The savage salome (7 page)

Donna's hands pressed my head tighter against her bosom so I could feel the quickened response of her body. Then my head was jerked upward savagely to face the molten look in her eyes, the moment before her moist red lips were crushed against mine.

If it started with a spark between us, like she said, it was going to finish with a volcanic eruption. She tensed her body against mine in a desperate and losing battle

inside herself which I guessed was part of the whole deal for her—each time she'd have to resolve the physical and mental conflict first—and each and every time her flawless body would win.

Suddenly she went limp and her hands pushed me away with impatient force.

"I'm sorry, Danny," she panted softly, "the door."

"Door?" I croaked stupidly.

"I'm not sure it's locked."

I pushed myself up from the couch and walked four, maybe five, steps toward the door, then stopped and turned around. Donna lay on the couch, breathing quickly but softly, her face flushed a glowing pink. The negligee lay in heavy folds around her hips, so the top half of her body looked to have been sculptured by some genius out of white marble. There was almost the grandeur of marble columns in the curving sweep of her legs from ankle to hip, and a careless fold of heavy silk partially revealed the last small and defenseless curve on the inside of her thigh.

I closed my eyes against the sudden intensity of desire which swept over me, then fought against the paralyzing grip on my nerve ends.

"Danny?" Donna's voice was lazy-soft. "The door—^remember?"

My eyes opened reluctantly and I looked at her again, concentrating desperately on her face.

"Donna," I said hoarsely, "'there are a couple of things you should know. I'm staying with my other client—and her name is Margot Lynn."

She didn't believe it and I didn't blame her—I had a hell of a job believing it myself. For maybe thirty seconds, she just looked at me vacantly, then she got the full impact.

Her face darkened swiftly from warm pink to a fiery scarlet; her arms and legs began to twitch spasmodically, and a film seemed to spread rapidly across her eyes. She moaned, softly at first, then in an ever-increasing volume until she shrieked in the ear-shattering crescendo only a prima donna can achieve.

Her whole body shuddered convulsively as she thrashed around on the couch until she rolled off onto the floor.

She lay on her back with her heels drumming wildly for a time; then she threw herself over and lay face down, while her fingers tore at the thick tufted fibers of the deep pile carpet.

Around then I found the kitchen and filled an outsize, cut-glass vase with cold water, went back to the living room, and poured the contents over her head. It cured the hysterics in one shot and for a frantic couple of seconds I wondered if it had killed her. I should have known she was indestructible.

There was the kind of uneasy quiet that follows newspaper columnists all over Europe. Donna slowly lifted herself onto her hands and knees, rested for a moment, then climbed wearily to her feet. The negligee had fought gallantly, above and beyond the call of duty, but it knew when it was licked. With a rustling sigh, it slid from her hips and piled in a reproachful heap around her ankles.

Donna turned her head dehberately and looked at me. The drenched, silver-blonde hair was matted to her scalp, and there were dark blotches across her swollen face. Her blue eyes shone with a malignant hatred I could feel.

"I just hope you get the goods on your murderer, Danny," she said shakily, "and her accomplice. She needed someone to call Helen about the dog, remember, and she needed someone to call the police about Paul's murder."

"What makes you so sure it was Margot?" I asked.

"You don't know much about women!" she said scornfully. "Or the opera—where the prima donna is the queen of the company. Her commands are obeyed before anything else, Danny. By tradition she is demanding, and hated by all the rest of the company, but even more so by the other principal voices, the contraltos, the mezzo-sopranos."

"It's fascmating," I said. "But it doesn't prove anything."

"Margot is the only other principal woman's voice in the company," Donna went on coldly. "So she determined to beat the prima donna by throwing herself at Kendall. That way, she thought the producer would listen to her more than me." She laughed harshly. "She needed a lesson

and I gave it to her—I took Kendall right out of her bed. I allowed him one small taste of ecstasy and then he didn't even know Margot existed.

"It was driving her crazy. I could see each day it was worse—the jealousy eating away her insides. And Tybolt —that fat, pompous idiot! Drooling at me the whole time with his httle pig's eyes bloodshot with lust—^his sweaty hands pawing at me whenever he could get close. There was a scene the first time we rehearsed the dance in costume. I spat in his face—^traced his ancestry back to an illegitimate swineherd and a Neapolitan whore!"

"I guess it'll make dandy reading when you write your memoirs, Donna, but it doesn't prove a thing," I told her.

"I'll find the proof," she said icily. "I'll give the lieutenant proof—if I have to make it myself! You're the only man who ever preferred another woman to Donna Alberta, Danny."

Her voice sank to a whisper. "You and that woman are something very special in my life—^before I'm finished with both of you, you'll wish—"

A door slammed and Donna stopped short and listened to the quick footsteps approaching the room. Then she threw herself across the couch and started to cry noisily with her head buried in her hands, the moment before Helen MiQs walked in.

Helen came to an abrupt halt when she saw the naked magnificence prostrate on the couch, her face turning ashen as the dismal, wailing sound increased in volume. Her fingers plucked nervously at her skirt for an undecided moment, then she lifted her head high and glared at me defiantly.

"What have you done to her?" she asked in a trembling, | high-pitched voice. "You beast!"

"Ah, nuts!" I said disgustedly. "All she needs is a slug of brandy."

Donna lifted her blotched, tear-stained face and gazed tragically at her secretary. "He—^he was like a madman!" she whispered brokenly. "He—no! I can't tell you—" She let out an even louder wail of despair and buried her head in her hands again.

Helen Mills ran across the room to the couch like a homing pigeon and threw herself on it. Her right arm

cradled Donna's head in her lap with possessive ferocity, while her other hand gently caressed the quivering mass of prima donna.

"There, there!" Helen crooned softly. "It's all right now —I'm here to protect you from that wicked man! You're safe now, my darling, nobody will hurt you while I'm here!"

The wailing noise rapidly quieted down to a muted sniffle. I lit a cigarette and figured what I needed was a drink but not here. The only thing that kept me was a doubt about the social niceties involved—I debated the relative merit of "Thank you for having me," against "I've enjoyed every minute of it."

A faint snoring sound made me suddenly realize Donna Alberta was sleeping peacefully, her head still cradled in Helen's lap. I figured the best thing was to just get the hell out, but before I had the chance, Helen MiUs lifted her head and stared at me disdainfully.

"I think you'd better go, Mr. Boyd," she said softly.

Her free hand stiU caressed the sleeping prima donna with a rhythmic touch. Then her prim Uttle mouth relaxed and her lips parted in a contented smile. Her eyes shone with an exultant triumph as she spoke again.

"I don't think we need you, Mr. Boyd—ever!"

Chapter Six

AGAIN, THE NEAREST BAR PROVTOED COGNAC

and a phone. It was a little after five when I called— Fran made a pointed reference to the fact that her quitting time was five sharp and what kind of Simon Legree type boss was I?

"Take it easy, honey," I pleaded. "I'm bushed!"

"That figures—after a couple of hours with the prima donna!" she said coldly. "I hope she left some permanent dents in the profile."

"Did you get to talk to Rex Tybolt?" I growled.

"You have a date for six-thirty," she said. "Take your own towel."

"Huh?"

"It's bath night, Danny-boy," Fran said happily. *The only chance he's got of talking with you is while he takes a steam bath at his club. He'll leave word at the desk so all you have to do is mention your name. It's the Albany—you know it?"

"Yeah," I grated. "A steam bath yet!"

"Do me a favor while you're there, Danny?" Fran said smoothly. "Get a trepanning job done on your skuU and try sweating out your brains a Uttle—maybe you could even get rid of a few of your more primeval urges. That way I wouldn't need to be so nervous around the ofl&ce all the time."

"Talking of primeval urges," I said, hamming the leer into my voice, "I haven't told you yet about this Donna Alberta—" There was a painful clunk in my ear as Fran hung up on me.

I stayed in the bar until six and had a couple more drinks and one extra for the bath. It was around six-thirty when I got to the Albany Club and told my name to the guy on the desk. He led the way downstairs to the locker room, and the attendant there fixed me up with a couple of outsize towels and a locker for my clothes. He waited patiently until I was stripped to a towel, then guided me into the first steam room.

Inside it reminded me of a summer day in England.

In the thick, swirHng mist I could hardly see my hand in front of my face. It was a hell of a good place to stick a shiv into someone's back—if you could locate your victim, that is—and with all this turkish toweling it wouldn't even be messy. I gulped steam and inched my toes across the wet floor.

"That you, Boyd?" A disembodied voice asked.

"Sure," I said. "Where the heU are you?"

"Over here."

I stumbled through the mist, following the direction of the voice and suddenly found him sitting in splendid solitude in one comer of the room.

"Sorry I couldn't make it any other time," Rex Tybolt said in his booming baritone. "But this will do you the world of good—^nothing like a steam bath for toning up the muscles!"

He was naked except for the towel draped around his hips. I looked at the dark pouches under his eyes and the sagging flesh under his jaw, at the barrel chest and bloated waistline where the stomach muscles had long given up trying—and figured he needed more than steam baths.

"Sit down, Boyd," Tybolt said genially. "What's on your mind?"

I sat on the stone slab beside him uncomfortably, feeling the sweat roUing down my body.

"Did you know I was a private detective?"

"Everyone in the theater did after the way Kasplin screamed about you yesterday," he chuckled. "He thought you overestimated the value of your services, I understand."

"He's a small man—maybe he takes a small view of everything and everybody," I said easily. "Margot Lynn

feels the police have her lined up as the number one suspect for Kendall's murder—so she hired me to clear her."

"I can understand the police figuring it that way," Ty-bolt commented. "Where do I fit in?"

"I saw Donna Alberta this afternoon," I told him, "She's got some very definite ideas where you fit in— like as Margot's accomplice—the guy who phoned about the dog, and, the guy who called the cops so they arrived when Margot opened the box and found Kendall's body."

"That's ridiculous!" Tybolt laughed. "What motive could I have?"

"You got mad at her because she flunked you out in the bedroom stakes," I said. "You wanted to even the score—Uke Margot did because Donna took Kendall out of Margot's bedroom into her own."

"Absurd!" He wiped the sweat from his face with one corner of the towel. "You don't take that kind of nonsense seriously, do you, Boyd?'*

"Maybe not," I said. "I saw Earl Harvey this morning —now there's a guy I do take seriously."

"Harvey?" Tybolt's heavy face hardened for a moment. "Don't talk to me about him—the comic-book impresario!"

"I wonder you work for him—^feeling that way about the guy," I said.

"Even a baritone has to consider money," he said. "The salary is very good, you know."

"Sure," I agreed, "I do know. Harvey went to a lot of trouble to make sure I did—he even produced a tame heavy to make me real impressed."

"Oh?" Tybolt didn't sound interested.

"Why don't we stop kidding around?" I suggested, crossing my fingers carefully. "Margot isn't talking about Harvey right now—but if Lieutenant Chase puts the pressure on hard, she will!"

"I really don't know what you're talking about, old man," Tybolt said distantly.

"If you want, I'll spell it out for you," I said tiredly. "My guess is a guy with the kind of reputation Earl Harvey's got would have no chance of persuading people

like yourself, Margot, and Donna Alberta, to work for him unless he had an edge."

"I'm beginning to understand why KaspHn thought you overrated yourself, Boyd," he snapped. "That's ridiculous!"

"K Margot tells the cops, they'll break the thing wide open," I said coldly. "Your name will be on the front page right along with Margot and Donna Alberta. You got a choice, Tybolt, but you don't have much time to decide—if I handle it maybe I can keep it under cover."

He used the towel again with more vigor than was strictly necessary.

"What do you want to know?" he asked nervously.

"Exactly what Harvey's got on you to make you go along with this opera deal of his."

"If I told you," he squinted at me sideways, "how do I know you'd keep it quiet?"

"You don't," I said. "But it makes sense for me to— Margot Lynn's my client and she's in the same boat as you are. If I talk about you, I'm exposing her to the same embarrassment."

Tybolt thought about it for a while, then nodded. "That makes sense. All right, I met Harvey first a year back—at somebody's party, I forget whose. Then, six months later, I was on vacation in Acapulco and Harvey arrived at the same hotel a couple of days later."

"Sounds Uke a big coincidence," I said.

"I was naive enough to think so," Tybolt sighed deeply. "He was friendly—^very friendly. Three days later he invited me to a party a friend of his was giving in a private house. I went along in aU innocence, Boyd!"