The Caddie swerved and my own tires screamed, sliding closer to the edge on my left as I tried to pull the car around the curve. I saw the Cad angling to the right, pulling away from me now, blackness looming all around me, and then, with the car slowing, I felt the left wheels bite at the road's edge, slide in the dirt, drop suddenly. The car shuddered, hung for a moment, and panic leaped in my brain as I threw my body automatically away from that blackness, clawing for the door handle, jerking at it as the car tilted crazily and moved beneath me. I slammed my feet against the floorboards as the car seemed to jerk and rise above me, and then I half jumped, half fell, through the open door and slammed against the earth, my fingernails ripping and breaking as I clawed at the ground, felt myself sliding backwards, dug with fingers until they bled, then felt the asphalt at my fingertips, pulled myself toward it and sprawled forward on my face.
Behind me I heard pounding from inside the car, hoarse shouts—and suddenly I remembered the man who was in the Buick's trunk. Then the car scraped the cliff's side, crashed with a grating of metal, and there was silence for seconds as it hurtled through the air, followed by a faint splash as it hit the sea. I heard sounds closer to me, looked up. The Cad was a hundred feet away, moving slowly, its side rubbing against the wall of earth at the right edge of the road. I sprinted to it, jerked the brake on.
Ellen lay motionless on the front seat. As I reached for her, light fell on us and I looked back to see the Ford rounding the curve, fast, veering in toward us with brakes squealing. I pushed Ellen to the floorboards, crawled over her and out the door as a gun roared and I saw the Ford stop, its lights off. I grabbed for my .38, yanked it from the deep pocket and dropped on my belly by the rear wheel of the Cad.
Light winked as a man fired and ran toward me; dirt splashed, inches on my left, and the slug ricocheted away whining. Then I was pulling the trigger of my .38, aiming at the man and pulling the trigger again even as he fell and I heard the slugs smack into his body. I jumped up and ran to him, slapped the gun from his hand and bunched his coat in my fist, jerked him up off the ground. I could feel his blood oozing warmly against my fingers. He coughed and a dark stain spread from his lip to chin.
“Where's Bruno?” I realized I was shouting. He shook his head, coughed again. I kept after him and he talked—for a little while. It was the same story I'd got from the other guy. Gill told me the same things about Bruno, except where he was. Gill also said that after the kill he was to phone the Laguna police and anonymously report the “accident.” Then Gill's dead weight hung heavy from my hand and I let him drop to the ground.
It seemed likely that Bruno, perhaps frightened by the mistakes last night, might be fixing himself an iron-clad alibi for tonight's kill. I wondered where Bruno would go if that were true. Probably where there were a lot of people. And right then I remembered some things I hadn't thought about enough; I thought about them. When I finally stood up I was pretty sure I knew where to find Ellen's would-be killer. I left Gill where he was and went back to Ellen.
After what seemed a long time, her eyes fluttered. She started screaming. “Hey, baby,” I said, “this is Shell, remember? Hell, I wouldn't hurt a flea.” She kept screaming. And she didn't stop until I remembered I still had on that stupid skeleton suit, minus the mask. No wonder she screamed. She thought she was dead and the ghouls had got her.
When we parked in front of the white two-story house with lights blazing inside all the windows, I told Ellen to wait for me away from the car, then I put the Death's mask on, walked to the door in complete costume, and knocked.
A woman opened the door, then stepped back, one hand at her throat. I could hear laughter and music in the room behind her. “What...” she gasped. “What in the world..."
She backed away from me; I followed her inside the room. People were talking, drinking. Joe looked up, his face shocked and surprised, then flushing with anger as he walked toward me.
Joe Benson, Ellen's new husband. He had stood out like a bright light once I started wondering about him.
As I'd thought earlier, the crime of passion is usually sudden, seldom carefully planned like this one—and the click of that skeleton's gun hadn't seemed part of a crazy man's kill. I'd also wondered, finally, how Bruno happened to learn where Ellen was.
Joe shoved me out the door and slammed it behind us. Light fell on his twisted face as he swore at me.
I said softly, “It's all right, she's dead."
In his anger he answered automatically. “But that outfit! And how did you know I was here? None of you knew—” And then he stopped very damned suddenly, his face frightened and ugly, as I pulled off the skeleton hood and he saw my face.
“Now, wait. You don't understand.” His voice shook.
“The hell I don't, Benson. I understand a million bucks worth."
His eyes focused on the gun in my hand, and I used it to slam him one between them and they stopped focusing.
I dragged him over to the car, shoved him inside, and began to work him over. He suddenly started squirting words. He was really trying to please me now.
“Where's Bruno, Joe?"
“House I rented by phone in his name,” he mumbled through puffed lips.
“Where is it?"
He mumbled the address, and I took off my necktie, yanked his hands around in back of him, and bound them together with the necktie. Then I locked the car door on his side, shoved him down on the seat, and took off. It didn't take us long to get to the house, and Joe didn't say a word while we were travelling. He just lay there on the seat, sucking in air through his mouth in huge gulps.
The house was completely dark, and I dragged Joe from the car and shoved him ahead of me up to the front door. I pushed him to one side and tried the knob. It was locked. I turned to Joe and held the barrel of my gun under his nose.
“The key, Joe,” I said softly.
“In my coat pocket,” he blubbered, getting the words out so fast that he almost stumbled over them.
I held the gun on him, fished the key out of his pocket, and opened the door. I grabbed Joe by the elbow, held him in front of me, and pushed him through the open door ahead of me.
From somewhere in front of us, I heard the muffled sounds of movement, something scraping on the floor. I pulled Joe to a stop and felt along the wall until I found the light switch. I flicked the lights on, and a few feet in front of us was a man sitting on the floor, his hands reaching out for a rope which held his ankles bound together. In back of him were strands of rope that must have come from his wrists.
“Hold it, Bruno,” I said, shoving Joe to the floor and pointing the gun at Bruno.
He swivelled his head around and glared at me with eyes that were hate-filled and deadly. Then he caught sight of Joe.
“You dirty son of a bitch!” he screamed. “You tricked me. Where's Ellen?"
Joe just stared at him. I dragged over a chair with my foot, sat down on it, and looked at both of them lying on the floor. I waved the gun back and forth slowly in my hand.
“I think I'll untie him, Joe,” I said. “Looks like he wants to get at you."
Joe's eyes rolled toward me and then back to Bruno. “No!” he said quickly. “No!"
“You tipped him off about Ellen, didn't you, Joe,” I prompted. “You met him outside the Gift Shop and told him you'd take him to Ellen."
Joe stared at me for a moment, then nodded his head.
“Let's have the rest of it, Joe."
His face twisted up, and then the words started to pour out. “I had to kill her. Had to make it look like an accident and make sure I was in the clear. Half of Reno knew Bruno had threatened her. I knew if I could get him down here when she died he'd be suspected if anyone was. Sam Lighter in Reno is one of my closest friends; I phoned him yesterday and had him trickle word to Bruno where Ellen was. I figured the fool would come down to pester her if he knew."
His voice trailed off, and he looked at Bruno, staring wild-eyed at him.
/> “Then you tried to kill Ellen after that, didn't you?” I said.
He pulled his eyes away from Bruno and swung them back to me. “Yes. Lighter let me know when Bruno hopped the L. A. plane, and I checked the bus schedules, made sure Ellen saw him get here. Last night, when she went to San Clemente I said I was sick. I followed her in a rented car. I'd messed with her brakes, but that didn't do it so I took the shot at her."
“So when that didn't work,” I said, “you got Lighter to send his boys to get Ellen, lured Bruno here, tied him up, faked the accident, and then tried to have me killed because I would be the only one who knew it was murder, and not an accident."
Joe nodded.
“Bruno was your patsy,” I went on. “You had an alibi, Lighter's boys wouldn't talk, and once you had let Bruno go free, the heat would be turned on him. All that was left then was to get me out of the way."
Before Joe could say another word, Bruno let out a wild yell, snaked his hand inside his coat, and pulled out a knife, snapping the blade all in one motion.
“Drop it, Bruno,” I yelled at him and started to swing the gun on him.
He never even looked at me. He moved forward, fast for a big guy, and I saw the knife flash upwards.
The knife caught Joe in the throat and stayed there. Bruno started to laugh and rock back and forth on the floor. He was still laughing when I picked up the phone and dialed the police....
I lay in my bed, alone in the wide bed, in my room at the Surf and Sand, and thought about the mess just ended. Bruno was in the clink; Joe was dead; so were some other guys; and two innocent waiters at The Haunt must still be rubbing their sore heads wondering what happened to their skeleton outfits.
I listened to the whisper of the breakers outside and thought about the Bruno gimmick that had made me concentrate on jealousy, a good substantial motive for murder, and made me wait almost too long to look at the best motive—Ellen's million bucks. That's what Joe wanted, and he had to plan her death when he saw their marriage going on the rocks.
I thought, too, about my own motives. I'd wanted to help Ellen for a lot of reasons. She'd been like a frightened kid; she'd had it tough, even if she did have all that dough. And once, at the beginning, she'd hinted at a fabulous fee for me if I could help. But that wasn't all of it. I suppose I had another motive.
The bathroom door opened and soft light outlined Ellen's full, sensual figure, filtered through the dark lace that hugged her lush curves. It was only for a brief moment, but a moment heavy with promise, and then the light snapped out. I heard her moving through the darkness toward me.
Yeah, I guess I did have another motive. Can you think of a better one?
Crime of Passion
I could hear the hellish squealing and whooping as soon as I parked at the address in Malibu.
I pulled my Cad in behind a new Lincoln convertible and walked to the front door of a two-story, hundred-thousand-dollar house as modern as now. A small fortune in rubber plants, ferns, bananas, hibiscus fronted the house and bordered the drive. I could hear the boom of surf, fifty yards away, and the air was clear and clean.
This was a warm Sunday afternoon, Sheldon Scott, Investigations—my Los Angeles office—was closed, and I was invited to a Hawaiian-type party: luau, roast pig, the works. From behind the house somewhere came another happy feminine squeal. Sounded like a good wild party. At the top of six cement steps I found a buzzer, poked it, heard somebody come running toward the door. Sounded like somebody barefooted.
“Oh, Johnny!” a gal yelled. “Here I come, Johnny!"
There was the slap-slap of bare feet and then the door swung wide and a beautiful blonde babe, holding a highball glass in her hand and beaming at me, stood there framed in the doorway, and in very little more than the doorway.
She cried, “Where you been, Johnny?” then blinked at the white-blond hair short on my scalp, the sharply-angled white eyebrows and slightly bent nose. Blinked down to the Cordovans on my big feet and up again, no longer beaming.
Very softly I said, “I'm not Johnny, I'm only Shell Scott, but—” Wham, the door slammed in my face. Feet went slap-slap back the way they'd come. What the hell? I leaned on the buzzer some more.
This time the door opened and a guy about five feet, eight inches tall came outside and glared up at me. The man was maybe thirty-five, wearing vivid swim trunks and carrying a highball glass. He was six inches shorter than I, but no more than ten pounds under my 205. He was built like a .45 automatic, and he was loaded.
“Johnny, huh?” he said thickly, then he dropped his highball glass onto the cement with a crash, and socked me on the chin with his right hand, and knocked me clear down those six steps onto the driveway. “The hell with you, Johnny,” he said. The door slammed again. Behind him.
I started to get up, then changed my mind. That short egg packed a powerful punch, and all the scenery looked fractured. I fumbled in my coat for cigarettes, got a weed lit, and propped an elbow under me while I dragged smoke into my lungs, wondering. Less than an hour ago Dolly had phoned me from here and said, “Come on, Scotty boy, you come on out here ri’ now. Bes’ li'l ol’ party you ever did see. You got my pers'nal invitation.” And so on. Naturally I had dropped everything and headed for Malibu. She had convinced me that I would be welcome. Welcome. Maybe Dolly had been out of her mind.
A girl's voice near me said, “Boy! I thought I was drunk. Whoo. You better go home."
“I just got here.” I glanced up.
She was wearing a censorably brief bathing suit and from this angle didn't look half bad. I decided that from any angle she wouldn't look half bad. She also had long red hair and blue eyes.
“What are you doing down there on the ground?” she asked me.
“I'm resting, stupid.” I felt ugly.
She squatted on her heels and looked bleary-eyed at me.
“Hi,” she said. “I'm Betty. You must be awful tired."
She was a gorgeous babe, but obviously no great shakes for brains. I got to my feet, went up the steps and rang the bell. Nothing happened. I banged on the door and the babe standing down there in the driveway said, “Why'nt you turn the doorknob?"
“Yeah, sure,” I said. Talk about stupid babes. I turned the doorknob. The door opened. I laughed sourly and went inside. Out in back somewhere the whooping and yelling continued. I headed that way, found a door and went through it. Ten or twelve guys and gals were standing around drinking and yakking, and a lot of noise was coming from somewhere closer to the ocean. A path led through trees and shrubbery toward the sounds, but I couldn't see very far because the grounds were so lushly planted and overgrown.
In this group, however, was the short, bad-tempered egg who had clobbered me. I walked up to him, tapped his shoulder with my index finger, and when he turned I tapped him on the chin with my right fist. He got all loose and his eyes rolled a bit and he fell down.
Everybody stared at me. Several of the people seemed shocked, a few merely interested. One guy remarked, to nobody in particular, “Some party, huh?” They were all horribly drunk. Another guy, a tall, gangling fellow with sandy hair and a wire-stiff mustache stepped toward me.
“Oh, I say,” he said mushily, “that was a rotten thing to do.” He was British, and sounded like Charles Laughton gargling with Schweppes Quinine Water. “That's not quite the way to treat our host, what?” he said cheerfully.
“What? He's the host?"
“Yes, host, old man. Well, toodle-oo.” He wandered off, down the shrub-lined pathway toward all the commotion.
I looked at the guy on the ground. This might ruin the party for me, but I wasn't sorry I'd popped him. A big ruby ring on his finger had left a lump on my chin larger than the ruby. Somebody behind me said, “Well, well."
It was the blonde who'd been looking for Johnny. She was still barefooted, but now wearing a red and green sarong. The blonde hair was shoulder length, her eyes were huge and brown, and she looked very good to me. Again.
She nodded at the guy on the ground. “Did you do that?"
“Yeah. But I had a reason."
“I should hope so.” It took her only a minute to bring sanity into this madness. Her name was Elaine, she said, and this was just one of the rather wild parties that L. Franklin Brevoort—now unconscious—held here every weekend. He'd been tossing the parties for a year, and this was a big one—pig and poi, dancing girls, Hawaiian music, all the trimmings.
Elaine went on, “I can't stand him. Who can? Oh, you can't blame L. Franklin maybe—everybody calls him L. Franklin—considering that old mace he's got for a wife."
“That old what?"
“Mace. A kind of battle-ax. She's pretty gruesome.” You had to be careful not to let L. Franklin get you alone, Elaine told me, because he was a regular old rip. “I'm surprised somebody hasn't shot him,” she said, “the way he's always going around reaching for everybody's women. He's sure a rip. Boy, was he mad when the bell rang and I took off."
“I know. He came outside and knocked me down."
She laughed. “Well, I'm going back to the party. Stick around. I'll save you a hula.” She actually performed a short but action-packed one right there, then grinned and walked away.
That did it. If everybody here was crazy, this was no time for me to be sane. I started after Elaine, noting that somebody was pouring water on L. Franklin. A minute later I stepped into a big clearing filled with plenty of interesting movement. Approximately fifty people, most in swim suits, trunks, bikinis, were flitting in and out among the trees, many of them dancing. Four brown-skinned guys in bright lava-lavas were playing a kind of Hawaiian mambo on stringed things and drums, and the place was a hot rainbow of color. A fifth brown-skinned man was swinging a wicked-looking sword around and jumping over it as if he was trying to hack off his feet.
On my right was a 200-pound block of ice, its center hollowed out and filled with purple punch. A redheaded tomato dipped one of the handy coconut cups into the punch, drank and let out a yip, shaking her head and running out her tongue. It was Betty, the genius I'd met in front of the house.
Shell Scott's Seven Slaughters (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 2