It's a Sin to Kill Read Online Free Page A

growing with his panic. He had to force the words past the lump. “On my face, it’s lipstick. On my skivy, it’s blood.”
    Mary Lou turned with one hand on the knob of the companionway door. “Blood?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œHow do you know it’s blood?”
    â€œI know blood when I see it. I’ve got it on the laces of my sneakers, too.” Ames gritted his teeth against an impulse to be sick. “The carpet in the cabin of the
Sea Bird
was soaked with it.”
    Mary Lou leaned against the door. Some of the sullen look left her eyes. “You’re hurt, Charlie?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen where did the blood come from?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you ask Mrs. Camden?”
    â€œI couldn’t.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œShe wasn’t in the cabin when I woke up this morning.”
    â€œShe wasn’t in the cabin?”
    Ames realized he was panting. “No. Just her evening dress and hose and scanties. Inside out. Like she’d peeled them off in a hell of a hurry.” He wanted Mary Lou to believe him. She had to believe him. “But I didn’t, Mary Lou. No matter how drunk a man gets, he remembers a thing like that. And I wasn’t drinking.”
    â€œThere was liquor in the cabin?”
    â€œYeah. An empty bottle rolling between the two bunks.
    And a whole cabinet filled with unopened bottles.”
    â€œMrs. Camden had gone to the house?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œHer maid came out on the pier looking for her. There was a long distance call. From Paris. The maid seemed surprised when I told her Mrs. Camden wasn’t aboard the cruiser. Then, later, when I pulled myself together and went to the house to ask how come, the butler said she wasn’t there, that they’d searched every room in the house for her. And both he and the maid were frightened. And the maid shot at me through the screen door.”
    â€œShe shot at you?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œLike I told you before, she was frightened.” Ames tried to swallow the lump in his throat and it bobbed up and returned with his Adam’s apple. “And that’s not the worst of it.” He tugged the thick wad of bills from his pocket and tossed it on the bunk on which he had been sitting. “When I put on my dungarees, I found this in my hip pocket.”
    Mary Lou came back and stood by the bunk. The fat wad of bills unfolded and lay flat. A thick silence filled the cabin. The smell of the sea was stronger. There was a gurgling of water. The mooring ropes creaked with the pull of the tide. An outbound fishing boat whistled for the bridge tender to raise the draw span. The rusted barrier lowered. The warning bells on the bridge began to ring.
    â€œHow much is there?” the girl asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” Ames said. “I counted up to two thousand dollars and I didn’t get half through.”
    Mary Lou picked up the top bill. It was faintly speckled with dried blood. She opened her fingers and the bill fluttered back to the bunk. Her voice was small, “Where did you get all that money, Charlie?”
    Ames released the bunk and used his hands to support his face. His words were muffled by his fingers.
    â€œI don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t the least idea. Like I told you, it was in the hip pocket of my dungarees when I came to this morning.”

Chapter Three
    M ARY L OU sat on the bunk and counted the bills. “There are five thousand dollars here.”
    Ames massaged his temples with his fingers. “So?”
    â€œYou don’t know where this money came from?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou’re not lying to me, Charlie?”
    â€œI swear I’m not.”
    â€œYou found it in a pocket of your dungarees when you woke up this morning?”
    â€œYeah. In my right hip pocket.”
    â€œAnd