Strip for Murder

by Richard S. Prather

  I still didn't get up, but I said, “Well, it's true I'm not, uh, especially talkative, as Miss Redstone said. But I assumed that you'd all been informed of my background in ... this work. I don't see any great difficulties. None that we can't work out.” Faces brightened all around the table.

  Mr. Blore said, “We've really only the sketchiest information about you, Mr. Scott. If you'd be so good as to tell us just a little more...”

  “Of course. Miss Redstone explained about the Laguna Beach activities. Fine group, that. Never worked with a finer group.” I laughed gently. “Until now, perhaps, that is.” Everybody laughed gently. I remembered that the first lovely who'd popped up after Mrs. Blore had said something about food preparation and weekly menus, so I looked at her. “Naturally I'll expect you to show me around the kitchen. I'm especially interested in your organic garden.”

  I didn't even know what an organic garden was; it could hardly be the garden it sounded like. But she'd dwelt on it at some length, so I threw it in. She smiled happily and said: “I'd love to show you around. And of course any suggestions you make we'll give very serious consideration.” She had a gorgeous smile.

  I said, “One year when I was with the, ah, Sunskinners, we had a food supervisor who came up with a novel idea. He insisted that we peel all our fruits and vegetables, every one. And then eat them. That is, eat only the peelings.”

  The smile went away. A couple of people said, “No!”

  I was losing ground again. “Of course, I put a stop to that,” I said, and gained back the ground I'd lost. “I assumed you were all familiar with the fact that I spent several years with the Marine Corps. I've a rather extensive background in unarmed defense, judo, some of the oriental arts of bodybuilding and defense. Oh, yes, everything from yoga to yogurt.” I beamed at them.

  Mrs. Blore's face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Judo!” she cried. “That would be perfect for us!”

  A gal on my left said, “How divine!”

  I'd gone too far again. One of the men on my right, a British-type blighter with hair clipped even shorter than mine, said, “Yes, Mr. Scott. We'd all be intensely interested in learning a spot of judo. This is jolly! Could you show us a bit now?”

  There were several cries of assent. “Well,” I said, “it's not exactly—”

  Laurel leaned toward me and looked up into my face. “I'd forgotten this talent of yours, Mr. Scott,” she said. “Our last director didn't know anything like it. This would do it.”

  And how it would do it, I thought. Laurel went on, “Can't we have just a short demonstration?”

  I forgot myself for a moment and said, “Not with you, babe.”

  Next to her the brown-eyed busty beauty leaned close and said, “Oh, show me, show me.”

  I began to get panicky—and then inspiration blossomed. I turned to look across the length of the table squarely at Mrs. Blore. “Why, certainly,” I said. “Mrs. Blore, would you be good enough—”

  She didn't even let me finish. “I will. Yes, I will.” She sprang up and away from the table like a starving ballet dancer. “What do I do?” she cooed.

  I slid my chair back and fixed my gaze on Mrs. Blore's chops. Then I took a deep breath and got up and walked over to her. “I'll just run through a few of the elementary items. First, a couple of come-alongs.”

  “What?” she said.

  “Holds. To keep your assailant—I mean attacker—I mean the other party—helpless while you walk him out of the room, or something.” I paused. “Should have a pile of blankets—you know, something soft to fall on. That is to say...”

  Laurel got up, saying she'd go get some bedding, and I looked at her as she hurried out, then quickly looked back at Mrs. Blore. I demonstrated a simple two-finger come-along, grasping two fingers of her right hand in my left, twisting her palm up and lifting. Mrs. Blore went “Eek” softly and up on her toes as Laurel returned.

  I said to Mrs. Blore, “Tell me if it gets painful. Easy to break bones this way.”

  I let go of her hand and she shook it awhile, but looked pleased. Then I quickly demonstrated a couple of the sensitive points on the body—on the upper body—the subclavian nerve pinch and the axillary nerve pinch, pressing in turn the nerve at the base of her neck over the collarbone and the exposed nerve underneath her armpit. Then I said, “Just one more and we'll be through. I'll show you how to throw people across the room.”

  “Can—can you throw me across the room gently?”

  “Oh, I won't throw you far. I'll just throw you down on the blankets.” I had to chuckle at the sheer insanity of my throwing her down on any blankets. But I was in a veritable frenzy of exhibitionism now, and I said, “Just relax. Here we go.”

  She was facing me, so I gripped her upper left arm in my left hand and stepped closer, pivoting around so that my back was to her. I wrapped my other arm under and around her right arm; then I pulled on her arm as I bent forward, rolling her over my back and shoulder onto the blankets, graceful as a swan. As she went kerplop, I held on in the hope of letting her down easy, but it must have jarred her nonetheless. She waggled her head a bit, stuck out her tongue, and said, “Gah.” Then she tottered to her feet.

  By George, though, she was a game old gal. “Show me again,” she said. This time she got her feet partly under her and cushioned the impact. There was very little else except feet with which to cushion her impact. Then she sprang up and said to me, “You do that so easily. Could a woman do it?”

  “Of course. It's not so much strength as balance, timing. You use the other person's strength.”

  “Well,” she said. “You're so strong I should be able to do it easily.”

  I shook my head. One of us was dizzy. But she persisted, so I showed her just where and how and we made a couple of playful passes at it. Then she said, “I'll try it now.” She sounded sort of grim.

  I said, “Fine. Ah, easy, remember.”

  She went into action like a tiger, spun around, slapped her hip into place, and bent forward, tearing at my arm. Just to please her, I gave a little kick with my feet, to help her along—and off into space I went. Mrs. Blore had bent her knees and then straightened up with a snap, grunting a grunt that was nothing compared with what I let out. I spun around in the air like a windmill, and when I landed it was not on those blankets. I landed on a hard floor and I could hear everything rattling around inside me and several internal organs bumped together near my spine with soft squishing sounds, and my head rolled back and went kerplunk on the floor. For a little while I just lay there, and I must have been quite a sight, but then everything settled into place and I clambered to my feet.

  “That was a dandy one, Mrs. Blore!” I squeaked.

  She clapped her hands and a lot of noise bubbled around the table. Everybody was beaming happily—except Laurel. She wasn't only beaming; she was damn near hysterical.

  I went back and sat down. “Yeah, funny,” I hissed at her.

  There was some more talk, and finally Mr. Blore said to me, “Now, would you wait outside in the hall, Mr. Scott? We'll reach a decision shortly.”

  I gave Laurel a hard look, got up, and strode out, trying not to limp. I leaned against the wall for about a minute. Four women strolled by, then two couples, then six or seven more women. I didn't count them, but never in my life had I seen so many naked broads all at once. I didn't mind, though; I'm broad-minded.

  Slowly the suspicion was growing: There was a new day dawning in this here nudist camp.

  Chapter Five

  People kept wandering by, and it was something of a shock that I realized I might become quite attached to Fairview.

  The door of the Council Room opened and Laurel stepped out. This was the first time I'd really looked at her since peeking out of the undressing room, and she seemed even lovelier and shapelier and more everything than before.

  She stepped close to me and said in that soft, warm voice, her bright-blue eyes on mine, “Well, Mr. Scott, you are now officially
the new health director of Fairview.” She smiled a luscious smile. “What do you think of that?”

  “I am appalled.” I was. “Laurel,” I said, “you and I—we've got me into a hell of a fix. And you have some fast explaining to do.”

  She nodded. “Let's go someplace where nobody will overhear us. Someplace where we can be alone.”

  “I'm for that.”

  She smiled winningly—which doesn't mean that I was losing—and said, “I thought you would be. The vote, by the way, was unanimous. You made quite a hit with Mrs. Blore.”

  “I think I can do without that. Look, Laurel, you must know I can't stick around here. I've got a lot of other things to do.”

  “I know.” She looked around us quickly. “Don't talk about it now. Wait till we get out to the pool.”

  “Pool? We going swimming?”

  “No, and it's not a swimming pool. It's a little lake, a few hundred yards from here. We call it the pool. It's quiet there, and we can be sure we're alone. Come on.”

  Outside, the grounds were almost deserted. “Where's everybody?” I asked. “There was a sort of parade past me back there.”

  “It's lunchtime. Are you hungry?”

  “No, I couldn't eat a thing. Thanks, though. Let's get out to the pool.”

  We walked across the grounds, in among the trees, and followed a narrow path that came out into a small clearing. There was a tiny trickle of water at our feet, running downhill, but following its course upward I saw that it came from a narrow cleft between two steeply sloping hills. We walked that way, between the steep hills and maybe a hundred feet into the little valley, actually a sort of blind canyon, and then Laurel stopped and pointed. “There's the pool. Nice, isn't it?”

  It was. Fifty yards ahead was the steep face of a cliff, slanting farther toward us at the top than at the base, and the waters of a small lake, about fifty feet wide and three times that long, along the cliff's base. Its surface was flat and unrippled, sunlight bouncing off it. All around the water, but especially at its edge, deep green grass grew profusely. A couple of big white boulders rested on the grass.

  I said, “Very nice. Where does the water come from?”

  “Oh, there must be an underground spring, feeding it from under the cliff or somewhere. It's usually bigger, from the rains, but it's been so warm this year that it's shrunk a bit. It's a nice little lake, though. One reason the camp was located here.”

  We walked close to the water, Laurel ahead of me. A knoll of grass-covered earth near the pool rose a few feet above the surrounding ground and Laurel went up it, sprawled at its top. I went up, too, but not as far as she did.

  “Sit down, Shell,” she said. “We can drop the ‘Don’ out here.”

  She was leaning back on her elbows, the leg nearest me drawn up with her foot almost buried in the grass, and I thought about walking right past her and down into the water. But I sat down anyway, maybe ten feet away.

  “What are you doing way off there?” she said.

  “I'll soon be leaving this nu—Fairview. Going to town. And I want to hear what you've got to say. I want complete control of my eardrums. See?”

  She smiled. But she didn't say anything right away, so I looked around some more. Anybody within shouting distance of us would have stood out like a bare thumb or worse. We were up in the air a bit, and the ground below our knoll slanted down rather sharply from here. I could see straight out through the niche in the hills a good two hundred yards or so to where the trees started again below us. Seemed rather exposed on this knoll, but maybe it was just my outfit.

  Laurel told me about the two attempts on her life. She'd been at Fairview, off and on as the saying goes, for about a year, and almost steadily for three months now. Last night she'd gone to bed in one of the small cabins everybody used here and during the night she'd been awakened by a noise, got up, and found the gas jet of the small heater turned wide open and both windows closed. Earlier the day before, during the afternoon, she'd been with the previous health director, a guy named Elder, when he'd shouted at her, then jumped and pushed her out of the way of a huge boulder plunging down at her from the hillside above. He'd been clobbered by the thing himself.

  Laurel, assuming with some logic that somebody was trying to kill her—though she hadn't the faintest idea why—had capitalized on Fairview's sudden need for a new health director to smuggle in a detective.

  “Laurel, honey,” I said, “I'm going to be plenty busy outside of Fairview. I can prowl around here a little, but that's all. Incidentally, do you know anything about a guy named Paul Yates?”

  “Never heard the name.”

  “Surely you've heard of Andon Poupelle.”

  “Of course. He's my sister's husband. Why do you ask about him?”

  “Just curious. What do you know about the guy?”

  “I met him at Mother's about two months ago. He made a big play for me right from the start.”

  “Not for Vera?”

  “Not then. I couldn't stand the man and he finally figured it out. Right after that he started turning his charms on my sister. And she found them more charming than I did, I guess.”

  “Quite a bit more. She married the guy. Pretty fast courtship, wasn't it?”

  “Oh, he's fast enough. He ... Shell, do you have to sit clear over there? I feel as if I'm shouting. Come here.”

  “Well. Well, OK.” I squirmed over to her like a GI sneaking up on the enemy's lines, and I guess I got a little hypnotized. When I was about two feet from this lovely, sensational tomato, and squirming like mad, she said, “Whoa. That's close enough. I don't want to shout, but I didn't mean we were going to sit here whispering into each other's ears.”

  I stopped, blinked, shook my head, and said, “Wow!”

  “Where were we?” she asked.

  “Well, I was back there about ten feet, and you—”

  “Oh, Shell. I mean, what were we talking about?”

  “You mean you've forgotten, too?”

  She chuckled. “We were talking about Andon.”

  “That slob. Yeah. Well, what else do you know about him? Where'd he come from? What was he doing at your mother's place when you met him? Who invited the guy? Wow!”

  “I don't know who invited him. There was a big dinner and he was just there. I'd never seen him before. I still don't know much about him. He's something of a gambler, though, I've heard—not professionally, just likes to gamble. I haven't even seen him since that first time, except for the wedding.”

  “Incidentally, what were you doing at the dinner? Was that before you ... well, before you came here?”

  “No, I've been a member of the Fairview group for over a year. I just signed out and went to the dinner. Mother asked me to come. I hadn't been home in quite a while, so I went.” She smiled. “We're not prisoners here, you know. All of us in Fairview are here because we like it, that's all. We can leave if we want to. Some just come out on weekends. I went to Vera and Andon's wedding, but I haven't been out since. It's much more pleasant here.”

  By this time I was sitting up, sort of leaning all over my knees, and Laurel—still only a couple of feet away, mind you—was half sitting, half propping herself on her hands, which were buried in the grass behind her. I looked up at the cliff beyond her, then back in the opposite direction, out between the V in the hills on either side of us. Something flashed, glinted down near the trees a couple of hundred yards away. I squinted, but I didn't see the flash again, or anything else. Laurel was still talking, saying once more that if the Council ever learned I was a detective I'd be booted out unceremoniously, convention or no convention.

  I looked back at Laurel. “Speaking of which, just what comes off at this convention?” I grinned. “I mean—”

  She laughed. “I know what you mean. There'll be about four hundred naturists from all over the United States here. Each year the convention's in a different locality; this year it's Fairview. The site was chosen at last year's convention, in S
an Bernardino, and the Council—all of us, for that matter—have been preparing for it for months. There'll be games, contests, and of course the beauty contest to choose this year's queen.”

  “Beauty contest? That sounds jolly. Queen of what?”

  “Queen of all the sunbathers. You're supposed to be one of the judges, of course.”

  “Of course. You win.”

  “Win what?”

  “The contest. I vote for you. This judge is fixed.”

  “I can't compete. I'm last year's queen. So you'll have to vote for somebody else.”

  “Heck, I name you last year's, this year's, and next year's queen.”

  She smiled. “Better wait until you see the others.”

  “I don't need to wait. I have seen ... enough.”

  Laurel shook her head. “You're a strange detective, I must say.”

  “Yeah. Shell Scott, the public eye. Oh, well...” Laurel leaned back flat on the grass, fingers laced behind her neck. “Laurel,” I said, “don't you think ... What I mean is...”

  She turned her face toward me, lips slightly parted. I scooted even closer and said, “Maybe we should be getting back. I've got to get out of here, and ... it's getting late.”

  Softly she said, “It isn't late.”

  “It's later than you think.”

  The parted lips curved into a soft smile. I looked at her for a second or two, steeling myself, but she was like a magnet, so it did no good to steel myself. I leaned toward those ripe red lips—and something whipped past my head. It snapped by viciously, but I kept on leaning. I almost made it, and Laurel didn't move, didn't look away. Then I heard the crack of sound from far behind me. It was a gunshot.

  I jerked my head up as clots of dirt fell from a spot high on the cliff and splashed into the water. Then I let myself fall forward against Laurel, grabbed her, and rolled. She let out a yelp, but I held onto her as we scrambled off the knoll. I grabbed her hand and dived for one of the big boulders, half dragging her with me.