As soon as I saw Diane I knew she must have given Jules his hundred-thousand-dollars worth. There were several things about Diane that were obvious, the first one being that she was a woman. A lot of women these days look like thin men, but not this kid. She was dressed in red-and-black hostess pajamas with a silver belt tied around her tiny waist. The pajama bottoms were the black part, with full flowing legs slit up the side to her knees, which I automatically assumed were dimpled and the red part was a thin, shimmering blouse which was crammed either with gigantic falsies or one hell of a lot of Diane.
She peered around the door and up at me, letting a strand of red hair droop fetchingly over one eye, and she said, “Hello, hello, hello.”
I looked behind me but there was nobody else around. “That all for me?” I asked her.
“Sure. You’re big enough for three helloes. You’re Scotty, aren’t you?”
“Shell Scott. How did you know?”
“Daddy phoned me. He said you’d come and see me.” She had the door about halfway open and she slid around it, one arm and leg on each side of it and her body pressed against the thin edge. She was silent for a few seconds, smiling at me, then she said, “He told me you were big, and your nose was a little bent, and you had real short white hair that stuck up in the air, and I should be nice to you and help you any way I could.” She laughed. “Come on in, Mr. Scotty. I’m Diane.”
There was a chance conversation with this gal was going to be difficult. I walked by her but before I got past she said, “He didn’t tell me about the funny white eyebrows. They glued?” She reached out and playfully tugged at one.
“No,” I said. “They are not glued. And I—”
“You bring my jewels?”
“What the hell—”
“I know you didn’t. I was just teasing. Don’t be mad. Come in and sit down. You want a drink or anything?”
“Nope. I want some conversation. You sit down in a chair clear the hell across the room from me and let’s talk. O.K.?”
She pretended to pout, which let me notice how full and sensually curving her lower lip was. While I sat down she plopped into a chair and crossed her legs. That black cloth parted at the slit and fell away from skin that looked white and soft as a cloud. Then she bounced up and sat on a long gray divan for half a second, then rolled over and lay on her stomach looking at me. She was a little fluffy bit of a thing, very young — maybe seventeen I figured, all curves and bounce and energy. She was beginning to make me feel decrepit and full of hardened arteries at thirty.
Finally we got around to the jewelry. On my way here I’d stopped at Montclair Jewelers, where Osborne had bought the stuff, and picked up a typed list and description of the missing items. Osborne had arranged to have it ready for me. The pieces were mostly diamonds, with a couple of emerald brooches thrown in. I checked the list against Diane’s memory, which was just as good as the list, then asked her to tell me what she could of the actual theft.
She rolled over onto her back, stretched her arms above her head, and presented such a charming picture that I hardly heard what she was saying. But she told me she’d gone with “Daddy” to an out-of-the-way spot and worn some of her diamonds. Back home, after Mr. Osborne had gone, she’d left the stuff on top of her bedroom dresser alongside the jewel box.
She said, “And when I woke up yesterday morning the little pretties were just gone. I’d locked the doors when Daddy left and they were still locked this morning. Windows too. But it was all just gone. Some robbers stole it all.”
“You mean somebody walked right into your bedroom and lifted the rocks without your knowing anything about it?”
“Well, they must have. I sleep sounds enough, but if anybody was banging around and flashing lights and things it should have awakened me.” She giggled at me. “I wasn’t very tired, anyway.”
“Yeah. You know, I expected to find you all broken up, yanking your hair out and wailing. You sure you want these things back?”
“Well, I like that. You want me to run around bawling and yelling ‘My jewels, my jewels’?” She was still smiling and didn’t seem angry. “Now, wouldn’t that be silly, really? I really feel bad, but Daddy said you’d get them back... or else he’d get me some more. So it’s not like my little old pretties were gone forever.”
“I was just thinking, wouldn’t it be a big laugh if you still had those little old pretties around somewhere and I naturally can’t find the robbers and you get another hundred grand’s worth from Da — ah, from your father?”
She sat up straight on the couch. “Let me think about that a minute,” she said. Then she laughed, flopped back on the couch and threw her legs up in the air. “Oh, how funny,” she said. “That would be a scream. But I never thought of it — wish I had. And he’s not my father, you silly. You know what I hope?”
“No, what do you hope?”
“That those robbers didn’t see me.” She swung her legs around to the floor, got up and scooted across the room and curled up on the floor at my feet. She put her arms on my knees, leaned forward and said, “If they saw the diamonds, right in my bedroom there, and stole them, they must have been able to see me it seems like. And golly I hope they didn’t. I don’t sleep with anything on, nothing at all, you know, and I’m restless. I kick and turn and wallow around all night I guess. Almost always I wake up all uncovered.” She shook her head and let red hair fly around.
I said in a voice that was practically normal, “And if those robbers did see you, you’d better lock and bar all the doors tonight, because they’ll be here again come hell or high-water, jewels or no jewels. Now go back to your couch.”
She laughed and said, “You’re fun. You know, you’re lots of fun. And you know what I meant. Well, what else do you want to know?”
“You got any picture of you wearing some of the rocks?”
“Just a minute.” She got up, taking her arms and whatnot off my shaking knees, and trotted out of the room on bare feet. I hadn’t noticed before that she was barefooted, but then I’ve never been much of a guy to look at feet.
She came back with two snapshots and a nightclub photo in which she was practically sagging under the weight of diamonds and emeralds. The nightclub photo showed a necklace, pin, and bracelet clearly. The dress she’d been wearing was strapless, and the photo showed Diane clearly, and it was clearly all Diane.
“You can borrow the pictures,” she said. “Daddy took the first two snaps, and he was in the other — but he cut himself out. Well, what now?”
“Now I go look for these things. And I’d be awfully sad if there weren’t any robbers.”
“There you go again. Don’t be so nasty. Somebody stole them, all right. You have to go right away?”
“Immediately.” I stood up. I looked at her for a minute and said, “Aren’t you being a little rough on the guy? I mean this business of either you get the rocks back or it costs him another hundred G’s? The guy might collapse from anxiety, start selling his Cadillacs, get rocks in his head—”
“Wait a minute.” She got about half sober, raised an arched eyebrow and looked me up and down slowly. Then she said, “Come on now. You know better than that. I’m doing him a favor. A lot of men think price is value. Daddy wouldn’t have a Cadillac if it only cost five hundred dollars.”
I blinked at her, thinking that maybe her brain wasn’t as soft as I’d suspected. Then she went back to normal and wiggled a little and smiled at me, and I thought: Hang on, Scott, you’ll be out of here in a minute and Jules isn’t paying you for what you’re thinking. I started for the door and Diane walked along with me, hanging onto my arm, which also started getting hot.