Strip for Murder (6 page)

“Well, I was back there about ten feet, and you—”

“Oh, Shell. I mean, what were we talking about?”

“You mean you've forgotten, too?”

She chuckled. “We were talking about Andon.”

“That slob. Yeah. Well, what else do you know about him? Where'd he come from? What was he doing at your mother's place when you met him? Who invited the guy? Wow!”

“I don't know who invited him. There was a big dinner and he was just there. I'd never seen him before. I still don't know much about him. He's something of a gambler, though, I've heard—not professionally, just likes to gamble. I haven't even seen him since that first time, except for the wedding.”

“Incidentally, what were you doing at the dinner? Was that before you ... well, before you came here?”

“No, I've been a member of the Fairview group for over a year. I just signed out and went to the dinner. Mother asked me to come. I hadn't been home in quite a while, so I went.” She smiled. “We're not prisoners here, you know. All of us in Fairview are here because we like it, that's all. We can leave if we want to. Some just come out on weekends. I went to Vera and Andon's wedding, but I haven't been out since. It's much more pleasant here.”

By this time I was sitting up, sort of leaning all over my knees, and Laurel—still only a couple of feet away, mind you—was half sitting, half propping herself on her hands, which were buried in the grass behind her. I looked up at the cliff beyond her, then back in the opposite direction, out between the V in the hills on either side of us. Something flashed, glinted down near the trees a couple of hundred yards away. I squinted, but I didn't see the flash again, or anything else. Laurel was still talking, saying once more that if the Council ever learned I was a detective I'd be booted out unceremoniously, convention or no convention.

I looked back at Laurel. “Speaking of which, just what comes off at this convention?” I grinned. “I mean—”

She laughed. “I know what you mean. There'll be about four hundred naturists from all over the United States here. Each year the convention's in a different locality; this year it's Fairview. The site was chosen at last year's convention, in San Bernardino, and the Council—all of us, for that matter—have been preparing for it for months. There'll be games, contests, and of course the beauty contest to choose this year's queen.”

“Beauty contest? That sounds jolly. Queen of what?”

“Queen of all the sunbathers. You're supposed to be one of the judges, of course.”

“Of course. You win.”

“Win what?”

“The contest. I vote for you. This judge is fixed.”

“I can't compete. I'm last year's queen. So you'll have to vote for somebody else.”

“Heck, I name you last year's, this year's, and next year's queen.”

She smiled. “Better wait until you see the others.”

“I don't need to wait. I have seen ... enough.”

Laurel shook her head. “You're a strange detective, I must say.”

“Yeah. Shell Scott, the public eye. Oh, well...” Laurel leaned back flat on the grass, fingers laced behind her neck. “Laurel,” I said, “don't you think ... What I mean is...”

She turned her face toward me, lips slightly parted. I scooted even closer and said, “Maybe we should be getting back. I've got to get out of here, and ... it's getting late.”

Softly she said, “It isn't late.”

“It's later than you think.”

The parted lips curved into a soft smile. I looked at her for a second or two, steeling myself, but she was like a magnet, so it did no good to steel myself. I leaned toward those ripe red lips—and something whipped past my head. It snapped by viciously, but I kept on leaning. I almost made it, and Laurel didn't move, didn't look away. Then I heard the crack of sound from far behind me. It was a gunshot.

I jerked my head up as clots of dirt fell from a spot high on the cliff and splashed into the water. Then I let myself fall forward against Laurel, grabbed her, and rolled. She let out a yelp, but I held onto her as we scrambled off the knoll. I grabbed her hand and dived for one of the big boulders, half dragging her with me.

We made it and Laurel said breathlessly, “What happened?”

“Somebody took a shot at us, that's what happened. Stay here.” I sprinted toward the sloping hillside, then turned left and ran back toward the spot from which the shot had come. Laurel called after me, but I kept going. Whoever had tossed that bullet up here would have been down below us, in line with the entrance to the pool, and probably in among those trees I'd seen earlier. Right at this moment I'd be hidden from him—if he were still there—but there was a lot of empty space between me and those trees.

When I could see around the hill to the trees again, I flopped onto my stomach and peered down toward them, but nothing moved. Nothing that I could see. For a couple minutes I lay there, staring until my eyes watered; then I got up and ran, bent over, toward the spot where I'd seen that glint of light. I knew that whoever had taken that shot at us must be long gone, but my flesh crawled anyway, and after fifteen or twenty strides I flopped onto my stomach again.

Then I got up and ran clear to the trees and in among them. There wasn't anybody in sight, but by walking a few feet to my right I could see uphill into the V, see the small raised spot where Laurel and I had been sitting, even part of the rock Laurel was behind. At least, I guessed she was still behind it. I knew the guy must have fired from someplace near where I stood; farther back there'd have been too many trees in the way for him to get a clear shot.

He obviously wasn't nearby at the moment. Traverse Road was only another hundred yards or so away, and I tore over there, leaned on the fence, and looked left and right. If a car had gone over that dusty road in the last five or ten minutes, there'd still have been a cloud of dust visible above it; but the air was clear. Nobody'd hightailed it down the road. Not in a car, anyway.

I prowled around a little longer, thinking about cartridge cases, but not really expecting to find anything. Then at an opening in the trees I looked east, and for a moment I thought I was seeing things.

Several miles away was what looked like one of King Arthur's castles. I blinked at it, almost expecting it to go away. But it stayed there, the closest thing to a medieval castle that I'd ever seen outside of those knight-happy movies. I gave it a final blink, then trotted back up toward the little lake and Laurel.

She got up from behind the boulder and walked toward me as I got close. Her face was drawn, sober. “Did you see anyone?” she asked.

“No.”

She bit deeply into her lower lip. “This about settles it, doesn't it?” she said slowly. “This was no accident. You've got to help me, Shell. Someone just tried to kill me again.”

I didn't say anything. The little grass-covered knoll we'd been sitting on was a few feet to my right. I walked to it, sat where I'd been before, then looked down to the spot in the trees where I'd been, then in the opposite direction, up at the cliff. I could still see the spot where the slug had drilled into the clayey earth, near a patch of clinging green growth. A line drawn from the trees below uphill to that spot high on the cliff's surface wouldn't have met any obstruction on the way—except my head.

Laurel had been lying on the grass. From the spot where I'd been minutes ago, she'd have been barely visible, if visible at all. But my white hair would have stood out like a blond bull's-eye. And, though I liked my thoughts not at all, I started wondering a little about Laurel Redstone.

If I hadn't leaned toward her just before the shot was fired, it would sure as hell have killed me.

Chapter Six

What are you doing?” Laurel asked me.

I walked over to her again. “Just trying to put a couple of things together,” I said. “The guy had all the time in the world to get lost. He probably hightailed it away right after that one shot.”

“Shell, I'm scared.”

“That makes sense. I'm starting to get a little jittery myself.” I looked at Laurel, thinking again that for everything she'd told me, I had only her unsupported word; even for the item that she was Mrs. Redstone's daughter, come to think of it.

“What are you looking at?” Laurel asked me.

I'd turned from her and was peering up at the cliff face. “Looking at the place where the bullet dug into the dirt up there,” I said. “I'd like to get my hands on that slug.”

She followed my gaze. “You'd be looking for a needle in a haystack, wouldn't you?”

“I saw where it hit. The only problem is how to get up there.”

It looked impossible. There wasn't any place to put a ladder except in the pool, which was no help, and the slug was about sixty feet above its surface. Even a rope let down from the cliff's top, a hundred feet or more higher, wouldn't have worked, because the cliff's top jutted out so much farther than the place where the bullet had dug in.

I said, “Might as well forget it. The only way I could get up there would be to float up, which is a talent I haven't developed yet.” I looked at Laurel and said, “How come you chose that knoll—” I pointed to where we'd been sitting—"for our conversation?”

She looked puzzled. “It's pretty, and we'd know there wasn't anybody listening. And there's such a nice view. Why do you ask?”

“We had a nice view, all right. So did that egg with the rifle.”

She frowned. “I'm sure you don't mean what that sounded as if you meant. So I must not understand you.”

I dropped it. “We'd better get back to camp. I've got to get out of here, anyway.”

“You mean you're leaving? After this?”

“That's right.” We started walking.

Laurel didn't have much to say on the way back. Halfway to the buildings I said, more to break the silence than anything else, “Laurel, when I was down there in the trees I saw something funny. A kind of castle east of here. Was I in shock?”

“Maybe. But there is a castle out there about four or five miles. Castle Norman.”

“A Norman castle? That's pretty silly.”

“It's a night club. Drinks, gambling, dinners, floor shows. Owned by a man named Ed Norman. That's where the name comes from.” She seemed a little cool.

Now I remembered hearing something about the place. I'd never been there in the months since it had opened, but I'd picked up a few reports about the “delightfully unique” new club. I didn't think any more about it. We walked back the way we'd come, through the trees and then into the big clearing where the camp was. Only now there was an appalling amount of activity.

“Lunch must be over,” Laurel said idly.

“It must be digested.” Even from here, at the clearing's edge, I could see splashing in the swimming pool and a dozen or so people playing volleyball. In fact, there seemed to be almost every game except leapfrog. And that slightly amusing thought combined with another that had been in my mind. I'd been wondering about that shot at me, and if I might have been lured out here, so to speak, so that somebody could have a try at knocking me off. It seemed like a screwy place for any kill attempt.

But from another angle maybe it was a damned good place for a killing, especially if I were the guy killed. If headlines had blared, “Shell Scott Shot in Nudist Camp,” L.A. and Hollywood would have laughed themselves into helplessness. There'd have been more attention paid to
who
got killed and
where
it had happened than the actual fact of my being bumped, and much of whatever investigation was made would have been obscured by waves of wild laughter.

Maybe. It also occurred to me that the same reasoning could apply to Laurel Redstone. There was also the possibility that I was goofy.

Laurel struck out across the open area toward the main building. I caught up with her.

“Where you going? I've got to get my clothes—and my gun.”

“You ought to at least sign in. Even if you sign right out again.”

“Everybody in camp on records here?”

She nodded. “All the names are in the records, plus the dates of entry. There are photos—portraits—of all of us, too. You can understand why we're careful about who joins the group. The Council wouldn't want to get any curiosity seekers, insincere guests, voyeurs, and so on.”

She was still aloof, so I grinned at her and said, “I forgot to tell you.
I'm
a voyeur. Just a crazy, mixoscopiaed kid.”

“Did you want to look at the records?”

“I'd like to.”

“They're in the Council Room.” We walked toward it.

There were about a hundred people at Fairview now, half of them male, and there seemed a chance that one of the fifty might well be my boy. There was at least a possibility I might learn something from their names and faces. I felt very queer indeed, walking across that bare area so bare myself, but everybody else was obviously in the same fix and nobody pointed or anything.

The Council Room was empty. Laurel went to the green filing cabinet, pulled out a manila folder, and handed it to me.

Inside it was a sheaf of papers and photos. I spread them on the big table, sat down, and went through them. On the left of each sheet was a list of names reading down, next to them addresses consisting only of a city or town name, and lastly the date of admission to Fairview. Another set of papers, one for each day of the month, showed signatures of those who had signed in or out of camp during that day.

Laurel, looking over my shoulder, said, “The daily lists are mainly routine, to show who's here, how many to cook for, and so on. Mainly for the benefit of the cooks. And the health director.”

“Yeah.” She was not only looking over my shoulder, but sort of brushing against it, and it was disturbing. I concentrated on the pictures and papers. They didn't tell me much except that there were a hell of a lot of Browns and Smiths at Fairview.

This was July first. Laurel had me sign the sheet for this date, with the time of my entry, and underneath it I signed “Out” and the time, one-thirty P.M. In the month of June only three couples were listed as entering camp: A Mr. and Mrs. Brown on June third, another Mr. and Mrs. Brown on June 15, and a couple of individualists named Waltzinki on June 29. Most of the names had been entered in May.