Find This Woman

by Richard S. Prather

  She swallowed and her eyes got wider, but she didn't say anything. I went on, "Maybe two of them."

  "What'll they do, Shell? To you, I mean."

  "Depends on a lot of things, including how the D. A. feels. He's the man who has to be satisfied. But the guy had a gun and was going to use it when I hit him."

  "Hit him? With your hand?"

  "Uh-huh. The other one got the knife, but the one I know is dead got the edge of my hand."

  She frowned, staring at me. "I don't understand. You just hit him and it killed him?"

  "That's one of the things I mentioned a few minutes ago, honey. About learning how to kill people when I went not so gaily off to war. There are a surprising number of ways to kill people with your bare hands, and in only part of a second. That's one of the things the services, especially the Marines, teach men—mainly so they can stay alive. But when you've taught a man how to kill quickly and efficiently so he can go fight your wars for you, you've done something you can't take back. That knowledge is in his brain and you can't wipe it out or pretend it isn't there simply by ignoring it. And if the man is well trained, like almost all Marines are, then a lot of that training becomes damn near a reflex action, automatic. I. . . probably didn't have to kill that man last night. If I hadn't, he might have killed me, but part of it was reflex, pure and simple. There was a man there, he intended to kill me, and I reacted the way I was trained a good many years ago to react. It's as simple as that. If I live to be a hundred, there'll still be part of that left in me."

  I stopped and then added, "I'm sorry, Colleen. I didn't mean to make a speech." I grinned at her. "Besides, it isn't likely I'll live to be a hundred."

  After a few moments she said, "I didn't mind the speech. You did get a bit wound up, though. You should have seen your face."

  I laughed. "That's one of my great good fortunes. I don't have to see my face."

  "Oh, I don't know," she said. "It's not such a bad face. Well, now I'm going to take a shower. You stretch out on the bed and relax." She smiled. "You're not so hardboiled as you sound."

  "I feel very soft-boiled at the moment. Get on with you now, my Irish Colleen. Go shower that incredible body of yours." She paused in the doorway and looked back at me and I said, "You are a damned beautiful woman."

  "Sure now," she said smiling, "next you'll be telling me I'm your own true darlin'."

  I grinned at her. "I'll be telling you more than that."

  She smiled at me for a long second, and there was a hint of the transformation I'd seen come over that innocent face once before, at the bar when she'd pressed her hand against my lips. Then she turned and shut the door behind her.

  I was wondering if she'd locked the door, and if she had, if I were strong enough yet to break the door down, but then I sighed and got up and went over to the bed. I stretched out on it, relaxed, and ran over again in my mind the things that had happened so far in this case, from the very beginning till now. There were several screwy angles, but I knew one thing: If Isabel were really still alive, I'd like to meet her face to face, know that it was Isabel, and ask her some pertinent questions.

  Something flickered in my mind, then faded away before I could grab it and pin it down. I felt the excitement tingle in me, but I lay quietly listening to the drumming of the shower in the next room, and tried to get that thought back again. I tried to think what it was, shook my head, and right then, just as if the shaking of my head had tumbled the final part into place, I got it.

  I got just a piece of it, and then all the rest of the pieces leaped up in my mind as if they had been waiting for the one thought that would release them and let them spring into place. I knew right then, with a kind of breathless excitement inside me, that this crazy case was solved, that I knew the answers now, knew where Isabel was and why Carter was killed and why Freddy was killed and all the rest, and I also knew I was going to have to visit Mrs. Victor Dante's bedroom.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I LET OUT a whoop and the shower stopped drumming on that lovely stuff it was drumming on in there. There was a moment of silence.

  Then Colleen called, "Was that you, Shell?"

  "That was me, Shell Scott, the one and only scintillating shamus."

  "What's the matter? You all right?"

  "I'm fine; I'm dandy. Come on out and I'll dry your back."

  "Oh, Shell!"

  "Think I'm kidding?"

  The shower started drumming again.

  I stretched out on the bed, feeling pretty good. I knew my next move was to go out to Dante's place. But not right now. I wanted darkness around me when I started in again; I also wanted my strength back. I wanted a steak or some prime ribs inside me, I wanted a drink, and I wanted to rest up some more and think the whole business through.

  The bathroom door opened and Colleen came out into the room. She had one of those huge, fuzzy towels wrapped around her body, covering her breasts and extending halfway down her thighs, but that was all she had on.

  I made a sort of strangled noise and started to get up, but she stopped in the middle of the room and, holding the towel up with her right hand, she pointed her left hand at me.

  "You stay right where you are, Mr. Scott," she said, smiling. "I've got to get some clothes on."

  "What for?" I croaked. "Let's not be hasty. Schiaparelli never designed a more fetching gown."

  "Sit down, Mr. Scott."

  "Shell. But—"

  "No buts." She meant it. No buts.

  I opened my mouth and she said, "You might as well relax." She held the towel with her right hand, the other hand on her hip, and she said with her lips twisted slightly in a soft smile, "I'm not kidding. If you think you can roam all over town all night, and wind up in strange ladies' hotel rooms, then come up here and do as you please—"

  "She wasn't a strange lady, I mean, I wasn't roaming all. . . I mean, well, you know, I mean. . . "

  She stood there with that damned little smile on her face till I petered out. Then she went to the closet and selected some clothes, went to the dresser and pulled out some delightfully frilly little things that were black and gossamer, and undulated back into the bathroom. She closed the door firmly.

  I sure shouldn't have told her a thing.

  She came out fully dressed in a black skirt and a pink sweater, and I'd never seen her in a sweater before, but right away I knew I should have. I also knew that everything in that sweater was Colleen and not stamped with a union label. When they started stamping those with labels, then I was joining the union, and I'd fight like hell for a closed shop. She had on nylon hose and high-heeled shoes, and her hair was still high on her head. She was all dressed up from tip to toe.

  I looked at her as she sat down in the easy chair again. "I feel all naked," I said. "Where the hell are my goddamn shoes?"

  She laughed with that delightful crackle in her voice and she said, "They're right there in the bathroom. You'd better put them on. People might talk."

  "Then they'd certainly be talking through their ears," I said.

  "Hungry yet?"

  "I'm ravenous."

  "Are you hungry?"

  I grinned at her. "Yeah. Order me a steak and a knife and fork. I gotta have something to keep my hands occupied."

  She ordered the food from room service while I put on my lousy shoes. But even so, the rest of that afternoon was one of the pleasantest I can remember. Colleen was sure as hell sticking to her determination that I was to keep my distance, but we had two meals together and a lot of conversation. All afternoon, as it got closer to dusk, I kept thinking that this was really a woman, this Colleen Shawn. She was beautiful, she was sexy as a handpicked harem, and in addition to that she was fun, just plain fun to talk to. She was interesting, too, and she made me laugh, and then laughed at me or with me. There are damned few women you can spend an afternoon with in a hotel room, alone, just talking, and still have a hell of a good time. But this Colleen of mine certainly was one.

&nbs
p; Finally the shadows were lengthening outside and the mountains were getting purple, and it was almost time for me to go. We'd sent for a bottle earlier and had a couple of highballs together after a delicious prime-rib dinner in her room, and I got up and mixed two more drinks.

  "Colleen," I said, "after this one I have to go. But this one's for you, because you're a wonderful woman. And I mean it."

  She took the glass I handed her and said, "Thank you, Shell." We sipped our drinks while it got darker outside.

  She said, "I meant it about seeing Los Angeles with you. Still want to take me out in your town?"

  "I'd like nothing better. We'll hit Mocambo, Ciro's, some of the little spots around L.A. and Hollywood too."

  "You can lead the way."

  I got up and walked over to the phone. It took only five minutes and two calls, and when I was through I had the address of Victor Dante's home, and a taxi on its way to the Desert Inn for me. Colleen stood next to me and listened while I phoned.

  I hadn't been wearing my gun or holster while Colleen and I sat alone in the room, but now that I was ready to leave I got the gun, strapped it on, and put on my tie and then my coat.

  Colleen said, "You're going to Dante's?"

  "Uh-huh. I'll see you later, honey."

  "Shell, will you be all right? I mean, you won't get hurt?"

  "I'll be all right."

  "Please don't lie to me, Shell. Is there any chance you'll be hurt?"

  "Oh, hell, there's always a chance, Colleen. I might trip on a rug and break my fool neck. But what I've got to do shouldn't get me in any trouble. I'll be back before you miss me. Honestly."

  I went to the door and turned the knob.

  "It's still locked," Colleen said. "Just a minute."

  She got up and went to the dresser, got the key, and came over by me. She unlocked the door and I reached for the knob.

  "So long, honey," I said.

  "Shell." Her voice was tight, but soft, and she was close to me.

  I turned, with my back to the door, and looked down at her upturned face and at the narrowed brown eyes. Her lips were parted and moist, and she took both my wrists in her hands and put them around her waist. She pressed herself against me and said, "Kiss me. Shell, kiss me."

  I started to speak, but I only started to, because I was talking between her warm lips and looking at her long lashes trembling over her closed eyes, and then my eyes were closed and her tongue stopped any more words from coming.

  I kissed her till her mouth and my mouth seemed like flesh fused together and she was pressed hard against me. We were thigh to thigh, stomach to stomach, her breasts mashed against my chest, and our arms around each other straining our bodies together. And she was liquid, like water or quicksilver, moving, never still, her body as fluid and demanding as her darting tongue in my mouth.

  Finally she broke away, pushed her hands against my chest, and held me from her like that, her breasts rising and falling with her rapid breathing. I started to speak but she pressed her fingers to my lips and said, "No, go on, Shell. But come back to me."

  Then she opened the door, and I went out of her room, out of the Desert Inn, and got into the taxi waiting to take me to Victor Dante's home.

  Chapter Eighteen

  DANTE'S home was out in the desert four or five miles farther out than the end of the Strip and a half mile or so off Highway 91, and as the taxi got nearer I tried to calm myself and collect my thoughts. I had trouble because I was still thinking about Colleen, but it was time I started concentrating on the work ahead. If it could be called work. If I had to, I was going to bust in Mrs. Dante's bedroom, but I hoped that wouldn't be necessary because all I wanted to do was get positive identification of the little blonde gal who'd plopped off the stool at the Lady Luck Bar. And remembering that I knew only one mark, a scar, that would identify the missing Isabel, I shook my head and clucked my tongue. Because voyeurism was rampant in the desert tonight, and in the interest of justice I was about to become, let's face it, a peeper. Scott, you devil, you.

  I got out of the taxi just off Highway 91, paid the driver, and watched him drive away. Then I turned around and started walking the half mile to my destination. I was there in less than ten minutes. It was a big, new, modernistic place, low to the ground and built with lots of glass to let in the desert sun. There were lights on inside, so I knew somebody was home, but that was the way I had it figured. Logically Dante would be at the Inferno, and the little lovely who'd had such an entrancing walk before she'd fainted wouldn't be likely to be running around town for a while after that. So the gal with Hogarth's lovely curve should be inside there.

  Ten minutes later I'd found what I assumed was the bedroom, or at least one of them, but I couldn't be sure, even though the window was wide open, because no light was on inside. But I picked my spot, then walked quietly around to the front again to look into the living room, where lights were burning. I took out my gun and held it ready in my hand just in case.

  There was a wide porch in front of the house and I walked gently across it to the window and found a spot where I could look through. There was a thin curtain behind the window, and I had to look through that, but she was in there, all right.

  It was the little blonde gal with the feather cut that the bartender had pointed out as Mrs. Dante. She was sitting in a low, modernistic chair with her profile toward me, reading a book. She wasn't dressed in the tailored slacks and black sweater she'd been wearing when she caught my eye at the Desert Inn dice table, but she had on a heavy silk dressing gown and fluffy slippers. I made sure it was the same gal, then walked about fifty feet away from the house and waited.

  I felt a little nervous waiting out there in the desert sitting with sagebrush at my back. It wasn't that I was afraid anybody would start shooting at me, but rather that this was hardly my usual method of investigation. This afternoon, when there'd been that little activity in my brain cells, it had become necessary that I find out if little Blondie was the gal who'd exploded firecrackers under tin cans, and find out for sure. Preferably in a hurry. If I were wrong, that hadn't been logical thinking this afternoon, but a brain fit, and I was right back to where I'd started.

  About an hour after I started my wait, the lights went out in the front room and I got to my feet. I started wishing I had the rest of that bottle I'd left with Colleen, because I sure could have used a drink. But I walked around in back of the house and the light was on in what I'd assumed was the bedroom. This was the only house for miles, a hundred yards from the narrow dirt road that led here from the main highway, and Blondie must by now have felt completely safe from prying eyes. Faint light spilled from the open window and fell dimly on the ground outside, and from where I was, thirty or forty feet from the house, I saw her walk across the room.

  I hoped this peeping act of mine wasn't a waste of time, because I wanted to wind this caper up tonight if I could. I was damn tired of hiding from gunmen. I walked clear up to the window and stood just out of the dim splash of light coming from a lamp over the bed, just as she crossed the room from my right to my left and went through a door in the left wall and swung the door nearly shut behind her.

  The stupid woman still had on that damn robe. No cooperation. I moved close to the window and watched the door in the far wall. I might get only one chance, if that, and I didn't want to miss it. I could hear her humming as if she were happy. I wasn't happy. I was damn near hysterical. I was in a cold sweat.

  Then she came through the door and I was in a hot sweat. She didn't have a stitch on except for a wide ribbon that held her hair back from her face. During a moment when my gaze wandered I saw that her face was covered with a thin film of some sort of pink cream.

  The head of the low Hollywood bed was across the room opposite me, the foot of the bed extending back toward me, and she walked across the room and stood at the left side of the bed opposite me, facing me.

  Damn. That was the wrong way for her to face. The hell it was th
e wrong way for her to face. But it was the wrong way for the success of my investigation. I was certainly uncomfortable. But I didn't know whether it was because I was afraid she'd turn out the light before I'd got what I'd come out here for, or because I was afraid somebody would see me and start false rumors about me. False rumors, hell, they'd be true. And already I was within an inch of changing my mind about what I had come out here for.

  She stood facing me squarely and put both hands high over her head. Near fainting, I thought, My God! Does she know I'm out here?

  But then I remembered that I'd thought she must play a lot of tennis or do a lot of exercises or visit masseurs regularly to keep that trim, compact body in such excellent shape; now I knew it wasn't tennis or masseurs. She was exercising. You know: stretch, bend, and touch the toes; stretch, bend, and so on. This gal was in earnest, just as if she were keeping time to music. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. A snatch of an old burlesque tune flashed through my mind. And then another. As a matter of fact, several snatches flashed through my mind.

  I was bending at the knees and swaying when she finished, and then she scooted over on the bed. I thought for one horrible moment that she was going to turn out the bed lamp, turn over, and go to sleep, and that all of this time would have been, ha-ha, wasted. But this gal wasn't through.

  There is an exercise that is excellent for toning one's stomach muscles. One lies on one's back on the floor or the bed, and one slowly lifts one's lower limbs high into the air and, with the toes, touches the floor or bed above one's head. This is excellent for strengthening the abdominal musculature and is highly recommended by health experts and, from this day forward, by me. But, usually, if you're not used to so strenuous an exercise, about ten of those things will ruin you for days. Ruined me for days.