Shellshock (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Read online

  MONEY FOR A SPREE

  If your name is Michelle and your 26th birthday was last April 23, you may be eligible for a money spree, a dollar bonanza! If you are the one, a very large fortune is awaiting you.

  That's the way it came out, and the only change I'd made was to strike out “sizable” and make it a “very large” fortune. I had also included the instruction that the right woman should “Call Shell Scott,” and listed my office phone for daytime hours and my apartment number for after five.

  The ad sounded a little as if it was one of those promotional come-ons that promise you prizes like “either a new Rolls-Royce automobile or a toaster” if you'll simply spend a few hours examining the property and let their crew of experienced hypnotists tell you about the wonderful opportunity in their Fairway Estates condominiums near the proposed eight-hole golf course.

  No matter; if it came to Michelle/Spree's attention, I would undoubtedly hear from her. I pushed the phone onto the corner of my desk, put all of Worthington's info, and my notes, into the padded envelope again, and shoved back my swivel chair.

  From here on, the case would be getting tougher. I was going to have to leave the office.

  After saying, “Hello again, you little devils,” to my frisky guppies, and “Good-bye,” I went out, locked my door, and stopped briefly at the cubicle personed by Hazel at the end of the hall.

  “If you need to reach me,” I said, “I'll be down at the Police Building. Answering a few final questions about my last job, the Amber case."

  She finished pecking at keys, spun around on her stool. “Oh, that one,” she said, rolling her eyes prettily.

  “Yeah, that one. Only reason I have to visit the LAPD is that the police insist upon giving me a medal for cracking the case. For the various misdemeanors and felonies I committed while cracking it they will, during the rest of the afternoon, be beating me with rubber hoses."

  She didn't laugh. Or chuckle. Didn't even smile. Instead, Hazel peered up at me and asked sweetly, “Have a nice nap, Shell?"

  “O ye of little faith,” I said. “Have you forgotten all those vitally important calls you just placed for me? Why, I want you to know that, already this morning, I have taken on a new case, accepted a sizable retainer with the promise of much more, talked to my client, to his and my attorney, and to a pair of detective agencies far away. Moreover, I have arranged for an ad in the L.A. Times, which probably means the case is half solved already."

  She glanced at her little glittery watch, and back at me. Then she started laughing. Great sense of humor, this kid.

  “Oh, Shell,” she snorted. “Sometimes you're so funny."

  That's the way it goes, when it's too early in the morning.

  Chapter Three

  Dusk was falling gently over the city when I got back to the Hamilton Building, and my early morning mood of exuberant euphoria had gradually been worn away by the hard bright edges of the day. I'd spent several hours at the LAPD, filling out reports and answering questions—and I guess it was what those questions made me think of that brought me down a little. Hell, I know that's what did it.

  This morning I had awakened with an indefinable sadness, gossamer dolor clinging thinly, as though from some sweet sorrow unremembered. And that isn't like me. It really isn't. I awaken slowly, true, very slowly. And usually grouchy and grumbling until hot coffee puts some gas in my tank and adds spark to the plugs and ignition. But almost never do I start the day actually down, depressed, with the feeling that somehow all's not right with the world.

  So, for a while this a.m., unusually early despite having slept very little, I had stood in my bedroom gawking at nothing, wiggling my bare toes on the thick black carpet, and wondering what the hell. Was I sick?

  And then I remembered. Aralia. Sure. The last case, the Amber investigation: hoodlums and holograms, con games and fun games, beautiful bodies and stiffening corpses, pulchritude and parties and Miss Naked USA. Ah, yes, Aralia Fields. Warm and wonderful Aralia.

  And Aralia was gone. As of Sunday, yesterday.

  I'd known she was going a long way. Long and long, probably too far for me to reach. It had been sweet and memorable and splendid while it lasted, but I knew, no question, it would never again be the same; those moments were done, vanished, gone.

  Even so, I had stood there in my bedroom for quite a while, wiggling my toes on the carpet and running through those movies of the mind. But after a bit much of that I said to myself: Hey! To hell with this dumbness. Whereupon I let out a growl, like a large dog sniffing a stranger he is preparing to bite hugely, and told myself aloud that I would not mope about and ooze moodiness and spoil what otherwise might be, what could be, a wonderful day. Correction: not might be or could be but was, if I didn't screw it up on purpose. Don't magicians and gurus tell us we create personal realities by private thoughts, build tomorrows from the harmony or static we self-generate now in our noodles? Sure they do. So wasn't I standing here wiggling forlorn toes and inviting large constipated birds to fly over and dump on me, or even more dire events to transpire? Sure I was.

  So I instantly ceased the toe-wiggling, and instead jumped vigorously up and down and about; and then, in the shower, sudsed up hot and rinsed cold while singing “Home on the Range” in my most thunderous ex-Marine bellow, finishing with a pair of allegedly obscene limericks, blessed by tag lines of sufficient sizzle to pierce delicate eardrums, while beating on my chest with the soap.

  Magic! By the time I was dressed and finishing aromatic black coffee I was feeling dandy again. Only a trace of Aralia remained, so I said, “Bye, kid; wasn't half bad,” patted her marvelous bare derriere, then shook my head and flung her into limbo, or at least in that general direction.

  I had been quite pleased with myself. Because it had turned into a wonderful day, or morning, or at least part of a morning. Certainly I'd been euphorically floating on my way to the office and perky-pretty Hazel this a.m. But, later, all that jazz with the LAPD, the repetitive questions—going over and over and over much of it, the way some psychiatrists and analysts deepen and deepen grooves and gouges of raw memory in an already-crippled brain—had brought back the malaise, or at least part of it. Well, dammit, I told myself, if you kicked it once you can kick it twice; you kicked it this morning, so do it again.

  I strode through the Hamilton's lobby for the second time this day, and up the stairs, taking them only two at a time this trip. Almost everybody else was long gone by now, though. And an empty building has an air of desolation about it, a lifelessness that doesn't exactly quicken the spirit. I trotted into the office. Fed the fish, watched the industrious scavenging of my little Corydoras paleatus snuffling along sand at the bottom of my guppy tank. Observed half a dozen male guppies prodding females with their vigorous gonopodiums, in the shameless and terrible way they have.

  Then I locked up, hastened downstairs, and into Pete's Bar, conveniently next door to the Hamilton Building. It was that in-between hour, and the place was nearly empty.

  Pete nodded silently at me, reached for my usual bourbon.

  “Give me something else, Pete. Something I've never had before."

  He moved a few feet away behind the bar, cocked his head, started picking up bottles. No comment; we'd known each other a long time.

  When he placed before me a murky, suitably dangerous-looking concoction in a tall glass, I heard the front door open, then shoosh closed. I took a sip of my drink, glancing around to see who'd come inside.

  It was a woman. Tall, dark-haired, young. She'd come in out of the gathering night, and in a strange way it was as if she'd brought part of the night, or dark, inside with her. She sat at the far end of the room, around the curve of the bar, in shadow. It could even have been someone I knew, but the light wasn't bright enough so I could be sure.

  Soon she slid from her stool, walked around the curve of the bar and up to me. Tall indeed, and very lovely in an odd, “foreign” way. Probably in her middle or late twenties, full-formed
woman's body, simple expensive-looking blue suit, dark, smooth, smart. Long-lashed dark brown eyes, black hair and thin black brows, lovely full lips.

  “Do you know me?” she asked. “You were looking at me so..."

  I needed to shake the last bits of that blue chill that had been sneaking up on me. Besides which, she was overflowing with a kind of sultry-looking gorgeousness. Besides which, what the hell, nothing ventured —

  “Sure,” I said. “Don't you remember? We met that glorious weekend in Acapulco. I was diving off a rock—"

  “Oh, way up high there, at La Perla?"

  “No, it was just this ... rock. Well, how has it been, Madelyn? I mean, of course, how have you been?"

  “Wonderful."

  “I knew it."

  “But my name isn't Madelyn."

  “Boy, you don't remember any of it, do you?"

  It was a slow smile. Slow, warm, getting warmer.

  “Why don't we move to a booth?” I asked her. “I'll have Pete bring us booze in champagne glasses. Doesn't that sound fun?"

  “No. No, it really doesn't. But I think I'd like to, anyway."

  “You're starting to remember. Maybe if I described this rock—"

  “I have to wait here, and I don't know how long it could be. So I might as well wait with you."

  “Thanks a lot, Evelyn—"

  “It's Kay. Kay Denver. And I didn't mean that the way it sounded.” The warm-warmer smile again. “I meant, I have to wait here for a while, and maybe you can help me. Either you or—” She turned, looking for Pete.

  I said quickly, “No, no, he's a—a deaf mute. But you can count on me, Miss Denver. Kay?"

  “I came here, to Pete's, because a friend of mine told me there's a detective who gets bombed here some nights. But he's supposed to be quite good, even if he drinks and all."

  “What do you mean, ‘and all'?"

  “My friend said this fellow's name is Shell Scott, but I don't know what he looks like, or anything else about him. I called his office, but he hasn't been in all afternoon. I thought maybe you could help me find him."

  “There's no maybe about it. But, ah, it happens I have some small talent in this detecting business myself—though you would never know it to look at me, would you?"

  “Goodness, no!"

  “You're not supposed to say that.” I stood up. “Come with me. I have reserved a booth."

  I led her across the small dance floor to a booth in the corner, waved at Pete, ordered a drink for Kay—a Tanqueray martini with two pearl onions, waited until it was before her. Then I propped my chin against my fist, and, comfortable enough to last through even a long story, looked with interest at Kay Denver's interesting face.

  “What would you do with a detective,” I asked her, “if you had one?"

  “Oh, I couldn't possibly tell you,” she said, shaking her head slightly from side to side. “I hate to tell anyone, and I'm certainly not going to tell the story twice."

  “Just tell me once, then."

  “No, it's too ... ghastly. I won't tell anyone except this Mr. Scott, and I might not be able to tell him, even. I don't know. I'd have to meet him first, make sure he's ... sympathetic."

  “He is a paragon of sympathy and empathy. And you've met him already. That's me."

  “What's you?"

  “Shell Scott is. I mean, I'm him. I'm Shell Scott."

  “No, you're not."

  “Sure I am. Wouldn't I know?"

  “I don't believe you. Who are you, anyway?"

  I blew some air out my nose, had a slug of my murky drink, put the glass down, and took out my wallet. “Observe,” I said, showing her my wallet card, attesting to the fact that I was a private investigator licensed by the California Department of Consumer Affairs’ Bureau of Investigative Services, then my driver's license. “See?” I said.

  She pressed her full lips together, then pooched them out a little, pulled them back in again. They kept moving for a while, and I watched them, fascinated by the poochiness of those fantastic lips as they moved out a little almost joyously, then back a trifle in what struck me as clear disappointment, then out a little again, and in, as if maybe she was sucking on a mint that was half sweet and half sour, but surely all melted by now, which would have been true even of a cold-rolled-steel ball bearing, it seemed to me, were it to be nuzzled like that by those wild lips.

  Then she stopped moving. That is, her nuzzly lips stopped moving in and out in that fetching way they had, and she eyed me curiously. “Why did you lie to me?” she asked.

  “Lie? When? About what?"

  “About who you are."

  “Oh, that. I didn't lie. I just ... didn't tell you who I was. Or am. Right? Think back."

  She thought back. At least her lips got very active again and she slanted the dark, heavy-lidded eyes to one side. “Well ... maybe so. But”—she glanced toward the bar, then back at my face—“he's not a deaf mute, either. I heard him talk to you when you ordered my drink. And you said he was. I want an investigator I can trust. Especially considering the awful ... problem I've got."

  “Hey, you can trust me. Honest. I just told you that about Pete as a ... little joke. I wanted you to talk to me, not him.” I paused. “Just a little joke, see? Play on words. Like, if I told you it was raining cats and dogs, you wouldn't say I lied just because little kittens and puppies weren't actually falling down all over the place. You wouldn't run outside to see if the air was filled with animals, would you?"

  “Well..."

  “Listen, do you think I would have let you hear Pete talking if I really wanted you to think he was a deaf mute? Wouldn't I have ordered in sign language? Wouldn't I...” I stopped. “What the hell am I doing?"

  “You're trying to make me believe I can trust you. So I can tell you about my ... awful problem."

  “I suppose. But I mean, how did you get me on the defensive so all-of-a-sudden? Look, when I came in here tonight, I was in an odd kind of mood. Loose ends, a little blah, maybe. Then I saw you come inside, and you looked—interesting. You're very lovely. You were alone. I was alone. I thought maybe we'd get acquainted, and run away together. To a tropical island. Build a grass shack and drink coconut milk, and—"

  “You're weird,” she said.

  “Well, strike the grass shack and coconut milk. What I'm getting at, Miss Denver ... May I call you Kay?"

  She hesitated, pushing her lower lip slowly up over the upper one and then rolling it down again, up and down several times. Which may not sound extraordinarily exciting, but was. In fact, I was getting more out of just watching this lovely's mouth move around than I'd gotten on some entire dates including drinks and dinner and dancing.

  I leaned toward her. “I'll let you call me Shell,” I said.

  And finally the lips parted, showing the even white teeth, and she smiled, warm-warmer and finally warmest. “Oh, all right,” she said. “Shell. But you're still weird."

  “Now that we're on a first-name basis,” I said, “what's this problem you mentioned?"

  She frowned, black brows pulling down over the dark eyes. Then she lifted a leather handbag from the seat beside her, placed it on the tabletop, and opened its clasp. She reached inside and pulled out an envelope, took something from the envelope, and extended it toward me. I barely got a glimpse of what appeared to be several photographs, about four-by-five-inch color shots, then she jerked them away, stuffed them into the envelope and stuck it back in the leather bag, placed the bag in her lap.

  Maybe I'd gotten only a glimpse, but the top photo had unquestionably been of a woman, nude, facing the camera and with her arms raised, hands holding a fluffy pink towel atop her head, the cloth covering her hair and falling down along one side of her face.

  “I don't know if I can do this,” Kay said. “I thought the detective my friend mentioned—you, I mean—I thought you were older. Like middle-aged. Maybe ancient and decrepit, and ... Well, you're not."

  “You noticed."

&
nbsp; “Maybe I'd better explain a little first."

  “OK."

  She took a deep breath, sighed, then said, “It's the craziest thing, Mr.—Shell. There's no way it could have happened, but it has. Somebody has taken a lot of pictures of me, photographs, in my apartment. But I live alone—I have a suite in the Dorchester. And if somebody was taking photos of me I would have seen him."

  “Him?"

  She looked at me, rubbing the tip of her tongue slowly back and forth across the upper lip. Sort of a nervous gesture, I supposed, the way someone else might crack his knuckles or drum with fingertips on a tabletop, but much prettier and stupendously more sensual, of course.

  “I just assumed it was a man,” she said finally. “Why would a woman want photographs of me naked?"

  “Why ... ah, indeed?"

  “Anyway, there's just no place he could have been without my seeing him. I mean, if you studied the photographs and realized where he would have had to be—well, people aren't invisible."

  “Uh-huh. If I studied the photographs..."

  “And if you saw my apartment, I mean, the way it's set up. There are pictures of me after I got out of the shower, and putting on my—well, getting dressed—and even one of me lying on my bed naked. It was warm, and I was letting the air-conditioning cool me, you know."

  “Sure."

  “Well, he couldn't have been up there on the ceiling, could he?"

  “Doesn't seem likely,” I said. “Maybe if I studied—just took a quick peek at the snapshots. And if you described your apartment—like, are there a lot of mirrors? There are one-way mirrors people can see through, you know, like they have outside the I rooms in most police departments. And, well, there could be a number of explanations, probably."

  “I don't know about technical things like that. What's an eye room?"

  “The letter I, short for interrogation. Where they ask questions of the prisoners and suspects."

  “Oh. Well, you'd know about all those things. Yes, maybe you really can figure out how he did it.” She took the envelope from her bag again and held it toward me. Well, sort of. She started to push it toward me, then pulled it back just as I was about to snatch it from her, and held it pressed against her breast.