the ice cold nude

“If you keep on, I’ll start in screaming,” Schell said pitifully. “So let’s accept all those coincidences and pretend they could happen to anyone. Then Louise and Willie cook up a scheme to rob the store. Willie makes a paste imitation, and Louise switches it for the real thing while she’s posing for publicity pictures—okay?”

“I know,” I said sympathetically. “So if it was Willie who killed her because he found out Marty Estell was beating his time—why did he leave that second paste imitation on top of her head? And what the hell did they need two fake tiaras for in the first place?”

“It’s a good question,” Schell grunted. “And I got one even better—if it was Willie who killed Louise, then who killed Willie? And if it wasn’t him, then who killed the both of them?”

“And where’s the genuine tiara anyway?” I finished for him.

The Lieutenant closed his eyes for a long moment. “I’m tired,” he said, his voice thick with self-pity. “I work too many hours for not enough money, my wife’s about to divorce me—and the selfish citizenry doesn’t give a goddamn. I’m going home and sleep for maybe three days.”

“It sounds like a great idea,” I said wistfully. “You mind if I come along, too?”

“You’ll enter my house over my dead body!” he snarled.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I mean, can I leave when you leave?”

“I guess so.” He didn’t sound enthusiastic. “You still driving that rented convertible?”

“That’s right.”

“Then there’s still a faint hope you might run it off the road and kill yourself.” His voice brightened a little at the thought. “You wouldn’t consider leaving a signed confession with me, for use only under those conditions, I guess?”

“You guess right,” I assured him hastily.

“Then you might as well get the hell out of my sight,” he grunted. “I can feel sick to my stomach without looking at you.”

“You’re a great guy, Lieutenant,” I told him as I headed toward the door. “Be sure and call me if you break a leg on the way home or something—right now I could use a good laugh.”

It was almost two in the morning when I got back to the hotel. The desk clerk stifled a yawn while he hunted for my key, and I took the opportunity to check the register. A Miss Patty Lamont had checked in okay and was in room 704. After I’d gotten the key, I went straight up to her room and knocked gently.

“Who’s there?” she called in a tremulous voice from behind the closed door.

“Me, Danny Boyd.”

The door swung open quickly and she almost pulled me inside the room. “Danny!” Her eyes were moist as they searched my face. “I was nearly out of my mind wondering what happened to you.”

She was wearing fancy baby-doll pajamas—hot pink roses printed on cool white nylon froth—which ended at the top of her smooth thighs. Her black hair had been combed out so it kind of floated around her head. The scent of subtle, fragrant perfume lent an added excitement to the curved body outlined beneath the froth. There was a time, I remembered, when I’d figured Patty Lamont just didn’t have what it takes, the way her sister Louise had—and I must have been out of my mind.

Her fingers dug gently into my shoulders. “I thought something terrible must have happened. Thank Heaven you’re all right, Danny. What took you so long? It seems like hours and hours since you left the apartment.”

“You’d better sit down, honey, this is going to take a while,” I told her, and gently lifted her hands from my shoulders.

She sat on the edge of the bed, her elbows on her knees, her chin propped in her cupped hands, and listened attentively while I told her what had happened from the time Marty Estell opened the door of Willie Byers apartment until I left the unhappy Lieutenant Schell and came back to the hotel.

Her eyes were wide with shock by the time I had finished telling the story. “I still can’t believe it,” she said slowly. “Byers dead, and you had to kill that horrible giant of a man. And Marty Estell got away?”

“I wasn’t real sorry to see him go,” I admitted.

“Do you think he killed Byers?” she asked thoughtfully. “I mean—when he didn’t find the tiara there maybe he got so mad he never stopped to think?”

“Could be,” I said. “But I don’t see Marty Estell trying to fake it afterwards so it looked like suicide.”

“Why not?” Patty asked logically.

“It’s a good question,” I said sourly. “Now I’m so confused, I don’t know what the hell to think any more.” “Did you tell Estell the truth in my apartment, Danny? You know, your theory about Byers and Louise working together to steal the tiara, and then he killed her when he found out about Marty Estell afterward?”

“Sure, I did,” I growled. “And it worked real fine right up to the time I saw little Willie dead!”

“Then who else but Marty Estell could have killed him?” she persisted with that damned logic.

I shrugged wearily. “I give up. I guess the best thing I can do right now is get some sleep. With Marty Estell still running loose, I think you’d better stay on here in the hotel for a while, honey.”

“You don’t think there’s any chance of him finding out I’m here, Danny?” she asked nervously.

“No,” I said, too confidently, then pulled a fast switch. “I don't think so, anyway, but there’s always a chance. You want to keep your door locked, honey.”

“I won’t sleep all night,” she whispered. “It’s been bad enough the last few hours, waiting to find out what happened to you. Now I think it’s going to be even worse.” She got off the bed and kept walking until she was in my arms, real close so I could feel the warmth of her body through the thin nylon and the firm weight of her breasts pressing against my chest.

“I’m so scared, Danny,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me now. Stay here the rest of the night?”

“Sure, honey,” I said tenderly. “You were going to have to throw me out, anyway.”

Patty kissed me with the kind of abandoned passion that always denotes unconditional surrender. I appreciated it a hell of a lot because it never happens often enough in any man’s life—and at the same time I got an additional kick out of it, because for the first time that night Marty Estell had done me a real big favor.

I got two frantic phone calls the next morning, much too early, one from each of my clients. They both demanded to see me at once if not earlier, and in a moment of weakness I set up early appointments with the two of them. So around ten that morning, I was sitting in Mr. Elmo’s office, trying hard to keep my eyes open, and even harder to listen to what he was saying.

Elmo hadn’t changed any—I don’t know why I figured he might in a couple of days—he was still the same little man in a dignified black suit, and his gold-rimmed glasses still glittered furiously whenever he looked in my direction.

“I am completely baffled, Mr. Boyd,” he said coldly. “I hired you to recover my stolen tiara, as I remember? All that has followed in the subsequent two days is a bewildering—and nauseating—rampage of mayhem and murder. Is it too much to ask whether you are still employed in an attempt to recover the stolen jewelry, or are you merely using that as an excuse to conduct some personal vendetta of your own?”

“I did find a tiara,” I said defensively. “How was I to know there were two phonies loose?”

He closed his eyes as if he’d suddenly been knifed. “Please don’t mention that,” he whispered. “When I remember how delighted I was to receive your call and hear the apparent good news—and afterward, when Miss O’Keefe told me the hideous truth—” He shook his head sadly. “At a conservative estimate, Mr. Boyd, I would say you took ten years off my life at that moment.”