for a moment and stand very still without saying anything, as if I were forcing her, but I'd hear her begin to breathe faster. Then I'd turn her slowly and her eyes would be closed, and my mouth would slide up the side of her cheek to her lips as she turned to me.
But she didn't unbutton her jacket. She went into the kitchen and shut the door. I got up and grabbed my hat and went out the front door.
I'd had a few drinks when I got back at nine o'clock. Just enough to hope she was waiting up for me so we could resume the argument about Lois. I'd thought of a lot of sarcastic things to say while sitting in the bar, and I'd been rehearsing them on the way home. One of those satisfactory mental conversations where the other party always says exactly the right thing to give you a chance for the smart comeback you've got ready.
There was a light in the living room. I closed the front door behind me quietly and hung my hat in the hall and went in.
Irma wasn't in the living room. The floor lamp at the end of the sofa was lit and the room was empty. I should have known she wouldn't be waiting up. I should have known she'd calmly fix herself something to eat and then go to bed without caring where I was or what I was doing. As for carrying on the argument about Lois — there wasn't any argument as far as Irma was concerned. It was all settled.
I guess most husbands would be glad to have a woman who didn't sit up waiting for them with a rolling pin. But I don't like to be ignored.
I stood just inside the living room trying to decide whether to go back to the bar and get drunk. It seemed like a good idea. But even while I considered it I knew I wasn't going to, just because it wouldn't bother Irma any if I did. Oh, it would bother her, all right, but she wouldn't let on till later. Not until months later when I'd forgot all about it. Then she'd bring it up and throw it in my face.
I thought about her lying in bed and knew I wanted to be with her before I had any more drinks. But I remembered that I hadn't eaten since lunch.
I went into the kitchen and turned on the light. Sure enough there was a plate with two hamburger sandwiches on the kitchen table and a plate of sliced tomatoes beside it, all fixed up neatly and waiting for me to come home — the smartest kind of reproof from a long-suffering wife for her brute of a husband who slams out of the house to a bar after denying her own flesh and blood the refuge of their home.
I poured a glass of milk and drank it, and ate the cold sandwiches and warm tomatoes. My drinks were wearing off and it seemed a lot of foolishness to argue with Irma about something she'd already decided on. Actually, I didn't particularly care whether Lois came to live with us or not I remembered her as a straggly, bigtoothed girl of ten or eleven, and I thought she'd be company for Irma and help around the house.
I tiptoed across the kitchen and rinsed out my dishes and glass, turned out the light and went through the living room to turn on the hall light between the two bedrooms. The door to our bedroom was open and I stood in the hall a minute to see if I could hear Irma snoring. She does sometimes. Not very loud, and I thought it was cute when we were first married. But I couldn't hear a sound from inside the bedroom. Not even Irma's breathing. So I felt sure she was awake and listening to every movement I made, waiting for me to come in and tell her I was sorry.
I left the hall light on and went back to the living room quietly and lit a cigarette. Let her keep on listening. Let her wonder what I was doing and why I didn't come on to bed. Let her wonder, by God, what I'd been doing these past three weeks while she was away so that now I didn't hurry in to bed with her.
I knew she would be wondering just that. Even though she often says she hasn't got a jealous bone in her body. That's because she thinks jealousy is tied up with sex, and she's been twelve years trying to prove that she doesn't know what passion is, that all she does is only to please me. Which I know is a lie. But I always have to make the advances to her.
I sat in the living room and smoked quietly and wondered how it would be if I went in and got undressed and lay down beside her with my back turned and didn't touch her. It would serve her right, but I knew how it'd be from past experience. She'd simply lie there a little while to see if I was going to turn over, and then she'd go on to sleep if I didn't. And there I'd be.
I put out my cigarette and went through the hall, flipped the hall switch and went into the bedroom. Moonlight came through the west window and I could see Irma under the covers of the big bed, curled up and turned toward the wall away from me. I still couldn't hear her breathing, so I knew she was awake.
I undressed without turning on the bedroom light. I reached for my pajamas, but then decided to stay naked and leaned down to turn back the covers and get in beside her.
She didn't move. She lay there as if she were unconscious of me. I could feel the faint vibrations of her breathing, and the warmth of her body was pleasant. I moved closer.
My knee touched bare flesh. She had on one of her silk nightgowns, but it was twisted up around her waist the way it gets after she's lain in bed a little while. She claims it works up by itself when she wriggles around to get comfortably settled. I suspect she helps by pulling it up a little. But it makes her mad if I suggest that. To admit it would be admitting she hopes I will respond, and Irma thinks that would be a nasty thing to admit.
She didn't move when my knee touched her. Her breathing didn't change. I lay there, tense and hot, and swore to myself that I'd be damned if I was going to beg her for anything.
But she was near and warm, and I thought I'd be as big a fool as she if I lay there wanting her and not doing anything about it.
I moved closer and felt her muscles tense a moment, then relax. She stirred a trifle, restlessly, as if she weren't quite awake, and moved closer to me.
Everything was exactly as it had been hundreds of times before. She was following my lead but pretending she wasn't. Or, rather pretending she was doing it, not because she wanted to, but only because it was a wife's duty.
As I said, Irma was hell on duty.
Her breathing had changed, now. It was deeper and faster. But still she stubbornly pretended to be too sleepy to realize what was going on. She was going to make me play it out to the end. Now I was supposed to reach over and pull her toward me. And she, simulating reluctance, would slowly turn toward me, trying to hide the fact that all the time she was as eager as I.
I didn't put my hands on her. I clenched my fists hard and gritted my teeth and lay there with my knee against her.
And she lay there and waited for me to go on as I always had before.
Neither of us said anything.
Desire doesn't stand up very well in a battle with other emotions. Passion ebbed out of me as I got angry.
I turned over with my back to Irma and lay there with my eyes wide open looking at a streak of moonlight hitting my chest of drawers at the end of the room. I waited a long time to see if, for once in her life, Irma would be honest enough to turn to me. That's all I wanted. Just one little gesture of honest love.
She didn't move. And after a while I went to sleep.
CHAPTER 2Lois was arriving on the early train from Chicago Thursday morning, so Irma dropped me off in front of the office on Seventeenth Street and drove on down to the depot to meet her sister. I went up in the elevator to the fourth floor of the Mechanics Building and down the hall to a door lettered MOUNTAIN STATES ENGINEERING COMPANY.
It was a new firm in Denver, fighting hard to get a solid foothold among the older and more established engineering outfits. The boss was Leverett Stone. One of the best engineers I ever knew, and the nicest guy I ever worked for. He was from the East, a graduate of Cornell, and had come to Denver to help build the government chemical plant east of town.
I was one of the dozen or more party chiefs on that job, and we got pretty friendly working there together. When the job was done and the engineering staff laid off, Stone decided to open his own private engineering office in Denver, and offered me a job with him.
I was glad to take it. Leverett Stone was about forty. Tall and rangy and slow spoken, with a streak of gray in his hair and a slow smile that spread easily over his bony face. He knew his profession from the bottom up, and was the only man I ever knew in my life who never got ruffled or upset under strain.
He had no ties in the East and he fell in love with the Denver climate and saw an opportunity to get in on the ground floor with a new firm while most of the local engineers were in uniform or dragging down fat salaries on government projects.
And that's just where we were. On the ground floor. We got a lot of small jobs that the larger firms didn't want to fool with, and were just about making ends meet by working like the devil. I was putting everything I had into the job because Stone inspired a man to do that, and because our success meant so much to me personally. If the firm grew, I would grow with it. If it failed, I'd be out on the streets looking for another humdrum job such as I'd had ever since college.
We had a small staff. Just Stone, a draftsman named Joe Durkin, myself, and a lad named Sonny Porter who'd had two years at the College of Mines and was staying out a year to pick up some field experience and tuition money. Sonny had something the matter with his lungs that kept him out of the Army but didn't interfere with his running an instrument or dragging a chain. Then I had two or three local boys on the string whom I could call in for a few hours or days any time I needed them to make up a field party.
Joe Durkin was wizened and bald, about fifty, a whiz of a draftsman but no good for anything else. He never went out of the office and Stone paid him two hundred dollars a month, which kept him supplied with snuff and drinking liquor. Sonny Porter was twenty. A big freckled kid with a thatch of corn-colored hair and sort of puppyish desire to please. He wasn't too bright, but he listened to what you told him most of the time and did all right if you didn't overburden his mind with two things at once. He could run an accurate string of levels, and turn angles and give line with the transit, and I'd taught him to handle a plumb bob and the rear end of the chain so we got pretty good closures most of the time.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Charlie Dell by Brett Halliday. Copyright © 1952 Coward-McCann, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of MysteriousPress.com.
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