Gat Heat (2 page)

This was the rear of the house, so—following Halstead's instructions—I walked to the end of the path and over a bricked patio to the rear door, through it and inside. Stairs rose on my left, and I went up them to the closed door opposite the head of the stairs. I knocked, waited, knocked again, and then went in.

It appeared to be the den, all right: large, masculine, with a dark cork ceiling and cedar-paneled walls, two small bookcases, a few hunting prints, and a hideous etching of some dead ducks. The carpet was shaggy and brown, and the couch and several chairs were big, squat, heavy. There was a desk in one corner, a few papers on its top, and a TV set glared from the wall. But that was all. No Halstead, nobody.

I went downstairs again, out the back door and stood for a moment, thinking about that hunch. In a few seconds there was the soft pad of feet behind me. As I turned, the door opened and out came a gorgeous naked tomato. It was the same one who'd been alone in the pool.

“
Whoo!
” I said.

She was eating a big, red, juicy-looking apple. “I still don't know what that means,” she said.

“Well,” I said, “ah … Uh …”

“Want a bite?”

“Don't mind if I do.”

She handed me the apple. I handed it back. “No, thanks.”

“But you said—”

“I changed my mind. I thought it was a tomato.”

“You don't know
what
you want, do you?”

“I wouldn't say that. Where's Mr. Halstead?”

She lifted her brows and rolled her eyes, thinking. “I don't know,” she said finally. “Haven't seen him for a while.”

“How long a while?”

“Hour or so.”

“How about Mrs. Halstead? Do you know where I could find her?”

She turned and pointed with her apple. And quite a lot of tomato. “Right down the hall there,” she said. “Second door on the right.” Mrs. Spork—or, as I preferred to think of her, Sybil—added, “At least she was. I saw her go in there a while ago.”

Then she took a big crunchy bite out of her apple and walked past me. I watched her till she reached the pool and jumped in feet first, apple and all. You aren't supposed to swim right after eating, I thought. But, then, these people seemed to do lots of things people aren't supposed to do.

Musing thus, I walked down the hall to the second door. It was open. The room was a bedroom, and at first I thought there was nobody in it. But there was one person, a woman—presumably Mrs. Halstead—in the bed. I walked over there.

She was sleeping in the nude beneath a pink sheet and spread, both of which had been pushed, or slipped, down to her waist. She was a strawberry blonde about thirty years old, with a pretty face and at least half of a splendid figure.

It was a jolly sight, but you don't stand around staring at sleeping tomatoes when their covers have slipped. Not much, you don't. But it didn't seem right not to let her know somebody was here—especially under the circumstances.

So I cleared my throat. Not very loud. In fact, I couldn't hear it myself, which proabably explained why she didn't wake up.

I cleared my throat again, then hummed a jazzy little tune. Didn't do any good. So I reached over and waggled her shoulder a bit.

She opened her eyes, blinked.

“Hello,” I said brightly. “Are you Mrs. Halstead?”

She said something like, “Glammbl,” and her eyelids went up and down about eight or nine times, very slowly, and the last time were either staying down or moving so slowly I couldn't detect any movement whatever.

She knew I was there, though. I was still kind of shaking her shoulder. “Hey,” I said. “Hey. All sorts of things are going on around here. Things you ought to know about. Hey.”

She got her eyes open again.

“Are you Mrs. Halstead?” I said. “You better be. I'm not going to look much longer. I'm going to say the hell with it, and go for a swim or something.”

“Who are
you?
” she said, sort of mushy.

“I'm Shell Scott.”

“I'm Mrs. Halstead.”

“How do you do?”

She made a little effort to cover herself up. Not much. She sort of plucked at the pink sheet, but not very pluckily.

“There's a dead guy out there,” I said, pointing.

“What?”

“A dead guy. He's out there near the path. Under a hydrangea bush.”

“A what?”

“A hydrangea bush.”

“No—there's a
what
out there?”

“A dead guy. I thought you ought to know about it.”

For some reason, I counted the seconds as she stared with her eyes—finally—wide open. You know the way you count seconds; that's the way I was doing:
One
-two-three-four;
two-
two-three-four;
three
-two-three-four;
four
-two-three—that was all.

By my count, it took three and three-quarters seconds, and then
zowie!
She was standing about fourteen feet from the bed—behind me, even—sort of in a crouch and yelling, “Dead? DEAD?
Dead?
”

I'm not certain I even saw her move. One moment I was looking down at her, kind of waggling her shoulder, and then she was behind me making an awful racket.

“You ought to at least put some shorts on,” I said. “I don't know what's going on here, but I sure like it.”

She looked down at herself.

One
-two-three-four;
two
-two—
zowie!

Yeah, back in bed. Covers up under her chin. Couple more of those and she'd be wide awake. Or clear over the hill and halfway down the next valley. Never did see a gal move like that.

“Who's dead?” she asked me.

“Beats me. I just got here. Your husband phoned me about half an hour ago and asked me to come out. But I'm beginning to doubt—”

“George phoned you?”

“That's right. Didn't you know?”

She shook her head. “Why would George phone you? Especially tonight …” She let it trail off. She got a kind of tortured look. After a few seconds she said, “Did you … see anybody else outside? Or—inside? Any—people?”

“Some.”

“What … ah … how did they look?”

“Naked. That's the best one-word description I can think of. I suppose that's what you meant. Aside from that, well, they looked … happy, I guess.”

She blinked her eyes some more, rapidly this time. Then she said, “Who did you say you were?”

“Shell Scott.”

“Why did my husband call you?”

“He didn't explain. He was going to tell me the details when I got here. I'm a private investigator, and he merely—”

“You're a detective?” I nodded, and she said, “My God. What in the world would George want with a
detective?
”

I shrugged. Mrs. Halstead was wide awake now, and apparently trying to think about three or four things at once. In a moment she said, “Dead … Were you
serious?
Somebody's
dead?
”

“Yes, I was serious.”

“Shouldn't we do something?”

“Sure we should. That's why I came in here and waggled you.”

“Waggled?”

“I'll turn my back if you want to put on a robe or something. Of course, if you don't give a hoot—”

She gave a hoot. I turned my back, and in half a minute she was clad in a rosy-pink bathrobe and following me down the path outside.

“There he is,” I said.

She stepped off the path, parted the shrubbery, and looked down at the dead man.

Then she turned and stepped back by me. “That's George,” she said. “It's my husband.”

Her tone was level, soft and apparently controlled. Her features weren't twisted into an expression of pain or shock. But I waited a few seconds before saying anything. And then there was no need to say anything.

Her lips puffed very slightly as breath pushed through them. Her head rolled to one side. Then she collapsed and fell suddenly, loosely, like an empty sack.

But I'd had a hunch she might keel over, and was able to catch her as she fell. Which made two of my hunches, so far, which had been proved correct.

I carried Mrs. Halstead into the house, laid her gently on the bed, and waited for her to come around again.

3

Twenty minutes later Mrs. Halstead was not only back almost to normal, but she was my client.

She claimed to be extremely curious to know why her husband had phoned me—if he really had, as she put it, which gave me something else to wonder about—but also, and naturally enough, she wanted me to do everything I could to find out who had killed him, and why. I told her there was probably little I might come up with that the police wouldn't get to first, but that I'd certainly do what I could.

By then I had called the police and they were on their way from the Hollywood Division, but I'd delayed my call briefly in deference to my client's wishes.

When she'd recovered enough to talk intelligently, she had asked me to please,
please
refrain from filling the premises with all kinds of cops until she could arrange for her guests to get their clothes on.

It seemed a reasonable request, so I told her, “O.K., but I'll have to tell the police some of the, ah, clues have been covered up.”

“You wouldn't!”

“I've got to.”

“You mustn't!”

“Look, Mrs. Halstead, first of all I'd tell them anyway. If that seems like betrayal, fire me. But in the second place, the police will find out whether I tell them or not—and it's better for all concerned if I do tell them.”

“I don't understand.”

“When the officers get here and find everybody clad in the height of fashion except the … the victim, this will give them pause. They will query the guests—and you—about this unusual circumstance. And they will find out precisely what the score was, believe it or not. Contrary to opinion bruited about in some areas, the police are just as bright as the rest of us—and in some areas, a good deal brighter. You want them to find out their own way and land on your guests—and you—like a ton of bricks?”

“Oh. Well …”

“Yeah. So, O.K., tell the people the party's over—just so long as nobody, but nobody, leaves here.”

She agreed. In fact, even before she passed the word around—caught me a little off guard there, by the way—I had her give me a list of the names and addresses of all the people present.

It turned out there had been, aside from the host and hostess, five other married couples enjoying the Halsteads' hospitality. They were the Warrens, Pryers, Smiths, Bersudians, and Sporks.

I went along with Mrs. Halstead while she rounded up the guests. She made a lot of racket, yelling names and things like “Lookout!” and “Yaah, here we come!” as we walked, which I thought interesting.

Even so, we found dark-skinned Mr. Bersudian with redheaded Mrs. Warren; they were sitting in a brightly-striped canvas-covered swing, but they weren't swinging, merely looking about blankly and breathing through their open mouths.

We found Mr. Warren and Mrs. Pryer lying on their stomachs, side by side on green grass beneath a weeping willow tree, plucking industriously at the grass, as though they were uncontrollably superstitious and each blade was a four-leaf clover.

Mr. Pryer came out of the house with Mrs. Bersudian, hand in hand, he saying over and over, “Wuzzamatter?”

And Mr. Spork, the old fuddy-duddy, was in the pool with, curious to relate, Mrs. Spork.

Perhaps more curious to relate, we found no Smiths. Mr. and Mrs. Smith were not on the premises at all.

Since I was now working for Mrs. Halstead, I took the opportunity to question Mr. and Mrs. Pryer, once they pulled themselves together, so to speak. Mrs. Halstead was still looking for the Smiths. I stood near a green chaise longue, on which Hugh and Betty Pryer sat.

He was in his middle forties, a short, solidly built man with thinning brown hair and long sideburns, good teeth and dark brown eyes that would probably have been intelligent and alert if he hadn't been so stewed. His wife was a few years younger, a slightly plump woman with small blue eyes and the faint beginning of a double chin, but with a rousing good figure nonetheless. She was quite sober.

So I talked mainly to Hugh Pryer.

They knew George Halstead was dead—they and everybody else here; Mrs. Halstead had blabbed that at the top of her lungs before I could stop her—and for the first minute or so, the Pryers merely expressed their shock and total ignorance of anything and everything connected with the homicide, Finally I said to Mr. Pryer, “What about the people who aren't here now? What can you tell me about them?”

He shook his head, as though trying, unsuccessfully, to clear it, then said thickly, “Well, lessee. The Whists and Rileys dropped out. The Kents and Nelsons weren't here at all tonight, though. That's—”

He chopped it off because little Betty Pryer got him pretty good in the ribs with her elbow. It was neatly done, hardly noticeable at all. But I noticed it.

She looked up at me, smiling sweetly. “The Smiths?” she said. “That's John and Nella. I haven't any idea what—”

Hugh looked at her. “Smiths?”

“Yes, you … dear,” she said. “That's who Mr. Scott is asking us about. John and Nella, who were here earlier, but who aren't here now.”

“I didden even know they left,” he said.

His wife was right, I had indeed been asking about the Smiths. But I was now more interested in Hugh's woozy response, so I tried to keep him going. “You say two couples dropped out earlier? You mean they were here tonight?”

He looked at me blankly.

“Whists and Rileys, wasn't it?” I encouraged him.

He began shaking his head again. “No, they weren't. They weren't here.”

“You said—”