by K. K. Beck
“So how’d it go?” Maurice demanded. “I got a kind of garbled report from Vince. What’s happening?”
“I’m not sure,” said Quentin. “We did review the fact that the properties are back in copyright. There’s a new wrinkle, though. The last copyright owner, Valerian Ricardo’s widow, was there. As I mentioned before, she’s living with Nadia Wentworth. She believes she has a shot at getting the rights back from us.”
“We gotta make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Maurice. “You gotta.”
“Well, I’ll do what I can,” said Quentin, exasperated, “but with all this stuff about Carla and the—”
“Not on this line, you idiot!” said Maurice.
“Good point,” said Quentin, seeing a way of getting off the phone. “Maybe we’d better discuss this in the morning.”
“There’s not much to discuss. All you need to know is you have to take care of the old lady and get Wentworth’s signature on the dotted line in the next forty-eight hours. Or else. And you know what ‘or else’ means, don’t you? Your hottest career move could be wangling a transfer from the rock pile to the warden’s typing pool.”
“I don’t think the old lady will settle.”
“She’s gonna have to,” said Maurice. “We can make it happen.”
“Well, short of throwing her under the wheels of an oncoming truck, I’m not sure—”
“Not on this line!” screamed Maurice.
“Give me a break,” said Quentin, painfully aware that his voice was shaking. “I can only do so much.”
“Stop whining! I want results! Mike might need some backup from you. He has this number and he knows where you are. If he gets in touch, give him whatever he needs to take care of this matter!” screamed Maurice, slamming down the phone.
Quentin stared up at the ceiling and wondered what could save him. The phone rang again. Presumably, Maurice had a few more thoughts to add. “Hello,” he said in a melancholy voice.
“Quentin? Is that you?”
His heart leapt.
“Margaret! My angel! Oh, Margaret! I was imagining you in the arms of that federal prosecutor. You can’t imagine how I’ve suffered!”
“Sam isn’t that interested in me. He was more interested in talking about you. And then when I got back, I heard your message. We have to talk. Can I come over?”
* * *
Nick stood in the middle of the sweep of lawn and adjusted the towel around his waist. Callie had completely vanished. There was a lot of dense shrubbery around the place, so he couldn’t search every inch of it in the dark, but he’d looked everywhere accessible and she was nowhere to be found. She’d probably stopped playing and had gone either into the house or back down to the pool to get the rest of her skimpy wardrobe.
Tentatively, he called out her name, making sure he wasn’t loud enough to be heard up at the house. “Callie,” he said. “Come out. Callie, where are you?”
Suddenly, he felt a powerful arm around his neck, his legs were kicked out from underneath him and he was pinned facedown on the ground by what felt like two hands and a knee. His face was pressed into the grass, and the wind was knocked out of him.
CHAPTER XXV
THE THING IN THE SHRUBBERY
“What did you say?” demanded a rough voice at his ear.
Nick found it difficult to answer with his face squashed into the lawn. His assailant, hearing him mumble, seemed to understand this. He grabbed Nick’s hair and twisted his head sideways, freeing his mouth.
“I was looking for someone,” Nick said. “Who the hell are you?”
“You said ‘Kali,’ didn’t you?” the voice barked.
“That’s her name.”
“Identify yourself.”
“I’m a guest here. My name is Nick Iversen. Let go of me.”
Suddenly, he was released, and the voice, now contrite, said, “Oh. Sorry.” Nick sat up warily and turned to see the powerfully built, square-jawed man who’d attacked him. He was now extending a hand to Nick, but Nick chose to get to his feet without help.
The attacker addressed him in reasonable tones. “I’m Tom Thorndyke, Nadia Wentworth’s security advisor. There may be an intruder on the grounds, and when I heard you call ‘Kali,’ I thought you might be this nut who’s obsessed with Nadia’s new project.”
Nick attempted to straighten out his towel. Thorndyke looked puzzled and slightly disturbed that Nick wasn’t wearing clothes.
“We were swimming,” said Nick. “I was just about to go and get dressed. Maybe Callie’s down by the pool.”
“Kali?”
Nick spelled it. “Callie’s my, um, girlfriend,” he said, trying to make it sound natural. “It’s short for Caroline.”
“Well, I’d like both of you inside the house,” said Tom. He followed Nick down the steps to the lanai, and watched him retrieve his clothes and put them back on. Callie’s bikini top, tiny purse, sandals and white lace panties were still flung around in a wanton way.
“Where did your girlfriend go?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” said Nick. “It’s been a confusing evening.” Feeling self-conscious, he began to gather up Callie’s things. “I guess we got a little carried away,” he said apologetically. He’d had only two hits off that joint Callie had offered him, but he felt pretty disoriented. “Um, the changing room was locked so we just—”
“It was?” Thorndyke seemed to find this fact of some interest. He strode over and tried the knob carefully, then astonished Nick first by producing a large black gun, and then by running at the door and planting a foot firmly beneath the knob in some kind of kung-fu move.
A second later, he’d turned on the light and was staring into the doorway, then rushed inside. “Oh my God. He looks bad. I’m going to call the medics.” He jogged over to the bar area and picked up a phone. “You go back to the house and wait for them, then bring them down here.”
“Who is it?” asked Nick.
“It’s Kevin. And he’s unconscious.”
* * *
Nick grabbed the pile of Callie’s things, ran back to the terrace and tried the French doors. They were locked. He pounded frantically on them, and wondered if he should run around the house trying other doors or wait for someone to come and open up.
Finally, a head popped out of a window on the second floor. It was Duncan Blaine’s. “Would you please stop making all that noise? I’m trying to work. Bloody hell!” He slammed the window shut.
“Let me in,” pleaded Nick. “It’s an emergency.”
Now another head popped out of another window. It was Melanie. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Tom found Kevin locked in the changing room by the pool and he’s in bad shape,” said Nick. “The medics are on their way.”
“I’ll come down and let you in,” she said.
Nick tried to pull himself together. The events of the evening were piling up in a startling way. So many incredible things had taken place in such a short period of time and his mind seemed unable to keep up. Why had he taken those hits off that joint? His stoned feeling made it all so much worse. He felt seriously as if everything were out of control, as if he had stumbled into some parallel universe created by the pen of Uncle Sid.
Just then he heard a thrashing sound in the shrubbery a few feet away from him. He turned to see some low branches slowly parted and then a stealthy figure creeping on hands and knees out onto the dark lawn. The thing made strange panting sounds.
No, he thought, I can’t take any more. He put his hands over his eyes for a second and asked himself if he were imagining this.
He remembered how it felt being attacked by Tom Thorndyke. Maybe this creature was going to attack him too, like Zuma, the strange catlike beast, baffling to zoologists and personally trained by Kali-Ra herself to lunge at people and tear at their throats with razor-sharp claws. His eyes flew open. It was coming toward him.
Behind him he heard the French doors unlocking, but he conti
nued to stare in horror as he realized that the thing that had emerged from the shrubbery was Callie. He ran toward her, just as she managed to drag herself upright. She stood weaving on the lawn, her sarong tied around her waist, her breasts exposed. The left one seemed to have a small tattoo.
“My God,” said Melanie, as Nick, still managing to hang on to her bikini top, underpants and purse, clumsily rearranged her sarong under her armpits and tied it firmly. The thing was now a reasonably respectable knee-length strapless dress.
Nick faked an indulgent chuckle and said, “She’s not used to so much excitement, I guess. And she normally never drinks. I don’t know what happened.”
“Weird stuff,” murmured Callie, her head drooping on his shoulder. “Unspeakable horrors. The sacred temple. Horrible. I must flee this hellish place.”
“Is she going to be all right?” asked Melanie.
Nick hoped he didn’t appear as out of it himself as he felt. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “That Duncan Blaine kept plying her with drinks and I guess—”
“If she drank what he spilled she’s well over the legal limit,” said Melanie impatiently. “What’s the deal with Kevin?”
“Tom found him locked in the changing room by the pool. And said he was in bad shape. He called the medics.”
Melanie put a hand to her forehead. “I think I’m going crazy,” she said. “Too much is happening.”
“I know,” said Nick, stepping toward her as he pulled Callie along. “It was nice of you to ask us to dinner,” he added, realizing how ridiculous this must sound. “I hope we didn’t abuse your hospitality. We got a little, um, over-enthusiastic, and took a dip in the pool. I’m not sure I should drive, to tell you the truth. Maybe I should call a cab.” He shifted Callie’s weight a little, and accidentally dropped her underpants at Melanie’s feet. They both looked down at them for a second, and then Nick scooped them back up.
“I’ll call,” said Melanie, with barely disguised eagerness. Nick felt ashamed that he and Callie had turned out to be such boorish guests. Half dragging Callie, he followed Melanie inside.
Melanie had the cab company on the line in an instant. “Where do you want them to take you?” she asked Nick.
“Um, what’s your address?” he asked Callie, who looked at him with a glazed-over expression and murmured, “The Temple of the Chosen.”
“Just a sec,” Nick said, fumbling with her pouch. Hours ago, before she’d taken the wheel of his rental car, she’d claimed to have a driver’s license on her.
There it was, next to a ten-dollar bill and the Zippo lighter. He read off the address to Melanie, who repeated it into the phone.
If the medics’ sirens hadn’t become audible just then, and Melanie hadn’t rushed off to the front door to let them in, she might have noticed how shocked Nick was to see the words, right above the address on the driver’s license, “Name: Cunningham, Kali-Ra.”
As Melanie led the medics down to the pool area, two questions came into her head. The first was, how had the medics’ car gotten through the security system? Kevin had said he’d reset it after the breaker tripped. The second question was, why did Nick Iversen have to look up his girlfriend’s address? And if he lived in Minneapolis, how come she lived here? Melanie had definitely seen a flash of a California driver’s license.
She forgot about both these questions, though, when she got down to the pool. Tom was there, propping up a tall, blond man who was half sitting, half lying on the tiles by the pool. He looked haggard but conscious.
“He’s coming around,” Tom said. He held up a coil of thick rope. “He was tied up and gagged the same way I was.”
“Who is he?” demanded Melanie as the medics bent over the victim.
“Why, Kevin, of course,” said Tom.
“That’s not the Kevin I know,” she replied.
CHAPTER XXVI
A NIGHT OF PASSION
“So you will do it?” said Margaret, sitting next to Quentin on the bed in his hotel room. “I wasn’t sure you would.” She was as beautiful as he remembered, and wore a soft blue dress and smelled like violets.
“Yes, yes. Of course I will.” He seized her fingertips and kissed them.
She withdrew them hastily and folded them primly in her lap. “They might want you to wear a wire and get him on tape.”
“Fortunately, I’ve never adopted Maurice’s Speedo dress code, so that should be no problem,” he said.
“It could be dangerous.”
“Of course it will. Maurice employs some pretty heavy muscle. Not to mention Vince Fontana’s pals, who are prepared to run around breaking arms and legs.” He arranged his features in a look of noble resolution and said with solemn dignity, “But I don’t care, Margaret. All I want is the chance to redeem myself in your eyes.
“And of course,” he added in more businesslike tones, “I’d also like immunity from federal prosecution for any criminal activities of Maurice Fender Associates in which I may have been involved.”
“We can do better than that!” Margaret clapped her hands together and bounced enthusiastically on the bed. “Sam says they’ll forget about the McCorkindale matter.”
“They will? What did you tell him about it?”
“Just that I might be able to persuade you to help, but only if you felt secure that anything Maurice tried to peddle about you wouldn’t be used against you. Sam said that was no problem, and they’d forget about anything you might have done in the past, short of murder, which isn’t a federal crime anyway.”
“Wow,” said Quentin.
“Sam is really eager to be the one to nail Maurice Fender. His boss has made kind of a crusade of it. Even if Maurice becomes an official fugitive and manages to avoid extradition, Sam would like to shut him down and prosecute some of his money-laundering clients. The IRS has had some bad publicity lately, hounding widows and orphans, and they’re particularly interested in making an example of some high-profile tax cheats in the top bracket.”
Quentin’s heart soared. After the humiliations of this evening at Nadia Wentworth’s, nothing would be more satisfying than seeing Vince Fontana in deep shit. Let his mob connections try to help him! Quentin looked forward to watching old Vince hawk his schlocky tapes on TV in a desperate attempt to raise enough cash to stay out of jail.
“I can hardly wait to start,” he said. “What do I have to do first?”
“Meet with Sam. He said it might be helpful if you had some preliminary information to hand over. Something that would show your good faith.”
“I’ve got some hot stuff in my briefcase,” he said eagerly. “Real paper-trail stuff that shows how Maurice works his little scam.”
“Terrific. Bring it along.”
“Oh, Margaret, you’ve saved me! I can’t believe it. You are an angel. You’re much too good for me.”
“I know,” she said.
Very gently, he placed a chaste kiss in the middle of her smooth, intelligent forehead. She didn’t flinch, so he caressed her hair reverently, and stared solemnly into her clear hazel eyes until she shut them, tilted her head sideways, and allowed him to kiss her mouth.
It was about half a minute later, right before they fell back onto the bed in a tangle of arms and legs, that the last rational thought Quentin Smith would have for several hours flickered momentarily through his brain. He remembered that in his haste to get away from Nadia Wentworth’s house, he had left his soggy briefcase with those incriminating documents there. He would have to get it first thing in the morning.
* * *
The real Kevin’s eyes were focused now, and the medics had a blood pressure cuff around his arm. He was making a clear attempt to overcome his grogginess and tell his story. “I’d just let myself in the gate with the security code, when suddenly, someone jumped me and knocked me out. Someone pressed a cloth into my face with some kind of chemical, a sickly sweet smell, that made me want to throw up.”
“Chloroform,” said Melanie. “I thou
ght it was only used in old novels.”
“After that, I don’t remember much. Just occasionally coming round and being fed a chocolate-flavored liquid.” He rubbed his arm at the memory. “I was never fully conscious.”
Tom looked grim. “There are a whole mess of empty chocolate Slim Fast cans in there,” he said, gesturing to the changing room. “At least the bastard kept him alive, but he probably drugged the stuff.”
“What bastard?” demanded Kevin.
“Sounds like your assailant impersonated you,” said Tom. “Someone calling himself Kevin has been running around here for a couple of days.”
The real Kevin ran a hand along his jaw where there appeared to be a few days growth of beard. “How long have I been out of commission?”
“About seventy-two hours,” said Tom.
“I can’t remember much,” said Kevin. “Except once, the guy mumbled something about waiting for the gong.”
“My God,” said Melanie. “The summons of the gong. Kali-Ra travels everywhere with one and when the slaves hear it, they gather. This idiot may still be running around the grounds,” said Melanie to Tom. “Where are the police? And did you know the security system is down? The power went out. I bet the fake Kevin went down into the basement and turned off the power earlier this evening in order to shut down the system. Maybe there are more of these crazies he wanted to let in! Later, he went down there and turned on the power again and said he was reactivating the security system, but the medics here got through no problem.”
One of them nodded as he shone a small flashlight into Kevin’s eyes. “That’s right. The gates were wide open.”
“I’d hoped to keep the cops out of it,” Tom said, clenching his jaw nervously.
“What?” demanded Melanie. “You said you were going to call them. We’ve got at least one and maybe more lunatics running around here chloroforming people and tying them up and dropping jars on their heads. Are you crazy?” But then it occurred to her that he wasn’t crazy, just embarrassed. If it ever came out that security expert to the stars Tom Thorndyke had let some clown run wild around Nadia Wentworth’s property for several days, his credibility would be severely diminished.