Whisper Death

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  He lay back again, his hands behind his head, his eyes on the moon, recalling the events of the previous few hours.

  She had remained silent on the journey back to Palm Springs, staring out the window at the passing landscape. When he’d stopped at the security gates in front of her home, she reached across him to press a button below the dashboard and the gates parted obediently.

  Leading the way into the house, Glynnis spoke briefly to the maid, who made a short telephone call before leaving to stand in the street just beyond the security gate. Twenty minutes later, McGuire watched from the living-room window as a battered pickup truck arrived, driven by an expressionless, brown-faced man. The maid climbed aboard and the truck drove away, one fender dangling from a length of wire.

  As the truck disappeared on Chula Vista, Glynnis Vargas entered the room wearing a light cotton robe and carrying a small, intricately carved wooden box. “I want you to see something,” she said, seating herself on a large sectional couch and patting the cushion beside her. “Come sit by me and look at these,” and she lifted the lid of the box.

  Inside were candid photographs of Glynnis Vargas in lush tropical settings and snapshots of her on a secluded beach. In many of the pictures she was accompanied by a tall, strikingly handsome man with a full head of thick, silvery hair, a neatly trimmed moustache above a strong mouth and square jaw, and eyes that beckoned and smiled.

  “Getti,” she said as she handed a stack of photographs to McGuire. “If you can assess a man by his face, surely you can begin to understand what this man was. And how much he meant to me.”

  She shuffled quickly through the remainder of the pictures before dropping them in McGuire’s lap.

  “He looks like the kind of man you described,” McGuire said, examining them one by one.

  “Look, look at this one,” she said quickly. She tapped a photograph in McGuire’s hand with a long, elegant index finger. “This was taken at our villa on Itaperica. It’s an island off the coast of Bahia. . . .” Her voice softened. “The most beautiful part of Brazil. So beautiful.” She pointed to the image of her husband. “It’s my favourite picture of Getti. Look how happy he is. Look at the smile on his face.”

  The man was indeed happy, beaming at the camera from a beach chair, his sunglasses pushed high on his forehead to reveal his laughing eyes.

  “I think I want a drink,” she said suddenly.

  McGuire watched her walk to a sideboard, the contours of her body moving languidly beneath the fabric of her robe. She poured herself a large glass of cognac from a crystal decanter and stood gazing out the window before returning to sit beside him again.

  “I used to look at these and cry for days after Getti died,” she said, gathering the pictures from McGuire’s hands and returning them to the carved wooden box. “Since I arrived here, I haven’t looked at them at all. Until now.”

  “Why now?”

  “I’m not sure,” she replied. “Perhaps it was just to say goodbye to him.” She set the box aside. “I don’t expect to look at them again. For a very long time.”

  McGuire recalled something from the evening at the Desert Museum. “When I brought you home from the museum the other night,” he said, “a man met you at the door. Who was he? You were obviously more than just friends.”

  She took another long sip of cognac before answering. “My cousin. From Brazil. Getti’s cousin, actually. He returned to Rio the following day. I miss him already.”

  “Was there something between you?”

  “No.” She lowered her glass and turned away, avoiding his eyes. “Yes,” she corrected herself. “Yes, there was. But not anymore,” she added quickly.

  McGuire set his empty glass on the floor.

  “You never waste words, do you?” she asked when he looked back at her. She too had placed her glass on the thick carpet. Before McGuire could speak, she raised herself onto her knees and dropped her hands to the belt of her robe. “I find that so appealing in a man. So let’s not waste words, shall we?”

  The robe parted and, still kneeling, she brought McGuire’s mouth to her breast, her hands behind his head and a soft, low moan rising from her throat.

  Remembering the moment, McGuire reached to touch her again. Her body was more firm, more lithe than he had expected. And he had expected much.

  Afterwards, she had cried. A small girl, sobbing on his shoulder. He had carried her in his arms across the living room, past the entrance to the Florida room, beyond the kitchen to the music room where her portrait hung, and through the white louvred doors down the darkened hall. “At the end,” she had said, her arms around his neck.

  He laid her on the bed in the desert dusk, her eyes closed, one arm flung aside. After closing the drapes he returned to the bed, unsure whether to stay or remain, until her eyes and her arms both opened to him again.

  Now, awake in darkness softened only by moonlight, he crept from the bed and watched her sleep for a few moments before exploring the house.

  When he had carried her down the hall, he had passed three closed doors. Now he tried them, to discover that all were securely locked. A doorway leading from the music room was also secured, as were two others, which should have opened to the living room.

  McGuire estimated that half the area of the house was sealed behind locked doors.

  He traced his way back to the bed and lay silently for several minutes watching Glynnis Vargas sleep, reaching to stroke her body lightly with his fingertips, barely brushing her skin as though sensing the texture of an eggshell.

  He awoke again to desert light leaking around the drawn drapes and flowing through the skylight. Beside him, Glynnis slept soundly on her stomach, one foot extending vulnerably from beneath the single sheet covering her.

  Dressing quickly, he walked down the hall to the music room, unlocked the sliding doors and stepped out of the air-conditioned veil of the house into the warm cloak of the desert day.

  McGuire skirted the pool and unlocked the rear security gate. Within a few steps he had left the green environment of the landscaped grounds and entered the harsh reality of the desert, scrambling up the steep face of the rocky hill behind the house.

  He found what he expected about a hundred feet up the face of the hill.

  A small hollow had been formed behind a massive boulder. The ground behind the boulder was pressed smooth with footsteps; a crumpled paper coffee cup and several food wrappers lay scattered on the ground. McGuire followed a worn path leading away from the boulder and traversing the hill until it ended at a short service road leading off Chula Vista.

  He returned to the shadow of the boulder and stared down at the house with its swimming pool, the sliding glass doors off the music room, the patio running along the side of the house to similar sets of doors, and the large skylight over Glynnis Vargas’s bed, where they had made love and slept bathed in moonlight.

  The sliding door to her bedroom opened and McGuire watched Glynnis Vargas emerge barefoot, carrying an over-sized towel and wearing an emerald silk robe. At the edge of the pool she shrugged out of the robe and dove naked and without hesitation into the water, her body gliding beneath the surface like a bird in flight.

  She swam several lengths with easy, practised grace. Then, casually towelling herself off without glancing around her, she returned to the bedroom. Only the shimmering surface of the water and her damp footprints, drying in the sun even as McGuire continued to watch, remained as evidence of her presence.

  McGuire suspected he had been treated to another piece of theatre.

  He found her in the kitchen, preparing coffee. Her hair was wrapped in a towel and she wore a thick terry-cloth wrap that extended just to her knees.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said as he entered from the music room. “You’re thinking this is not normal behaviour for a Palm Springs widow. You’re thinking I should have a cook to ma
ke my breakfast, a butler to serve it and a maid to tidy up.” She looked at him, a smile bringing out the half-moon dimples in her cheeks. “Am I right?”

  “Only partly,” McGuire said. He sat at the breakfast nook in the corner of the large, brightly lit room. “I was really thinking you had better be more careful.”

  “About what?”

  “About appearing for your morning swim like you did just now. I was watching you from the side of the hill. . . .”

  “I know,” she interrupted. “I saw you.” She opened a cupboard door. “Croissants? They were fresh yesterday.”

  “Doesn’t anybody surprise you?” McGuire asked.

  “No,” she said, placing the croissants on a gilt-edged plate. “Not even you.”

  “Glynnis, somebody has been watching you from that hill out there,” McGuire warned, gesturing over his shoulder. “And more than once. He’s brought food and drink with him and for all I know binoculars and a gun. I saw him, the first day I was here. He was scrambling up the hill, probably back to a car parked on that road off Chula Vista.”

  She turned to face him, the dishes in her hands. “And what do you want me to do? Remain inside like a hermit? Invite him down for a swim?”

  “You could call the police, at least.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea, Joseph.” She walked toward him, the plates in her hand. “Then, instead of some harmless peeping Tom, I’ll have an entire shift of police officers watching my every move. No thank you.”

  “How long has he been doing it?” McGuire asked.

  She returned to the counter for the coffee. “Doing what?”

  “Watching you, damn it.”

  She carried the coffee to the table and sat down before answering. “I don’t know,” she said as she filled his cup. “Does it make a difference?”

  “Don’t you care? Aren’t you concerned?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Look, this guy could be dangerous.”

  She filled her cup, then began separating the croissant, pulling it apart delicately with her fingertips. “We both know, Joseph, that there are two kinds of maniacs. Dangerous ones, and the rest of us. I don’t think a man who spies from a hilltop is a danger to me or anyone.”

  “How can you be so calm?”

  She lifted a piece of croissant to her lips. “I have had many years of practice in avoiding panic.” She chewed her food, her eyes never leaving McGuire’s. “You’re dying to ask, aren’t you?”

  McGuire forced his eyes from hers and lifted his coffee cup. “Ask what?”

  “Ask what I meant a minute ago when I said not even you surprised me.”

  He smiled. “So go ahead. Tell me.”

  Extending a hand to his, she touched him with the tips of her long and polished fingernails. “I knew you would be that good last night,” and she smiled like a naughty little girl.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked. She lay on her side, one finger tracing circles on McGuire’s chest.

  “I’m thinking I better decide if I should stay here in Palm Springs and help find the man who shot Bunker Crawford and my partner,” McGuire replied. “Or just leave it to the locals. It’s their case. Not mine.” The skylight above him was cobalt blue. Music drifted in from the other room like the sound of the tide echoing through a seashell. His clothes were on the floor, her robe was back in the kitchen.

  “If you stay, you could move in here.” She was already smiling at his answer with her eyes.

  “I hadn’t thought of it.”

  “Good thing I did.”

  McGuire shook his head. “I really should return to Boston.”

  “For what?”

  McGuire wasn’t sure.

  “I’m leaving for Los Angeles tomorrow,” Glynnis said. “There are still some things to be settled regarding Getti’s estate. I’ll be gone two days. Three at the most. Why not stay here? When I come back, we’ll talk about your career.”

  “In Palm Springs?”

  “No, silly.” She patted the bed beside her. “Here.”

  She followed him in the Mercedes, as he drove first to the motel to check out, then to the rental agency to return the car.

  “You drive,” she said when he emerged from the rental office. She was already sitting in the passenger seat of the Mercedes. “You like driving this car, don’t you?” She smiled as he slid behind the wheel.

  “It’s a nice car,” McGuire agreed. He checked the traffic behind him and pulled quickly away from the curb.

  “You look good driving it too,” she said. “Some men look especially good behind the wheel of certain cars. You look better in a Mercedes than you do in a Ford.”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” McGuire punched the buttons on the car radio. He wished he could hear some vintage jazz. A little Miles Davis, maybe a walking blues by Zoot Sims, some classic Basie, a rollicking Oscar Peterson piano solo. But all he could find was Barry Manilow and syrupy strings.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “Good jazz.” He gave up and switched the radio off.

  “Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?” She laughed and touched him gently when he frowned at her. “Some day you’ll have to teach me about jazz,” she said. “Anyway, not everybody looks good in a Mercedes. But you do. You look terrific.” She was watching him, her head angled, her eyes flashing. “Would you mind if I turned you into a chauffeur for a few minutes?”

  McGuire said he wouldn’t mind at all.

  “Then stop at my bank, would you please? I have a few transactions to make.” She became thoughtful and serious. “I wonder how they’re coming along with the new figurine display? I should go and inspect it, but I don’t know anything about the security arrangements . . . how am I to judge?”

  “How long will you be in the bank?”

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes, I guess. Maybe longer. This is a languid town, Joseph. Things don’t move along here quite as crisply as they do back east.”

  “Why don’t I wander over to the museum while you’re in the bank? Give me a chance to look things over, let you know what I think.”

  She brightened at the idea. “Would you really? I would appreciate it so much, Joseph. I really would.”

  It was several blocks from the bank to the museum. McGuire parked the Mercedes in the VIP area, paid the general admission fee and walked through the painting gallery to the Getti Vargas Court. A heavy tapestry covered both entrances, and a painted sign on a brass music stand announced “The Getti Vargas Court is closed until further notice.”

  McGuire parted the tapestry to look inside. The figurines were gone; otherwise it appeared that nothing had changed.

  “Hey. You.”

  McGuire turned to see a security guard striding toward him, an officious frown on his face. It was the same guard who had been on duty the night the figurine was damaged. “It’s all right,” McGuire said, dropping the tapestry back in place. “I was with Mrs. Vargas the other evening. Remember?”

  The guard’s face clouded, then creased into a broad smile of recognition. “Yeah, I remember.” The smile faded. “What do you hear? They any closer to finding out who broke that little statue?”

  “I thought you would know.”

  “Who, me?” the guard scoffed. “They don’t tell us nothing. All’s I know is they took all those things, the little statues, away the next day. I don’t know what’s happening. Just keep people out of here, that’s all I’ve been told.”

  Descending the museum steps, McGuire noticed a man peering under the Mercedes who stood and grinned sheepishly as he approached. The man was wearing garish Bermuda-length shorts and a lightweight jacket. “Thought I saw a leak under your car,” he explained. “See? Here? But it’s just water from your air conditioner, I guess. How do you like this model? I had one, an earlier Benz. Never should have s
old it.”

  McGuire said he liked it fine and stared silently until the man shrugged his shoulders, smiled pleasantly and sauntered off toward Palm Canyon Drive.

  On his hands and knees, McGuire looked under the car. Sure enough, a small puddle of water had formed below the air-conditioner condenser. Nothing to worry about, he told himself. Another dose of desert paranoia. But he held his breath as he turned the ignition key, relieved when the motor came to life.

  “They’ve done nothing?”

  Glynnis Vargas stared across at McGuire as he drove along Palm Canyon Drive half an hour later.

  “Just closed it off,” McGuire said. He recounted his conversation with the security guard.

  “I can’t believe it,” she replied. “I’ll certainly speak to Henry about it. As soon as I return from Los Angeles.”

  She made small talk while McGuire drove, gossiping about board members at the museum, all the while resting one hand lightly on McGuire’s thigh as he turned off Palm Canyon Drive onto Vista Chino.

  McGuire saw the car first, parked directly in front of Glynnis Vargas’s house. “You have company,” he said guardedly.

  Richard Bonnar stepped out of his unmarked car into the desert heat as they approached, his body trim and taut in a short-sleeved golfing shirt and casual slacks.

  McGuire lowered the window on his side, and Bonnar leaned into the car. “Nice to see you, Mrs. Vargas,” he said, directing his broadest smile at her. “Got somethin’ for you, McGuire.”

  “How did you find me?” McGuire asked.

  “Friends at the motel. They called me as soon as you checked out. Been lookin’ all over for you. Care to tell me where you’ve been?”

  McGuire smiled coldly back at him. “As a matter of fact, no. So what’ve you got?”