the ice cold nude

“1*11 kick his head in before he even gets close to batting an eyelid,” I said confidently. “So we got plenty of time for the question and answer routine, right?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” she said flatly. “Mr. Machin took me to the store and I wore the tiara while the photographer took my picture—the same as he did with the other two girls—then we left. That’s all there was to it.”

“You didn’t notice anyone act suspiciously or do anything out of the ordinary at all?”

“Not me, buster.” She shook her head with a rapidly growing impatience. “Look! Do me a favor and get out of here before Pete opens his eyes again, will you? It’ll be hard enough explaining to Marty what happened without you hanging around and making things even worse.” “Marty is your boy friend?” I asked, with brilliant intuition.

“Kind of,” she said, shrugging indifferently.

“So what does that make Pete?” I pointed toward the inanimate heap on the floor.

“He kind of looks after Marty’s interests,” she said vaguely. “If you’re gone already when he wakes up, then maybe I can convince him he made a genuine mistake, and if I get real lucky Pete won’t even mention what happened to Marty. But if you’re still here, nothing will convince him he wasn’t dead right about you and me in the first place and then—”

“Okay!” I held up my hand pleadingly to try and stop her running off at the mouth like a waterfall. “You convinced me, baby, so I’m gone already—but I’ll be back.” “You’ll pardon me if I don’t wait up?” Her voice had an arctic quality that didn’t match up to that transparent beach slip and all.

“Sure,” I told her, and headed toward the door. “After all, baby, I know my way around your apartment just fine—remember those wonderful weekends?—so just leave my pajamas over a chair, huh?”

When I got back to the rented convertible my watch said it was almost six o’clock. Considering I’d only arrived in Santo Bahia in the early afternoon, and right off the plane at that, I figured I’d done enough work for one day and deserved a drink.

Back at the hotel I checked the front desk to find out if I’d had any calls from a jewel thief eager to sell back a diamond tiara cheap, but I was out of luck. I told the clerk I’d be in the bar if any calls came in for me, then resented the knowing look in his eyes which said, “Where the hell else?”

It was called the Luau Bar because it served meager, rum-based drinks in an imitation coconut half-shell at twice the price of good honest liquor. I settled for a martini with a twist of lemon, and started to relax. Someplace around the start of the third martini I was getting to be real relaxed, when a gentle voice from in back of me said, “Mr. Boyd?”

I turned my head and saw a brunette standing there—a dame with a good figure that was subdued, if not hidden, by the businesslike black suit and the crisp white blouse underneath. She looked like a girl Friday owned by some tycoon with an efficiency fetish, who spent one weekend a year in Las Vegas for sex.

“They told me at the desk that I’d find you in here.” She smiled nervously. “I am Miss Lamont ”

“Honey,” I said gently, “I already met the dame, and you couldn’t be Miss Lamont in a million years.” Hie nervous smile had gotten to be a fixture. “You mean Louise, of course.” Her fingers fumbled with the strap of her pocketbook. “I’m Patty Lamont, her sister.” “Why don’t you sit down?” I invited her. “Louise never told me she had a sister. What are you?—some kind of family skeleton?”

She nearly blushed as she sat down opposite me. “I’m afraid I don’t have Louise’s glamour, Mr. Boyd. I’m just a working girl.”

“Would you like a drink?” I asked, figuring it might help her nerves a little—mine, too.

“No, thank you.” She fooled around with her pocket-book some more. “You must excuse me coming in here like this, Mr. Boyd, and invading your privacy, but

I read in the newspaper about how you’re working for Mr. Elmo to get back his tiara that was stolen.

“Be my guest,” I said expansively. “If you want to sell it back cheap, we can talk prices.”

“It’s nothing like that!” Her cheeks flamed with a vivid scarlet. “I hoped you might be able to help me. I don’t want to go to the police and—and—” She stopped for a moment, busy fumbling for the right words, and I drank some more of the third martini to take care of the hiatus.

“You see, Mr. Boyd,” she resumed with an intense expression on her face, “it’s my sister, Louise. I’m so worried about her I just don’t know what to do. I—I need help.”

“If helping your sister helps me get that tiara back, honey, I’m your boy,” I told her generously. “Just what is it about Louise that keeps you awake nights?”

“Louise has always been the wild one of the family, you see, Mr. Boyd?” Her voice had a faintly wistful quality. “I’m just the homebody type, I guess. Our parents were killed in an automobile accident a few years back—maybe that’s why I feel so responsible for her, being the older sister. I didn’t want her to enter that beauty contest even, but I couldn’t stop her—and now she’s mixed up with all these dreadful people and I have this feeling that something horrible is going to happen to her!”

Patty Lamont settled back in her chair, obviously glad she’d broken the ice, and her face relaxed back into its natural primness. She should have been beautiful; she had all the basic attributes of her sister with one vital exception. The fundamental spark of natural, inborn, sex appeal was missing. Some got it and some ain’t—like the man said—and it’s a quality a girl can’t acquire like a taste for olives or frivolous underwear.

“You figure she’s somehow gotten herself mixed up in the tiara theft?” I asked hopefully.

“Good grief, no!” She nearly leaped out of her chair at the thought. “I only think she’s keeping bad company, Mr. Boyd. You see, I know something of the background of the beauty contest because I work for Poolside Plastics. I am Mr. Machin’s confidential secretary.” She made it sound jazzier than handmaiden to the high priest of some pagan temple.

“You mean there’s something crooked about the contest?” I grappled desperately to extract some kind of sense out of her words, but it was like wading through a sea of marshmallow.

“Well—” She paused momentarily, choosing her words very carefully indeed. “Louise also worked for them, Mr. Boyd. She had a very good job as confidential secretary to the president himself—Mr. Rutter.”

“And you work for Machin—the publicity manager?” “Director of Public Relations,” she corrected me coldly. “It was about four months back when Louise suddenly resigned—for no reason at all as far as I know—and after that, when they announced the beauty contest, she decided to enter it and now she’s one of the three finalists.” “I guess the prizes are considerable?” I suggested.

“But—as an ex-employee of the corporation?” Patty’s voice was basically disapproving. I started to feel a bond of sympathy with her boss—this Machin character. I guessed she had the kind of blind loyalty that could eventually smother a corporation executive to death.

“Maybe this Rutter guy didn’t care if she was his ex-secretary?” I said impatiently. “He’s the president—he could make his own rules for his own contest.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Patty said determinedly. “From the first day she entered the contest, Louise has been absolutely confident she’ll win it. She hasn’t done a day’s work since she left, yet she always seems to have plenty of money. How would you explain that, Mr. Boyd?”