by K. K. Beck
“Hang in there and do whatever you have to do to get the picture made,” he said in tones of deep conviction, staring at her intensely with his babyish eyes. “It will become a great contribution to popular culture.”
“Sometimes I feel so weak,” she said. “I’m surrounded by sharks and bloodsuckers. But I guess you wouldn’t know anything about that, being a professor and all. It must be such a peaceful life.”
Actually, Glen Pendergast felt that his department at Badlands State College was full of bloodsuckers and sharks, but he sensed that Nadia didn’t want to hear this.
“A life of the mind is not always peaceful,” he said, breaking off the eye contact and gazing soulfully across the room. “It can be tremendously exciting, but all the excitement goes on inside you.” He tapped his chest as if to indicate that his inner life was one of the heart, not simply the mind.
“Sometimes,” said Nadia sadly, “I wish I had developed my own, like, intellectual part, a little more. My career has taken all my energy. I was voted Wenatchee Apple Blossom Queen right out of high school and things took off right away. I never had time to go to college.”
“It’s never too late,” said Glen Pendergast, refocusing on Nadia. “Learning is a lifelong commitment.” This was the motto of Badlands State College, and appeared between quotation marks on all its promotional literature.
“You know,” mused Nadia, returning his gaze thoughtfully, “I always thought that Marilyn Monroe hooking up with Arthur Miller was really great.”
“I was always very moved by that relationship too,” Glen replied, strolling over to the chair next to hers. “I think she had a fine mind but no one really appreciated it because she was so beautiful and sexy.”
“Exactly,” said Nadia. “It’s so unfair when that happens.”
“It must be awful,” he replied, his voice trembling with sympathy.
* * *
After showing Vince Fontana and Quentin Smith the door, and hinting strongly that she saw no need for Mr. Fontana to play any part in future negotiations, Melanie went back into her office to see if Nadia was still there.
She had gone. Melanie was about to leave the room when she spotted a piece of paper dangling from the printer. She picked it up and glanced at it. There were two lines of text in a font she never used, some kind of cheesy-looking Ye Olde Gothic. The lines read:
“Nadia Wentworth has invoked the wrath of Kali-Ra. We, her loyal slaves, will carry out the will of our mistress and smite the little bitch. To inflict pain in service of the will of Kali-Ra is a labor of love.”
Melanie let out a scream and dropped the paper.
Where the hell were the police? And were Tom and Kevin still patrolling the grounds? She needed them now!
Someone had been, or was, in the house.
CHAPTER XXIII
A SEARCH OF THE GROUNDS
Nadia had to be taken somewhere safe. Melanie rushed back to the living room but there was no one there at all. A quick check of the other downstairs rooms revealed that Melanie was entirely alone. What was going on?
Melanie ran upstairs and knocked on bedroom doors. There was no answer from the Rose Room, where Glen Pendergast was staying, and no light under the door. She slowly opened the door to Nadia’s room. In the sliver of light from the hall she could see Lila, all tucked into Nadia’s huge carved bed. Her mouth was open and she was snoring lightly.
Maybe Nadia had discovered Lila there and gone to bed in the Blue Room—the only one left in the house. She wasn’t there either. Melanie checked her own room with its demure twin beds and flowery curtains. Empty.
Finally, she rapped on Duncan Blaine’s door, through which she heard tapping computer keys.
“What is it?” he snarled from behind the door.
“Can I talk to you for a sec?” said Melanie.
Melanie now heard the sound of a chair scraping and the door opened a crack, revealing a few inches of Duncan Blaine. His eyes were unfocused and he seemed to be weaving slightly from side to side. A cloud of blue cigarette smoke emerged into the hall. “What the fuck is it now? I am trying to work. This is impossible! I can’t believe I’m being treated this way!”
“Sorry to disturb you,” Melanie said. “I’m looking for Nadia.” Melanie had a horrible fantasy that Duncan, pushed off the rails by a creative collaboration with Nadia, drunk and enraged, had tried to kill her and Lila with that big jar. Maybe he’d tried again and succeeded. She stood on tiptoe, trying to look into the room over his shoulder to see if Nadia was there in a strangled heap on the floor.
“Well, I haven’t got her. I wouldn’t want her! Why are you peering into my room? Checking to see if I’m smoking and drinking? Well, I am. I removed a bottle of gin from the liquor cabinet so I could finish this fucking rewrite, but I can’t work here if you’re going to come pounding on my door and carrying on.”
He clutched his forehead with both hands like a screaming ingenue in a cheap monster movie and said, “I cannot work under these appalling conditions!” Melanie took advantage of his histrionics by opening the door wider and taking a look inside. Nadia clearly wasn’t there.
“Sorry to bother you,” she said, stepping back to avoid his slamming the door on her feet.
Melanie was now in a state of panic. She had to find Nadia. She went out onto the terrace and heard the sound of splashing and a laugh from the swimming pool. She ran down the steps to the lanai. Now her paranoid thoughts about Duncan expanded to include practically everyone in the house. Okay, so Kevin found the man on the balcony, but now it seemed the intruder had a confederate inside the house who had left another message, this time in person, right in her office. How much did she really know about any of these people, really, other than that they all had some connection with Kali-Ra, Queen of Doom?
The pool was surrounded by shed clothes. Two naked people were floating on their backs in the middle of the water, their hands lightly touching. Melanie knew they were staring at the stars and the palm fronds. She often did that by herself during moonlight swims. On closer inspection, the couple appeared to be Nick Iversen and his girlfriend.
Nick Iversen claimed to be Valerian Ricardo’s relative. But how did she know if that was true? All she knew was that he’d been buying Kaliana at some bookstore in the Midwest. God, how could she have been so dumb! He might be a nutcase who was stalking Nadia. Melanie felt a horrible, sinking feeling. He seemed so pleasant and normal. He couldn’t possibly be a crazed stalker. But he also had that snaky-looking girlfriend in tow. She seemed to know a lot about Kali-Ra herself. And Lila had turned on the girl as if she knew her. Melanie had thought at the time that Lila was simply nuts, but maybe there was more to it than that.
Suddenly, Melanie remembered the central plot, in as far as Valerian Ricardo ever actually came up with a real plot, of The Gong of Kali-Ra. All the weekend guests at Lord Basingstoke’s country house turned out to be slaves of Kali-Ra, with the exception of Raymond Vernon and the drab governess, who turned out to be Kali-Ra herself.
The moon made a silvery path across the bathers, who continued bobbing lightly in the water. Well, whoever Nick and Caroline actually were, they seemed too preoccupied to be stalking Nadia. The couple, apparently blissed out and floating with their ears below the waterline, hadn’t reacted to Melanie’s presence.
She ran back up the stairs from the pool, her heart racing, determined to get some kind of help. What is happening? she asked herself. Am I going mad, driven to depths of despair by the unrelenting presence of the Queen of Doom, drawn into her evil web by forces, which are outside the realm of normal humdrum life?
Yes, she must be. The thoughts forming in her mind seemed to have come from the twisted mind and depraved pen of Valerian Ricardo.
Melanie’s morbid mood was broken by the sound of Nadia’s voice drifting over the tall hedge surrounding the rose garden.
“Oh, Glen,” she was saying, “I can’t tell you how exciting it is to meet someone who gets the whole
Kali-Ra thing. Let’s face it, Hollywood isn’t an intellectual town. Sometimes it gets pretty lonely.”
Melanie went through the carved entryway in the hedge. Nadia was bending tragically over a rose, and sniffing it with her eyes closed. Dr. Pendergast, leaning on the base of a statue of Aphrodite, was gazing at her with a stupid, devoted expression.
If he had ever intended to harm her, he had apparently changed his mind. But what did they know about him, really? He seemed pretty normal, but maybe he was mad. Professors could go mad, couldn’t they? Working for years on a Ph.D. thesis could push people over the edge, and his thesis topic had been Kali-Ra. Maybe he’d flipped after close reading of the complete works of Valerian Ricardo. Melanie thought this could very well tip a normal person over into a descent into madness. In fact, just a moment ago she’d felt as if she’d been losing her grip herself. Melanie coughed and they turned to her like startled animals.
“What is it?” snapped Nadia.
Still slightly paranoid, Melanie didn’t want to go into details in front of Glen Pendergast. She’d just try to get Nadia out of here and check her into a hotel or something. “Um, did you forget about the benefit tonight? The limo’s here.”
“What benefit?”
“It’s all my fault. I didn’t post it on the schedule. But we talked about it. It’s for a disease.”
“Oh, forget about it,” said Nadia. “It’s too late.”
“But they’re honoring you,” said Melanie. “Just come on up to the house for a sec and I’ll show you the invitation. There are some really big people involved.”
“Hey, forget about it,” snapped Nadia. “I’m the only woman in this town besides Demi and Julia who gets more than five million a picture. I don’t need to kiss up to anyone at some stupid benefit. Glen and I are talking. Call them up and have them FedEx the award or whatever it is. Make some excuse. Tell them I caught their disease.”
Melanie gave up. “Okay. There’s no benefit. But I’m worried. Tom and Kevin are missing in action, the police never arrived and we got another threatening message from the slaves of Kali-Ra.”
“You mean I’m not really being honored?” said Nadia peevishly.
“Maybe you should call the police and see if they’re on their way,” said Glen with a worried look.
“I was just about to,” said Melanie.
“Leave them out of it,” snapped Nadia. “That’s Tom Thorndyke’s job. I don’t want a lot of paparazzi making my life hell.”
“Maybe the police are over at the garage with Tom and Kevin, arresting the intruder,” said Glen.
“You’re so smart,” said Nadia.
“I’ll go over and check,” he said, squaring his shoulders.
“We’ll come with you,” said Melanie.
* * *
Nick couldn’t believe he was running naked through the shrubbery under a starry sky. At least he’d had the presence of mind to grab a towel, which he carried as he ran. Branches from some prickly shrub were slashing at him, but he could still see the white gleam of her about thirty yards ahead across a darkened lawn.
While he felt exhilarated, gasping in the warm, flower-scented night air, he also wondered if he was doing the sensible thing. But what else could he have done? Callie was crazy and wonderful and beautiful, and when she’d slipped out of the pool after that chlorinated kiss, laughed wildly, and said, “If you catch me, you can have me,” grabbed her sarong, and leapt into the darkness, carrying it over her head like a banner, he felt he had no choice in the matter. He’d look like a real jerk if he just treaded water.
And of course the thought of catching her and collecting his reward was delicious. However, the rational part of his brain, considerably feebler since he’d arrived at LAX ten hours ago, flickered into action long enough to tell him that the reason he’d better catch her was so she wouldn’t run amok here and embarrass them both.
He didn’t know how much her outrageous behavior was attributable to the gin and tonics that sleazy Englishman had poured down her throat and the megajoint she’d smoked most of, and how much to simple high spirts and an exciting personality, but he felt responsible for her. In fact, what he should do was catch her, get her dressed and bundle her off home, wherever that was.
Somehow, he imagined it as the Temple of the Chosen, in the special bedchamber, described so movingly in The Island of Kali-Ra.
It was decorated with incense burners putting forth a queer and hypnotic blue haze, bowls of fascinating and rare fruits, lush, ripe and round, from every corner of the globe, and alabaster vases of orchids, roses, and lilies. All these things were tastefully arranged in a room with walls of lapis lazuli, jade, and amethyst and carpets of tiger skin. The chamber was dominated by a massive onyx bed trimmed with sapphires and emeralds and shrouded with pearl-embroidered, violet-hued draperies of gossamer-fine silk as soft and delicate as the pale, strangely yielding flesh of the Queen of Doom herself.
CHAPTER XXIV
A GHASTLY DISCOVERY IN THE CARRIAGE HOUSE
The garage, although built in the post-horse era, but just barely, was constructed like an old carriage house. It was a large, square structure set some distance from the house and covered with heavy vines. There were chauffeur’s quarters on the second floor, and the windows there indicated that the lights were on upstairs.
Glen pulled open one of the heavy wooden doors, which should have been locked, and said in a loud voice, “Hello! Is anyone there?” There was no reply from the cavernous gloom.
Melanie felt Nadia’s hand reach for hers and hold it tightly. She squeezed back, as much for her own reassurance as Nadia’s. “There’s a light switch to your left,” she said.
The garage sprang into light. The Jaguar and the BMW were sitting there as usual, which gave a sense of normalcy to everything. Melanie felt her courage returning.
“How do you get upstairs?” asked Glen. “Maybe they can’t hear us.”
“Over here,” said Melanie, making her way past the workbench and around the BMW. At the bottom of the stairs, her foot encountered something large and alive. She screamed and leapt backward. Nadia’s scream echoed her own and Glen rushed to her side.
She looked down and saw the pitiful figure of a man in the fetal position, hands behind his back, tied up with coils of strong rope. Across his mouth was a strip of cloth that seemed to split his face in two. She looked away, but turned back again when she heard a muffled moan coming from the prisoner. She screamed again when she realized with horror that the bound and gagged man was security expert Tom Thorndyke.
“This is so humiliating,” said Tom, once they’d removed his gag. “I can’t believe this!”
Glen Pendergast busied himself untying knots.
“What happened?” said Melanie. “Where are Kevin and the police?”
“All I know is that when I pulled up here, there was a huge wheelbarrow right in front of the gate full of what looked like peat moss. I got out of the car, surveyed the area to make sure there was no one around waiting to jump me or anything, and then started to move the wheelbarrow. Someone leapt out at me from under the peat moss and went right for my throat. A second later, they’d pressed a cloth soaked in some chemical into my face and knocked me out.”
Tom was now shaking off the ropes and rubbing his arms and legs. “I came to here about a half an hour or so ago, I guess.”
“Did you recognize the guy who attacked you?” asked Melanie.
“No. He was covered in peat moss.”
“It’s straight out of The Secret of Kali-Ra,” said Glen excitedly. “Except that was a cart full of sawdust. The slave of Kali-Ra breathed through a reed while he waited to waylay Raymond Vernon outside the gates of Baron Santini’s villa in Monte Carlo.”
“Kevin was coming out to meet you,” said Nadia. “But he never came back. And he said he’d captured the guy and tied him up here in the garage. But you were here instead. Maybe the intruder escaped and now he has Kevin.”
�
��We’d better conduct a search immediately,” said Tom, rubbing his wrists and ankles.
“Could there be more than one of them?” asked Melanie with a shudder.
“Maybe,” said Tom. “I weigh two hundred pounds and I didn’t walk here.”
“You came in the wheelbarrow, I bet,” said Glen. “That’s how Kali-Ra’s faithful slave Achmed did it in The Secret of Kali-Ra.”
“I’ll call the police,” said Melanie.
“Maybe we’d better,” said Nadia reluctantly.
Tom had gotten back up on his feet, and was assuming his familiar take-charge persona. “I’ll handle that. I’ve got some good contacts with the Beverly Hills police. That way we can get control of the PR fallout. Meanwhile, you ladies should get back to the house and lock yourselves in one of the bedrooms. Glen here can escort you back and stay with you until I come back. Who else is on the premises?”
“Duncan Blaine is working on the screenplay in his room. Lila’s asleep in Nadia’s bedroom. Rosemary went to bed too, and Nick Iversen and his girlfriend were swimming in the pool just a little while ago,” said Melanie.
Tom clenched his jaw in a determined way. “I want everyone inside. I’ll round them up and call the Beverly Hills police from the pool phone. Then I’ll find Kevin.”
Melanie said anxiously, “I hope Kevin’s all right.”
“He will be,” said Glen. “Minor characters in the Kali-Ra books get tied up and shut up in closets and cellars, and they’re threatened with unspeakable torture, but Ricardo mercifully never followed through with the details.”
“Well, this is one story that’s going to end with the bad guy getting apprehended, prosecuted, and incarcerated,” said Tom resolutely.
* * *
Back in his hotel room, Quentin had been tossing, frightened and angry, on the bed, trying to sleep for an hour. Just when he began to relax and believe he could fall asleep, the phone rang and the sound of Maurice Fender’s demanding voice plunged him back into anxious despair.
