And kill once more (20 page)

I swallowed a couple of times, my hands tensing, pressing the wet grass. If she started to use the gun, I had to try something. Near the girl's feet I saw the handle from the valve. She must have used it to knock me out—the pain in my head was beginning to register now. Hazily I tried to figure the vagueness of her voice, tried to get her mind fully with me.

"You saw me use the tray, Elsa?"

"No. But there was the sound of the metal when the water shut off. I had the thing open, the pool draining, and then there was the clinking noise and I knew it couldn't have been you that hit the drain cap."

"You slipped that steel handle off, then, and went back along the path?"

The redhead nodded silently, but I hadn't gained an inch. Her answer and that detached way she spoke both told me that I was only dealing with the top of her mind, and that underneath was something entirely apart from

the words she uttered. I tried again, attempted to focus her thoughts with mine.

"You found the papers Sandy hid. In the lounge pad, I guess?"

"In the lounge pad, Marty. I had the jump on you—I was instantly worried about her keeping some of the evidence out. I watched and thought about it, and that night I found them there."

"So that meant Sandy had to go, too, Elsa?"

"She might have read them. I was already in too deep. I stayed outside most of the night when you were gone with her, Marty. When the car came back I waited under her window and heard Widdle catch you putting her to bed, heard you two go back down to the snack bar. Then I went back to my room and thought about the path and the jacaranda. It was no trouble to talk her into going down the walk to wait for me. . . ."

She had killed twice, but she was still an amateur. Before she could murder a third time, she had to talk about the first two, just to convince herself that the third killing was necessary. Now she started to move, her hand still close to the gun beside her. The moment had come— now she had told me . . . now I had to die.

I tried to keep her talking. "And now, Elsa? Murder's never easy—you found that out the first time, with Engle. He was supposed to drown, wasn't he? I'll bet you never figured the odds of his being sucked into that sunken drain face first, so that instead of drowning he suffocated. That made it murder to Toland, and he had to ask his questions. What makes you think you can get away with the next one?"

She picked up the gun and pointed it at the top of my head.

"I've got no choice, Marty. You know that."

She looked at me for several seconds, then, gun still in her right hand, slid her left down to her dress, lifted it

and pulled her stocking down to the knee. It fell in an uneven loop around the calf of her leg and she didn't touch it again.

"Until tonight, Marty, I wasn't sure whether or not you had talked Sandy into telling you what she had read. I was hoping desperately that you hadn't been successful, but when you said you'd see us all again it was pretty obvious."

I shut my eyes. It had worked beautifully, my little plan. All but the last part. All but the ending where I'd march someone up to Widdle at gun point and make my speech. But a steel handle slammed against my skull had changed everything, made my bluff earlier in the evening a monstrous joke at which I couldn't laugh.

"Marty, what did you think of Cronk?"

I caught my lip between my teeth, then hedged with, "I haven't changed my mind about him since the first."

"You were right on the button," she agreed. Her left hand went to the back of her hennaed hair and brought it up over her head, then rumpled it into a disheveled mess across her right ear. "A phoney doctor. How much would he get for that, Marty? A year or two, probably, and it wasn't too serious, but he was scared to death the sheriff would stick him with this murder charge. I had hoped so." She looked at me again, then went on. "And Pilcher. Imagine all that money—your dollars and mine, Marty, that he raked in on phoney war contracts. What did you think when Sandy told you about that, Marty?"

I risked a vague, "Dipping into federal funds. And Engle had the goods on him. A nice shakedown, I thought."

"A very nice shakedown, but Pilcher could afford to pay All of his was tax free, remember. It makes a difference, Marty." She brought her left shoe back against the toe of her right foot and a high-heeled slipper tumbled off to one side. She bent to the stocking, her eyes

still full on my face, and made a gaping tear in the filmy nylon near the ankle and when she slowly straightened, her fingernails dug into the bare skin of her knee and thigh, raking parallel red marks halfway up her leg.

That's when I began to get the pitch. My throat tightened. Any minute now. Any minute she would point the gun more carefully and pull the trigger. There wasn't any doubt about the future she planned for Bowman. Only one of us to tell the story. Just Elsa—and the body of the killer who had almost included her in his bag of victims. I forced my lips to move.

"And the mess on the page for Elsa Doyle? That was straight too?" I asked.

"What else? And it would have been the end of my career in films. One year on a call girl list. In New Orleans, six years ago, but someone peddled it to George Engle. Someone must have seen me and recognized me, even with the red hair, and there it was. Engle was around my neck like rope. T must expect to get a little more money from you, my dear,' he would say. 'After all, your business is so uncertain.' And in the end he took more than I could pay. I had to stop him, Marty, and I did."

Time was running out—I had to do something, but how do you fight a girl? You're beaten before you start, damned if you do and damned if you don't. If I could distract her and get the gun away she'd still yell rape and murder.

All at once I relaxed, as I realized that no gag would be good enough to get me out of this. I was going to have to stop at least one bullet from Fred's gun. No more if I could help it, but the irony of being shot for a tussle in the hay that I didn't even get was bitter medicine. I watched the redhead carefully and when she hunched her shoulders and ripped the neckline of her dress I worked my right leg up under me, dug bare toes into the sod, yelled and lunged all at the same time, going up on

hands and feet as I covered the first part of the four yards separating us, flattening out as I reached her. The blast of the .38 filled the night and a searing pain streaked along my back. My shoulders hit her shins and I felt her falling over me. I twisted back to grab the gun hand before she leveled for a second shot.

They build these Hollywood babes well. Lots of regular exercise to maintain her figure was partly responsible for her coordination, I suppose, but some lessons in manhandling she must have learned in a rougher school. She came to her feet like a bobcat, bit me on the wrist that was holding her shooting hand, scratched and kicked all at once. I managed to snag her other wrist, twisted her arm behind her, brought her hard up against me and held her there.

"Easy, Red," I panted. "Let's relax and ride with the punch. It's all over now—we'll have the smiling face of Widdle among us any moment and it won't help to struggle any more." She gave me the heel again, the hard leather scraping along my bare shin and sliding off my ankle-bone on the side. She applied her bridge work to my arm in a new spot but I managed to hold fast and when the flashlight beams began to bounce along the flagstone path she suddenly stopped writhing.

"Marty," she said quickly, "we can get together on this. You've read the evidence but you don't have to remember it all. Don't mention my part—we can pin it on Pilcher and he deserves it. You know he deserves it—"

"Forget it baby," I said firmly, and tightened my grip against a new outburst. But she stood perfectly still, her eyes staring into the distance, and when Widdle came into sight she let out a scream for help. Holding her tightly, I waited while Bob Widdle steamed up, stopped for a quick look, then let his mouth drop open.

Before he could make any decisions I said, "Get the gun out of her hand, man. Don't do anything until you've

got all the guns in sight under your wing. Then we'll break up this little love scene—but get that gun."

He gulped a time or two, put out a cautious hand, and fastened on to the business end of the .38. She let it go without a struggle.

"What the hell goes on, Bowman?" he wanted to know. I took a breath but the redhead beat me to it.

"What does it look like?" she stormed. "An attack! Bowman killed George and Sandy and he almost added me to the list. If you hadn't come in time, Mr. Widdle, he might have been successful."

"The gun," I pointed out, "was in your hand."

Widdle held up a nervous hand. "Don't say any more. We'll let'Toland handle this, and he'll probably be here any minute. You can keep still while we wait."

I explored a little and found my wound. I wouldn't be sitting down for a while with any comfort, but I'd live. I looked at Elsa, then along the path where Kate and the others were running toward us. When they came up I heard a noise a little to one side and Sheriff Toland came through the bushes and into the clearing. He wore field boots and a hunting jacket and there were binoculars slung around his neck. He stood for several seconds, his eyes going from one to the other of us, and then Elsa broke the silence.

"Sheriff, I'm certainly glad you came. I've never been so scared in my life and—"

I stood and listened while she piled it on. I'd been swimming in the pool, she told him, and she had walked past and I'd talked to her. She went on for ten minutes, the story getting more convincing every second—how I'd said I'd discovered some new evidence and wanted her to see it and she went down the walk with me to the drain valve. And how the evidence I'd discovered turned out to be a fraud and I'd deceived her and then

tried to pull a force job. She told him I'd carried my beach towel and had a gun, and then she looked around and pointed to the towel lying on the grass.

"I had to play along with him," she said tearfully, "and he tore my dress and I felt behind me for the handle and it came off and I hit him—"

"The hard way, Sheriff," I cut in. "She reached all the way around and slugged me from behind. A little unhandy, but that's the way it must have been. Here's the lump." I bent my head to show him but Toland didn't look at me.

"Later, Bowman. We'll get her side first."

"Then his gun fell and he fell and I was awfully afraid I'd killed him, Sheriff, but I grabbed the gun and backed away. Then—"

She finished it from there on pretty much as it happened, and I opened my mouth to say something vulgar but Toland spoke first!

"Uh-huh. Now weren't you just a mite worried, miss, while you were walking down the path with Bowman here? My orders, you'll remember, were to stay out in plain sight. By the pool where you started to talk to Bowman. How about that?"

"But he said there was something here that would tell us who had killed George and—"

"You should have stayed by the pool. You said that's where you and Bowman met, didn't you?"

"Yes, but—" She stopped as Toland turned away from her. He looked at me long and steadily, and then shook his head.

"Son, I've been out in the brush most of the evening just waiting for you to jump. Had it figured you'd strike off across the hills before long and then I'd collar you, which is why I told Bob to needle you some. But it looks like I'll have to turn you loose. There's plenty I didn't

see but the light by that pool is pretty good, and unless I'm ready for a white cane this girl wasn't anywhere near the plunge tonight."

"Well, fairly close at one time," I corrected. "You'll find a cigarette lighter on the bottom. She tossed it there, as she did my silver dollar two nights ago." Then I brought the sheriff up to date on the last hour and what I'd found and how things were. When I finished I gingerly touched the red soaking through my swimming trunks and asked if we could get a patch someplace.

Toland poked his flashlight behind me for a closer look, then grinned at me. "A crease, son. You'll be sleeping on your tummy for a while and maybe eat a few meals standing up, but that's about all. We're taking the girl in with us; you can come along and we'll drop you by Doc Crandy's."

I looked from him to Kate Weston, saw her turn away, and then I followed the sheriff toward the house.

Twenty

It was Friday morning again, just a week since I'd answered my phone and heard Boreland Gregory's voice and now I was back on the beach. A patch of white bandage taped to my fanny ruled out a dip in the surf, so I had to settle for sunshine, but somehow I couldn't get comfortable. I squirmed and tried one side and then the other and about eleven o'clock I began to realize that nothing was going to be all right again until I took care of a little business still hanging fire—something about the dossier Fred had piled up on a blonde named Weston —a manila folder with half a dozen typed pages of data and it had done a lot toward jolting Marty Bowman out

of the rut. I went up to the beach cottage, cleaned up and climbed into my coupe.

Riding higher than usual by the thickness of a pillow tucked gingerly under my bottom, I cruised down the boulevard and swung off at Vine, then parked and climbed the stairs for a chat with Gregory. He handed me a fat check which I tore up and then we had words. Lawsuit was mentioned, and publicity and hiring a man without credentials just to bring in an unearned fee, and at one time someone even shook a fist under someone else's nose, and in the end I left with a much bigger check made out to another name. Then I rolled on down the boulevard again.

Weston's, the sign said, and it wasn't the biggest place on the street but it was as nice as you'll find anywhere. On the inside you didn't see the floorspace packed with racks and cheap signs and there weren't any giggling salesgirls standing in the aisles. A trim woman in a dark dress came across the plush carpet and greeted me with the sincere warmth of a good hostess.

"May I help you, sir?"

"Yes. thanks, I'd like to see Miss Weston." We went toward an office in the rear and when the door closed behind me Kate Weston looked up from her desk.