Murder Queen High Page 2

  The thirteenth cottage and the next one ought to — He froze as a bat fanned skittishly by his broad-brimmed hat. God, he was jumpy. But why shouldn’t he be? It wasn’t any piker stunt to play two hands in this game. Both Barselou and — but he knew where the Queen was holed up. That was all that had kept him alive today.

  Ah, here it was. He stepped confidently up the flagstone walk to the blue wooden door. From inside came the murmur of voices and a little light seeped through the Venetian window blinds onto his dirty leather jacket. Anglin was a squat man with skin as weather-beaten as his clothes. He braced himself momentarily against the white stucco of the porch and shook his foggy head. His calloused hand left a smear of blood when he withdrew it.

  The ornate door handle felt cold to his grip. He squeezed it and stepped into the small living room.

  Darkness here. Some light fell in a lopsided rectangle from the open door to the bedroom. Beyond that somewhere, a man was singing in an untrained voice, “Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me …”

  An invisible woman spoke from the bedroom. Her voice was startled into a squeak. “Who’s that?”

  His clumsy fingers found the night latch and twisted it home. The noise made the woman say again, frightened, “Who’s that? Is somebody in there?”

  She was as jumpy as he was. But whoever she was this trip she ought to be better trained than to yell like that. He told her in a low voice, “Shut up, for the luvva Mike.”

  She let out a gasp as he moved into the patch of light on the carpet. Anglin could see her now, standing still as a rock before the imitation ivory dressing table. Her face that watched him with wide green eyes in the mirror didn’t have any more color than the table top. The brush she’d been punishing her red hair with dropped from her hand to bounce softly on the thick shag rug. The haze of dressing gown over lingerie didn’t conceal her long tan legs much and the sight of them made him forget the pain in his shoulder briefly, very briefly.

  Well, he hadn’t expected to know her. The big boy used different girls for different operations. This one was a looker like the rest. But why didn’t she catch on? The big boy had funny ideas about the value of women in work like this.

  “Get out,” she whispered. “Get out or I’ll scream.”

  “Quit it,” he said, leaning wearily against the door jamb. “It’s okay. Where is he? I got it for him.”

  “If you don’t get out — right now — I’ll call the police.”

  What was she talking about, anyway? “You’re from ‘Dago, ain’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “Then it’s okay. Now for the luvva Mike get him.”

  Her glance went over the white French phone beside the bed. Anglin put his hand in the pocket of his leather jacket, so when she looked back at him, he held the little black automatic carelessly in his horny palm.

  “I don’t know what you got in mind, sister. But I ain’t got much time. I want to finish the job and get out.”

  Behind the closed bathroom door, the man began to sing again. “Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song …” Anglin looked at the woman and gestured with the gun.

  “That him?”

  “That’s — my husband,” she said dry-throated, her greenish eyes hypnotized by the weapon.

  “Get him.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He felt dizzy again as the room swam around under his wide hatbrim. This should have been the easy part and instead — “Get out of my way,” he husked thickly. He smelled her perfume as he brushed the woman aside and rapped the gun muzzle against the door panel.

  “Okay, okay,” said the singer inside and switched to, “I’se comin', though mah head is bending low. Ah hear those gentle voices callin' — ”

  Anglin couldn’t wait that out, so he threw the bathroom door open and stood staring. The man inside gulped on a drawn out “old” and didn’t sing any more. He was a young fellow, not too big but stocky, and his body was still damp from the shower and faintly pink from a vigorous toweling. He wore blue rayon shorts with an elastic waistband.

  “What the heck!” finally said the man in shorts.

  “Oh, Johnny, be careful,” the girl quavered. “He might shoot us!”

  Something was screwy here. The advance arrangements had been specific about the cottage number. The only unknown had been the when and he’d wired that this morning. He squinted his wind-burned face and did his best to think. It was generally a different girl, but the man should have been … Was this more of Barselou’s bunch? He gave up trying to think.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled and began to back toward the living-room door. “Reckon I made a mistake.”

  The stocky young man moved forward as far as his wife’s restraining arm. “What’s this all about? What’s the answer?”

  “Never mind, son. I — ”

  “Wait a minute — that looks like blood — ”

  Anglin ran out of patience. “Whaddya expect me to bleed — milk?” he snarled.

  The young fellow looked grim. “I don’t like the looks — ”

  “Nobody does, son. My mistake. I’m sorry I scared you and your missus. If you got any bright ideas, let them stop here and now.”

  He groped in the dimness behind him and found the night latch, unbolted the door and opened it. The two were staring at him from the lighted bedroom. Anglin started to say something else but couldn’t decide what there was to say, so he closed the door and stumbled off the porch onto the soundless grass.

  The shadows were still as tombs, and he was one of them again. The crickets ceased their ominous music at his coming. He didn’t have any particular direction to go any more. What could he do now?

  Mr. Trim hung up the bar telephone and came back to his booth. “That was my company long-distance,” he apologized. “Business. I’d never be able to afford a place like this except on business.”

  “Oh, is that so?” Thelma Loomis commented. She really should ask the little bore what his business was, but she’d been asking questions all day and she was tired of it. The spell Mr. Trim had spent at the bar phone, she had put in watching Sagmon Robottom.

  The man in the white suit sat morosely on one of the upholstered bar stools of the Palm Room and nursed his second Martini of the evening. His white sun helmet lay on the stool beside him. Robottom was a tall man and his athletic figure was almost painfully erect. Even his silver hair stood up like cropped and frosty grass. Thelma Loomis thought, he’s too well-preserved to be true. She chuckled inwardly at that.

  Robottom’s hard gray eyes brightened in the mirror as a blonde youngster with upswept hair slowly cruised the length of the Palm Room behind him. His sun-browned skin pulled tightly over his distinguished features; apparently there was none to spare for wrinkles. But a faint frown worked somehow onto his patrician face as Robottom lowered his big head and began to play again with the stem of his Martini glass.

  Was he waiting to meet somebody? Thelma Loomis wondered. She looked around at the roomful of people. The fashionably dressed clientele clashed with the more primitive setting of a palm grove. Exits were roughly outlined by pineapple-skinned tree trunks. The roof, the walls and the front of the bar were all woven of tough fronds. Three live palm trees grew painfully out of the center of the tile floor, their drooping frills swaying listlessly in the breeze from concealed fans.

  Thelma Loomis drooped a little, too, as she remembered her companion. She wished she could decently desert him, but he had bought her the Scotch and water. Then she saw Mr. Trim’s watery brown eyes across the booth table, also welling curiosity and waiting.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry — I beg your pardon — what were you saying, Mr. Trim?”

  “I was saying that you must have quite a fascinating job, Miss Loomis.”

  She elaborated. “It’s all right.”

  “Of course, it wouldn’t appeal to me, but lots of folks probably envy you the chance to mingle with movie people.” Mr. Trim pulled an ivory toothpick from his inside coa
t pocket and manipulated it dexterously. The Hollywood woman sized him up again. Yes, same grisly teeth as the last time she’d looked — discolored, broken, uneven. He certainly wasn’t much on the outside, either. Small, nearly bald, a pug nose that made her think of a doorknob on a tan prune — what was she doing talking to this character, anyway?

  “I really should have stayed in Palm Springs this week end,” she said. “I just had a hunch that someone important might pop up here.”

  “And they haven’t?”

  Miss Loomis snorted. “The usual bunch of creeps. The only interesting people here are that cute couple in Cottage 15 — and, of course, Sagmon Robottom down the bar there.”

  Mr. Trim tracked her glance down to the man by the sun helmet. “Robottom? Isn’t he — ”

  “Yes — the Prince Charming of archaeology. You probably read his book.” Thelma Loomis was scornful. “He popularized archaeology — made it just like golf. Robottom’s the All-American Boy grown up.”

  “He looks like a gay dashing fellow,” said Mr. Trim just as the archaeologist scowled darkly in their general direction. “Worried right now,” Trim added hastily. “But what’s so unusual about the couple in Cottage 15?”

  The blonde writer explained grudgingly. “It seems the wife has a peculiar type memory. Remembers everything she’s read until she says it, then it’s gone for good. And that won them a quiz contest. You know the one, Bry-Ter Tooth Paste. They got a — ”

  Miss Loomis stared. Mr. Trim, forehead pleated, had sprung to his feet. Their drinks sloshed back and forth alarmingly. “Holy smoke!” said Trim. “Are they here already? Cottage 15, you said?”

  From way below her eyebrows, she watched the wrinkled back of his black suit navigate swiftly around the palm trees toward an exit. Then she shrugged and went back to the business of studying Sagmon Robottom’s perturbed face.

  “It beats me what happened,” John Henry said. “I was just singing a song — surely it wasn’t that bad.”

  Sin still wore the filmy dressing gown she’d bought especially for this year’s vacation. She faced the open closet challengingly, rapping at her teeth with a knuckle. “Johnny, which dress shall I wear tonight — the green or the gray?”

  “The gray.” John Henry frowned. Now he’d gone too far in reassuring his wife about the innocuousness of the gunman’s visit. Sin didn’t even think it worthwhile discussing. He wished he’d left her a little frightened. “That gun looked pretty real. Why’d he bust in here?”

  “Wouldn’t you rather I wore my green?”

  “Huh-uh.” John Henry bent over and started lacing his shoes. “What do you think, Sin?”

  “I think I’ll wear the green.”

  “No, I mean about the guy with the gun.”

  “Oh, him!” Sin was more interested in pursuing a wrinkle on the green dress. “I guess he just made a mistake, like he said.” Now that all the inside lights and the porch light of the cottage were blazing away and the windows were fastened and all doors locked, Sin wasn’t afraid any more. Besides, it had all happened so fast and Johnny said forget it. “Why don’t we forget it? I want dinner. You hungry?”

  “Starved. Okay, honey, we’ll forget it.” John Henry straightened up and stamped his feet. After he found his soft white shirt, “What was that he said about a message?”

  Sin chuckled throatily. “In the first place, dopey, we were going to drop it. In the second place, all the fellow said was that he had ‘it’ for you — or whoever he thought you were.”

  After a while, John Henry expressed all his thoughts. “H’m.”

  Sin had put on her nylons, straightening the seams carefully before the long dressing-table mirror. She was adjusting her garter belt when the rap came on the cottage door. John Henry was still pants-less. Clutching the dressing gown tight around her, Sin headed for the front door. Then she stopped and asked him, “What?”

  “Nothing,” he lied. John Henry had started to say, “Watch it!” but had given the whole thing up rather than make a fool of himself. “It’s probably somebody from the hotel — the manager, maybe.” Not that they’d report their incident — both of them had voted against any fuss. But Conover wished somebody would show up with a notarized explanation.

  He found he was holding the heavy glass ash tray from the bureau. Sheepishly, he put it back.

  Sin finally managed to release the night latch and the door handle at the same time. Vernon, the freckled bellhop, stood somberly grasping an envelope in both hands.

  “Evening,” he lisped. “You sure got this place lit up.”

  From the bedroom, John Henry called, “Who is it?”

  “It’s all right,” Sin told him. “Someone from the hotel, like you said.” To Vernon: “Is something wrong?”

  Vernon looked at the envelope moodily. “I guess not. Here.” He thrust the envelope toward Sin. “I’m supposed to deliver this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Invitation.”

  John Henry came up, hastily buckling the belt on his gray gabardine slacks. “Invitation? Where we going, Vernon?”

  The freckled youth was pained. “From the hotel. They’re throwing a big costume brawl tomorrow night. Everybody gets invited.”

  “Oh, honey!” Sin’s eyes sparkled. “It’ll be fun! I love costume parties.”

  Vernon’s expression signified disbelief. John Henry wanted to know what he had against costume parties.

  “Can’t see much use for them, Mr. Conover. This one you’re supposed to come as what you’d most like to be. Now isn’t that something?”

  “It’ll be fun,” Sin said stoutly.

  “Maybe,” Vernon doubted. “But I’ll give you odds. Now, if I were running this place …”

  After he’d gone away with twenty-five cents, Sin repeated, mostly to herself, “It’ll be fun.” Her husband laughed and put his arms over her shoulders.

  “Right.” He pushed a kiss against the tip of her unpowdered nose. “I’ll bet if Vernon shows up, he’ll come as a wet blanket.” He spun her around and spanked her dressing gown once affectionately. “Let’s get us fed.”

  Sin vanished into the bedroom, peeling off the misty garment en route. Her voice floated back to him. “I’d most like to be a woman who’s completely dressed.”

  “Barselou speaking.”

  “Odell.”

  “About time you checked in. What’s the good word?”

  “Isn’t any, chief.”

  “Where’d you see Anglin last?”

  “He was trying to crack the hotel from Andreas Street.”

  “Then keep that Las Dunas sewed up.”

  “We are, we are. Incidentally, our Mr. and Mrs. Jones have checked in.”

  “Gayner told me that already. There was only one couple from San Diego today. Now listen, Odell — tonight may mean whether or not we ever see the Queen. Anglin’s got to be found and found quick. Get me?”

  “Sure, I got you.”

  “Above all, keep him in the open. If he contacts anybody at all — ”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  “You tighten up your boys and check over here. There may be some other angles. And get this through your thick skull. This is one time when it’s smart to keep up with the Joneses.”

  John Henry had a red knitted tie wound around his finger and the collar of his white shirt buttoned and the wings turned up around his neck. The knock sounded again.

  “Oh, no!” Sin said firmly. “I’m not going this time. I intend to get my clothes on.”

  “All right, all right,” Conover muttered to his tie and the front door. “I never saw anything like — ” He let his voice trail off into unspoken comparisons and went into the living room. He remembered the first visitor in time to open the door only a crack and say gruffly, “Yeah?”

  It was a wizened little man in a black serge suit and his late fifties. He had a big smile on his face and his hand was outstretched. “Mr. Conover?”

  “Uh-huh.”
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  “Mr. Conover, my name is Trim. On behalf of the Bry-Ter Tooth-Paste Company may I welcome you — and Mrs. Conover — to Azure.”

  “Well, thanks,” said John Henry uncertainly and opened the door the rest of the way. “Won’t you come in, Mr. Trim?” The representative stepped in and stood blinking in the living room. John Henry finally shook his hand and they eyed each other awkwardly. Conover could see no suspicious bulge under Trim’s left armpit. Surreptitiously, he switched his gaze to the other armpit in case the man were left-handed. Trim squirmed.

  “Who was it, honey?” Sin demanded from the bedroom. It broke the stern silence.

  Mr. Trim cleared his throat. “Mrs. Conover — ” He cast a questioning look at John Henry and the younger man nodded. “Mrs. Conover — I represent the Bry-Ter Tooth-Paste Company. For a Bry-Ter Future. You know.”

  “Oh, how thoughtful,” Sin threw out to him but she didn’t appear.

  John Henry waited. The bedroom doorway stayed empty. Mr. Trim shuttled his glances between them. “Well — I’ve been commissioned by the Company to sort of look after you — you know, see if I can do anything to help — ”

  “Cigarette?” asked Conover.

  “Uh-no. That’s what I mean.” Mr. Trim’s bad teeth showed in a grin. “I should have offered you a cigarette. The Bry-Ter people want to make sure you enjoy your stay here. We want to be positive you have a good time and — uh — enjoy your stay here.”

  “Fine. We want to keep the Bry-Ter people happy.” Pointedly, John Henry lifted his dark-blue sport coat from the back of a chair and slipped into it.

  “I’m glad they gave you a cottage,” Mr. Trim groped for conversational subjects. “Much nicer for a young couple, it seems to me. I’m sure that you’ll — ”

  “Enjoy our stay here,” the younger man finished.

  “That’s it! That’s what I’m getting paid for, you know.” No arrangements would be too titanic for the representative to handle. A ride up the Santa Rosa Mountains where the beach line of an ancient inland sea striped the slope like a traffic marker. A trip to the grove of thousand-year-old trees in Palm Valley, just two miles northwest. “Many of these palms show traces of fire due to the Cahuilla Indian custom of burning the family tree upon the death of the family head. It’s inspiring, Mr. Conover.” Or perhaps a horseback ride in the opposite direction to see the Badlands …