1956 - There's Always a Price Tag (7 page)

When we reached the house, I carried the suitcases into his study. He had gone upstairs, and as I was crossing the hall, Helen came out of the lounge.

'At eight o'clock, Nash, please,' she said.

'Yes, madam.'

Our eyes met and she smiled. I had seen that kind of smile before, and again I felt my heartbeat quicken.

'You won't wear your uniform, will you?'

'You said not, madam.'

'Yes, of course.'

At eight o'clock, I drove the Cadillac to the front door. I had spent the past hour shaving, taking a shower and putting on my new clothes. I was pretty pleased with the result.

As I leaned forward to cut the engine, the front door opened and Helen came out. She was wearing a white frock: a simple thing, not the kind of getup I would have expected her to wear at a ritzy joint like the Palm Grove, and that surprised me. She came down the steps looking very lovely and got into the car without even glancing at me.

The Cadillac was a two-seater with a bucket seat at the back and she sat next to the driver's seat. I closed the door, went around and got in beside her.

'Palm Grove, madam?'

'No; I've changed my mind. The Foothills Club, please.'

The Foothills Club was out Mount Wilson way and that was quite a drive. Her change of mind should have warned me what was in the wind, but somehow the nickel didn't drop. It dropped all right later, but it didn't then. Maybe having her so close to me, the sleeve of her dress against the sleeve of my jacket, the smell of her perfume, seeing the shape of her thighs under the folds of her skirt threw me off balance: the silent powerful weapons a woman has that can make a monkey out of any man.

The Foothills Club was used mostly by jive enthusiasts. I had been out there several times with Solly who was a keen jive fan. The advantage of the club was that it was cheap, the food good and the band superlative. Not the kind of joint one would have expected Mrs. Erle Dester to go to.

'Do you dance, Nash?' she asked suddenly as I swung the car through the gateway on to the avenue.

'Yes, madam.'

'For goodness' sake stop calling me madam.'

'Yes, Mrs. Dester.'

'That's better.' She half turned in her seat to look at me. 'I couldn't face the Palm Grove tonight,' she went on. 'I felt I wanted something with some snap in it. Do you ever feel like that?'

'Every so often.'

'I thought we might dance. None of my stuffy men friends would be seen dead at the Foothills Club.'

I didn't say anything.

We drove for a little while in silence, then she said abruptly, 'Tell me something about yourself. Why did you take this job? A man like you - surely you could find something better?'

'Why should I want anything better? You're the loveliest woman in Hollywood. I'm going dancing. This is a new Cadillac and I've just been paid. What more could I want?'

She laughed, reached forward and turned on the radio. She picked up Pee-Wee Hunt doing his stuff in a jam session.

'What were you before you became my husband's chauffeur?' she asked as she adjusted the volume control.

'It wouldn't interest you,' I said, looking straight ahead. 'Let's keep this free of personalities, shall we? You want to dance: I want to dance. That's about it, isn't it?'

'Yes,' she said and turned her head to watch the traffic that was hedging us in on all sides.

She was a good dancer, and to have her in my arms, feeling her breasts against my chest, her hair against my face, her long legs touching mine, gave me a bang I thought I had got beyond feeling.

The restaurant was pretty crowded with bobby-soxers and their kid friends. Most of the boys forgot who they were dancing with when they saw Helen.

We danced maybe for half an hour, then she said it was time for a drink.

'Are you feeling very rich, Nash, or shall I pay?' she asked as we moved to the bar.

'I'm rich enough to buy you a drink. What'll it be?'

'A brandy. While you're ordering it, I'm going to put my face straight.' She gave me that long, bold stare again. 'I didn't think I was going to enjoy this as much as I am.'

'This is only the beginning of it,' I said. 'The night lies ahead of us.'

'Yes.' Her fingers tightened on my arm. 'The night lies ahead of us.'

I watched her walk down the aisle that led to the Ladies' Rest Room and I felt a little heady.

I had an idea that this was going to be one of those nights when things go right. In the past there have been nights when things didn't go right. I have second sight about that kind of thing. I know when it isn't going the way I have planned it to go, and this night, I felt it was going right.

I went over to a table on the terrace where I could see the door of the Ladies' Room and snapped my fingers at a waiter. I ordered a brandy and a double whisky.

It wasn't until twenty minutes had crawled by that I began to wonder. Another ten minutes had me on my feet. Surely she couldn't take half an hour to put her face straight?

I waited another five minutes, then I got hold of a cigarette-girl. I gave her a buck and told her to look in the Ladies' Rest Room and let me know if a redhead in a white dress was still working on herself.

That took another five minutes.

The cigarette-girl came back and said there was no redhead now. The girl in charge had told her the redhead had gone out the back way the moment she had come into the Rest Room.

That was when the nickel dropped and I saw how I had been taken for a ride.

I was now forty minutes' hard driving from Dester's residence, if I had a car, that is, for I was pretty sure she had taken the Cadillac. She had a good start on me, but I wasn't licked yet.

I ran around to the parking lot.

There was no Cadillac.

But there was a 1945 Buick pulling out from a line of cars. I didn't hesitate. I ran over to the car, waving my arms.

The driver, a kid in an open-neck, green-and-white check shirt, pulled up and stared at me.

'Look, this is important,' I said. 'I've got to get to Hill Crest Avenue fast. I'll give you five bucks to get me there. How about it?'

'Sure,' he said. 'I was only going home.' He reached over and pushed open the off-side door. 'Get in. For five bucks I'd drive you to Los Angeles and back.'

'If you can make it in half an hour, I'll give you ten bucks,' I said.

He grinned at me. 'You've lost your dough. Hold on to your hat. Here we go!'

Although the Buick was born in 1945, it could move and the kid could drive. He was smart enough to know he couldn't hope to make the journey in time if he kept to the highway with the evening traffic at its peak. He took to the side roads: working his way down to Hill Crest Avenue by a series of rushes from one back street to another. He didn't quite manage to get me to the gates of Dester's house in thirty minutes, but he was only five minutes on the wrong side so I gave him the ten bucks.

I ran up the drive towards the house. As I reached the bend in the drive I saw there was a light on in the garage. I pulled up sharply and stepped behind a tree. From where I was I could see into the garage.

I waited, then I spotted Helen as she came from the back of the garage into the light.

What was she up to? I could see the Rolls and the Buick were in the garage. The Cadillac was parked on the tarmac. She paused by the Buick, her back turned to me. Cautiously I moved forward until I was within fifteen yards of her. Then I saw Dester.

He was lying on the garage floor, face down, and for a long, frightening moment I thought she had been crazy enough to have killed him.

She moved over to him, turned him over on his back, and I saw he was breathing. She took hold of him and hauled him to his feet. She handled him as if he weighed nothing at all. That shook me. I had carried him to his bedroom and I knew what he weighed. She must have been as strong as an ox to have handled him the way she was handling him.

Dester lolled against her. The light fell on his face. His eyes were open and glazed; his jaw sagged.

'Why can't you leave me alone?' he mumbled, trying to push her away. 'Take your hands off me. I'm going out, and no one's going to stop me.'

A smile came to Helen's mouth: an awful little smile that made my flesh creep.

'Of course, darling,' she said. 'I'm not going to stop you. I'm trying to help you.'

She opened the off-side door of the Buick. She wasn't missing a trick. Why smash up a Rolls when you had something cheaper to use?

This was it.

She intended to drive him down to the gates, put his hands on the steering wheel and launch him on to the avenue. At the end of the avenue, down the steep hill, was the main highway, crammed with fast-moving traffic.

At first glance it looked foolproof. If one of those fast-moving cars on the highway caught the Buick as it came out of the avenue the chances of Dester surviving were slight. Most of the people in Hollywood knew he was an alcoholic. They knew he drove when he was drunk. There was nothing in the setup to make the insurance company suspicious.

Or was there?

I remembered he had gone to San Francisco that morning. Had he fixed something with the insurance company? It flashed into my mind that there were loose ends, and you can't afford to have a single loose end when dealing with an insurance company.

Suppose he wasn't killed outright? The Buick was big and solid. It would take a lot of smashing. If he wasn't dead when the cops reached him, he might talk. If he told them his wife had helped him into the car, and later, they found out - as they were certain to find out - that he was insured for three-quarters of a million dollars, that would be that.

It wouldn't take the police long to find out Helen and I had been to the Foothills Club. What would they think when they discovered that she and I - her husband's chauffeur - had been dancing together?

That would put me on the spot. The kid would tell them I had been left high and dry without a car and I had been anxious enough to get back to the house to give him ten bucks for the trip. The police would want to know why; they would want to know why Helen had sneaked away. If I didn't come clean, they might think I was also in the plot. Even if they didn't grab Helen on an attempted murder rap, even if they didn't try to tie me into the rap too, the insurance company would be tipped off and she would never dare try again; and if she didn't try again, I wouldn't get my share of the money.

I was suddenly certain that this wasn't the way to do it. If Dester had to die, something much more certain and foolproof had to be thought up. There was too much hanging on his death to take any risk: too much risk to take any chances.

As Helen walked around to the driving seat, I came out of the shadows and stepped into the light.

She must have had nerves like steel. She didn't start nor cry out. The hard glare of the light fell fully on her face; except for a slight tightening of her mouth, there was no change of expression.

She moved slowly towards me.

'Oh, Nash, Mr. Dester insists on being driven to the Crescent Club,' she said quietly. 'I was going to take him, but now you are here, you had better.'

The lie was as smooth as silk. If I hadn't known better I would have fallen for it.

'Yes, madam,' I said, and I wished I had as good control over my face as she had over hers. My voice sounded husky, and I must have shown how rattled I was.

I stepped past her to the Buick, got into the car and started the engine. She turned and walked away, disappearing into the darkness.

Dester suddenly straightened up.

'Don't drive out,' he said sharply. He spoke in his normal voice and that shook me. I turned to stare at him.

'She wanted to get you out of the way, of course,' he said. 'How did you get back?'

I continued to stare at him, aware that cold sweat was beading my face.

He smiled crookedly at me. 'Don't look as if you've seen a ghost,' he said. 'How did you get back?'

'A guy gave me a lift,' I said, and my voice sounded like the croak of a frog.

'I had an idea she wanted to get rid of me,' he said. 'She's after the insurance money, of course.' He laughed. 'You wouldn't think a woman as lovely as she is could be so ruthless, would you?' He produced a cigarette and lit it. 'Well, now I know where I stand.' He opened the car door and got out. 'I think after all that excitement I'll go to bed. I want you to sleep in my dressing room tonight, kid. You never know: now she has started, she might try to finish it. I don't want her to be tempted to suffocate me while I'm asleep.'

I knew I had to try to behave as any normal man would have behaved when he heard a thing like this.

'But aren't you going to call the police?' I said.

'The police?' He laughed. 'Of course not. She's only after the insurance money. I'm taking good care she doesn't get it, and once she realizes that she'll leave me alone.'

I'm taking good care she doesn't get it.

I very nearly gave myself away.

What did he mean?

'Let's go back to the house,' he went on and moved off across the tarmac.

I turned off the garage light, ran upstairs, snatched up my pyjamas and shaving kit, then went after him.

Together, we entered the still, silent house.

As we came up the stairs, Helen appeared in the doorway of her bedroom.

The sight of Dester with me behind him jolted her. Her face lost colour and her hand went up to her throat.

'Nash's sleeping in my dressing room,' Dester said. 'He's keeping an eye on me. You might like to know in case you felt you should see how I am during the night.'

He moved past her into his bedroom.

I paused at the head of the stairs to look at her.

We stared at each other for a long moment. I could see the naked hatred in her eyes. Then she turned and shut the bedroom door in my face.

* * *

I didn't sleep much that night. I kept thinking of what he had said about making sure Helen wouldn't get the insurance money. That had me worried for he had spoken with conviction. Was it possible that the premium was already overdue? It would be a joke on me if the policy wasn't worth anything now: and a joke on her too.