the ice cold nude

35

own damn time about taking care of me. She was built like a diet-free Italian starlet—like she didn’t jiggle when she moved, she joggled. Her molded orlon sweater and form-caressing gabardine skirt left nothing to the imagination except maybe her age.

“Yes?” She yawned gently, and me and the profile just don’t care for that kind of early brush-off.

“I’m a guy given to quick decisions,” I told her in a grave, thoughtful voice. “Fifteen million for the whole business, including all tangible assets, plant, land—the works. What do you say?—take it or leave it?”

“Huh?” Her mascara muddied a little as she blinked twice.

“But the one thing I always do insist on is loyalty from all my employees—loyalty to the product, I mean,” I continued rapidly. “Are you personally loyal to the product?”

“What’s that?” Her eyes widened a little.

“For example,” I explained briskly, “are you wearing a plastic bra and girdle as of this moment?”

“A plastic bra and—” The muddied mascara turned into a confused swamp. “What are you?” She nearly choked. “A nut, or something?”

An impeccably dressed guy, somewhere around thirty-five, came up to the desk and noted the expression of traumatic shock on the girl’s face. Then he stared at me with insolent disdain. “You wanted something?” he asked in the kind of voice that strongly doubted it was possible.

“Well, sure,” I said plaintively. “This is the joint where they make those plastic gizmos, right?”

“You could call it that.” His voice gained added confidence from the slight wheedling tone I’d injected into my own, and a condescending smile began to spread his lips. “Don’t tell me you actually want to buy something?”

“It’s like this,” I confided in a confidential, but penetrating whisper. “I’m a sea captain, mister. I spend most of my lousy life making lonely voyages to Long Beach, so I wondered if your outfit maybe makes any of those plastic women—like life-size—I could take along for company. You just don’t have any idea how empty a small sea cabin can get”

I looked around for inspiration and found it in the pallid glassy-eyed stare of the receptionist. “I’m looking for something with a whole lot of foam padding,” I added helpfully, “like her?”

The square cut of the guy’s shoulders visibly crumpled, while his mouth opened and closed slowly a couple of times. Surrounded by a circular glass bowl—and fed a straight diet of ants’ eggs—who could tell him from any other goldfish? Around the time he started in making faint gobbling sounds, I figured the gag had gone about as far as it could go, so I told him who I was and that I was working for Elmo.

It took him a little time to absorb the information, and it looked like it would take the receptionist a little longer —like six months maybe—if the way her generous bosom had suddenly slumped was any indication.

“I’d like to talk with Mr. Rutter, the president,” I said cheerfully.

“He’s not in today,” the guy said vaguely.

“How about Machin, the publicity manager?”

“I am he.” He cleared his throat a couple of times and brought his voice back from a high-pitched squeak down to its normal baritone level. “Maybe we should go up to my office?”

His office was on the top floor, full of extruded plastic intrusions. It looked like a pool-lover’s dream that had suddenly multiplied into a nightmare one night when he wasn’t looking. Machin sat himself behind a magnificent desk and looked at me cautiously, like he figured I could produce a banana boat out of my hip pocket any moment.

“I don’t think I can help you much, Mr. Boyd,” he said finally, after a lot of thought. “I told Lieutenant Schell at the original investigation that I noticed nothing out of the ordinary happen during the whole time we were in Elmo’s jewelry store and the girls were modeling the tiara.” He shook his head dismally. “And now this dreadful murder of Louise Lamont! This is a shocking thing to happen, Mr. Boyd. Anyone would think there’s a curse on the Poolside contest. First the tiara is stolen— and now one of the finalists has been killed.”

“The way it looks, Louise Lamont must have been mixed up some way in the tiara theft,” I said, “and that’s why it figures the beauty contest could have been rigged to get at that tiara.”

“I don’t get it.” He looked at me expectantly.

“The contest was your idea in the first place, right?” I snarled at liim.

“No—funnily enough it wasn’t. The original idea came from Mr. Rutter himself.” Machin gave a self-deprecatory smile. “The tail wagging the dog, you could say, Mr. Boyd? I have to admit 1 resented it though—it sounded like a damned good idea, and I wished I’d thought of it first.”

“Does your president come up with red-hot publicity ideas very often?” I asked.

“That’s the only one so far—and I hope he doesn’t get any more, either!” he said fervently. “My guess is— after what’s happened now—there’ll be a six-inch fall of snow in Santo Bahia before he dreams up another publicity stunt.”

“Patty Lamont is your secretary?” I prodded.

“Sure, but she’s not in the office today.” His face sobered. “I called her as soon as I heard about the murder. She’s heartbroken naturally—they were very close, I believe, even for sisters.”

“They even worked for the same corporation, at the same time once,” I added helpfully.

“Yes,” Machin nodded. “Louise was Mr. Rutter’s personal secretary and she only left a couple of months back.”

“After she had a violent fight with him, right?”

His eyebrows rose a fraction. “Who told you that?” “Her sister—but it’s true, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is.” Machin shifted in his chair, a slight look of embarrassment on his face. “But don’t quote me, Mr. Boyd!”

“What was it all about?”

“I wouldn’t know. I only heard them yelling at each other, then she left—he fired her on the spot.”

“But later on he let her enter the contest and get to be a finalist even?”

“That’s right,” Machin said in a very neutral voice. “Why?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Boyd.”

I glared at his expressionless face for a while, then shrugged helplessly. “I guess I should be talking to Rutter, huh? I’m sure as hell wasting my time here talking with you.”

“You know how it is, Mr. Boyd?” he said smoothly. “You just stopped by to visit and ask a few questions—I work here all the time.”

“And Rutter is the president of the company?”

“You have a gift for putting things concisely, if you don’t mind me saying so.” He grinned weakly.

“Then maybe you could give me his home address— if that isn’t top secret around here,” I grunted. Tamara had given me only the office address for the Poolside characters—sort of like giving the service entrance.

“Sure, my pleasure.” He wrote it down on his desk pad, then tore off the leaf and handed it to me across the desk.

“Thanks.” I put the piece of paper into my wallet. “Just one more question before I leave: the idea of tying in the contest with that tiara in the jewelry store— who dreamed up that one?”

“I did,” Machin said promptly. “It looked like it was too good an opportunity to miss.”

On my way out past the receptionist’s desk, the chest-nut-haired, foam-padded receptionist gave me a dubious smile.

“I’ll be thinking of you, honey,” I said gallantly. “Nights, when my ship rolls gently in the cradle of the Pacific, I’ll—”

“Maybe plastic could give a girl good uplift,” she said, knitting her eyebrows in concentration, “but wouldn’t it be kind of hot in summer?”