The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (10 page)

“
Which neighbors lost their
pets?”

“
Tom Jefferson, next door
to me here. And that Erickson looker.” He pointed up the street
again. “Tom lost his Weimeraner, friendly four-year-old Weimeraner.
And I think Erickson’s cat got lost.”

“
This Erickson, you say
she’s a looker? Do you mean she’s an old lady who peeks around the
curtains, mumbling at the–”

That convulsed him. He
whooped and chortled, whistled and waved his hands before him in an
exaggerated figure eight, then cupped both hands before his chest
and moved them up and down as if tossing a couple of basketballs
into the air and catching them with some difficulty. Crude. Crude,
but effective. Without saying a word, he had convinced me that
Erickson was not an old lady who peeked around curtains.

“
Ah,” I said, “that kind of
looker. Well, I’ll have to check into this missing pet situation
with her, I suppose. And, what was the guy’s name?”

“
Tom. Thomas Jefferson.
That’s a tough one to remember, all right.” Then he was whooping
again. After a bit he said, “The other one’s Lucinda. Lucinda
Erickson. Man, I’d mow her lawn any day. Or night. I’d cut it with
fingernail scissors.”

I smiled. “Next year, the
Caribbean,” I said, and walked next door to see if Thomas Jefferson
was home.

He was at work, but his
wife was there and answered my questions agreeably after I said her
neighbor, Mr. Williston, had told me about their missing dog. The
Weimeraner had been outside, around lunch time, and just hadn’t
come home when they called him. That had been nearly a month ago;
she knew the date, September eighteenth. They’d run advertisements,
offered a reward, without any response. And that was all Mrs.
Jefferson could tell me. She hadn’t seen any green vehicle, or
running dog, recently.

So I left my card with
her, went back to the Cad and drove it half a block and into the
driveway next to the small house with “L. Erickson” on the mailbox
out front. What I’d thought was another lawn here turned out to be
attractively lumpy and bumpy Korean grass, very dark green,
obviously well watered and with its edges neatly trimmed. Williston
was out of luck; you can’t mow Korean grass, you just let it grow
and maybe enjoy walking on it barefoot.

The house was painted a
creamy beige with chocolate-brown trim, a chocolate-brown door, and
on the beige paneling at the door’s right a chocolate-brown bell,
which I poked. Nothing. Poked it again.

I heard a door slam at the
rear of the house, thumping as of rapid footsteps, somebody
trotting my way. Then the door was swung open wide and framed in it
was the eye-torching blood-warming breath-taking shock of
Lucinda.

At least, I guessed this
was Lucinda. But, because I had been looking at the door and the
trim and the bell, while at the same time thinking of walking
barefoot on toe-friendly Korean grass, what I saw was an absolutely
gorgeous gal with wild black hair and wilder black eyes and
extravagant dimensions, a young black beauty of perhaps twenty-five
tender years, with chocolate-brown skin the shade and smoothness of
melted Hershey bars, who appeared to be barefoot all
over.

At least, that’s what I
thought for a remarkably stimulating second or two, but then I
noted that though she was indeed barefooted and bare-legged and
bare almost everywhere else, she was in fact wearing a brief
two-piece swim suit, or play suit, or skin graft... Well, what it
looked like, when my eyes finally found it–which wasn’t easy,
because both little pieces of it were exactly the shade of melting
Hershey bars–was the lower half of a brassiere above bikini briefs
that had recently shrunk, these trifles either partially covering
or abundantly uncovering a body that explained why Williston had
found no words to describe it. But, then, Williston had struck me
as more crude than eloquent, anyhow.

So I smiled eloquently and
said, “Lu—?”

“
Hi.”

“
Lu–?”

“
Are you selling
something?”

“–
cinda?”

“
What?”

I sighed. “This isn’t
working. Frankly, ma’am, or miss, or Ms., I had hoped to speak to
you so eloquently that your ears would sing, that you would
automatically say Yes! No matter what–”

“
Yes? To what?”

“
Ah, good question. Give me
a minute–”

“
Speak eloquently? My ears
would sing? And what was that Loo–loo–sin–ahdah or whatever, isn’t
that what you said?”

“
How would I know? Why
don’t you go put some pants on, and we’ll start over. Pretend I
just got here.”

“
You did just get
here.”

“
Will you quit it? Look,
let’s really start over. It’s important, believe me. And you want
some eloquence? Okay, hear this: I just got here. You just got
here. I mean, I just pressed the belly-button, or rather the
doorbelly, and you just opened the door wide and stood there
like...like you’re standing there. Undismayed, I said smoothly: Hi
there, ma’am. Or mmmm–I’m Shell Scott, a private investigator of
some renown–strike that, uh, I have an office right here in Los
Angeles. I have been employed to find a client’s dog. Well, more
than that, a lot more, but the dog part is part of it. And, since
that’s what I’m doing, I heard that you may also have lost a pet, a
cat. That is, if you are indeed Lu–”

“
Oh! My precious little
purry kitty, Precious! You’ve found Precious?”

“
Found what? No. I didn’t
even know it was missing until...What did you call it?”

“
You haven’t found
Precious?”

“
No. Good Lord, that is
what you said.”

I scowled at her. Since
she still appeared to be standing only a foot from me completely
naked, I hadn’t lost interest entirely; but women who name their
kittens–or birds, or baby iguanas–“Precious” can be dangerous to a
man’s blood sugar. Thus that first fine careless rapture I’d felt
upon glimpsing her apparently wearing only the doorway was being
replaced by a sense of, ah, loss.

But that didn’t last long.
It took only a few more seconds for me to realize she talked like
an imbecile only when speaking of her kittycat, and the rest of the
time she sounded normal, nice, and as intelligent as–well, as I
am.

The way it went, she said,
“Oh, I thought for a moment you’d found her and were bringing her
back,” and I said, “No, sorry, I’m just checking the neighborhood
here. But, first thing, are you really Lu–“ and she said, “I’m
Lucinda Erickson,” and I said, “Thank goodness, I was really
starting to wonder about that.”

And in another minute and
a half she understood why I was here and what I was doing, and I
knew that her cat had “just disappeared” a few weeks
ago.

“Do you remember the exact
date?” I asked her.

“About three weeks ago.
Well, it was last month, and I wrote it down on the calendar. C’mon
in, and I’ll check it.”

She opened the door even
wider, stood for a moment in bright reflected sunlight, then turned
and went back into the house.

After brief hesitation,
not a whole lot, I followed her inside.

CHAPTER SIX

It was a small place, but
neat and bright, with colorful paintings on the walls and pink and
white pillows on a blue couch here in the living room.

Directly ahead of me were
a couple of stools before a low counter, beyond which was the
kitchen. Lucinda switched on a light in there and I could clearly
see the refrigerator, an oven and microwave–and Lucinda. She was
facing away from me, bending forward to peer at something low on
the refrigerator door. I sighed.

“
Eighteenth,” she said.
“September eighteenth.”

“
That’s very
interesting.”

She came back into the
living room, glanced at me and said, “You don’t have to stand
there. Sit down, Mr. Scott.” Then she moved one of the pink pillows
aside and sank onto the couch, crossing her long brown
legs.

“
Okay,” I said, looking
around and spotting a pair of gracefully designed and attractive,
but quite dinky, chairs. I stepped over to one of them and looked
down at it, dubiously.

“
Over here,” Lucinda said,
patting the pink pillow next to her legs. “I paid a lot of money
for those ridiculous things, and nobody as big as you is going to
sit in them.”

“
Okay,” I said again. “Good
thinking.”

But I didn’t move
immediately, wondering briefly if she expected me to sit on the
pillow she was patting. However, I rejected that thought as highly
unlikely, realizing my temporary hesitation was due only to the
fact that the pillow was so close to those really bare legs, and
bareness as provocative as what Lucinda was exhibiting in abundance
had, on occasions in the past, made me appear to be a dummy, not
because my mental processes stopped or even slowed down but, on the
contrary, because they speeded up so fast that moving my feet had a
very low priority.

I must have been thinking
very speedily for quite a while, because Lucinda said, “Is there
something fascinating about that dumb little chair that I never
noticed before?” Then briskly–but pleasantly–“You can keep standing
there and looking at it if you want to. Or come sit over here
unless you’re afraid of me, Mr. Scott.”

“
Fear is not my problem.” I
moved the feet, sat down on the other side of the pink pillow she’d
patted, and said, “Call me Shell, okay?”

“
All right, Shell. Now, you
said–”

“
And you are... Mrs.? Miss?
I know you’re not Mr. Erickson.”

She laughed easily. “You
really are a detective, aren’t you? It’s Mrs. Erickson. Mr.
Sco–Shell, when I told you the last time I saw Precious was
September eighteenth, you said that was very interesting.
Why?”

“
Yeah, that. Well, you know
Mr. Williston down the street, don’t you?”

“
Yes. Just as one of the
neighbors. We wave at each other. And sometimes he honks at me when
he goes past my house.”

“
When he goes past driving?
Or walking?”

She laughed again, leaned
over and slapped me on the knee, then straightened up, or at least
straightened her spine.

“
That’s pretty good,” she
said.

“
Truth is, when you opened
the door, I was unprepared to see such a young, attractive...
um—”

She was laughing merrily
with unselfconscious abandon of people who like themselves, and
others, enough that they’re not afraid of letting go a little, and
it was so infectious that I joined her for a few seconds. When we
calmed down I added, “Especially not in such a swell
outfit.”

“
Oh, this?” She took a deep
breath, looking down at herself and brushing a hand over the wisp
of Hershey-brown cloth only partially concealing those remarkable
Hershey-brown breasts. “I forgot I had it on.”

Then she looked at me
again and probably noticed my eyes widening, adding quickly, “I
mean, I forgot I had it on. Usually I wear a one-piece swimsuit.
When I heard the doorbell, I was about to jump into the Jacuzzi.
Another two seconds and I’d have been soaking in it.”

“
Good thing I rang when I
did, I guess. Jacuzzi, huh?”

“
I try to unwind in it at
least once a day. With all the jets on, swooshing the warm water
around, it relaxes me.”

“
Well, I hate interrupting
your routine, Mrs. Erickson. We could continue this, ah, friendly
interrogation out there if you’d like, if you’d prefer. That is, if
you’d enjoy that warm swooshing–”

“
Do you mean you want to
interrogate me in the Jacuzzi, Shell?”

“
No, no, I don’t believe
that’s what I...I thought maybe I’d just watch, and ask...You
wouldn’t mind?”

“
No, I wouldn’t
mind.”

“
Well, maybe your
husb–husb–” I always have difficulty with that word.

“
Mr. Erickson and I are
divorced.”

“
Hoo.”

“
We’re still friends. We
just don’t live together any more. So you can either join me in the
Jacuzzi, or sit outside and ask your questions. How long will it
take?”

“
How long will what take?”
For a moment there I drew a total blank. Then I said, “Yeah,
questions. Got it.”

“
What was it about Mr.
Williston?”

“
Williston, sure. Well, he
lost his pet, too, a young Weimeraner. Thing is, the dog
disappeared on September eighteenth.”

Lucinda blinked, sober
now. “Just like Precious. That’s strange, isn’t it?”

“
Sure is. Something else.
Nine days ago, Wednesday last week, a green van came up this street
pretty fast, with a dog chasing it. Williston said the van braked
to a stop about here, in front of your house. I was wondering if
maybe you saw it.”

“
Yes, I did. Just for a few
seconds, though. I heard tires skidding on the street outside. I
was in the kitchen, so I just walked over and opened the front
door. The car or truck, van I guess, was stopped right out front.
But it started up again in three or four seconds, and
left.”