the ice cold nude

chapter one

I always figured blondes, like brunettes, were mostly a sometime thing; while redheads, being invariably skinny, were mostly a no-time thing. One swift glance at this redhead made me realize the sheer stupidity of all generalizations. The tight fit of her demure black silk dress against the arrogant thrust of her high-riding breasts was proof positive. Brother! If she was skinny, I was from outer space yet.

“The name is Boyd,” I confided with an approving grin, “Danny Boyd, from Boyd Enterprises, New York City.” My head turned automatically—a fraction to the left, then a fraction to the right—so she got the full impact of the profile both coming and going. It was the absolute treatment because I figured she deserved it; just one sid^-of the profile alone is mostly more than enough to reduce a healthy bouncing blonde to sobbing tears of frustration.

Somehow it produced no reaction at all from the mag-nificendy built redhead. There was merely a questioning look in her tawny eyes as she returned stare for stare. I guessed she was myopic for sure, and just too damned proud to wear cheaters.

“The glazed eyeballs I take as a compliment,” she said finally in a calm voice. “But take one small step closer to this desk, Boyd, and I’ll scream my head off.”

“Maybe if you put on your glasses for a moment,” I suggested nonchalantly, “you’d realize that sinister blur in

7

front of your straining eyes is the most handsome hunk of virile—”

“My vision is twenty-twenty,” she snapped. “Without straining my eyes at all, I can tell you what I see is one of those square-jawed cartoon characters they frighten children with on'television. For sure, there’s no possible resemblance to anything human.”

“You’re sick?” I said hopefully. “I bet any analyst could find some simple reason for why you don’t like good-looking men. Maybe it’s a hangover from childhood —you being a skinny kid with flaming pigtails, all the boys would run screaming when you came around. But believe me, honey, you’ve changed—now you’re all rounded out and everything.”

A faint smile quirked her lips, and she bent her head quickly to hide it, giving me a bird’s-eye view of her fantastic hair-do, which was a kind of careless rapture in titian.

“You wanted to see Mr. Elmo?” she said in a muffled voice. “He’s been expecting you, Mr. Boyd. You can go right on into his office—the second door to your right.” “Thanks,” I said politely. “I expect to be around here a while and I’d like to offer you the services of the Boyd good neighbor policy for free. We should get together and work on that inferiority complex of yours, honey. How about we make a start tonight, around eight maybe?” “I’m no masochist, Mr. Boyd,” she said sweetly. “If I want to make myself real miserable, I can do it without your help.”

Right then I figured it would be easier to take the second door to my right than try and answer that crack, so I started walking at a fast pace, pretending I never even heard that malicious chuckle of triumph from in back of me.

Mr. Elmo was a little man sitting behind a big desk. He was dressed in a dignified black suit and he wore gold-rimmed glasses that glittered with curiosity as he looked at me.

“I’m Boyd,” I told him cautiously.

“Ah, yes.” His tone of voice made me some kind of personal tragedy. “Sit down, Mr. Boyd. I trust you had a pleasant journey from the East?” He made New York sound like the Casbah.

“It was fine,” I told him, then sat cautiously in what looked like a genuine piece of early Americana. “I never expected to be back in Santo Bahia so soon—it’s only around six months since I was last here.”

“Indeed?”

“I’m curious,” I said truthfully. “I normally work out of my New York office and I wouldn’t call the West Coast my home territory exactly. How come you found me?”

“You were recommended, Mr. Boyd. I had great need for the services of an astute private detective. Lieutenant Schell suggested I contact you.”

“Schell?” I gaped at him.

“Does it surprise you?”

“That’s an understatement.” I remembered the last time I was in Santo Bahia, a skip-trace assignment turned into a multiple murder caper—with Lieutenant Schell holding me personally responsible for most of the corpses.

Elmo gave me a wintry smile. “The Lieutenant said the assignment was impossible in the first place and only a— I quote his words, you understand?—complete nut could have any hope of success. That was when he mentioned your name, Mr. Boyd.”

“It’s real great to know you have friends,” I said bitterly. “So what is this impossible assignment?”

“My jewelry store was robbed a week back,” he said in a precise voice. “We lost a diamond tiara worth one hundred thousand dollars, approximately.”

“Obviously the police haven’t found it,” I said. “How about the insurance company?—they’d have their own men working on it. Why do you need me?”

“A reasonable question, Mr. Boyd.” His gold-rimmed glasses glinted with an outraged sense of propriety. “The insurance company have refused the claim. Unless the tiara is recovered, I shall lose its wholesale cost which is approximately fifty thousand dollars.”

“How was it stolen?”

Elmo leaned back in his chair and shook his head dismally. “A clever plot, Mr. Boyd! It is, I’m afraid, a quite complicated story. Perhaps I should start at the beginning?”

“My time is your time,” I said generously.

“On the basis of a thousand dollars retainer, plus expenses, I imagine it is,” he said coldly. “Well now, in the first place I was approached by a local manufacturer, Poolside Plastics, to cooperate in publicizing a beauty contest they’re running. The tiara was on display in our window, and had been for a couple of weeks, when their publicity manager, a Mr. Machin, brought the three contest finalists to the store. The idea was, of course, that the contest winner would be crowned with the tiara. He wanted to photograph the three finalists, each wearing it in turn, to further the publicity.”

“That was when it was stolen?” I asked.

He nodded. “Two armed guards removed it from the window and brought IT into this office, where Machin and the rest of his people were already waiting. Each girl put on the tiara while the photographer got his pictures, then the guards returned it to the window.

“Two hours later, our Mr. Byers returned to the store— he’d been out selling a few expensive trinkets to a private buyer—and happened to glance at the display window. Fortunately for us, this man has a sharp and expert eye. That one glance was enough to tell Mr. Byers the real tiara had been replaced by a paste imitation.”

“He’s that good?” I asked incredulously.

“Mr. Byers came to us five years back, direct from Van Dieten and Luutens, of Amsterdam,” Elmo said in a hushed voice. “This man is a genius with precious stones, Mr. Boyd!”

“Fine,” I said politely. “But whoever made the switch had to have a paste imitation ready for the occasion. Who actually took the tiara from the window and gave it to the guards?”

“I removed it myself,” he said with frozen dignity. “I am the only person who knows how to operate the photocell rays and the rest of the protective devices that make the display window burglarproof.”

“So the only possible place the switch could have been made was right here in this room?” I said.

“That is the police theory,” he agreed. “I can see no other possible explanation, Mr. Boyd.”

“And the police haven’t gotten anyplace so far?” “Certainly not to my knowledge, at least,” he said stiffly. “As I have already mentioned, the insurance company refused the claim—using some small-print legal trickery—because the tiara was only covered while it was either in our window or in the vault.”