For a second I didn't think my words were likely to have any effect on her, as if the sight of me had drained her of further power to react in any way except running, but then she stopped suddenly and sort of jerked. She quivered slightly like a woman who had stuck her finger into an electrical outlet, and slowly turned. She stabbed me with a strange, anguished gaze as I rose dripping from the water.
“Ilona,” I said. “I'm—I—what can I say?"
She stared at me.
“Well,” I said a bit pettishly, since I was pretty uncomfortable to begin with, “I didn't do it on purpose, you know."
There was some more silence, and finally I asked, “Did you find the card?"
“Card?” At last she spoke. Her voice was dull. “Yes, I found the card. I didn't know you wanted it so badly.” She was still staring at me.
Dan Thrip was staring at me, too. He stood outside in the hall, eyeballing me through the open doorway. His chin was hanging down two or three inches, which was about as far down as it could hang, and his long arms dangled at his sides. He was looking from one of us to the other, with a fixed stupidity of expression, and not a glimmer of understanding in his blank eyes.
His cue had come and gone long ago. He had heard those musical notes that said to him, Go Into Your Act, Dan, but somebody had changed the act. Everything was all fouled up. He was bewildered, nonplussed, unsure of himself.
The events of the last minute or so had, understandably, occupied my mind to the exclusion of everything else. Consequently I had forgotten all about Johnny Cabot. But suddenly I remembered that he should be lying without a wiggle on the floor. He wasn't even in sight.
“Dan,” I said. “What happened to the guy who was in here?"
It took him a while to answer, but at last in a few, halting phrases, he indicated that a guy had come racing out past him and downstairs, very obviously in a big hurry—which told me that by now Cabot would be about a mile from here. I started to race out after him anyway, but then stopped, knowing that chasing the man now was useless.
I said to Ilona, “What did Cabot want with you? What was he doing here?"
She had practically recovered her senses and poise by now, and she said, “It was about you, Shell. He just came in without knocking or anything and asked if you'd been in to see me. When I told him yes, he seemed real angry, started swearing and all."
Apparently Cabot had remembered telling me he'd been with a girl from the Grotto this morning, and hadn't liked the idea of my coming here. “He say anything else?"
“Yes, he told me if I saw you or heard from you again to deny that I'd been with him or ever met him. He seemed pretty worried about it."
“He would be."
“I'll get that card,” Ilona said. “Don't—do anything.” Then she looked past me and seemed to notice Dan Thrip for the first time. She slammed the door in his face. It slammed not more than two inches from his nose, but as far as I could tell he didn't move at all.
The recent events had probably put him nearly into a state of shock, but it finally dawned on me that the real push into trauma must have been his first sight of Ilona, the mermaid, without her fishtail, most of which was somewhere in the pool down below. Only wispy segments of it still remained.
Ilona and I both stood there looking at each other and dripping, and then she chuckled. The chuckle turned into a laugh, and after a moment I joined her. When we caught our breath again, we were both back to normal.
I was so back to normal that I had got quite close to her indeed, and she reached up and put both hands on my shoulders. It was about the same movement that Carol had earlier made, but this time it filled me with all sorts of desires, and not one of them was the desire to leave.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world for my arms to go around her, and her fingers to tighten on my shoulders, and her parted lips to get closer to mine, and then meet them eagerly, almost harshly. It was delightful. It was also, there is no doubt, one of the sloppiest kisses in my kissing history.
We mashed together, dripping, squishing, and gurgling. Since she had almost nothing on, I was doing most of the dripping and squishing. But she was gurgling. There was really quite a bit of sound there for a minute or so, like those hi-fi records of heartbeats and joints popping. I even heard a far-off pounding.
Then I realized the pounding wasn't so far off. Somebody was running down the hall. Then I heard Dan Thrip saying, “No! You can't go in. She hasn't got no clothes on."
Ilona leaned back an inch or two and looked up at me. “Why, that's true,” she breathed in mock surprise. “How could I have forgotten?” Then she stepped back and said, smiling, “Now, don't peek,” and walked slowly, beautifully, artistically, to the bamboo screen and behind it. I felt a bit weak.
In a few seconds she came into view once more, wearing that white robe again, and at almost the same instant the door burst open. Joe Grace leaped into the room, his face livid. He pointed a finger at me. “You!” he shouted hoarsely.
9
Dan Thrip came in and grabbed Grace, who told him he was fired, but then Thrip noted that Ilona was clad in her robe and he calmed down, and Ilona cooed a few words at Joe Grace and said everything would be all right. Her robe fell slightly open as she leaned toward him, but she quickly grabbed it and pulled it together; after that, however, when Ilona asked them to please leave, for just a little moment, they both went out meekly. During all that I managed to elicit the info from Grace that Cabot had gone tearing through the club and outside minutes ago.
As the door closed, Ilona reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out a small white card. “I found this just before you showed up—Joe said you'd be by. Is this what you wanted?"
“Uh-huh.” The name Harold Welch was printed on the card, with the word “Investigator” below the name. That was all, but written across its back was “Rancho Cottages, Cottage 12."
Ilona said, “Shell, maybe if you get all your investigating done real fast, you might get back here before closing."
“A brilliant thought, but highly unlikely."
“Well, you try, anyway. But right now you'd better go—Dan and I still have a show to do."
I shuddered. I looked down at my dripping clothes and shuddered again. A sudden pain rippled through my stomach and I bent slightly forward, wincing. Dizziness swept over me momentarily.
Ilona said, “What's the matter, Shell?"
“I don't know. Must have bent some muscles..."
“You should be sprained all over."
“Maybe Cabot clobbered me when I wasn't looking. No, I understand—I swallowed some water and there wasn't any bourbon in it. The shock shattered my nervous system."
She was smiling, but I wasn't. I had barely noticed similar sensations a couple times in the last few minutes, but in the movement and excitement I'd paid no attention. I did feel a bit dizzy, but that wasn't too unusual. I told Ilona good-by and to put on a sensational act, and left.
Half an hour later, after looking up the Rancho Cottages in the phone book, I'd found the place and was talking to the sleepy owner. At first he'd ogled my wet clothes, but I told him I'd fallen into the lake at MacArthur Park and that seemed to satisfy him. The Rancho was a twelve-unit motel-type spot off Grange Street about five miles from downtown L.A. The owner, a man named Brand, said he remembered Mr. Welch, but he hadn't seen him for over a week; Welch had left word that he wasn't to be disturbed, even for maid service, unless he asked for it.
Mr. Brand went on, “I think he had a babe livin’ with him."
“Oh? Who was it, do you know?"
Brand shook his head. “Not even sure there was a babe. But that's usually why folks don't want the maid service and all."
The cottages were separate cabins, and Brand took me to Cottage 12. He knocked, but there wasn't any answer. “Don't think he's home,” Brand told me. “Like I said, I haven't seen him around. Probably investigating somewhere—detective, you know."
“Yeah.
"
He looked at me in the glow of the flashlight he held. “Something the matter with you?"
“I'm all right.” That sudden pain had caught me several times in the last half hour, but it was now subsiding to a dull ache that stayed with me, along with mild dizziness.
Mr. Brand opened the door, then pressed the light switch on the wall, saying, “I know you're a detective, but I still don't like to ... Oh, my God!"
Looking past him, I could see the same thing Brand had seen. On our right was the open door to the bathroom, and halfway through it, sprawled on the floor, was a man's body.
I walked to the figure and touched the outflung hand. The arm moved easily, so there wasn't any rigor mortis. I guessed, though, that he'd been killed several days ago; rigor mortis could have set in and then left again, as it will after a few days. I could see the man's face, and it had the distinctively bluish tinge of cyanosis.
The dead man fit the description I had of Harry Welch; he had a lot of dark hair, gray at the temples, and a thin black mustache, but I asked Mr. Brand, “Would you say this is Welch?"
He came a couple steps forward and bent down, peering at the dead man's face, an expression of distaste on his own features. “Yes, but what happened to him? Look at that color; it's...” He made a grating sound deep in his throat.
“Cyanosis,” I said. “One of the less important effects of cyanide poisoning. You'd better call the police."
Brand went out. I could see that the wrinkled collar of the white dress shirt the dead detective wore was open, and he wore no tie. He had on brown trousers and brown shoes.
It looked as if Welch had been relaxing at night after finishing a day's work. And he had almost surely been poisoned by somebody else. Suicide was such a remote possibility that I ignored it.
There wasn't anything to show that Welch hadn't been living here alone. I looked around for something he might have eaten or drunk from, but there wasn't anything like that in the cottage. In the dresser drawer, however, was the dead man's wallet. I flipped it open with a finger and examined the identification cards behind their transparent windows.
The dead man had been a private detective, all right, licensed by the state of California. His name was Harold M. Welch, and his address was in Fresno, California. So finally I knew where he'd come from.
Looking at the limp body on the floor, I wondered why Welch had been killed. There was one reason, or motive, that fit all facets of the case. But Welch, too, had been poisoned—with cyanide. And there had been cyanide in Ilona Cabot's milk.
I stopped. Remembering, I could hear Johnny Cabot saying to me at the Westlander Theater: “If I wanted to kill anybody, I wouldn't use cyanide, I'd use a gun.” How had he known that the would-be murderer of his wife had used cyanide?
I thought about that, and when I remembered that Ilona had been gone by the time I'd arrived at the house on Robard Street, I felt sure I had the answer to that question—and more, including why Welch had been murdered, why there'd been the attempt on Ilona Cabot's life—in fact the whole story, including where Johnny Cabot and his three Ilonas fit in. But I still needed a little more information and a little more proof. And the place to get it was in my apartment, and the method was using the phone to call Fresno.
Carol Austin was still waiting for me in my apartment when I got there. I'd anticipated that, and would have been enormously surprised if she hadn't waited for my return. She didn't say anything when I walked in the door, just stared at me.
“Hi,” I said. “I wondered if you'd still be here."
Only then did she smile and seem to relax. “You must have known I'd wait. What have you been doing?” Her blue eyes got very wide. “What happened to your clothes? It isn't raining, is it?"
I walked to the divan and sat down, reached for the phone. “No, I fell into a tank of water.” She asked some more questions, but instead of answering them I dialed information and asked for the phone number of Mr. William Grant in Fresno.
Carol got up and said, “I'll mix us something to drink."
“Fine,” I told her. “I'd like that."
While she moved about in the kitchenette, I listened to the operator getting in touch with Fresno, then asking for the number of William Grant.
Finally a woman's sleep-dulled voice was saying to me “Hello."
“Hello, this is Shell Scott in Los Angeles. I wasn't sure I'd reach anyone at this number."
Carol came back and sat on the divan and handed me a dark-brown highball. “Bourbon and water, isn't it?” she whispered.
I nodded. At the other end of the line the woman was saying, “Mr. Grant passed away recently. Perhaps I can help you—I was his personal secretary for many years. I'm Joan Bates."
“What can you tell me about Mr. Harry Welch, a detective."
“Oh?” She hesitated. “I don't feel I should—"
“He's dead,” I interrupted. “He was murdered. I'm an investigator, myself.” I added, with only slight exaggeration, “I'm working quite closely with the police on this."
And that loosened her tongue. “I see—He's dead, then. We hadn't heard anything for several days. How awful! Are you sure he was murdered?"
“There's not any doubt. What can you tell me about him?"
“Well, he was working for the estate. When Mr. Grant's will was read, we learned that he'd left half of all his money to me and his nurse Ann Wilson, and the other half to a friend. But nobody knew where the—friend was living."
“You're referring to his daughter, aren't you?"
She gasped. “Why, how did you—"
“I know all about that, ma'am. Will you excuse me a minute?"
She said she'd hold the line, and I put the phone down on the cushion, then got to my feet, highball in my hand. “Any ice left?” I asked Carol. Or, at least, the lovely I thought of as Carol.
“Yes. Yes, lots. A tray's in the sink. What—"
She started to get up, but I said genially, “Relax, honey. I can do some of the work."
10
In the kitchenette, out of sight of my guest, I made noise getting the ice, rattling the tray in the sink, while I held the highball close to my nose and sniffed. It was obvious, once I looked for it—or smelled for it. The peach-pit odor of potassium cyanide rose even above the strong fumes of bourbon. I poured the drink into the sink, quickly and quietly rinsed my glass and filled it with tap water, plus enough Coca Cola to give it a dark bourbon color, then added a couple more ice cubes and went back into the front room.
Carol hadn't moved. She seemed almost rigid. I beamed at her and said, “I like lots of ice. This conversation may take quite a while.” I sat down and picked up the phone, holding my hand over the mouthpiece, then had a sizable gulp of my water-and-Coke. “That's better,” I said happily, and then frowned, making a face. “But that's the bitterest bourbon I ever tasted. Carol, next time use the Old Crow—not that cheap stuff."
She nodded silently and smiled. It was a ghastly smile. An hour earlier, I would probably have thought it charming, hot, lovable. But now I could see what it really was, just muscles pulling at lips and cheeks.
Into the phone I said, “Hello again. Would you give me the whole story, please?” She did.
While talking to the woman in Fresno, I sipped occasionally at my drink. When she finished, I thanked her and said I'd get in touch with her again the following day, and hung up.
Carol Austin had her big blue eyes fastened on me like blued steel to a magnet. She couldn't have learned much from the phone conversation, because for the most part I'd been listening, but she said, “Are you getting your case all finished up, Shell?"
“Looks like it."
She raised her highball. “Relax a little. You'll live longer. Bottoms up?"
Live longer, hey? “Bottoms up,” I said, and drank the rest of my Coke-and-water. It was fascinating to watch Carol watch me. She didn't even seem to be breathing. I said, “Would you like to hear about the case, honey? About my fa
scinating life?"
She shrugged, as if that would be as good a way to kill the next minute or two as any. I said, “Some of this I'd already learned, and some of it I got on the phone from Fresno. I was talking to Fresno just now, did you know that?"
“I ... thought maybe...” She stopped. “I mean, I don't know where it was."
“Well, it was Fresno. It seems a man named William J. Grant died up there a little while back, and this Mr. Grant had raked together about four million dollars. About twenty-two years ago, Mr. Grant and a girl named Mary Lassen were, well, let's say in love. Is this interesting to you?"
She gave me one of those pulled-muscle smiles again, as if she had just sprained her face. Carol knew something was very wrong, but she didn't seem sure exactly what it was. Then, too, I was dying rather slowly.
I said, “Well, to boil it down, they had a baby. And they weren't married. The old story; it's happened before, it'll happen again.” And right there I stopped. I let what I fondly hoped was a stricken look capture my features. I waggled my face around and bent forward, saying harshly, “Arrggh!"
Carol didn't move an eighth of an inch. She stared at me, and in a voice completely devoid of surprise or even friendly curiosity, asked “What's the matter. Shell?"
“I—A pain. Feel a little dizzy. Something I...” After another groan or two I straightened up and shook my head. This time when I looked at Carol there was, oddly enough, an apparently real smile on her face. It was a small, hardly perceptible smile, but after all there wasn't much to laugh about.
“That was strange,” I said, and went on. “Well, this guy Grant took a powder, left the Lassen woman and the child in the lurch. The woman turned the kid over to an orphanage and knocked herself off, and by the time Grant learned about that a year or so had passed. He didn't do anything about it. But after another twenty years, he took real sick. He was dying, and his thoughts turned to the girl—his daughter. He was a rich man by then, and he wanted half his fortune to go to the girl. Is this boring you, Carol?"
“What? Oh, no, Shell. This is interesting."
Three's a Shroud (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 10