Show Red for Danger Page 2

  He knotted a tie in a white shirt. Which, he thought, was more than a hippopotamus could do. He could give himself that. She came back, a green wrap-around skirt smooth around slender hips, swinging about slim brown legs. She moved crisply, now.

  There is a time to moon, Susan Faye had thought, buttoning a skirt of pale green linen around a slim waist, over white shorts. There is a time not to moon, she thought, running a comb through short brown hair. Mooning gets me nowhere, she decided, refreshing the color of a wide mouth, of softly curved lips which were getting damn tired of waiting. Not today. Not, at any rate, so far today. And why, knowing the bump on the log was moving far enough off it to reach a terrace, had she agreed to stop by Brian Collins’s house, and studio, and tell him whether what he thought was a fabric design was a fabric design, or could be made into one? Or ought to be made into one.

  Perhaps her asking the great oaf if he minded stopping by with her, if only for a minute, had been the throwing of the monkey wrench. The setting up of a time to do something else, hence the delimitation of their own time—possibly it was that which had, today, put him off. There would be no reason to it, but there did not have to be—not with Merton Heimrich. Or, admit it, with anybody worth the bother. These things are balanced on razor edge.

  She walked out on the terrace, the sun on her. Heimrich was a big, solid man in sports jacket and gray slacks, in white shirt and a dark gray tie. A stolid man, she had thought—in a flicker of the most casual thought—when she had first seen him, after the fire house had burned down, before the charred body of Orville Phipps had turned up in its ashes. A man who, identified as a policeman, had fitted perfectly into preconceptions. No doubt a slow, sure man; a man who, called in to do a policeman’s work, would inspire confidence if by no means promise brilliance.

  He still looked much the same, except that now she did not see, at all clearly, what he looked like from the outside. And part of it had been right—he was unhurried, if not slow; he was thorough; he got what he started out to get. (Her out of a burning house, for example.) He was also, by and large, as intricate a person as any she had ever met. And as—as skittish.

  She smiled faintly at her own choice of a word, moving toward—moving crisply toward, since this was no longer a time for mooning—an extremely solid man, who looked a little as if he had been planted on the terrace and was growing there, like an oak. Skittish indeed!

  Seeing her smile, Heimrich thought of straightening his tie. He did not, being by no means a fidgeter. Well, if something about him amused her, it did not matter. There would be only friendliness in her amusement. He knew her well as a person; knew her to be without malice. (Or as closely as it was human to be.) She liked him. There was no doubt in his mind of that. She seemed to have affection for large animals.

  Colonel sat part way up at her approach. He did not sit all the way up, preferring to be sure that the effort—in his case considerable—would be worth the trouble. “No, Colonel,” Susan Faye said. “Not this time.”

  It was no more than Colonel had expected. Whatever he had done that was wrong was still held against him. They had taken the small god—the real god—away from him because he had done wrong, and still his expiation was incomplete. They would not let him go for a ride. Colonel thudded down on the flagstones again and sighed. “Poor Colonel,” Susan said, and patted the great head. Colonel moaned at that.

  “It’s only,” Susan Faye said, “because you’re so outsized. Such a great lump of animal.”

  She doesn’t, Captain M. L. Heimrich told himself sternly, mean any more than she said.

  II

  He didn’t, Heimrich said, know his way precisely. She would have to guide. First along Oak Road?

  “And then,” Susan said, “left on Sugar Creek Lane until the end. Or almost. Why Sugar Creek, do you suppose? There isn’t any creek, as far as I know.”

  It was to be supposed that once there had been; that somehow sugar had been associated. Perhaps there had been sugar maples, although this was not the region for them. Perhaps someone—fifty years ago; three hundred years ago—had dropped a bag of sugar in a tiny stream. Or the stream, come upon by thirsty men, had seemed, after brackish water, of unexampled “sweetness.” Possibly Brian Collins would know, since he lived at the end of the lane named for the creek.

  Susan doubted that. They were easy again, now; the tension was gone now. They drove, climbing, toward the setting sun. It was seven-fifteen, the car clock said. They talked of matters of no conceivable importance, and not to avoid discussing what had importance. It was a waiting time; a time between.

  She doubted it because Brian Collins was, by the standards of the countryside, a newcomer. She did not know him particularly well; it was only since she had opened her shop on Van Brunt Avenue that she had known him at all. He had dropped in one day—a year ago? a year and a half ago?—and looked at fabrics, with the eye of a man who sees color. He had introduced himself; had said that, in a sense, he was in the same line of business. He had given his name.

  “And I,” Susan said, as the car turned into Sugar Creek Lane and continued to climb, “said, like any other half-wit, ‘The Brian Collins?’ And he asked what the hell anybody was supposed to say to a question like that, and why the hell did people keep on asking it, and if I meant did he do magazine covers and illustrations for nauseating stories, he supposed he was. He has moments of being abrupt, in a long-winded sort of way.”

  She had known vaguely for some time that Brian Collins lived in the area. She had thought it was nearer Cold Harbor, up the river a few miles. A good many people who lived on the back lanes in the town of Van Brunt went to Cold Harbor rather than to the Center to shop, partly because Cold Harbor had more places to shop in, and partly because it had a railroad station. She had mentioned Collins to somehody—she had now forgotten to whom—and been told about him. Or, more precisely, something about him. “He doesn’t join in,” Susan said, explaining that, and explaining it, to Heimrich, fully.

  Collins had bought a few acres, “on the last high hill,” above the river and built a house there. An entirely modern house, largely of glass; a house which was at the same time a dwelling and a studio. That had been about eight years ago.

  “He was married then,” Susan said. “I suppose he built the house for his wife, but apparently it didn’t work. Anyway, there isn’t any wife now—hasn’t been for years. He’s never said anything about her. As a matter of fact, I don’t know him at all well. Went up once with some other people—people from New York—and looked at some of his things. Ran into him once someplace else—at the Kelseys’ in Cold Harbor, as I remember it. And he stops by the shop now and then and looks at my things. Once he bought yardage enough for curtains and once he took me to lunch at the Inn. It was that time, I think, that he said he was having a go at fabric designing, for the fun of it. And that if anything came of it, he’d ask me to give an opinion.”

  “And,” Heimrich said, “make an offer?”

  She doubted it. For one thing, anything she—or anybody, for that matter—would be likely to pay for a design would be peanuts compared to what a man like Collins got for, say, a magazine cover. For the other thing—“All right,” Susan said, “I’ve got my own style. It’s what I’ve got to—it must be just around the next bend.”

  Heimrich drove slowly around the next bend, which was extremely sharp, and stopped the car abruptly since there road ended and so, apparently, did earth. Twenty feet more, and they would have rolled off into the sky. (Which would have been a violation of traffic regulation, because there was clearly a sign which said “Stop,” as well it might.) Heimrich looked at Susan enquiringly.

  “There,” she said, and pointed. A few feet ahead a narrow driveway, almost a trail, went off to the right—went to the right and went up. “He likes privacy,” Susan said, with no special inflection. Heimrich turned the car carefully into the driveway and started up it. “Of course,” Susan said, “he has a four-wheel-drive one.” Heimr
ich moved the gear selector to point at “L” and realized that, in the year or so he had driven this car, that had never been necessary. Even a “four-wheel-drive one” would, he thought, need to wear spikes for this in slippery weather.

  Trees overhung the road, so that they climbed through a tunnel—a twisting tunnel. If they met anybody else coming down—well, somebody would have to back. The upbound car, presumably. Which would be—

  They did not meet anyone; they made the last turn without meeting anyone. And ahead there was, abruptly, a clearing and a house—a sleek house as Susan had promised; a house largely of glass and redwood; a house on one long level. The car rolled onto a smooth expanse of gravel; a turnaround which seemed to be, at the same time, the front lawn of the house. Heimrich swept the car around until it faced the way they had come, its back to an open garage where a jeep and a Buick station wagon stood shoulder to shoulder. They walked across gravel to flagstones and across flagstones to a frameless glass door. At least, Heimrich presumed it was the door, since it had a glass knob set into it. It was part of a glass wall under a wide, upward-pitched overhang. Sun in winter, shade in summer, Heimrich thought and looked into the room.

  Brian Collins’s desire for privacy stopped, evidently, with a hidden house. Once the house was found it was as un-private as—as, obviously, a goldfish tank. A fishtank was precisely what, standing at the glass door in the glass wall, one looked into. Thirty feet or so from the wall Heimrich and Susan Faye looked through, seeking signs of movement within, there was another wall, also of glass. And beyond it the sunlight, entering through yet another wall of glass—this one at right angles to the partition wall, and on their left as they looked into the house—flickered on water.

  “Tricky,” Susan said. “A swimming pool inside, but with sliding glass panels on the west so that it can, in a way, be moved outside. There doesn’t seem to be anybody home. Of course, there’s a lot more to the house. Probably he’s in the studio and—” She did not finish. There was a glass button almost invisible in the glass wall. She pressed it. Faintly, from within the fishtank house, they could hear chimes.

  There were chairs—low and modern chairs, various in shape—in the room on which the door would open, if somebody would come to open it. Several of the chairs were grouped around a free-standing fireplace, with a hood on it. Heimrich looked at the grouped chairs and at the same time Susan pressed the glass button again and the chimes sounded again. And Heimrich said, “Wait, Susan.” He spoke in a level, somehow distant voice, as if he gave an order to someone he did not know.

  She turned to look at him. But he moved away from her, down the glass wall of the house, still looking into the house. A dozen feet from her he stopped and leaned a litde forward, toward the glass. He stood so for several seconds and then came back.

  “Collins wears a beard?” he said and when, slowly, in a puzzled tone, she said, “Yes. A beard like—” and stopped, Heimrich said, “I’m afraid there’s trouble,” and pulled on the glass knob in the door. It resisted. He pushed. It did not resist.

  “Better wait,” he said, and went in, and she did not wait, but went in after him—went after him toward the grouped chairs. And then, seeing, she made a little, gasping sound and put both slim hands up to her face.

  A man with a pointed beard which had been yellow, almost golden yellow, but now was matted red, sat in one of the chairs—slumped in the chair. His right arm dangled over the chair’s low arm, the hand lax, open. Below the hand, on the tile floor, there was a stubby automatic pistol.

  The wound in the man’s right temple was a torn and blackened wound. A contact wound. And the story was told. Heimrich stood looking, not moving closer—not yet. Then he started to turn away and Susan said, in a voice unlike her voice—in a voice half whisper, riffled air—“Look!”

  She pointed and he looked—looked at a slender foot, with painted nails. A foot only.

  They went around the fireplace—the pedestal of a fireplace.

  The dead girl wore a brief bathing suit, a golden yellow bathing suit. She had tawny hair of deeper gold and she lay on her back with one leg drawn up; lay relaxed, as if she rested, with arms flung out; rested gracefully, perhaps in conscious grace. And she had been shot just below the left breast, and there seemed to be very little blood. They would know better when they moved her.

  She had been very beautiful until—Heimrich bent down and touched the skin of the extended, perfect leg. The skin was perceptibly cool to the touch. It was nothing to go by, nothing at all sure to go by. He bent lower and touched the tile floor. Perceptibly cool; cooler than the body. Which would have made a difference. But, at a guess, the girl had stopped being beautiful, in any sense that mattered at all, several hours earlier.

  Which was, he thought, a little odd, and stood straight and continued to look down at the body of Peggy Belford, co-star with Francis Dale in The Last Patroon, being filmed on location.

  “Did—” he said, without turning, and then realized that, seconds before, he had heard Susan’s feet on the tiled floor. He turned sharply. She was standing on the other side of the room, near the door to the terrace. She had her back to him and her hands were over her face. He went to her quickly. She did not turn, did not move, until he put his hands gently on her shoulders. She leaned back against him, then, and he could feel her body shaking against his. He held her slender body against his sturdy one and waited until the shaking—it was as if she were having a chill—ended. Then her body moved as she drew air deep into her lungs.

  “All right now,” she said. “It’s—he killed her? Then himself?”

  “That’s the way it looks,” Heimrich said.

  She turned. He let his hands fall from her shoulders. They were no longer needed. She faced him, looked up at him and her gray eyes were, he thought, strangely dark. Of course, the light came from behind her, which might be it.

  “I didn’t—” she said, and stopped and he saw the muscles move in her slender neck as she swallowed. “Didn’t know it looked like—the way it does look.”

  “I know,” he said. “Susan—don’t you want to go sit in the car? Or—take the car back?”

  “I’m all right,” she said. “It’s—it’s like some hideous parody.” He closed his eyes momentarily. “The—the gold-colored bathing suit,” she said. “And—and Brian’s beard. I never thought of it as gold-colored before and—and this awful place. Like a—tank.”

  Goldfish. Dead goldfish in a gigantic goldfish bowl. And death a grotesque, labored joke.

  “Of course,” Susan said, and her voice was different, almost an everyday voice—“the suit blended with her hair. That’s all that means. And—she had been swimming?”

  “I don’t—” Heimrich said, and went back across the room and touched the golden bathing suit on the slender, curving body. It felt slightly damp. But he could not be sure; it would not be anything he would be able to swear to, if it came to swearing to things. He came back to Susan and said, “Probably,” and then, “Do you know where he kept his telephone?”

  She didn’t. She supposed there would be one in his studio. “Through there,” she said, and then, “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  It would be better, Heimrich thought, if she got out of this tanklike house; away from the chill of death. Heimrich shook himself, mentally. The chill, now that he had got around to noticing it, prosaically of air conditioning. And a man and a woman dead, not goldfish.

  “Wait a moment,” he said, and left her where she was standing and went back to the bodies, this time to that of Brian Collins. Collins had died in gray slacks and a blue polo shirt; a short-sleeved polo shirt. Heimrich touched one muscled forearm. He went again to the girl’s body, and again touched the slim brown leg. The girl’s body was perceptibly cool. The man’s was not. Which would mean, other things being equal, that she had died before the man. But—other things are seldom equal. She had lain, almost naked, on a cool tile floor. He had sat in a chair, with most of his body clothed.


  And, suppose Brian Collins had killed Peggy Belford—Peggy the beautiful; La Belford the exquisite—for reasons unknown and then, for reasons not too difficult to guess, himself. Suppose that and it was still not necessary to suppose the two actions had been as nearly as possible simultaneous in time. It is easier to kill another than one’s self. Men have been known to need three shots for self-destruction, so anxiously does the body flinch away. They have been known to take hours steeling themselves for the attempt.

  Anyway, a doctor could tell him more. It was high time to get a doctor on the way—a doctor and the rest. He turned to Susan and she came to him, but did not look at the bodies. She led him to a door in the wall beyond the fireplace—a quite conventional plastered wall—and said, “I think it’s this way,” and they went into a hall. At the end of the hall there was the open doorway to a kitchen. At right angles, leading toward the rear of the house, was another corridor, wood paneled. “Sliding doors,” Susan said. “All the doors slide.”

  The house, Heimrich realized, was built like an L, a fact which was not apparent when one approached it from the front. This corridor ran along the foot of the L. It ended in a studio, with slanting skylight. There was an easel, draped with canvas; framed pictures were stacked against walls, their faces to the walls. And, leaning against a desk, there were half a dozen canvases, framed, tied into a bundle.

  There was a telephone on the desk. Captain Heimrich used the telephone, a switch to start a machine.

  “Look,” Susan said, when he had finished, and he looked. She had lifted the shrouding cover from the picture on the easel.

  The girl in the painting was not wearing a golden bathing suit. She was not wearing anything at all. She lay—as, in the other room, the dead girl lay—on her back on a green tile floor, with one perfect leg bent at the knee and lifted; with the head back on the floor and tawny-colored hair swirling about it. The face was turned a little toward the painter. It was a lovely face.