Date for Murder Read online

  He felt Idell’s cool, slim hand touch his as he stopped inside the archway.

  “Hello, everybody,” she said with her brittle gayety. “I bring a hero.” She tugged at Mark’s hand, moving him reluctantly across the room behind her. “Link, darling,” she said to the man seated nearest the archway, “I’m awfully sorry about your car. Really I am. But I’ll buy you another.” She turned to Mark. “Mark Warren, James Link. I call him ape-man because apes and missing links always go together, somehow. And he does look sort of like an ape, don’t you think?”

  Mark thought so, but only in silence. He had seen Link occasionally riding into Indio with Grant. He accepted the hand thrust at him and didn’t bother to return the tremendous pressure on his fingers. Link was a giant, two inches taller than Mark’s six feet and half again as broad. His face was dark and glowering, with eyes under bushy black brows and a chin thrust forward like that of a belligerent bulldog.

  “Wrecked it, huh?” he rumbled at Idell.

  “Darling, no,” she said. “Some men did. They came at me, shooting and banging away. It was frightful.” She didn’t seem in the least frightened now, but Mark remembered the pounding knot of fear against the whiteness of her throat.

  The others in the room (there seemed to be about a half dozen tucked in various places) laughed. All but Link. His dark face with its blue-black beard showing through tanned skin turned the color of pallid putty, and for a moment his eyes threatened to roll back in his head. Fear, Mark thought. The man is frightened half out of his senses. But he didn’t look the kind who would be afraid of something that might have happened to someone else. Long seconds passed before color drained back into his face and a smile formed half-heartedly on his thick lips.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I usually see green dragons and purple dogs myself.” It fell flat in Mark’s ears because he knew it was forced.

  “Nobody believes me,” Idell said in mock anger. “You tell them, Mark. No, first meet them all.” She tugged at him and drew him across the room. “Clinton Jeffers,” she said, indicating a big blond man, as husky as Link but not so tall. “You know, the All-American tackle from Grant’s college? He was famous two years ago. Nobody knows him now, of course.”

  Jeffers took Mark’s hand without exerting too much pressure. “Yeah,” he said cheerfully. “The forgotten man. Glad to see you, Idell. I got worried; thought you’d piled up the car, coming so late.”

  Idell smiled at him and waved her hand at a small blonde woman seated beside Jeffers. She had a cocktail glass in one hand. “Myra Cartwright. You know Myra, Mark. Everybody knows Myra.”

  Yes, he knew Myra, and he admitted as much with a pleasant smile. She had stopped for gas numerous times on her way home from her woman’s shop in Indio. She was a small and brittle blonde with pointed features and hard, blue-black eyes as sharp as pointed nails. But there was a roundness to her small figure and something in her eyes when she smiled that made men forget her sharpness. Mark had heard a great deal of her; he noted with interest her long, unpolished fingernails.

  They wandered along the room. Mark met Maybelle Farman, of the oil Farmans, and her cousin, slim and dark where she was short and athletic and dark. Mark took it for granted her cousin’s name was Farman too. He was introduced simply as Chunk. When he smiled he showed even white teeth in his deeply tanned face. He was almost effeminate, with his small hands and feet, but when he rose Mark got the impression of wiry grace. His eyes were brown and like an adoring spaniel’s when he looked at Idell.

  “We were getting worried!” He had a New England accent.

  “Terribly,” Maybelle agreed. “That car of Link’s is too fast.” Mark saw her eyes turn toward Link, and they seemed to hate him.

  “And Leona Taylor, surely,” Idell was saying, as she dragged Mark across the room to where a deep chair and matching divan sat near the French doors. Mark looked at Leona Taylor and felt that he need not have been pulled toward her; he was drawn to her.

  She sat quietly in a rattan chair partially concealed behind a potted palm. The fingers of her right hand, tipped with soft-toned polish, were clasped around a glass which had hardly been touched. Her hair was a drab brown, drawn in soft waves and curled at the base of her neck. But a second look showed Mark the drabness was purely imaginary. Incredible lights shot through her hair when she moved, capturing rainbow glints like a prism. And as if to bely the brown shade of her hair, her face was a white cameo in pallid marble with two great violet eyes shining from it. Mark made no attempt to guess her age. She might have been anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five. But her type was ageless, ageless and exotic. He could not tell whether she knew of her own beauty. When she held out one blue-veined hand she was quiet and reserved. When her violet eyes met his he felt an insane stirring in his blood. He was relieved when Idell’s voice allowed him to turn his eyes from Leona Taylor.

  “And this is Uncle Frank,” she was saying. “There is always an Uncle Frank. But this one is a dear. He happens to be executor of Father’s estate, too. He’s a lawyer.”

  And a famous one, Mark thought. He had heard of Frank Manders, the great civil lawyer, but he had never seen him before. His open, rugged face, weathered like an outdoor man’s, made it difficult to imagine him in a city courtroom. His eyes and hair were grey and sparkling with life. Mark liked him instantly.

  “Pardon my not rising, young man,” Frank Manders said. “I’m a bit under the weather.” Mark saw a light blanket draped over his legs, and the tops of a pair of crutches peered from behind the divan. “I had an accident on a fishing trip three months ago,” he said. “Rode like a tenderfoot, and my horse threw me. Broke my leg in two places below the knee. Confounded nuisance for a man of my age.”

  “Sorry to hear of it, sir,” Mark said.

  Frank Manders leaned toward Idell. “Now what is this, young lady? You wrecked the car, I suppose.”

  “It was literally shot out from under me,” she said. “They chased me all the way from Riverside. At least that’s where I first noticed them. Every time there was a dark, lonely stretch they started shooting. They hit the car once just this side of Banning.”

  “Who is they? Good Lord, child, are you serious?”

  “Quite serious,” Mark said. “I saw them shoot at her after she left my station not a half hour ago.”

  “I don’t know who ‘they’ are, Uncle Frank,” Idell said. “I got a glimpse of two men when they went by me after I left Mark’s. They came out of the Palm Springs road. I fooled them, so they took that one by mistake. It was a convertible sedan. After they found me again, I decided I was tired of playing cops and robbers, so I slowed down this side of Coachella, set the throttle on Link’s car and jumped.” Her voice was light and airy, but Mark caught a throb of tension beneath it.

  Idell showed them the palms of her hands. There were red marks in the heels and on her fingertips. “I was really lucky. I lit running.” She laughed and glanced across the room at Link, who had moved nearer. “If your car went straight you might catch it in the Salton Sea, darling. I only put two gallons of gas in the tank. I thought I would use about that much before I had to leave it. And I didn’t want it to catch fire.”

  “Then you planned to jump,” Mark said.

  “Certainly. I didn’t want them to go on shooting at me forever.”

  “Why didn’t you let me help?”

  “Please,” she said, squeezing his fingers. “You did enough, chasing after them in that awful car of yours.”

  “It gets me around,” he said stiffly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and sounded as if she meant it. “Really I am. It was sweet of you to go to all that trouble, Mark.”

  “I don’t understand this,” Frank Manders said. “And I’m going to find out what’s back of it.” He sounded as if he could quite easily.

  Link came forward and put one arm protectingly around Idell’s waist. “They must have mistaken your car for someone else’s.”

  “Yo
ur car, darling,” she reminded him.

  “I’ll mix drinks for you two,” Grant said unexpectedly. “You look as though you need them.”

  Mark wondered why he hadn’t spoken before, and saw now that Grant was a bit too far gone to realize completely what had happened. He staggered badly as he went to the bar in one corner of the room.

  “Make mine a double Scotch,” Idell said. “I feel awfully shaky.”

  Mark saw whiteness grow around her temples and the edges of her lips and knew what was going to happen. Link had taken his arm away, so Mark was the first to catch her. Link took her feet and they laid her on the divan.

  “Lower her head,” Mark said crisply. He took the bandana from around her head and began to rub her temples. Link stroked her wrists. The others had crowded around, suggesting. Only Leona Taylor sat quietly, her violet eyes amused.

  Mark watched Link while he worked. The other’s face was grim, his jaw set. “I’ve seen him somewhere,” Mark thought. He guessed Link was about thirty. But where? New York? Chicago? San Francisco? He couldn’t be sure. He felt he had been in a situation like this before, with some of these people. With Link and Leona Taylor, surely. The others didn’t fit. Where had he seen them before?

  And, he thought, as long as he was going to play with puzzles, why had Idell refused his help only to rush off into the desert and turn the car loose?

  Chapter III

  IDELL was in the middle of her second Scotch and soda, her feet tucked comfortably beneath her. She sat on the couch, between Mark and her uncle. Leona Taylor had taken a seat in an easy chair next to Mark.

  “That was stupid of me,” Idell said. She looked brighter now; the liquor had put a tinge of warmth on her cheeks and had taken the white line from around her mouth.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Mark objected.

  “Don’t you think you should call the police?” Frank Manders asked suddenly. “If there are homicidal maniacs running loose, they should know of it.”

  “I doubt if they were homicidal maniacs,” Idell said with a light laugh. “And I shan’t call the police, darling.” She patted his hand. “They had a very definite purpose, judging by the way they clung so closely to me. But it’s all over, thank Heaven. Let’s forget it, shall we?”

  “As you wish.” Frank Manders rose without assistance, and located his crutches. “I think I’ll retire, if you don’t mind.”

  “But I just came,” Idell objected.

  “It can wait until tomorrow,” he said. “And you’ve been here some time. It’s three o’clock. Good night.” He bowed to Mark, and included Leona and Idell in the gesture. The others sat motionless and silent while his crutches tapped their way across the room and through the archway. By listening carefully, Mark could hear them carry him slowly up the stairs. Mark wondered if he would be able to move around so easily if he wore a plaster cast on one leg from foot to knee.

  “I wonder what this conclave is all about,” Jeffers asked suddenly.

  “We’ll find out in the morning, Clint,” Idell said cheerfully. She rose. “Here I dash down to be here as soon as I can and he bundles off to bed.” She wandered quite steadily across the room to where Link sat. He was nursing a drink in dour silence. And occasionally he reached out a hairy paw for a date in the package on the end-table at his side.

  “You and Miss Cartwright are fortunate,” Leona Taylor said to Mark. Her voice was low and carried a throb that entranced him. “You both live elsewhere.” Her eyes were full on his, but he could see nothing in their violet depths.

  “Is that good fortune?” Mark demanded. He glanced significantly about the luxurious room.

  She laughed, low and pleasingly. “It is now. They aren’t all drinking for the pleasure of it; and I know everyone is beastly tired.”

  “Why don’t they break it up, then?” What was she driving at? he wondered.

  “They’re afraid to go to bed,” she said. “Some of them.”

  “And you?” Mark asked. He wondered if she were drunk too.

  “I?” She paused and seemed to consider. Then she said very slowly, “Yes, I think I am—most of all.”

  Mark could think of nothing to say. A voice rose sharply in the heavy silence.

  “I say, Link, keep your hands off her!”

  Mark turned his head sharply toward the other side of the room. Slim, dark Chunk Farman was standing up, his face quivering beneath strain and anger that whitened his jaw-line. He was staring at Link and Idell standing near to one another ten feet from him.

  “Oh, Chunk,” Idell said wearily, “calm down. He only put his arm around me.”

  “I saw you shrug it off,” Farman protested.

  “What the hell’s it to you?” Link rumbled. He started forward and then stopped as if the effort were too great, as if Farman were too ineffectual a mosquito to bother with. “We’re engaged, aren’t we?”

  Grant Manders suddenly laughed. “That,” he said with a slight slur in his voice, “is as damned funny as Idell’s story—unfortunately both of them are true.”

  Idell walked back through the heavy silence and sat by Mark. She had a full glass in her hand, and she tipped it against his half empty one. “To more and better melodrama.” She drank. “Don’t mind it, Mark. They’re all a bit tight, and Chunk is foully jealous. I think my darling brother is just drunk enough to forget himself, too.”

  Myra Cartwright’s sharp voice broke in. “I have to get home. Is there a sober gentleman in the crowd?”

  “I’ll take you,” Mark offered quickly. He rose and glanced down at Idell. “I have to be getting back to the station.”

  She gave him her hand, cool and slim, and white. “Come up when you aren’t working. Really, there is a welcome here for you. From me.”

  Grant, across the room, said, “Yes, come up. There’s a swimming pool out back. We’re draining it tomorrow, but it’ll be filled by Thursday. One way of beating the heat.” His voice carried a slight slur, but amazlingly little, considering his glassy eyes and the looseness of his features. Mark decided Grant had had a good deal of experience with liquor.

  “He’s repaying you for helping Idell,” Leona said in a voice of amusement. “You get a coupon book. Three dinners, six swims, ten drinks. When that is gone, then you have to save the family name again before he issues another.”

  “You’re a beastly cat,” Idell said almost savagely. Then her humor and lightness seemed to return, bubbling back to cover what she wished to hide in her dark eyes. “Isn’t she, Mark?”

  “Are you putting me on the spot?”

  She laughed. “You can go. And thank you.”

  “Good night, Miss Manders. Miss Taylor.” He nodded to them and strode to where Myra stood, talking to Jeffers. “Ready, Miss Cartwright?”

  “Mrs. Cartwright,” Grant said nastily. “Myra’s playing hooky.”

  Myra turned when she reached the door. “Delightfully boring, all. See you tomorrow.”

  The Queen was still up; she opened the door for them. She sniffed and glared belligerently at Myra.

  Myra’s sharp features dissolved in a little smile of sympathy and understanding. “The Major couldn’t always be here to take care of things, Queen. I guess it’s up to you.”

  The Queen hated Myra with her eyes. “It will take more than I have,” she said with the automatic politeness of the trained servant. “Now off with you.”

  “She doesn’t like me,” Myra said when they were outside.

  “Does she ever sleep?” Mark asked. He opened the door to his coupé and helped Myra inside.

  “I doubt if she does,” she answered when he had crossed around and slid beneath the wheel. “She’s the mother hen of this ranch.” She became brittle again. “The pleasures of being rich.”

  Mark said nothing; there seemed nothing to say. The roar of the motor and the protesting grumbles of the body as the car jounced over the dirt road prevented conversation to a large degree. After he crossed the tracks and turned west tow
ard the all but dark town, things were quieter. The station was still lighted as they passed—Mark had half expected Babe to turn the lights out from anger—and a car was drawn up at the pumps. Babe was pouring gas into the tank. She looked up, saw Mark, half lifted one hand to wave and then thumbed her nose at him.

  Myra laughed. “You do get around, Mark. Go up with a brunette and back with a blonde.”

  “Am I that tied by local gossip with Babe?” he asked.

  “It’s a small town,” she reminded him.

  “Not so small that I knew you were married.”

  “My husband lives in the East,” she said. “I came down for my health—like ‘most everyone else. He comes down in the winter occasionally.” She spoke in brittle, sharp sentences.

  “Odd I haven’t seen him around,” Mark said. He was not particularly curious, just trying to make conversation. He wanted to bring the talk around to those they had recently left. His curiosity would eat at him until it was satisfied, he knew.

  “He stays at Palm Springs,” she said. The way she said it gave him the impression her husband had money; and that they didn’t get along too well. There was nothing to say to that. He said nothing.

  “I was Grant’s guest,” she said suddenly. “For that overgrown Jeffers. He’s an oaf. In twenty years he’ll be the successful, retired business man who leaves the small town for his yearly fling in the city. His wife, of course, will know nothing about it. She’ll sit home and take care of the kids while he haunts gardens and paws chorus girls young enough to be his daughters. And he’ll be the local pillar of the church and society until some front line female brings her letters to the home town and frightens him half to death.”

  “You’re bitter,” Mark said. “He’s a kid.”

  “He’s older than Grant,” she told him. “And Grant is twenty-four.” The way she said it gave Mark the idea Grant wasn’t such a kid. He regarded Myra with speculative interest. Sharp features, yes, but her figure was just right. Not if you compared her to Idell, but then you didn’t compare people to Idell. He began to think he was a fool.