This Girl for Hire (8 page)

There was a light in my cabin. I opened the
door. Aces was sprawled across my bed, legs and arms hanging limply over each side. My heart sank to my knees. I stepped inside and slammed the door.

Aces sat up, stretched, yawned and peered at me. “Where you been, Honey?” he asked. “I been worried about you.”

“Sam, I thought you were dead! Where's Swanson?”

“You got me,” Aces said, grinding to his feet. “We got to be as thick as thieves in the bar. Then he suggested we take a walk. I didn't like the sound of that, but I went along. When we got out on deck, I don't know whether it was the ship pitching or old B. S. pushing, but I damn near went over the railing. That's when we quit being friends.”

“How'd you get in here?”

Aces tried to shake some of the whiskey out of his cranium. “I don't know exactly. I remembered your gun and that's about all I remember until now. What time is it, anyway?”

“About two o'clock.”

“How'd you get back to the ship?”

I told him the whole story, including the part about Lori's picture in Rod Caine's drawer.

“You mean that son-of-a-B is aboard my ship?” Aces roared.

“Someplace,” I said. “I lost him in the shuffle. But I got a hunch where we might find him.”

We headed for the swimming pool. Wind and rain swept the decks wildly, pushing us around like paper dolls. Rod was sitting at the bar
with Lori.

Aces waded over with me and grabbed Rod by the arm.

“Get out of here, Caine! Get off this ship before I throw you off!”

Rod didn't ruffle a feather. He gently lifted Sam's hand away and said, “Now, that isn't being very hospitable, is it, Mr. Aces? Is that all the thanks I get for bringing your blonde bombshell back to her base?”

“Don't do me any favors, Caine. I don't need your kind of help. Now get out of here!”

Lori tried to intercede. “Sammy, please! Rod saved Miss West's life. Let's let bygones be bygones.”

“No!” Aces roared.

His voice barely caused a ripple in the noise and confusion. Ann Claypool, still dancing and singing on the bar, was shouting her lungs out. And beyond, in the wet darkness, the storm was creating its own impossible clamor.

Rod grinned, his usual grin, and quietly mixed Aces a drink. Then Swanson appeared out of nowhere, breasting the water in his inimitable muscular style. He looked at Caine, then at Aces and exploded wildly.

“Let me at him!” he roared. “Let me at Caine! I'll kill the bastard!”

He flailed and stumbled around drunkenly but never even got close to Rod Caine. Sam Aces intervened with a smashing blow to Swanson's mouth that caught the muscle man completely offguard. He stood for an instant, eyes widened, blood spilling from the wound, then slowly submerged in the water
of the swimming pool. Rod helped me drag him to the side of the pool.

“What is this?” I said to Caine. “You and Swanson were supposed to be pals. What happened the night in the Golden Slipper that you haven't told me about?”

Rod shook his head. “Nothing. I told you everything. Now forget it!”

I shook my head angrily. Rod Caine wasn't telling me half what he knew. Had he seen Swanson put something in Aces' drink? Or was it the other way around? Or was it that everyone had a hankering to hang one on the capricious Mr. Caine's jaw? But the biggest riddle was why Sam Aces suddenly stepped in between the two and lowered the boom on Golden Boy.

Swanson was all out of the fighting mood when he came to his senses. He growled a few times and skulked off to his cabin. Rod was about to head back to the beach when things really went haywire.

Aces stopped him. “I'm sorry I flew off the handle, Caine. Why not stay the night? You'll have a tough time making shore the way the storm's going now.”

Rod accepted gratefully. We joined Lori at the bar again and immediately Decker floated over. There was one thing about Max Decker. Drunk or sober, he didn't have to shout to be heard.

“Good to see you again, Rodney,” he bellowed, pumping Caine's hand. “I thought maybe you were dead.”

This time it was Rod's turn to get nasty. He didn't hit Decker, but he might as well have. He gave the big man one of the roughest five minutes
on record. When it was over, everyone seemed willing to call it a night, but we got naked little Annie instead. She obviously knew Rod Caine well.

She flopped into his lap. “Hi, honey man! I been missing you, where you been?”

“In a clothing store,” Rod quipped.
“Why don't you try one for size?”

“Now, sweetie,” Ann said drunkenly, “when the public clamors, you got to give them what they want. Isn't that right, Sam boy?”

Before Sam Aces had a chance to answer, Lori cried, “Can it, Claypool! Can it and sell it on Main Street where you can make yourself a buck.”

The two gals were about the same size and weight. I thought for a second they'd square off in another fight but they never had a chance to get up out of their corners.

Sam Aces suddenly turned green, grabbed his throat and screamed as if he'd just swallowed a pint of broken glass.

The bar patrons stopped dead in their drunken tracks. Aces lurched through the water toward me with a tall orange drink in his hand and as I tried to catch him, he went down. I got the drink instead.

While I juggled the glass, Aces sank and came up again, still screaming, still off balance. Several people tried to stop him, but failed in their efforts. He crawled up the side of the pool, staggered, fell and got up again, finally disappearing onto the storm-drenched upper deck.

“He's poisoned!” someone yelled.

Rod Caine ditched Ann in the pool and came
after me. Apparently he wanted Sam's glass, but I wasn't about to give it up.

Clutching the glass firmly, I waded to the edge of the pool and started after Aces. Caine was hot on my heels. So were a few others, including Decker, Meeler, Ann Claypool and Lori Aces.

If there was poison in the glass, I had to get the contents to a safe place. More important, I had to find Aces and dig up an antidote in a hurry.

A light burned in a cabin up ahead. I recognized it as Aces' and turned in. The bit players were gone. I went into the bathroom, opened the cabinet and took down a small ceramic figurine used for storing old razor blades. The container was almost empty.

I shook out the blades and poured the contents of Aces' glass into the narrow slot. Replacing the piece of pottery, I noticed a bottle of orange-colored medicine bearing the label,
Suspension Co-Pyronil Antihistamine.
It looked like concentrated orange juice. A bright thought struck me. I poured a small quantity of the thick liquid into Aces' glass and added water. What a break! It looked enough like the original contents of the glass to fool any one.

Suddenly the cabin was swarming with people. Caine extracted the glass from my hand and grinned.

“I'll take care of this,” he said. “I can analyze it at my place tomorrow. I've got lab equipment there.” Lori stood behind Rod.

“‘Remind me to analyze you
sometime, Mr. Caine,” I said. “Especially if we find Sam Aces dead.”

We split up and searched
Hell's Light
. The wind, rain and darkness made it difficult. I finally tried my own cabin. The door was banging loudly in the wind and it was pitch dark inside.

The hair on the back of my neck began to twitch. And with good reason. Something was hanging from the ceiling. A rope with a body attached to it. Caine appeared behind me in the open doorway, a flashlight in his hand.

“What's the matter?” he shouted over the roar of the storm.

I didn't have to answer. The flashlight beam caught the round white face under the rope. It was Bob Swanson.

I
SWITCHED ON THE CABIN LIGHT
. G
OLDEN
B
OY WAS
hanging from a rope looped through a metal ring in the ceiling. The cord was hooked under his arms. We lifted him down.

“What the hell do you make of this?” Rod
peered at me through narrowed eyes.

I examined Swanson's head. “Big lump, here, over his right temple. He must have been struck by a pretty solid object.”

Swanson began to make sounds. He opened his eyes and looked at us. “What hit me?”

I grinned. “From the looks of the lump, I'd say the Twentieth Century Limited. Where'd this happen?”

He looked about the room dazedly. “Right here. I was going through some of your drawers.”

“What for?” I demanded.

“Your gun,” Golden Boy grunted. “I knew you had one. Lori told me you did. I wanted to find it so I could
blow his brains out.”

“Whose brains?” Rod asked.

“Aces'! That dirty bastard!” Swanson tried to get up. “I'll kill him, so help me, I'll kill him!”

“You wanted to do the same thing to Rod Caine twenty minutes ago,” I said. “What is it with you, anyway?”

Swanson felt the lump over his right ear. “Caine knows why I said that to him. That's not important now. Aces is. He's hit me for the first and last time. When I see him I'm going to put a hole right through his middle.”

“Who do you think jumped you in here?” I asked. “Did you see or hear anything?”

Golden Boy grimaced. “No. I was bent over. There was a lot of noise outside from the storm. I didn't even hear the door open.”

“Serves you right for going through a lady's drawers,” I said. “‘Did you find the gun?”

“Do you think I'd still be here if I had?” Swanson tried to stand up, but his legs were like rubber.

I gazed about the room. A chair was overturned a few feet from where the rope dangled from the ceiling. Then I spotted a piece of pipe lying under the edge of the bed. I picked it up in a small towel and showed the weapon to Caine.

“Half-inch,” Rod said quickly. “Looks like a fitting for a gas or steam line.”

Swanson grabbed the pipe before I could stop him. “So that's what hit me! Wonder it didn't crush my skull.”

“I'll go along with that,” I said angrily. “With as few brains as you've got I'm surprised you weren't flattened right down to your oxfords.”

“What do you mean by that
crack?” he howled.

“If you hadn't smeared your fingerprints all over the weapon, we might have found your friend.”

Golden Boy groaned, touched the patch on his eye and said, “This is all your fault! Everything's gone wrong since we hired you!” He staggered through the door into the drenching rain.

Rod helped me search the yacht but we found no trace of Sam Aces. About four o'clock we checked the bar again. Everybody had gone to bed.

Exhausted, I slumped clown on the edge of the pool and glanced at the weary-eyed writer. “Well, what do you think?”

“Maybe it's all a joke,” Rod said, stretching his arms. “We're not absolutely certain there's poison in that glass. Maybe he took one of his own small boats.”

“None of the boats are missing.”

“Okay,” Rod continued. “Maybe he swam to shore.”

“Very funny!”

“He was drunk. Maybe he carried his joke too far.”

“Listen,” I said. “I don't care how drunk he was, nobody would go into the water during a storm like this.”

“A good swimmer might. I've seen a lot of fools attempt it.”

“Not Sam Aces,” I insisted. “He can't swim a stroke.”

“How do you know that?”

“I watched him earlier. There's only one way he'd have gone into that
ocean peacefully—and that's dead!”

Rod scanned the swimming-pool area. “All right,” he said, “let's assume he's dead. That he was poisoned and thrown overboard. Who slipped him the arsenic?”

“Any number of people could have, not excluding present company.”

He smiled. “Thanks for the compliment. Maybe you figure I was the one who slugged Swanson and hung him from the ceiling, too?”

“It's possible.”

“Now wait a minute,” he argued. “I was in the bar with you and the others when Aces staggered out. I couldn't have been in your cabin at the same time.”

“You forgot,” I reminded tightly. “We searched for Sam about twenty minutes before discovering Swanson in my cabin. That was plenty of time for you or anyone to string him to the ceiling.”

Rod threw his hands up in a mock pretense of surrender. “You got me, pal.”

“I didn't say you did it.”

“Then who do you think did it?”

“Could be Bob Swanson.”

“What?” Rod stared at me for a moment. “Are you kidding? I suppose Bob knocked himself out, then strung up the rope, took a running jump, leaped into the noose and at the same time pushed the poisoned body of Sam Aces overboard.”

“Nope,” I said. “Maybe Swanson poisoned Aces' drink in the wild melee at the bar, then waited outside on deck and hurled Sam over the railing
when he came outside—”

“Now wait a minute—”

“Afterward he could have gone to my cabin and fixed a noose, stood up on a chair, slipped his arms through the loop and pushed the chair away as he hit himself with the pipe.”

“May I say something?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Nobody in his right mind would take the chance of fracturing his own skull.”

“It's quite possible Bob Swanson is not in his right mind.”

“It's a cinch somebody isn't,” Rod agreed. “I'm beginning to wonder about you. Why would a beautiful gal get involved in this kind of business anyway?”

I brushed a few wet strands of hair away from my fore head and looked at him. “I was brought up in this business. My dad was a private detective.”

“What do you mean was?”

“Six years ago he was murdered in an alley behind the Paramount Theater in L.A. I hired myself to find the killer.”