The Kubla Khan Caper (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Read online

  But then the driver braked suddenly, skidded, slid left and seemed to disappear into the mountain. I slowed, came almost to a stop at the spot where he’d turned. Dust rose and swirled lazily above a dirt road there, which rose toward a depression in Moss Mountain, perhaps the lowest spot along its rim. Near me I saw a weathered sign in the shape of an arrow pointing up the road, and the words harding ranch in black paint on the sign.

  Maybe it was Papa Harding racing home to Mama. After a year at sea. Maybe not. I kept going on up Yucca Road. In another minute I caught sight of Monaco’s house, though house doesn’t seem quite the word.

  It sat cupped in a hollow on the side of Moss Mountain, almost like a miniaturized—and Westernized—version of the Kubla Khan. There must have been forty rooms inside the place and the entire stock of seventeen nurseries outside it. A big chunk of the house jutted out toward me in apparent defiance of gravity, suspended in air, and beneath it was about an acre of water, either an emperor-size swimming pool or a shallow artificial lake. Tall palms rose near the water and behind the house. A black-topped drive curved past the water and ended in a hundred-foot circle at the base of stone steps leading up to the entrance.

  In the circle was parked a three-year-old Buick coupé, its left-hand door open. I drove up near it, parked, and got out of the Cad. Above me, with her back to the big carved-wood doors, a woman stood, staring down at me.

  I waved; she didn’t. But, after staring at me for a few seconds longer, she moved from the door and started down the stone steps.

  I walked forward to meet her, but she was at the bottom of the steps by the time I reached them—skipping along at a pretty good pace, she was—and the lovely started to skip right on by me without a word.

  Lovely she was, too. Tall, maybe five-eight, wearing a pale-blue skirt over flaring hips and a white blouse over raring breasts, a tan leather belt cinched tight around a waist that couldn’t have been more than twenty-one inches around. In one hand she clutched a big leather handbag the same color as the belt. Her big breasts trembled under the white cloth as she hurried past me.

  “Hey,” I said, “wait a shake. Where’s the fire? Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  She stopped briefly, let vivid blue eyes rest on my face, then glanced around, once up toward the house, then back down the road. Her hair was cut short but was thick and full, the color of harvest-time wheat.

  “Nobody home?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s funny. Mr. Monaco said he’d be here. Were you supposed to see him, miss?”

  She turned and started walking toward her car.

  “I’ll be seeing him later,” I said., “If you’ll give me your name I’ll tell him you—”

  She’d climbed into the Buick and pulled the door shut.

  Great. Luscious gal like that, and she’d said two words to me. “Hello” and “No.” I’d goofed; she’d looked lovely enough to be one of the “talent search” contestants, eager for fame and adoration, and I hadn’t even thought to tell her I was a judge. Of what use is power if you don’t use it? I asked myself.

  I went up the stone steps, found a bell button, which looked a bit like a belly button, with a pearl in it, and pushed it tentatively. Somewhere inside the house a gong boomed, sort of a twuuungg, like you’d expect to hear when Fu Manchu glides through the silken curtains.

  The fluttering echoes died. Nothing. I started to twungg the button again and noticed one of the big double doors was not completely closed. I pushed it and it swung open. Funny. If Monaco wasn’t home, it seemed odd he’d leave a lavish joint like this unlocked.

  Below me tires crunched in bits of loose gravel on the drive. The noncommittal tomato had started her car, was heading down the blacktop toward Yucca. I shrugged, turned back to the door and looked at it, then walked inside.

  “Hello!” I yelled. “Anybody home?”

  Silence. Heavy silence, that was all. I walked forward over white spongy carpet, my feet barely whispering on the thick nap.

  “Hello!”

  If there were forty rooms in this place, it would take a while to look through all of them. Be hell if I found a dead body. Like Monaco’s, say. Or any kind of dead body.

  I stood still for a moment, listening. Then I sighed, took a step forward—and felt my spine stiffen.

  I’d heard a sound. Two sounds, actually. Flat, heavy, one right after the other. Not in the house—outside, down the road.

  And I’d heard that sound too many times not to know what it was. Gunshots.

  3

  The front door was still open behind me. I spun around and jumped to it, through it and down those stone steps three and four at a time. I was in the Cad, jabbing my key at the ignition, when I heard the third shot, louder in my ears now that I was outside the house.

  I cramped the wheel, raced down the drive to Yucca and into it, tires skidding. I pushed the gas pedal for half a mile, then hit the brakes. The Buick coupé was off the road on my right, fender crumpled against a huge boulder, the side of Moss Mountain dark in shadow beyond it.

  As the Cad slowed I looked toward the car, around it, up the slanting side of the hill. But nothing moved that I could see. I stopped near the Buick, eased my .38 Colt Special from its clamshell holster and got out of the car, keeping low.

  Nothing happened and I ran to the Buick, shoved my head past the open window and yanked it back out involuntarily.

  It was awful. Half her head was gone. Blood was all over. Above the dashboard, at the base of the window, was a ragged segment of curving bone, and on it a hank of hair the color of harvest-time wheat.

  I started back toward my Cadillac, and the radio-phone under its dash. The sudden sight of the girl so messily dead had shocked me, and I guess I let my guard down. The hiss of the slug near my head and the crack of the gun seemed simultaneous.

  I hit the dirt and rolled, got my feet under me and stayed crouched for a moment close to the side of my Cad. The shot had come from my left, somewhere up on the hillside. I cocked the .38, then raised up, stood motionless for a second and stepped suddenly to my right.

  Whoever was trying to kill me would have missed me even if I hadn’t stepped aside. The bullet was high overhead; he’d probably jerked the trigger convulsively.

  But I saw the flash this time.

  The rim of the hill was only about two hundred feet away, and the dart of fire blazed briefly below the rim. I had my arm extended, Colt cradled in my fist, and I swung it left a bit and up and squeezed off three shots before ducking down again. There were two more shots and I heard a clunk, but neither slug came close to me. I moved to the Cad’s rear bumper and poked my head up again—and saw him.

  Only for a moment. He was high above me, outlined against the still-bright sky, running. It was a man. I snapped another shot at him but knew I missed; the slug kicked up dirt near the hill’s rim, hit a rock and whined away. Then the man was out of sight. But by then I was running myself.

  I fell twice going up that damned Moss Mountain, slick leather of my shoes slipping on rocks. But I got to the top bleeding only from the palm of my left hand. And a lot of good that speedy climb did me. The far side of the hill was little different from the first side, slanting down for two or three hundred feet to a dirt road, with dust swirling lazily above it. Far to my left a car raced away, going like sixty; or maybe like ninety.

  I swore, wrapped a handkerchief around my left hand, and started down the mountain.

  Before the deputies arrived I looked at the dead woman again. And at her car. She’d been hit in the chin with one slug, and there was a bullet hole in the right-hand door of the Buick, opposite where the driver would sit. So that explained the third shot.

  Obviously one of those first two bullets had hit the car and the other bad slammed her chin like a club; that would have sent her off the road, probably knocked her unconscious. So the killer had run to the car from wherever he’d been lying in wait and had, in order to be very very
sure, carefully fired another slug into her brain. They must have been heavy-caliber bullets, I thought. And for a moment I thought of something else: how lovely that face had been.

  Within minutes after I’d used the radio-phone in my Cad to call the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department office in nearby Indio, the first black-and-white sheriff’s car arrived. In it was a tall, burly sergeant named Torgesen, who turned out to be the day-watch commander, still working. Right after him came another car driven by a deputy called Mike.

  Torgesen spoke briefly to me and asked a few questions, looked into the Buick, glanced around. Then the sergeant walked over to me, notebook and pencil in his hand.

  “You say your name’s Scott?”

  “That’s right. Shell Scott.” I showed him my wallet card attesting to the fact that I was a private investigator licensed by the State of California.

  He looked at it, rolled his eyes up to my face, then back to the card. “L.A., huh?” he said gently.

  “Right.”

  “What was your relation with her, Scott?” He moved his head toward the blue Buick.

  “No relation. Never saw her before. Sergeant.”

  “You know who she is?”

  “Nope. I told you, I heard the shots while I was up at Mr. Monaco’s place, got here as fast as I could. As you can see, it wasn’t fast enough.”

  The deputy called Mike had walked up to us while I was speaking. When I mentioned again that I’d been at Monaco’s house, he and the sergeant exchanged quick looks.

  Mike said, “No registration in the car. Her bag’s open, bunch of junk spilled on the floor mat.”

  Torgesen nodded, looking at me. “You touch anything, Scott?”

  “Not me. I looked inside the car, that’s all.”

  “You saw the man who killed her?”

  “I saw a man, and he must have been the killer. He took a bunch of shots at me then scrammed over the hill.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Beats me. I got just a glimpse of his back when he took off. Guy in a dark suit, and that’s it.”

  “What were you doing at Monaco’s?”

  My client—that is, my client then—had stressed his desire that nobody know he was hiring an investigator. But I couldn’t very well hold back that information now. So I said, “Mr. Monaco phoned me earlier this afternoon and asked me to meet him here before five o’clock . . . .” I let it trail off, wondering why Monaco hadn’t been there to greet me.

  Torgesen was apparently thinking along the same lines.

  He said, “Mr. Monaco told you he’d be at his home until five?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “You say the place was empty, right?”

  “No. What I told you was that I found the door open and went inside. Before I could look around the place I heard the shots.”

  “The woman was at the door when you got there?”

  “Yes. But she would hardly have had time to go in. I got there shortly after she did.”

  He chewed on his lower lip, jotted a line in his notebook. Torgesen glanced down Yucca Road. A white car was coming toward us. When it got closer I could see it was a new Lincoln Continental.

  Still looking at it, Torgesen said to me, “You’ve got no idea where Mr. Monaco was when you were up there, huh?”

  “No idea. I suppose he could have been in the house.

  That joint’s big enough—”

  “No, here he comes now,” Torgesen said. “He always drives that big Connie.”

  The Continental slowed, then stopped as it drew abreast of us. I saw a man looking out, an expression that might have been alarm on his narrow tanned face. His eyes fell on me, and the white hair and brows, plus my size, must have told him something, but I couldn’t tell from his expression if it was something he’d been eager to hear. Then he parked, stepped out of the car and walked toward us, and I was getting my first look at Ormand Monaco.

  He was tall and had pretty good shoulders, but he looked unusually lean and elongated, as if he was originally half that size and had been stretched. He looked like a man with narrow bones covered by only a little flesh, and thin fat. But he was not a bad-looking man. In fact, he possessed a rather cadaverous handsomeness like a starving Basil Rathbone or one-half of a Vincent Price. He was wearing a pearl-gray suit, beautifully tailored and faintly iridescent, a soft white shirt, and a gray tie with a knot in it the size of a bean.

  He stopped before us, glanced at me and then turned to the sergeant. “It’s Torgesen, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s the matter here?”

  “There’s been a shooting, Mr. Monaco.”

  Monaco had slightly wavy gray hair, full at the temples—perhaps to make his head look wider—and delicate brown brows flecked with gray. The brows pulled down over dark, almost black eyes, and without speaking he stepped toward the Buick. Torgesen followed him, and I tagged along.

  I watched Monaco’s face when he looked into the car, and his sharp features twisted into angles of shock and dismay. He jerked his head back, just as I had done, but then looked again. After several seconds he swallowed, stepped back and turned away from the car.

  “My God,” he said. He started to say something to Torgesen, hesitated, then turned to me.

  “Well, you’ve found her, Mr. Scott. That’s Jeanne Jax.”

  4

  It didn’t really surprise me. Maybe it should have.

  Monaco explained briefly to Sergeant Torgesen that he had asked me here from Los Angeles to find the girl now dead in the car, and mentioned that she’d been missing, or at least not in evidence at the Kubla Khan for some time.

  So I figured it would be OK for me to ask a question or two. I said to Monaco, “Do you know why she wanted to see you?”

  “See me? I don’t understand.” He seemed genuinely surprised. After a moment he glanced toward the car, then up one-lane Yucca Road. “She was coming back from my home, is that it?”

  “Uh-huh. I was there, and saw her, but she wasn’t very communicative. I thought maybe you’d know what she wanted.”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  Torgesen had been standing silently next to us, rubbing a thick-fingered hand along the side of his chin.

  Quietly he asked, “Where were you, Mr. Monaco?”

  “Where was I? Why, I merely went for a drive, Sergeant.”

  “Weren’t you expecting Mr. Scott?”

  Monaco flicked a glance at me. “Yes, I was.”

  “But you went for a drive.” There was a little edge to Torgesen’s tone. He sounded sort of respectfully nasty, or perhaps politely disbelieving. Maybe it was just his technique.

  Monaco got the point of the needle, however, and thin ridges of muscle bulged at the back of his jaws, and the brows pulled down over his eyes again. It was becoming clear that Monaco did not like to be on that end of the needle.

  Slowly he turned to gaze levelly at Torgesen. “Is there something wrong with that. Sergeant?” he said icily. “Does it disturb you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I merely wanted to relax a little,” Monaco continued, “from the pressures of the imminent opening of my new hotel. The Kubla Khan opens to the public tomorrow, and I’ve arranged for a little party tonight.”

  “I know,” Torgesen said pleasantly. “But I’d still like to know where you were, Mr. Monaco. When you were driving. For relaxation.”

  “I fail to see how that can possibly be of interest to you. However, I drove along Desert View, past the Khan, over some of the roads at the base of the mountains. . . . Merely driving and thinking.”

  “Would you mind coming down to the office with us, Mr. Monaco? Just to answer a few questions.”

  That one stuck me. I’d assumed Sergeant Torgesen was simply laying on the heavy official hand—either out of habit or for some reason I hadn’t been able to guess.

  But the blunt “invitation” shocked me.


  Monaco pulled in a deep breath and blew the air out his nose. Those little muscles bulged, the eyebrows descended, his lips thinned and he stuck his head forward toward Torgesen. “If you,” he said crisply—and I was reminded of his little speech to me on the phone earlier—”from the depths of your abysmal ignorance of me and my character, have assumed that I had anything to do with the death of Jeanne Jax—”

  “I wasn’t thinking about her,” Torgesen interrupted. “I wanted to ask you a couple questions about Sardis.”

  I blinked. By now, of course, I was all at sea. I wasn’t even sure what he’d said, but it had sounded like “Sardis.”

  Ormand Monaco pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and fumbled for a cigarette—and fumbled is the word. Apparently he intended to light up a smoke, casually draw upon it, and possibly blow smoke at Torgesen. But whatever he intended, I’m sure it wasn’t what he did.

  He flipped the pack to lift up a cigarette, but the movement was not very casual or smooth. Two of the weeds fell out and dropped to the ground. Monaco started to grab for them, caught himself. “Ephrim?” he said.

  Then he stooped, picked up the cigarettes, getting dirt on his fingers, put one of the smokes back and stuck the other between his lips. “What about Ephrim?” he said.

  He wiped his fingers on his trousers, leaving a faint smear on the iridescent gray cloth.

  I felt almost sorry for him. I didn’t know what the hell—or who—this Sardis was, or Ephrim, or whatever they were talking about. It was beyond doubt, however, that Monaco not only knew but was very close to emptying his bladder. When he lit the cigarette his hand trembled.

  Torgesen didn’t raise his voice or change his tone.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “Ephrun Sardis. You drove out to his place, didn’t you, Mr. Monaco?”

  “Certainly not!” It was a little too emphatic. “I may have driven by there, but . . . Yes, I believe I did drive along Ocotillo Lane. Yes. But I didn’t call on Ephrim today.” He paused, dragged on his cigarette, getting more of his poise back. “Why do you ask. Sergeant?”