The Bamboo Blonde (6 page)

They returned to comfortable chairs with the cold glasses.

"Where is Con? I thought maybe you two might join Dare and me for dinner."

She stated into the liquid, "Con went to see Dare."

He didn't look sympathetic but he did look too kind. "How about tonight?"

"We can't. We're having dinner with some friends of Con's. I don't know them." She recalled the name. "The Travises."

He looked up then. "Not Walker Travis?"

"I don't know. Maybe that was the name. You know him?"

"No. But you know who he is, don't you?"

She said lazily that she didn't.

"Walker Travis is the naval radio expert." He added, "I've been wanting to do a story on him."

"He's Navy. Con said so." She wasn't very interested. There was something bigger than radio experts filling her thoughts. Kew could have read a part of them.

He asked, "What did the police want with Con?"

"It was about that girl who was killed last night. Shelley Huffaker." Of course, he must know that.

"Why come to Con?"

"Because"—she could have wailed over Con's headstrong curiosity—"because he was with her, that's why."

"And how did they know that?" He shook his head as if disbelieving.

"Evidently his bar friend, the one at the Bamboo, the one he calls Chang, volunteered the information." She said, "It's so stupid. Con didn't have anything to do with it. He didn't even know her. And now we can't go to Malibu. We can't leave here."

"Can't?" His dark brows were perplexed.

"Captain Thusby won't let us. Con said so."

"He's not under—" He didn't finish.

"Oh no!" She stressed it. "Oh no, of course not." She finished lamely, "But they might want to ask him some more questions."

His dark eyes smiled into her blue ones. "Selfishly I'm glad of that. Glad you won't be running out on me for the movie paradise."

Of course, he meant nothing personal but Kew always made it sound that way. That was why women liked him, why men did not. But she wasn't interested in him the way other women might be. She didn't know exactly how or what to say of the major. The man might be Kew's friend. She continued speaking, waiting for a bypath.

"Kew, the cousin who identified Shelley Huffaker was Dare." And then she realized, this couldn't be news to him. "But you knew that."

"I didn't." He was thoughtful, then spoke again, "I still haven't seen Dare. I spoke to her on the phone but she said she was busy this afternoon."

Not too busy to see Con. They were both thinking that.

He was finishing his drink. She had to blurt it now, "Kew, who is Major Pembrooke?"

He set down his glass. He didn't look at her. "Why do you ask? Have you run into him out here?"

She didn't explain. She said, "Yes."

Kew's eyes were steady. "He is a British officer."

"Con told me that." It was surprising that you could speak when you were so cold you trembled without willing it. Whatever his title Major Pembrooke was a dangerous person; that was written on him. She asked, "Are you here looking for Mannie Martin?" She added hurriedly to the flash in his eyes, "Major Pembrooke said that you were."

The flash had faded. He answered as evasively as Con, "I wouldn't object to finding him." He held out his hand. "I must go. Maybe we'll see you tonight anyway. Where are you dining, the Sky Room?"

"Yes. I suppose so. We're meeting them at the Hilton."

"We may run into you."

She asked curiously, "Is Dare going to be with you?"

"Yes." He repeated, "We may see you. Unless Dare decides not to go out."

She had little hope that Dare would make that decision. Not the Dare she remembered. She watched Kew's roadster, handsome as his face, make a turn toward the city. She would have to dress with competition in mind. It was ridiculous to have to compete for your own husband but there was no faint hope that the leopard had changed her spots in the intervening years. Con had been gone too many hours for that.

He didn't return until after six-thirty. He was jaunty as he'd always been after seeing that woman, and he was slightly alcoholic. He didn't notice that she was wearing the pale blue swiss, wide ruffles to the waist, a tiny ripple squaring the neck; he didn't know the dress was a dream, that she'd designed it for Oppy's favorite ingenue, and that it looked better on her than on the slightly bawdy young actress.

All he said was, "Hello, hon. Ready to go?"

She nodded. "Aren't we a little early?"

"Thought we might stop for a drink on the way."

"You've had enough as usual." He wanted to go back to that truly sinister bar; even an afternoon with Dare hadn't made him forget Pembrooke. She prayed the major wouldn't be there.

He was whistling by the window when she returned with her army-brown silk duster. "Any callers?"

"Only Kew."

He twirled. "Only Kew!" He seemed suspicious and then he was casual again. "What did he want?"

"He wondered if he'd left his cigarette case."

"An ancient stall."

She shrugged. "Maybe. Why should he need a stall? He could come any time without it. He's a friend of ours."

"Yours. Did he find it?"

"No. We looked. He decided maybe he'd dropped it in his room."

"Probably in his pocket all the time." Con was disgusted. Was it that he thought Kew had come to see her and didn't like it?

She hoped so. It would serve him right. She smiled in the darkness as the uncomfortable coupe rattled across the street fronting the bay. "We may see him tonight."

She saw Con's face turn to her in the street light. It was expressionless. That meant he was angry. She didn't know why.

"Does he know where we're going?"

"Yes—" she began.

"You told him."

"Yes." She defended herself. "I couldn't help it, Con." He'd stopped the machine in front of the Bamboo Bar. "He asked us to join him and Dare at dinner. What could I tell him?"

He stated, "I suppose you also told him who we were dining with?"

"Yes." She knew she'd done wrong but not why or how. "What could I say?"

He started the car again, swore at the traffic light snapping red, and said above the noisy coughs of the engine, "You could have told him we were busy and let it go at that, couldn't you? I asked you not to talk. Do you think I want him scooping me? Wives as a rule don't help out their husbands' business rivals."

She hadn't thought of their being in competition. Con must be after a story too on this Travis. She said, "I'm sorry."

He shot the car ahead at the first warning of green, quickly leftwards into Ocean Boulevard. "Maybe we can beat him there and sneak the Travises out somewhere else to eat."

It was no more than ten to seven when they reached the Hilton, but the Travises were seated there waiting. Walker was a skinny young officer with a round preoccupied face, pale sandy hair plastered above a recessive forehead. He didn't look like a bright boy.

Kathie was beautiful. Even the white chiffon dress, obviously made over and without style; the blue street coat over it with the big pink fish pin on the lapel, didn't diminish her beauty: the soft soot hair, the sad contour of her face, and her eyes, blue as early night, soot-lashed. The pin might have served as model for the bulbous examples on the beach-cottage cretonne, pink, with black spots superimposed on the enamel. No one with any taste could have selected, much less worn it. It wasn't hideously smart. It was hideously banal. But fish or no fish, Kathie was exquisite.

Griselda looked at Con. He too knew that Kathie Travis walked in beauty. It had been too much to hope that he wouldn't.

He was smiling at the girl, "I thought we might—" and then he broke off. Griselda saw where his eyes had strayed. White-linened Kew rising from one of the period chairs. He raised a friendly hand and started toward them. He was intercepted. Without her glasses Griselda couldn't be certain, but it looked as if the man patting Kew's sleeve was Sergei Vironova, Oppy's favored foreign director. She'd done costumes for one of his pictures.

Con put his arm' through Kathie Travis's. "We'll eat in the Sky Room. O.K.?"

Her smile was even lovelier than her quiet face. Griselda followed to the elevators with the dull lieutenant. It wasn't fair that Kathie Travis should exist with Dare already here. In the stereotyped beauty land of movie stars, Griselda wouldn't have been disturbed by any or all women. But Kathie didn't need the Westmores or Griselda Cameron Satterlee. And Dare didn't need anything. With gloomy foreboding Griselda watched Con bend down to the slight girl's words as the elevator rose swiftly to the roof.

They sat on the terrace looking out at the sea that moiled in twisted currents to a once mythical East, land no longer of cherry blossoms and delicate things, land of drawn sabers and crashing bombs. A low parapet protected the diners from a sheer drop to the Pike below.

Con suggested the menu, said, "We should have stopped at the bar first. Care to investigate it, Kathie?" He had said he wanted to see Walker Travis; it seemed he'd mixed up the forenames. Griselda wasn't surprised.

She was left with the negative little officer. She didn't know how to make conversation with him; when she spoke he was a rabbit peering insecurely from a safe dark hutch. The weather, the night, Long Beach—he scuttled from each topic back into his hiding place. And then she stopped trying, watched silently the approach of Kew and Dare Crandall.

They came directly to her. Dare kissed her, crying, "Darling, I'm so glad to see you again! I told Con I was just furious that he didn't bring you along this afternoon but he said you had other fish to fry."

Dare hadn't changed although she had let her hair go back to neutral. It looked as brown hair should, shining as if light were upraised above it. Her body, draped in white wool jersey, would alone make women distrust her; it had, as Griselda remembered, the sleek lines of a polo pony. She was talking to Griselda but the slant green eyes in her almost ugly face were looking at Lieutenant Travis. And Griselda could have cheered. After thirty-odd years, Dare had met her match. Walker Travis wasn't any more impressed by her than if she were a waiter. He was peering into the lighted main room where his wife and Con were laughing at the great bar.

And Con saw him. Quickly he returned Kathie to the table, said bluntly, "Hello, Kew. Hello, Dare." With incomprehensible rudeness he shouldered them out of the way to give Kathie her chair. When he sat down. Lieutenant Travis did too. It was obvious that Con wasn't going to make introductions; Kew and Dare knew it.

Dare said, "We must see a lot of each other while you're here, Griselda. It's been so long—" They moved beyond to an unoccupied table.

The husky sweetness of Kathie's voice was relief after Dare's pseudo-British shrillness. She asked, "Who are they?"

Con said wickedly, "Friends of Griselda's. The girl's quite a decorator. For fame, not nickels. She was married to a mint, son of the tobacco Crandall. He was killed in a plane wreck. Before that she was the damn best newspaperwoman ever worked New York." He added disinterestedly, "The man is Kew Brent, the Washington columnist."

Travis's eyes colored in recognition. "I read him," he said, as if he read nothing else in the paper.

"Too many people do." Con was enjoying himself. "That's why he exists. Mrs. Crandall is here to decorate the Swales's house."

"Admiral Swales?" Kathie raised her eyes.

"Yeah. The daughter."

Kathie said, "Oh," and her head turned slightly to where she could see the other couple, there where the low wall made an angle. She said softly again, "Oh. The Swales are terribly rich." She was like a naïve child. "She'll make their house beautiful, won't she? It's that big white one on Ocean. It has private steps to the beach. I was there once at a tea. I'd like to meet that—Dare." She sounded wistful.

"Some other time," Con replied promptly. "Not tonight. I've spent the afternoon with her. That's enough."

"You don't like her?"

He laughed and he had the grace not to look at Griselda. "I might like an electric current but I couldn't stand it crackling in me twenty-four hours a day."

The small lieutenant emerged from his silence temporarily. "You understand, dear, don't you?"

"Yes, I understand." Her expression didn't change and her voice was gentle, but there was irritation gnatting behind the words. She devoted herself quickly to Con. "You've known her long?"

"Yeah. Pretty long."

Walker Travis spoke up, "Why are you so interested in her, dear?"

Kathie hid the irritation this time. She said, "She sounds wonderful. She's rich, and she makes money besides, and she has beautiful clothes. She's really good-looking too, in a queer sort of way. She has everything, hasn't she?"

Con said, "Uh-huh," not very interested; and Griselda to herself said, "Everything but Con." Nor was she going to have him. This time she'd fight Dare, foul or fair, preferably foul. She hated her being in Long Beach.

Con began to entertain. It was deliberate, and if the Travises but knew, it was a rare compliment. Griselda herself hadn't heard these tales of Ethiopia, of Spain, of France. Whether or not they were true, they were exciting. She scarcely remembered that Kew and Dare were on the roof. And then he eyed the table sprawling with empty dishes. "Let's go somewhere clean." He grinned. "Some place where we can have a drink." He took Kathie's coat to help her but he didn't. "Where'll we go? Any suggestions? I'm afraid if I ask you out to our trailer we'll have drop-ins. Griselda and I seem to be awfully popular this season."

Walker Travis spoke as if it were prearranged, "We could go up to our room." He looked for approval to Kathie but it was not forthcoming.

Again there was no change in the Madonna face, the gentle chime of her voice. But her, "Oh, no," was definite as concrete, and her deprecating, "Hotel rooms are so dreadful," sealed her decision.

Con stood up. "I like hotel rooms. I'm never really happy except in a hotel room."

The fine chiseling of Kathie's chin wasn't soft. "They depress me." She turned her smile on him. "Let's go some place where it's fun, Con."