Murder Queen High (8 page)

“No,” said Gayner. “You win.” He prodded Sin toward the street. “I didn’t think you knew anything, Mrs. Conover. Mr. Barselou was about to agree. I thought you were just a harmless snooper. But this puts a different light on it.”

“You’re going to take me to Barselou, anyway?”

“Definitely. You can make your bargain with him. As you quaintly put it, he’s the big boy.”

“But I really don’t know anything!” Sin cried desperately. The dam of reason broke. Mounting waves of dread overwhelmed her. The men beside her were prosaic — but their matter-of-fact purposefulness was a gripping peril in itself. “I was just kidding!” She begged with wide shiny eyes.

“Come on,” said Vernon. “I’m supposed to be on duty.”

They urged her out into the white sunlight of Date Street. A few paces down the block, a sober black Buick sedan nuzzled the curb. The two men walked her quickly toward the car.

From behind them, a man’s high-pitched voice called, “Yoo-hoo! Mrs. Conover!”

“You don’t hear him,” Gayner muttered and quickened his steps.

“Mrs. Conover!” Tires whirred on cement and Mr. Trim appeared alongside the trio, perched on a bicycle. Coming up behind him was the chunky figure of Thelma Loomis, also pedaling energetically. The Bry-Ter representative showed all his bad teeth in a waggish grin. “Ah, Mrs. Conover — you were trying to run away from me!”

“Not from you!” Sin choked.

Vernon and Gayner pushed against her from either side. Gayner said hurriedly, “We’re in quite a rush, Mr. Trim, so if — ”

Sin wriggled forward frantically. “Don’t wait for me, Mr. Gayner. The streets are too crowded today for what you had in mind.”

Vernon’s hand strayed to the pocket under the tail of his tunic. Gayner’s eyes were startled, but he said smoothly, “Oh, we wouldn’t think of going without you, Mrs. Conover.”

“I’ve been wanting to talk to Mr. Trim, anyway.” Sin put a hand on Vernon’s arm, pulling the little bellboy’s hand away from his hip pocket. “It was nice of you to offer me the ride.”

Thelma Loomis got off her bicycle and grated, “I’m glad that’s settled. You take this machine, young lady — I’m not built for it. I shouldn’t have left the hotel at all, but Trim here talked me into it.” She shoved the bike at Sin. “Here — or don’t you think these things are safe?”

“Oh, yes!” breathed Sin, grabbing the handlebars.

Gayner bowed slightly. “We’ll run along then, Mrs. Conover. I see we can’t do anything to change your mind.”

Sin couldn’t do anything but shake her head.

Gayner smiled frugally. “Some other time.” He jerked his head at the open-mouthed Vernon and the two got into the Buick. It slid away from the curb and turned the corner into Cahuilla Street.

Thelma Loomis clapped Sin on a trembling shoulder. “You and Trim have a good time.” She strode chuckling up the street toward the Las Dunas.

Mr. Trim asked, “What was it you had to say to me, Mrs. Conover?”

“This!” Sin cried, laughing brokenly. Disregarding the straw hat he clasped against his chest, she threw her arms around the little man and kissed his bald spot resoundingly. “Mr. Trim, I love you!”

Mr. Trim looked solemn. “But what about your husband?”

“Whereabouts you want to go?” the truck driver growled.

John Henry frowned and then wished he hadn’t because it made his headache worse. “Any place in town,” he said. The driver eased his foot away from the accelerator and the huge freight truck slowed down for the 25-mile speed limit that began with the outskirts of Azure.

As the truck crept into the center of the city the vacant lots and stucco homes became fewer. Here were shops, many of them branches of New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles stores, crowded close together and interspersed with neon-fronted and palatial nightclubs. Souvenir stands dotted street corners. Here and there, conspicuous in austerity, a branch brokerage office awaited the vacationing industrialist.

Few cars crawled the street today and only a sprinkling of people, although none of the stores observed Sunday as a holiday. Most of the tourists wore informal garb which was virtually a uniform in Azure — the men in shorts, slacks and T-shirts, the women in any of those, plus sun suits. Now and then this gaudy uniformity would be broken by the blue levis, plaid shirt and ten-gallon hat of a dude cowhand from one of the surrounding ranch resorts. Or the moccasined and brightly blanketed Indians who made their livelihood by posing for the eager cameras of Eastern tourists.

John Henry forgot his aching head for a moment as he got his first good look at the bizarre city. “What did you say?” he had to ask when he realized his burly companion had spoken.

“I was saying,” the driver repeated ungraciously, “that you really see some characters around this place. Take a gander at that creep on the bike — a black suit in this heat!” His calloused forefinger gestured in disgust toward a couple approaching on the opposite side of the avenue.

John Henry followed the grimy finger. Then his eyes lit up. “Stop the car!” he yelled. Alarmed, the driver jammed on his brakes and the big truck and trailer screeched to a halt in the middle of Date Street.

“What the hell — ” he was beginning.

John Henry had already opened the door and now he vaulted to the pavement. “Thanks a lot for the ride,” he tossed over his shoulder and darted across the street.

“Sin!”

The red-haired girl on the bicycle looked up. Her eyes got wider and wider. Then she put her hands on her cheeks and screamed. “Johnny!”

Her handle bars spun unguided into Trim’s bicycle. Cement and sky whirled crazily for a moment. When the sky was on top for good again, Sin was sitting on the cement without a vehicle. Both bicycles were heaped near by on Mr. Trim.

“Sin, Sin — are you all right?” John Henry’s voice said. Sin shook her head to clear it of everything except what she wanted most to see. Then she reached her arms up for her husband. He hugged her. She laughed against his shoulder.

“Johnny, darling, I was worried sick —

“I’m sorry, Sin. I shouldn’t have — ”

“I was afraid — I didn’t know — and those men — and the gun — they were going to — ”

“You don’t seem to be bruised,” said John Henry, surveying her lovingly.

Sin put an experimental hand behind her. Then she sighed. “It won’t show.”

Amid a jangling of metal, Mr. Trim arose from the street to join them. His lower lip trembled. “Vicious!” he said and kicked the tire of the top bicycle. It rolled over lazily and impaled a pedal through the straw hat he hadn’t picked up yet. He clenched his fists and drew ten deep breaths.

Sin began to get back some presence of mind. “I’m awfully sorry, Mr. Trim. I was so worried about Johnny and when I saw him — ”

The Bry-Ter representative summoned up a brave smile. It faded quite a bit as he discovered one serge trouser leg was ripped from the hip down, exposing a milk-white thigh and calf. “They were new, too,” he reminded himself.

“I’ll insist on taking care of this,” John Henry said.

Trim shook his head wisely. “Expense account.”

Sin wrinkled her nose at the tangled bikes. “For real enjoyment give me a well-boiled icycle,” she quoted.

The tooth-paste man looked puzzled. “That’s a Spoonerism,” explained Sin apologetically. “From Reverend Spooner of Oxford. He was always talking in reverse English. My mind’s cluttered with useless quotes like that.”

“Let’s get out of the sun,” Conover suggested. His headache was beginning to nag him again. Trim passed a palm cautiously over his naked scalp and agreed eagerly.

Across Date Street, the broad walk had been roofed over to shade the tables of a sidewalk cafe. They dragged the bicycles to the curb, sat down at the table nearest the street and listened to John Henry relate his adventures.

“I got dizzy all of a sudden,” he concluded. “When I woke up I was all by myself in this empty library. Somebody had gone through my pockets. Faye was gone.”

“She drugged you and searched you!” Sin said accusingly.

“I guess so. Anyway, I climbed out a window and walked to the main road and hitchhiked back here.” John Henry looked uncomfortable. “All right, I made a fool of myself. Next time I’ll keep my nose in my own business like you, Sin.”

His wife shifted uneasily and picked at a loose thread on her gay skirt. “Well,” she murmured, “as a matter of record — ” While she told of Sagmon Robottom and his mysterious warning, John Henry’s chin began to jut forward. As she continued with the story of following Gayner and finding the flood maps, his face turned red. And when Sin had ended the tale of the near kidnaping, her husband slammed his fist down on the linoleum-topped table hard enough to bring a waiter scurrying out from the café interior.

“That does it! That’s enough for us, Sin.”

“What would you like, sir?” the waiter requested timidly.

“Nothing in this town!” John Henry roared, glaring at him. The waiter backed up and regarded him with bewilderment.

There was no amusement on Trim’s face as he hunched across from the Conovers. He confessed slowly, “I don’t know what to say. My instructions never allowed for this sort of thing.”

“We came here on a vacation,” John Henry stated, and his voice was dangerously level. “Not to sun ourselves on a firing range. Not to be searched. Not to have my wife threatened.”

“I’ll admit that all this hasn’t been very pleasant, but before you do anything hasty think of the Company that sent you here — free of charge. I feel personally responsible. What could I ever tell my Company?”

“Tell them to stop sending people to this munitions dump! We’re through with it.”

“Please reconsider. Please stay till tomorrow, at least. Until I can get in touch with the Company. I’ll send a wire — ”

John Henry sucked in his breath. He looked at his wife questioningly. “I’ll leave it to you, Sin. You won this vacation. Do we go or stay?”

Sin spoke for the first time in several minutes. “We’re already packed,” she said.

MR. TRIM BADE them goodbye on the cement walk that led through the palms to the front entrance of the Las Dunas. Sin flatly refused to enter the lobby where Gayner or Vernon might be waiting. After a moment’s thought, John Henry agreed.

So the Conovers sauntered innocently along the front of the hotel’s south wing. Then, with a hurried backward glance, they turned the corner and plunged into the shrubbery that fringed the building.

“Do you think anybody saw us, Johnny?”

“Hope not,” muttered John Henry. He pushed a path through the clawing branches for his wife. Trying to think out the best thing to do hadn’t helped his headache any. The dangers of the morning — particularly to Sin — had sobered him more than he cared to admit. Last night, they had been merely bystanders to Anglin’s murder. Today, they were virtually fugitives — possibly already marked as victims by some unknown hand.

“We’ll get the baggage to our car and beat it,” he outlined. “I’ll phone what we know to Lay from some other town. The main thing is to get you safe, Sin.”

Within view was the curving path which would guide them to the cottages. It was silent and deserted. John Henry held the last branches apart for Sin. The grass they hurried across was lifeless in the hot afternoon sun and lackadaisical bees sparred with the flowers. The flagstones leading up the canyon gave off ripples of heat.

Sin stopped in her tracks and squeezed his arm hard. “Johnny — look!”

Slouched on the porch of Cottage 14 was a familiar uniformed figure. It was Vernon. He was watching the path and his mournful face split into a pitying grin at the sight of the Conovers. He got to his feet.

John Henry hesitated only a second. Then he grabbed Sin by the elbow and whirled her around. “Back to the hotel,” he said under his breath. “Keep going!” She had to quicken to a little trot to keep up with him.

“Gayner,” she panted. “He might be there!”

“They can’t do anything in the lobby. Not right there with people around.”

“Honey, I’m scared!”

Vernon was matching them stride for stride. They reached the sunken patio. Sheltered beneath umbrella shade, two old men looked up curiously from behind their newspapers. There were no other loungers.

The Conovers pounded up the wide steps to the glass doors. They were halfway across the cool lobby when a thin length was framed on the front steps in the opposite glass portal. Gayner was just entering, his cadaverous face startled. His long arms came up, shoving the doors open.

Sin gasped out a little shriek. John Henry cast a lightning glance around. Except for the boyish clerk behind the mahogany counter, the lobby was empty. Both exits were blocked and the clerk was an unknown quantity. Without slackening pace, Conover swung his wife about and they headed at right angles for the elevator.

Gayner stepped into the lobby from the front just as Vernon clattered up the steps on the other side. The two men traded glances and started in pursuit of the fleeing couple.

John Henry half-hurled Sin into the open elevator. “Up!” he snapped and jumped in after her. He stopped in dismay.

“Johnny,” Sin moaned, “there’s no operator!”

His eyes rambled frantically over the control panel. The elevator was designed to function for either the individual guest or a professional operator, evidently depending on the time of day and the pressure of passengers. Now, the determining lever was set in the drive-yourself slot. John Henry made up his mind in a split second.

He threw the sliding doors together just in time to avoid Gayner’s clutching hands. Blindly, he pushed one of the black buttons on the panel. Machinery whirred, the elevator jerked and began to grind upward smoothly.

John Henry let out all his breath in a long shuddering sigh. His legs felt weak and he sought support on the operator’s stool. He looked at his wife. Sin was crouching in a back corner of the cage, her head buried in her arms.

“Buck up, honey,” John Henry said as stoutly as he could manage. “We’re doing all right.” He almost added, “ — for a while,” but changed his mind.

The elevator came to a stop at the fourth floor. Conover heaved himself hastily off the stool and began helping Sin to her feet. She was trembling violently.

“It’s okay, honey,” John Henry said soothingly. He reached out a hand to open the sliding doors.

The elevator started down again.

Conover stood poised with one hand still outstretched as he fixed blank eyes on the control panel. The light marked “1” glowed an insistent red.

“What is it, Johnny? What is it? Are they going to get us?” Sin babbled by his side. Then he realized what was going on. When the elevator had stopped, Gayner or Vernon had pushed the “down” demand button on the main floor. Since the doors had been closed, the elevator had responded automatically to the command. Wildly, John Henry began punching at all the black buttons. The car continued its slow inexorable descent toward the waiting gunmen.

Sin began to wail in earnest as she recognized the despair on her husband’s face. They passed the second floor. Next stop was the lobby.

Then, at the bottom of the panel, John Henry saw the red button. It was so conspicuous it angered him. He closed his eyes in enraged prayer and jabbed it.

The elevator jarred to an abrupt halt between floors.

Immediately, John Henry pushed one of the black buttons again. He shouted in exultation as the cage surged upward obediently. Laughing, he seized Sin by the waist. “We’re still winning, sweetheart!” he cried. “Get out the minute it stops!”

Sin nodded silently, not daring to trust her voice.

The elevator stopped at the third floor. At once, John Henry forced the doors apart and they bounded out onto the lush carpeting of the hallway. As the doors slid to behind them the elevator clanked immediately and started down again. Apparently Gayner and Vernon still hoped to catch the Conovers in the cage.

“Where to now?” Sin asked tremulously.

John Henry pressed perspiring hands against his temples. The headache was gone. There hadn’t been time for it. His brain wanted to operate in slow motion. They had momentarily baffled their pursuers — but what next?

“Can’t we phone for help? Tell me what to do, please, honey!”

Sin’s fright spurred his mind. “A call’d be stopped at the switchboard. Look — if we get separated, I’ll meet you in the parking lot where our car is — ”

“But our clothes — ” ended there was some more clawing shrubbery and then they burst suddenly into the Las Dunas parking lot to run for their car. The Chevrolet was beautiful in familiarity.

John Henry halted his glad reach for the door handle. He felt in his left-hand trousers pocket, then rummaged through all his other pockets. “Oh, no!” he said bitterly.

“What is it?” cried Sin.

“The keys. When Faye searched me, she stole the keys to our car!”

Sin let out a wail of fresh panic. John Henry peered into the useless sedan. The back seat cushion was askew and the door to the glove compartment hung open. The car, like their baggage and himself, had been thoroughly ransacked.

“Don’t let them get me!” Sin’s voice had a tremulo.

John Henry gnawed his lip and thought about using a hairpin to turn on the ignition. He gave it up. He’d never tried it or seen it done outside of movies and there wasn’t time to experiment now. He pulled Sin aimlessly along the silent row of automobiles.

“Let’s look for one with the keys in it,” he snapped, trying to inject hope into his voice. Nobody in his right mind left his keys in his car — not these days — certainly not in Azure. “ — den of thieves,” growled John Henry, ignoring the nature of their present mission. The Conovers galloped down the double-parked row, glancing nervously in through car windows. They had rounded the row and were starting back toward the shrubbery on the other side when the shout came.

They stopped as if rooted. It was Gayner’s voice and it came from the opposite side of the gallery of automobiles.

“Vernon,” he was calling, “get a move on! They must be around somewhere!”

Sin gave a little moan and sank toward the gravel as if her legs had melted. John Henry held her up with one hand. After a final look around at the unco-operative surroundings, he opened the car door nearest his hand — a convertible coupé with the top up — and thrust his trembling wife inside. He crept after her and shut the door quietly behind him.

“See ‘em?” Vernon’s question came from four or five cars away. Gayner replied something that John Henry couldn’t make out. Sin was curled along the red-leather seat, breathing in little whimpers. He jabbed her with his elbow and put a warning finger to his lips.

“Okay,” Vernon’s voice came again. “I’ll look over here, but it’s no use.”

“Johnny — ” Sin began in a loud whisper.

John Henry jumped and turned cold. He jabbed her again. “Quiet!” he breathed.

“But, Johnny — ” He scowled his blackest and she subsided, whispering, “All I wanted to say was that the keys — ”

“Will you keep quiet?” John Henry listened for a shuddering second, then he whipped his head around. “What’s that about keys?”

Sin pointed a finger. From the dashboard, a chain with several keys trailed down from another key which was half-buried in the ignition switch. The feeling surged over John Henry that he had been here before. He craned his head at the registration slip and his lips tightened. The name on the white slip of paper was Faye Jordan.

“I might have known,” he muttered. Sin squeezed his arm. Gravel ground against gravel as shoes crunched closer to them. John Henry’s breath was trapped in his throat. Somebody — either Vernon or Gayner or both — was coming slowly up the column of cars, probably peering into each one with gun ready.

“ — forgive us our debts — ” Sin was moaning into his ear, frightenedly. All John Henry could think of was that it tickled.

It was Vernon who spoke, and he was so close that the Conovers nearly fell off the seat. “I told you they went back to the cottage.” Gayner’s severe denial came from almost directly behind the convertible. John Henry’s face bleakened. The trap was perfect now — the bellboy on one side and the assistant manager on the other. Nudging Sin to move her hips, he cautiously wormed under the steering wheel and turned the ignition on.

The coupe jolted as a body leaned against it and a freckled hand trailed along the window ledge. John Henry made a lightning calculation and went into motion before his reason had time to argue. His right foot kicked at the starter. His shoulders shoved into view and he drove his fist straight at Vernon’s startled face. That amazed face, framed in the window of the convertible, drew back and the young man caught Conover’s knuckles square in the Adam’s apple. Vernon’s profane surprise was just a squawk as he fell with a crash into the fender of the next car.

The engine exploded into life with a confident roar. Sin, hunched on the floor, was scrabbling for the emergency brake. John Henry threw in the clutch and the Mercury leaped forward, gravel spurting from its rear wheels.

Behind them, they could hear Gayner’s thin voice, yelling. The coupé swerved to the right, cut around the parked cars and hurtled without a pause onto Coachella Street. At the corner, John Henry spun the car left and gunned off down Date toward Highway 99 and escape from Azure. The streets were still semideserted, with only an occasional stroller or bicyclist to break the somnolence of the midafternoon siesta. Sin pulled herself, grunting, to the seat. “Damn my memory. Damn my memory,” she mumbled.

“Huh?”

“I’ll never remember another thing as long as I live. I’ll never go on the radio. I’ll never answer a question in public. I swear it.”

“You feeling okay, honey?”

“I guess so,” Sin admitted grudgingly. She squirmed around for a last look at the hotel. “Johnny!” she squealed.

“Hurt yourself?”

“They’re following us!”

The Mercury raced recklessly onto Highway 99. John Henry flicked his eyes at the rearview mirror and swore definitively. A big black Buick sedan danced in the polished surface. It looked like Vernon behind the wheel.

John Henry glanced at the gas gauge and swore again, this time more collectively. The tank was less than a quarter full. They’d never be able to outrun the Buick on that. Before they’d gotten halfway to Brawley they’d be out of gasoline.

Sin didn’t look at the gauge or the pursuing car. She studied her husband’s frown. “What can we do, honey?”

“Let me think a minute,” John Henry begged. He kept the accelerator flat against the floor mat. The shivering needle of the speedometer rocked past the black 60, heading for 70 with no hesitation. “Where the hell are the cops?” John Henry wanted to know, outraged. “Any other time they’d be swarming all over us. Don’t they work on Sunday?”

Sin dared another glance back. The Buick still hugged the roadway behind them. It hadn’t gained, but it hadn’t lost any ground, either.

John Henry’s cheerless face went suddenly incandescent. “The obvious thing!” he cried.

“What is it, honey?”

“The ranch!” he shouted. “There’s a crowd at the ranch. They can’t do anything to us in a crowd.”

“But, Johnny, that’s where — ”

“Faye’s back at the hotel — we’ve got her car. And Lieutenant Lay’s at the ranch, isn’t he? It’s the safest place in the world right now!”

“You decide,” said Sin in wifely fashion. “I’ll do what ever you think is best.”

The Buick seemed to be lagging behind. John Henry, keeping anxious watch in the rearview mirror, lost sight of the big black car for moments at a time as they raced up and down the rolling hillocks. The highway now curved slightly to the south. They were nearly to the dirt road which led to the Bar C Ranch. John Henry strained his eyes for the small grove of fan palms and tamaracks that marked the juncture of the two roads. At last, he sighted it, rushing at them at seventy miles an hour.

Vernon and the Buick were hidden behind a rise of ground. He jammed on the brakes, easy at first, then harder. Tires screamed in protest as the convertible checked its head-long rush and slowed down to fifty. Black streaks of rubber lined the highway behind them. Sin sat with her eyes closed and her feet braced against the floor boards, awaiting the inevitable.