One of Us Is Wrong
- Автор: Holt Samuel
- Серия: Sam Holt #1
- Год: 1986
- Язык: английский
- Год: Tor Books
- ISBN: 978-0-312-93550-4
- Жанр: Иронические детективы
Электронная книга - «One of Us Is Wrong». Краткое содержание книги:
Suddenly, though, someone seems to have a new role for Holt: the role of Dead Body. Years of having watched stunt-drivers do their stuff help Holt avoid becoming a grease-spot on the San Diego Freeway, but his Volvo will never play the violin again. And if Holt can’t figure out where the screenwriters are going with this one, he’s not going to get a chance for a second take.
She sat beside me, all eyes. “Tell.”
I told: The attempt on my life, the conversation with the police. “Then I realized it had to do with a problem of Ross Ferguson’s from last November.”
“Do I know about this problem?”
“No. It was his secret, not mine, so I didn’t tell anybody.”
“I had to drop the aspic,” she said, nodding.
I frowned at her. “Is that another reference?”
“Yes. Dinner at Eight. But never mind, tell me chapter two of this story. The Secret of Ross Ferguson.”
So I did, and she said, “You’ve been keeping this inside you for three months? You’ve come over here, we’ve had dinner, we’ve screwed, we’ve driven up to Ferndale together, I’ve stayed at your place, and all this time you had this thing, this murdered woman in extreme close-up, and you never showed it?”
“I wasn’t trying to insult you, Bly,” I said, “or keep you out of my life or any of that. It wasn’t my secret.”
“Jeepers,” she said, and turned to frown briefly at the fire, which was almost out. She nodded at the fire, and looked back at me, and said, “Okay, you’re an actor. You acted the pants off me.”
“Bly, it really wasn’t my secret to tell.”
“It is now. Once they start trying to run you off the road, it—” She stopped, wide-eyed, and looked at the Academy Guide in my lap. “Oh,” she said.
“He couldn’t have known what they wanted the tape for,” I said. “They probably told him it was a birthday gag or something like that.”
“And the makeup man, sure. But why now? If they did the thing— My God, that was months ago!”
I said, “I think it’s because they’re making their move now. They’ve been setting it up for a long, long time, but until they actually do whatever it is they have in mind, nobody’s dangerous to them. But now several of us are.”
“Did you talk with Ross about this?”
“I tried,” I said, and told her about that part, including Malibu and Doreen. Under other circumstances she might have made a couple of fake-jealous jokes about Doreen winding up at my house, but now she just stayed silent and absorbed. At the finish I said, “I figure Ross’ll phone Malibu again tomorrow morning at ten, to be sure Doreen’s alive and well. This time I’ll be the one to answer the phone.”
“But what’s he doing with them? You think he’s made some sort of deal with them?”
“I’m pretty sure he has. But it seems to me he’s wrong; once they’re finished with him they’ll kill him too.”
“It’s all so elaborate. And ruthless. What can it be for?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea.”
“I bet you haven’t called the police yet, have you?”
“Tomorrow,” I promised. “After I finally talk to Ross, I’ll call the police. I just think I have to give him one chance before I do.”
“Chance for what?”
“Maybe he can still get away from them.” I told her about the poolman’s van. “If they’re in there with him, maybe he can get out before the police arrive.”
“Sam,” she said, “I wish you’d call the cops right now.”
“In the first place,” I told her, “it’s after midnight. In the second place, all I’ve wanted to do since this afternoon was have one phone conversation with Ross. After that I’ll tell the police everything. Including the death of your actor friend Beau.”
She looked at the Academy Guide and shook her head. “These are really bad people, aren’t they?”
“They haven’t shown any redeeming features yet.” We talked about the mysterious “they” a while longer, without accomplishing anything. Bly asked me if I wanted to stay over, but I felt I ought to be at my place in the morning to talk with Doreen before going on to Malibu, so a little after one I left, promising to phone her in the morning, after my conversations with Ross and the law.
It was just a little out of my way, and I stopped for only a second in front of Ross’s house. A couple of lights were showing, not many. The van from Barq Pool Service was still there.
16
From my bedroom window I could see Doreen in the pool, doing her laps, a lithe, slender fish the color of sandalwood in an inland topaz sea. Little playful clouds in a washed-out blue sky rolled in front of the sun from time to time, and whenever that golden light left the pool, replaced by gray, Doreen looked to me like a shipwreck victim, swimming hard, pursued by sharks.
It was a little after eight in the morning. I’d come home from Bly’s just over seven hours ago, to find only the all-night lights on, both Robinson and Doreen retired, no notes or messages from Robinson on my desk, no further events in Ross Ferguson’s problem, whatever it was. My flight to New York wasn’t till one this afternoon, so I should have time for everything I had to do before then. I put on my blue swimsuit, grabbed a towel, and went out to the cool air, emerging from the house just as another cloud overtook the sun. Max and Sugar Ray came over for a brief morning chat, and accompanied me to the pool, where I dove into the wavelets of Doreen’s wake, and the two of us plugged companionably back and forth, grinning occasionally as we passed, neither of us wasting breath on words. The dogs watched us awhile, decided we were boring, and went off around the house in search of adventure.
Having started earlier, Doreen was finished first, and hoisted herself out to sit at the edge of the pool, breathing hard through her diaphragm and smoothing her hair down with the edge of her hand to get some of the water out. Sunlight alternated with cloud, and I worked my water loom back and forth, counting toward forty. As I did, I wondered how much to tell her about what was going on, and decided she didn’t need to know any more than she already did. She was away from the Malibu house, just in case Ross’s new friends were to decide she was a loose end to be tied up after all, and she was safe as long as she stayed here. Any talk about murders and attempted murders and faked videotapes might just make her nervous and unpredictable.
Forty. My pool has no shallow end, so I made it forty-one today, climbing back to the end where Doreen still sat, beginning to look cold. She’d taken her feet out of the water and sat cross-legged tailor fashion in a rust-colored bikini, watching me, occasionally rubbing her arms, shivering a bit whenever the sun went away.
“You should have gone into the house,” I told her, and surged up out of the pool like a walrus, water geysering all around me. “It’s cold out here.”
“I’m fine.” She grinned, looking very happy this morning, though cold. “It’s great out here. I feel clean, brand new all over again.”
“That’s good.” Standing, I gave her a hand and she came gracefully to her feet.
“All the badness is gone,” she said. “I’m ready for a fresh start.” She was still holding my hand, smiling at me.
Oh-oh. “I guess you got a good night’s sleep,” I said, as bland and oblivious as could be, gently reclaiming my hand. “You were already turned in when I got back from my girlfriend’s house.”
“You’re right,” she said, “it is a little chilly out here.” And we went off to our respective rooms to shower and dress.
When PACKARD first hit big, I suddenly found all sorts of attractive women making themselves available, and for several months I said a whole lot of “Yes, ma’am.” I’m afraid I even spoke aloud more than once that fatuous line, “A gentleman never refuses a lady.” Whatever women had been to me before, they had now become an endless flow of birthday presents, to be unwrapped and played with and outgrown.
For a long while I didn’t notice how I’d changed, but women did, and more and more of them walked away from me, avoided me. Women in business meetings, wives of friends, actresses on the show — they all treated me as an uninteresting piece of driftwood they noted in passing and had no use for. There were still plenty of women eager to climb into bed with me, many of them absolutely beautiful, but somehow they weren’t the best. The interesting women had turned away.