The Bamboo Blonde (10 page)

The voyage was too short. She stirred as the boat approached the sheer cliffs upraised in the falsely calm waters at St. Catherine's Landing. The little speedboats were circling the ship, sirens blowing, passengers screaming welcome. She walked the gantlet at Avalon, down the roped-off path where masses of faces pushed laughter upon the newcomers. None was familiar to her. Whatever Con was doing here, he was not playing at tourist. She walked to the St. Catherine cab. Con always chose the best. If he were not there, she at least would have comfort until he was found.

He was registered and she convinced the clerk he had been expecting her arrival. She hadn't expected to find him in. His room was old-fashioned but you could see the bright green terrace and the blue-green ocean beyond. She flung off her hat, rumpled her smooth golden hair. It might be a long wait. She opened her bag, lifted out the blue mull negligee. She could catch up on .sleep; there might not be an opportunity soon.

* * *

He was singing, "The life on the open wave, tra-la," oft key and misworded, when she opened her eyes.

"You're certainly noisy."

He put his head out of the bathroom door. "And what do you think the teeny-weeny bear found in his bed?" He returned the head. "How'd you know I was here?"

"I'm psychic that way." He was shaving without being told and he had his white dinner jacket laid out. "Successful afternoon?" She knew it was from the lustiness of the song. Only Dare gave him this lift and only for Dare would he dress to the gills. "Are we dining with her?"

"Who?" He made sounds scraping his upper lip. He wiped the razor carefully on a towel before his pretense went out in a sheepish grin. "Yeah," he admitted.

She yawned and stretched her arms up to the headboard. "That means the black." She was right to have brought it. It fitted her like cellophane and the clouds of fluff were no less flattering. No glasses on her nose at night. Straining her eyes made them look bigger and brighter anyway. With Dare present she needed every advantage.

She asked, "Why didn't you tell me you were coming to Catalina?"

"Didn't know it till I landed here. Too much orange juice."

She hardened her calm chin in her hand. "Not good enough, Satterlee."

"Do you want it straight?" He looked out at her. She said yes.

"I didn't want you along." Perhaps he was frowning at the microscopic cut under his chin but she didn't like that faintly troubled voice, and she went swiftly into the bathroom, touched his side. "Con, I want to help you. What can I do?"

He turned slowly to her. His voice was level. "You can stay out of it. Don't ask questions of me or anyone. If you don't know anything, no one can hurt you." He put his hands on her shoulders. "I involved you in a mix once but never again. You understand. Never." His voice was sharp but his look was deep in hers. "I'd saw off my right arm with a damn rusty saw before I'd let anything happen to you."

It was so seldom that he slipped the casual front, allowed her to see the real feeling behind it. Her lids stung with unexpected tears. If he'd show her the real more often, she'd know, not have silly feminine qualms about Dare and other beauties.

She said, "Darling," and then, "It can't be that dangerous."

He said soberly, "It is," and she thought of the blonde girl who'd been seen with Con before she lay in the palm shadows of Bixby Park.

Con shook her a little. "Sweet child, don't be curious. Promise me you won't do a Pandora."

She said, adoring him with her eyes, "I'll do anything you say, Con."

He nodded. "Then just go along as if there's nothing up. So far as you're concerned, nothing is up, understand?"

She was hesitant. "But—Shelley Huffaker?"

It was as if he'd just remembered her, as if it had nothing to do with him. "Let Thusby worry about that." He kissed her, a quick one, gave her a shove. "Go on and get dressed. We'll be late."

"Oh Con!" Her face was patched with shaving soap.

He was jauntily scraping again. "That's what gals get who invade men's bathrooms."

She was firm, "I gave you an electric razor. If you'd use it."

"Never could stand vacuum cleaners. My face is no rug."

He was dressing quickly. She wasn't surprised when he said, "Think I'll go down and have a quickie while you're finishing up. How do I look?"

"Elegant." She watched him survey himself in the mirror. "You ought to try store clothes more often." She dodged. "Go on and drink. I'll get along taster without you. Where do we meet?"

"On the terrace."

* * *

She took a last survey of her hair and lipstick by the deepening twilight window, and she saw Con's length below on the path behind the bushes. He wasn't with Dare. She leaned out. It looked amazingly as if he were with the dreadful Mr. Smithery. But surely it couldn't be he. Chang would have to be on duty at the Bamboo Bar on a Saturday night.

She caught up her evening coat, locked the door after her. The corridor was dim lit, down one angular flight to the first floor. She had to cross through the glassed supplementary dining room to reach the terrace. She thought she recognized the figure standing there outside. Sergei wore his beret at that angle. And Sergei would wear that navy beret even with dinner clothes.

He piped, "Griselda!" as if he were surprised to see her but he wasn't. He'd been waiting for her to come out. "Griselda, I missed that dreadful boat and had to come over by the plane. I had planned we would be friends on the boat. Make the trip go so fast with talk. Traveling perturbs me. It is so endless."

There had been no available plane reservations; he had had his when he spoke to her at the Terminal. He had never intended to take the boat; he had only wanted to make sure she was taking it. But why? It made her feel faintly uneasy. She turned away. "I must find my husband."

"He is down below there." He waved a gesture to the beach. He had been watching Con, too. Was this all a maneuver to meet him?

He said. "You and your husband will have dinner with me, yes? I should like to know him. He is the unusual young man, yes?"

"I'm sorry." She wasn't. "We're dining a friend of Con's."

"Such an unusual young man. I would know him."

She was disturbed. No one thought Con unusual. "He's a good newspaperman who's turned into a good air reporter."

"Not that, not that!" His hands fluttered. His eyes in the twilight seemed sharp, prying. "It is not that I mean. Of course that is very fine. But he is the confidant of Barjon Garth, the great Barjon Garth who directs the great X division. That so fine organization who protects your country, my country to be."

She put her hand on his arm and laughed out loud. ".Sergei, you're incredible. Con knows Garth but as for being his confidant—" Her laughter rolled merrily as if it were real. "Imagine a newspaperman being in the confidence of the head of the secret service!”

He pouted like a hurt child. "But I was told, Griselda."

"Someone was ribbing you, Sergei." She let her laughter run lightly down the terrace; it had reached Con; he was materializing before her.

He asked, "What's the joke?"

She took his arm, not answering, murmured introductions, and led him firmly down the terrace away from the sulky face. She didn't want to talk longer with Sergei. She'd never cared for him, for his insatiable taste in tawdry girls.

"Where'd you find that and why?" Con asked.

She shook her head helplessly. "It found me."

"Which wholesale house is he with?"

"He isn't. He's one of Oppy's directors. You know. Sergei Vironova."

Con stepped back and stared into her face. "My God, why didn't you say so?"

"I did," she retorted.

"You mumbled." He took her arm again. "So that's Vironova.”

She looked at him out of troubled eyes. "Yes."

He had stopped walking, was watching the silhouettes back there on the terrace, particularly one small one with the round shadow of a beret. "Why didn't you ever tell me you knew Vironova?"

She said, "I don't really know him. I just know all of Oppy's hired hands, that's all."

"You've never mentioned Vironova."

She touched his arm. "Darling, if you really want me to, I'll take a couple of days off and tell you everyone I know in Hollywood. Or it might be more amusing if we'd run up to Malibu and I could introduce them to you."

He wasn't listening. "Maybe he'll join us later."

Sergei's interest in Con evidently was mutual. She tried to speak as if she weren't nervous about it. "I hope he doesn't. His perturbations don't amuse me."

"He has perturbations?" Con's eyes were narrowed on his cigarette. "What about?"

"I didn't pay any attention. I suppose his latest blonde walked out on him." She was sharp now. "Con, why are you interested in him?"

He didn't answer.

She said, "He's interested in you," and she caught her breath. "He thinks you're in Garth's confidence. He wants to know you."

That was why Sergei had been waiting for her. She knew that definitely now. Sergei had not ever trailed her at the studios. She was blonde, yes, and thought beautiful by some; but she wore hornrimmed glasses while she worked, and she was always at work. She wasn't a Hollywood blonde who sat around and looked sexy and didn't need to work. It was Con, who had no connection with the pictures save by remarrying her, that Sergei Vironova was fishing for at Catalina.

Con said, "Forget it. He isn't important."

"Is he in on the party tonight?"

"Not yet." He whistled. "You can never tell what the night will bring."

A tender was landing a party there at the far end of the pier; Dare's shrilling came heightened by night and sea. Con, surprisingly, turned on his heel. He moved Griselda toward the hotel, took a seat at a table on the upper terrace, and beckoned a boy. Sergei wasn't in sight. "Rum and gum. What about you? Dubonnet?"

She sipped it watching Dare and a man come nearer. Sipped it as if it weren't connected with death in a quiet park.

Dare cried, "Con, my love," pretending that she didn't know he would be waiting for her. She wrapped one diamond arm about his shoulder, said, "Griselda, how nice to see you." She didn't expect to see Griselda; shadowed by moonlight, the green glint of her eyes told that.

Con came to his feet without disentangling her. "Griselda thought she'd try a week end, too."

She waved an arm at the shadowy mass of her escort. He closed in. "Of course, you'll join us for dinner. We've reservations."

Con said quickly, "Deter introductions until we're surrounding a table. I like to meet people where I can see them."

Dare shrieked again, "Isn't he wonderful. Albert George?''

She led with Con. The stone-faced major watched them go in a thoughtful and terrible silence. Then he turned to Griselda. "Shall we follow, Mrs. Satterlee?"

Evidently, Con was having it as he planned, meeting Albert George Pembrooke without seeming pre-arrangement.

She didn't speak. She went with Pembrooke as if she were walking to her doom.

CHAPTER 4

Major Pembrooke’s table was in a favored spot, the waiters were deferential. Griselda sat beside him in well-mannered docility, ate and drank, listened and spoke. She didn't want to. She wanted to clutch Con's hand, make him run, swim, fly with her away from the macabre reverberations there at the St. Catherine. But Con didn't notice her; he was not wasting charm on a wife that night. Nor did he pay any attention to the man he had traveled to meet. Pembrooke should have been harassed at having his companion taken over completely by Con. Actually he wasn't, Griselda realized. It was because he was waiting for something, for someone else.

When Kew entered the dining room with Kathie Travis on his arm, Griselda knew what that something was. She knew with such certainty that there was no amazement in her at Kew being there, nor at Kathie being with him, not even at Sergei Vironova following sadly in their wake.

Con saw them, too. He laid his fingers on Dare's arm and shouted, "Look what's here!"

Dare put her other hand on Albert George's red-haired wrist. "There's Kew Brent and Kathie Travis. Shall they join us?"

Griselda was certain this had been staged. More than ever she resented being on the outside, being relegated to busboy intelligence. She knew wheels within wheels were revolving, revolving with rapidity and precision; she didn't like not knowing the motive nor the goal. It left her nerves too tight for comfort.

Dare signaled, crying, "I didn't dream you were coming over, Kew. Why didn't you tell me? And you, Mrs. Travis. Of course you'll join us."

She made introductions. Sergei Vironova stood back, wetting his sad lips. Kew remembered him, "You know Vironova, Dare, the director."

She broke in, "How d'you do," as if not interested but her eyes measured him. Albert George was curt to the little Russian. Sergei knew it. He cringed. But he had accomplished what he was here to accomplish. He wedged in now beside Con, made his chair closer than need be. He was afraid of Albert George. He glanced in the major's direction and quickly again at Con's shoulders as if these were bodyguard. Con ignored him.

Griselda sat quietly in that group encircling the table of shining glass and silver and white napery, her scalp prickling. She knew that she was dining with Death. She was conscious of only one person, the reason that each of the others was present. He bulked there, certain of himself and his power.

Why was Kew here? Was it to give Kathie a taste of the luxury that grimly, sweetly, she was determined to attain? Would he do that much for a woman? Or had he brought Kathie to deliver her over to Major Pembrooke for some unknown purpose?

She heard him say, "Mrs. Travis's husband is Lieutenant Travis, Major."

The silence was brief but it was pregnant. Unconsciously Griselda glimpsed over her shoulder for a hovering Chang Smithery. He alone was missing.

Kew's repetition was distinct. "Lieutenant Walker Travis of the
Antarctica."

Major Pembrooke laughed. "Indeed!" His laugh didn't belong to him; it was pleasant, disarming. He seemed to thaw all at once but it was mere external radiance. There was still the mouth, the icy brain beneath the suddenly warm face. "Where is the lieutenant tonight, Mrs. Travis? Could he join us?"