The Polka Dot Nude

by Joan Smith

  “Have I been hostile? I was going to say temperamental.”

  “Close enough. So, are we friends?”

  “Friends.”

  We shook hands. But there are handshakes, and handshakes. This one was a very warm handshake. Our fingers clung lovingly while we gazed into each other’s eyes. If Simcoe hadn’t come out to rake the mud patch in front of his house, I think it might have escalated to something more.

  “I’m going to have a marathon shower, then we’re going out for dinner,” he said.

  “It’s my treat. I insist. It’s the least I can do.”

  His sober mood faded and a mischievous grin peeped out. “Don’t feel obliged to do the least that courtesy demands.”

  “You can’t be nice to some people,” I groused, and pretended to be annoyed. In fact, my hormones began twitching, as he went on gazing at me.

  “You can be nice to me anytime you want.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Between finding my research all intact and being on speaking terms with my neighbor again, it felt like Christmas in June. Of course a few stray questions still bothered me. Like, was he or wasn’t he Hume Mason? If he was, why had he helped me find the research, and if he wasn’t, what was he doing with that box from Belton in the trunk of his car, to say nothing of the letter in his desk urging him to complete his manuscript? If he wasn’t Hume Mason, what was that pile of literary rubbish doing beside his typewriter? You wouldn’t think a professor with a fine reputation would write that kind of junk. Then I remembered the advance mentioned, and Brad’s expensive life-style.

  He certainly wrote something unbecoming to a professor of literature, and he wrote it for Belton. Belton seemed to have cornered the market on best-sellers recently. They had not only Hume Mason, but Rosalie Wildewood and Madison Gantry and . . . Madison Gantry!

  My God, that was it! He was Madison Gantry! I laughed out loud for relief and joy. All his modest praise of this writer came back to me. “Gantry isn’t quite as illiterate as most of the escape writers.” I dropped my filthy clothes and moccasins in a garbage bag and tied the top in a knot so I wouldn’t have to touch any of it after my shower. Or better, a long soak in the tub, with a copy of Madison Gantry’s Pavane for a Polish Princess to keep me company. All his titles used alliteration and some musical term. Brad was interested in music, and alliteration would come naturally to a poetry critic.

  It was a very enjoyable soak. I knew who had written the book as soon as Max Gerter, the hero, who happened to be an ex-professor of literature, began preparing spaghetti Caruso in chapter three. Before long, bosoms were flowing all over the place, hearts were throbbing, pulses were quivering, and loins were shuddering. There was no doubt in my mind who had written it. The only question now was why Brad had wanted my copies of Rosalie’s diaries, and what that one had been doing on his desk, when he said he was writing an essay on her. Maybe he really was an innocent fan—he had her picture on his bedside table. But was he so keen a fan that he went to her funeral? It must have been Cary Grant’s younger brother. There was one other question too, but I had an inkling of the answer to it. Why hide that he was Madison Gantry? Stupid pride, which boasted of that sedative of a book on Eliot, made him ashamed of these detective stories.

  I was in an expansive mood. I wouldn’t admit I’d discovered his secret, but I’d tell him I’d read Pavane for a Polish Princess and loved it. I’d praise the literary touches of Max Gerter, the detective hero. I wondered why he’d made him of German extraction, instead of Irish. Maybe he wanted the cool, assessing Teutonic mind in his hero, and not the amiable sort of romantic Celt associated with Ireland. The hero’s mind may have been cool and assessing, but the book was wildly romantic, in the true sense of the word. It was a work of passion rather than reason. It was funny and witty and very cleverly done. Madison Gantry gained a fan; I planned to borrow every one of Brad’s books. In fact, I’d pay the ultimate compliment, and actually buy them.

  As the shadows grew long and the water grew tepid, I took a quick shower to wash my hair, and bundled myself into a towel. The evening nip in the air made it feasible to wear the one good outfit I’d brought with me. Carefully hung in the back of the closet in a plastic cleaner’s bag was a white shantung suit with a designer label, which I’d planned to wear when I took my manuscript to New York, sealed and ready for acceptance. I fully expected a first-rate lunch with Eileen to celebrate the occasion.

  Aware of the high standards of Max Getter’s ladies, I surveyed myself closely in the mirror. The sleek lines of the jacket suited my lean body. It clung to my meager curves, and the slit in the skirt showed a generous length of leg. While my hair was still damp, I took advantage of its tractability and pulled it into a swirl on the back of my head. Gold hoop earrings and the gold chains were added to ears and neck respectively. A frivolous scarlet handkerchief stuck into the jacket pocket added a touch of color. We all know what red stands for.

  A few sessions in the sun had removed the slug-like pallor from my skin, and anticipation of a wonderful evening brightened my eyes. Didn’t I wish Garth could see me like this! I decided, with an unaccustomed fit of confidence, that I looked a suitable date for Brad O’Malley.

  Just why he chose that particular evening to appear in a cambric shirt, blue cords, and brown hippie sandals was not yet clear. I’d told him the best dinner money could buy.

  “Did you think I was going to take you out for a hamburger?” I asked.

  “A class act, Audrey,” be approved, looking me up and down. “I’ll run home and pick up a jacket.”

  A jean jacket wouldn’t add much to his outfit, and anything else would look silly. “No hurry.”

  “Right, I’ll put on a tie and get out of these sandals.”

  I waited for him at his car. He was back in minutes, much better dressed for the evening I had in mind. The Mercedes had been not only aired but taken to a car wash while I soaked in the tub. It shone dully in the glow of twilight.

  “There’s a good restaurant down at the bay, where we can dance on an outdoor patio,” Brad said. “Do you want to give it a try?”

  “It sounds fine. I haven’t done much scouting since I’ve been here.”

  The dining room looked over the river, across the dance patio, where potted plants and flowers lent an exotic air. The maitre d’ greeted Brad by name. “They have rooms to rent. I stayed here one night,” Brad explained.

  Our table had a choice view. The cocktail waitress wore a brief outfit that showed fire-engine-red briefs beneath a short ruffle of black skirt. A busty redhead, she said, “Good evening, Mr. O’Malley,” and gave him a big smile when she came to take our order. “The usual?”

  “The usual for me, Marnie. What’ll you have, Audrey?”

  “I’ll try your ‘usual’ too.” I was expecting a glass of Château de, but got a double martini. “Marnie has a good memory. How long ago did you stay here?”

  “Just a week ago, before I went to Simcoe’s place. I stayed a couple of nights actually, while I looked around for a quiet spot to spend the summer. It’s nice here. They have tennis courts, a pool, a boat tour of the Thousand Islands. It was Marnie who put me on to Simcoe. She lives near there, and commutes to work here.”

  Brad smiled an intimate smile across the table. “Little did I know at the time that it would all work out so beautifully. You look fantastic in that getup, Audrey. I thought you liked a more casual style. I was trying to suit myself to you.” I was flattered by his thoughtfulness, and admitted I had been trying to match him.

  “You don’t have to change anything for me. You’re pretty terrific just the way you are.” His voice was a caress; his eyes glowed with admiration.

  Marnie came jiggling back with the dinner menus. I pressed Brad to have the surf and turf, since that was the most expensive thing they served. Over dinner, I wanted to extol Madison Gantry’s genius, but Brad kept detouring me to talk about the theft from my cottage, and the mystery surrounding it.

&nb
sp; “Did you lose much writing time? How long do you figure it will set you back?” he asked.

  “A few days. I can make it up.”

  “I’ll retype anything that needs retyping. You’re sure everything is there, in the box?”

  “Positive. The box hadn’t even been rifled. I think he just opened the lid and rammed in my manuscript. Weird!”

  “It confirms you weren’t burgled for your research or the typewriter. What he did take and keep was the polka dot nude.”

  “It sounds like a case for Max Getter. I’m reading Pavane for a Polish Princess, by the way. It’s terrific. I’m really glad you put me on to Madison Gantry.”

  “Yeah, he’s good. You know, I keep wondering why someone wanted that nude painting. It’s not worth a lot in dollars, so it must be important to somebody in some other way.”

  I was more than a little surprised at how my praise had rolled off him. “Too bad we don’t have Max Getter here. I wonder how he’d fit these clues together.”

  “If it were a Gantry plot, we’d have more clues. There’s only the one, really.”

  “Max could do a lot with one clue. That sharp German mind.”

  “Will you lay off with the Max Gerter,” he said impatiently. “This is serious, Audrey. It must have something to do with Rosalie’s death, don’t you think? As soon as she died, somebody came running after you and stole that picture. None of her Supreme Court judges or presidential candidates would do that.”

  “Nobody would. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “There’s Lorraine Taylor, and her daughter,” he said pensively.

  “Why would they want it? They probably have a lot of Rosalie’s other works.”

  “Did you know Drew runs an art gallery in New York?”

  “Rosalie never mentioned it. How do you happen to know that?”

  “Don’t you do any research, Audrey? I read it in the National Enquirer.”

  “The National Enquirer! Oh well, in that case there’s no possibility of a doubt. I mean, the National Enquirer and the Bible. Do you mean to say you, a college professor, actually read the Enquirer?”

  He had the decency to blush at least. “I read everything. Nothing conceived by human mind is alien to me. I saw Rosalie’s picture plastered all over it at the supermarket, and picked one up. It talked about Lorraine and her daughter, who runs a gallery in New York. Drew’s gallery is in the phone book, so the Enquirer got that right. So,” he continued, “to return to my point . .

  “Just what is your point?”

  “That Drew Taylor’s connected with the theft of your picture, in some way that I haven’t been able to figure out yet. It didn’t say in the Enquirer that Drew inherits anything. Actually Rosalie didn’t leave much, considering how much she earned. Her estate only amounted to a couple of hundred thousand.”

  “But there’s Hartland. It’s worth a lot. Since Rosalie’s dead, I can tell about the daughter now. There won’t be any sequel—that was the only reason she wouldn’t tell me earlier.”

  Brad pokered up. “It’s more likely the child she wanted to protect than herself. We don’t know what Drew’s circumstances are. She might be a highly respectable woman, who wouldn’t want the world to know she’s illegitimate. For that matter, the father could be some guy you and your publisher wouldn’t care to tangle with. Besides, you don’t even know whether it’s true. You’d be laying yourself open to a libel charge if it isn’t.”

  “It’s true all right. She said in her diary she was gaining weight, and a letter from a friend hinted at morning sickness. Then later she comes home with a baby—Lorraine does, I mean. Brad, I’ve been meaning to ask you for ages. Why did you slice those pages out of Rosalie’s diary—the ones about her gaining weight?”

  Caught off guard, he looked as guilty as sin. Furthermore, his inventive mind failed to throw up any plausible explanation. “I had to. I just had to. Don’t ask.”

  “We’ll make a deal. I’ll promise not to ask, if you’ll promise to tell me.”

  “You must work for a union.” He rubbed his furrowed brow, bending his head so I couldn’t read his eyes. When he looked up, I knew he had concocted some improbable answer. “Well,” he admitted with a sheepish smile, “you won’t like it.”

  “Try me.”

  He took my hands and blasted me with his most ravishing, professional smile. “Remember the garbage dump, Audrey? I did it for you.” But it wasn’t his real, post-garbage dump smile he was wearing. It was the Styrofoam one that accompanied his defrosted gourmet dinners.

  “And you razored the pages out of the diary for you. Why?”

  “Because the magazine I’m doing that article for insisted I have some evidence to substantiate my claim that Rosalie had a child. I don’t finger Drew as the offspring. I just say I think she had a child. And even for that, they insisted I have something in black and white.”

  I had forgotten about the magazine article. “You phony! Warning me not to use it! You just wanted to scoop me.”

  “No! I’m not saying who the kid is, or even hinting. And at the time I took it, you weren’t going to mention your suspicions that Rosalie had a child at all.”

  “It was a crummy thing to do, and you know it!”

  “I do know it, and I’m sorry, Audrey. I’m not going to use it, if that helps any.”

  I proved susceptible to his steaming coffee eyes, and even more so to my memories of the afternoon. What he wasn’t saying—but it didn’t take a Max Gerter to figure it out—was that he cared enough for me that he was foregoing his stolen scoop.

  “Promise you won’t use it?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “Okay, I forgive you, but I need those pages back. Then you really are writing an article about Rosalie? How do you find time?”

  “I have a whole summer free.”

  “Unh-unh, Madison. You have to hustle along the next Max Gerter detective book. You might as well confess, Brad. I figured it out. The spaghetti Caruso, the hero an ex-professor. But why did you make him of German ancestry?”

  His face looked perfectly blank. “What are you talking about?” he asked, with a genuine frown wrinkling his brow.

  “You are Madison Gantry, aren’t you?”

  “Lord, no. Where’d you get that idea?”

  “The letter from Belton, the box of books in your trunk. Who are you, then, if you’re not Hume Mason, and you’re not Madison Gantry?”

  Just when I had begun to doubt it, he owned up sheepishly that he was Madison Gantry. “But I don’t tell anybody. I don’t do any PR—not even my picture on the cover.

  “Why not?”

  “I like my privacy.”

  “I think you’re ashamed of it. You think your colleagues at college would put you down. I really liked the book, Brad.”

  “Well, thanks. I’m glad you did, and now that we’ve got that settled, can we get back to the real case? We need some tangible evidence that links Drew Taylor to the theft.”

  “Fingerprints? No, it wasn’t Drew. She was at the funeral.” I slid a leery look at Brad. Had it been he at the funeral? I only got a glimpse. I must have been mistaken.

  “She wouldn’t do it herself. She’d hire a couple of thugs. There are guys that’ll do it for a C note, as Max Gerter would say. The trouble is, that typewriter’s been handled more than a public pay phone. There are your prints and mine, the wino’s, and the cop’s.”

  “True, and since I don’t believe in dusting or housecleaning, there’d be prints from the salesman and everybody else who ever touched it.”

  “You’re the one who said it. Anyway, pros use gloves.”

  “I could phone Drew,” I suggested, though what I would say hadn’t occurred to me yet.

  “That would alert her you’re suspicious.”

  “All right, what do you suggest then?”

  “I suggest we exercise the little gray cells,” he said, tapping his temple. “Like Hercule Poirot. I don’t waste all
my time on Gantry. I also waste it on Agatha Christie. Exercise increases the oxygen supply to the brain. Don’t faint—I’m not going to suggest we do jogging. There’s a dance floor out there.”

  “There’s a nice hot cup of coffee here,” I pointed out.

  “Bitter stuff. They use too much cheap Brazilian coffee. Dancing is much better for you. Besides,” he added with a glowing smile, “if I don’t find some excuse to get my arms around you very soon, I’m going to burst a blood vessel. Your jacket falls open when you reach forward.”

  I leaned low across the table. “The creamy whites are heaving, are they?”

  He took a long look, with eyes that seemed hypnotized. “I can see your heart throb.” I could actually feel it throb faster from the concentration of his gaze. “Now they’re heaving,” he said, and looked up, smiling.

  “My bosoms do not heave. They hardly flow. Furthermore, they’re not white. I’m getting a tan.”

  “You knew it was you I was writing about, huh? They were white the last peek I got, when you had on your bathing suit. I’ll look into it more closely, and change the manuscript to read ‘freckled,’ if required. Polka dot nudes are in style this season.

  “You’re seriously weird, Brad,” I decided, and stood up.

  “I’ll just walk a step behind you like the Duke of Edinburgh, and watch you undulate,” he whispered in my ear, as he drew my chair back.

  “Voyeur!” His hand settled on my hip. I could feel the heat of his fingers as we walked, with my hips moving intimately against them.

  Only three couples occupied the tiny dance floor. Others sat at tables around the edge, drinking. A combo played soft, romantic music. It was a black-velvet night, the sky sprinkled with stardust, and the reflection of a fat, wan moon danced in the dark water beyond.

  A brisk breeze blew in from the river. “Do you think it’s going to be warm enough to dance outside?” I asked.

  “I feel like a nuclear reactor, ready to melt down. Are you feeling cold?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  His head bent above mine, above being the operative word here. He was tall enough that my head just fit the crook of his shoulder. “Romantic,” I sighed. “You’ll give me a chance to run for cover if the meltdown starts, won’t you? I wouldn’t want to glow in the dark.”