The Kubla Khan Caper (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 15

  My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Lyssa’s voice. It was kind of different this time.

  She said, “Bull, I’m not going to argue with you. If you want to be a stupid jealous old—Oh!” And then, “Oh!”

  I knew that “Oh!”

  Lyssa had once again become inspired. This time it truly was inspiration. And this time it did, indeed and at last, change the subject.

  I saw the fuzzy white towel fall and crumple on the floor. That made once accidentally and twice on purpose. Or maybe, I mused, three times on purpose. Whichever, Bull Harper knew when to quit arguing.

  “Lyssa, bab-bb-by,” he yowled.

  “Bull!”

  “Lyssa!”

  Thumping footsteps again, muffled snorting, yowls, and “Bull!” and “Lyssa!” and a couple of thumps, and a creak. A huge scabbarded scimitar sailed across the room and clunked on the carpet. Then some other things. Oh, no, you don’t, I thought. But I was wrong about practically everything these days.

  OK, I told myself, let’s go over it again. Let’s go over this here case from the beginning. Must be several clues just waiting to be grabbed and put into the right places, maybe enough to complete the puzzle. Besides, there wasn’t much else for me to do.

  I drew a little line on the damp carpet under my nose, and watched as a drop of moisture fell from my nose onto the mark. Probably couldn’t do that again if I tried.

  “Bull,” Lyssa said—I could hear her quite clearly—”it must be almost noon. I’ve got to get ready for the ceremonies.”

  “In a minute.”

  Yes, it must be nearly noon, I thought. But when I looked at my watch, it was with some surprise that I noted it was only eleven-fifty-four. Six minutes yet. In six minutes I could say good-bye forever to nine thousand, nine hundred dollars. Of course, I’d never really expected to get that whole ten G’s. I’m not a nut.

  I suppose I should be more—oh, more orthodox. Nose to the old grindstone, up at the croak of dawn, charge around with an expression of severe pain on my face. Like right now, for example. But that wouldn’t be me, and if I lost me, where would I be?

  That one was too deep for me to figure out with my brains in the mess they were in. All I knew was, that wouldn’t be smart; that wasn’t my way to go. No, I’d rather lie under a bed, cursing under my breath, and drown in my own sweat. That was smart.

  Six minutes to go. Five minutes now. Something . . . Something about the time, just before noon, wiggled a little tendril in my brain. It was a worrying little wiggle, but I couldn’t figure out what had caused it.

  Well, I thought, let’s go over it again.

  There’s the Jeanne Jax bit. On arriving, she had first talked to Ormand Monaco—assuming, always, that Monaco hadn’t been lying to me with deliberation and expertness, which was more than possible—and had noted Neyra Vail and Jerry, had later asked some of the girls about Neyra Vail and Sardis, and had as the day progressed confined her questions, so far as I’d been able to determine, to Sardis, Ephrim Sardis. At the end, by the time she got to Bull Harper, she’d asked Bull to arrange a meeting for her with Mr. Sardis—and, according to what Lyssa had just wangled from Bull, had actually shown up for that meeting yesterday at 3:30 p.m. What had occurred then I couldn’t know, but maybe I could guess.

  Sardis had been shot and killed around 4:30 p.m.—at least that was when the call to the sheriff had been logged, the call reporting the sound of a gunshot; 4:28 P.M., I recalled.

  Unless Jeanne’s killer—and Sardis’ murderer, too—was somebody I didn’t know or hadn’t met, the people closest to the case were Ormand Monaco, Jerry Vail, Warren Phelps and Bull Harper. Bull was out. He hadn’t killed anybody. Not with a gun. In the first place, I believed he had met Lyssa yesterday shortly after 3:30 p.m., at least well before the sound of that gunshot had been reported; further, I thought if it had been Bull running up over Moss Mountain late Friday, I’d have been impressed by the size and bulk of him. No, for my money, Bull was out.

  Which left Jerry and Ormand and Warren. And, conceivably, Neyra Vail herself, though that wasn’t likely. I’d have to talk to Neyra, when I got a chance.

  Back to Jeanne, the crux of it.

  She’d been married, saw her estranged hubby here at the Khan. According to Phelps, the hubby had left her, taken a powder—with some of her loot, at that. But according to Misty, Jeanne had said, at least at first, that they were merely estranged.

  Misty . . . That wiggle in my skull again. And the worry, growing.

  I shook it off, tried to concentrate. I remembered my first “interrogation” of Misty, here on the Khan’s grounds last night. And then the repeat of it, while Ormand Monaco and Jerry Vail listened . . . .

  Then through the convolutions of my brain like a small bright worm wriggled the thought: If either Vail or Monaco happened to be the murderer, and had listened to Misty answering my questions about Jeanne in that ersatz interrogation . . .

  I almost had it.

  I wish to hell these people would shut up, I thought. How’s a mart supposed to concentrate? I looked at my watch. Four minutes till noon. Pretty quick everybody, simply everybody, was going to be out in front of the hotel entrance for the grand, impressive, dignified ceremonies, the speeches and ribbon-cutting. The grand opening of the fabulous Kubla Khan. Even going to have a band, I’d been told. A band playing, politicians and celebrities making speeches and having their pictures taken. Probably even the Governor of the state would consent to make a few thousand remarks. It was going to be something to see, all right. And everybody would be there. Except Bull and Lyssa. And, of course, me.

  Back to Vail and Monaco, I told myself. OK, assume one of them was the murderer—and sapped me, tried to kill me last night. Would there have been any reason, any motive, for that same man to try to kill Misty? And, if so, wouldn’t he have tried to kill her later that same night? It was possible, and if what was beginning to go through my mind now made sense, it was even probable. Except . . . Of course. Except that I had been with Misty last night.

  I couldn’t keep my thoughts from Misty. The worry about her was growing, starting to chill my guts. I still didn’t know why, hadn’t pinned it down, but I had sense enough to know if that chill fear was growing, then there was a reason for it. Buried somewhere in memory of my subconscious, maybe, or even pushed aside by the events of these last minutes; but there, and real.

  Wait a second. Go at it another way. Suppose, just suppose there is one person with reason, with motive—now—not only to kill me but to kill Misty as well. Who would that person have to be; and why the need to get rid of us both? I was getting closer to the answer, and then I thought of something else.

  Last night would surely have been the time for the murder of Misty Lombard—if I’d not been with her. Everything dark, nobody around. And then came another worm of thought, an ugly one this time: it wouldn’t have to be dark.

  Half a dozen other thoughts came then, all the other ones, or at least most of them, and it suddenly felt as if the sweat on my body had frozen. My breath stopped. Fear for Misty was a solid block in my throat. I knew. It was knowledge, it was certainty: it was happening. If she wasn’t already dead, it was happening.

  That last worm of thought stayed in my mind: it wouldn’t have to be dark. Just a time when nobody was around. A time when all the guests and most of the help were gathered before the wide entrance of the Kubla Khan. A time when somebody was going to meet Misty at her suite, “just before noon.”

  A time like—right now.

  19

  I was staring at the second hand of my watch.

  I didn’t even know what time it was, only that the little hand was moving like death, inexorably—and fast, too fast.

  I started to roll from under the bed, then stopped.

  Every second was important, every second might mean the difference between one more breath for Misty and none again, none ever again. But I couldn’t take a chance that—

  I
stopped, shook my head. I wasn’t thinking straight enough. If I messed this up I’d never get to Misty. There might still be time, but I had to force my thought from her, away from my fear, and make certain I did everything right—and at the right moment.

  Think of this second, and the next ones. Out the door, to the hotel running, through it. I edged over the carpet, under the bed to its edge. I could see my damned trousers dangling from the ironing board. The hell with them, too.

  No time to grab them, no time even for that. The really big mess would explode if Bull Harper lamped me. Uh-huh, there was the thought which had slowed me down a moment ago. And a good thing, too. Because if Bull did lamp me, he would of a certainty become instantly filled with ravenous desire to get his hands on me. Even if he didn’t render me unconscious for several hours, there would sure as hell be no reasoning with him. There’d be no chance to explain—anything.

  It was a good thing I hadn’t followed my first impulse and scrambled out, noisily, startling Bull more than just a little. The startle would put even more adrenalin into his veins, and there was, I felt certain, more than enough there already. No, I had to be very cagey, move quietly even at first with agonizing slowness, but only until I could be sure of getting to the door unobserved and making a break for it.

  So, slowly, like a lone guerrilla crawling through regiments of the enemy, I moved out from under the bed. I was aimed toward the door and I crept another foot toward it before rising slowly, noiselessly to my knees. And my knee popped.

  Pop.

  Well, I thought, that tore it.

  And right after that there was a queer gobbling sound, like a turkey when you hit him with a bamboo stick.

  I hadn’t looked behind me yet. I hadn’t really wanted to look behind me. But what the hell, you can’t always do what you want to do. I looked behind me.

  Miraculously it was not Bull Harper making that strained and strangled sound. He hadn’t even seen me yet. Not that it made any real difference, because his big head was moving and in a very, very short time he was going to see me.

  The sound, however, was issuing from Lyssa, who upon spotting me in my rather awkward position, had apparently become possessed of an insane joy. Or at least some kind of entirely inappropriate merriment. She was laughing. Or, if not yet actually laughing wildly, was unsuccessfully suppressing her attack of acute imbecility.

  She pressed her teeth together, then they opened as if prized apart by an irresistible force, and she squeaked; “Yeeee—oooee—oooee,” which—at another time—I might have thought much resembled a teeny-weeny bird calling to its mate, and which she finally choked off with a sound like a parrot being strangled in the middle of a squawk.

  Things were never going to be the same between us again. It was a sickening thought. But that was the only kind of thought I was having right then. There wasn’t even time for very many sickening thoughts.

  For Bull, big old Bull, had got that great head of his cranked around all the way and his wide and staring eyes were full upon me.

  Well, words cannot tell it.

  Music could not have told it.

  Not even ten thousand senators orating while geniuses conducted symphonies and madmen beat hell out of kettledrums could have told it.

  I can’t even begin to describe Bull Harper, and his weirdly flickering expression at that moment, because part of it was in the fourth dimension. But if you have ever seen a guy get hit on the head with a truck, you’ve an idea of what happened to his eyeballs, in which little veins appeared to be preparing to pop.

  He was staring at me, with his head cocked way over on one side, practically looking at me upside down, and his glistening black chops bore the strangest and most memorable expression imaginable. It was—as close as I’ll ever be able to get it—an inscrutable blend of unbelieving comprehension rising reluctantly over denied belief, plus stunned dollops of wistful sorrow and sheer agony.

  He seemed to be in some kind of trauma, which I hoped was irreversible, but I, too, felt as though my nerves had all been plucked like pinfeathers from a Christmas goose and it was totally impossible for me to move. I wanted to move. I knew I should move—for lots of reasons, none of which at that moment were crystal clear to me. But I had to wait till my pinfeathers came back.

  So I watched it all.

  At first he was simply frozen there. Rigid. Unmoving. Addled. But then he moved, just a little. Slowly his expression changed a trifle. The eyes got smaller; narrowed; squinted. His lips came together and pooched out. He got a strained look. And I was able to detect the exact moment when he knew, knew for sure, the what and how: what was going on; what it was out there on the carpet, eyeballing him in transfixed nausea; how I’d gotten into my awkward position; how those keen pants had gotten onto Lyssa’s ironing board. It was when his eyes sort of emptied out, like when you dump used coffee grounds in the sink.

  But that was only the beginning.

  It went on forever.

  It was much the same as when I got clunked on the head and time became as taffy. It was another very sticky moment right then. And in that strange world I go to at moments of great peril, I watched Bull’s lips and eyes and nostrils and teeth and hair and hairline and eyebrows and chin and you name it go this way and that way and form snorts and silent curses and homicidal conniptions. It was as though for eons I watched, as over his contorted features marched the whole parade of evolution. History was born and died there—earthquake, storm, fire and flood and I don’t know what all.

  Boy, something had to be done.

  “Bull,” I said, very friendly, “don’t jump to conclusions.”

  His lips went way out, way out, and he said, “Shhhh—” like a storm blowing up off Cape Hatteras.

  “Bull,” I said, “this isn’t what you think. No, it’s not. Not really. Are . . . you thinking? Bull . . . can you hear me?”

  “Shhhhhh—”

  “Don’t you understand? I didn’t do anything. Not really. I didn’t have time—”

  “shhhhhh—”

  Getting louder and louder. He was starting to sound like gas leaking out of a dirigible.

  “shhhhhhhh—”

  What’s he trying to say? I wondered. Shucks? No, that wouldn’t be it. Not Sherlock Holmes, either, I’d have bet a million.

  “shhhheeeellllll—”

  There it was!

  “scott!”

  Yep, there it was. And it was as though finally getting it out freed Bull for wild, horrendous and unbelievably speedy movement. Of a sudden he was flying through the air toward me, leaping at me, hurtling upon me like a herd of stampeding elephants. It was—ack, I just hope I never see anything like it again.

  What had gone before had then been extraordinarily unpleasant to behold; but compared to this, to the sight of Bull Harper spread out in the atmosphere, hands clutching, teeth gnashing, eyes bugging and flaming, everything in awesome activity, that had been as nothing.

  Not since the eruption of Krakatau, not since the sinking of Atlantis and Mu, had there been a more fearsome sight. Never on land or sea or—like Bull—in the air had human orbs beheld so horrifying a conglomeration of galloping fury, creeping agony, shock, consternation, sex appeal, thundering stupefaction and murderous abandon. Never had there been a sight more fiendishly designed to glaze over eyeballs, to make the brain go, faintly, pfft, like cigarettes dropped into the toilet.

  Hoo-boy, I thought. I’m going to get killed. At least.

  20

  The only thing that saved me was the fact that no matter what had galvanized Bull into action, his movement sent me into pretty zippy movement, too.

  I flipped over and yanked my legs up and slammed them into his midsection before he landed on me, and he sailed over my head. I didn’t see him hit the floor, but there was a hell of a thump as he landed, then another as he crashed enormously into the wall.

  That should have fixed him, I thought, and rolled over, and spock!

  It hadn’t fixed
him.

  But the foot he kicked me with damn near fixed me. Actually, it must have been his fist; he would have needed both feet to get back from the wall so speedily. But it felt like a foot with a gob of lead on it.

  The blow caught me on the side of the head and when I stopped rolling I couldn’t for a moment remember where I was at. I was pretty sure, though, it was not some place I wanted to be. So I started getting out of there. I got my feet under me, straightened up—and ducked.

  Ducked just in time. My eyes had focused on the big form of Bull Harper swinging a huge fist at me and I got my head down just enough so that his arm bounced off my short-cropped hair.

  He kept turning from the force of the blow and I slammed a right hand up into his iron-hard belly and then, as he turned and tried to grab me, got my feet set and hammered the side of his chin with a solid left hand, arm and shoulder and thrust of straightening leg behind it.

  It was a good one.

  It was the kind of blow that would end ninety-nine out of a hundred fights. It had all my steam plus a little extra tonnage born of desperation in it, and it sent Bull to one knee. He wasn’t out; he wasn’t even all the way down; but he was a yard from me and not on his way back yet—and it was my chance to go. I went.

  I leaped to the door and through it and skidded on grass as I turned right, but kept my feet and then really got them going, moving like little five-toed dynamos, and as I ran those earlier ugly thoughts came back to me—Misty, and murder. I was moving about as fast as it’s possible for me to move, but the thoughts seemed to add even more power to my legs and feet and by the time I reached the hotel’s front edge I was flying like a startled bird. I’d been thinking too. Maybe not enough, but thinking.

  I’d been thinking time was so short that the only hope was for me to get from Lyssa’s room to Misty’s suite in the shortest, most direct and fastest way. Both were outside rooms, not among those that overlooked the inner court and pool, and they were in opposite wings of the Kubla Khan, Lyssa’s almost at the end of the north wing and Misty’s clear over in the south wing of the hotel.