Dance with the Dead (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  I read that line twice. Then I read on, Handsome heartthrob Orlando merely said, Give us a break. Shed a tear, girls — and boys. That’s Hollywood!

  To nobody in particular I said, That’s Hollywood!

  Married, huh? No wonder he’d been able to be so helpful. I remembered, too, those glances between them, as if they’d had secrets I didn’t share. But it figured. Both of them had been in the same show, and I had a rough idea of what Ravens act must have looked like. I’d seen part of Charlies and, though delightful, she wasn’t really in the same class with Raven McKenna. Besides which, Orlando would have been on the stage with Raven. No wonder Love blossomed between them. That’s Hollywood!

  I added this new info to my four pages of notes, left the newspaper on my desk, and locked the office.

  I drove to Medina.

  When Desmond answered the door he looked even more sleepy and tired than he had the last time I’d been here.

  He said dully, Oh, Scott. As if he wanted to hit me on the head with a beer bottle. You might as well come in. Everybody else has. He was wearing a Chinese silk robe, and an air of impending collapse.

  In the living room he said, I suppose its about that damned column this morning.

  Yeah. Just thought I’d check at the source. Ill be out of here in a minute, Desmond.

  Good.

  Raven came in from what I guessed was the bedroom. She was wearing a robe, too, shimmering white cloth hanging like a Grecian tunic and held together by a blue cord at her waist. Thin — hah.

  Hello, Mr. Scott. She smiled wearily. Ill bet I can guess why you’re here. Well, its all in Hollywood Highlights.

  Its true, then.

  Of course. I told that prying old bat — she smiled stiffly — that dear reporter, I was glad shed snooped out the story. And I am. Now we can stop sneaking around, pretending to be just good friends. She looked at Orlando, her eyes soft.

  Ill get out of your way, I said. But as long as Im here, you might be able to give me a little help in another direction, Miss McKenna. I mean, Mrs. Desmond.

  Sure. She looked at Orlando again. Mrs. Desmond. Its about time I heard that.

  I said, Do you know any of the other girls who were featured in the magazine? And went on to the Algiers?

  A couple. Why?

  How about Pagan Page?

  She shook her head, black hair brushing the white of her robe. No, I never met her.

  I looked at Desmond, and he also shook his head.

  How about the Hawaiian girl? Loana.

  I met her the night I left. The last night in January. There was a big party at the Algiers, and she was there. She started the next day, you know.

  Uh-huh. Can you tell me anything else about her? Did she stay in California long?

  I don’t know any more, Mr. Scott. She was at the party. We said hello, that’s all. Raven paused. Shes very beautiful, and seemed awfully nice. But that’s really all I know.

  Desmond had nothing to add. He hadn’t even caught her act. We . . . had other things on our minds, he said. Did you want to see the girl?

  I nodded.

  Raven said, Youll have to go to Hawaii.

  Yeah, I know.

  Desmond said, I gave you her address there. But shes working now at the Pele. Just started.

  Pele? That’s Ed Grey’s club, isnt it?

  Yes.

  How come shes at Grey’s place?

  Why not? Several of the other girls have done shows at the Pele. They’ve all put in a month at the Algiers, you know — most of them jump at the chance for an expense-paid trip to Hawaii. And Loana lives there; her homes in Honolulu.

  Makes sense. It did.

  I thanked them and stood up to go, but Desmond said, The reason I asked, Scott, youll be able to meet Loana if you want — and all the rest — at the party next week.

  Im afraid I cant wait that long. But it is still on?

  Yes. Saturday night at Sy Whittakers place here. I can get you in. Should be worth seeing. He paused then, sort of glowering, looked at Raven. Damn it, I don’t like the idea of your being there. You know what I mean!

  You didn’t mind before, she said.

  That was before!

  Well, I cant back out now. There was a little friction building up, but then Raven laughed merrily, realizing what shed just said. The expression had been apt.

  Well, Desmond said shortly, weve got to get back to bed. His mouth pulled down at the corners. I mean, weve been kept up half the night with this thing.

  Thanks again. I may take you up on that Saturday invitation. If . . . Im around.

  His mouth pulled down again. He glowered at Raven. Then he glowered at me. I left.

  The next step, I thought, was Hawaii. It had all started there in the Islands; records would be available for inspection there. Maybe I could locate that judge, or a wedding guest. The Pele, Ed Grey’s nightclub, was near Honolulu.

  Besides, Loana was there.

  And I was looking forward to meeting Loana.

  Nine

  Before turning in that night I stepped down the hall and knocked on Dr. Paul Ansons door.

  Paul is the doctor I’d mentioned in my note which Farley had grabbed. Not a psychiatrist — though well up on things psychiatric — hes an M.D., a movie-colony doctor. Which is to say his patients number many Hollywood personalities. Which is also why hes well up on things psychiatric. Hes also a good friend of mine, very lively outside the office.

  I heard his footsteps, then the door opened.

  Shell, he said. Run out of bourbon again? He was tall and rangy, with a faint resemblance to John Wayne, which resemblance he did all he could to make less faint.

  Nope, I said. Favor. I had the projector and two reels of film in one hand, screen in the other. Im flying to Hawaii in the morning. Would you hang onto these things for me?

  He looked at them. Ah, feelthy movies. Of course.

  They are not feelthy movies. Theyre clues. Somebody just might blow up my rooms while Im gone, and these with it.

  Glad your rooms are down the hall, pal. He took the stuff from me.

  And would you look in on the neons a time or two?

  Havent those little devils cooperated yet?

  I shook my head sadly. No. I’ve . . . done everything I can.

  He laughed. No mother could have done more. Ill watch them. And Ill feed them all for you. Of course, youll have to pay. Bring me back a hula skirt.

  Done.

  Any nice skirt will do, just so she can hula.

  Doctor, you ask the damnedest —

  No, seriously, a real hula skirt. One of those grass things. Little gal I know is going over on the Matsonia next month. Wants to learn to hula first. Crazy.

  Ill bring a couple — you can learn with her.

  I left him beaming. Obviously that thought had not occurred to him.

  The Pan-American jet took off from L.A. International at eight the next morning, Tuesday the eighteenth. Barely more than five hours later we were over Oahu, coming in to a featherlight landing at Honolulu International Airport. With California still on Daylight-Savings-Time foolishness, there was a three-hour time difference, and it was ten-fifteen a. m. in Honolulu.

  In the Cloud Room inside the small terminal I had a cup of rich coffee and ordered ham and eggs. When the waitress brought the breakfast to my table, there was a small, delicately colored vanda orchid on my plate. It seemed to start the day right, to say in a friendly way, Welcome to the Islands.

  I had brought along with me a small photo of Webley Alden, and magazine reproductions of photos of all twelve Wow girls. Some of those twelve shots, which I’d cut from various magazines, werent very good, but they were the best I’d been able to get my hands on, and much better than nothing at all. Even the ones — such as Loana’s �
� in which the faces were veiled by shadows or partly turned from the camera, would be enough for identification, I thought. That is, if I found anyone who had actually seen the girl with Webb, or at the wedding.

  I talked to my waitress and others, numerous airline employees, men at the baggage counter and ticket window, showed my pictures. But nobody remembered Webb or any of the girls. I grabbed a cab and headed for a look at the fiftieth state, at the streets of Honolulu, the sands and sea of Waikiki. At people and places, a judge, maybe. And Loana Kaleoha.

  The cab driver took me from the airport up Kamehameha Highway and into Dillingham Boulevard, and I began feeling buoyed up and energetic, enjoying the ride. The first really strong impression I got was of the remarkably clean air. Clean, clear, sweet. Lining streets we drove along were lovely bright flowers, trees in blossom, thin-trunked coconut palms with leafy fronds swaying like hula skirts in the wind. The trees and flowers were colorful as guppies, some even as bright and vivid as neons.

  And I couldn’t help wishing it wasn’t a case that had brought me here, wasn’t murder and ugliness. That I was here for fun, to lie on warm sands, ride and walk the streets, swim, drink in the bars and clubs. But I got out of the cab on the corner of Queen Street and Punchbowl Street at the civic center in Honolulu, and walked into the Kapuaiwa Building — the Board of Health Building.

  The Bureau of Health Statistics was on the first floor. No flowers for me there. A bright young guy with a happy smile gave me all the cooperation I could have hoped for. But no help. There simply wasn’t any record of Webley Aldens marriage.

  I asked him, What if it was on one of the other islands? Kauai or Hawaii, say. Would the records be on those islands?

  He shook his head. By now they should be on file here.

  I know he was married here somewhere. I remember he said it was a civil ceremony. Maybe a justice of the peace —

  He was shaking his head again, smiling. We have no justices of the peace here. If it was a civil ceremony it could have been performed by a circuit court judge or district court magistrate commissioned to perform marriages.

  I left, puzzled. And a little worried. I knew Webb had been married on August thirteenth. And somewhere here in the Islands. That should have been all I needed to know. I found a phone. In twenty minutes, by calling one hotel after another, I learned where Webb had stayed while here. A Webley Alden had been registered at the Hawaiian Village Hotel for a week, from August sixth through the night of August twelfth. That checked out all right. But it also made it appear that he’d spent all his time in or near Honolulu. I headed for the Hawaiian Village.

  The cab drove slowly past the shiny aluminum dome at the entrance to the big pink hotel, along a cool tree-shaded drive into a lavish profusion of tropical planting, trees, brilliant flowers. The driver curved around, let me out at the entrance. Coconut palms seemed everywhere, fronds waving overhead against the blue sky. The beauty of the hotel and grounds was stunning.

  So was the beauty of the girl behind the desk. She was dark-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired, as so many of the women were here. A red hibiscus blossom was behind her right ear. Some members of a convention had just left, a day early, and I had no trouble getting a room. As I signed the registration card an idea started growing.

  The girl behind the desk was the one I’d talked to on the phone. I asked her if I could see Mr. Webley Aldens registration card, and after a few more words she found it, handed it to me. I took Webb’s check from my wallet, put the wallet back. It was the check for a thousand dollars which he’d made out to me — how long ago? Five nights ago now. I compared his signature on it with the one on the registration card. They were the same. And another idea died a-borning.

  I jammed the check into my trousers pocket, wondering what was wrong. Something was goofy about all this. I couldn’t pull the threads together. They floated in my mind like cobwebs. And I had the odd feeling that I knew enough now. If I looked at the picture in just the right way I’d see it all.

  The pictures, including the one of Webb, didn’t do me any good here, either. I showed them around, asked questions, then followed a bellboy up to my room. I flopped on the bed, pulled the phone over on my chest, and called the Pele. Loana was appearing there nightly now. This would be her fourth night. She wasn’t there at this hour, but I had her home phone number. I tried it out.

  She was home, just getting ready to leave, she said. I couldn’t tell much about her on the phone, except that her voice was low and sweet and soft. I told her who I was and mentioned Webley Aldens name. She asked me how he was.

  Hes dead, I said. Didn’t you know?

  Dead? Oh, Im sorry. I didn’t know.

  She sounded subdued, but not greatly shocked; about what I would have expected from someone who had not known him well. I started to tell her he’d been murdered, but decided to let that and the rest of my questions wait until I could see her.

  I said, I’d like very much to talk to you, Miss Kaleoha.

  She laughed. Im sorry, she said. Its just that everyone from the mainland. pronounces my name that way.

  I’d said something vaguely like: Cal-ee-Aha! Her pronunciation was more like: Kah-lay-Oh-h . . . hah. But with a golden softness in her tone, a fluid whisper, that made it sound like another language entirely. But of course. It was another language entirely.

  She added, Please call me Loana.

  Loana. It rolled pleasantly on my tongue. Could I meet you somewhere today?

  Well, I . . . She hesitated. I’ve so many things to do this afternoon. Would tonight be all right? At the Pele?

  Fine.

  If you’d like. Ill see that you have a good table. We could talk after one of my shows. Im on at nine and eleven.

  Nine okay?

  Of course. Youll have a table reserved. Just give your name to Chuck at the door. Nine, then, Mr. Scott.

  I knew that Ed Grey owned the Pele, and it didn’t seem a good idea to let any of the people there know in advance that Shell Scott was going to drop in. Not all, of course, but some of the Pele employees might be like some of the Algiers employees.

  So I said, Would you mind having that table held simply for a friend? I mean, without mentioning my name?

  Well . . . all right. Just tell Chuck you’re the man I was expecting.

  Right. By the way, call me Shell.

  Till tonight, then, Shell.

  We hung up. I know theres no explanation of it in physics textbooks, but I’d swear some kind of Loana-electricity came over the wires and through my ear and started recharging my battery. I said, Whoo! and headed for downtown Honolulu.

  I spent most of the afternoon looking for and talking to judges commissioned to perform marriages. There were only a handful of district court magistrates and I managed to contact all but one of them. I hunted down several of the more numerous circuit court judges. None of them had officiated at Webb’s marriage; none of them recognized his photograph. I decided to make one more call, then get on to other things I wanted to do.

  This one was a circuit court judge who had been described to me as tall and thin, dark-haired, with a rather large beak. It sounded enough like the man I’d seen in Webb’s films that I was hopeful. I hadn’t called on him yet because he lived quite a distance out of town, well up Tantalus Drive in what I’d been told was a realty beautiful residential area. It was inland from the city — or mauka. My driver explained that few Honolulu streets run north-south or east-west, and directions are thus usually expressed as mauka, toward the inland; makai, toward the sea; waikiki, toward Diamond Head; and ewa, toward the Ewa district Northwest of Honolulu. So we headed mauka.

  I’d noticed a car following us for a while.

  It didn’t mean a thing to me. It was just a brown beat-up old Chevrolet sedan that I’d seen a time or two. Maybe it was because I was so completely out of my element, away from the hard, fr
antic streets of Los Angeles, but it never occurred to me that there might be a tail on me. Something like that seemed so unlikely here.

  Besides, my ham-and-egg orchid had clearly said, Welcome to Hawaii.

  The drive up Tantalus was beautiful. The farther we went up the mountain, the greener the view became. Trees joined branches overhead, dropping a rain of shadows in pools upon the road. At a curve, where there was a thick carpet of green grass on our right, and a great mass of fernlike trees and drooping plants that looked exotic to me, I asked the driver to stop. Hell, grass looks exotic to me.

  I got out, wondering why I’d been pounding cement in smog-smothered Los Angeles when all the time this had been here. I walked over the grass toward the drooping exotic things. The brown Chevy passed my parked cab. In a minute I heard the dash of gears, as if the Chevy were maneuvering, turning around. I fingered the exotic item. The little leaves were soft, smooth. I felt like eating a hunk of it. Man, I was really about to go Hawaiian.

  But then I straightened up. This was a fine way for me to be mincing about. Back to work, I thought.

  But the work came back to me.

  The Chevy was moving fast as it returned down Tantalus Drive. I was halfway across the grass, walking toward the cab, when the other car came level with me. The rear window of the sedan was open and a guy sat in back. Something long and tabular was sticking out of the window. I thought idly that it looked a bit like a long bean-shooter.

  But not even in the flower-smelling state I’d sunk to could I fail to recognize murder when I saw it. Especially when the guy to be murdered was me. Perception was delayed a little, but it came. Awareness didn’t just filter into my brain. It slammed in. It rammed my brain and nerves like a hammer. I dug one foot into the grass, snapped my leg and leaped, diving for the ground. The rifle cracked while I was in the air and the slug whispered past my head. I hit the grass skidding, had the Colt in my hand as I heard the cars engine-whine sing higher. Another slug spat from the rifle. It hit the grass a foot in front of my face.