Dance with the Dead (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  I thought he was going to hit me. Or, rather, hit at me. But be thought better of it, let his little eyes bore into my face. I turned and went out, the taste of vulture in my mouth.

  Just before nine-thirty I drove along Poinsettia, past Webb’s home. A police car was parked at the base of the stone steps and two officers stood alongside it, talking. I drove on around to Azalea, parked at the rear of Webb’s place. No officers were in sight back here. I lit a cigarette, smoked it while trying to make sense out of what had happened.

  The car that had left in such a rush last night could have gone anywhere from here; undoubtedly the killer had been in it. But the girl had been nude, carrying a cloth or robe. Even in a robe shed have been too conspicuous to get far. So where had she gone? In the car that had raced through the night? Or, more likely, shed just run, getting away from the violence and gunshots — naturally enough. But to where?

  I thought back to the scene in the studio. Camera and lights had been set up as if Webb had been about to take — or had just taken — some shots of the girl. Of his wife, apparently, since on the phone, minutes before, he had told me his wife was back. But the whole situation puzzled me.

  Either Webb’s wife had just come home, and he was taking pictures of her; or the girl who’d been present was not his wife. The first of those two possibilities was conceivable, even though it seemed more than a little goofy; but if the model was not his wife, then who in hell had it been? And why in the name of sanity would Webb, under the circumstances, have been taking photos — especially of someone not his wife?

  Something else bothered me, too. If Webb had paid the ransom, and his wife had been released, why was he killed?

  I stubbed out my cigarette, left the car and walked toward the rear of Webb’s house. I knew what Farley would arrange for me if a report reached him that Shell Scott was still snooping around, but I wouldnt get answers to all those questions merely by thinking about them, and the hell with Farley. I went in through the same door the killer had used for his sudden exit last night. In the empty studio, chalk lines on the floor marked the spot where Webb’s body had been. I saw the lines that had been traced around his hands and arms, remembered the clawing fingers.

  Then I stepped past the chalk lines, stopped before the bedroom door. The clothing was gone now from the bed. But the cluttered table next to me appeared undisturbed. The books and boxes of cut film were still on it. And the stack of four-by-five film holders. The top one was placed at an angle across the others, as I had placed that one last night. Undoubtedly it was the one I’d removed from Webb’s Graphic.

  A film holder holds two four-by-five pieces of cut film, one in front and one in back, protected by dark slides which are removed when the film is to be exposed. One of the slides had been out of the holder last night, and I had replaced it myself before taking the holder from the camera. So there was a good chance that one of those films had been exposed. Possibly both of them. If both, once developed, were blank, they would then match my state of mind. But if even one had been exposed, some of the vital answers might well develop along with the picture. In color, at that.

  I put the film holder into my coat pocket, turned and walked rapidly toward the side door. As I passed the entrance into the living room the front door opened.

  Hey! somebody yelled.

  I didn’t even look toward him. I jumped to the door, through it, sprinted for the Cad; I was in it and grinding the starter before the man got outside after me. As the engine caught I put the Cad in gear and glanced toward the house. It was a uniformed policeman there, but I couldn’t make out his features. I hoped he couldn’t identify mine. The Cad was moving forward and I slammed the gas pedal to the floorboards.

  The Spartan Apartment Hotel is on North Rossmore in Hollywood, across from the Wilshire Country Club. A few blocks farther down Rossmore is the Eagle Photo Supply, where I’ve bought cameras and film and had some of my own photographic work done. I left the film holder there with a middle-aged man named Harold, who handled developing jobs, told him to develop both films and, if there was anything to print, make prints as soon as he could. Then I drove back down Rossmore to the Spartan.

  I parked opposite the Spartan, got out and angled back across the street, trotting toward the hotels entrance — and from somewhere on my left came the gunshot. The slug whipped past my head, glanced from the Cads hood behind me and smacked into a tree, the four separate sounds blending into one. I was in a half-run two or three yards from the car and all I did was go instantly into a whole run, left my feet and dived through the air, hit tumbling on grass beyond the curb. I came up next to the Spartans wall, gun in my hand.

  There were no more shots. I could hear two or three cars moving in the area. One of them came down Rossmore from the east and rolled past. An old lady was driving it, with an air of cautious desperation. A minute later I’d found the hole in a tree across the street, sighted back from it over the furrow on my Cads hood. The shot had come from near the intersection of Rossmore and Clinton. Probably from somebody in a car there — a car long gone now. I looked around the intersection but nothing was there. No car, no man — or woman. No cartridge case on the ground.

  I had learned one thing, though. When Webb’s killer had taken his first shot at me last night he had been in darkness, but I had been bathed in very bright light. At the time, and since, I’d wondered whether or not he’d gotten a good look at me.

  Now I knew.

  He had.

  In my apartment, even after a cold shower, I was still burning. I felt as if the top of my head might pop off like a bony skullcap. I was hot enough to be a fire hazard.

  These last fifteen hours or so had really lit me. The kidnaping, Webb’s murder, the unpleasantness with Farley, the miserable Medina can. Webb was dead and twice now I’d damn near been killed myself. Somebody was going to pay if I had to wade through boiling horse manure swarming with heat-resistant piranhas.

  I dressed in the bedroom. On the dresser was a folded slip of paper I’d put there last night. It was the thousand-dollar check Webb had made out to me, given me at his home. It wasn’t really mine yet, but I stuck it into my wallet. I’d cash the check — when I earned it.

  I used the phone to call a bank in which Webb had kept a large chunk, of his money. I got the manager. He knew me and gave me the information I asked for. Webb had appeared at the bank yesterday morning when it opened, withdrawn one hundred and sixty thousand dollars he’d had on deposit in cash, and cashed bonds in the amount of forty thousand dollars more.

  Total: Two hundred thousand dollars. So he’d paid the ransom.

  I scrambled some eggs that wound up looking and tasting like liquid yellow latex, and brewed some coffee. I could still see Webb’s fingers, clawing behind my eyes. I forced them away by watching the neons for a while. Nothing. Maybe they werent both males; maybe they were both females. Maybe they were fish missionaries. Maybe they werent trying.

  I took my gun kit into the front room, sat on the big chocolate-brown divan, then cleaned, oiled, and loaded my Colt.

  Quite clearly, Webb’s killer was now trying to kill me. I didn’t have the faintest idea who he was. But there did appear to be one way to wind up all the threads: find the girl who’d been at Webb’s last night. Webb had apparently been taking, or about to take, her picture shortly before he was killed. It seemed to me now that the girl must have been Webb’s bride. Logic said he wouldnt have been focusing the lens of his Graphic on anybody but his bride under the circumstances, and from now on I meant to go ahead under that assumption — and with the hope that she was still alive.

  So, assuming that much, and knowing Webb himself had told me his bride was one of the twelve Wow! girls, the rest of it seemed simple: get the names and addresses of those twelve girls and ask each one if shed married Webb. The one who said yes could give me the rest of the answers. It really did seem like a simple ope
ration.

  The editorial offices of Wow! were on Tenth Street in Medina. I phoned them. I got a man with a fluting voice, and when I asked him for the names and addresses of the Women With Wow the fluting veered an octave to piccolo. That was simply out of the question, unthinkable, and so on.

  I could understand the reaction. Probably eighteen thousand men before me had tried to get those names and addresses, for different reasons. But I said, Look, Im Shell Scott. Im a private detective investigating Webb’s death.

  Aha!

  He was a good friend . . . what in hell do you mean, Aha?

  Scott, eh? Lieutenant Farley informed us that you might approach us. He also informed me that if you did —

  Never mind. I can guess.

  I shall be forced to inform Lieutenant Farley —

  I hung up while he was still fluting.

  Farley was becoming a boil that needed lancing. But there were other ways. More simple ones, in fact. When people get married they put names and addresses on wedding licenses. See, simple.

  I put in a long-distance call to the City Hall in Honolulu. A clerk there informed me that marriage records were on file at the Bureau of Health Statistics in the Board of Health Building, and gave me their number. I called it. While waiting for a man at the other end of the line to get the information I’d asked for, a new thought occurred to me. Webb had been killed the day after his marriage, true; but he had been married.

  And that meant his wife would inherit well over a million dollars — or, at least, whatever the Storm Troopers left of it after estate and inheritance taxes. Oddly, I hadn’t thought of that angle until now. And it gave me a peculiar prickling sensation along my spine.

  Then the man was back on the line. A couple of minutes later I hung up the phone, puzzled. About as puzzled as I get.

  There was no record of a Webley Alden being married in Honolulu. No, not on the thirteenth. Nor the twelfth, or eleventh. . . . I frowned at the phone.

  Webb would surely have used his real name. And Webley Alden was his real name — at least it had been during all the years I’d known him. He’d told me himself that he’d been married on Thursday, the thirteenth of August — had, in fact, taken some movies after the ceremony. Movies.

  I called the Kodak Company in L.A. They told me that Kodachrome films — which I knew Webb used — mailed in prepaid mailers in Honolulu would have been processed at Kodak Hawaii Limited on Kapiolani Boulevard there. I called Kodak Hawaii Limited in Honolulu; the films had been processed and sent out airmail in the usual fashion. Tomorrow was Sunday; that meant the films would be delivered to Webb’s home in Medina on Monday.

  At two p.m. the phone rang. It was Harold at Eagle Photo. I said, Anything on those films?

  Was on one, Shell. Just took the print out of the wash water. Other film was unexposed. But one of these is enough. Whered you get it?

  I felt a quick ripple of excitement. What was on it, Harold?

  A babe. Naked babe. Beautiful job, too. Whoever took this ones a pro.

  What does the girl look like?

  He laughed. I don’t know how to describe her. Whatever he was thinking seemed to amuse him even more and he laughed again. Come on down and take a look.

  Ill be there in three minutes. Or less.

  When I trotted into Eagle Photo Harold was waiting for me. I followed him down into the basement darkroom where he did his work. There she is, he said, pointing at the wall. He’d scotch-taped the four-by-five color print against the walls dark wood. My eyes fell on it. And clung.

  Harold was saying, Its still a little damp. Just took it off the dryer. Nice?

  Nice.

  It was. Looking at the brilliant, sharply focused print, I forgot for a moment why I’d been so anxious to see this. Forgot my hope that it could lead me to Webb’s wife, to the woman who’d been present at the moment of murder last night. Forgot that this was a clue.

  It was all of that; but it was more.

  It was a fanny.

  A marvelous, jaunty, virtually effervescent behind; an undulatory aphrodisiac; a most daring derriere. That, at least, was the center of interest, but after its first impact upon me I noted that there was more to the picture.

  The photo was of a woman, nude, her back to the camera. And, beyond her, Pan. Pan, the goat-footed god. It was the carved-wood statue I’d seen in Webb’s living room and later in his studio. The thick, leering lips, the almost real eyes slanted sideways toward the womans bare flesh. The projecting arms were outthrust, one at either side of the womans slender waist, the hands cupped as if moving to pull her toward him.

  I couldn’t tell anything about the woman herself, her face, color of her hair or eyes, nothing about her appearance — except for that vital area, the center of interest. The womans body was visible only from a point halfway up her back down to the middle of her thighs. Pans head was tilted to one side, as if he were leaning away to peer at her. One shaggy goat foot and cloven hoof was raised in the air, just visible at the bottom of the print. In the background, the red velvet drapery I’d seen in Webb’s studio seemed melting red shadows.

  And suddenly I realized this was precisely the kind of photo Webb had used in the magazine, in Wow!, for that three-page spread featured each month. I thought, . . . ?

  What in the hell? On his wedding night? Something was fractured here. But Harry was saying, Want me to retouch this? He pointed at the left side of the center of interest, that charming derriere. Four small brown spots there formed an irregular rectangle. Freckles.

  I should say not, I told him. That’s the most important part of the picture.

  He goggled at me. You sick? Theres more important things than freckles.

  Not in this shot.

  It was true. But that question mark loomed even larger in my mind, and the questions came back. Why would Webb have taken this kind of picture — any kind of picture — on the very night when his blushing bride had been returned to him? Webb had greatly enjoyed his photographic work, sure; he had even been a little eccentric; but not that eccentric. He had not been the kind of guy who would order a martini just to get an olive.

  Whatever the reason, this picture, clearly, had been taken by Webb last night, shortly before he’d been killed. So this was the girl I had to find. My other leads to her had so far come to nothing, led me nowhere. And it could be that none of those other leads would pan out, that they would fade away into nothingness. But even if so, all would not be lost. Now I had something solid to go on, something tangible.

  Maybe I still didn’t know what the rest of the woman looked like, but I had a start. Not exactly a head-start, but a start.

  I knew where to go from here. I had a clue.

  I had a picture of her fanny.

  All I had to do was — find it.

  Four

  In the apartment once more, I mixed a drink, then got out my back issues of Wow! Okay, so Im a subscriber, and go to hell.

  In the front room with the very frisky, possibly half-drunk, still childless Neon Tetras, I settled on the big chocolate-brown divan, plopped my color print and twelve issues of Wow! on the highball-glass-scarred, scratched, cigarette-burned, kicked, and fallen-down-over coffee table, lit a cigarette, had a sip of my bourbon-and-water, and began the hunt.

  The first issue of Wow!, the September issue, had appeared one year ago. The twelfth issue, August, had only recently disappeared from the stands. In each of those issues the highlight had been the photo of a different girl. For the first three months, September, October and November — or the months of autumn — brunettes had been featured. The following three winter months, black-haired gals. Spring, blondes; and redheads for summer.

  It was a rather neat angle. Neater was the fact that in none of the twelve featured shots, though most were full-length photos, was the models face in view. Occasionally a half profile,
or a face veiled with the models hair, but never a recognizable collection of features. It had been Webb’s idea — well-publicized in the magazines pages — that exactly one year after each models first featured appearance in Wow! the same model would again be featured. But on the second occasion she would be facing the camera instead of turned away from it.

  And each of the models was so frankly delectable that hundreds of thousands of guys were waiting in fevers of impatience for the head-on, you might say, shots of September, October, November, and so forth; to get, in a word, the rest of the picture.

  And a lot of good that did me. Assuming that the girl in my four-by-five print was Webb’s wife; and knowing he’d told me she was one of the twelve Wow girls, I figured all I’d have to do would be to match my color print with one of the twelve photos in Wow! If the vital area of the color shot matched the same area of June, then June was my gal.

  Only it wasn’t that easy. I went through all twelve back issues and there wasn’t a freckle in the lot. And without freckles — well, lets tell the whole truth: there just isnt that much difference in the things. Especially in these superb examples, which were all edging toward, if not actually sitting on, perfection. They might vary a shade, a jot here, a tittle there, but hardly enough for positive identification.

  The absence of minor blemishes puzzled me until I remembered Harolds asking me if I wanted the shots retouched. Undoubtedly any little flaw would have been retouched on the prints or transparencies before engravings were made for the magazine; and I knew Webb would have done all that work himself, in his home, if it were done at all. But I couldn’t go back to his home for a while, that was sure.

  But I wasn’t stumped, hadn’t come to a dead end, so to speak. There was one avenue of investigation yet remaining. The twelve Wow girls themselves.