And kill once more (14 page)

"I think you've got a secret admirer," I said, my voice low. "The sheriff's understudy hasn't turned a page of that magazine in his lap for ten minutes."

Kate wrinkled her nose, rolled over for a look at Wid-dle who sat in a deck chair just past the far end of the plunge. She turned back to me.

"Just one?" She let a smile play across the corner of her tan face, her blue eyes wandering off to the side a little.

"That's all. One. The other guy isn't making any secret of it," I said.

She touched the tip of her finger to her chin and gave me a quick look. "Nice recovery."

"It's no recovery. I haven't changed my mind since yesterday. On the way up here—when I said you're blonde and beautiful and all the rest. When I make my

first million I'll look up Weston's Women's Apparel and drop in to see you."

"Marty, I—" She stopped there, then pressed her lips tightly together and turned away.

"What's on your mind, Kate?"

"Nothing, I guess. You—well it isn't going to matter, I suppose. How about the situation here? We'd better talk about that, instead of getting all tangled up in personalities."

"Yeah," I said. I got up and walked around the pool to where I'd tossed my smokes, brought the pack and my lighter back and flopped down again. When we were halfway through our cigarettes I'd made a strong decision. It was just about twenty-four hours since I'd parked her Cad on the strip beside Engle's place and something less since I had pulled our host's lifeless body out of the water. A hell of a lot had been brought to light about those gathered in that time, but if Toland had made any real progress he was keeping it under his hat. It didn't seem like a bad policy. For several hours now a nagging little thought had tugged at my mind but there wasn't any reason to spill it to Kate. If I was right it would look like a real sharp operation later and if I was off base—wound up doing a belly-flop—I'd feel less silly if I hadn't sounded off. Much better to work along quietly for a while. I started by putting the pump on Kate.

"Would you remember, just offhand, any of the other guests you've met up here from time to time?" I asked.

She gave me a questioning glance, then shook her head. "No, I don't think so. Why?"

"Try hard. No names, nothing you could put a finger on and recall what they looked like or talked like or what they did?"

She thought it over for a while. "I guess I could get a name here or there, but it would be pretty hard to connect the names to the people if someone paraded the en-

tire list in front of me, Marty. I just haven't noticed, I suppose. Maybe if you could tell me exactly what it was you wanted to know, I'd be able—"

"Thanks. You've answered already. For once something around this wacky ward is making sense. Maybe good sense, and if it turns into anything I'll cut you in. Fair enough?"

"Fair enough," she echoed, and I cradled my head on my crossed arms and started to think. One loose end. one little thread sticking out of the tangle, and maybe. ...

It took a while to lay the foundation but by the time dinner was over I had something solid in the making. I got up when Kate left the table and followed her into the hall, and when she turned to lift a questioning eyebrow I nodded toward her room, then stepped in after her and closed the door.

"Feel like an evening swim?" I asked.

"Sure, Marty. Say when."

"Now. But not with me. I was thinking maybe you'd go it solo for a while."

She leaned against the top of a dressing table and gave me the full treatment with those soft blue eyes. "You were going to cut me in," she invited.

"When I get something," I said. "Remember? So far I'm as close as I am to flying to the moon. Now be a good kid and climb into that fetching white bathing suit, what there is of it, and go take a few dives. It would help if you can manage to look at Widdle now and then."

She smiled, then let it grow into a grin. "You wouldn't by any chance be thinking—"

"How about those dives?" I cut in. "Say about twenty minutes from now?"

"Marty." She came toward me, her eyes asking the question before her lips framed the words. "Marty, it

isn't Elsa, is it? You're not going to see her, or get out of here with her, or—"

I put a stop to the questions in the only sensible way a man could. My arms tightened around Kate's slim waist and I pressed her to me, kissed her full and hard on those soft upturned lips and felt their warm answer. A number of seconds passed, every one of them wonderful, and when we parted I stroked her hair and smiled down at her.

"I missed a lot of words yesterday," I said. "Blonde and beautiful weren't even a good start. We'll have to go into the rest of it some night. Maybe tonight—a little later?"

"A little later, Marty," she said. I kissed her again, reminded her to hurry into that bathing suit, and let myself out.

A little later I rapped on Sandy's door. Five minutes more and I was back out on the terrace. Widdle had his magazine again, but now he managed to turn a page every once in a while. I stood beside him and struck a flame, lit my smoke and flipped away the match.

"What do you hear from Toland? He coming back tonight?" I asked.

"Haven't any idea, Bowman. Why?"

"Well, I was thinking of hitting the sack," I said. I wrinkled my forehead and pressed the palm of my hand to my face. "Too much sun, maybe. Just thought I'd tell you, in case anyone wants me. Okay?"

He gave me a quick hard look, then nodded and went back to his reading. I wandered toward the house, went into the main hall, and then stopped in the living room. I thumbed through a day-old paper until the hands on my watch said seven, stood up, and eased over to the large picture window overlooking the terrace and pool. Kate Weston was poised on the diving board and Widdle's magazine had reached a new low on his lap. I grinned to my-

self and slipped through the house toward the garage, then out to the big Cad. When Sandy Engle came quietly up to the car I opened the door for her, then closed it noiselessly and slid in behind the wheel. Releasing the hand brake, I let the heavy wagon roll back and when it had gone a few feet I cramped her hard left, kept an eye on the edge of the concrete, then pressed lightly on the brake. She stopped and then, as I released the brake pressure and whipped the wheel to the right, the Cad started down the hill. We let gravity do the honors for half a mile, then wound up the engine and slipped the hydromatic into drive. At the canyon highway we pulled onto the concrete and swung north, the heavy hack rolling smoothly over the road. The summit, then the winding pavement toward Palmdale, and the wan brunette beside me flashed a dubious look my way.

"This is crazy," she said at last. "It's only been three months since my last check-up. There could hardly be much change in that time. Not enough to show. And in the second place it's Saturday night—after seven and you certainly won't find a lab open at this hour."

"You came, though," I observed dryly.

"Yes. Hope against hope, Marty—if there's even a chance that you might be right, but—"

"No buts. Leave it to Bowman, Sandy."

"But if they're not open?"

"We'll open 'em."

"You don't lack confidence, do you, Marty?"

I didn't say any more about it and we talked about other things—the years she and Kate had chased around together, her marriage, some of the people she knew back in the city. It was nearing eight when we slid to a stop beside a drugstore in Lancaster. I checked the phone book for an address, then asked the waitress how to get there. We found the X-ray lab locked.

" 'We'll open 'em,' " she taunted. I got out and went up

to the door, my eye searching for the emergency address sign most any shop has pasted down in one corner. There were two names—the doctor who must have owned the place and a Mr. Kelson with a phone number and an address. He'd be the technician, our target for tonight. I scribbled his house number and street on a card, then drove to a gas station, took on ten gallons and asked directions.

It wasn't far. A few minutes later I was rapping on the door of a modest concrete block bungalow near the edge of town. My third try brought a freckle-faced lad of about ten around the side of the house.

"Pa's out in back. We're gonna barbecue," he said happily.

I followed him along the new cement walk, through a white wooden gate, and over to the far corner of the lot. A red brick patio bearing unmistakable signs of an amateur's hand stood against a not yet completed block fence and a thin gent in faded Army fatigues bent over the flames of a wood fire. When he turned to give me a 'howdy' I guessed him to be in the early thirties, the gaunt type who, due to premature baldness, probably looked a little older than he really was. On the flat brick counter near him were red hamburger patties, a cellophane package of buns, catsup, and a bottle of hickory sauce.

"Mr. Kelson?"

"That's right." He set down a bag of charcoal and dusted his hands on the legs of those faded green fatigues.

"Marty Bowman," I said. Then: "Your name was on the card down at the lab. How about a little overtime tonight?"

"Emergency? And from which doctor, Mr. Bowman?"

"No emergency. Routine chest X-ray. But I need it now."

"Well, I'd sure like to help you, but unless it's something that can't wait—broken bones or like that, brought in by a physician—we don't open up. You drop by in the morning at nine and I'll get you first thing."

"Not me. A friend of mine, and we can't wait."

"What's so urgent about a chest X-ray? And you'll need an M.D. to read it anyway, you know. We can't just—"

He stopped talking when I brought out my wallet and slid a twenty into my hand. Then I folded the bill lengthwise like a crap shooter and looked at Kelson.

"Time is money, Mr. Kelson," I said, "and we're in a hurry. I just want the plates—we'll worry about getting the thing read later."

Kelson's eye was following the green bill and I knew he was beginning to see the light. He raised an eyebrow, then glanced toward his unfinished fence and back to the cash again. It wasn't hard to guess he was seeing twenty more dollars worth of blocks in that wall. I let the bill waft to the ground and was a little slow in bending for it. He got there first. When he straightened up with the cash in his hand, he turned to the freckle-faced lad beside him.

"Tell your mother to hold those french fries back for about forty minutes. You can drop some of this charcoal on the fire now and it'll be down to coals when I get back. And don't get burned, hear?" He winked at me and walked toward a pre-war Chewy parked in his driveway.

He looked a lot different in a white jacket. Sandy came out of the dressing room, a plain short hospital gown covering the part above her skirt as she stepped in front of the shining black glass plate.

I held out a tiny safety pin. "Stick it in the cloth. Low, but not too far down."

She looked curiously at the pin, then fastened it in the gown. Kelson gave her that breathe-and-hold-it routine twice, then went to process the plates. By the time he came out with them, Sandy was dressed. He handed me the oversized brown envelope, took the ten dollar bill I held out, and began to rummage for change.

"Eight dollars, Mr. Bowman. I'll get—"

"Skip it. Tomorrow you can barbecue steak. On Gregory."

"Thanks. Thanks, but on who, did you say?"

"You don't know him, but he's still stuck for it. Good night."

"Well, thanks." Kelson said, and the door closed after us.

We got into the car and rolled back to the drugstore, and this time I checked for doctors. Phoning several, I was able to get appointments with two who were home and would see us. The first turned out to be a round little character with a penchant for using more words than were necessary and reasonable. Sandy and I sat down in the office he maintained in the front part of his house and the doctor beamed at us.

"Ah, yes. Always nice to see two young people so well matched. A blond boy and brunette girl, a nice combination indeed. And now what was this about an X-ray? You have it with you, I see."

"We thought that might help." I smiled.

He favored me with a questioning glance, then chuckled. I slid the envelope across his desk.

"We'd like you to go over these, if you would. We'll wait."

"Certainly, certainly. Hmmm. Chest X-rays, eh. Yes indeed."

"That's right, Doc, for one dollar. Like to try for two?"

He couldn't be ruffled. "A quiz program fan, eh?

Say, I was listening to a pretty good one the other night. Fella was asked—"

The doc yacked on while he was getting his light set up, but I'll have to admit that when he put the plate up against the illuminated ground glass, all nonsense ceased. He even forgot what the sixty-four dollar question was. Taking the first plate off, he studied the second, then called us over.

"You aren't joking, Mr. Bowman? I mean that pin I see is really in the blouse—or was, wasn't it?"

"Certainly. Don't worry about the pin. The lady put the pin there to be sure there wasn't any switching of film. All we want to know is the condition of the chest. The spots. Are they active or bottled up or what?"

The doctor didn't even glance back at the plates. He sat his round bottom on the nearest chair and gave us a big grin. "What are we playing, Mr. Bowman? Nobody can say I won't go along with a gag, but—"

"There isn't any gag. What about the X-ray?" I said it in a hard flat voice and when he turned his smile my way I didn't bounce back with one. His face straightened and he went back to the plate still on his glass, then motioned us over with his finger.

"This is a pin. You said it was on the dressing gown so we don't have to worry about that, eh? Now as far as the rest of this X-ray goes, there isn't a sign of any chest condition; no scar tissue, even. There is not now, nor has there ever been any tubercular infection in these lungs."

"Thank you, Doctor. We'll take the films with us, if you don't mind." I slid them back into the envelope and dropped one of Boreland Gregory's twenties on the desk. The doc scribbled a receipt and piled a few bills on top of it, and Sandy and I left without half hearing the patter the doc dished out as we went down the walk.