Over Her Dear Body

by Richard S. Prather

  I made a quick tour of the top deck, then went below and hurried along the starboard corridor past the closed door behind which I'd met Navarro and the three other men. I went on by and checked the storeroom where I'd left Navarro. He was still there. As I looked in he groaned softly. It wouldn't be long until he was on his feet again. Wobbly, but on his feet. And I knew in whose face he'd feel like putting those feet.

  The corridor on the yacht's port side was empty, too, and I went up top and back toward the dance floor again, wondering what I'd do if Elaine were in one of the other staterooms. I couldn't kick all the doors down, and the Srinagar seemed more and more like a good place for me to get away from.

  A few feet this side of the dance floor a girl was standing at the rail, outlined in the glow from hanging lanterns. The spot was about where Elaine and I had earlier stood and talked, but this was a little gal in a red-and-white striped bikini. Bunny. She faced as I walked up.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Oh, hello,” she replied without great enthusiasm. “It's you.”

  “Yeah. Bunny, did you notice a tall dark-haired woman in a white dress around here in the last few minutes?”

  “Beautiful? Shapely? Sexy?”

  “That's the one.”

  She blew air out her nostrils. “So that's what took you away in such a hurry.”

  “Well ... yes, but—”

  “I'll admit she's much prettier than I am. But she had all her clothes on.”

  “Bunny, I haven't time for games. Where is she?”

  She didn't answer my question. Not immediately. Instead she said, her voice still brittle, “I realize you don't have time for games, Mr. Scott. I got the impression you don't even know how to play.”

  “Honey, I invented some of the games. Where is that girl?”

  “She left.”

  “Left the Srinagar?”

  “Yes. With some old goat. When you ... abandoned me, I walked up here. She was just getting into the launch with him.” She pointed toward the Balboa shore. “There's the launch now, starting back.”

  I followed her pointing finger. Several yards to the left of the amusement center on shore, just pulling away from Greene's Boat Landing, a sleek inboard cruiser was turning to head back for the yacht.

  I said, “Did you notice anything else? Were they alone when they got into the boat? Who was the guy? Did she ... look all right?”

  “Of course she looked all right. Why wouldn't she? She must have looked absolutely irresistible to you. They just got on and left. I noticed them because it seemed like an odd time to leave, when the entertainment was just starting.”

  “You know who the guy was?”

  She shook her head. “I barely noticed him. It was a man, that's all I know.”

  I didn't get it. But it settled one thing—I was leaving the Srinagar as quickly as possible. I wanted to ask Bunny about her so-called “partner,” Joe Navarro, among other things, so I said to her, “I'm getting off this tub. Want to come along?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Sure.”

  “I don't know.” She tilted her head back. “I like red-blooded men.”

  “Honey, I'm so red-blooded even my white corpuscles are pink.”

  “Well ... why did you rush off so all of a sudden?”

  “I had to be at another spot on the yacht at midnight. It was business.”

  “Business?”

  “Primarily.”

  “What kind of business are you in? You never said.”

  “I'm a private detective.”

  “How interesting!” She really seemed intrigued. “What are you working on now?”

  “You.”

  She laughed. We argued a little more, but she seemed mollified and finally said, “I came with Joe. If I left with you, he might not like it.”

  “If you refer to Joe Navarro, I recently knocked him out, and about now he's coming to. He isn't going to like anything I do—but I wouldn't want him angry with you because of me.”

  “Knocked him out? You hit him?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, good for you.” She glanced at the launch now nearing the Srinagar and said, “All right. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “I'll take it.”

  “Let's go.” She paused, smiling. “By the way, I never went swimming in the nude before tonight. This was the first time. I wouldn't want you to think I did that sort of thing all the time. I ... got a little looped.” She paused. “It turned out to be fun, though.”

  “It always is.”

  “I'll have to get my clothes.” She glanced at the launch, veering in toward the landing platform at the bottom of the ladder amidships, and added, “But I'll hurry. I'll just grab them and wear my bikini ashore. All right?”

  “I wouldn't have it any other way. But hurry—if I don't get away from here quick, I may leave with lead weights on me. Or in me.”

  She trotted off, but was back in no more than a minute, wearing a thigh-length white beach robe over her swimsuit and carrying a small cloth bag in her hand. We went to the ladder, down it, and reached the wooden platform barely above the water as the launch bumped into the cushioned edge.

  Under almost any other circumstances, that short trip from a yacht to an amusement center would have been one of the high points of the week. But even though I was much preoccupied with thoughts of lovely Elaine Emerson, the now almost surely conscious Navarro, and other people and occurrences of the immediate past, it sure wasn't a low point.

  Most of the time Bunny merely lay back on the leather cushion next to me, bare legs stretched out before her, the shortie robe open and resting at each side of her bare middle, fingers patting gently as she hummed one of the tunes the combo had been playing earlier, hands resting easily on her provocatively curving body. Just that, while she looked at me and added occasional words to the conversation.

  But that patting was like jungle drums going whomp-boom-smack in my ears. And from time to time she seemed to be caught up in her own rhythm and would wiggle her shoulders a time or two, as if doing an imaginary dance.

  I said, “So you're a dancer?”

  “Uh-huh. I work at the Red Rooster.”

  “Red Rooster.” She was patting away, drumming with her fingers on that nude middle. “What kind of dance?”

  “Cockfight. Joe and I do a kind of cockfight.”

  “You do, huh? That's—maybe you'd better say that again. Explain it a little more.”

  “We each have bird costumes—you know, feathers and everything. Joe wears a red rooster-like comb—we don't really look like chickens, but the audience gets the idea.”

  Slap, slap, she went; pat-pat-pat.

  “You'll have to come to the club tomorrow night.” She went on, “Shows at nine and midnight—we had tonight off. We dance around as if we're going to tear each other apart—both of us wear long spurs on our feet. They're painted silver to look like metal, but they're just rubber. We waggle all around and leap at each other, and then finally Joe wins. It's very colorful.”

  “That's an act I'll catch. About Joe. I'll tell you in advance, I like him best when I'm hitting him. So with that warning, how'd you get mixed up with Navarro?”

  She patted firmly and then went into one of those grand wiggles. “I was doing another act with a fellow named Mike, but he broke his leg.”

  “During the act?”

  “No, he fell off his house. He was fixing the roof or something. Anyway, I was planning to do a single after that, but Joe—he was emcee of the show then—talked me into the Rooster bit. He used to be a flamenco dancer, and he's still pretty good. The act looked all right in rehearsal so we tried it out, and it went over big. That was two months ago, and we're still doing it.”

  “So Joe's just a partner, huh? Not the husband or boy friend.”

  “Ho-ho,” she chuckled. “I don't have any husbands. And he's not the boy friend.” She had been looking at me at the time, and now she smile
d slightly and said, “At the moment, you're the boy friend.”

  “I don't feel much like a boy. I'll say this for, you, Bunny. You've got more rhythm than a mad bongo player.”

  “I can't help it. I'm full of music. I just keep time to me.” She patted away beautifully and went on, “But Joe wants to think he's the boy friend. He's one of those guys that likes to believe he's irresistible. Believe me, he isn't. We dated a couple of times, but he didn't want anybody even looking at me. So I told him to open his veins, and he flipped. Said he didn't want me jazzing around with anybody but him. Played the big heavy—you know.”

  “Yeah. Only I don't think he's playing. I think he is the big heavy.”

  “He's mean, all right. Anyway, he got so ugly I told him we'd be partners in the act, but that was all, and if he pushed it I'd leave the club and do a single. So he simmered down a little. The only reason I came with him tonight is because he promised he'd play the gentleman—and I don't get invited on yachts more than twice a week.”

  “Nor do I. He invited you, then? I mean, the invitation came through Navarro, not from Goss?”

  “That's right. Who's Goss?”

  “Guy who owns the yacht. So I hear—I don't know the man.” I described the three other men I'd seen in that room on the lower deck, but she didn't know any of them, she said.

  Then with a last pat, and a culminating wiggle, the conversation stopped because we were at Greene's Landing. I helped Bunny up the steps, and we walked toward the amusement zone. My car was parked on Palm Street at the zone's far side.

  As we walked, Bunny slipped her arm in mine and said, “I've been gabbing all the time. You gab. So you're a detective, hmm?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you really were looking for a villain or something when you abandoned me. It wasn't just some old tryst or assignation.”

  “Right. Only I still don't really know what I was looking for. But as for abandoning you, you seemed quite abandoned even before I left.”

  She laughed. “I must have. And I am, Shell. Only not quite that abandoned. I told you I'd never swum in the nude before.” She paused. “Have you?”

  “Oh, on numerous occasions,” I said airily.

  “Alone?”

  I changed the subject. “You never did explain how you happened to be so delectably in the drink.”

  She hugged my arm. “When Joe and I got aboard, there wasn't anybody else around. Big party, I thought. The cad's going to bring out some yard-square etchings of Sin or something. So I told him off. He said there really was going to be a very fancy party, but it didn't start for an hour or so.”

  “Oh? Then why were you aboard so early?”

  “I don't know. He left me. The louse just left me.”

  “He say why?”

  “Only that he had something to take care of.”

  We were walking through the Fun Zone, bay gleaming on our right beyond the small sand beach, Ferris wheel slowly turning on our left. The merry-go-round was operating, calliope honking tortuously in the clear air. A kid hung onto the neck of a black stallion, wailing more horrendously than the calliope, and a few feet farther on a teenage couple was throwing baseballs at metal milk bottles.

  Near us a group of guys in their early twenties looked at us, at Bunny, her shapely legs bare beneath the short jacket, and it was a sure thing that not one of them saw me. Two of them let out long, low whistles as we passed.

  Bunny, unperturbed, continued, “Joe acted almost as if he didn't give a hoot what I did, up and left me. I told him I took it back about he should open his veins, to make it the arteries so he'd go quicker. He just went off somewhere.”

  “That, Bunny, is what Navarro probably conceives of as playing the gentleman.”

  “Well, it sure made me mad. The bar was set up, so I made some drinks for me, and sat at the bar all alone—feeling sorry for myself. So I had some more to drink, and suddenly it seemed like a good idea to go swimming. On impulse. Can you imagine?”

  “Sure. I'm loaded with impulses.”

  “It was good and dark by then. I'd put on my bikini, but I thought what the dickens, I'd go in nude. I guess, the wild feeling of being on that beautiful yacht had something to do with it. And I figured I'd show Joe, the louse.” She chuckled. “Instead, I showed you, didn't I? Well, I swam around for a while, having a ball, but all of a sudden the launch arrived with the first guests, and I started wondering about the fix I was in. I don't remember now if there was a ladder on the back end of the boat or not when I went in, but there wasn't any when I looked.” She shook her head. “So I swam and swam and—you know the rest.”

  We walked to Palm Street and turned away from the water. Bunny said softly, “Do you think I'm awful, Shell?”

  I put my arm around her waist. “I think you're wonderful.” We were at my car, so I stopped and opened the door for her. The buggy is a new Cad, sky blue with white-leather upholstery, and Bunny commented that it was quite a boat itself. I told her to climb aboard and we drove to Balboa Boulevard, turned right toward Newport.

  Bunny had told me she lived in Hollywood, and since my apartment is on North Rossmore, only minutes from Hollywood and Vine, we were practically neighbors. She also told me she was hungry, starved, famished, so we stopped at Berkshire's in Newport for steaks and the view of harbor and boats through big glass windows, before driving to the Santa Ana Freeway. On the way in we talked easily, happily together, the wind fresh in our faces, pulling light words from our mouths. It was a pleasant drive into town.

  Bunny Wade, there is no doubt, was a completely delightful little package of vital femininity. But even so, at several moments during the hour's drive into the city, I found myself thinking about Elaine Emerson. Not only because she'd hired me, spoken to me, and disappeared without another word—though that puzzled and worried me enough—but also because there was something about Elaine that stayed in me like warm wine. I'd see her as she'd looked to me from across the dance floor, tall and dark and graceful, and in the moment when she'd spoken to me in the Srinagar's alleyway—and I could see those big eyes, those deep Indian eyes, seeming to glow with a faint warm fire.

  Bunny was smaller, more compact, but delightfully formed and full of fun and merriment. Elaine was more—more ample, more voluptuous in her appearance, with deeper breasts and even more flowing curves. Bunny was pep and sunshine; Elaine had more of the night about her, its velvety softness, more of darkness and mystery.

  We both knew where Bunny lived, of course; but she didn't object when I drove past Clinton, her street, and on down Vine to Rossmore and the Spartan Apartment Hotel. The Spartan is where I live.

  I parked at the curb before the green grounds of the Wilshire Country Club, which the Spartan faces, and turned to Bunny. “Want a nightcap?”

  “Sure. Make me a big one that'll last till morning.” She paused. “You're nice, Shell. I feel ... like the sun's coming up.”

  At that moment, so did I. Her sweet lips were parted, close to my face, and I leaned toward her. Those smooth white arms went around my neck again and her lips made love to mine. Her fingertips moved gently on my cheek, then one hand slipped down to my chest. She must have felt the pounding of my heart. After a while she pulled her mouth free, brushed my cheek with hers, and said almost inaudibly, “How about that drink now? That big drink.”

  I put my fingers on the door handle and glanced toward the Spartan. “You shall have it in a vase ....” I stopped.

  From where we were parked, across the street and a few feet short of the building's edge, I could see the bedroom window of my apartment, up on the second floor. As I'd glanced that way something had flashed faintly, glimmering behind the window.

  “Either you ignited my eyebrows,” I told Bunny, “or something even stranger is happening.”

  As I finished the sentence, the flash became visible again. It wasn't obvious, more of a sudden faint glow. I didn't know what it had been, but somebody lighting a match, or more probably snappin
g a lighter on briefly, might have caused that kind of quick, dim flare of light. But any kind of light meant people. And people in my darkened apartment, at this dim hour of morning, could mean only one thing.

  Trouble.

  Chapter Five

  “What's the matter?” Bunny asked.

  “I don't know. I ... saw something.” I thought about it for a moment, then turned to Bunny. “Look, you'll get that big drink. But right now, wait here. Stay in the car.”

  “Shell, what's wrong?” Her voice was a little tight.

  “I'm not sure. Look, don't get in a tizzy. I just want to check something.”

  I eased past Bunny and got out on her side, pushing the door shut instead of slamming it. Then I walked in darkness up Rossmore until I was opposite the Spartan's entrance. Before crossing the street I looked around, but no other car was close, and I didn't see anybody else in the area.

  I crossed the street and went into the Spartan's lobby. It was empty except for the night man on the desk, sitting before the switchboard. I stopped in front of him and said, “Anybody ask for me tonight?”

  He glanced up. “Hi, Shell.” Then he pursed his lips and looked me up and down, eying the white tux and gaudy cummerbund. “You've been dancing in the streets.”

  I grinned. “No, I've just been yachting again. Same old rut. Seriously, has anybody asked for me?” He shook his head. “You didn't let anybody into my apartment?”

  “Of course not.” He frowned. “Why? Something wrong?”

  “I'll let you know. You can douse the hall lights on my floor from here, can't you?”

  “Sure.” He pointed to a switch box.

  “Okay. Give me a minute, then douse them. Wait another half minute or so, then ring my room. Long rings, lean on the switch. All right?”