Bring Back Her Body

ABEL CAIN—
He lived up to his first name, but soon was raising his last.

HONOR RYERSON—
A curvacious quiz kid, she asked too many questions.

THEODORE RYERSON—
A tycoon who wasn’t beyond paying in hot blood for cold cash.

TOBY PATTON
—He specialized in wild parties and thought of murder as another sort of amusement.

LISA SIMMS
—She knew what made men tick and how to wind them up.

KARL MUNGER
—This gambler had chips to burn and fish to fry.

PAULA RYERSON
—This elusive lovely held the keys to a dazzling fortune or a fiery fate.

“I want Paula
or
her body–

I don’t care which.”

This was the command of her wealthy, ruthless father. But Abel Cain, who undertook the search, found that he had been presented with only one side of the ugly truth. There were others looking for the hidden heiress too, and among them were the forces of jealousy, greed, and murderous vengeance.

When an island orgy held by Paula’s friends backfired and the two-faced revelers uncovered a surprise coffin, Cain found the key to his puzzle, one that pointed to something terribly simple and utterly evil.

This new novel, an ACE Original, presents some saucy humor, stalking females, and a bevy of up-to-no-good sophisticates thrown against a background of fast action and awesome terror. It will keep you guessing and breathless all the way.

CAIN
wouldn’t have got mixed into the Ryerson affair if he hadn’t told Honor Ryerson he “would see about it.” And that was the equivalent of a promise with Cain.

He paid little attention at first when Honor kept talking of her sister Paula’s disappearance. Paula had disappeared before, first with one man and then another, and Cain laid Honor’s concern to her imagination. But when she mentioned Karl Munger, Cain became interested.

She said, “I’m really scared, Cain. That private detective Daddy hired quit today because he found a connection between Paula and Karl Munger. And lately I’ve had the feeling that someone is watching us.”

Cain pointed out that a lot of people might find Honor worth watching, especially as her idea of being well dressed was to slide into a pair of sandals and out of practically everything else.

“Pooh,” Honor said. “I don’t mean that way. I mean sort of — well, skulking like. At night.”

“For how long?” Cain wanted to know.

“Just the last few days,” Honor admitted. “It was just a feeling until Daddy told me today the detective had been scared away. Now I’m worried.”

“Uhm,” Cain said. “I’ll see about it.”

“Tonight, Cain? Daddy asked if you wouldn’t come up tonight.”

Cain had planned to spend the evening trolling on Puget Sound but Munger interested him more. “Tonight,” he agreed, and watched Honor as she got into her little inboard cruiser and charged full speed around the point separating his land from the Ryerson estate.

Cain hadn’t tangled with Karl Munger for some time now. In a way he didn’t like the prospect. He was afraid of Munger. But he was restless from a winter of inactivity and the prospect of getting a crack at Munger was too much to resist.

At dark, he got into his little coupe and drove the two miles of road to Ryerson’s. He went at his usual conservative pace, braking carefully as he came down the gravelled slope that led to a sharp right-angle turn through the big iron gates.

If he had been going at any speed, the sudden blinding glare from oncoming headlights would have put him in the ditch. As it was, he came to a quick, full stop and blinked his lights. The approaching vehicle came on without dimming, grinding its gears so that Cain knew it was a truck. Then it stopped across the Ryerson driveway.

Cain swore fervently, squeezing his eyelids together to cut down the glare, and crept his coupe forward. He stopped alongside the truck and before he could do anything a flashlight beam hit his eyes, blinding him again.

“It’s Cain all right,” a voice said. There were footsteps on the gravel, “Going somewhere, Cain?”

“Take that damned light out of my eyes.”

The light dipped away. Cain blinked the after-glare away. He saw a slender, dapper man, a sleek little man with the marks of a typical gunsel stamped all over him. Cain recognized one of Munger’s hoodlums, a man he knew only as Smoky.

“Your business where I’m going?” Cain demanded.

“My business.” Smoky sounded as if he hoped he could get an argument started with Cain.

Cain took one hand from the wheel and pulled a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket. He found a match and lit it, cupping the flame to the end of the cigarette and letting the light flicker on his long, bony face. He flipped the match, still alight, at Smoky’s face. Smoky slapped at it where it struck his cheek. His swearing was shrill.

“Get that truck out of the way,” Cain ordered.

Cain could see Smoky’s hand tug a little at his coat lapels and he knew the man was itching to go for his gun. It was always that way with the kind of hoodlums Munger picked, Cain thought. They couldn’t use their heads; they substituted bullets for brains.

“This is just a friendly warning, Cain.” Anger shook his voice. “Go back to your fishing.”

“Sure,” Cain agreed. He opened the car door and unfolded his great length from the seat. Standing he was a head and a half taller than Smoky but not much wider. He looked down, noting indecision on the pale features. The light over the gate was dim but sufficient.

“Now let’s move that truck,” Cain said.

“The big fisherman wants to play, Anse,” Smoky said loudly.

Cain stood waiting, his eyes flicking toward the truck. The door opened and a man got out. Cain knew Anse and now he wasn’t at all happy about this situation. Anse was as tall as he and twice as broad. He lumbered down from the truck like a great robot, carrying his six-feet-six inches and three-hundred-odd pounds stiffly. When he came into the light, Cain could see his dead white hair and the pallor of his skin. He was an albino.

Cain knew better than to tangle with Anse: — He had tried it before. He moved swiftly, grabbing Smoky by the coat lapels. He lifted, smelling the sweet odor of marijuana on Smoky’s breath. With a grunt of pure pleasure, Cain juggled so that he caught Smoky by one leg and his coat front. Then he heaved as Anse charged forward.

Smoky hit Anse in the chest, breaking the big man’s stride. Cain took two quick strides and swung a looping right that flattened Anse’s nose. He cried out and Cain drove a fist against his ear. Off balance, Anse went on over sideways, tripping on Smoky. Cain turned and legged it for his car.

Inside, he gunned the motor and roared off down the road. As he took the curve at the bottom of the slope, a gun cracked from behind him. They would be shooting at his tires — Munger wouldn’t take a chance on killing him yet, he knew. But he was sweating. He didn’t like to think of tangling with Anse. He had tried it before and found it like trying to work over an animated stone wall.

Once around the curve Cain slowed, looped back by another road, and approached the estate along a little used gravel road that limited the south boundary. Parking in a thick grove of spruce trees, he went through a break in the high iron fence. He was shaking a little as he stood still to get his bearings. His fright was wearing off, leaving him angry. He didn’t like being pushed around by anyone, especially by Karl Munger.

But even in his anger he had to admire the man’s efficiency. Two hours after Cain had decided tentatively to look into the affair, Munger had a set-up rigged to warn him away. Which could only mean that Munger had already heard of the private detective’s quitting and of Honor’s latest visit to Cain. Very neat, Cain thought. Too damned neat.

Now, calmed a little, he followed a faint track through the fir and spruce forest that made up this part of the estate. He stopped once, listening to hear if he had been followed, but the only sounds were those of nocturnal animals and the plaintive bellow of a ferry boat on the Sound. It occurred to him that even Munger might hesitate to invade Ryerson’s. The old man was still a power in the area despite his age, and despite the rumors that he was financially against the wall. Cain decided to take his chances and turned on his pencil flashlight.

Now with enough light to keep the underbrush from tripping him, he made good time. He was still alert, his woods-sense sharpened as though he were a thousand miles from civilization instead of a few miles north of Seattle. But for the light it would have been difficult to track him. For a big man, he was surprisingly quiet.

When he broke onto the edge of a lawn that flowed uphill toward the house, large on a hill crest, he snapped off his light. He turned and walked to his left toward a summer house. It was little more than a vine-covered roof supported by pillars set in slabs of concrete and when he neared he could see the glowing tip of a cigar near one of the pillars. He knew that Theodore Ryerson was there waiting for him.

Cain had counted on this. He knew from things Honor had said that the old man always spent the warm evenings here in the quiet, soft darkness. Cain reached out with a toe and put his weight on a dry twig. The crack was a tiny pistol shot in the darkness. The glow of the cigar wavered briefly.

“Damn you!” It was a dry, rustling voice.

Cain said, “You should be more careful. Munger’s men are around.”

Ryerson’s voice was dry. “Munger wouldn’t dare come onto this place. When Paula first started gambling, he threatened me. He hasn’t tried it since.”

Cain could imagine the type of reprisal a man like Ryerson would concoct. He was still mentioned with awe in many business circles. Fabulous as the last of the lumber barons, an anachronism in modern business, he still managed to outwit many a younger, supposedly cleverer man by his ruthless disregard for ethics. Munger would not be fool enough to buck him openly.

Cain took a cigarette from the pack in his pocket and snapped a match aflame, holding it so he and Ryerson could see each other. They had not met before, although Cain had known Honor for five years.

The light revealed a drawn, heavily lined face, thin and dry like the voice, a pair of deep-set eyes, piercing, and a beak of a nose above a tight mouth. Cain could find little resemblance either to Honor or her half-sister Paula.

“Sit down.”

Cain sat. Ryerson spoke like a man accustomed to giving orders and to having them obeyed. There was no particular rudeness in his manner. “So you’re Abel Cain?”

Here it came. “Yes,” Cain said, and to forestall further remarks, added, “The name was my father’s idea of a joke.” Cain’s father had been a renegade minister and he had left his son a small income property and a somewhat agnostic idealism that Cain found to be incompatible with modern civilization. As a result, he had chosen to combat life by ignoring it for the most part.

Cain said, “Honor told me that Paula has disappeared again. She either didn’t know any more details or wouldn’t tell me.”

“I asked her not to say more. Honor is a good girl.”

That sounded odd coming from Ryerson. Honor was brilliant in the academic sense of the word. A genius. But she was erratic. That was the kindest word Cain could think of. Contrary to popular conception, being erratic and being a genius seldom went together. But in Honor Ryerson they did. But “a good girl”? Cain wasn’t so sure.

He said, “Why ask my help when a licensed detective failed?”

“You know Paula. From what I hear, you’re the only man who ever managed to handle her for any length of time. I want you to find her and bring her back.”

Cain said, “Your daughter chartered my boat to take her fishing in Alaska two years ago. I made her fish, that’s all.”

“Not from what I heard.” Ryerson chuckled, a rasping, dry sound. “I heard you threw her case of whiskey overboard and kept her away from getting more.”

“I just stayed away from shore,” Cain said. “But listening to a woman coming out of the D.T.'s isn’t getting to know her. I spent a lot of time fishing her out of the water, too, before I got rid of her liquor. I couldn’t convince her you don’t paddle around in glacier-fed water. I know her anatomy. I don’t know her.”

Ryerson said, “Did you know that when she’s sober Paula blushes at wearing a bathing suit in public?”

“She didn’t even wear a bathing suit for me,” Cain said dryly. “And I was glad to get rid of her. I only did it because Honor thought a trip might ‘cure’ Paula.”

“You seem to think a lot of Honor.”

Cain chose to ignore the undercurrent in the voice. “I’m trying to teach her something about literature. She’s spent all her life wrapped around a telescope and a logarithm table. I think she needs broadening. Do you object?”

“Hardly. You’ve been very good for her. And you can sleep with her for all I care. That might be good for her too.”

“I don’t chase nineteen-year-old children,” Cain said, “over-developed or not.”

Ryerson said, “We were talking about Paula. I gather you don’t think she’s worth finding.”

“I know her reputation,” Cain said. “I don’t see what you’re worrying about.”

“I’m not worrying about Paula,” Ryerson told him, and Cain could feel the thread of cold hatred in his voice. “But I can’t afford to have her disappear right now. She may be just trying to annoy me, but I doubt it.”

“Because of Munger’s interest?”

“Yes. For all I know she may be dead. If so, I’ll want proof as quickly as possible. I need her or her proxy for a business deal. If she is dead, the court will award me her proxy, I’m sure.

“As soon as possible, I want Paula or her body. I don’t care which.”