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Authors: Helen Nielsen

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BOOK: The Brink of Murder
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Narcotics, probably. The pleasures of youth weren’t as innocent as they used to be. The plague of the ghettos now reached every stratum of society, and Barney Amling was grateful that Kevin was safe at home. From the staggered skeleton of the villas-to-be, he watched the doors of the old Beach House open and a group of frightened young people, hands clasped over their heads, marched by the police into the waiting cars. He watched for several minutes before he heard the sound of dislodged gravel somewhere behind him.

Amling turned about quickly. The man he had come to see stood only a few yards away. He might have been there all the time, or he might have just arrived. That detail was no longer important. The important thing was the gun Barney Amling was pulling out of his coat pocket because now there was time for only one shot.

CHAPTER TWO

I
T WAS LATE
afternoon when the
Wanda Lust
nosed into her berth at Marina Beach harbour. The low clouds that were bringing early twilight to the November sky were edged with burgundy and the air carried a pungent promise of approaching rain. Simon Drake, his bright-blue poplin jacket open and flapping in the wind, scrambled out of the cabin and ran forward to the bow. The rubber soles of his canvas shoes had barely touched the deck before he saw a pair of black hands scoop up the rope and execute a firm hitch to the docking. The hands belonged to a tall black male of about 25 who was uncharacteristically attired in a sombre grey suit.

“Chester,” Simon called, “you look like a professor.”

Chester Jackson completed the hitch and stood to full height. Smiling, his face became instant inspiration for an advertising agency with a dentifrice account.

“That’s what I am—almost,” he answered. “I just came from an interview. After the first of the year I start teaching in a private college near Riverside.”

“Congratulations! But Hannah won’t be happy.”

“No sweat with Hannah. We’ve got it all worked out. I bought one of those little cars that makes 30 miles to the gallon and I’m staying on at The Mansion as long as she needs me.”

When Wanda climbed out of the cabin Chester whistled appreciatively. She wore a jacket identical to Simon’s, except that hers was zipped up to the throat of her turtle-neck sweater. White Levis were rolled up to her knees. Barefoot, she carried a well-packed sea-bag over one shoulder while the wind teased her long, blonde hair that had gone the way of all hair over-exposed to sun and sea. She wore no make-up and her nose was peeling.

“Now that’s what I call a well-trained bride,” Chester said. “You’ve got her barefoot and toting the gear.”

“But not pregnant,” Wanda laughed. “At least, I hope not until I finish my next recording session.”

“You could handle it,” Simon said. “Any woman who can turn out a perfect soufflé on the kind of seas we’ve been navigating could give birth to triplets at a rock festival without missing a beat.”

“Rough weather?” Chester asked.

Simon took the sea-bag away from Wanda and gave her an affectionate slap on the bottom. “It hasn’t been a sea of glass,” he admitted. “Hey, what kind of vehicle is that?”

Chester opened up the trunk of the little car that was parked alongside the dock and it looked as if the chassis had split in the middle. After Simon tossed in the sea-bag, Chester closed the trunk lid that included the rear-view window and a pair of side vents. “Lots of storage space,” he explained. “The trunk goes all the way up to the front seat.”

“And the front seat sits over the bumper,” Simon said. “Where’s the motor?”

Chester scowled. “I knew there was something I forgot to ask the salesman. Well, let’s all pile into the front seat and see what happens when I turn on the ignition.”

The little car took off with a surprising burst of power. The marina receded in the rear-view mirror as Chester turned off on a winding street that would take them across Pacific Coast Highway and thence through the fringes of Marina Beach up to the old section called Marina Heights. Destination was a restored Victorian mansion that Simon had purchased for a song and refurbished for a few grand operas and a concert season. Left behind were the tiny weekend cottages and the plate-glass and concrete boxes of the new tracts. Left behind was the sea that now blended with the lowering sky until only the foam of white water lashing against the rocks gave evidence of its presence.

Chester shifted into low gear for the climb. “Hannah was ready to try communicating with a ouija board before we got your ship to shore,” he said.

“Doesn’t she know I’m a big enough boy to play with boats and girls?” Simon asked.

“Correction,” Wanda insisted. “Not girls, plural; girl, singular.”

“See?” Chester chided. “I told you that Justice of Peace in Vegas meant business. Which reminds me, Simon, in your gay bachelor days did you know a classy-looking brunette named Carole Amling?”

“I knew her best when her name was Carole Ehrenberg,” Simon answered. “When she married Barney Amling it put our relationship on a different level.”

“Barney Amling?” Wanda echoed. “The name is familiar.”

“It should be. You must have been about eight years old and still trilling hymns in your father’s gospel choir when Barney Amling won his first all-American football honours. He racked up a couple more and a Heinzman trophy before he turned pro’. That’s when he married Carole and broke my sophomore heart. It’s harder to lose an older woman.”

“I didn’t know that,” Wanda said.

“When one is a sophomore,” Simon explained. “Later in life the situation reverses. What sparked this discussion of Carole Amling? Where did you meet her, Chester?”

“She’s at The Mansion right now,” Chester said, “listening to Hannah’s memoirs of her show-biz days. When I left Hannah had covered the phase when the ardent lover crippled her with a Luger fired in jealous rage and was working up to the time you bought The Mansion from her, when she was down to her last annuity, and kept her on as house mother.”

“Poor Carole,” Simon said.

“Serves her right!” Wanda insisted. “She should stay at home with her football player.”

“That,” Chester remarked drily, “is what she wants to do but she needs help. Barney Amling has disappeared.”

By this time the little car had passed through the wrought-iron gates that marked the entrance to Simon’s property. The doors of a carriage house turned garage stood open and Hannah’s red Rolls-Royce, vintage of 1926, was in its place beside Simon’s new Jaguar. In addition, a new black Cadillac sedan took up half the driveway. Spying a medical symbol attached to the rear licence plate, Simon asked:

“Is Hannah ill?”

“Hannah’s fine,” Chester said. “The Caddy belongs to a doctor named Larson. He brought Mrs Amling to see you. She’s too uptight to do any driving herself.”

Leaving Chester to manage the sea-bag, Simon slipped his arm about Wanda’s shoulder and walked her into the house. Hannah and the unexpected guests were in a first-floor sitting room just off the foyer.

When Hannah Lee found Chester Jackson, complete with new teaching credentials and an unemployment card, sitting out the line at the local unemployment office, she had hired him on the spot, ostensibly as cook and houseman, which he was not, but actually as companion and therapist in her long struggle to get out of the wheel-chair status which had terminated her theatrical career in the early thirties. In this latter capacity Chester proved to be a miracle worker. The wheel-chair had long been banished to a local veterans’ association, and even the walking stick, which Hannah still carried on occasion, was more for dramatic effect than necessity. She held it now, sceptre-like, as she sat in a fan-backed chair from which she could simultaneously observe her callers and the doorway through which Simon and Wanda entered.

“Look what came in with the tide!” she cried as they came into the room. “We were about ready to alert the coastguard. Storm warnings are out all along the coast.”

“Overdramatizing, as usual,” Simon said. Then he spied Carole Amling seated on a red-velvet divan alongside a vaguely familiar man who might have been recognizable without black-rimmed glasses that magnified his intense blue eyes. Carole was surprisingly recognizable. Except for an air of maturity and suppressed anxiety, she wouldn’t have looked out of place in a school sweater with cheer-leader’s pom-poms in her hands. She wore a simple black suit and a red paisley hairband that accentuated her high forehead and large brown eyes. She was a small woman with a generous mouth, lightly rouged. At the sight of Simon the tension lines about her mouth relaxed into a wan smile.

“Simon—” She rose from the divan as she spoke. “I’m sorry to come without warning like this, but I do need help. Is this your wife? She
is
lovely.”

Simon made the introductions. Wanda, to her credit, made no apology for Levis and unshod feet.

“Do you remember Eric Larson?” Carole Amling asked. “He insists that he met you years ago, Simon.”

The vaguely familiar was identified. “Of course,” Simon said. “After your father’s death. How are you, doctor?”

Larson unfolded from the divan to tower protectively above Carole Amling. He was on the short side of 40 with pale blond hair that was beginning to recede from a healthily-tanned forehead. “I’m worried,” he said quietly, “and so is Carole. We’ve been walking around the edge of a volcano for a week and it’s getting uncomfortable.”

“A week?” Simon echoed. “Is that how long Barney’s been missing?”

“More than a week. For the first few days we assumed he had gone to Mexico City. There was a monetary conference.”

“Let me tell it, Eric,” Carole begged. “Simon, you know that Barney does travel a lot and often without much advance notice. For the last year he’s kept a packed travel-bag in his office for these quickie trips. A week ago Friday afternoon he called home and said he was flying to Mexico City. I wasn’t home but Kevin took the message. I was disappointed when he told me because we were hosting a charity dance at the country club Saturday night, but, like any executive wife, I took it in my stride. But, Simon, whenever Barney has to make these sudden trips he always calls me as soon as he reaches his destination. I waited up until 3 a.m. Saturday. There was no call. He didn’t call during the whole of Saturday. When Eric came by to take me to the club I was at the edge of my nerves. Together, we called hotels in Mexico City until we located one where a monetary convention was in progress but Barney wasn’t registered. I left word at the hotel to have him call me as soon as he came in and went to the club with Eric.”

“It was better than moping at home,” Larson said.

“Eric stayed over on Sunday,” Carole continued, “and scolded me into believing that Barney had found the hotel booked up and was staying with friends. I called three families in Mexico City where he might have been but none of them had seen or heard from him. On Monday we went to his office. He had left word with the garage-attendant that he was going away for a few days and, through him, left instructions for his secretary, Mary Sutton. But he hadn’t told Miss Sutton about the trip or mentioned it to any other associates at the office.”

“But there is a conference in session,” Simon reminded her.


Was
a conference,” Carole corrected. “I sweated out Monday and Tuesday without word from Barney and then called the hotel where it was being held again. I was told the conference had concluded and Mr Amling hadn’t answered any of the page calls put out for him.”

“Have you checked with the airlines?” Simon asked.

“As soon as Carole completed the call to Mexico City,” Larson said. “No line scheduling flights that way had a record of Barney on their passenger lists for Friday or any other day.”

Chester came into the room after dropping the sea-bag on the foyer floor. Wanda, aware of the growing tension, dispatched him to the bar to create a pitcher of dry martinis. But it would take more than a cocktail to dispel Carole Amling’s gloom.

“Barney didn’t go to Mexico City,” Simon reflected, “but that doesn’t mean he didn’t go to a business conference somewhere. I don’t pretend to understand Barney’s profession, but I do know it’s a complicated one. He might have deliberately misled the office staff because the meeting was too secret. Have you checked the airport parking-lot for his car?”

“What do you mean?” Carole asked.

“He was driving when he left the office, wasn’t he? You said he left word with the garage-attendant. If he took any flight from LAX his car is still there.”

“Any flight, Simon?” Hannah asked.

“Right. A flight to Washington D.C., for instance.”

“But it wouldn’t matter where Barney went,” Carole insisted. “If he’s all right, he would have called me.”

“If he could. I’ve been in conferences so hectic I couldn’t take time to make a phone call.”

“For more than a week?” Carole asked.

Simon couldn’t answer that question. Chester arrived with the martinis and gave him a welcome respite. It was Wanda who continued the conversation.

“If you’re afraid your husband’s been hurt, Mrs Amling,” she said, “why not check with the hospitals or call the police?”

“We called the hospitals in the area yesterday,” Dr Larson replied. “No trace of anyone answering Barney’s description. As for the police, I’m sure you can understand Carole’s reluctance to take any action that would cause publicity. Her husband is the president of a multi-million dollar operation which handles other people’s money.”

“Eric, please,” Carole protested.

“I’m sorry, Carole, but it has to be said. I brought you here because you were desperate and thought Drake could help you. I’m sure he’s too intelligent not to have thought of it himself.”

“A missing Savings and Loan president could make a headline writer’s day,” Simon admitted. “We want to find Barney—not ruin him.”

“That’s exactly why Mrs Amling and Dr Larson came here,” Hannah observed over the rim of her martini glass. “They want to hire Jack Keith and you know he doesn’t take clients without a recommendation.”

“He also doesn’t answer his telephone,” Larson said. “Carole knew you used his private-detective service in conjunction with your own legal practice and thought you could put in a word for her.”

Simon finished his drink and held out his glass for a refill from the pitcher Chester was tending. “I’m sure Jack would take the job without my influence,” he said, “but he isn’t available right now. He’s on vacation somewhere out of the States and he never sends postcards.”

“But surely he’s coming back,” Carole said.

“When he’s ready. Jack doesn’t live by any time clock but his own. I’ll try to reach Jack; I’ll even do some probing on my own. I can imagine how you feel, Carole, but this is probably nothing at all. Why don’t you relax with another drink while Wanda and I change, and then we’ll scare up some dinner.”

Carole Amling glanced nervously at the windows where the brief sunset had faded behind an invasion of fast-moving storm clouds. “It’s going to rain soon,” she said. “I have to get home to my boys. Kevin’s fifteen now but Jake’s still pretty much of a baby at times. I’ve had trouble enough trying to explain Barney’s absence without giving them more to worry about.”

BOOK: The Brink of Murder
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