Boy, I thought, you don’t know how unusual.
He went on, “And you have, indeed, done precisely what I asked of you. I wish it could have ended differently, but I am nonetheless very grateful.”
He reached into his pocket, took out a piece of paper, and handed it to me. It was the check. The very lovely check.
“Your part in this affair is concluded, Mr. Scott. You may be sure I shall take that action which is appropriate. The thief will be prosecuted, Mr. Finster will pay his debt one way or another, and as for what happens to my son —” He sighed.
“Yes, sir.”
We shook hands. “I wish to hell,” I said, “it had been the butler.”
He smiled a little. “Thank you, Mr. Scott.”
“Thank you, Mr. Madison. And good night.”
I left him standing in the den, the Da Vinci on the wall behind him. He wasn’t looking at it. He was looking across the room, as if at something very distant, distant in space and time. I suppose he was.
It was only half an hour after midnight, a time when life is still pretty zippy, here and there.
Hell, even the bars were still open. I’d had lots of sack time. Even if I went to bed I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Besides, there were too many thoughts twirling in my mind. Thoughts about George and Lupo and Finster and Madison, among others. Others, like Alston Spaniel. And Ardith, and Mrs. Otterman. Every once in a while I imagined I could see bodies, glowing in the dark….
Why not?
I called Antonia.
Her voice was sleepy.
“Wake up, wake up,” I said. “Darling, this is Shell.”
She woke up. “The hell with you!” she said.
“Antonia, you don’t really mean that.” She started to tell me she did, too, mean it, but I kept on going. “Darling, I really was on a case. And I’ve just wrapped it up, all over, I’m free.”
“The hell —”
“I can’t tell you what the job was, but it was for G. Raney Madison. Do you know who he is?”
“The billionaire?”
“Well, not actually a billionaire. But well-to-do. I recovered something for him, and he gave me, as my fee, a check for ten percent of the item’s value to him. It’s burning a hole in my pants—there’s that word again. I don’t know why whenever I talk to you —”
“Ten percent of what?”
“Of two hundred and eighty thousand bucks.”
“Two hundred and eighty—Shell, darling!”
“Antonia!”
“Shell! Really?”
“Really!”
“And it’s burning a hole in your pants?”
“Well, my pocket’s starting to smoke a little. I’ll hurry over before I catch fire entirely, hey?”
“Give me time to get dressed. I don’t have anything on.”
“Hot dog.”
“I’ll wear that outfit you like.”
“You’re wearing the outfit I like. I’m on my way!”
“Shell, wait. I mean it, give me time to get dressed. We have to go out and spend money, lots of money, spend and spend —”
“Yeah,” I said dully.
“Shell?”
“Yeah?”
“But afterward … Well, don’t worry. Shell, darling.”
“Who’s worried?”
I hung up. I should never have let her know the check was for twenty-eight thousand dollars. It might take days to spend twenty-eight thousand dollars. Ah, but surely, we wouldn’t have to spend it all. I grabbed my coat, put it on, headed for the door.
The phone rang.
At this hour, it might be a potential client. Somebody in trouble. An interesting case, another fat fee maybe.
Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. Duty, perseverance, dedication, all that jazz—it is very good jazz indeed. It’s drink for the parched spirit and meat for the hungry heart. But there is more to life than meat and drink, friends. There is the lean of life, and the fat of the land, all sorts of fun things.
As I went out the door, the phone was still ringing.
I let it ring.
The Bawdy Beautiful
Zing!, you’ll recall, was the most exciting thing in bathtubs since plumbing for a while.
If you could believe the advertising, the lavender soap didn’t just clean the dirt off you, but “gently coaxed” it away, leaving your skin sinfully soft and maddeningly scented with a seductive fragrance which, presumably, no man with a nose could resist.
But no more. Nobody hears about Zing! any more.
Overnight the zip went out of Zing!
I know, I was there, I saw it happen.
In fact, I did it.
* * *
It had been a slow day at Sheldon Scott, Investigations, and I was at home, my three rooms and bath in Hollywood’s Spartan Apartment Hotel, watching TV for a change. On the screen was a movie which had been cut only enough to remove the plot, allowing equal time for commercials, one of which was starting.
I watched it too. Because this was a new Zing! commercial. In color.
It began with a stunning and extraordinarily shapely blond gal playing tennis, racing on the beach, cooking over a hot electronic range. Then—the bath. But not in a tub. Not for Zing!
The lovely stood nude beneath a waterfall—at least I guessed she was nude, you could never get a really good look the way they handled the thing—laughing wildly as if she had somebody hidden in there with her. Then a shot of her in the mountain pool into which the falls plunged, soaping ecstatically, lavender-tinted Zing! lather in great gobs all around her. You couldn’t really see a thing this time, either.
But I watched intently as the soupy-voiced announcer spieled away: “Zing! Zing! Zing! Makes your skin feel so good you can’t keep your hands off yourself! … Comes in a plain, sealed wrapper … Tasteless … contains the exclusive, magic ingredient, the secret ingredient: SX-21!” Or something happy like that.
Right then—it was eight forty P.M.—the apartment chimes bonged.
On the screen, the lovely was in a black gown with spaghetti straps and saucy front, thoroughly rejuvenated, dancing in the arms of a guy who seemed to be chewing her neck. I waited until the commercial ended for the next commercial, then walked to the door and opened it.
A tall blond girl stood there hugging some kind of white coat, or robe, around her. Irregular spots darkened the cloth, as if it was wet, though this was a balmy evening with no sign of rain.
“Mr. Scott?” she said. “Are you Mr. Scott?” Her brown eyes were wide, very wide. They roamed over my white thatch of hair, the smaller white thatches of eyebrows, my tanned ex-Marine chops, and she said, “Yes, you are, aren’t you?”
“That’s me. Come on in.”
She had a strikingly beautiful face, marred at the moment by marks of strain, or fright. The long blond hair was damp, little flecks of something like foam upon it.
She said, “You’re the detective, aren’t you? Will you help me? I just saw a man murdered, only five minutes ago, he pushed him into the pool, I saw it, I didn’t even wait to get my clothes back, I just ran —”
“Wait a minute.” She stopped.
I guided her to the divan, turned off the TV, faced her.
She sat quietly, staring at me from the wide eyes. And what eyes they were. Big and dark, a melting, golden brown. Eyes like hot honey, eyes that sizzled. Plus flawless skin, smooth brow and cheeks, lips that looked as if you could get a shock from them.
It was a disturbingly familiar face, too, but I couldn’t remember where we might have met.
I said, “Do we know each other, miss?”
“No, I remembered reading about you in the papers and that you lived here, and when it happened all I could think of was —” This time she stopped the rush of words herself. “I’m sorry. Shall I go on?” She smiled.
It was her first smile. But worth waiting for.
“Sure,” I said. “But one word at a time, OK?” She was still
hugging the stained coat around her, so I said, “Relax, let me take your things. Would you like a drink, or coffee?”
“No, thanks.” She stood up, pulled the coat from her shoulders and started to slide it off, then let out a high-pitched scream and I let out a low-pitched wobbling sound like a muffler blowing out.
She was wearing nothing beneath the coat.
She jerked the coat back on and squeezed it around her again, but not soon enough. There had been a good second or two during which my muffler had been blowing out, and now I was certain I’d seen her somewhere before.
“I forgot!” she yelped. “Oh, do forgive me. I’m sorry!”
“I forgive —”
“That’s what started all the trouble in the first place. Oh, dear, I’m all unstrung.”
“You and me both, dear. Haven’t we … haven’t I seen you … I mean, surely we’ve —”
“You may have seen me on TV,” she said. “I’ve done several filmed commercials for —”
“Zing!” I cried.
“Why, yes. And you recognized me!” She seemed pleased.
“Yes, indeed. In fact, I was watching you on that little seventeen-inch screen when you rang my bell. Man, you rang—It was in color, too, miss, and … miss? What’s your name, anyway? Ah, you were splendid.” I sat by her on the divan. “Splendid. In a waterfall … and all that.”
“That’s the last one we did. That was a fun one.”
“I’ll bet. It was fun for me, all right. I don’t mean to pry, but do they hide the swimsuit with the bubbles, or something sneaky like that? I mean: is advertising honest?”
“It depends on who does it. I never wear anything at all. It wouldn’t—wouldn’t seem fair, somehow.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more. Why, that would be a rotten —”
“I really do have something important to tell you, Mr. Scott. About the murder.”
“Murder? Oh, yeah,” I said. “Tell me about the murder.”
She told me.
Zing! was the creation of two men, Louis Thor and Bill Wallnofer, partners in Zing!, Inc. They’d peddled the soap virtually alone, and without much success, until about a year ago, when—with the addition of SX-21 to their secret formula, and the inauguration of a high-powered advertising campaign—sales had soared practically into orbit. Their product had been endorsed by Good Housekeeping, the A.M.A., and the Veterinary Journal, among other repositories of Higher Wisdom, and before much longer if you didn’t have a cake of their soap in the john even your best friends would think you just didn’t bathe.
My lovely caller—Joyce Holland was her name—had previously done three filmed commercials for Zing! and this evening the fourth, a super production, had been filmed, in Wallnofer’s absence, at the home of Louis Thor on Bryn Mawr Drive, only two or three miles from the Spartan.
The water in Thor’s big swimming pool had been covered with a blanket of thick, foamy soapsuds—fashioned, of course, from Zing!—Joyce had dived from the board into the pool, then swirled and cavorted in her luxurious “bath” while cameras rolled. The finished—and drastically cut—product would begin with a hazy longshot of Joyce entering the suds, then bursting above the pool’s surface clad in layers of lavender lather, and I had a hunch this item was going to sell tons and tons of soap, even to clean men and boys.
Joyce went on, “When we’d finished, Lou—Mr. Thor—asked me to stay a little longer. He wanted a few stills for magazine ads, he said. Everybody else left and I stayed in the pool, then Lou came back alone and leaped into the pool too! And he didn’t have any clothes on!”
“He didn’t!”
“Yes, he didn’t! Did, I mean.” She paused. “Did leap into the pool, and didn’t have anything on. Anyway, it was evident what he had in mind.”
“You got away, didn’t you?”
“Yes. He caught up with me once and grabbed me, but I was all covered with Zing!—it’s very slippery, you know.”
“I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have the stuff in the house. But I’m pleased to hear —”
“So I just scooted out of his clutches. I swam like mad, got out of the pool, grabbed my robe and ran to the car. Luckily I’d left the keys in it, and I was miles away before I remembered that my clothes and purse and everything were still in the little cabaña where I’d changed.”
She paused.
“That’s where they are, huh?” I said encouragingly.
“Yes. I couldn’t leave them there. So after I’d driven around for a while, when I figured Lou—Mr. Thor—would be calmed down, I went back. I parked in front and started walking toward the pool, but before I got there I saw a man kneeling at the pool’s edge. For a second I thought it was Lou, but it wasn’t. Lou was still in the water and the man was holding onto him, holding him up and looking at him.”
She stopped again.
I said, “What was Lou doing?”
“He was dead.”
“Oh.”
“At least I think he was dead. At least he wasn’t doing anything.”
“I see. And this other guy was just holding onto him and looking at him?”
“Only for a second or two. Then he shoved Lou into the water and ran past the cabaña—there’s a walk next to it that goes out to Quebec Street. I was so scared … well, I just ran to my car and came straight here.”
“The guy see you?”
“No, I was behind some shrubbery there. It’s an oleander hedge, actually.”
“Uh-huh. You know who the man was?”
“No, I never did see his face. I didn’t get a good look at all, his back was to me, and I was so scared…. It was just somebody in a man’s suit. But I’m sure the other one was Lou. The one in the water.”
“I see. Well … was there something you wanted me to do?”
“Oh, yes. I’m afraid to go back. Twice is enough for me. I’m scared to death—but you could go there. And do whatever detectives do.”
“What’s that?”
“I thought you’d know.”
“Yeah. Well, the first thing I’d do would be call the cops —”
“No!” It was the loudest noise she’d made. “That’s what I don’t want. I want you to go to Mr. Thor’s before any police get there, and get my clothes and bag—my identification and everything. I can’t afford to get involved.” She leaned forward a little, and moistened her lips, and widened her eyes, and turned me on and said, “You will help me, won’t you?”
“You bet. I don’t quite—just get your clothes and bag?”
“Yes, mainly my identification. You see, if I were to be involved in scandal—murder—bad things, it would just be awful! I might lose the part in Underwater Western Eye!”
“In what?”
“A television series set for next fall.”
“What did you call it?”
“Underwater Western Eye. It’s going to have everything.”
“Sounds like quite a lot, all right. You might lose the part? I think we left something out somewhere —”
“Oh, I didn’t tell you. Well, you know I’ve been doing the Zing! commercials.”
“Yeah.”
“They’ve had quite an—impact. I mean, they’ve drawn a lot of attention to me.”
“Yeah.”
“Before Zing! I was only a receptionist in a dentist’s office. And I hate teeth, anyway. Unless they’re in mouths.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“It was just a job. There wasn’t any incentive. But now—well, I’m simply crazy about showbiz. I love it. I feel like I’ve found my true destiny.”
“Say, about this Lou Thor. Are you pretty sure he was dead? If he wasn’t, I kind of hate to think of him there in the swimming pool —”
“He looked awfully dead. Or at least unconscious.”
“There’s a difference —”
“And even if he wasn’t dead then, he surely must be drowned by now —”
“Yeah. I wasn’t thinking clearly. You we
re saying something about—your destiny? In Underwater Western Eye, was it?”
“Yes, it’s a documentary-type show to be sponsored by Oatnut Grits. I’m set for a wonderful part in it, but if I get involved in scandal—murder—all that—the role will probably go to the sponsor’s wife.”
“Mrs. Oatnut Grits?”
“Who?”
“Never mind. I see what you mean.”
“And I so want the part,” she said. “Even the commercials have just been for money, there hasn’t been any real incentive for me, but in the series I’d have a chance to act. I could show what I can do.”
As far as I was concerned, she had already and dandily shown what she could do, but I promised her I’d scoot over to Thor’s and get her clothes and bag quick as a wink. And incidentally check on Lou while I was at it.
I explained to Joyce that—eventually, at least—the police would have to be let in on this, but she pleaded with me to keep her name out of “all the scandal” if I possibly could. I promised her I would mention her name, if at all, only as a last resort.
Seeming much relieved, she smiled one of those worth-waiting-for smiles, and I smiled all the way into the bedroom. There I got my Colt .38 Special and shoulder harness, slipped my coat on over the rig, and went back into the front room.
Joyce squirmed a little on the divan. “I’m starting to itch,” she said.
“Itch?”
“Yes, I’m still all covered with that soap. I was loaded with suds when I ran away, and I haven’t had a chance to wash it off. Mmmm, it sure itches.”
“You might as well wait here while I’m gone. So you can use my shower if you’d like.”
“Oh, I’d love to.”
I showed her the shower and tub, and she said, smiling, “If you really don’t mind, I think I’ll get clean in the shower, then soak for a few minutes in your tub. That always relaxes me. Doesn’t it you?”
“Only when I do it.”
I shook my head. One of my virtues, or vices, is a sort of three-dimensional imagination complete with sound effects and glorious living color. “Soak … as long as you want, Joyce,” I told her happily. “It’ll probably be at least an hour or two before I can check back with you. So you’ll have everything all to yourself, doggone…”
The Shell Scott Sampler Page 9
