The Cool Cottontail (2 page)

“I don’t know him. Man of about fifty or so, floating face down. I got him out and thought of artificial respiration, but he was gone—cold as ice.”

“Go back and try to revive him anyway. You know what to do. Keep at it—he may still be alive no matter how he feels. I’ll join you as soon at I call the sheriff.”

George turned and ran back toward the trees and the pool. Almost as rapidly Forrest returned to the kitchen, threw a quick “It’s all right” to his wife, and went to the telephone. He glanced at the emergency-number list posted on the wall and then dialed swiftly. When he heard the ringing on the other end of the line, he consciously relaxed so that his voice would be normal when he spoke. “This is Forrest Nunn at Sun Valley Lodge. My son has just discovered a nude body floating in our main pool.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” the voice on the line commented.

“I didn’t make myself clear; this isn’t one of our people. I haven’t seen him yet, but according to my son he is a stranger. He’s being given artificial respiration, but George is sure that he’s dead.”

The voice at the other end became crisper. “Keep up the respiration until we get there. Mouth-to-mouth, if possible. Try not to disturb the area any more than is necessary. We’ll come as soon as we can.”

The line went dead.

Forrest returned at once to the kitchen to face his wide-eyed,
worried wife and their two daughters. “Carole,” he directed, “I want you to go to your room and stay there until I call you. You’re a good girl and you aren’t being punished. Run!”

Carole looked very disappointed but nevertheless obeyed immediately.

When she was safely beyond hearing, Forrest said calmly, “George has found a man, a stranger, floating in our pool. He thinks the man is dead, but he’s applying artificial respiration anyway. I’ve sent for the sheriff’s rescue squad. Please stay away from the pool area and see that no one else goes there. Linda, dress and put the chain up on the gate. Don’t let anybody in, not even our members, until the sheriff’s squad arrives; then take your orders from whoever is in charge.”

“How about the new couple?” Linda asked quickly.

“If they come in the meantime, have them use the private driveway and offer them some coffee. If you have to, explain we have had something unusual occur and will be with them as soon as we can.”

Linda nodded her understanding and hurried after her sister.

“Is that all?” Emily asked.

“So far, yes. I’m going down to the pool to spell George. Handle things, will you?”

Emily nodded. “If you need me, call.”

Forrest reached for a pair of sun-bleached khaki shorts where they lay conveniently ready, picked up another pair for his son, and left. Emily watched him as he crossed the lawn with long swift strides and disappeared down the pathway through the grove that led to the pool area on the other side.

Along the stretch of public road that bordered the grounds of Sun Valley Lodge, there was a solid screen of shrubbery and trees unbroken except for the main entrance driveway and a smaller road some distance away for the private use of the owners. Opposite the principal gateway there was a sign, which read:

SUN VALLEY LODGE
Affiliated with the A.S.A. and W.S.A.
Visitors Welcome

(Please use gate phone)

Even though the public road was only a two-lane macadam-topped secondary highway, the thin stream of traffic it carried added up to a surprisingly large number of cars by the end of the long California summer. The road followed the foothills for some miles and then turned up toward the mountains and the high resort area, where it joined the main routes to Big Bear Lake and the winter ski sites. By taking a branch, the knowledgeable driver could end up at the El Cajon pass and cut many miles off the established through-way route from Los Angeles across the desert to Las Vegas.

Of the sum total of cars which traveled the relatively obscure
cutoff route past the lodge, a few turned in. Many other drivers who glanced at the sign in passing weren’t even aware that the abbreviations represented the American Sunbathing Association and its regional subdivision, the Western Sunbathing Association.

Linda Nunn knew every part of the lodge grounds and every foot of its hiking trails; she had lived there since she was ten years old. As soon as she saw her father take off toward the sheltering trees that guarded the big pool, she hurried to her room wondering how any stranger, dead or alive, could have got to the carefully protected recreation area without having been seen from the house. Buried in the entrance driveway, there was a concealed treadle that rang a bell in both the office and the kitchen whenever a car drove in; the warning device had not rung the night before.

Opening her closet door, Linda snatched a dress from a hanger and slipped it over her head. She did not bother with underwear; she was not planning to leave the park grounds and expected soon to be free of clothing again, possibly within the hour. Though her closet and dresser were full of the usual things found in a young lady’s wardrobe, wearing any more than was absolutely necessary at the lodge was pointless. The dress she had chosen was conservatively cut and would do nicely.

She paused for a brief moment at her mirror and gave her hair a pat or two before she hurried out of the room. Her feet in attractive and well-made sandals felt the springiness of thick Bermuda grass as she walked rapidly across the big front lawn, taking the short cut to the members’ entrance. She arrived slightly out of breath, but in time to put up the chain that had been provided against any circumstance which might require
that the grounds be temporarily closed. With this done she paused to collect herself and speculate on what would be likely to happen next.

Eight minutes later she heard the distant high whine of a siren. It was not continuous, but sounded only now and then as the approaching vehicle hit curves in the road where a warning was necessary. She had heard that same pattern many times before, even in that quiet rural area. This time, she knew, the emergency equipment was coming to her home and the realization gave her a strange and uncomfortable feeling.

The sound grew louder until she could distinguish that there were two cars, one close behind the other. With a final blast from the sirens the vehicles came into view, a copper-colored patrol car closely followed by a police ambulance with the word “
RESCUE
” visible on its side. The lead driver, who obviously knew exactly where the lodge driveway was, pulled up and stopped.

When he leaned out to speak, he was crisp but pleasant. “Is there a service road down to your pool?” he asked.

Linda hesitated a moment. “Yes, but we don’t use it very often. It’s pretty rutty.”

“That’s all right. Which way do we go?”

“You have to use the other driveway. Shall I show you?”

“Please.”

Because there were two men in the front seat of the car, Linda opened the rear door and climbed in. Sitting on the edge of the seat, she directed the driver to the other entryway, down past the onetime farmhouse, and onto the dirt road that skirted the edge of the trees. The sheriff’s car bumped heavily over exposed tree roots and soft sandy potholes for a hundred yards and then drew up beside a complicated filter system that
serviced a beautifully decked Olympic-size swimming pool.

When Linda reached to open the door, she discovered there were no handles on the inside of the car. The man beside the driver let her out and followed as she led the way up an embankment to the deck level. The smooth surface of the water stole a deep blue from the sky and created a false feeling of calm serenity. Midway up the side of the elaborate concrete decking, George Nunn was lying prone, face to face with the body of a substantially built man, stark nude in the strong light of the sun. George, with his fingers around his lips, was doing his best to force mouth-to-mouth air into the lungs of the inert man. Forrest was kneeling beside his son, watching for any sign of reviving life.

After a quick glance at the scene, the sheriff’s deputy next to Linda reached for her shoulder and turned her away. “You’d better leave us now, Miss,” he advised.

“I’ve seen dead people before,” she answered quickly. “That is, if he’s really dead.” She looked back and saw that two more men were getting out of the ambulance, which had followed them down the road.

The deputy took a firmer tone. “He’s not covered, Miss.”

Linda looked at him. “I’m not a cottontail,” she retorted. “And I might know him. I know everyone who comes here and a good many other members, too.”

While they were talking, a surprisingly young-looking man carrying a doctor’s familiar black kit brushed past and knelt beside the man on the deck. He motioned George away and laid his ear against the man’s chest. A moment later he rolled up an eyelid and then listened carefully with a stethoscope on the side of the chest next to the left arm. He shook his head. Experimentally he flexed the arm itself and then rose to his
feet. “He’s gone,” he announced. “Probably several hours ago.”

He looked at George. “You did exactly the right thing in trying to revive him. If you’d been in time, you might have saved him.” He turned. “Get the girl out of here,” he ordered.

“She’s my daughter,” Forrest said mildly. “She’s seen death before.”

The young doctor opened his mouth, remembered where he was, and closed it again. “At least let’s cover him up,” he said finally.

The ambulance driver brought a blanket and laid it over the body.

The senior deputy was an older man; his body was thick around his middle, where much of his weight had settled, making him look shorter than he was. He appeared in his early fifties, but added five years more when he took off his uniform cap to wipe his arm across his forehead. His hair had turned largely white, and over much of the top where his cap had rested it was gone altogether. When he had wiped the perspiration away, he replaced his cap, produced a small notebook, and asked calmly, “What happened?”

George answered. “I came down not much more than half an hour ago to clean the tiling and backwash the filters—we do it every other day. When I came through the trees”—he stopped and pointed—“I saw him floating in the pool. He was back up, with his face in the water. I was surprised because I hadn’t heard any guests come in and early Tuesday morning isn’t a usual time for the pool to be in use. When he didn’t pull his face out of the water after half a minute or so, I knew something was wrong. I ran the rest of the way and dove in. I pulled him out and put him on the deck where he is now.
I was pretty sure he was dead—he was cold—then I ran for Dad.”

“If you dove in after him, how come your shorts aren’t wet?” the deputy asked.

“I didn’t have them on at the time.”

“Do you know this man?”

George shook his head. “I don’t and Dad doesn’t. He isn’t a member here, that’s for sure.”

“I don’t think he’s a member anywhere,” Linda contributed unexpectedly. “Maybe a onetime visitor, or an occasional who goes to one of the northern clubs, but no more than that.”

The deputy turned and looked at her. “I’m sure you have a reason for saying that,” he prompted. “Would you mind telling me?”

“He’s a cottontail,” Linda pointed out. “He isn’t tanned at all around the hips, you could see that clearly. He couldn’t be a nudist and have skin that white anywhere.”

The deputy wrote in his notebook, then looked down at the doctor, who had resumed his examination of the body. “What do you think?” he asked.

The doctor got to his feet after replacing the covering. “I don’t think he drowned. Possibly an accident, but more likely he was murdered.”

The senior deputy nodded. “About what I figured. He doesn’t appear to belong here. And if he had come in for a midnight swim without the owner’s consent, he would have some sort of a vehicle. He could have walked in, but if he did, where are his clothes?”

He turned to the driver who had accompanied him. “Call in and tell them what we have,” he directed. “Ask if Virgil
is still there. If he is, maybe it would be a good idea if he stopped by.”

The other man nodded and returned to his patrol car. In little more than a minute he was back with a report. “Virgil was just walking out the door, but they caught him. He said he’d look in on his way back to Pasadena. They’re going to call Chief Addis and ask if we can have him if it works out we need him. He asked to have the body left where it is until he gets here.”

“Will that be long?” Forrest asked.

“I don’t think so,” the senior deputy answered. “He doesn’t know this area the way we do, but he should be here inside a half hour.”

“Meanwhile, then, come up to the house and have some coffee. It’s ready—it always is.” He motioned toward the pathway.

“Somebody will have to stay with the body.”

The ambulance driver, who had remained silently in the background, raised his right hand shoulder high to volunteer and sank into one of the aluminum deck chairs. Forrest led the rest of the small party through the grove and toward the residence on the other side. Linda fell in beside the man in charge, whose uniform already showed dark marks of perspiration under the armpits.

“Who’s Virgil?” she asked.

The deputy looked at her a moment before he replied. “In Virgil’s case it might be best to wait until you meet him. Then you’ll know.”

Forrest Nunn held the door open to the big bright kitchen, where his wife, who had seen them coming, was already setting out the coffee cups. It was characteristic of her that she counted her guests first and then took time to wonder what was going on. “Please sit down, gentlemen,” she invited. “The coffee is ready and I’ll have sweet rolls for you in a moment.”

The deputy in charge, who was at once fully aware that his hostess was wearing a coverall type of apron and nothing more, regarded it as one more curiosity in the line of duty and took it in his stride. “Bill Morrissey, ma’am,” he introduced himself. A little gingerly he walked past her and stood waiting at the table. The other deputy, who was much younger and considerably less self-possessed, mumbled his name and hurried to join his partner, his eyes toward the floor. The back of his neck was red and he shifted his weight slightly from one foot to the other.