Strip for Murder (5 page)

I still didn't get up, but I said, “Well, it's true I'm not, uh, especially talkative, as Miss Redstone said. But I assumed that you'd all been informed of my background in ... this work. I don't see any great difficulties. None that we can't work out.” Faces brightened all around the table.

Mr. Blore said, “We've really only the sketchiest information about you, Mr. Scott. If you'd be so good as to tell us just a little more...”

“Of course. Miss Redstone explained about the Laguna Beach activities. Fine group, that. Never worked with a finer group.” I laughed gently. “Until now, perhaps, that is.” Everybody laughed gently. I remembered that the first lovely who'd popped up after Mrs. Blore had said something about food preparation and weekly menus, so I looked at her. “Naturally I'll expect you to show me around the kitchen. I'm especially interested in your organic garden.”

I didn't even know what an organic garden was; it could hardly be the garden it sounded like. But she'd dwelt on it at some length, so I threw it in. She smiled happily and said: “I'd love to show you around. And of course any suggestions you make we'll give very serious consideration.” She had a gorgeous smile.

I said, “One year when I was with the, ah, Sunskinners, we had a food supervisor who came up with a novel idea. He insisted that we peel all our fruits and vegetables, every one. And then eat them. That is, eat only the peelings.”

The smile went away. A couple of people said, “No!”

I was losing ground again. “Of course, I put a stop to that,” I said, and gained back the ground I'd lost. “I assumed you were all familiar with the fact that I spent several years with the Marine Corps. I've a rather extensive background in unarmed defense, judo, some of the oriental arts of bodybuilding and defense. Oh, yes, everything from yoga to yogurt.” I beamed at them.

Mrs. Blore's face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Judo!” she cried. “That would be perfect for us!”

A gal on my left said, “How divine!”

I'd gone too far again. One of the men on my right, a British-type blighter with hair clipped even shorter than mine, said, “Yes, Mr. Scott. We'd all be intensely interested in learning a spot of judo. This is jolly! Could you show us a bit now?”

There were several cries of assent. “Well,” I said, “it's not exactly—”

Laurel leaned toward me and looked up into my face. “I'd forgotten this talent of yours, Mr. Scott,” she said. “Our last director didn't know anything like it. This
would
do it.”

And how it would do it, I thought. Laurel went on, “Can't we have just a short demonstration?”

I forgot myself for a moment and said, “Not with you, babe.”

Next to her the brown-eyed busty beauty leaned close and said, “Oh, show me, show me.”

I began to get panicky—and then inspiration blossomed. I turned to look across the length of the table squarely at Mrs. Blore. “Why, certainly,” I said. “Mrs. Blore, would you be good enough—”

She didn't even let me finish. “I will. Yes, I will.” She sprang up and away from the table like a starving ballet dancer. “What do I do?” she cooed.

I slid my chair back and fixed my gaze on Mrs. Blore's chops. Then I took a deep breath and got up and walked over to her. “I'll just run through a few of the elementary items. First, a couple of come-alongs.”

“What?” she said.

“Holds. To keep your assailant—I mean attacker—I mean the other party—helpless while you walk him out of the room, or something.” I paused. “Should have a pile of blankets—you know, something soft to fall on. That is to say...”

Laurel got up, saying she'd go get some bedding, and I looked at her as she hurried out, then quickly looked back at Mrs. Blore. I demonstrated a simple two-finger come-along, grasping two fingers of her right hand in my left, twisting her palm up and lifting. Mrs. Blore went “Eek” softly and up on her toes as Laurel returned.

I said to Mrs. Blore, “Tell me if it gets painful. Easy to break bones this way.”

I let go of her hand and she shook it awhile, but looked pleased. Then I quickly demonstrated a couple of the sensitive points on the body—on the upper body—the subclavian nerve pinch and the axillary nerve pinch, pressing in turn the nerve at the base of her neck over the collarbone and the exposed nerve underneath her armpit. Then I said, “Just one more and we'll be through. I'll show you how to throw people across the room.”

“Can—can you throw me across the room gently?”

“Oh, I won't throw you far. I'll just throw you down on the blankets.” I had to chuckle at the sheer insanity of my throwing
her
down on any blankets. But I was in a veritable frenzy of exhibitionism now, and I said, “Just relax. Here we go.”

She was facing me, so I gripped her upper left arm in my left hand and stepped closer, pivoting around so that my back was to her. I wrapped my other arm under and around her right arm; then I pulled on her arm as I bent forward, rolling her over my back and shoulder onto the blankets, graceful as a swan. As she went
kerplop,
I held on in the hope of letting her down easy, but it must have jarred her nonetheless. She waggled her head a bit, stuck out her tongue, and said, “Gah.” Then she tottered to her feet.

By George, though, she was a game old gal. “Show me again,” she said. This time she got her feet partly under her and cushioned the impact. There was very little else except feet with which to cushion her impact. Then she sprang up and said to me, “You do that so easily. Could a woman do it?”

“Of course. It's not so much strength as balance, timing. You use the other person's strength.”

“Well,” she said. “You're so strong I should be able to do it easily.”

I shook my head. One of us was dizzy. But she persisted, so I showed her just where and how and we made a couple of playful passes at it. Then she said, “I'll try it now.” She sounded sort of grim.

I said, “Fine. Ah, easy, remember.”

She went into action like a tiger, spun around, slapped her hip into place, and bent forward, tearing at my arm. Just to please her, I gave a little kick with my feet, to help her along—and off into space I went. Mrs. Blore had bent her knees and then straightened up with a snap, grunting a grunt that was nothing compared with what I let out. I spun around in the air like a windmill, and when I landed it was not on those blankets. I landed on a hard floor and I could hear everything rattling around inside me and several internal organs bumped together near my spine with soft squishing sounds, and my head rolled back and went
kerplunk
on the floor. For a little while I just lay there, and I must have been quite a sight, but then everything settled into place and I clambered to my feet.

“That was a
dandy
one, Mrs. Blore!” I squeaked.

She clapped her hands and a lot of noise bubbled around the table. Everybody was beaming happily—except Laurel. She wasn't only beaming; she was damn near hysterical.

I went back and sat down. “Yeah, funny,” I hissed at her.

There was some more talk, and finally Mr. Blore said to me, “Now, would you wait outside in the hall, Mr. Scott? We'll reach a decision shortly.”

I gave Laurel a hard look, got up, and strode out, trying not to limp. I leaned against the wall for about a minute. Four women strolled by, then two couples, then six or seven more women. I didn't count them, but never in my life had I seen so many naked broads all at once. I didn't mind, though; I'm broad-minded.

Slowly the suspicion was growing: There was a new day dawning in this here nudist camp.

Chapter Five

People kept wandering by, and it was something of a shock that I realized I might become quite attached to Fairview.

The door of the Council Room opened and Laurel stepped out. This was the first time I'd really looked at her since peeking out of the undressing room, and she seemed even lovelier and shapelier and more everything than before.

She stepped close to me and said in that soft, warm voice, her bright-blue eyes on mine, “Well, Mr. Scott, you are now officially the new health director of Fairview.” She smiled a luscious smile. “What do you think of that?”

“I am appalled.” I was. “Laurel,” I said, “you and I—we've got me into a hell of a fix. And you have some fast explaining to do.”

She nodded. “Let's go someplace where nobody will overhear us. Someplace where we can be alone.”

“I'm for that.”

She smiled winningly—which doesn't mean that I was losing—and said, “I thought you would be. The vote, by the way, was unanimous. You made quite a hit with Mrs. Blore.”

“I think I can do without that. Look, Laurel, you must know I can't stick around here. I've got a lot of other things to do.”

“I know.” She looked around us quickly. “Don't talk about it now. Wait till we get out to the pool.”

“Pool? We going swimming?”

“No, and it's not a swimming pool. It's a little lake, a few hundred yards from here. We call it the pool. It's quiet there, and we can be sure we're alone. Come on.”

Outside, the grounds were almost deserted. “Where's everybody?” I asked. “There was a sort of parade past me back there.”

“It's lunchtime. Are you hungry?”

“No, I couldn't eat a thing. Thanks, though. Let's get out to the pool.”

We walked across the grounds, in among the trees, and followed a narrow path that came out into a small clearing. There was a tiny trickle of water at our feet, running downhill, but following its course upward I saw that it came from a narrow cleft between two steeply sloping hills. We walked that way, between the steep hills and maybe a hundred feet into the little valley, actually a sort of blind canyon, and then Laurel stopped and pointed. “There's the pool. Nice, isn't it?”

It was. Fifty yards ahead was the steep face of a cliff, slanting farther toward us at the top than at the base, and the waters of a small lake, about fifty feet wide and three times that long, along the cliff's base. Its surface was flat and unrippled, sunlight bouncing off it. All around the water, but especially at its edge, deep green grass grew profusely. A couple of big white boulders rested on the grass.

I said, “Very nice. Where does the water come from?”

“Oh, there must be an underground spring, feeding it from under the cliff or somewhere. It's usually bigger, from the rains, but it's been so warm this year that it's shrunk a bit. It's a nice little lake, though. One reason the camp was located here.”

We walked close to the water, Laurel ahead of me. A knoll of grass-covered earth near the pool rose a few feet above the surrounding ground and Laurel went up it, sprawled at its top. I went up, too, but not as far as she did.

“Sit down, Shell,” she said. “We can drop the ‘Don' out here.”

She was leaning back on her elbows, the leg nearest me drawn up with her foot almost buried in the grass, and I thought about walking right past her and down into the water. But I sat down anyway, maybe ten feet away.

“What are you doing way off there?” she said.

“I'll soon be leaving this nu—Fairview. Going to town. And I want to hear what you've got to say. I want complete control of my eardrums. See?”

She smiled. But she didn't say anything right away, so I looked around some more. Anybody within shouting distance of us would have stood out like a bare thumb or worse. We were up in the air a bit, and the ground below our knoll slanted down rather sharply from here. I could see straight out through the niche in the hills a good two hundred yards or so to where the trees started again below us. Seemed rather exposed on this knoll, but maybe it was just my outfit.

Laurel told me about the two attempts on her life. She'd been at Fairview, off and on as the saying goes, for about a year, and almost steadily for three months now. Last night she'd gone to bed in one of the small cabins everybody used here and during the night she'd been awakened by a noise, got up, and found the gas jet of the small heater turned wide open and both windows closed. Earlier the day before, during the afternoon, she'd been with the previous health director, a guy named Elder, when he'd shouted at her, then jumped and pushed her out of the way of a huge boulder plunging down at her from the hillside above. He'd been clobbered by the thing himself.

Laurel, assuming with some logic that somebody was trying to kill her—though she hadn't the faintest idea why—had capitalized on Fairview's sudden need for a new health director to smuggle in a detective.

“Laurel, honey,” I said, “I'm going to be plenty busy outside of Fairview. I can prowl around here a little, but that's all. Incidentally, do you know anything about a guy named Paul Yates?”

“Never heard the name.”

“Surely you've heard of Andon Poupelle.”

“Of course. He's my sister's husband. Why do you ask about him?”

“Just curious. What do you know about the guy?”

“I met him at Mother's about two months ago. He made a big play for me right from the start.”

“Not for Vera?”

“Not then. I couldn't stand the man and he finally figured it out. Right after that he started turning his charms on my sister. And she found them more charming than I did, I guess.”

“Quite a bit more. She married the guy. Pretty fast courtship, wasn't it?”

“Oh, he's fast enough. He ... Shell, do you
have
to sit clear over there? I feel as if I'm shouting. Come here.”

“Well. Well, OK.” I squirmed over to her like a GI sneaking up on the enemy's lines, and I guess I got a little hypnotized. When I was about two feet from this lovely, sensational tomato, and squirming like mad, she said, “Whoa. That's close enough. I don't want to shout, but I didn't mean we were going to sit here whispering into each other's ears.”

I stopped, blinked, shook my head, and said, “Wow!”

“Where were we?” she asked.