Murder Comes to Eden. Leslie Ford

       Murder Comes to Eden

      Copyright © 1955, renewed 1983, by Zenith Brown.

      All rights reserved.

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidepress.com

      CHAPTER I

      TIPTON JAMES O’LEARY had his war all taped out. Mission: no entangling alliances. Method: off duty, stick strictly to those spots where you don’t run into any. It was a conclusion he’d come to the sixth time he was best man at a hasty wedding, fortified every time he saw a girl with a lost look in her eye and a kid in her arms waving good-bye on a station platform. He finished his last year in college and enlisted when he was twenty-one. He was a staff sergeant in a cadre at Fort Bragg when he was twenty-three, dropped in at a USO dance for a minute because he was fed up with a crap game, and that was that. She had red-gold hair and a green dress. She was standing over in a corner all by herself, like something cool and lovely that had slipped up from the crystalline caves of the sunlit sea.

      “Who is that girl?” he asked the hostess.

      “That’s Miss Dulaney. Shall I take you over to meet her, Sergeant?”

      “No, thanks,” said Sergeant O’Leary. He went over by himself. “I’m Tipton James O’Leary. Spig, for short,” he said.

      She looked up at him, laughing. Her eyes were greenish brown, flecked with sparkling gold, and there was a faint almost milk-blue transparency under the long golden lashes that shaded them.

      “I’m Mary Margaret Dulaney. Molly for short.”

      “May I have this dance, Molly—and all the rest? Then I’d like to take you home, if your father the Sea King doesn’t mind.”

      “You may have this dance,” Molly said. “More than one’s against the rules. And my father the Sea King’s coming for me at half-past twelve.”

      “You leave the rules to me,” said Spig O’Leary. “A sergeant can do anything.”

      At twelve-thirty he took her out. The Sea King’s car was khaki-coloured, with a flag on the fender, a flag with two stars on it. He got out, giving his daughter a testy glare.

      “Daddy, this is Staff Sergeant Tipton James O’Leary—Spig, for short.—My father, General Dulaney.”

      Spig saluted. The general returned it. He was a short, peppery man.

      “ ‘Spig’ ” he said. “No relation to old Spig O’Leary, West Point ’16?”

      “My father, sir.”

      “Ha. Where is the old horse?”

      “Washington, sir. War Production Board.”

      “Ha.” He looked at Spig’s GI uniform. “What are you doing in that?”

      “Backbone of the Army, sir. Save money. No uniforms to buy.”

      “Sounds like old Spig himself. Too bad. Loss to the Army.”

      “Eight kids to feed, sir.”

      “Tough going with three, myself. Give him my best. Hurry up, Molly.”

      “I’d like permission to see your daughter again, sir,” said Spig. “Immediate mission: matrimony.”

      The general started. “No way to save money.” He glowered around at his daughter. “I told your mother she was a fool to let you come here.” He looked at his watch. “Now you’re here, the sergeant can walk you home. I had to leave the only Christian hand I’ve had all night. Your mother’ll be delighted. Daisy Tipton was one of our bridesmaids.”

      He returned Spig’s salute and got back in his car, and Spig kissed Molly then in front of a streetful of cheering soldiers.

      Spig O’Leary was six feet one, his hair, what the barber had left of it, ginger-red, his eyes grey, his mouth wide, his lips thin, his jaw round but appearing square.

      “I don’t know what our kids are going to look like,” he said. “Have you had biology? What do two reds make—any idea?”

      “Blue, I think,” Molly said. “But I only got as far as frogs.”

      Two weeks later they were married.

      “It’s a mistake,” the general said. “Nineteen’s too young.”

      “He’ll have to take a commission, now,” said Mrs. Dulaney.

      “We need the money,” Molly O’Leary said. “I’ve been in plenty of officers’ clubs. The backbone of the Army, Daddy. I’ve heard you say it. And he’s leaving so soon, Mother, you won’t be embarrassed long. Oh Daddy, I love him! I’m going to get an apartment in Washington. Maybe he can hitch a plane back once or twice. . .”

      “A sergeant can do anything,” the general said.

      Sergeant O’Leary made it five times—once, just before Normandy, for twenty-seven minutes on a darkened airstrip in Virginia. In May, 1947, he came back to the Sea King’s daughter and two small kids—older, tougher, quieter, profoundly happy, profoundly in love. Molly had a three-room apartment in a rabbit warren of brick with “Keep Off” signs on the patch of grass in front of it. He’d been home two weeks the morning she plunked the coffee pot down on the table, her eyes flashing, the gold flecks tinder-bright.

      “Spig O’Leary . . . we can’t stand this!” she said hotly. “We’ve got to have a bigger place to live. That box you threw in the garbage yesterday had Tippy’s leaves in it, the ones he’s been collecting all spring every time we took a walk. This marriage has gone beautifully all the time you were away. It’s going bust in six months unless——”

      “Not ever, Mrs. O’Leary. This marriage is never going bust.”

      “It is unless we get a little room to move around in. And Tippy’s just got to be outdoors. Look, Spig. We’ve got thirty-five