The Bamboo Blonde (7 page)

Dare and Kew were preparing to leave too. It might have been that they'd only come to watch Con's party. Griselda knew that was absurd, quite naturally they would finish, even as they'd started, at approximately the same time.

Con delayed. "We'll find something to amuse you. Now if it were New York…" He beckoned the waiter.

Kathie moved to the parapet, stood there looking over at the dark tumultuous waters beyond the crowded Pike. Griselda shivered from a safe distance. The girl turned her head. Her eyes were shining as if lighted by the stars. "Look!" she whispered. Her hand pointed, a white tendril over the sea.

Griselda shook her head. She said, "It would make me dizzy to stand there and look over." Saying something prosaic took away the gulp at the idea.

Kathie's eyes were wondering. "Really? I love it." Her voice was shiny too. "It makes me feel as if I have wings."

Walker sounded anxious, "Come, dear. We're ready to go."

Again there was the faintest displeasure under the outline of her face but she obeyed, walking not to her husband but to Con. And the undercurrent had been swept away before he saw her face.

CHAPTER 3

Con said, "I'll get the car," and Griselda smiled. Kathie wouldn't be so eager for Con's company when she viewed that model.

They stood there, not long, but conversation languished as always in idle waiting. She shouldn't have heard what Kathie said to Walker; Shelley Huffaker's headline in the night's paper had sprung at her, and she stepped to the newsstand.

But Kathie had spoken too soon, too hurriedly, before Griselda was out of earshot. "Remember, Don't mention her." It wasn't spoken gently, even her voice seemed changed, harsh.

Griselda didn't hear the lieutenant's answer. When she turned back, paper under her arm, Con had come through the door and Kathie's window was again dressed.

They went into the always misted night. Con flourished, "Madame, the Duesenberg." Kathie didn't care for the form of transportation, not even when Con herded her into the center place leaving Griselda to sit on top of the lieutenant, to be bumped on knees and skull. Griselda presumed there was reason for all, for the Travises, for an afternoon with Dare, even for the horrible little car. She knew one thing. There must be explanation soon or her namesake's virtue wouldn't be one of her qualities.

Con stopped at the Bamboo. "This is the best place I've found for fun." He was that determined to find the major; even a social evening couldn't give way for it. She wanted to speak to him; she had thought she glimpsed Kew's car following them as they drove out Ocean, not that there weren't other lean black roadsters in town. But Con gave her no opportunity: he was hanging on to Kathie as if he'd won her in a lottery.

Griselda followed hesitantly; tonight, haunted by the memory of the blonde girl, the green shadows were not amusingly sinister. Major Pembrooke was not lurking in them, and Chang displayed no conscience about throwing Con to the Thusbys. he came happily to the table.

"Drinks all around, Chang, and don't spare the bottle." This still wasn't Con, this hyper-gay spiriting; it was imitation of some of his newspaper colleagues in their cups, not Con with Barjon Garth's business on his mind.

Without surprise flecking anyone's lips, not even those of Chang, Kew and Dare walked in. There was no eluding them this time. Dare's narrow wrist, gemmed with marquise diamonds, rested on Con's shoulder. "Are you preceding us, darling, or vice versa?"

Kew had hands on two neighboring chairs. "Don't mind if we join, do you?"

This time Con had to make the introductions. "Lieutenant and Mrs. Travis, Mrs. Crandall, Mr. Brent."

Mrs. Travis knew Mr. Brent. She acknowledged the introduction but when their eyes met there was a secret, a delightful secret, hidden in hers. Kew, at some time during his two days in Long Beach, had evidently made yet another conquest. The rabbity husband wasn't to know; that was the why of the pretense here and earlier. It lifted one care from Griselda; she wouldn't have to worry about Kathie Travis chasing Con, her starry eyes encircled Kew alone.

Dare wedged herself between Kathie and Con, not adeptly but with arrogance; Kew sat himself by Walker Travis. Griselda between the Navy couple was in observation post. She heard Kew working toward
a
column on naval radio, even while Dare's narrow jade eyes posed on Kathie.

"I've seen you before, haven't I?"

Kathie murmured, "Perhaps. We were at the Sky Room tonight."

"I don't mean that." Dare's pointed elbow lay on Con's coatsleeve. She put a slender cigarette into her mouth, pressed her naked shoulder against his coat, tilted her head to him for a light. When she exhaled smoke she turned narrow eyes again. "You're Shelley's friend," she stated.

Griselda waited, startled into immobility. Dare's statement was more than definitive; it was almost accusation. And then she noticed that she wasn't the only one waiting that answer. Con's lids were down, his ears up, and he wasn't drinking. More surprising, Walker Travis was ignoring Kew, and he seemed to want to say something but he didn't know how.

Kathie's little laugh sound was obviously a play for time. And she asked stupidly, "You mean Shelley Huffaker?"

"Certainly I mean Shelley Huffaker." Dare was brazen. She didn't make any attempt to keep her words to this table, and she was insolently amused by Kathie's scarcely hidden discomfiture.

Again Kathie didn't seem to know what to say. She was hesitant. "Yes—I—we—I met her in Hollywood." She glanced around the circle, began again with apparently aimless volubility, "I hardly knew her. I hadn't seen her for months."

Dare struck. "You had lunch with her yesterday." She said it without her usual triumphant arrogance; she said it almost quietly but it might have been a dart transfixing Kathie's security. No one spoke. Griselda was certain Chang—Mr. Alexander Smithery— wasn't hovering for reorders. He was listening as eagerly to the conversation as was Con, and Kew pretending to be engrossed by his cigarette.

And Kathie denied it, denied it barefacedly, in that too sweet, soft voice, "No, I didn't."

Dare persisted, her lizard eyes watching Kathie with unwavering certainty. "You called her the night before, at about six. You asked her to meet you for lunch at the Hilton."

"Yes," Kathie agreed. "I called her. But I didn't lunch with her. She didn't show up."

Chang moved one step to Con's shoulder. "Another, Mr. Satterlee?"

"All around," Con ordered. And he turned to Kathie. "So you knew Shelley Huffaker."

"Very slightly, Con. I hadn't seen her for the longest time. I didn't know her well, anyway." Her great eyes were an epitome of harmlessness but she had warned her husband not to mention a her, a her who could only have been Shelley.

Dare wasn't satisfied. She glistened when she said, "If you knew her so slightly, Mrs. Travis, how did you know she was in Long Beach?"

Kathie answered innocently, "I noticed it in the paper. And I just thought I'd call her and see if she'd have lunch with me." She leaned across Dare to lift her dark lashes to Kew. "There was nothing wrong in that, was there?"

Again Dare answered, "Nothing wrong at all." Her laugh wasn't pleasant. "Save that she'd only just arrived and no one but myself knew she was in Long Beach. She particularly didn't want it known."

Kathie was sweet but stubborn. "Some reporter must have found out." Her voice expressed her awe of the gentlemen of the press.

Kew moved words between the contestants. Con had done nothing to alleviate the tension; he might have been egging the women on, sitting back there with that enjoying smile around his mouth.

Kew spoke with such nice matter-of-factness, "The papers are saying she was your cousin, Dare. I never heard you mention her."

"But, darling," she shrilled with delight and was her normal self again, "I don't go about mentioning my relatives in civilized society. You've never heard me mention Uncle Ebenezer or Aunt Jerusha or Cousin Marmaduke, I'm certain."

"Of course, he's heard of your Aunt J'ushy, Dare," Con helped out. "You remember the time she brought her old Tom in the canary cage—"

They were off again, Kew and Dare and Con, the three. No matter what worldly ladders they had climbed since their days on the old
World,
there would always be the past, delightful hare-brained past, linking them. And as always when they were off again, Griselda felt left out and lonely. But tonight they did not retain the mood. It did not interest them. The reason was obvious. It was the mild naval lieutenant sitting there, quite frankly not understanding, and feeling sheepish because he didn't belong. All of them, even Dare who had no business with him, were there because he was present.

And when he said, "Kathie, we must be going. It's late," Griselda knew that the evening was practically over.

Kathie .didn't want to leave. She protested, "It's barely eleven, Walker," but this time he didn't give her her own way. He was already on his feet. "We have taps early in the Navy, you know. I'm tired. And I haven't been feeling well."

Con said, "I'll run you down."

"No reason for that," Kew inserted. "I go that way." He attempted to rise but Con, standing, pushed his hand on his friend's shoulder.

"You keep an eye on Griselda until I get back and we'll think of something to do with our money. The evening's young."

Kew needn't have wasted words; when Con was decisive he didn't fall back. Travis kept trying to protest, "You needn't bother," but his voice was lost in the discussion. Kathie did not assist. She powdered her nose complacently, watching Kew under her curled eyelashes.

Con's fingers lay on her arm as they left the table. He called back, "Bring another round, Chang. I'll be with you before you get 'em poured."

Dare watched the exit with slit eyes and calculating mouth. As the bamboo door swung behind them, she turned to Griselda with deliberate malice. "Well," she demanded, "what do you think of Con's most recent acquisition?"

Griselda could have told her where Kathie's interests lay but she didn't. Not with this opportunity to warn Dare to stay on her own side of the fence. She thought her reply carefully. "Just what I've thought of all of them. They don't know Con very well."

Kew said,
"Touché,"
and moved his chair beside hers. "You asked for it, Dare."

"Deliberately, and with careful consideration of the chances," she replied easily. And she looked with steady eyes at Griselda. "But if I were you, darling, —if you'll excuse my offering advice—I wouldn't let Con get too involved with this one."

"Why not?" She hated Dare, cool, insolent, so sure of herself.

"Because—" She hesitated before continuing. She looked at Kew rather than at Griselda. "Because she is dangerous."

Kew laughed out loud. He didn't seem to notice Chang wiping the dry table next to theirs. "Ridiculous. Dare darling, are you seeing sheets for ghosts? That timid girl, that creature steeped in an inferiority complex, dangerous?" He laughed again as if he were enjoying himself hugely, as if he'd only met that girl for the first time an hour ago.

Dare spoke directly to Griselda. "Because she is dangerous. That quiet voice and those innocent eyes and that damn cloying sweetness—it's a wonderful game. It's even taken Kew in, you see. And Kew isn't half so curious about the female intricacies as Con."

Dare had no business saying that. It wasn't true. She was trying to use Kathie as a red herring to mask her renewed attachment to Con. And perhaps her nose was out of joint because Con had left her temporarily. Yet there was something false in Kathie Travis. Griselda herself had sensed that.

Dare went on. "I have never met a woman any more certain of herself and so determined to have what she wants."

"And what does she want, Madame ZuZu?" Kew asked. He winked at Griselda.

"She doesn't want what she has." Dare smiled now. "And she does want what we have."

She gestured vaguely but Griselda knew that Dare was right. Kathie's want for Dare's air, for clothes and jewels, for moneyed things, hadn't been disguised at dinner.

"For one thing," Dare laughed a little, "she doesn't want that funny little Lieutenant Travis." She lit a cigarette slowly.

Again Dare was right. Kathie's irritation with Walker was constant; women weren't that way with men they wanted.

Dare laughed again. "She'll trade him in at the first chance. She had one before Walker, you know, a farmer. He was considerate, though. Left her a widow so she could climb up in the world on Lieutenant Travis's shoulders. But she'd like to climb a little higher. And I'm afraid the lieutenant won't do as well by her as his predecessor. The Navy watches its men too closely."

Kew said, "You seem to have a bit of information on someone you never met before."

"Darling," she droned, "I'm working for the Navy. And the Service does gossip." She approved the narrow length of her parrot-red nails. "But even you should have recognized that Kathie Travis is a damn liar."

Con had returned, slid into the chair beside hers. "You've decided."

“I knew. Kathie did lunch with Shelley yesterday. The Hilton maitre-d'hotel told me this morning. He remembered Shelley with her pictures slattered in all the rags. Moreover, he knew Mrs. Travis very well. She and her husband stay at the Hilton frequently."

Kew made a sound like hmmm. Con murmured, "Incredible, Dr. Watson."

Dare continued, "Moreover, there wasn't one line in the Long Beach papers about Shelley being here. She'd have yelled if there were. And she went over them inch by inch as if she were looking for something lost."

"Why did Kathie lie?" Kew seemed puzzled.

Con shrugged. "Perhaps she doesn't want to get mixed up in it. The Navy's almost as particular as a boarding school some ways. Perhaps she's allergic to the police. How would we know why she lied? Maybe she's just a psychopathic liar. Some women are."

Kew asked then, "Was Shelley really your cousin, Dare?"

She eyed him almost in disgust. "Of course, she wasn't. Do I look as if I'd have that sort of cousin?"