“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.”
“You should blame Willie Byers, not me,” I said wearily. “He was the guy who set himself up in the fake tiara business in the first place. I can get real nervous myself, trying to figure out just how many more fake tiaras are likely to turn up.”
Elmo shuddered. “Now you give me another repulsive thought to live with! What I want to know, Mr. Boyd, clearly and concisely, couched in simple English, is just exactly what progress you have made toward recovering my tiara?”
I lit a cigarette and shifted my haunches uncomfortably on the hard seat of the pseudo-antique chair while I tried to dream up something that would sound like a reasonable answer.
“I’m waiting, Mr. Boyd,” he said sharply.
“I’m trying,” I said and shrugged. “I’ll keep on trying.”
The gold-rimmed glasses flashed angrily. “Is that all you have to say?”
“You paid me a thousand bucks, and I get another five if I do the job,” I grated. “So far, in return for that thousand bucks, I’ve been slugged and shot at. I’ve found two corpses and created a third. The way Lieutenant Schell feels right now 1*11 be lucky to ever get out of this town. If you don’t think you’re getting any value for your money, Mr. Elmo, I can quit right now— well, after I’ve given you a couple of suggestions about what you can do with the tiara if it ever is found.”
He looked at me coldly for a few seconds, his face completely bland, then picked up an ivory paperweight from his desk and toyed with it for a few more seconds.
“Mr. Boyd,” he said finally, “I’ll let you in on a secret. My lawyers have found a weakness in the insurance company’s fine print. It looks strongly as if they will have to pay after all. You realize what that means, of course? Once they meet the claim, the recovery of the tiara will
then be their concern, and not mine. Undoubtedly they will also appoint their own investigators at the same time.” “I have a feeling you’re trying to tell me something, Mr. Elmo,” I said gently. “Do me a small favor—put it clearly and concisely, in simple English?”
“Of course.” He smiled thinly. “You mentioned a few moments back that, in return for my down payment of a thousand dollars, you had suffered various indignities and dangers—all in the ardent pursuit of my stolen tiara. 1 am prepared to accept this—though I have some reservations, you understand?—and am also prepared to agree that, as of this moment, I have received adequate service from you in return for the down payment.”