The savage salome (13 page)

"That's final?" I snaried.

"I'm sorry, Danny, but it is," she said in a low, determined voice.

I got up from the couch and walked over to the table, then made myself another drink with minute attention to detail.

"Danny?" There was a question in her voice.

"I'll call you a cab," I said tersely.

"You're mad at me?"

"Why would I be mad at you, honey?" I spun around and glared at her murderously. "You hired me to find the killer. I nearly got myself killed—took a beating from a punk like Benny just to prove a point—and now you chicken out when all we need to clinch the deal is your own testimony."

I bared my teeth at her. "I'm not mad at you, Margot, honey—I'm wild, crazy-mad at you. Any moment now I'll start and kick your teeth in—and you deserve it. So maybe you'd better get going while you're still in one piece!"

She sat bolt upright in the chair, her eyes widening with fright. "I'm not going any place," she said nervously. "You're going to stay close to me all the time—remember?"

"I changed my mind," I sneered coldly. "Like that! The way you change yours—remember?"

"You can't!" she said tautly. "You wouldn't dare—"

"Listen, stupid!" I grated. "I found the killer like you wanted—so you owe me another thousand dollars. Apart from that, I'm through—finished—you dig?"

"I'm not leaving!" she said in a small voice.

"You can walk out, or get thrown out on your can," I told her. "Either way, I'm not worried."

Margot looked at me with her lower lip trembling for a couple of seconds, then stood up slowly.

"All right," she whispered. "Do you mind if I use your bathroom first?"

"Help yourself," I said coldly.

She disappeared into the bathroom, her head held high in a pathetic dignity of despair. After she'd gone I wondered if the heel my old man had planted so firmly in my genes was showing through again. I drank most of the fresh drink in one gulp and figured what the hell—I was only playing it according to Margot's rules, anyway.

I raised the glass to my lips again to drink a silent toast to my old man's personality, when the bathroom door opened and Margot came back into the living room.

The glass shpped from between my fingers and bounced on the rug, spilling good bourbon with careless abandon. Margot gave me a brief, disdainful glance and kept on walking.

"Hey!" I gulped frantically. "What did you do with your clothes?"

She turned her back on me and headed straight for the bedroom, giving me a connoisseur's view of her rounded buttocks in free flight. The moment before she closed the door, she leaned her head out and smiled sweetly at me. "Good night, Danny," she breathed huskily. Then the door shut tight.

My paralyzing inertia lasted maybe five more seconds, then I burned up the rug in a straight line toward the bedroom, flung the door almost off its hinges, and came to a skidding halt beside the bed.

Margot pulled the covers up decorously in front of her and smiled lazily. "You forgot something, Danny?"

"What kind of crazy stimt are you trying to pull here?" I gurgled furiously. "I told you to get the hell out of my apartment—and you're going!"

She sat up slowly, letting the covers fall back to her waist, exposing small, pointed breasts. "Like this?" she asked gently.

"If that's the way you want it!" I snarled.

"O.K." She shrugged the satin-smooth shoulders in a slow, sensual movement that dried my throat just watching.

"I'll go," she said coolly. "Straight to the next door apartment and hammer on their door until somebody answers. I'll tell them the whole sordid story of how you tricked me into your apartment—your very own second cousin from Wichita Falls yet—then tore off all my clothes

—then threw me out because I wouldn't surrender my virtue to your beastly desires!"

The next-door apartment, I remember numbly, was leased by a retired West Pointer whose hobby was skeet-shooting—and his wife was an angular, hard-eyed dame who spent most of her time up and down Broadway, handing out reUgious tracts.

"O.K." I muttered hopelessly. "You win!"

"I knew you were only kidding, Danny," she said smugly. "Underneath, you're just a big, softhearted kid!"

"From Wichita Falls yet," I moaned.

I turned around and shuffled toward the door slowly and was two-thirds the way there when Margot spoke crisply.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"To get stoned, then sleep on the couch," I said shortly.

"No, you don't!" She had enough power of command in her voice to make the military man next door turn green with envy. "Come back here!" she ordered sharply.

Numbly I about-faced and retraced my steps until I reached the side of the bed again.

"I need protection, remember?" she said firmly. "That means you stay close to me, Danny Boyd, real close!"

"Yeah?" I said hoarsely.

She patted the empty expanse beside her, then threw back the covers invitingly.

"Real close," she repeated in a soft, suddenly husky voice.

That sudden deeper note was like the cry of the wild goose in my book—like the call of the wild the true hunter can never resist. I was about to follow a policy of non-resistance to the hilt when my subconscious reared up and threw me a fast curve, and it felt like somebody had tossed a wet fish in my face.

"Why, did you say, Tybolt was murdered?" I asked slowly.

Margot stared at me in open-mouthed amazement. "A time like this—and you're still detecting?" she said in a worried voice. "I must be losing my grip—" she checked up with a swift glance that detailed the terrain from her shoulder to ankle "—or something!"

"You said he was killed because he talked to me—

told me he was being blackmailed by Harvey—right?"

"Sure." She blinked bewildered. "We both know it."

"It doesn't make any sense," I said reluctantly. "I met him on the way to your dressing room during intermission and if he was going to say something to me, he never got the chance—he saw Harvey and he ran. Harvey saw it. Tybolt was scared to death of him and Earl knew it."

"That didn't necessarily stop him making sure," Margot said, pouting.

"If he was about to murder anyone, you were the logical choice," I went on. "He knew you'd hired me to find the murderer. He could guess I was working on you to testify about the blackmail, and chances were I'd gotten you ready to sign."

"But he didn't have the opportunity because you stuck so close to me the whole time?" Margot asked, then shivered delightfully and puUed the covers up over her shoulders again.

"He had plenty of opportunity," I said. "You were aJone in your apartment last night—it would've been easy then."

"What are you trying to do—^frighten me to death?" she protested.

"Harvey blackmailed you, Donna Alberta, and Rex Tybolt into his opera," I went on. "Because with your names and talent, he knew he'd have a smash hit. Suppose he didn't kill Kendall—^he'd still be worried sick somebody would uncover the blackmail and figure he'd murdered the producer because he'd done the same. Then a nosy private eye starts hinting as much—Harvey panics and tries to knock him off. It doesn't prove Harvey killed Kendall—it only proves how scared he was that somebody would make him the fall guy."

Margot shook her head helplessly. "If that makes any kind of sense, Danny, I don't see it."

"I've been so goddamn sure it was Harvey all along," I said bleakly, "I stopped thinking two days back! Rex Tybolt—alive and singing for Harvey—^was an investment Earl went to a hell of a lot of trouble in Acapulco and all to get. Why would he kill off his own investment?"

"I wouldn't know," Margot said and yawned widely. "So if it wasn't Earl Harvey, then who was it? Or do you

think they aren't dead at all—Paul was just kidding and Tybolt's decapitation was all done by mirrors?"

I walked up and down beside the bed, beating my brains into a souffle. Three suspects, Chase had said, only three with no alibi at all for Tybolt's murder. So if I eliminated Harvey, I had a choice between Kasplin and Helen Mills, and there wasn't much to choose between them. A couple of weirdos with enough neuroses to keep a private sanitarium working a double shift for the next twenty years. Neither of them would need a logical motive to murder even—so maybe I should stop looking for one.

Better, I should go back to the beginning and start over, look at it from their viewpoint. It started with the Pekingese, Niki, who was stolen, killed, and returned to Donna Alberta in a gift-wrapped package, then— The sudden horrible realization of what I was doing hit me right between the eyes. Danny Boyd—the profile—the guy no dame can resist, was pacing up and down the floor muttering to himself while right beside him a beautiful, non-resisting dame patiently waited.

I turned toward the bed, tilting my head a little so she'd get the profile kind of head on and full impact; then I smiled with all the warmth and appreciation of a guy who feels honored by the nonresistance of a beautiful doll Hke her.

"Honey," I said tenderly, "I must have been out of my mind—^forgive me?"

Margot lay with her head averted from me and didn't answer. I leaned closer and said, "Margot—honey?" There was still no answer. I leaned closer still until my lips were touching her small, shell-pink ear. "Margot, darling, I know I was crazy, but give me the chance to make up for it?"

If she wanted to play it cute I didn't really mind—I put my hand under her chin and turned her head gently toward me. Her face was completely relaxed, the eyes closed, her lips parted in a tender smile.

A couple of seconds later I switched out the light and went out to the lonely couch in the Uving room. You can get around most any objection a girl can offer except one —a snore is final.

Chapter Eleven

I WAS IN THE KITCHEN, THE FORTIFIED

vitamin mixture already made and the coffee about right, when Margot appeared in the doorway. She wore my silk robe and it looked better on her than me, Uke it does with all the girls.

"Good morning," she smiled sleepily. "Did the Great Brain solve the mystery last night?"

"You snore," I said coldly.

"I was stood up." Her smile retrogressed rapidly to a giggle. "It served you right!"

She saw the vitaminized mixture and poured herself a glass, with a hungry glint in her eyes. "I die without orange-juice in the mornings," she said, then drank it down in one gulp.

I watched the sequence of reactions flit across her face, starting with doubt and finishing with horror.

"What did you put into it?" she asked finally in a strangled voice.

"It's not orange juice," I said reproachfully. "It's the stuff I use to clean the silver."

For a moment she paled, then the mixture hit the spot and an appreciative look came into her eyes. "I think I could use another one," she said casually. Her hand grabbed the jug a full second ahead of mine.

I tried to get along with a cup of coffee and was making out by the time she'd emptied the whole damn

jug.

"That's terrific, Danny-boy!" she said brightly. "You'll

have to give me the formula!" She lifted her arms above her head and stretched luxuriantly. "I feel great!"

"You need food," I said tersely. "There's some in the icebox, I think."

"Coffee will be fine," she said.

My second cup tasted better and I figured I could maybe survive without the vitamins after all, and Ht a cigarette to keep the coffee company. Then I got that uneasy feeling of being closely watched by something outside the barriers of the normal world. I Ufted my head sharply and found Margot's eyes staring into mine with a glittering intensity.

"Danny," she said throatily, "I've got so many vitamins, they're going to waste!"

"Don't brag!" I snarled.

Her smile was much too brilliant for nine-thirty in the morning. "Don't be a piker, Danny-boy, Danny-the-Brain—the slowpoke ole lover! Let's go put them cute little vitamins to work, huh, Danny?"

"Stop kidding yourself," I told her. "You're mistaking a large slug of gin for vitamins. All you've got is calories— lots of energy but no staying power. Drink some coffee!"

"You're real romantic in the mornings!" she said acidly.

"I got work to do," I explained. "That thinking last night lost me a thousand clams of your money—I have to get it back."

"That's why you're all dressed and everything?" she asked cleverly.

"Check," I said patiently. "You just sit and drink coffee for a while."

I went out to the living room and called the office. Fran answered in her cool, drawling voice that always tones up my vertebrae.

"Somewhere," I said solemnly, "in this vast city a lonely woman lies in a hospital bed—"

"Pardon me, Mr. Boyd," Fran interrupted efficiently, "but don't you mean *lay'—the generic term for most of your female friends?"

"Not this time," I said honestly. "This one's name is Marge Harvey and my guess is she's the older sister of Mack the Knife. She's been hospitalized the last twenty-four, thirty-six hours with suspected pneumonia."

"You left her out in the cold?" Fran said sadly. "Mr. Boyd—I'm surprised!"

"I left her in the tunnel of love," I said happily, "but you wouldn't beheve that."

"If I can believe what happened at the opera last night, I guess I can believe that," Fran said. "It must have been some night."

"I'll tell you all about it, honey, but not now," I said impatiently. "This Marge Harvey is important, Fran—I want you to find out where she is. Then ask the hospital if I can see her sometime around noon. If they make it tough say I'm her lawyer and it's vital she sign some document—you know, make it up as you go along but make it sound real good."

"Will do," Fran said crisply. "Where do I find you?"

"Don't bother," I said, "I'll be in the office around eleven-thirty."

I got the .38 Masterpiece and its harness out of the bureau and strapped it under my coat not that I figured I'd need the gun; it was a precaution in case Earl Harvey should get real stupid. On my way out of the apartment, I looked in on the kitchen again.