The Bamboo Blonde (16 page)

Sergei wasn't in the lobby. Five and ten minutes passed; he might have been stating fact not trying to avoid her when he'd suggested he couldn't make it. There could be a message for her at the desk. Before she could move to ask- Kew and Kathie Travis saw her. She wouldn't allow them to intrude on this luncheon date.

Kew asked, "What are you doing here. Griselda?" He didn't wait for answer. "Will you join us for lunch?"

She said, "No," and saw the first tolerance of her on Kathie's face. Kathie didn't want to share him. "Sorry but I've a date."

Kathie wasn't deft. She put her hand on Kew's beautifully tailored gray flannel coat sleeve. "We might as well go eat then." Her hand remained on the gray as if she believed it belonged there. Obviously she didn't know Kew well.

He didn't move. "Any more news of Con?"

She shook her head briefly. She wouldn't tell him of Thusby's discovery before an outsider. But her eyes tried to convey more than her words. "Nothing that won't keep."

Kathie edged closer to him. "I was sorry to learn of your husband's arrest." Her voice was too soft. "I know he had nothing to do with it. Not a man like Con." Something special in her great eyes always for a man.

"Technically it isn't an arrest, Mrs. Travis." Deliberately because she neither liked nor trusted this girl, she added, "I'll see you later, Kew."

He nodded, "I'll phone." Kathie's mouth was a rim.

Sergei must have been hiding behind a pillar waiting until the elevator closed on the others. He was taking a new part today, more Hollywood, more natural. "It's so good you should waste your time on poor Vironova. I have been lonesome, yes, for a friendly face in this Long Beach. No one I know here. No one to talk with." His hand waved like a wand. "We shall have lunch now. Yes?"

He jerked toward the exit but she stated, "We might as well eat in the Sky Room."

His lip quivered. "It is up too high. It upsets the stomach."

She looked into his eyes. "You needn't worry about Kew or Mrs. Travis bothering us. She'll see to that."

He agreed miserably, "All right. I go." He retained wariness.

She maneuvered the headwaiter to a table far from the others, safe as possible from ears that might prick. She didn't begin on Sergei until the order was taken. He might have been lulled into security but he clicked to alertness when she opened bluntly, "Why did you come to Long Beach?"

"Why do I come to Long Beach? Why do I come to Long Beach?" He was stammering for time to evolve an acceptable answer. "It is for rest." He could see that wasn't going well. "For research." He jabbed his finger upward into the air. "For research, yes. To do a grrreat picture on the Navy. Yes. On the Navy."

She let him elaborate before she spoke again with knowledge and decision, "You came to Long Beach because Shelley Huffaker was murdered."

His mouth was a static O.

She said, "I called Oppy this morning."

His eyes flicked with nervousness. He wet his lips.

"Why have you kept quiet? Why did you let my husband be taken in by the police while you said nothing?"

His voice was muted. "The police, they know this."

"The police know?" She was incredulous.

He bobbed his head. "Already I have talked with the police. They have been seeking me in Hollywood. But they do not want me. I was not here when she is murdered."

She knew that his alibi was real. "She was your— good friend?"

"Yes. For three years, yes. I have the good friends more beautiful, perhaps, and more—" He tapped his beret. "But none who knows so many people. She is smart. Even if she do not have the right brain." His breath expelled like wind. "She is dead now."

Griselda repeated, "Why did you come to Long Beach?"

He waited until the waiter had placed the bouillon.

He looked cautiously over one shoulder and then the other before speaking. "I will tell you that. I come because I am curious." His face was peaked as a goblin's. "I am curious to know who killed Shelley and why did they do this." If he spoke truth, and she believed he did. their purpose seemed identical. He attacked the soup sibilantly. "She did not come to be killed," he announced without interest.

She leaned across the table quickly. "Why did she come?"

His head wagged sadly. "That I do not know, Griselda. She do not tell me that. She say she wish to drive down the coast. I
am at the studio so perturbed over the big scene. The chauffeur come to me and say Miss Huffaker will stay in Long Beach a few days to see the good friend. She tell him to go home; she will telephone him when to come back to her. To me. she tell nothing." He souped. "But she knew she would stay. She had taken the bag with her."

"Did you know she had a gun with her?"

"No. It was my gun. She borrow it. That is how the police look for me. They trace the gun and then they look for me." His whole attitude was that of nothing to hide but he was nervous. Even as he ravished the food he was casting his eyes, scarcely restraining the urge to peer behind him.

If only he knew why Shelley had come. He could know even if the girl hadn't told him. He could have pieced it together from living with her. He was shrewd; he wouldn't tell Griselda anything important, anything that the police didn't know. He was cognizant of the fact that she was searching for any and all outlets for her husband's safety. She knew now that she wasn't going to find out much here.

But she asked, "Who was the good friend?"

He shrugged. "It must be Mrs. Crandall, yes? I do not think Shelley go to Long Beach to see Mr. Brent. She could see him in Hollywood. He is much in Hollywood."

Kew hadn't said he'd known Shelley before. He had implicitly denied it. She couldn't believe. "Was she a friend of his?"

"Oh my, yes." He seemed well pleased. "I tell you she know the important people? When we meet him at the Hollywood party she say, 'Don't tell me, let me guess.' " He tittered. "Jokey always she was."

She pressed it. "Had she known him in New York?"

"But necessarily. Or when they meet in Hollywood—"

She wasn't certain. She knew the Shelley Huffakers, insinuating friendships; remembering faint occasions that others had long forgotten. She asked, "What about Major Pembrooke?"

His mouth snapped. "She did not know Major Pembrooke." His eyes were curtained. That subject was stamped
taboo.

"Sergei, whom did she come here to kill?"

He spread his fingers. "She do not come to kill."

She said, "I suppose she carried a loaded revolver to do a little duck-hunting along the way."

He looked carefully all about again. "Maybe she was afraid somebody would kill her." He added simply, "And so they did."

Griselda hadn't thought of the gun as self-protection for Shelley. She might have been afraid of an old friend, or of a new one that Sergei didn't know or wasn't speaking about. She switched abruptly on him. "What about Mannie Martin?"

His lizard eyes were terrified.

"I know nothing of him. Nothing I beg of you."

"You seemed to Saturday."

"Nothing I tell you. I know nothing."

"Where did your information come from?"

He tried not to show fear but it was still staring out of his eyes. "I hear nothing. Maybe someone say. I do not know. Maybe I read in the newspaper—"

He hadn't been afraid this way at Catalina. Something had happened to him during the intervening hours.

He fluted hysterically, "I do not know. I do not know nothing."

It was unfair to pursue someone as weak as this. But it was necessary. It was for Con. She made her voice strong. "Why were you watching me at the Terminal Saturday? Why did you miss your boat and fly across? To get there first. You wanted to meet Con. Why?"

He was shaking as with palsy while she spoke. His eyes were almost popping out of his face. He kept cramming more and more of the torte in his mouth until crumbs were patterning his chin. When she halted he washed the mouthful down with a gulp of coffee and was on his feet. "I forget. I must take someone to lunch. It is a lady. You do not know her. We will meet again."

He was gone. She didn't try to stop his flight. When they met again she would do better with him. He could not hold out for long; no one as terror-weakened would have the ability to resist. Moreover, Kew, or Con when he was released, could put on the pressure better than she.

"Your companion rushed off in a surprising hurry."

She knew who it was without turning. The amusement in the words was cold as rain. And that cold was transferred into her veins as he came in front of her.

She attempted in her manner of answering to convey her will that this would complete their conversation, as well as her belief that it was none of his business. "He had a luncheon date."

The ludicrousness of the picture of Sergei rushing off for further lunch with his mouth practically full and the overflow on his chin must have touched some human strain in the major. He actually chuckled, a real not simulated sound. She didn't laugh; in his presence there could be no normal reaction save fear.

He said, "Mind if I
sit down?" and took the empty chair. He hadn't been in the dining room when they arrived nor had 'she seen him enter during their luncheon. But Sergei might have watched his approach, that would be the cause of the director's fright. She couldn't rebuff him again; she didn't want him to know how much she feared him. She could retain some strength with which to fight him if he did not know.

He continued, "Perhaps it is a new Hollywood idea he is introducing, two luncheons a day. A reaction to the overdieting which has gone on there. But he didn't look hungry."

"He'd forgotten a previous luncheon engagement." She tried to speak normally; if she didn't think about him, it wasn't too difficult.

He asked, "May I order you a liqueur?"

"If you please. Cointreau."

He summoned the waiter, gave the order, and smiled at her. But the smile was false. After that momentary lapse, he had returned to his emotionless norm. "I am sorry that you and your husband left our party Saturday night. We had a pleasant cruise. Mr. Brent and his little friend were delightful companions."

She was casual. "Kew told me you had the party flown back. Do you keep a plane as well as a boat, Major?"

The softness of his voice was frightening, "One is available to me. I find Catalina extremely hospitable. But America is such a hospitable country."

"Sergei was not of your party?"

"No. Unfortunately he had pressing business on Sunday. We set him ashore shortly after you left."

Her eyes blurred. It must have been Sergei who had been receiving the brunt of that stateroom conversation. No wonder he feared.

He said, "We'll cruise again whenever you wish, Mrs. Satterlee.
The Falcon
is at your disposal."

She lied, wishing it were true, "I'm afraid it won't be possible for us to have that pleasure. We can't stay much longer. I have a job in Hollywood and my husband must go where he is assigned. His vacation is only for a month; almost three weeks of that have already slipped away."

His face was a mask now. "He has been released?"

The careful casualness went from both of them. He had joined her with a purpose in mind; he was moving toward it. He would move wisely but not slowly; he would crush.

She answered, "Not yet. But the charge is ridiculous." She added firmly, "I am seeing him this afternoon."

Con was not incommunicado; Major Pembrooke need not think she was unprotected.

He said, "Murder is a serious affair."

"He did not murder anyone. I told you the charge was ridiculous. He didn't know this girl."

"No?"

"No! He'd never even seen her until he offered to take her home that evening. She needed help."

"Quixotic." He made the word a blot.

"Or civilized." Albert George might be British but his viewpoint was something else. There was no doubting that. She hated him as much as she feared him. She wanted to get away. But he was not releasing her.

He said, "Yes," as if civilized ideas were as stupid as Con's picking up Shelley Huffaker that night had been.

She hated him and the hatred allowed her without trepidation to ask what she wanted to find out, "Did you know Shelley Huffaker?"

"I?"

"Did you?"

"My dear child, no!" He was amused as well as emphatic. "How could you think I would know her?"

She said, "You were in the Bamboo Bar that night."

He replied evenly, "I was anchored off Catalina long before the murder
took place, having a drink with Mrs. Crandall and the Swales."

With a plane available. She hung on stubbornly. It would solve things if he had killed Shelley. And he was certainly capable of doing it. "You had heard of her. You knew she was Dare's guest."

He smiled. "Dare did not mention her guest until the police telephoned the evil news to her."

He was granite. But he had considered an alibi. It was presented without asking and had doubled its value by adding the witnesses' names. And he couldn't remove the available plane from the picture.

She posed another question, "Did you know Vironova before?"

"No." His lip curled. "I'm afraid I don't care for that sort. I don't quite understand how he became one of our party, particularly since both Mrs. Travis and Mr. Brent later disclaimed all responsibility for him."

She made her voice pertinent, "Do you understand
why
he joined the party, Major Pembrooke?"

His eyes held hers. "Perhaps he wished certain information. Russia is extremely interested in what your country and mine will do in the East."

Without reasoning she rose to the protection of Sergei. "But he's not a Russian. I mean not in that way. He's been over here for years. He's a movie director not a politician."

He asked coolly, "Are you certain, Mrs. Satterlee?"

She couldn't in all honesty answer yet. But she had to protect Sergei if possible from this man. He was too weak to be pitted against this adversary. She spoke with seeming conviction, "Certainly I know that. I've worked with him at the studio. I doubt if he's even sympathetic to the new Russian policy." He had been a supporter of Communism. The art in his propaganda films was what led Oppy to import him from Moscow. But she seemed to remember that he had publicly broken away when Russia invaded Finland. She repeated, "I doubt it very much. He's no spy." She had wanted to avoid that word in Pembrooke's presence but it came out. "He's an artist."