This Girl for Hire (12 page)

He flashed that infectious smile. I liked this guy. I couldn't help it.

“Mister,” I whispered, “I'm very glad we met.”

“So am I. I saw you Monday at the studio and you know what I said to myself? There's the most beautiful woman alive. Why don't you ask her to marry you, buy a hunk of your crazy island and never come
back to civilization again?”

“Why didn't you?” I teased.

“Because,” he said, “I knew there'd be ten thousand guys ahead of me in line.”

“What if I told you there weren't ten thousand guys?”

“I'd say you're the biggest liar in the world.” He took my face in his hands and kissed me.

He looked at me tenderly, “You know, I started some thing the night we met that I never got a chance to finish.”

A crazy hot feeling boiled up in my stomach. Before I could make a move, Rod picked me up, carried me to my cabin and locked the door.

The horn of a big ship passing outside tore the darkness with its sound. He unbuttoned my sweater and slipped it gently off my shoulders.

Suddenly there was another sound. Loud footsteps running hurriedly on the deck. It was a sound filled with urgency—with deadliness.

Rod whirled toward the doorway, snapped open the lock and stepped outside. He disappeared as the night wind pushed the door closed. I waited tensely as Rod's footsteps faded in the distance. New rain pattered on the windows. When I peeked through one of the curtains, a yellowish face rose up, stared at me and disappeared.

Then there was knock at the door. For an instant I was frightened. Really frightened. A killer was loose aboard
Hell's Light
. I forced back my female
instincts, assumed my role of private detective, and answered.

“‘Who is it?” I asked.

“Carruthers, ma'am.”

“Who?”

“Carruthers. One of the ship's crew, ma'am. I found something I think you and your police friend ought to see.”

“Just a minute.” I switched on the table lamp and crossed to my closet for a negligee.

Carruthers, his weather-beaten face damp with rain, stood outside the door. He was wearing a yellow hat and slicker and looked like something hauled straight out of the Sargasso Sea. But what really shook me was the instrument he held.

It was a knife. A butcher knife. Exactly like the one Mark had pulled from the dead body of Joe Meeler.

C
ARRUTHERS SHOVED THE KNIFE TOWARD ME.
“F
OUND
it down on B Deck near one of the lifeboats,” he said. “Looks like a trick gadget of some kind.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Here, I'll show
you, ma'am.” He took the butcher knife in his right hand, swung it back and rammed it squarely in his chest.

He should have been ready for a pine box or leaking so much plasma the blood bank could have closed down for a week. But he wasn't even scratched.

The old man smiled. “Amazing, ain't it?”

“Let me see that again.” I examined the knife. It was apparently spring-loaded, allowing the blade to collapse on contact into a narrow slit in the handle.

Carruthers chuckled, remarked about weird inventions and vanished into the night. A short time later Rod ap peared, breathless and wet from the rain.

“I don't get it,” he said. “There was somebody out there, but he vanished before I could
catch up with him.”

I showed Rod the trick knife and gave Carruthers' account of the discovery on B Deck. “What do you make of the gadget?” I asked.

“It's what they call a breakaway. Must be a Swanson TV prop.” Rod examined the instrument. “Wonder how it got down there. I understood from Lud Norman that all props are kept on main deck in back of the swimming pool.”

“Looks exactly like the one we found in Meeler,” I said.

“Yeah, but that was no breakaway.”

I pointed to the handle. “Did you notice this brown stain?”

“Makeup,” Rod nodded. “TV people just don't know when to stop with the stuff. Ann Claypool's one of the worst. She spreads it on every part of her that shows.”

“Speaking of Ann Claypool, what gives between you two?”

“What do you mean?” Rod demanded. “I—I'm an old friend. Vince Claypool and I went to college together.”

“Vince was her husband?”

“Yeah. A nice guy. We opened up a sporting-goods shop together after graduation. That's when Vince met Ann. I never liked her—must have told him a thousand times she was no good. But he married her anyway.”

“Was Ann really crazy about him?”

“Are you kidding? She's crazy about only two things—Ann Claypool and sex. She's one of those physical com binations that spells dynamite. Little
woman, big bust. She's always out to prove something. Little people usually are. I imagine you can guess what she's trying to prove.”

“You don't think she was sorry to see her husband die?”

“Hell, no! Vince had a ten-thousand dollar G.I. term policy. She's been having a ball on that poor bastard. If he only knew.”

“But Ann gave me the impression she hated Aces' guts for sending Vince Claypool out on that underwater assignment.”

“Sounds like Ann all right. Always with the sad story when she's in the chips and living high. The time to be careful of Annie is when she acts deliriously, sexapat ingly happy like she did last night.”

“Do you think she and Swanson could be in this together?”

“Who knows?” Rod shrugged his shoulders. “What would Ann get out of it?”

“The female lead in the Swanson show.”

A stunned look sprang onto Rod's face. “Hell! I'd for gotten about Decker replacing you with Claypool!”

“It was apparently a joint decision introduced by Swanson and approved by Decker,” I added.

“And meted out the morning after Aces disappeared.” Rod rubbed his hands together vigorously. “I think you've got something, Honey. Something big.”

“Think back,” I suggested. “It would have been pretty tough for Swanson to poison Aces' drink. He was around only a few seconds. But with Annie
it was different. A lot different.”

“You can say that again,” Rod agreed. “She was all over the bar. It wouldn't have been easy, but nothing's too tough for little Annie if there's money in the deal.”

I picked up the breakaway knife again. “But why murder Joe Meeler? Do you suppose he saw Ann or Golden Boy slip something in Aces' drink?”

“Could be!”

“Maybe Meeler was mixed up in the plot himself.”

Rod shook his head. “Not Joe Meeler. He wouldn't hurt a gnat if he could help it.”

“Joe never drank, did he?”

“Used to,” Rod said. “Plenty. He cut off the alcohol after his operation.”

“What was his trouble?”

“Peptic ulcers. Bad. Damn near killed him.”

“If that's the case, why was he always hanging around the bar?”

Rod said, “Habit, I guess. In the old days he always did his best writing in bars. Liked the atmosphere.”

“Seems almost prophetic he had to die in one.”

“Yeah.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Little after three. Why are you always so interested in the time?”

I stepped into the bathroom, slipped out of my negligee and into a swimsuit. “If the swimming-pool area is cleared out, I'd like to try to reenact Meeler's murder. Are you game?”

Rod's forehead ridged slightly. “I don't know. What do you want me to do?”

“Play the murderer.”

“Will you cut it out?” he said angrily.

“All right, I'll play the murderer if it makes you
any happier.”

Just as long as you don't substitute that breakaway knife for the real thing.”

I whirled around and grabbed Rod. “That's it!” I exclaimed. “That's how it was done!”

“What do you mean?”

“Somebody who knew Meeler could have substituted a real knife for the phony while they were discussing a scene.”

I tossed a sweater over my shoulders and took his arm. “Come on, I'll show you.”

The bar and swimming pool were dark. I switched on some lights and led Rod through the water to the exact stool where Meeler was found.

“You sit here,” I said.

He followed my instructions resignedly. “Okay, now what?”

I waded back to the edge of the pool. “Now, I'm Swanson. You're Meeler. The bar is filled with people having a wild time.”

“Yeah,” Rod said. “Only if you're Swanson and these characters have been looking for you all day, don't you think you'd better come in with a tent over your head? Nothing would be more obvious than Golden Boy's chubby jowls and thick arms.”

That made sense. Swanson
couldn't have walked in unnoticed. He'd have attracted as much attention as a man wearing kilts and playing a bagpipe in the ladies' lounge of the Statler Hotel.

“Check,” I said, circling around the edge of the pool. At the deep end, I stopped to survey the bar. “How about an approach from this direction? He could dive in and swim underwater. Swanson's a crackerjack at that sort of thing.”

Rod pointed out a very important factor. There was no way into the pool area from the deep end. Swanson still would have had to pass through the game zone on the shallow side in order to reach the nine-foot depth.

I took off my sweater and plunged into the water. In the middle of the deep end wall I noticed a small porthole. Through the thick glass I could see a narrow passageway on B Deck. Then I saw something else. There was a lifeboat suspended along the side of the corridor. I surfaced.

“Rod!”

He almost fell off his stool. “‘What's the matter? You find another body?”

“No!” I yelled, swimming quickly to the bar. “I think I've got the answer to how the murderer entered and left unnoticed.”

“Don't tell me he was in the pool all the time using a snorkel and pretending to be the Creature from the Black Lagoon!”

“Don't be smart!” I climbed over the top of the circular bar to the inside where the glasses and liquor were stored. The floor, about two-feet wide and
made of steel plating, was dry and raised well above the level of the pool bottom. Obviously a circular area the size of the bar was built underneath. I searched for a trap door.

About three feet from Rod's stool I found one. The door raised easily. I climbed down a ladder into a storeroom that was dark and foreboding with its stacked cases of whiskey. Rod's face appeared in the trap door opening.

“What's down there?” he asked.

“Enough giggle juice to float a battleship. Take a look for yourself.”

Rod accepted my invitation. He was overwhelmed by the quantity of liquor in the storeroom.

“Courtesy of Grandpa Aces,” I said. “No doubt Sam got around certain provisions of the will by listing this as necessary ship's stores.”

“Holy smokes,” Rod exclaimed, “I didn't know this room was down here. Sam always carried enough stock on the shelves around the bar to last any trip we ever made to Catalina and back. This looks like enough for a three-year cruise around the world.”

“That's for sure,” I agreed. “Let's see how they got this stuff in here. They couldn't have brought all these cases through the swimming pool.”

I was right. A watertight door led us out onto B Deck only a few yards from the lifeboat. I'd seen through the underwater porthole in the pool. Carruthers said he'd found the trick knife on B Deck near a lifeboat. I was willing to bet this was where he'd made his discovery.

“Okay,” Rod said, “how'd Swanson do it? And, more important, why?”

“Meeler saw the
Clementine
arrive,” I explained. “He recognized the man at the
wheel. He probably exchanged friendly greetings with the killer not realizing he was signing his own death certificate. They retired to the bar where Meeler was shown the breakaway knife. Then, in the confusion of my arrival with Chief Clements, while everyone poured out on deck, the killer plunged the real blade into Meeler and escaped through the opening in the bar floor.”

“Sounds reasonable up to a point,” Rod said. “But you still haven't explained Bob Swanson's presence in the bar and why someone besides Meeler didn't recognize him.”

I answered quickly, “He must have put on some sort of disguise before joining Meeler. This would explain the makeup smudges on the breakaway handle.”

“Fantastic, Honey. Then you really believe Swanson's the killer?”

“I don't know.”

“But, you just said—”

“Forget what I said, Rod. I don't know what's wrong here, but something's haywire.”

“I don't get you.”

“Herb Nelson was bludgeoned to death. Sam Aces was apparently poisoned and then shot at close range. Joe Meeler—stabbed. All three murders about as brutal as possible. I'm convinced they were committed by one and the same person. But who? Swanson's almost too obvious. Decker had arsenic in his possession. You said you were going to test for arsenic and
yet we couldn't find any of your equipment. We did find a highly suspicious note which led to Aces' bloodstained jacket.”

Rod Caine reddened. “Now, listen, once and for all, I'm not the killer!”

“If you're not,” I said, “the real villain in this piece is trying mighty hard to make you look guilty. Believe me, Rod, you'd be behind bars right now if Chief Clements hadn't verified your presence aboard
Hell's Light
while Mark and I were searching for Aces. The murderer probably hoped you'd leave the yacht and go home so that you d be the logical stowaway suspect.”

Rod glanced away for an instant. Then he said, “I was on the float ready to go back to my place when Chief Clements pulled up in the police boat.”

“Now you're talking the killer's language.”