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  Additional guests had arrived, enlarging the group surrounding me in the courtyard. Conversation was buzzing as people wondered what was going on. Even the caterers had drifted toward the promise of excitement.

  Keith Sigmon shouldered his way until he was standing before me. He took Elena by the arm, pressuring her aside.

  Sigmon’s classically chiseled, once-handsome face was pulling its edges tautly together. Some of the whisky fog was clearing from his eyes.

  “Rivers, I thought I made it clear — ”

  “Really, Keith,” Natalie Clavery said, “we had no idea his presence would prove such an upsetting — “

  “Are you telling me you brought him?”

  “Of course.”

  Sigmon looked at Natalie closely. “I don’t believe you,” he said flatly. “There isn’t a reason in the world why you should bring this two-bit private eye to a party.”

  Van Clavery said with a quietness that got through to me at least, “I’d rather you didn’t accuse my wife of being a liar, Keith.”

  Natalie moved between her husband and Sigmon. As she looked at Sigmon, a brief, secretive expression came to her eyes. “I’m sure Keith didn’t mean it that way. Did you?” With a slow curving of her lips and a smoldering upsurge of the thing in her eyes, Natalie gave Sigmon a brief charge of her allure.

  Looking at her, he swallowed slowly. “Naturally I meant no offense to you, Van, or Fred.”

  The buzz of conversation had trickled off. The crowd was restless but quiet, wanting to hear everything that went on. Sigmon was turning toward me. Before he said anything, a voice piped out of the crowd, “That cat came on his own ankles. I’ll clue you. He was here before anybody else.”

  Both Sigmon and I looked toward the speaker. It was the combo leader, simpering under the sudden shift of attention.

  “What do you mean?” Sigmon asked in a thick voice.

  “Like I have said it, Pops,” the musician lighted one of his own breed of cigarettes. “Rivers was making the scene when I got here. We ankled into the house together.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pops, like how could I be otherwise? Who could forget that puss?”

  Natalie Clavery edged toward Sigmon. “Keith, we saw him and simply didn’t want to spoil a party.”

  He wiped the back of his hand across his high, widow’s-peaked forehead. “I understand,” he said. “It’s okay. But we’ll make with a party. A memorable event. A blast to be long remembered.”

  “Take it easy, Keith,” Fred Eppling said.

  Sigmon jerked himself away from the lawyer’s touch. “Rivers is trespassing. Makes him fair game, doesn’t it?”

  Sigmon’s tone and expression communicated a message to the swarm of guests. Some of them eased fearfully away; other began to crowd in.

  “Keith,” Eppling tried again, “why don’t we talk this over?”

  “Nothing more to be said,” Sigmon replied. He measured me with his eyes, conscious that every other eye was on him.

  Several things didn’t have to be spelled out to me. Sigmon was pretty well drunk, dosed with cockiness and false courage, not a good combination for a man whose secret self-doubts must have plagued him for a long time. He was a man who needed to bully others, to break them, to degrade them as in the case of his daughter. A sick man, maybe. But sick like Ben McJunkin.

  Unlike McJunkin, Sigmon didn’t quite have the guts to create frequent opportunities to strut. The opportunities had to be handed to Sigmon.

  He thought he had the opportunity now. He reasoned drunkenly that I was in no position to make an overt move. He was confident that his friends would talk him out of it before it was too late, seize his arms, cajole him.

  He put a heavy sneer on his face, which I didn’t mind. He took the initial step forward, his hands turning into fists.

  I minded. I hit him across the mouth with the back of my right hand. I felt his lips slide across his teeth like banana peels under a heavy rubber heel. A gasp came from the crowd as Sigmon stumbled backward, tripped on his own feet, and fell full length on the flagstones.

  He lay there at the feet of all his friends. His face twisted in a grimace of hate. He hated everything and everybody right then, I’m sure. His friends for not having moved on cue. Me for having moved at all.

  In the sudden, deep silence, he stared wildly from face to face, shamed and ridiculous, his great moment turned inside out with bitterness and defeat.

  I was turning to go. I might have been able to walk away from it. But a man broke the silence with a laugh. A woman giggled. The laughter was contagious.

  Then a woman added a new note to the rising laughter. She screamed. This was contagious also. The people began to spill backward, to jostle each other as they attempted to get out of the way.

  I spun, saw light glinting on the long blade of the saber that Sigmon had grabbed from one of the Gasparilla pirates. The tip of the blade was reaching to divide my belly button in two parts.

  I sucked in breath, twisted to one side, and folded my body out of the way.

  The rush from the center of the action became chaotic. I heard a man trip and fall into the courtyard fountain. In the perimeter of my gaze, I saw a woman get stepped on as she fainted dead away.

  These were secondary impressions. Anything other than the sight of the long steel blade was secondary.

  Sigmon’s rush had carried him past me. He was turning, the saber swinging up. It was no toy but the genuine article, probably an antique sword with a real history of pirate blood. A little something extra for the owner to keep shined up for the day each year when the owner put on his pirate’s costume.

  Sigmon’s drunken sense of outrage had passed the point of sanity. He was beyond knowing or caring that I might shoot him. Nothing was real to him right now except the face of a hated man who had humbled him.

  I ducked under his two-handed swinging of the saber, heard the swish of it. Before he could get the weapon set for another try at laying the side of my face open, I drove in low and hard.

  My shoulder hit him, and I discovered he was as soft in the gut as I’d thought. I felt the air rush out of him and heard the muffled scream it left in his throat.

  His body folded across my back. He went backward, and I fell on top of him.

  I shook free of him and got to my feet. Clutching his stomach, he rolled back and forth a time or two. Then in the upper stratum of queazy sickness and pain, he saw the hovering outlines of my face.

  His face twisted in raw fear, he scrabbled himself around, got his hands and knees under him, and started crawling away.

  The target was too exposed, the temptation too great. I drew back my foot, and kicked him squarely in the tail. The force of it knocked him flat again, on his face this time. His fingers clawed at the flagstones as he tried to pull himself beyond my reach.

  He needn’t have worried. He wasn’t worth further bother. I bent, touched the saber where it had clattered to rest. I picked the weapon up, studied it a moment while the hushed faces scattered around the courtyard watched.

  Gripping the saber by the tip and haft, I raised my knee and brought the sword down across it. The way it rang when it snapped attested the quality of the steel.

  I pitched the pieces of broken saber. They struck flagstones near Keith Sigmon with a clatter.

  I turned and walked away. As I passed from the lighted area of the courtyard, I heard the timorous return of life back there. Rustling movement. The sound of voices.

  Sigmon was being helped to his feet. Elena was suggesting drinks all around.

  Fingers began falling on a bongo like warm, fat, tropical raindrops.

  Fourteen

  When I got back to my car I saw the shadowy outlines of a person in the front seat. The dome light turned on as I opened the door on the driver’s side.

  Myrtle Higgins leaned across the seat, looking up at me. A smile curved her full, red lips. “Hi,” she said casually.

  With her f
irm-cheeked face and full-breasted, amazonian body, she was a pervasive presence that took some of the tension out of my shoulders. I slipped under the wheel beside her. Half-turned, she rested with her elbow on the back of the seat. “You know something,” she said, her voice suddenly serious, touched with a feeling akin to fright, “old José Gaspar would never have taken you in his crew.”

  “No?”

  “It would have cost him sleep, worrying about you breaking him in two and taking command.”

  I looked at the lusty, surface perfection of her physical shell. “I wish I knew you better.”

  “Remember the other night,” she said softly. “How much better can a man know a woman?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. I don’t know you at all. Not the Myrtle Higgins who waits and hides behind the eyes.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” she said, straightening in the seat.

  “Okay,” I said. I gave her a glance. “Going to the party?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I’ve been rambling around, looking for you.”

  “So now you’ve found me.”

  “Sure — and who wants to go to Elena Sigmon’s silly party?” Her smile was back. She was trying for a mood of casual ease, lightness. “I got here in time to see the finish of the fight after I’d spotted your car. Don’t you think we’d better get away from here?”

  “Why?”

  “Sigmon has grounds to swear out a warrant for you.”

  “I don’t think Sigmon wants any cops around,” I said.

  “Let’s get moving anyway.” She stirred restlessly. “I need to move, to talk, Ed.”

  I started the car, turned it around, and followed the headlights through the warmly dark jungle landscaping.

  “Ed … I heard about Lura Thackery on a newscast.”

  “I’ll feel bad about that one a long time,” I said.

  She looked at me quickly. “You shouldn’t. The girl was a fool. She brought it on herself.”

  “Did you know her well, Myrtle?”

  “Not very. Just as a friend of Jean Putnam’s who came to the hacienda occasionally to see Jean. Old Señora Isabella didn’t much like to have Lura around.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Myrtle said. “I think Lura reminded the old lady of her own daughter.” “In what way?”

  “They were both weak,” Myrtle said. “The old woman regarded her daughter’s marriage and subjection to Keith Sigmon as the height of human weakness and folly.”

  I reached the boulevard and waited for a break in traffic.

  “Anything personal between the old woman and Lura Thackery?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of. The señora was courteous to Lura. She was too well versed in the social graces not to be. But she was always distant with the girl, as if her wise old instincts were solidly set against Lura.”

  I gunned the car and shot onto the boulevard.

  “Got a cigarette?” Myrtle said.

  I handed her a package, pressed the car lighter.

  “As the old woman’s nurse,” I said, “you were probably closer to her than anyone in Tampa.”

  “I wouldn’t be sure. There was her doctor — and Jean Putnam. I think Jean was the closest of all. Jean seemed to fill a little of the inner void the old woman had brought with her from Venezuela.”

  “But even Jean didn’t see and talk with the señora in moments of pain, in the small hours when she was suffering.”

  Myrtle watched the sweep of lights and darkness. “Part of a nurse’s job, Ed,” she said quietly.

  “So you heard words from her that not even Jean Putnam ever heard.”

  She stirred, turning partially toward me. “What do you want of me, Ed?”

  “I’m not sure. A word, maybe, that the old woman spoke when the night was deep and the pain was heavy.”

  “I wish I had a word, Ed.”

  “Or a fact. A detail that hasn’t come to light yet.”

  The lustrous dark-blond hair swished about the fine wide shoulders. “I can give you much, Ed. You’ve only to name it. But I’m not able to give you anything in the realm of your work.”

  “You knew them,” I said, “all the people around the old lady. One of them, back there at the party tonight, is a murderer.”

  “Ben McJunkin …”

  “The tool,” I said. “Nothing less, nothing more.”

  I pressed the brake pedal and we became one of the cars massing at a row of traffic signals. “You see how it is,” I said. “Ben McJunkin is operating on his own terms. If he comes to me again, I may not live to get to the person behind him. If I reach the person behind McJunkin first, then I can go to McJunkin. The odds would be a little better that way.”

  “My God, Ed! Do you have to keep talking about it?”

  “Want to go back to the party?”

  “Oh, you …” She seethed. She jerked herself to the far side of the seat. Her huff didn’t last long. She sighed almost wearily. “I’m no detective, Ed. I don’t know how to play detective.”

  “You knew the people. You’re no fool. You’ve dealt with people a long time in extreme circumstances. You know what to look for.”

  “In a murderer?” she demanded. “How was I to suspect that one of them was planning to silence Jean Putnam and Lura Thackery?”

  “Okay,” I said. “I guess I was just trying to strike my last match in a high wind.”

  “What am I supposed to say?” she cried. “Keith and Elena Sigmon? I hardly know them. Van Clavery? A nervous wreck on two legs who probably wakes up with ants in his pants and goes to bed seething from all the real and fancied mistakes of the day. He burned with envy for the old señora’s wealth and position. But he liked Jean Putnam.

  “Ditto for Fred Eppling. Cold fish of a lawyer. Got a high yearly retainer from the old lady, although his tasks were mostly routine. Untangled one minor legal snarl for her in Caracas, but mostly never had to leave his office except to come to her home. He got Jean Putnam her job with Señora Isabella, remember — but if he had any wish to see Jean dead, it’s beyond my imagination.

  “Natalie Clavery? A glistening object of art made out of alabaster. But plenty of hot blood under the cool surface. Deep down, she’s a tigress, the kind that takes a mate without reservation — and who knows what sort of specimen the chemistry of a woman will react to?”

  “Part of the wondrous mystery of women,” I said.

  “Sure.” She looked at me obliquely. “Take my own case. Here I am — with a big, sweaty hulk who borrowed the shoulders from a gorilla, got his daintiness from a bull, and dredged up the face from the left-overs when Mother Nature put a wrestler together. Here I am — of my own free will. Maybe I really should have my head examined!”

  “Don’t start thinking objectively about me,” I said, “just about those other people.”

  “I’ve given you everything I can, Ed, and I’m sure it’s nothing you didn’t already know. So why not forget it for a little while? Give yourself a chance to simmer down, relax. Buy me a drink.”

  “The bars are awfully crowded.”

  “Who said anything about a bar?” she asked.

  While we were going up the stairs to my apartment, I heard the phone ringing. I murmured “Pardon” to Myrtle, hurried up the remainder of the stairway, and keyed the door open. Even if the phone was demanding attention, I reached around the door frame and clicked on a light before I took the final steps into the bed-sitting room.

  The phone lapsed to silence as I reached it. I said, “Hello?” to a humming dial tone.

  I dropped the phone slowly back in its hooks. When I turned, Myrtle was standing in the doorway.

  “The caller get tired and hang up, Ed?”

  I nodded. “If it’s important, maybe they’ll call back.”

  She crossed the room, touched my arm with her hand, urged me to one side as I started into the kitchenette.

  “I know where the makings are,” she said. “Unbutton
your collar and sit down. Beer chaser?”

  “Just beer,” I said.

  She raised her brows slightly and went on into the kitchenette.

  I wandered back to the phone, picked it up, and tried the answering service. There had been no calls downtown. Just here, on the line into my domestic domain.

  I was standing there frowning at the phone when Myrtle crossed the room, set beer and whisky on the table, and slipped her arms loosely about my neck.

  “You’re still not with me, Ed. Forget the call. Probably some anemic chick who’d stack up against me like a sack of sticks.”

  I pulled her closer to me. The warm pressure of her breasts and thighs against me was firm, but imbued with a heady female plasticity.

  “You know,” I said, “that if you’d ever entered a Miss Universe contest the nursing profession would have lost a member.”

  “Your beer’s getting warm.”

  “Not only the beer.”

  She laughed, cupped my face in her hands, tilted her head, and gave me a warmly moist kiss.

  I slid my fingers up through the silken wealth of dark-tan hair, and returned the gesture.

  We stood there with our lips and bodies welding together and soft little sounds forming in her throat. Anything beyond this building, this room, this one spot began not to matter.

  The phone rang.

  We drew apart slowly. The phone started its second shrill peal for attention. “Don’t answer it, Ed.”

  “You know I have to. Anyway, it’s barely past dinnertime. The evening’s young.”

  In irritation, she jerked away and walked halfway across the room.

  I picked up the phone. “Hello?” I said.

  “Ed Rivers?” The accent was Spanish.

  “Yes.”

  “Where do you keep yourself? I have been calling again and again.” “Who is this?”

  “Pepe Tortugas, who runs the bar.” “Long time no see.”

  “Sí, Señor Ed, not since you cleared my brother of the armed-robbery charge more than a year ago.”

  “You paid me for the chore, Pepe.”