Read Online Shoot to Kill by Brett Halliday - Free Book Online

some typing, and Helena was nervous and ill-at-ease. She apologized for her husband’s keeping me waiting, and Alfred came in soon after with a coffeepot ready to be taken up to Wes, and Helena took it up. She’s the only one in the household allowed in that room when Wes has his sign out. She stayed upstairs and I sat here alone.
    “About seven-fifteen the floodlights came on indicating a visitor had arrived, and Vic came out of his room to go to the front door and check him in. It was evidently someone Wes expected, because Vic sent him on around the side of the house to go up the outside stairs to Wes’s study.
    “That was standard operating procedure here,” he went on with a twisted grin. “Wes had a lot of weird characters visiting him at odd hours, and it was Vic’s job to know them and screen them, and send them around the back way if they were expected.
    “Vic came back inside and talked for a few minutes, and then went upstairs to his own room. A few minutes later Wes’s visitor left and the floodlights went off outside. I thought surely Wes would open up his door then and call me to come in, but the son-of-a-bitch didn’t.
    “Helena came down after a little, wearing a mink and a scarf over her head, and said she was bored to death sitting around this morgue and was going to drive over to the beach for a drink. She said I could tell Wes she’d probably be at the Penguin Club if he gave a damn.
    “She was just going out to get in her T-Bird that was parked in front of Wes’s Cad when Vic came hurrying downstairs and said he was going in town, too. I remember she asked him if he had Wes’s permission to leave the house and he said to hell with that… that there weren’t any more visitors due tonight and he had some time off due him.
    “They went out together and drove off in their own cars.” Mark Ames paused, looking at Griggs quizzically. “That brings me up to where I was when I started. Wait a minute. Except that Sutter came to the head of the stairs and yelled down to Alfred to bring him a bottle of Scotch and a glass, adding that he might as well get good and drunk if Ames was going to keep him waiting all night. He was good and sore and I got the impression he was shouting outside Wes’s door expecting him to hear him and come out to apologize, but he didn’t know my dear brother very well. He went back to his room, and I told Alfred he might as well bring me some bourbon at the same time, and that was when the car drove up outside and the lights came on.
    “I started for the front door just as Alfred was coming in from his pantry with the tray, and it was flung open violently and a young man burst in flourishing a revolver and shouting, ‘Where is he? I’m going to kill him.’
    “I tried to stop him, but I didn’t try very hard. I didn’t like the looks of that gun and I was hardly prepared to give my own life to save Wes. Anyhow, he shoved me aside and ran toward the stairs, and Alfred got in his way and he knocked him aside and the tray crashed on the floor. Then he went up the stairs two at a time, and Alfred picked himself up and went after him, and then the door burst open again and these two men came in. I was just getting up from the floor and all I could do was point up the stairs, and they ran past me and a moment later I heard a shot.”
    Mark Ames paused and shrugged. “I pulled myself together and went upstairs hoping for the best. Sutter was running down the hall and Alfred was outside the door, and Shayne and Rourke and the young man were inside, and I heard them say Wesley was dead, and I remember my first thought was that a lot of fairly decent people were going to sleep more soundly tonight after hearing the midnight newscast.”
    Griggs nodded absently. “Is that all, Mr. Ames?”
    “Your cops came a moment later. That’s all.”
    “Very well. But stick around until I get through and give you permission to leave.”
    “I intend to stay at least until Helena