The Bamboo Blonde (14 page)

Mechanically she locked the door after him. He wasn't a reassurance. She'd wager that he knew as little about things as she. She laughed, picturing the bewilderment on his scrawny face had she quizzed him on the ramifications of Pan-Pacific. But the sound was eerie in the empty room. She turned on the radio in futile reach for companionship. She didn't like the hollow of the cottage without voices in it, the creaking of the wind against the walls, the unending swish-unswish of the waves against the rocks. Fortunately it was music that sang from the tiny loudspeaker; she didn't want the news now. She took her own bag and opened the bedroom door.

She couldn't help the little scream that came from her throat. She couldn't act; she simply stood there terrified. She hadn't wondered why the door was closed; she hadn't consciously realized that it shouldn't be that way, that she and Con never closed connecting doors. Her hand ached on the handle of the grip but she didn't set it down.

Alexander Smithery, Chang or Buck, didn't speak either. He stood motionless facing her. Had he moved an inch the screaming she was holding in control would have been unleashed. But he was wise, or else he too didn't know what to do.

She finally whispered, "What are you doing here? What do you want?"

He relaxed then. He spoke just as normally as if he were in the Bamboo Bar waiting on tables, "Sorry I startled you, Mrs. Satterlee. Con asked me to pack some of his things and bring them down to him."

She didn't believe him. Con couldn't have seen him after the arrest. But she set down her bag. He did have one of Con's in the middle of the floor and he had been taking things from the bureau drawers.

He continued, "I had hoped to be away before you got home but I wasn't able. Some of the things he wants are in that bag there."

She said stupidly, "Not this one. The one in the other room." She stood aside like an automaton while he went past, brought Con's grip into the bedroom. She stood watching while he opened it, transferred razor, toothbrush, and daily necessities.

Although it was obvious that he knew for what he had been sent just as if the list were in his hands, she still wondered at the professed innocence of his presence. Suspicion heightened. And she asked, "Why didn't you come out when Vinnie Thusby was here'"

He said, "I didn't know who was coming in with you." He almost grinned, a simian grin. "But I wouldn't have wanted him to know. Con didn't want anyone to know I'd been here."

She didn't believe a word he said but she couldn't tell his lies as she could those of young Thusby. She started nervously at the sharp sound of the clasps made fast, and trembled just a little as he straightened up, lifted the bag. She stepped further aside.

He said, "You won't tell
anyone
I've been here."

She was afraid of him, even of his apparent respectful demeanor.

"Con wouldn't like it if you did."

She assured him with quirk breath. "No, I wouldn't tell anyone."

She stood in the doorway while he walked across the living room. At the door he said, "Good night, Mrs. Satterlee. I'm sorry to have troubled you." His eyes met hers with no touch of servitude. "If there's anything at all I can do for you while Con is away, don't you hesitate to call on me. You can reach me through the Bamboo Bar any time."

She waited until he was gone before moving to lock the door. Her fingers remained on the cold of the key. She had been right in her previous assumption. A bent hairpin would open any door in the rickety cottage. She had neglected to ask Chang how he had entered. It wasn't by means of the house key: Con had given that to her; that was now moist against her fingers.

She hadn't removed her hat or her gloves as yet. She was undecided; she could go to a hotel. Why had Vinnie and Chang both thought it necessary to offer assistance to her? She pulled off one glove, then quickly the other. Con had told her to stay here; he had made a point of it before he was arrested. He wouldn't have asked it if it meant danger in any way. She proceeded into the bedroom, ignoring the creaking of the floor at every step, flung her hat on the bureau.

She stared at it where it lay, half-shrouding a revolver there on the yellow-white of the scarf. She touched the weapon gingerly, then grasped it. She wouldn't leave now, not even if fish-eyed Albert George Pembrooke came proffering assistance. There was not the slightest reason why she should. She could protect herself.

She wondered what mention of the network would have done to Chang's composure. Not a thing. He probably would have afforded an even more thorough and plausible explanation of its necessity than the British major.

The program changed before she could return to the radio. The inevitable news broadcast. And she heard with stark clarity the commentator announce, "Con Satterlee, well-known New York air reporter, was taken into custody tonight by Captain Charles Thusby, chief of the Long Beach police, for questioning in the Bixby Park murder—'' She almost ran to silence the machine. Her uneasiness at being here alone was momentarily gone in her unmitigated fury at the stupidity of this business of thinking Con was involved. Con had never fired so much as a BB gun in his thirty-plus years. And she would prove it. She and Kew. Kew would obtain the information necessary to show up the Long Beach police for the utter fools they were, and Barjon Garth for the Judas into which he had degenerated.

The cottage resumed its rustling with the radio stilled. She switched the radio on again, found music, not words. She finished undressing with the revolver at hand, returned to the living room with the feel of comfortable metal on her palm. She blocked the front door with the one overstuffed chair, established herself in the comfortless cane-bottom rocker. Magazine and the dial, the pressure of steel in her hand, would keep her eyes open. She wouldn't sleep this night; not with the broadcasters announcing to the continent that she was alone, presumedly unguarded.

CHAPTER 5

Kew said, "I don't understand it."

He was pacing. He certainly didn't understand. He behaved as if this were plainly a personal insult to his intelligence. He'd come rushing over breakfastless, although fully and well dressed, at her call. His eyebrows hadn't released that frown of puzzlement since he'd entered.

"If you only knew, Griselda, it doesn't make sense. It simply doesn't add."

She was almost amused. "Don't you think I know that?"

His eyes saw her then, her cinnamon flannel skirt, her brass-colored military coat. He didn't know about the crick in her back from sleeping all night in that rigid excuse for a chair. Her eyes must have closed before she'd read a paragraph.

"Of course, of course. Yes, of course," he said. But he wasn't thinking of what he said. His mind was miles away. He did know more than she, and knowing more, he was steeped in certainty that Con should not have been arrested. She saw that in the scowl, in the incessant pacing, in the preoccupation with his own knowledge.

She spread her fingers on the couch beside her. "Sit down, Kew. I want to say some things. And I want you to hear them."

He came out of his shock this time; he even tried to smile at her but his linked eyebrows defeated that. "I'm sorry, Griselda. But you don't know how impossible this is. You do, yes—but you don't know." he stressed it and then saw he had been afar again. This time he did smile at her. "I'll listen." He seated himself, carefully tending the creases of his olive-drab gabardine slacks.

"Really listen." She smiled back. "Please."

"I will," he apologized. "I'm lucid now. See?" He projected his hand, grinned. "Not a quiver. Except for slight coffee-nerves. Forge right ahead, Griselda. When did all this happen? We flew back about two this morning with no news."

"You and Kathie?"

"And Dare and Albert George. Special job. Major Pembrooke's gift to the laboring class." He stopped to light
a
cigarette. Something was awry in what he had said. "You can judge what a shock it was to have you wake me to the fact that Con—Con of all people —was arrested."

"That's just it." She seized upon it. "Con of all people. You know he had nothing to do with it, and I know it, but those disgusting Thusbys think he's involved. And Garth."

"What about Garth?" he asked quickly.

"I didn't tell you that?" She was surprised that she hadn't poured out the X head's perfidy. But Kew had cut her off the minute, "Con's been arrested," was off her tongue. She said now, "Thusby, the young one, claims his father had a wireless from Garth authorizing it or something."

Kew said, "That's impossible." The lines about his mouth betrayed bewilderment.

"That's just it. It is impossible. Garth is on a fishing trip. He couldn't possibly have heard."

"By radio?"

"But he couldn't know Con was involved. That hadn't been broadcast. His name wasn't even mentioned in the papers."

He decided, "There's only one explanation. Thusby wirelessed Garth."

"Kew, you can find out these things," she said. "That's why I'm asking you to help me to get Con out of this."

"You think he needs help?"

"But certainly he does." She was impatient to the point of irritation. "What makes you think he doesn't need help? He's in jail, isn't he?"

Kew said, "They can't keep him. Picked up for questioning, the papers say." He'd brought them; they lay on the table. "Con can talk his way out."

"He'd told them everything he knew about it." That wasn't quite true but he had told them as much as was needful. "Evidently they don't believe him or why should they arrest him? Don't you see, Kew, it's worse than it seems, far worse. They've questioned him; they knew he was available here at any time, yet despite all that Thusby went to the effort of going to Wilmington to make the arrest."

"He did?"

"Arrested him as we came down the gangplank." Just as if he were a common criminal trying to escape. She was furious again.

Kew asked soberly, "What do they have on him?"

She made flat statement, "Nothing!"

He smiled with tolerance. "Darling, what, do they think they have? Or do you know?"

She said, "I'm sorry. I'll try not to bite you. Yes, I asked Vinnie. young Thusby. He drove me home from Wilmington. Con went with the captain as if he were a Christian slave." She took a breath. "They have him with her that night. You know about that. And they have his fingerprints all over the gun."

Kew whistled and he looked grave.

She said angrily, "Of course, his fingerprints were on the gun. He took it away from her and unloaded it. He gave it back to her there on Junipero when he let her out. He was home with me hours before she was killed." But she broke off weakly. She couldn't mention that Con had gone out again. He had suppressed that in his version to Kew. It had been deliberate suppression. "He was home at midnight. I noticed the time because I'd been asleep and he woke me to tell me about it. Kew, how long would there be blood? It was one-thirty when she was found. He has an alibi, hasn't he?"

Kew said, "I don't know. The blood would be something to look into, I should think. That and the shells. If he unloaded the gun, she must have gone somewhere and reloaded it. She must have had more ammunition if the same gun killed her. She could hardly buy any at that hour."

"That's what Con thought," she admitted. She put her hand on his arm. "You will help me, won't you, Kew?" She had to know that before going on.

He took her hand firmly. "Yes. I'll do anything that it is possible for me to do."

'They shook hands as if making a solemn pact. That much was gained. Now she could breathe again.

He too seemed relieved now that they were in covenant. "What do you have up your sleeve?"

She spoke eagerly, "You're a newspaperman. You can go places where I can't and ask questions that I can't. With your news sense you'll know if the answers are right or wrong."

"Any idea where to start?"

She was definite. "I certainly have."

He turned to her with new interest.

"Shelley Huffaker wasn't just going to kill herself that night. She was going to kill someone else too. She told Con that. She was going to 'blow' herself out but she wasn't 'going alone.' That someone else must be the murderer. We must find out who that someone was."

"But how?"

She faltered. Con had asked her to know nothing, to say nothing, to be beautiful and dumb. Yet his arrest had changed that status. She couldn't be the simple young thing he had suggested when he was being framed on a murder charge. And she wouldn't speculate to anyone else, but to Kew she must. Unless they talked it over from every standpoint they wouldn't know how to proceed. Her words came haltingly, "I don't know exactly, Kew. But we've hints to go on. We know she was the kind who'd step on plenty of toes getting where she was. That might be a motive. Or she may have been threatened. We have Dare who knew her in New York, and we have Hollywood which simply dotes on spilling the gore when it won't kick back. It should be that easy."

He stated what she was leading up to, "But maybe it's tied up with the Pan-Pacific deal."

Her eyes were wide and blurred on the white patch the newspapers made there on the scarred table. "That's what I'm afraid of."

He spoke slowly, "If that is it, there'll be no emotional aspect to the murder. It will be more difficult to trace down someone acting for an organization."

"But not impossible, Kew. Not if we could find out if she did evince any interest in the Pan-Pacific plan. We know she hung around the broadcasting studio. She might have heard rumors. Why stay with Dare? She hadn't seen her in years. Maybe she knew Dare was a friend of Major Pembrooke's." She didn't like saying that out loud. She shivered as she spoke, as if that man were listening or had sent some henchman to listen and report.

"Yes, she might have been a spy. We don't know these days who is in the Fifth Column; they don't sport badges." His face was squared with serious thought. "I've got to ask you a couple of things, Griselda: Off the record, of course. Things I should know before I start out."