The Polka Dot Nude (7 page)

About fifteen minutes later, Brad jogged past my window. He’d changed back into his jogging outfit, and I knew his kitchen would be sparkling clean too. I wondered what he planned to make for dinner. Then I turned my attention back to my work and forgot Brad O’Malley for a whole ten minutes.

CHAPTER 5

The reason I thought of Brad was that I needed the diary he’d forgotten to return. He’d be jogging much longer than I could afford to wait, so I went over to get it myself.

I was surprised to hear the clatter of typewriter keys when I reached his door. He couldn’t have jogged four miles already! Simcoe! He’d sneaked in around the back of the cottage so I wouldn’t see him, and was checking for damages. But typing? Maybe the missis was with him. With a mischievous smile at the opportunity of catching them in the act, I quietly opened the door.

“Brad!” I exclaimed. There at the desk sat Brad, still in his jogging suit, typing away at sixty or seventy words a minute. “How’d you get back here?”

“Audrey!” He looked up, startled, and rushed to the door. The startled expression was tinged with guilt around the edges. “I took a short circuit today. Just looped around that little stand of cedars and came home. My leg’s bothering me. I wrenched it last night when I was docking Simcoe’s boat.”

“You didn’t say anything about it this morning.”

He had his hand on my elbow, blocking the path to his desk. “It didn’t act up till I tried to jog. What can I do for you?”

“I came for that diary of Rosalie’s. The one about gaining weight.”

“Have you got that far already?” he asked, staring.

“Not really. I’m listing various names and occupations of her lovers as a lure of what’s to come. What are you writing?”

“I decided to jot down some ideas about Eliot—you remember we talked about it.”

“You jot fast. You should get yourself an electric machine like mine. I thought it was the Simcoes in here, snooping around.”

“No, just me. I’ll get the diary.” He went to his desk to get it. Funny it was on the desk, where he was working on the Eliot jottings.

“Thanks.”

He didn’t invite me in, or seem interested in casual chitchat. In fact, I had a distinct impression my intrusion was unwelcome. Subtle little things like opening the door and pushing me out before I mentioned leaving. “See you tonight,” he called after me. “Dinner at seven-thirty——come early for a drink.”

“Sure, see you.”

“Would you mind bringing another of Rosalie’s diaries? They make good light reading.”

“Better than philosophy, huh? Sure, I’ll bring one.”

I forgot the visit as soon as I got back to work. It wasn’t till the devastating phone call from Eileen that I remembered it. “Audrey, how’s it going?” she asked.

“I should be done by the end of August—no problem.”

“That’s too late. The rumor is that Belton is a month ahead of us. Apparently Mason’s sequestered himself somewhere and is writing like crazy. It’ll knock a hundred thousand from our sales if he gets his out in time to cash in on all the excitement of Rosalie’s death. Can you speed it up?”

“I’m writing as fast as I can. You know Mason’s book will be a mishmash of old magazine articles, Eileen. I don’t think he’ll tap our market much.”

“Let’s be realistic. This isn’t the Shakespeare audience we’re after. Rosalie’s fans will buy the first thing that comes along, and won’t buy another a month later. Mason spices his up so well, you know, to appeal to the mass audience. Keep in touch. And about that illegitimate child, Audrey, see if you can pin it down. That’s one item most people don’t know about.”

“There’s nothing positive about it in her diary.”

“Well, go through her letters with a fine-tooth comb. Maybe you could give that Lorraine Taylor a call.”

“All that fine-tooth combing and calling isn’t going to help my schedule.”

“Do your best.”

“Sure,” I said, and hung up.

I hate you, Hume Mason, wherever you are. Panic had escalated to red alert, making work nearly impossible. I paced the room a minute to calm my nerves before going back to the typewriter. I bet Hume Mason had a word processor. How else could he pound out those execrable books so fast? Through the window, I glanced at Brad’s cottage. It was a gorgeous day. Why wasn’t he out working on his tan? Probably still in the cottage, typing away on his Eliot notes.

I wondered if those literary things paid well. He sure got a lot of money somewhere, with his Mercedes and his Guccis and his French restaurant. He couldn’t possibly do all that on a professor’s salary and a couple of academic essays. He must write something else as well. Maybe articles for
Playboy
or something, under an assumed name. Was that why he was in such an almighty hurry to get me out of the cottage this morning? Not that there was anything wrong with writing for
Playboy.
More power to him. Some of the top writers did it.

No, it must be something else. I remembered Rosalie’s diary, there on the desk by his typewriter. I remembered his startled face when he asked if I’d got to that part already.
Alarm
wasn’t too strong a word for his reaction. He was very interested in those diaries, in everything about Rosalie.

An unpleasant, niggling suspicion was scratching at the back of my brain. If he hadn’t gone jogging today, who was to say he ever went? Maybe he just ran around the cedars and sneaked back home every day. Maybe he hadn’t spent last night fishing either—the lights were on in his cottage, and he hadn’t caught anything. Maybe he was in the cottage all the time, pounding away like a fiend at his typewriter. In a great hurry—to beat me!
He was Hume Mason,
holed up here in the country like me, to bang out his cheap, unauthorized book. He’d discovered somehow I was coming here with the research, and he came trotting after me. That’s why the fashion model was living in a hovel! He was putting on this whole infatuated act to get at my research material!

The bastard! I glared at the cottage window. What an ass I was to have been taken in so easily. Bought with a couple of meals and a few kisses. I’d been seduced as surely as if he’d had his way with my body. I was beyond working. I couldn’t think of anything but his trickery, and every detail bolstered my theory. His strong reaction when we heard of Rosalie’s death—he looked like a zombie. He knew he had to get his book hammered out faster. And he even had the gall to ask me to bring another diary to him that night, to devour while I innocently slept, wasting time.

I ran back to my typewriter, but nobody could work when her adrenaline was pushing through her skull. My fingers were shaking with anger. I got up to go and confront him, then stopped at the door. He’d deny it, of course. He’d pull out that blasted dull book on Eliot and claim that was the source of his wealth. I couldn’t prove otherwise, either, unless I used my wits. For that matter, I could be wrong. I was consumed with a desire to read what he was writing. I wouldn’t let on I knew, but the first time he left his cottage, I’d go in and see for myself.

I forced myself back to work. His flashing eyes laughed at me between the lines. Every word he’d said came back to taunt me. He’d stood up for Hume Mason, intimated he was no worse than me when I put the man down. I knew there had to be a lead lining to my little cloud of pleasure. Well, here it was, raining pellets on me. For a few distraught hours, I’d write a line, then look to the cottage to see if Brad was leaving, reread what I’d written, and strike it out. It was hopeless. Nobody could write under these conditions. Barbara Cartland would run dry.

I phoned Lorraine Taylor, and heard she was in bed with a sedative. I went through the letters, trying to find some evidence that Rosalie had actually had a child, but there was nothing except that question about her feeling better. The word
nausea
was used. Morning sickness certainly caused nausea. I turned to the diary in which she’d mentioned gaining weight, and couldn’t find even that passage. I knew I hadn’t imagined it. I remembered mentioning it to Brad . . . and he’d borrowed that particular diary. That was the specific one he wanted. He’d removed the pages! I pulled the sheets back as far as they’d go, and sure enough, two pages had been razored out, very neatly. So Hume Mason was even going to have that coup!

It was suddenly noon hour, and I stopped for a can of soup. Brad was probably simmering himself a duck à l’orange. I was supposed to be having dinner with him tonight. I wouldn’t go, of course, but I’d let him waste a few hours preparing it. I couldn’t face a whole afternoon of waiting for him to leave his cottage. I’d go as soon as I finished my soup.

About two spoonfuls before that happened, he came to my door. He didn’t open it, but just called through the screen. “I’m off to town to get some Grand Marnier for dinner. Do you need anything, Audrey? Cigarettes . . ."

I kept my voice as close to normal as I could, to allay suspicion. “I’m out of beer.”

“I’ll pick some up. See you at seven.”

“You bet.”

Through the screen I saw him back the Mercedes around and fly down the road, leaving the inevitable cloud of dust behind it. It was time to sneak into his cottage. Breaking and entering was the official term for what I had in mind. An indictable offense. But if it had been a capital one, it wouldn’t have stopped me; I was too mad.

As soon as he was gone, I darted to his cottage. The front door was locked as tight as a drum. That in itself was suspicious. I went around, checking windows, and found the bedroom one wasn’t impossible to lift. It wasn’t easy either, but by exerting all my strength, I finally moved it. Scrambling in a window at chest level wasn’t easy or comfortable. I tore my shirt and scraped my legs through the jeans, but at last I found myself on the floor inside the cottage, headfirst.

I took a cursory look around the bedroom. A small gold-framed picture of a woman on the beside table caught my attention. At that point, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been himself with a wife and kids, but it was only a woman. I recognized the sweetly smiling face. I’d been looking at it enough lately. It was a photograph of Rosalie, at the height of her beauty. Why would he have a picture of Rosalie by his bed, if not to imbue himself with her aura? He must have actually interviewed someone who knew her, and stolen the picture.

I hurried into the living room, heading straight for the desk, in hopes of finding the missing pages. A sheet of paper in the battered machine with neat, double-spaced typing on it caught my attention. My eye encountered no “prelapsarian” here, no “specious good.” What I read with deep interest was “From the rim of her low-cut scarlet gown, a creamy bosom flowed gently as she came timidly toward him.” The passage continued with many a throb and quiver, as the bosom was aided from the rim, molding itself compliantly to the warmth of his fingers, and engendering a shudder in his loins. Soon his manhood was swelling uncontrollably. I read on, till it—the manhood—was searing her vitals with a sweet sting. Despite her virginal timidity, she enjoyed the whole process to the point of ecstasy.

I was furious that he was fictionalizing Rosalie’s sexual exploits with the breathless “I was there” quality and Day-glo colors expected from Hume Mason. If this was a sample of his book, it was garbage, and would be snatched up by the thousands, leaving
Queen of Hearts
a mile behind.

A sheaf of pages was stacked beside the machine. With curiosity rampaging, I quickly looked through the sheets. There was no sign of the missing diary pages. It seemed to be Rosalie’s affair with the judge he was writing, though the man’s actual name wasn’t on any of the pages. She called him “my darling” and he called her “you eternal woman.” There was nothing like that in the diaries. Mason was unscrupulous, using every cheap trick in the book, and inventing a few of his own.

I took a quick look through the drawer for letters, hoping to get the scheduled publication date. Right in the top drawer there was a long envelope with the Belton Publishing Company name in the corner. I didn’t hesitate a second before opening it. A Ms. Barlow was urging him on to the complete “the manuscript discussed by phone today” at top speed. No date was given, but the letter was dated two weeks before. Just time to learn that I was doing my book, and for them to discuss it by phone. The size of the advance staggered me. No wonder he drove a Mercedes. He could have driven a team of Rolls-Royces if he’d felt like it. Ms. Barlow had signed herself “Love, Vicki.”

I rammed the letter back in the envelope, slammed the drawer, and gritted my teeth till I had stopped panting with anger. I did a quick sweep of the rest of the cottage, but couldn’t find the diary pages. Even the kitchen—including the freezer, where I discovered a pile of frozen gourmet dinners wrapped up in aluminum foil and labeled. The ones on top were spaghetti Caruso—two of them. I had a pretty good idea what treat he planned to serve tonight, and let on he’d made it himself. He never took his head up from that damned typewriter, except to scatter rugs and tablecloths around the place.

I didn’t know how long I’d been there, but the town where Brad was getting Grand Marnier wasn’t far away, so I went back to the window and crawled out, landing in the scrub beneath on my hands. I couldn’t get the window completely closed. I left it open an inch and ran home, with a look down the road to make sure he wasn’t coming yet. I sat on the lumpy sofa, hugging myself with my arms, as though to keep in my body all the vituperation that was longing to spew forth. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him with my bare hands,” I said two or three times, till the first wave of fury had dulled. “I can’t believe I’ve been such an idiot.”

Various revenges were plotted and rejected as too time-consuming. I wanted to write up phony diaries and expose Mason to lawsuits. I wanted to run back and burn his manuscript, to phone Eileen Haddon and demand more money, to sit down and finish my own book that same day and outdo him in pornography. Him and his ranting of helping me find a significant theme for my book! The
hypocrisy
of it— he just didn’t want me to wander into his area of sleaze. In the end, I was too tired and defeated for any of these schemes. Mason was halfway through his book, if he was working chronologically. Chapters ahead of me. I opened a Coke, and wiped away the lone tear that trickled down my cheek. Mixed in with the rest was a regretful memory of my summer romance that never was, and never would be. He’d only found me “sensational” to get hold of my research. He thought I was a gullible dope—and he was right. First Garth, now Brad. Did I wear a sign on my butt that said “Kick here”?