The Sure Thing (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Then she said softly, “Is ... is something wrong?” and opened the door wide.

  For that moment, rather a brief moment as it turned out, Cynara was framed in the doorway with her form limned by light from behind her, and it was instantly clear I'd guessed rightly that the loveliness thus limned was not in any way overconcealed, for she appeared to have on only a kind of frilly gauziness, a negligee or robe or peignoir, or something even better, and the contours and roundnesses of the form thus revealed made the description “shockingly curvaceous” inadequate, but close enough, considering the limitations of language.

  “Wow,” I said, “if it's true kissing spreads colds, I wouldn't mind catching pneumonia—"

  Clunk-click. Clunk was the door closing in my face, click the lock automatically snapping into the jamb.

  Right after that I heard Cynara say in what, if it had been anyone but me out here, I would have thought a tone of high exasperation. “I knew you'd come snorting around here before the night was over—"

  “Snorting?"

  “—but I am not going to let you in, Shell. I told you I've got work—"

  “What do you—"

  “—to do, and I know what will happen if I let you in. So I won't let you in. So, go."

  “—mean, snorting? And what do you mean, you know what'll happen? ... Cynara?"

  There were more of those soft thumping sounds, and it did not require a detective to deduce that they were moving away from me, not only because if they hadn't been moving away she would have banged into the door, but because the thumps got softer, and ceased, and I heard the clickety-clack of a typewriter's keys. Then even that stopped.

  I knocked softly. Said, “I really do have something to say to you, Cynara.” Knocked again. “Something else, I mean. It's important."

  The door opened a crack and Cynara said, “Don't come in for a few seconds. I'm—not quite dressed.” After which I heard her moving away.

  I waited a few seconds, then stepped inside, closed the door behind me, and gazed around at a small but very comfortable-looking living room—low silvery-blue divan against one wall, a couple of darker blue overstuffed chairs, long low mosaic-topped table covered with magazines, books, papers. A few paintings were on the walls, and in one corner was a six-foot-high bookcase containing several dark brown leather-bound volumes, a few newer hardbacks in shiny paper jackets, some paperbacks, and several open spaces in which were little idols and figurines, an hourglass, one small and fragile blue-pink-white cloisonné vase. A few feet from the corner where the bookcase stood was a small desk, a typewriter upon it with paper in the carriage, a straight-backed chair behind it. But no Cynara.

  Then, however, she came in through a door on my left, wearing a long white evening coat with at least a dozen large buttons all the way up its front. All the way up to her neck. And with all of the buttons buttoned.

  “I see,” I said. “You think I came here to unbutton you, and you've made it impossible."

  “I suddenly realized I was standing in the doorway in only my nightclothes, and very little even of them, which is not a wise thing to do with one such as you about."

  “No, ma'am. Of course, I didn't really come here to do what you seduce—suspect—deduce ... what you think. Gippy Willifer got shot tonight."

  “Oh, dear God,” she said.

  * * * *

  Five minutes later we were both seated on the divan, and I had explained most of what had occurred since I saw Cynara at the Starguide offices. She had calmed down, or maybe relaxed, enough to unbutton her coat. Unbutton one button, that is, the top one, recklessly baring her Adam's apple.

  She sighed, saying, “Thank heavens he's going to be all right. I was afraid something might happen to Gippy, but I never even thought of his getting shot."

  “I know you assumed something might happen to him. You told me so. You even said he could get it in the stomach, if memory serves me. To me, that's either one hell of a coincidence, or....” I let it trail off. There wasn't really any way to say it with the kind of lightsome precision I had in mind.

  “Yes, that affliction in Virgo,” she began, but left her sentence unfinished, too. She looked at me, smiled tentatively, glanced away, and was silent for several seconds.

  Then she pulled her gaze back to my face once more and said, “Well, really! Detective Scott, I think I understand that ‘coincidence-or’ now—and two or three other innuendos I ignored earlier. Let's see, I told you Gippy might be injured, even mentioned the possible area of his injury, stressed that he was going through a critical period right now and during the next few days, and therefore—since I couldn't possibly have known this through astrological analysis of his horoscope—I must have been planning to hire a professional gunman or shoot him myself!"

  She sure made it sound dumb. But before I could tell her so, Cynara continued:

  “I am myself, of course, a trained marksman, incapable of missing what I aim at, and I planned to aim at his duodenum, and therefore pretended to see a severe affliction in the sign Virgo of Gippy's chart. If I'd really wanted to kill him, I would have said there was an affliction in Leo, so I could shoot his heart out, and if I'd felt like merely wounding his feet, I would have said Pisces—"

  “You're getting all shook up, dear. Over noth—"

  “Nothing! When you—"

  “Your Adam's apple is bobbing obscenely, Cynara. Look, we got off to a bad start in your office today, let's both admit that, and make up, and then fight some more. Half the fun of fighting is making—"

  I'm not quite sure what her interruption to that was except it was loud, after which we yakked at each other for another minute or two, but finally she simmered down. Seemed a bit sulky, but calm. So I said, “What I would really like for you to do—"

  “I won't."

  “—is show me on Gippy's chart where it says he'll get shot. Maybe I wasn't paying attention."

  I could tell she was crunching her teeth even though her lips were pushed together and hid her teeth completely. But after maybe ten more seconds she took a deep breath and whooshed it through her nostrils, and said, “Nowhere is it written in capital letters, or even small print, that Gippy would get SHOT. I didn't say SHOT—"

  “Now, Cynara—"

  “But the possibility, even the probability, of injury is unmistakably there. And I will show you the planets and aspects indicating that. I'll do better than that. But then I have to get back to work, and you have to go."

  “Naturally,” I said.

  She got up, walked to her little desk near the bookcase, opened a drawer and removed a sheet of paper from it, took another paper from the desk top, and left me alone for a minute. I heard a faint hum from something in the next room, then Cynara was back.

  She handed me one of several pieces of paper she was holding. “I duplicated Gippy's chart, with his current progressions and transits, for you. Since you may not believe what I tell you, about anything, ask any other astrologer—any competent astrologer—to interpret it for you. Particularly the significance of Gippy's afflicted natal Mars in his first house, and transiting Uranus forming a quincunx to that Mars-Uranus conjunction while his Mercury in Virgo is squared by transiting Mars."

  “Naturally,” I said.

  But then I looked at the now more familiar three-ring chart with symbols scattered around it, exactly like the ones I'd seen at Starguide since even this duplicate showed the figures in three colors. And, oddly, the thing didn't look nearly so goofy to me now—probably because, thanks to Cynara's earlier explanations, I could recognize at least some of the symbols.

  We actually spent a couple of minutes discussing it, which gave me a chance to show off, after which Cynara looked at me with an arched brow raised over one of those velvet-dusk eyes and said, “You really are learning a little, aren't you?"

  “I made that up about the asteroids."

  “I know, you idiot. But that is transiting Mars—” she tapped the little beggar with a long coral-t
ipped fingernail—"and that is Gippy's natal Mercury. And ... well, I think there's hope for you. Don't let it go to your head. As for Gippy, except for these difficult transits, which won't last much longer, he should really be moving now into a lovely time—particularly lovely for him, after these past several years. His progressed Sun, after thirty years in Libra, has moved into Scorpio, applying to a trine with his fifth-house Jupiter, both of those points to be trined by transiting Jupiter in Pisces. I consider that a very fortunate configuration, but it doesn't negate those other dangerous aspects we've discussed. Really, though, the worst stresses of Gippy's entire life should be just about over now."

  “I'm delighted to hear it. What lies ahead for me? I mean, soon, like in the next few min—"

  “I wanted to show you this, too, Shell,” she continued. “I found Arnold Trappman's birth date in one of our biographical reference volumes before I left the office, and set this up tonight. It's Mr. Trappman's solar chart, and you really should find out his birth time for me so I can do a more accurate horoscope. But even this is significant."

  “Significant how?"

  “Well, just from his solar chart, I'd say he's probably a crook."

  “Come on—"

  “I'm sorry, I shouldn't be so dogmatic about something like this,” she said. “I should say, if he hasn't overcome the clear indications in his birth chart, if he has overcome difficulties without giving in to a natural tendency toward taking the easy way, the deceitful way, the crooked way, then he's a crook. And ... maybe I threw in a little woman's intuition there."

  “Good, that clears everything up—"

  “He's intelligent, sharp—look at that Mercury—but there's a criminal mentality if I ever saw one. I won't try to explain why I say that, but you'd better accept it if you have anything to do with him."

  “Well...."

  “Now, I don't know what time of day he was born, so these progressions could be off as much as five months or even more either way, up to nearly a year—another reason you've got to get me his birth time if you can. But there's a very strong possibility he's in something crooked now, and that he was into something very similar—and just as crooked—about seventeen years ago. Sixteen, eighteen, about seventeen years. Would that help you?"

  I didn't quite know how to answer that. “Well, it's sure—interesting,” I said.

  We chatted a little more, mostly about things she saw in Trappman's chart, and Gippy's, that sort of thing, and I got up and looked around the front room. I liked it, and told her so, then found myself next to her little desk in the corner.

  On the sheet of white bond paper in the typewriter was half a page of double-spaced typing, some sort of “Forecast” presumably, since the top two lines read, “splendidly benefic influences six months from now, when your progressed Sun-Mercury conjunction is trine natal Uranus—"

  But of more interest to me, and more intelligible to me, were the comments in the last three—or two and a half—lines, since as soon as my eyes fell upon them I recalled that brief flurry of clickety-clack typing Cynara had done immediately after shutting her front door in my face.

  “...even more important, the conjunction of progressed SHELLSCOTTSCOTTSCOTT IS A BASTARD BASTARDBASTARD AND DAMN HIM AND HIS DAMNED MARS-VENUS ON MY—"

  Cynara had leaped off the divan and all-of-a-sudden charged at me, reaching for the paper in her typewriter. I let her grab it and rip it out, merely saying innocently, “I wonder whose forecast this could be-be-be?"

  “You—"

  “Well, I only dropped by for a minute ... ho-ho, what's this?"

  On the desk, face up, was a somewhat different kind of horoscope—I guessed. There were only two rings or circles, pinkish-red figures entered in the outer ring and light-blue ones in the central circle. But, while at Starguide earlier today, having studied with some interest the little figures denoting Sun and Mars and Mercury and Jupiter and such in my horoscope, I noted that all those symbols, here in light blue, were to the best of my recollection precisely where, on that other wheel and in dark blue ink, my own planets had been.

  So, casually, I pointed to the pinkish-red figures and said, “What's that?"

  “Not what—who. It's a girl."

  “How can you tell?"

  “It's me.” She started to grab the paper, but this time I was quicker than she.

  "Wait a minute,” I said, offended. “I thought you were pleased I was learning astrology so fast."

  I could pick out the symbols for Mars and Venus quick as a flash by now, since in my own chart they were scrunched together on the same degree, right next to my “H” with half a dumbbell hanging down. So it was with interest that I noted the pinkish-red Moon and Venus—the latter like a little circle with a small cross descending from it—were right above my own Mars and Venus and funny “H."

  “Just to show you how far I, like my planets, have progressed,” I said to Cynara, tapping first the inner circle then the outer, “if this is me and that's you, then my Mars and Venus in cahoots—"

  “Conjunction."

  “Yeah, same thing. Well, they are, it appears, right there at, or in cahoots with, your Moon thing and your naval—natal—Venus thing. Is it not so? Or have I flunked—?"

  “Yes, it's so. In fact, Shell, your Mars-Venus-Uranus conjunction is on the same degree as my conjoined Moon-Venus in Pisces. Your Scorpio Moon opposes my Mars in Taurus. In fact, your Moon-Jupiter conjunction is in wide square to my Aquarian Sun.” She pointed. “There, and there, and there. Now, do you know any more than you did before?"

  “Sure. I know what that means."

  Her eyes widened. She turned her head slightly, looking slanty at me. “You—do?"

  “Sure. It means we're going to—going to—going to take a trip? Yeah. A vacation. Together, or in conjunction, of course. How's that?"

  “Lousy."

  “Sounds like lots of fun to me. What's so lousy—?”

  “I mean your astrology is lousy."

  “Ah, then the idea's not so bad, hey? I knew you'd see the light, Cynara. Well, since we're going to go off together, I've a splendid idea. Or two or three. How do these sound?"

  I leaned close to her and whispered in her ear.

  Whereupon she stepped back, stood a full yard away, and glared at me, actually stamped one foot, thump, on the carpet. “Shell Scott,” she said sharply, “you, you—criminal. I wouldn't spend an unforgettable weekend at the Mauna Kea, or a mad-magic night in Acapulco, or an afternoon in Burbank with you if you were the last man on the Earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars—"

  “You don't have to exaggerate—"

  “—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto—"

  “You're going to hurt my feelings."

  “—not to mention the Sun and Moon."

  “I'd just as soon you hadn't mentioned that first bunch—"

  “In other words, No."

  “Why are you so unreasonable about vacations?"

  “Shell, you—"

  “'Criminal,’ yeah. And I need a partner in crime. I'm not doing so good by myself. Hold it—you wouldn't hit a man, would you? OK, I know when my aspects are lousy. You win. Good-bye. Or, rather, good night—so kiss me good night and—"

  “Go. Go. I have work to do."

  “Sure. I understand. Your work is more important than my well-being. So, just kiss me good night, and—maybe you'll never see me again."

  “Oh, dear.” She flipped her pretty hands. “All right."

  “No kidding? Well—"

  “I'll kiss you good night, just to get rid of you. Keep your mouth shut—"

  “What kind of kiss is that—?"

  “Keep your big mouth shut and listen!"

  I listened.

  “If I kiss you once, just once—I mean, really kiss you nicely and neatly, not a little peck—will you get out of here and let me work?"

  “Sure."

  “Do you mean it, Shell?"

  “Sure."

  “Do you have
to pucker up like that?"

  “Just messing ... horsing around. All this work you do forever and ever, I figured you might enjoy a little horseplay—little humor—amusement?"

  “All right, then, now pucker up."

  I didn't really have that much time. Her mouth moved at me like a soft wild bird flying almost faster than the eye can see, and then....

  And then....

  Well, if this was what Cynara called kissing “nicely and neatly,” I wanted to be around when she felt a little tacky.

  Too soon, though even twenty-five minues as a bare minimum would have been too soon, the kissing and varied vibrations and exceedingly marvelous labial extrapolations ended. Ended suddenly.

  And just as suddenly Cynara was saying, “All right, Shell, you've been kissed—"

  “Boy—"

  “So get lost, beat it."

  “Beat it? You mean, get lost?"

  “I mean go, leave, depart."

  “You want me to split, huh? After all we've just been to each other?"

  “Damn you, Shell, get out."

  I smiled. “OK. But I want you to know, before I depart, that you've been swell, really. Really and really swell. I'm a sentimentalist fool at heart, you know, and nothing makes my fool heart rejoice like—oh, you know, dear, like—romance. Like we just did. Sweet, tender, almost teary romance. Like the romantic song, A fine ro—. Of course I did ask for my lips rare, and you did ‘em well-done. Now they're ruined, you went and cooked all the blood out—"

  She socked me. I mean, she really bonked me. Raised one white-coated arm, slender fingers clenched in a pretty little fist, raised it high over her head and then swung it down, bonk, on my skull.

  “Just for that,” I said, reeling, “I'll leave."

  I turned and legged it across the room, shoulders slumped, threw the door open, and trudged out into the darkness.

  But from the darkness I looked back, at Cynara, and she was rubbing her still-clenched hand. Rubbing it, and smiling, smiling sweetly at her pretty little fist.