No one else in the bar room took any notice. These three were always horsing around. After a while they got tired of rolling about on the floor, and giggling breathlessly they came back to the table and sat down.
‘I’ve broken my suspender,’ Dana complained, examining the damage. ‘I wish you two hogs would learn to behave like gentlemen. Every time I come out with you I land up on the floor.’
Kerman ran a comb through his hair while Benny peered under the table.
‘She does wear suspenders!’ he reported excitedly. ‘I thought she kept her socks up with glue.’
‘Will you three pipe down?’ I pleaded. ‘I have business to talk about.’
Dana hit Benny over the head with a rolled newspaper.
‘Keep your eyes to yourself or I’ll slit your guzzle!’ she said fiercely.
‘Miss Lewis!’ Benny said, shocked. ‘What a way to talk!’
I rapped on the table.
‘If you don’t listen to me...’ I began threateningly.
‘All right, darling,’ Dana said. ‘Of course we’ll listen. What’s the job?’
I told her.
‘I want you to go over and meet Cerf at the Athletic Club at three this afternoon. Keep your eyes open. There’s a chance the daughter’s mixed up in this. Anyway, stick close to Mrs. Cerf. If she does lift anything in a shop you’ve got to cover her. I want this job handled nice and smooth.’
‘What’s this Cerf frail like to look at?’ Benny asked, pushing the whisky over to me.
‘Lush,’ I said, and made curves with my hands. ‘All hills and valleys. Very, very lush indeed.’
‘Are we in this?’ Kerman asked with sudden interest. ‘We’d better help Dana, hadn’t we? You know how dumb she can be.’
Dana pushed back her chair and stood up.
‘But not so dumb as you’d like me to be,’ she said pertly.
‘Well, I guess I’ll run along. Don’t let these two degenerates drink too much, Vic,’ and she whisked her tail out of reach as Benny took a slap at it.
‘Degenerates!’ Kerman said indignantly as she left the bar. ‘After all we’ve done for that woman. Hey! Leave some of that whisky for me, you drunken rat!’ he went on excitedly as Benny poured himself another slug. ‘I have a half-share in that bottle I’ll have you know.’
‘You two guys will follow up the blackmail angle,’ I said, grabbing the whisky and putting the cork in. ‘Stick around until Dana gets something to work on. And listen, you’d better sober up. I have a job for you this afternoon. Some old guy wants to catch marlin. It’s an easy job, and besides the old guy has a nice long beard. If you get bored you can always set fire to it.’
‘Old guy, huh?’ Benny said in disgust. ‘Why not a dame? Why not the lush Mrs. Cerf? Here we have the perfect setup for a breakdown miles out at sea, and it has to be an old guy with a beard.’
‘Maybe you’ll catch a mermaid; then you can throw the old guy overboard and have your breakdown after all,’ I said encouragingly.
There was a long, ominous silence.
‘You know what?’ Benny said to Kerman. ‘I love this guy, the way a fly loves Flit.’
IV
On the evening of the second day after my interview with Jay Franklin Cerf I sat on the verandah of my four-room beach cabin, keeping a highball company and reread Dana’s report I had picked up at the office on my way home.
It was a concise job, and contained several points of interest. So far, Dana reported, Anita Cerf had shown no kleptomaniac tendencies. She had gone shopping in the morning, and there had been nothing suspicious in her behaviour. All purchases she had made had either been paid for or charged account. But that meant nothing as kleptomaniacs very often have their impulses in cycles, and it might take a little time to catch her red-handed.
What did mean something was the discovery that Anita was secretly meeting a guy named George Barclay, and had been seen by Dana with him twice in two days. By their attitude to each other they were obviously on an intimate footing, and both of them had taken care not to be seen together on the streets.
They had met at a lobster-bar a couple of miles outside the city’s limits, and again the next day, for lunch at a Greek restaurant away from the swank district where Cerf or Anita’s friends would be unlikely to run into them.
Dana had got Barclay’s name and address from his car’s registration card. He lived on Wiltshire Avenue in a small chalet-style house set in its own grounds. He was the playboy type, looked and dressed like a film star, ran a Chrysler convertible and seemed to have plenty of money. He was lead number one.
Lead number two was Ralph Bannister, the owner of a swank nightclub, L’Etoile, out at Fairview. Anita had gone out there around six o’clock the previous evening and Dana had overheard her asking the commissionaire who guarded the entrance if she could talk to Bannister on urgent business. She had been admitted, and had remained in the club die best part of an hour, then had driven back to the Santa Rosa Estate in time for dinner.
I knew Bannister by reputation, although I had never met him. He was a smart crook who had made a big success of the nightclub, catering for millionaires and running a couple of roulette wheels that must have cost him a lot of money in police protection.
I was deciding to turn Benny and Kerman loose on these two leads when I saw the headlights of a car coming slowly along the beach road. The time was ten-fifteen, and it was a hot night, and quiet. I wasn’t expecting visitors, and I thought the car would go on past, but it didn’t. It pulled up outside the wooden gate and the headlights went out.
It was too dark out there to see much. The car looked as big as a battleship, but I couldn’t see the driver. I slipped Dana’s report into my pocket and waited. I thought someone had got the wrong house.
The latch of the gate clicked up and I could just make out a shadowy figure that looked like a woman. The sitting room light was on and the verandah doors open, but not much light spilled into the garden.
It wasn’t until she was right on top of me that I saw my visitor was Anita Cerf. She came slowly up the three wooden steps that led to the verandah, her full red lips parted in that half-smile that had fooled me before. She was wearing a flame-coloured evening dress, cut low to show plenty of cleavage, and an impressive collar of diamonds encircled her throat like a ribbon of fire. There was something in the way she looked at me that had that thing: it came across like an invisible ray and was strong enough to lean against.
‘Hello,’ she said in a low, husky voice. ‘Where’s everyone, or are you alone?’
I was on my feet now, just a little rattled, as she was the last person I expected to see. I looked past her, wondering if Dana Lewis was out there, watching, and she was quick to read my thoughts.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I gave Miss Sherlock the slip,’ and before I could stop her she walked into the sitting room and sat in one of the easy chairs. I followed her in, and to be on the safe side, pulled the curtains across the windows.
Up to now I hadn’t opened my mouth. I was too busy trying to make up my mind how to handle this visit to bother to be polite. There would be trouble if Cerf heard about it. She knew that, of course; that was why she had come out here alone, and when she knew I would be alone.
‘What do you want, Mrs. Cerf?’ I asked, walking around her chair and standing before her.
We looked at each other. There was a jeering expression in her wide grey eyes.