One Minute Past Eight (16 page)

He was moving her toward the door now, but before he could open it she resisted.

“I’m serious,” he said. “What you really should do is get the first plane out of here.”

She tipped her head. She gave him a tentative smile, but her concern still showed.

“And who’s going to get the consul when you’re arrested? Who’s going to arrange for a lawyer?”

“I’ve already had an offer,” he said, and told of Luis Miranda’s threat.

She heard him out, but her young face stayed serious. “Please,” she said. “If something doesn’t happen, you will be arrested before long. Julio didn’t say so, but I know that’s what he’s thinking.”

“All right,” Jeff said and opened the door. “We’ll do something. He’s working on a thing now,” he lied. “As soon as I know something I’ll call you,” he said, and ushered her into the hall.

The knock that drummed on the door no more than five minutes later startled Jeff and he stood waiting until it came again. The threat of arrest that Karen had voiced was still with him, and the feeling had been growing in him that time was running out. No one could be lucky forever. When the knock came the third time he knew this could be it. With no way of guessing who might be outside, he suddenly realized he was tired of the apartment, tired of hiding; if this was a couple of boys from
Segurnal
he might as well get it over with.

This was what was in his mind as he stepped up and opened the door. Then he stepped quickly back, mouth gaping as he brought his stare to focus on the blond and ripely rounded figure of Muriel Miranda.

She was clad in a black silk suit with a short jacket and a snug-fitting skirt. Her straw-blond hair had a carelessly combed look, her tanned, broad-cheeked face was set and unsmiling. The eyes still looked as if they’d had their morning rinse in bluing but they seemed alert and purposeful as they gave him a quick inspection and slid beyond him to scan the room. When she stepped silently past him he voiced the first thing that entered his mind.

“How did you know I was here?”

“I followed your girl friend.”

“But—”

“I decided if anyone knew where you’d been hiding, she would.” She stopped in the center of the room and waited for him to close the door. “You sent her, didn’t you? You thought Luis might have beaten your stepbrother with one of his canes, didn’t you?”

“By the looks of his face, somebody had.”

“Have you got that metal tip?”

Jeff took the golden thimble from his pocket and slipped it over the end of his little finger. She looked at it and then began to unbutton her jacket.

“I got to thinking after your girl left,” she said. “There were only three canes, but Luis likes to ride, and I decided to do some more looking.”

She pushed back the front of the jacket and now Jeff saw the leather loop hanging over the waistband of the skirt. While he stood there wondering what came next, she pulled her stomach in and elevated her chest. With the pressure eased on the skirt, she withdrew a plaited, alligator-leather riding crop. She tapped it lightly across her palm and thrust it at him, her blue gaze bright and intent.

“Try that for size,” she said.

Jeff took the crop. It was heavier than it looked and as he tried to flex it he found it had the hard resiliency of a thin steel spring. When he slipped the ferrule over the end it fitted exactly.

He hefted it again before he put it on the table, the ferrule still in place, and now, recalling his impressions of Luis Miranda, he understood that this was a proper instrument for such a man to use.

“He knew you were planning to go away with Grayson,” Jeff said,

“I guess he did.”

“What changed your mind about your husband?”

She scowled at him. “How do you mean?”

“Sit down a minute,” Jeff indicated a chair by the windows. He watched her hesitate and then accept his suggestion. “I know my stepbrother,” he said. “And maybe a little about your husband. You’d been around when you married him, hadn’t you? You were no shrinking violet. You must have either been in love with him or thought you had a good deal, or was it a little of both?”

She had taken a small gold case from her bag as he was speaking and now she put a cigarette in her mouth and held her face up for a light. When she had it she inhaled. She blew smoke at the ceiling and then she laughed, an abrupt sardonic sound.

“I’d been around all right,” she said. “Ever since I got out of business school I’ve been standing on my own two feet. I started out as a sort of typist-secretary with a hotel. When I had some experience I did a lot of things. I’ve been a secretary, hostess, publicity woman, social director. I worked for hotels in New York, the White Mountains, Florida, Montauk. When they were getting the staff together for the Tamanaco it sounded like a good deal so I came down.

“In the hotel business you see a lot of men. All kinds of men with all kinds of ideas. I learned how to handle them, how to get along with them, how to spot the different types. I thought I’d seen about everything, until I met Luis and changed my mind.” She flicked ashes in the general direction of a metal tray and considered the past a moment before she continued.

“A girl gets tired of standing on her own two feet after a while. Sure, I wanted to get married. I always intended to. But with men around you all the time and plenty of chances, you put it off. You want to be sure you’re getting something good for what you have to give. Well, Luis was different. I didn’t pay too much attention to him at first. He was older and had grown children, but that didn’t seem important because he didn’t look old, or act it.

“He was handsome, distinguished-looking. He came from a fine family and I knew he had money, which isn’t something you readily do without. He was considerate and polite and he was persistent. So”—she lifted one hand and let it fall—“I fell for him. I was more in love with him than I’d ever been before, and I knew something else, which to a woman is important. He loved me; he still does. Probably too much.”

“He was jealous,” Jeff prompted when she hesitated.

“God, yes! But it was more than that. They don’t think the way we do down here. Luis’s idea of a wife was a woman who stayed home and sat on her fanny when he wasn’t around. It didn’t matter if I was bored stiff. It didn’t matter if I got fat or lazy or drank too much—just so I stayed home. When we went to parties, and because of his business that was fairly often, he was always at my elbow. Like a leech. The minute I talked to some attractive guy we had a threesome. It was awful. I told him so. Sometimes I’d scream at him and I couldn’t even get an argument out of him. It is the custom,” she said, mimicking. “One must be proper. The wife of Luis Miranda must conform at all times.

“Well, I wasn’t cut out for the hothouse treatment. I’d been around too much. What good is money when you can’t have any fun with it? He had most of the servants bribed and until recently I couldn’t even drive the car by myself. I was practically a prisoner, and if I could have got my hands on any money I would have left him long ago. But I made up my mind I wasn’t going back to New York empty-handed. I never had any cash. I could charge what I needed. I might have managed the price of a plane ticket, but that wasn’t enough. I figured I’d earned a lot more than that.”

“Where’d you get the tan—Macuto?” Jeff asked, remembering the beach cottage Miranda had mentioned.

“Macuto? Hah!” She mashed out her cigarette and sat back, brow still furrowed and distance in her hard, fixed gaze. “I got it in the back yard. We got a pool with a high fence. I sit out there stripped down as much as I dare and bake.”

“What about those?” Jeff pointed to the emerald solitaire, the platinum watch with the diamond-studded band, the diamond-and-aquamarine cocktail ring.

“The emerald is mine. The others belonged to his first wife. He loans them to me and keeps the rest locked up. He puts them out on consignment from week to week.”

“If he kept you handcuffed the way you say he did, how did you manage those afternoons at Macuto with my stepbrother?”

That brought her eyes into focus. “How did you know?”

“Your husband told me.”

She considered this a moment; then shrugged. “He didn’t know about it at first. I suppose I raised such a fuss he decided to see what would happen if he let down the bars a little. He said I could drive my car without a chauffeur and go out afternoons by myself.”

“By that time you already liked my stepbrother,” Jeff said. “You were beginning to fall for his charming ways—or was it just the idea that he might be the answer to your problem of getting back to the States?”

“Maybe I was a little in love with him,” she said. “But there was never any talk about my going away with him until that detective—”

“Harry Baker.”

“—told him about the stock he was going to get if he went home.”

“You knew about the Las Vegas thing?”

“Yes. Arnold told me everything.”

“Not everything.”

“What?”

Jeff took a breath and then, not quite knowing why he bothered, he spoke of the Arnold Grayson he had known as a boy, the trouble he had been in, the mean and vicious things he had done. He watched the blue eyes open as he spoke his mind but when he finished he knew she was not convinced that she had made a mistake.

“He wasn’t that way with me,” she said. “He admitted he had done some awful things, but he had changed—Men do change,” she said defensively. “Women can help them. And anyway you don’t love a man for what he was, but what he is.”

“And you loved him?”

“Yes. I—” She hesitated and her lips trembled. She stilled them with an obvious effort and her chin came up. “I was willing to run away, wasn’t I? I’m not a complete fool. Who can say in advance that a marriage will work out? I wanted to go with him. I wanted another chance, a new start.”

She stood up abruptly, her lips compressed and her eyes bleak. “If Luis killed him—” She left the thought unfinished but the implication had an ugly sound. “He did, didn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” Jeff said. “They haven’t even finished the autopsy.”

“He wanted to kill Arnold,” she said, as though she had not heard. “He would have done anything to stop him, not because he loved me, but because of that fanatical pride of his.”

“But why should he kill Harry Baker?” Jeff said. “He didn’t need the money, did he?”

“Need it?” she said, her voice harsh and metallic-sounding. “Of course not. But if he took the money, Arnold wouldn’t dare go home. Don’t you understand?”

Her look challenged him as the bitterness built inside her. “Luis knew about the money and why Arnold needed it. He knew a man was coming from Las Vegas to collect. He knew if Arnold couldn’t pay he’d probably be killed. I think that’s what Luis hoped would happen. Without that money to deliver Arnold would have to run, or hide. He was afraid. He had to pay, and unless he did he could not go back and neither could I.”

She stopped, out of breath now, the prettiness twisted from her face. “I’ll find out,” she said. “Don’t worry about that.”

Jeff watched her jerk open the door, a little aghast at the fury of her words. He wanted to tell her to take it easy. He wanted to suggest that she tell the police what she knew. But before he could find the proper words, the door slammed and he was alone. Then, seeing again the riding crop and moving toward it, he was stopped by the jangle of the telephone.

“The autopsy has been completed,” Cordovez announced in his quiet way. “Your stepbrother did not die as a result of the beating.”

“Then what did kill him?”

“Asphyxia is the term the doctor used.”

Jeff mouthed the word silently as he tried to define it. He understood that this would apply to a man who had inhaled gas. Would it also apply if a man had been strangled?

His thoughts hung there as his mind snapped back and he recalled the jacket that had been flung on the floor not far from Arnold Grayson’s head as he lay dead on the office floor. Earlier, when Jeff had knocked him down, the coat had been draped over the back of a chair.

“You are still there?” Cordovez asked.

“I’m listening,” Jeff said.

“There is one more detail.”

“The nails of the first and second finger of the right hand were discolored. Scrapings taken from them were examined. These revealed blood and tissue and hair.”

“Hair?” Jeff said. “Like from your head?”

“Much more tiny, and of a finer diameter. Such as might come from the back of a man’s hand—or his wrist.”

Jeff’s mind considered this; then moved on, “See if you can find out about one more thing.”

“I will try.”

“There was a jacket on the floor by the body,” Jeff said. “See if you can find out if there were any bloodstains on it.”

“Very well,” Cordovez replied. “And you will remain there until I come?”

“I’ll be here “

Cordovez said that would be a good idea. He said he did not know how long he would be, but when he came he would bring sandwiches and beer.

KAREN HOLMES took Jeff’s advice when she got back to the hotel shortly before noon. She felt hot and tired and discouraged and the swimming pool looked so inviting when she glanced down at it from her window that she peeled off her clothes and pulled on her suit. Taking her cap, a straw bag, and her key, she went down the back way, using the stairs.

Only a half-dozen of the web-seated aluminum chairs were in use, and when she’d been given two towels by the attendant, she selected a chaise which had been left adjusted in a flat position and deposited her things.

With the edges of her hair tucked up under her white cap, she dived from one side of the pool, stretching out the dive as long as she could and finding the water pleasantly refreshing after the first cool shock. She paddled about for five minutes and then stretched out on the chaise, face down. She reversed her position twenty minutes later when the hot sun began to spread its heat on her skin.

When she had taken her second dip and sat toweling herself she decided not to bother dressing for lunch, so she walked over to one of the round tables at the far end and caught the eye of one of the waitresses. She ordered a salad and iced tea, turning her back to the pool as she ate so she could look out over the distant rooftops of the city.