Date for Murder (5 page)

“The police really prefer things left the way they were found,” Leona said.

“The police!” For the first time Idell thought of them. More scandal, more front pages news about the Manders family. “Damn!” she said. She rose and turned Link over. For the first time she became aware of the long shallow scratches on his chest. She took her candy-striped towel and draped it so it covered him from chest to thigh. “That’s the best I can offer now,” she said with a touch of grim humor. “I’ll go phone.”

M
ARK
went off duty at seven, leaving the station to the boy who worked mornings, and walked over to Babe’s for steak and coffee. Babe always reserved a pair of steaks, and usually had them fried by the time he arrived. She turned her kitchen over to the morning girl and slid onto a seat alongside Mark.

“Have lots of fun, last night?” she asked.

Babe used a blond rinse on her hair. Not enough to bleach it, she often said, but just enough to bring out the lights. Normally it was a rather rusty blond, but with the rinse it glowed attractively. That was what Mark liked about Babe, her hair. It was long, and she wore it with a clip so it narrowed at her neck and spread in waves down her back. When he would pull it around her shoulders it came below her breasts. When it was freshly shampooed he liked to bury his face in its thick softness.

He gave the clip holding her hair a tug to set it in place, and grinned in answer to her question. “Plenty,” he said, sipping hot black coffee. “Oh, hell, yes.”

“You should have,” she said coldly. “Going up to that joint with a hot-looking brunette and coming down with the Cartwright blonde. If I hadn’t watched the clock to see how long it took you from the time you passed here, I would have—”

“And you would have been right,” he interrupted. “If I could have trusted you with the station.” He slipped one hand beneath the counter and patted her knee. “Forget it. I was just taking her home.”

“And the other one?”

Mark sawed at the steak with his knife. “Idell Manders?” he said casually. “Oh, she had her car shot out from under her. I picked her up just this side of Coachella.”

“Uhm,” Babe said through a mouthful of meat. “Hell, yes.” She made a face at him. “Christ, you do things up fancy when you step out.”

Mark finished his steak before he answered. “It’s a fact,” he said finally. “I imagine they’ll find the car today and drag it back here.” He stuffed his pipe and lit it. Babe put a cigaret between her lips, and he held his match for her.

“Thanks,” she said. “You aren’t kidding, Mark?”

“Not a damned bit,” he assured her. “She was chased all the way from Riverside. Maybe you saw it, if they swung back this way. A long black convertible sedan; foreign make of some kind. The pipe had a belly rumble to it.”

Babe said, “I saw them. It was about three-thirty. They went roaring west, doing sixty anyway—maybe more. I heard the damned thing a mile off; it sounded worse than the midnight express.”

Mark nodded. “They must have thought they got her, then.” He slipped off his stool and waited while Babe stacked the plates and pushed them across the counter toward the waitress. “Let’s go,” he said.

Babe was extraordinarily silent as they drove across the highway and cut into town. Two blocks west of the main street, Mark swung into an alley and drove over a lot and parked in front of a cabin. It was a double, facing the vacant lot, with another building cutting it from the street and street noises, and the afternoon sunlight. Mark liked it because it was quiet and there were no kids to disturb him when he slept days. There were trees shielding the front, and with the blinds down it was almost night dark inside. The air-cooler in front, a big wire cage packed with excelsior through which water dripped continually, kept it comparatively moist and cool in his room. At first he had struggled to get used to the fan in front of the cooler that sucked air into the room, but eventually it got so he hardly noticed whether it was on or not.

His cabin had a number one over the door, Babe’s a two. There was a connecting door between their rooms in case it was ever rented out as an apartment. Hers had a kitchenette in the rear with a small sink and a two burner gas plate. The bath was outside in the rear of the building that shaded them from the street. Mark went in through his door, Babe through hers. The connecting door was open.

He grinned at her. “Wait till I get my shoes off and I’ll start the coolers,” he said.

Babe snorted. “I can fix my own, Lothario.” She slammed the connecting door, and he heard the click of the lock as she turned the key. He laughed out loud, and her voice cursed him from the other room.

He took his shoes off and rubbed his feet, swollen from the heat. He got up from where he had been sitting on the bed and pulled down all the shades so it was dark enough to need the light overhead. He switched on the cooler, and the moist air began to take the oven temperature off the room, and he felt he could breathe again. He crawled wearily out of his clothes, realizing for the first time how tired he was. He slipped on the bottoms of a pair of red striped pajamas over his long body. He glanced at his watch as he turned off the light. It was quarter to eight.

He lay with his eyes closed, letting the cool air wash over him, when the sound of the lock clicking back stirred him to full wakefulness.

“Honey?” Babe said.

“Yeah?”

“You awake?”

“Now I am.”

He heard the door open and her bare feet pattering. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He put his arms around her, closed his eyes and fell asleep.

The pounding on his door drew him achingly from the beginning of hard, complete sleep. Slowly he opened his eyes to stare into the near darkness of the room. He realized someone was at the door and turned to look that way.

“What the hell?” he called sleepily.

“Telephone, Mark.” It was the voice of his ancient landlord. “Some woman. Says it’s important.”

“Right with you,” Mark called. He noted without surprise that Babe had gone.

He stumbled to the door, found slippers and bathrobe in the dark and opened the door. The heat and blinding sunlight made him throw one hand before his eyes. He took it away slowly, opening his fingers one at a time to let the light filter in slowly. When his eyes were better adjusted to the glare, he staggered through the sand to the office, a hundred yards away.

“Hello?” His voice was still thick with sleep, but his eyes were opened enough for him to see it was eight-thirty. He had had forty-five minutes of sleep, and now this!

“Mark? This is Idell Manders.” He caught no lightness in her tone. And without even seeing her he could guess that the cord in her throat would be pounding and the depths of her dark eyes would hold those pinpoints of fear he had seen before. It was thick in the timbre of her voice.

“Yes, Miss Manders.”

“You said once you would help me if I needed it. I do need it.”

“Right away?” he asked.

“Please,” she said. “At once, Mark. I can’t tell you now. Hurry.”

He heard the click of the receiver at the other end and hung up. He yawned and scratched his tousled yellow hair. Now what the hell? And what would Babe say?

He went back to his room and raised the shade nearest his closet. Babe’s voice came sleepily from her room. “Now what?”

“I’m going to the Manders’,” he said. “Some trouble.”

“You bastard,” she said cheerfully, frowned and went to sleep.

Mark slipped into fresh duck pants, a clean polo shirt and thrust his stockingless feet into a pair of hard-soled moccasins. He grabbed up his Panama style hat, patted his pockets to make sure he had transferred everything from his other trousers and went out.

The coupé rumbled angrily beneath the unaccustomed pressure on its throttle, but it made the mile trip in good time, coming to a stop with a gravel-spitting skid at the top of the drive. Mark hopped out and started up the front steps. He turned as Idell came around the corner of the house.

“Thank you,” she said, squeezing his fingers. And somehow he felt this was a different kind of squeeze from the others she had given him. That had been flirtation; this was something warmer, more intimate.

He followed her silently around the back, along a concrete walk through groves of desert shrubs and cacti, past occasional upthrust palms to where the swimming pool shimmered through the semi-tropical plants set around it on three sides. He looked curiously at the house. He had never seen it from all sides, and the more he looked the more amazed he became.

It was built in a perfect rectangular box, but the offset heights of the firewall and the balconies with metal stairways running down the sides of the building to the ground kept it from the dull squareness so many adobe structures have. There was a balcony on each corner, with the stairs running toward one another and hugging the side wall. In the rear an iron stairway curved from the large balcony shared by Grant and Idell and another from the balcony which opened into the stitting room of the Major’s suite. Around the base of the stairs rich, imported soil held sweet peas that climbed and wound their way up the ornate iron. Everything was well-groomed, perfectly kept.

Mark followed Idell through a wooden gate set in the four foot high adobe wall that continued from the house line and walled in the patio on three sides, reaching from the house to the edge of the date groves at the rear.

The path carried him onto the tiles surrounding the swimming pool before he saw the body. It lay face down as she had left it, the towel covering the head and neck. Mark knew before he lifted the towel whose face he would see.

Link’s features had lost none of their horrible contortion. If anything, they were more horrible now that a ray of sunlight streaked across his sightless, staring eyes. Mark dropped the towel with a little shudder.

He looked at Idell, still without speaking. She said, “I found him in the pool.” The remembrance whitened the edges of her lips. “I got up, and the pool looked inviting, so I thought I would have a swim. I dove in and—and I opened my eyes, and there he was. His face was—like that. Just floating there with his hair streaming out and waving up and down like—” She shuddered and buried her face in his chest. He held her quietly, both hands flat against the warm, moist back of her shirt. He heard soothing noises coming from his own throat, but they sounded foolish and he stopped.

A cool, low voice from behind him made him drop his arms. Idell straightened and wiped her fingers across her eyes. Leona stood there, looking quite calm in her pale green hostess gown, her hair glinting like a mass of tiny jewels where a ray of sunlight caught it. She indicated the tray on the table.

“You need a drink,” she said. “He is quite nasty-looking,” she went on, going to the table and pouring a good jigger into a tall glass. “Or should I say ‘it’?”

Mark looked at her oddly, receiving an amused curl of her lips for an answer.

“Why did you call me?” he demanded. “The police are the ones to notify.”

“Must this be a case for the police?” Leona asked quietly.

Mark looked at the rope still about Link’s waist. “Was that about him, or did you put it there to pull him from the water?”

“He was tied to the ladder with it,” Idell said. “I suppose we should have left him just like he was.”

Mark shrugged. “They won’t kick up too much of a fuss.” He looked at Leona. “It is too obviously murder, I’m afraid. Even without the rope.”

“It was only justice,” she said.

“What do you mean by that?” he demanded.

“He was a beast,” she said coolly.

“Nevertheless,” Mark said, “he was murdered, and the police would find out sooner or later. You could never fake this. It wasn’t drowning—it was poison. Cyanide.”

“You know?” she asked.

“Look at his face,” Mark said. “Someone must have thought the contortion of his features looked a little like drowning and tried to pass it off, but that never works.” He lit his pipe and sat down in the chair next to Idell. “Why did you call me instead of the police?” he asked again.

“I went to call them,” she said with a slow smile. “But I got so frightened at the thought of publicity and everything and—well, after last night, you were the first person to pop into my mind.”

“Her private trouble-shooter,” Leona said. She leaned against the table smoking quite casually and apparently undisturbed by the horror that gripped Idell spasmodically and made her shudder and go white.

“Were you here when Idell found him?” Mark asked her.

“Yes. I helped drag him out. He was beastly heavy and unmanageable,” she said.

“I gave him respiration,” Idell put in. “I thought there might be a chance—not really, but I had to make sure. There was no water in his lungs. I smelled the cyanide then.”

“He’s been dead some time,” Mark said. “You had just got up when Idell did?” he asked Leona.

“Yes,” she laughed. “Are you going to play detective, Mr. Warren?”

He flushed beneath his reddish tan. Force of habit cropping up after a two year lay-off, he knew. “Sorry,” he said, “but these things are sure to be asked by the police. You might as well get them straight.”

“You are helpful,” Leona murmured. “I’ll call, if you wish.”

“They’ll probably be sore because you put it off for so long,” Mark said. “Call the sheriff sub-station. They’ll handle it up here. It’s out of the city limits.”

Leona moved slowly across the patio. He watched her, entranced with the slow gliding motion that spoke of rhythm in every muscle.

“She’s inhumanly beautiful,” Idell said.

“She draws one,” he admitted. “Just who is she?”

“A friend of Link’s and Grant’s,” she said. “I don’t really know much about her. I think she is—or was—a showgirl.” She smiled thinly. “An exclusive strip teaser, or some such thing.”

He closed his eyes and decided he had left New York too soon. He would have liked to see Leona Taylor do a strip-tease.

“I wonder how he got the cyanide,” he said. “Or I should say how it got him.”

Idell shook her head. “I’m not sure. After I called you I played detective, though, and I have an idea.” She straightened in her chair and finished her drink. He took the glass and set it down. “I went to my room and showered—I had to get that water off me—and then went into his room. The door was unlocked, and the key was on the inside. There was a whiskey glass and an ashtray on his nightstand. That was all I saw; I just took a quick look. I locked the door behind me.” She took a plain key from the pocket of her shirt and handed it to him.