the ice cold nude

“The beauty contest was his idea,” I said easily. “One of the three finalists was murdered last night, and coincidentally, he happened to be his ex-confidential secretary.”

“Louise Lamont,” Myra said tightly. “The bitch! She sure had it coming.”

“You knew her?”

Myra shuddered disdainfully. “No, with my devout thanks to a benevolent Providence, I only knew her.as a voice on the phone. A simpering slut who sweetly informed me she was sleeping with my husband, and if I didn’t want the fact made public I could take care of it with a lump of hard cash—ten thousand dollars, to be exact.”

“She tried to blackmail you?”

“Sweet innocence at eventide!” she snarled. “What the hell else would you call it?”

“Did you pay?”

“I told her fortune—for free,” she said in a satisfied voice. “I told her about her father and why he always wore a fur coat—it’s obligatory for all chimpanzees—and her mother, who once made ten dollars in a single week, and, at a nickel a time, that’s good going. Then I told her about herself and—”

“Like if I can cut the autobiography short,” I interjected hastily, “you didn’t pay?”

“When I was all through with her, I called James,” she snapped. “Five minutes after I hung up, she went out of the office on her ear!”

The bourbon was the real good stuff, straight out of Tennessee, and I sipped it appreciatively.

“But he allowed her to enter the contest,” 1 said finally, “and get to be one of the three finalists, even?”

“I didn’t know that until recently,” she said. “Then I asked James about that. There are times when he can be very uncommunicative.”

“He didn’t give you any reason?”

“He just hit me across the mouth,” she said casually. “There is never a dull moment in the Rutters’ lives— many sordid, but none dull.”

It was the kind of comment that didn’t call for an answer, and I didn’t try and dream one up. I drank some more bourbon instead, and felt the sun steadily getting hotter on the back of my neck. I loosened the knot of my tie and unbuttoned my shirt collar.

“You’re not dressed for sunbaking,” she observed. “Why don’t we go inside the house? It’ll be cooler there.” “Fine,” I told her.

We stood up together and suddenly we weren’t going any place. Her sloe eyes seemed transparent as she stared at me, her lips slightly parted, and I could see the well-banked furnace that burned steadily in back of them. She took the two steps it needed to cut down the distance between us to maybe a decimal point. “Danny?” Her voice was husky and triumphant at the same time, and there was no real question there at all. Her hands reached up and seized my earlobes painfully with each thumb and index finger pinching tight, pulling my head down toward hers. Those pouting lips pulled back again into a smile and a moment later the sharp white teeth clamped firmly into my lower lip. She hung on long enough for me to be in two minds whether to whoop or merely scream, then let go abruptly.

“Make us a fresh drink, Danny,” she said softly, “then come on into the house.” She turned away from me without waiting for an answer, and I was lost again in the torrid vision of those undulating satin clad curves as she walked toward the house.

I watched until she had disappeared inside, then made the fresh drinks with my hands shaking a little and twenty different—though allied—thoughts pulsating through my mind at the same time. Then I carried the jiggling glasses slowly, because I didn’t want the liquor all spilled by the time I got there, and it seemed to take a hell of a long time before I reached the open door.

The open glass door led off the terrace into a vast, strictly modem living room—and another door took me into the hall. I stood there for a moment, feeling a vague kind of empathy with Goldilock’s trauma in the bear house, then I heard Myra’s slightly muffled voice call, “Danny? I’m in here.”

“Here” figured to be the guest room, air-conditioned and the shades drawn, with pink broadloom on the floor and little fat cherubs depicted in gold on the walls. A blue-green satin swimsuit lay on the carpet, clashing with the color scheme. Myra stood beside an oversized couch, her arms raised above her head, stretching luxuriantly. Two horizontal strips of white across her nude body made a startling contrast with the deep bronzed tan that covered the rest of her. Her raised breasts, the nipples hard and pointed, were an arrogant challenge to the virility of all mankind—and I was mankind’s elected gladiator, I realized with a sudden surge of vitality.

She dropped her arms to her sides, then sauntered across and lifted her glass out of my hand. “You certainly took your own damn time about making fresh drinks,” she said casually. “What kept you?—stage fright?”

I reached out with my free hand and ran it slowly down across the swelling curve of her flank, then exhaled softly. “I heard about Venus rising out of the sea,” I said wonderingly, “but who’d believe a plastics outfit would come up with something like this?”

She smiled lazily. “It’s all real, Danny. You’ll find out!”

The bourbon I didn’t need right then, so I put the glass down on the bureau, and stripped off my clothes. By the time I’d finished, Myra’s empty glass stood beside my full one, and she lay on the couch, her head cradled in her hands, watching me with approval.

“Just don’t talk, Danny,” she said in a soft voice. “If I want sweet music when I make love, I can always switch on the radio.”

“What’s to talk about?” I asked hoarsely as I advanced ; toward the couch. “California weather is all the same the 1whole year round, right?”

One time when I was in a poker game with four other guys and it had gotten kind of dull, we started swapping embarrassing experiences—like the time one guy had try- j ing to explain to his wife he was sure it was her looking for a lost earring under the bed, with only her legs sticking out, and that playful tweak of his fingers was meant as an expression of his love for her, not the maid, but his wife never did believe him. Although, he’d allowed, he’d had a hell of a time with the maid for the next six weeks.

Right then I suffered the kind of embarrassing experience that’s just too painful to recount, even to a bunch of old buddies over a poker game. I was bent—well, crouched even—over the couch when it happened, and that’s a hell of a position to be in with no clothes on. A door slammed suddenly someplace in the house, achieving the effect of freezing me rigid in that stooped-over position. Then the sound of tramping feet came rapidly closer, the door of the guest room was flung open, and for a couple of seconds that lasted longer than eternity there was a dreadful silence.

“So sorry,” a cold masculine voice said. “Should 1 apologize for having gotten home too early—or too late?”

I managed to unfreeze my aching back muscles and straighten up painfully. All I wanted right then was a jar of vanishing cream from my mythical mad scientist friend.

Myra turned her head and stared over my shoulder at the source of the interruption. “You’re very gauche, James,” she said and yawned. “You could at least call before you come home unexpectedly!”

“I’ll remember it the next time,” the male voice said icily. “Would you care to introduce me to your naturalist friend? He’s apparently suffering from some kind of seiz-* ure at the moment.”

“Of course.” Myra smiled gently, then raised herself on one elbow. “This is Mr. Boyd, and he’s a private detective hired by Elmo to recover the stolen tiara.” “Indeed?” The male voice registered polite interest. “I must say he appears to be dedicated in his search—leaving no woman unturned, as it were?”