Murder in the Raw
Page 18
“I’ll just sit,” I said. “I didn’t bring any swim trunks.” As it happened, I didn’t just sit. Two bottles of Einlicher and three glasses of iced coffee prevented that. A few minutes after she went into the house, I followed, expecting to ask the housekeeper where the bathroom was.
I came in through the doorway to the den and heard Miss Destry on the phone in the next room. I heard her say, “Now, everything is going to be all right. And please don’t come around for a few days. People are sure to talk.”
I waited quietly where I was until I heard her talking to the housekeeper in the kitchen. Then I went directly there. By the time I got to the kitchen, Miss Destry was no longer there, but the housekeeper knew where all the bathrooms were and she steered me to one of the smaller ones.
When I came out again, I picked up a couple of copies of Life from the den. I was back in my original chair, reading, when Miss Destry came out in a simple black lastex swimming suit.
High breasts, slim legs, beautiful shoulders — all this and two million dollars Dennis Greene had owned and left behind.
She went down the steps into the shallow end of the pool and began to immerse herself slowly. I went back to the dull pages of Life.
About ten minutes later she’d had enough of swimming and had stretched out on a pad on the far side of the pool from me. I heard footsteps from behind, coming along the patio, and they sounded like a man’s footsteps. Alert and reliable, I turned quickly to check on our visitor.
He was a lot of man, tall, bronzed, with thick hair the color of wheat and with the shoulders of a weight-lifter. Miss Destry looked up and I thought annoyance showed briefly on her face. I wondered if this was the person she had warned to stay away.
“Hello, everybody,” he said jovially, and grinned at the girl. “I had no idea you had company.”
“Didn’t you see his car?” she asked coolly.
“I thought it was the housekeeper’s,” he said cheerily. “You told me you hired one.” He grinned at me. “No offense, old man.”
“I’m not old,” I said. He came over and held out a hand. “Of course not. A figure of speech. I guess Carol isn’t going to introduce us. My name’s David Hawley.”
I stood up and shook his strong hand. I thought he gave it a little more pressure than was absolutely necessary. I said, “Alex Bell is my name, Alex G. Bell.”
He chuckled. “No kidding. No relation to Don Ameche, I suppose?”
“None,” I said. “Are you a friend of Ameche’s?” He stared at me a second and then the joviality returned. “A kidder from left field, huh?” He looked at Carol. “A relative, maybe?”
She shook her head, saying nothing. I sat down again and pretended to be interested in Life.
There was a silence of perhaps five seconds, but silences were plainly abhorrent to smiling Dave Hawley. He called to Carol, “I thought we could go over to the Club. Some of the gang are there. We could have dinner there.”
She yawned and shook her head. Another five-second silence and then David Hawley’s voice was less genial. “We had a date for dinner, I hope you remember.”
She nodded. “I’ll be waiting. Pick me up about seven. Is it all right if I rest, just for one afternoon?”
“Sure,” he said, after a second. “Of course. I’m sorry, Carol. I didn’t mean to come — I mean — well, sure, seven o’clock.” He glanced at me. “Glad to have met you, Mr. Bell.”
I nodded and smiled, and he went back from whence he came.
A little later, I heard the snort of a semi-muffled engine and the squeal of accelerating tires. Then silence again descended.
From the other side of the pool, Miss Destry asked, “Do you have any cigarettes? I forgot to bring any out.”
“Yes’m,” I said, and started to get up.
“Don’t bring them,” she said. “I’m coming over to the shade, anyway.”
She brought the pad along and flopped down on it in the shade of the lucite shelter. I lighted a cigarette and handed it down to her.
She said, “That Hawley man is indefatigable. Three sets of tennis, a two mile swim, eighteen holes of golf and dancing all night are his idea of a well-spent day.”
“The dancing would be enough for me,” I said. “I’ve done that for a solid five hour stretch. But I was never an athlete, thank God.”
“Honestly? You look like an athlete.”
“No I don’t. I look like a big, over-sexed and underpaid wop and that’s what I am.”
‘‘What’s wrong with athletes?” she asked.
“They never grow up. They stay exactly the age they were when they scored their last touchdown, hit their last homer or ran their fastest mile. They live and die adolescents.”
She chuckled. “You have just described David Hawley. He’s a hopeless adolescent and over thirty. But I like him, for some reason.”
“What did Mr. Greene think of him?” I asked. Another of our many silences. Then she asked quietly, “Exactly what did that mean?”
“If I were over sixty,” I said, “and you were — well, working for me, I would take a very dim view of gents like Hawley hanging around.”
“Are you implying, Mr. Puma, that my relationship with Mr. Greene went beyond an employee-employer relationship?”
“I’m inferring it,” I explained. “You implied it by suing for half a million dollars. Let us be realistic; ordinary employees don’t sue.”
“I wasn’t ordinary. I was a very important spiritual solace to Dennis Greene.”
“Okay,” I said agreeably. “Pardon my dirty mind.” She sat up and put her cigarette out. She looked at me and smiled. “We’re going to get along, aren’t we? I really need you.”
“We’re going to get along,” I assured her, “but why you need me is the question that gives me goose pimples.”
She continued to smile. “You know, I think there’s a pair of trunks in the house that would fit you. Are you sure you don’t want to enjoy the pool?”
“You’ve sold me,” I said. The way I figured it, maybe if she got a look at my fine non-athletic body, this Hawley wouldn’t seem like such a fireball any more. Not that I was planning anything in the adultery line, you understand, but there was a possibility I’d be needed for a considerable time. And San Valdesto had a reputation as being a very dull town.
Let her size me up; she was paying for it. We splashed around and traded some banter. The sun got lower in the sky and it got a little chilly, up there with all those woods around.
And she said she had to go in and get ready for her dinner engagement. She said, smiling, “I must be clean and sweet for David Hawley, mustn’t I?”
I held her gaze and nodded. I asked, “Do I go along or won’t you need a bodyguard with him?”
“I won’t need you,” she said. “The housekeeper will fix your dinner and show you your room. When I’m alone is when I’ll need you.”
That last remark could be read more ways than one, but I read it the clean way. I showered and went into the breakfast room for dinner while she made herself ready for Hawley.
The housekeeper was a sourpuss about fifty and she had no dialogue as she served me, though I gave her a few openings. A little later, I heard that throaty engine outside again, and a few minutes after that, I heard the front door close. She hadn’t even stopped in to say “good night.”
I sat out in front after dinner, watching the big red sun set over the oaks and the sycamores, the dark green pines and the tall eucalypti. Around this house, and below it, were all the expensive homes of the truly rich, the rich who didn’t have to go to the office every day to stay rich.
You’d think, in an area that fancy, the odor coming to me across the rich, dark green pines would be Chanel #5.
But it was sewerage I smelled; somebody’s septic tank was acting up.
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Copyright © 1955 by William Campbell Gault under the title Ring Around Rosa,
Registration Renewed 1983
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
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