The Bamboo Blonde (19 page)

The wind billowed her sheer black cape, flung back her hair, hatless now, as she made slow progress through the sifting sand. The whole idea seemed absurd before she was half across the waste. But with silly stubbornness she kept plowing on. She was out of breath when she reached the opposite porch. There was no answer to her knock. But someone was there; lights were behind the drawn blinds. She pounded now. The door opened an abrupt width. The woman she had seen earlier blocked it. She was big and square and her face was as rigid as soap.

Griselda began brightly, "I saw your light—" but she faltered. It wasn't that there was no answering response in that face; it was that there was no response at all. And at that moment, the lighted blind was made dark.

She tried to make her voice normal, to explain the reason she had evolved for intruding. But she was speaking to a void. And without warning the door was shut in her face.

Her halting words gaped to silence. The cup fell into ghost shards at her feet. She turned to go but, incredulous, swerved back again. She must be certain: it could have been a whim of inhospitable wind.

The door was a block of wood. The blind had moved. Who or what was peering at her from behind it? She stumbled to the warped steps. She couldn't run across the sand; it wasn't sand; it. was evil spongy hands pressing her heels backward into the creeping shadow of that strange cottage. The wind too was evil, twisting her golden hair across her eyes. Her breath came in whimpers as she struggled on to her own lights, a haven now.

She shut the night outside, shut and locked it out with an insufficient key. She muted the radio, dance music was an anachronistic dream. She wanted Con. She wanted to feel the strength under his blue shirt, to listen to the strength under his flippancies. She had known that he was involved more deeply than he had told, in a matter far more dangerous than a girl's murder. He had been ordered to obtain the information Pembrooke wanted to suppress. When he had it complete, he would be killed even as Mannie .must have been killed. Garth was safe, vacationing on the sea. Travis was sale, guarded by the Navy, possessing but part of the knowledge; the postscript implied that. It was reckless Con on whom the major would converge.

Weakly, she wanted to cry; if he didn't come soon she would cry. She couldn't go on alone. She could be brave about Albert George Pembrooke in Thusby's office with Con near but not in this unprotected beach house.

She heard the rattling but the wind had given false alarm too often. She ignored it until it became staccato insistence. She went shivering to the door. No outer light to turn on, no hook on the screen to ascertain what menace was without. She called before opening, "Who is there?"

"It's I."

Dare edging in, holding the door closed as it pursuers were after her. Too many in this with shattered nerves, Dare, Kew shying at shadows, Sergei, even Con prowling and jittering until they locked him up. The incongruity was that none of them should have this reaction. It didn't fit any of them, it didn't match their customary range from cocksureness to arrogance.

Dare's tweed Burberry was buttoned under her chin, the collar upturned to her checks. Her brown riding hat shaded her face. She kept on her driving gloves. "Where's Con? I've got to see Con immediately." Her green eyes were bright as baubles.

Griselda said. "He's in jail." She laughed after she said it. What was the proper way to announce a husband's incarceration? But she didn't want to laugh.

Dare looked at her as if she were lying. "What for?"

"For being seen with Shelley Huffaker." She asked Dare's shocked face, "You mean you didn't know it?"

"I've been away. Just came from the airport now." She sat down. "Tell me about it quickly."

Telling, it seemed invented incident, the Wilmington Terminal, an author's set.

"Who's responsible?"

She started to answer, "Thusby," but she went deeper into truth. "Barjon Garth."

Dare said, "I don't believe it. Rot." She stood up again. "I've got to see him no matter where he is. Do you suppose they'll let me in?"

Griselda answered, "I don't know at this hour." It was nearing midnight.

Dare repeated, "I have to see him tonight." She went to the door. "If I don't have any luck I'll come back and get you. You'll have a better chance."

She banged out, Griselda standing there with hands clenched. She wished she had but one gram of Dare's insolent assurance. She'd walk right up to Pembrooke and tell him to get out of her honeymoon, and the same to Captain Thusby and all the rest of them. She couldn't go to bed yet; Dare might return. She walked the room and she heard the newsflash warning, ran to turn up the radio.

The announcer's voice was so certain and so impersonally disinterested. "Captain Thusby announced tonight a sensational development in the Bixby Park murder case. Con Satterlee. well-known news commentator, who has been held since Sunday for questioning, has been charged with the murder of Shelley Huffaker. He is held without bail. Recent developments which have come to light—"

The voice went on and on in dreadful clarity, rehashing the known facts and the conjectures. It was the missing shells added to the fingerprints and the time element, ruling out all human intuition. It didn't enter into a murder charge that it was not in Con's character to have done such a thing. All the police wanted was the unimportant circumstances, the things that didn't count.

She didn't know she was sitting on the floor there before the croaking box until the air touched her ankles and she looked up at Dare again in the open doorway.

"Griselda, Con's been—" She stopped, realizing it was known. "You've heard. They wouldn't let me see him. Said he didn't want to talk to anyone until he'd seen his lawyer in the morning." She dug her hands in her coat pockets.

Griselda saw her through a blur.

"You don't want to stay here now. Come to my apartment. I have an extra bed." She must have remembered who'd last been her guest for she added quickly, "Or I'll drive you to the hotel. You can't stay here alone."

Griselda spoke with decision, "Con asked me to stay until he returned. I will." With battered dignity she rose from the floor. "I'm tired. I'd like to go to bed. If you don't mind."

She could sleep now. When you are purged of all feeling, you can't be afraid.

* * *

The Long Beach morning papers had it in scare-heads. So did the Los Angeles papers. The New Yorkers would have it served the same style with their breakfast coffee. Griselda sat in the ugly room waiting for word from someone. There wasn't any. Not even Captain Thusby. You would think that the police would inform the wife when they made such a move, not let her learn it from the radio and press. She wondered why the reporters hadn't descended; probably haunting the hotel lists; they wouldn't expect the Satterlees to be in a ramshackle beach cottage.

When the phone did ring near noon, it startled her. She didn't know the voice. Captain Thusby's compliments and would she come down to headquarters immediately?

The old car crept. She would get to see Con, confer with him. She must get a lawyer, a good lawyer, who would know what next should be done.

Her eyes were puzzled when she entered the office. There was Dare in the same tweed and brown felt, her gauntlets still dug into her pockets. There was Kew biting at his mustache. There was Major Pembrooke's stony face; Kathie Travis turning her great gaze from one man to the other. There was a type officer acting as doorman. All of them looked at Griselda when she entered and all looked too quickly away.

She crossed to Kew, spoke under her breath, "Why this? What's it about?"

He shrugged, then touched her arm. The door was being opened again by the officer. She began to tremble, wanting, not wanting, to see him here in front of everyone. But Con didn't enter. A grimly silent Captain Thusby marched in to his own swivel chair and sat down hard. Vinnie came through another door with a yellow pencil in his mouth and a notebook in his bony hand. He sidled to a plate near his father.

Thusby barked, "Nestor, get some more chairs. Everybody sit down." The officer brought them to Kew and Griselda. "I'll tell all of you right now, you don't have to answer my questions. But you'd better unless you want to look suspicious."

Vinnie took the pencil out of his mouth, licked the sharp point and regarded it with a faint surprise, as if it had disappointed him by not being flavored. The captain drew on his pipe, his face reddening with each puff, and he spoke on top of the stem.

"You start in, Mrs. Satterlee. What did you do last night?"

The question was so unexpected to all that they looked at Griselda, and she said nothing. She simply didn't understand.

Captain Thusby barked more sharply. "Go on. What did you do last night? Where’d you go? Who'd you see? Don't try to think up any fancy way to say it. Vinnie's going to write it down and he don't spell very fast."

It was simply absurd to sit there, holding her bag damply in her hands, unable to say one word. Save for burning the letter, she hadn't done anything that couldn't be repeated to the police chief and the entire roomful. It was nothing but a bad case of stage fright, looking into eyes whichever way she turned.

Thusby spoke to his pipe in exasperation. "Mrs. Satterlee, don't you know what you did last night?"

"Of course, I do," she answered back. "What time?"

"Start with dinner. Go on from there."

She began, "I had dinner with Kew Brent in Laguna," and watched Kathie's eyes darken. She didn't have to tell what they talked of; what they did was simple and innocent. But when she reached the homecoming, she faltered. She hadn't meant to; she hadn't intended to think of the letter, to remember that obscene cottage that could be another of Pembrooke's shore quarters. Nor did she wish to mention Dare. It might hurt Con. How, she didn't know because she, all of them, were steeped in ignorance, only Thusby had the right book open. She had to go on. Better Dare than those other items.

"What time was this?" Thusby nudged Vinnie and the son used his new pencil as if it were a more useful stub. He wasn't transcribing every word, only what the captain wanted.

"I don't know. Yes, I do. It was before midnight." Before that news broadcast. "Between eleven and midnight."

"What did she want that time of night?"

She said, "She wanted to see Con."

The a-ha! look on his round face was as strange as anything else in this strange gathering.

She looked about bitterly, "Why isn't Smithery here?" He had everyone else connected with Con, everyone but Chang and Vironova.

Vinnie said as if delighted, "We couldn't find him." His father scowled. "His name was on the list but we were unable to locate him this morning. Mrs. Crandall. you next."

Dare was at ease. "A friend of mine flew me in from Hollywood at eleven o'clock. You may check that without any trouble at the airport. I went directly from there to Satterlee's, then down here as you jolly well know, and after you turned me down flat I went back to Griselda. She told me to go home and I did."

"Any visitors?"

"No one. None." She was lying but she knew how to do it, answer promptly, fish out a cigarette and light it as you spoke. Dare anyone to question you further.

Thusby coughed and put away the gaseous pipe. He was as dictatorial as an old-fashioned schoolmaster.

"Mr. Brent, start telling about after you left Mrs. Satterlee. You turned up at the Hilton."

"Yes. I went up to the bar for a drink. Pembrooke and Vironova were there and I joined them."

Griselda was cold. He'd gone from her to meet the major.

She couldn't be certain that Kew wasn't in this on the major's side. His oblique suspicions of Pembrooke could have been to divert her and to terrorize her. Had all that he'd told her, frightened her with, been pre-arranged, to make her force Con to give up his investigation of Mannie's disappearance? Had that letter he destroyed incriminated Pembrooke in some way, or Kew himself?

He continued, "Mrs. Travis joined us when her party broke up. I escorted her to her room later and I went to my hotel. And so to bed."

"What time?"

"I don't know exactly. About one."

Captain Thusby said, "It was exactly one-forty when you reached the Villa Riviera."

He'd stayed longer with Kathie than he knew. Still there seemed no reason for his hand to waver as he lit a cigarette.

Kathie answered Thusby's inquiring eyes, "Walker and I had dinner with Admiral Swales. It was so early when they left that my husband suggested that I stay with Kew a while. He took me to my room just like he said." She smiled sweetly at him. She knew she'd done nothing wrong.

Thusby had turned to Major Pembrooke. "You left the roof a bit after midnight with Mr. Vironova?"

Major Pembrooke said, "Yes, Mr. Vironova and I were discussing a sea spectacle he was planning to produce. We went to my room to continue discussion in peace, without the night-club accouterments, as it were. He left at one fifteen. I know the time concretely because he kept surreptitiously consulting the watch on his wrist as he talked. At that hour he leaped up as if surprised, remarked at the lateness, and rushed away. I presumed, rightly no doubt, that he had an amorous rendezvous."

Captain Thusby crumbled the paper slowly in his fingers. "He had a rendezvous, like you call it. but it wasn't what you thought it was. It was like in that poem Vinnie recites. What's it called, Vinnie?"

The son's face was magenta. He choked, " 'I have a rendezvous with Death.' "

No one said anything, not even—Vironova dead? No one did anything. No faint gasp disturbed that still. The shocked silence on each face was as unbecoming as it was unrehearsed. Yet one of these, unless it were Chang, must have known the reason for the police chief's peremptory morning summons. And there was no one who did not take murder for granted.

Thusby put on spectacles, started reading from a paper as if he hadn't mentioned anything of import. "Mrs. Travis, Major Pembrooke, Mr. Vironova staying at the Hilton." He looked over the old square lenses. "Not a stone's throw between the two hotels. Mighty easy to step from one to the other without nobody saying a word, don't need to take out a car or anything. Mighty near the Village."