And kill once more (4 page)

"None. I'm getting a liberal education in beaches and the people who go there. Please go on."

"Sure," I said. "As long as we're just kidding around I'll carry the ball one more time. The doctor. Cronk, I think they introduced him. Dr. Cronk."

"This should be good," Kate laughed. "He hasn't been in and he didn't bring a bathing suit. How do you classify him on the Bowman beach scale?"

"He comes out all right, as long as there isn't anything specific to nail him on. He doesn't give a damn about the water and what's more, he doesn't care who knows it. From here we see a somewhat nervous gent in his fifties. Rimless glasses, a round face, no tan. He's a little belligerent, I'd guess—a little too forceful about not let-

ting anyone get him to paddle around in the pool. That Lincoln outside must be his and means he probably takes in a tidy little sum in fees each year. I presume that reasonable intelligence and ability will have to be credited to him, if he's made it through the rough deal that medical school is said to be. He reads the daily paper with gusto and probably stays away from the people he reads about." I grinned and added: "As far as the Bowman beach scale goes, we'll say Dr. Cronk is at least honest. We see him seldom and then only when the family drags him along by the collar. Which brings a question to mind. Have you run into him up here before?"

"Once. Last spring, I think. I can't be sure. Not with his family, though, if he has any."

I shifted to a more comfortable position and fixed a steady eye on the girl. "So far I've been on safe ground. You don't know these three any better than I do. Or very little, but you do know George and Sandy, so how about a blonde's eye view on the lord of the manor? What about George?"

Kate let a twinkle work its way into her eye and then a smile broke over her tan face. "That hardly seems fair— you should take a flyer on George, too, just to show me that Bowman knows his beach people. Where do we put George Engle?"

I looked over toward my smokes and matches across the pool. A stall. Three minutes, maybe, to think of something. "Time out," I grinned. "I'll get my cigarettes and be back."

The blonde watched me go and I didn't hurry any. I had already had a few ideas about the pool. Now I watched Engle. He stood by the diving board, a trim, well-formed man who had taken the best possible care of his physical being. Fifty, Kate had said, and I thought now that she'd given him the benefit of a good five years. Fifty-five, say, with straight gray hair that hadn't yet made

him a highbrow. He was as tan as walnut stain and it made his teeth flash white when he smiled.

I picked up my pack and matches and started back. Small black tile numbers just below the water level marked the fifteen foot depth under the board and it graded up to three feet, the dark numbers waving slightly as the tiny ripples on the water distorted them. Fifteen feet of water under a low board—and it told me something else about Engle. I walked slowly back to the pad, flopped down, offered smokes, and looked at Kate.

"Here it is," I said lightly. "We'll try one for size on George Engle. Apart from age and the rest that's visible, I'd say George hasn't always been a swimming enthusiast. In fact he's only been a water bug for three or four years, Kate. Right?"

Her eyes came up a little and she nodded slowly.

"Uh-huh." I said, gaining confidence. "He took it up, probably because Sandy liked to swim, but like some of the people who join a church to please a bride, George really got interested. Now he loves the pool. As far as being a husband goes, George would stop at nothing in his efforts to please Sandy. He's considerate, a good provider, well mannered, and yet has enough determination and force to keep from being a milktoast. Okay so far?"

"I'm trying to remember," Kate said, "what I might have said that told you George didn't swim much before he met Sandy. I mean—"

"Elementary, my dear Watson," I grinned. "No one puts this much cash into a pool without professional advice. Any pool man would have told him that six to eight feet is enough under a low board. It goes up—or down really—to fifteen feet for a tower but there is no tower here. So probably George had the pool built for maximum depth and figured to put the tower in later. In fact the base plates for a tower are already in the concrete. Now, I ask myself, why didn't he put it in when the pool was

made? Surely money was no problem. And that leads us to a very fine point about George Engle. He didn't want a tower to dive from until he became an expert on the rest of it—the springboard and swimming in general. Because G.E. is a man who makes sure that he always looks good. Unlike Pilcher who wishes he did."

"All right, Sherlock, I'll buy that," Kate laughed. "And I'm sorry to have put you on the spot."

"You can do penance," I said lightly. "You can take over the opium pipe for a while and do a little dreaming for me. You were very insistent, Kate, that Gregory provide you with a man who would be at home in the water. But look at what's here—Pilcher who splashes more than he swims, Dr. Cronk who hasn't even pulled on a bathing suit, and a host who is an ardent fan but no better than a fair swimmer, and that in an elderly sort of way. True, you're an expert. I'm not simonizing the apple when I say you're really good. But what about Sandy Engle? As a kid she was nuts about the water, you tell me. Now I see her as strictly a dry number. She hasn't gotten wet once, and while I'm a big boy now and don't go around asking girls why they can't go swimming, I get the feeling this has nothing to do with the calendar. I'm willing to bet she doesn't swim any more. Period. What's the pitch, Kate? Does she or doesn't she?"

"Well, yes and no, Marty."

"That's an answer?"

"I mean she has been in. I've seen her, but late at night. Mostly it's as you say. She stays on the patio lounge or lies in the grass. But a few times I've been awake in the night and looking down from my window I've watched Sandy and George swim."

"No one else around. You didn't join them?"

"No. It was almost obvious that she didn't care to be in while the rest of us were and that's another reason I

wanted to get someone to come up here and look things over."

"It's your money," I told her. "How late was this swimming party for two?"

Kate thought a moment. "Perhaps one-thirty in the morning. Or almost, because the caretaker was getting ready to drain the pool and wash it down. He does that around two every morning, I think George told me."

I smoked in silence and hoped I looked like a man thinking about something but for the life of me I couldn't tie into anything concrete. An occasional dip in the moonlight, that I could understand. But usually people who go for that kind of diversion are crazy about the water— or each other—and in view of what Kate had told me it was hard to tell which was right.

"You did say George was in too. I mean, it wasn't just Sandy swimming and George watching, Kate?"

"No. No, both of them were in. I watched for several minutes."

I gave it more silence, and somewhere there the thing died. A wave of doubts began to set in. About myself. Maybe Gregory had guessed this was nothing serious and had sent a boy to do a man's work. Maybe this called for experience and know-how in the art of investigation and maybe I was letting everybody down, including myself. I smoked and tried to think but before me was the thin veil of something only dimly seen and a little beyond my reach. My fingers scraped against the concrete deck of the pool and I clamped my teeth tightly together. I wasn't quite sure how, but I was determined that one way or another I was going to keep a sharp eye peeled in Kate Weston's interests, no matter how she finally fit in. Mentally I ran over the others—the pudgy Pilcher and his brown-haired, heavy-hipped wife. George Engle, fit and fiftyish, who had a wife under thirty. And the wife,

Sandy Engle, thin, dark and lovely in an abnormally retiring way. Dr. Cronk, staying strictly dry in a place where swimming was the main course.

Then I looked up and something new had been added. Something with red hair and a figure that could have been a model's stock in trade stood near the diving board and chatted idly with George Engle. I touched a hand to the tan shoulder beside me.

"A late arrival, Kate. Know this one?"

She rolled lazily onto her side, then opened a sleepy eye. Then she opened both eyes and sat up. "No, Marty, this one I haven't seen before. My God. Competition has increased. I can see that from here."

"Competition?"

"The eligible males in this camp are, for the most part, few and far between."

I resisted the obvious and together Kate and I watched the redhead. She hadn't gotten into her bathing suit yet. George led her toward the terrace side of the pool to introduce the other guests and I tried to size her up— well-filled nylons, yellow skirt cut as high as Schiaparelli would allow, sweater tight in just the right places. She walked with a trace of charm school in her step, but the lessons had been a long time ago because when she and Engle came around to our side and I got to my feet for the introductions I saw a few more years in her face than I'd seen in her construction. I mentally moved her from the last of the teens on into middle twenties.

"Miss Doyle. Miss Weston and Mr. Bowman," George said. I nodded and was paid off with a warm smile and frank appraisal. The redhead gave Kate a smile too, but one cut from different cloth.

"You may have caught one of Miss Doyle's pictures last month," George Engle said easily. "She's a starlet on her way up. Elsa Doyle. Your latest was Alone At Night, wasn't it, Elsa?"

"Oh?" I said. Kate raised an interested eyebrow and I thought that Elsa's brief glance at George Engle carried something less than appreciation for the plug. And I wondered why, because with TV cutting into the box office more every day, movie people shy away from publicity like a hungry kid passes up an ice cream cone on a hot afternoon.

Engle didn't leave it there. "We're expecting great things for Elsa," he said. "Naturally there are a lot of pitfalls for show people, but barring accidents she should go far. We're certainly going to keep our fingers crossed for her."

"Thanks, George." She said it with measured politeness and favored him with a smile that was just a shade short of being sincere. We made pleasantries for another few minutes, then watched the pair of them walk along the narrow band of concrete between the side of the pool and high Italian cypress as they went toward the house. I flopped down on the green pad again, lit a fresh smoke and tried to read something into George Engle's crack about pitfalls and accidents. Engle had much better manners than to mention something like that without a reason. His tone had been a little like talking to a friend in a hospital bed, telling him you hope he'll recover, and then recalling that you've known several others who had his same malady, God rest their souls.

Four

Evening brought dinner on the terrace, two tables of bridge, and early good nights. At eleven o'clock I leaned on the window sill of one of George Engle's guest rooms and watched thin trails of vapor caught in the moonlight

falling across the upper reservoir. A narrow walk circled the building on the side toward the hill and, stepping outside, I struck a match, touched off a final smoke before hitting the sack, and listened to the small noises of the desert night. When I ground out the red ember and went inside, I piled my change on the dresser, slipped off my watch, and climbed out of my pants. There was a silver dollar among the coins I'd shelled out and I tossed and caught it and, without even glancing to see whether it was heads or tails, reached for a pair of swimming trunks.

The pool was deserted. Good enough. You get a lot of swimming on the beach but your diving tapers off and I needed a little work to put me in shape before the inn opened at Death Valley, so I stepped onto the board and led off with a simple jackknife. Not good. I repeated, this time going almost to the bright, sunken stainless steel drain grill fifteen feet below. Then a couple more, going as shallow as I could, and after that a full gainer or two.

"Very good, Mr. Bowman."

I turned to see George Engle standing behind me. "Thanks," I said, and stepped down from the board. "Next?"

"No. You go ahead. I'd like to learn to do that half as well as you do, Marty."

"Thanks again," I said. "Takes a little patience, I guess, but that's about all."

"I doubt that," Engle said good-naturedly. "I get all the practice one man can stand, yet improvement seems to come slowly."

"Take a couple," I said. "I'll watch and see if we can't speed the process a little."

His pleasure was genuine and for twenty minutes George Engle dove and I worked with him. A diligent pupil and one determined to turn in a creditable performance. You don't find many like that—at any age. I thought about his young wife and how hard Engle must

have worked to stay trim and fit and all and I wanted to help him improve his diving. But another thing I've found is that there comes a time when the best thing you can do for a person who's trying to learn is let him alone. When G.E. reached that point I slung my towel across my shoulders and started an exit.

"Watching you work is making me hungry," I said. "I seem to remember your mentioning an all-night serve-yourself snack bar somewhere in the house."

"By all means," he said. He walked along a few steps and gestured toward the door near one end. "Straight through to the kitchen. Make yourself at home and I'll be along in a few minutes."

"Thanks," I said, then looked up sharply as something splashed back in the pool.

George smiled. "Damn bugs. Every once in a while a big one will see those lights under the water and fly toward it."

I muttered an "Oh," and toddled off to the groceries. Provisions for midnight chow were on par with the rest of the Engle layout. I laid out two slices of bread, then went eny-meeny-miney-moe among the assortment of meats, cheeses and relish arranged nearby, and came up with something in the nature of a Dagwood Special. Drawing a cup of coffee, I sat down to munch my sandwich and browse through the magazine rack.