Carried away like a couple of puppies in Chuck’s husky grasp, Lorraine and Lover joined Mimi and the stranger. Mimi melted against Lover, twisting his lapels girlishly. The stranger, who looked very Spanish, was bowing over Lorraine’s fingers as if she were a princess of the blood.
I turned to watch Iris. My wife was trying not to notice a little group of fans around her and was still pouring fifty-cent pieces into an apparently listless machine. I moved towards her. Suddenly the entire machine seemed to explode with a mad clanging, and fifty-cent pieces poured from its maw, like magic rain.
Forgetting her dignity as a movie star, Iris screamed in ecstasy and plunged to her knees, wallowing in Federal silver.
“The jackpot,” she moaned like one possessed. “I’ve hit the jackpot”
The cluster of fans took it up. “Iris Duluth’s hit the jackpot!” Their carryings-on caused a minor sensation. Everyone at the roulette table turned. Even Lorraine, Chuck, Lover, Mimi and their new friend came running over. There was complete confusion while people crept around under other peoples’ legs, retrieving half dollars. Iris, her life’s ambition satisfied, was kissing me tempestuously. Then, remembering her golden rule, she said, “The piggy bank. Where’s the piggy bank?”
She had abandoned it on the floor. Chuck brought it for her. Beaming from ear to ear, she gathered her ill-gotten hoard and, piece by piece, plopped it into the horrible pig while people cooed and told her how wonderful she was and tried to get autographs.
While the confusion was subsiding, Lorraine, agog with a new enthusiasm, dragged the South American stranger forward.
“Everybody, this is Alvarez. He’s doing a special rhumba act at the Del Monte and he saw me rhumbaing with Chuck last week and he says I danced a wonderful rhumba and he wants to rhumba with me. Isn’t that divine? Gambling’s dull, anyway. I’ll tell you what. Let’s all go over right away to the Del Monte and dance. Where’s Dorothy?” She turned round to find Dorothy at her elbow. “Finished, dear?”
“Finished is right,” drawled Dorothy, smoothing her white gloves and tucking her silver pocketbook under her arm. “I lost your all, I’m afraid. No elevens.”
“That’s wonderful.” Lorraine, fitful as the wind, was already bored sick with roulette and hot on the trail of new “fun.” She was naïve enough to be flattered that a professional dancer wanted to rhumba with her. That was Lorraine. It never occurred to her that there wasn’t a gigolo in the world who wouldn’t murder his mother for the chance of a crack at Lorraine Pleygel.
One arm through the dancer’s, one through Chuck’s, she started towards the door. Her party, sunk now in a mood of sullen resignation, trooped after her. In a few minutes “divine” roulette was a thing of the past, and we were all spaced stolidly around the best table on the best side of the dance floor in the Del Monte, while waiters, headwaiters, and even the manager hovered around to make sure that Miss Pleygel and Iris Duluth were getting the best of service.
The Del Monte was one of the very few places in Reno which made a stab at elegance and class distinction. With its subtle lights, its dark mirrors, its fancy rhumba orchestra, it aped New York with a shrewd eye on the pocketbooks of nostalgic Eastern divorcees. Even so, the brash exuberance of Reno had not been entirely excluded. Here and there among the evening gowns and the tuxedos, a cowboy’s pink satin shirt or a rancher’s denims showed up to take some of the chic out of the chi-chi.
Lorraine, who was doubtless as fed-up with her guests as they were with each other, was already on the dance floor, weaving her small hips around the South American’s in blissful contentment. Ill luck had jammed me in a corner of the table, with Dorothy as a buttress between me and Iris, who was still clutching her piggy bank and talking animatedly to Lover. Before I could think out a reasonably polite way of leaning across Dorothy’s bosom to ask my wife to dance, the Count Laguno sidled up with much bowing from the waist and whisked Iris onto the floor.
That definitely stuck me with Dorothy.
Drinks came, and with them a large chicken sandwich for Mrs. Flanders. Her eyes gloating at the sight of it, Dorothy peeled off her long white gloves and opened her large silver pocketbook to put them away. As the silver clasps broke, my eyes almost unconsciously glanced at the bag’s interior. Instantiy Dorothy jammed the gloves in, jerked her hand out as if it had been bitten, and, snapping the clasps shut, bundled the bag down onto the seat at the far side of her.
She had been quick, but not quick enough to keep me from seeing the henna chips, stuffed in edgewise between her compact and her handkerchief.
Dorothy did not improve with acquaintance. Expert in all the major vices, she was not above practising the minor ones, too. She had lied to Lorraine about having lost everything at the roulette table. She had salted away a fistful of her hostess’ five-dollar chips to be redeemed on a later, rainier day.
Since Dorothy knew I had seen and I knew she knew I had seen, the social situation between us was very strained. After a few moments of sick silence in which she took flustered snaps at the sandwich, I asked her to dance. It seemed the only thing to do.
With a smile that was meant to shatter the very soul of me, she rose in sinuous coils. Squeezing her rather too voluptuous hips through the narrow space between the table and the wall, she followed me out onto the dance floor. The orchestra was pouring forth its torrid South American noises. Dorothy Flanders extended her bare arms and engulfed me.
We moved in among the other couples without speaking, giving our all to the rhumba. Lorraine and her South American danced closer and then away again, Lorraine waving gaily. Mimi and Chuck, that unlikely partnership, also writhed near to us. I could just see Iris and Laguno at the other side of the floor. The softness and the heavy warmth of Dorothy Flanders in my arms would have sent most men into a tizzy of orchid and jungle fancies. But to me, as it happened, the only South American thing that reared its ugly head was the poison dart which either was or was not missing from the trophy room.
I glanced back at the table. I could see Janet Laguno flopped in her yellow dress, looking like a soufflé that had fallen. Lover was peering anxiously over Iris’ piggy bank, searching the floor for Mimi. The Wyckoffs and Bill Flanders, his face strangely alight, were watching the dancers.
Lorraine, undulating by, waved again, her pretty pug face sparkling with enjoyment. As I reviewed that memorable and ugly evening, it seemed incredible that even the giddy Lorraine could have brought this dynamite collection of people together without realizing the probability of explosion. Had she been as naïve as she seemed? Had her plan been just one of her typical muddle-headed gestures of kindliness? Or was it possible that there had been in it some well-concealed and sinister malice? I had never in my life known Lorraine to be malicious before.
Back and forth, I pushed the exotic heaviness of Dorothy. The music and the rhythmic swaying of her body were having an anaesthetic affect. The poison dart merged in my mind with an image of Iris as she said, “Darling, you don’t think Bill Flanders will try to kill her, do you?” Then there was Laguno’s voice, saying, “Curare has a certain nobility. It should be used with artistry to kill only the most legitimate murderees.”
Legitimate murderees! If ever there was a legitimate murderee, I reflected, I had one right there in my arms.
I was as embarrassed by this thought as if I had spoken it out loud. Quickly I said, “Nice music, Dorothy.”
The rhumba pounded on. Dorothy’s hand on my shoulder had tightened its grip. She did not answer.
“Dorothy—” I began.
Then I stopped because the grip of her fingers on my shoulder had become so tight that it was painful.
Although she was in my arms, I had been too abstracted to look at her. I turned to half profile so that my face was almost touching hers. Her eyes were staring straight ahead, like a doll’s, with no sense in them. Beneath the gorgeous blonde hair, her skin looked strangely blue in the dim light.
The hairs at the back of my neck
stirred. My feet still went through the movements of the rhumba, but nothing seemed real any more.
“Dorothy—”
If I had leaned forward an inch or so, my lips would have been on hers.
And it was her lips that were so terrible now. Slowly, they were drawing backward, exposing her teeth like an ebb tide exposing white sand. It wasn’t a smile. It was as if every drop of moisture was being drained away from her skin.
“Dorothy—” I said it so loudly that people turned to look.
Someone in the band started to sing in high, throbbing Spanish. The painted gourds hissed out their rhythm like trained serpents. Dorothy had given up following me. We stumbled. She was shaking all over. Suddenly her whole body writhed against me in one savage convulsion. Her face knocked against my shirt front and then sprang back, trickles of foam spattering from between clenched teeth.
“Dorothy—”
Her back arched. Then she collapsed, sagging, half sprawling towards the floor in my weakening grasp.
The man was still singing. The couples were still dancing. I stared down at the limp, unhuman thing that had been my partner.
And cold sweat broke out on my forehead.
Because there was no doubt then—no doubt at all.
There I was in the middle of the dance floor with Dorothy Flanders dead in my arms.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick, and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912–1987), Richard Wilson Webb (1901–1966), Martha Mott Kelley (1906–2005), and Mary Louise White Aswell (1902–1984) wrote detective fiction. Most of the stories were written together by Webb and Wheeler, or by Wheeler alone. Their best-known creation is amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1972 by Hugh C. Wheeler
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5152-1
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Puzzle for Puppets Page 24
