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  She told me. The Duttons lived in the plush section above Sunset Boulevard, among the swimming pools and the trees that grow money. This was a good omen. Now that my initial annoyance had worn off, I was glad I’d answered the phone.

  “We’ll expect you at seven-thirty,” Eloise Dutton said.

  “I’ll be there,” I promised, and hung up.

  Well, Mr. Mark Wonder, Private Investigator, I told myself, you’ve gone from famine to feast with a genuine in-the-flesh client to help defray costs of all the good things in life you so richly deserve. You don’t have to throw in the towel now and go to work for a living, after all.

  It was a good feeling. I put the paper with the address on it under a paperweight on the telephone stand and returned my attention to the beautiful redhead on my couch.

  Except there wasn’t any beautiful redhead on my couch. In the john, I thought—or the bedroom, I thought further. And then I saw the open doorway to the outside world, and I knew both guesses were wrong.

  Miss Cherry Collins had taken a powder.

  And worse, she’d been replaced by an unlikely and unwelcome substitute. Mr. Abernathy stood in the doorway. He was still wearing his bathing trunks, and he still looked like the paunchy, balding, middle-aged man he was. This time there was a difference.

  He had a gun in his hand.

  Chapter Two

  I WAS NOT A happy private detective. In fact, I was a sore, annoyed and plenty p.o.’d private detective. I answered a telephone, lost a gorgeous friend, but got the rent money. You can’t have everything. But sometimes you get too much. Like Mr. Abernathy with a gun.

  “Now what the hell,” I said, “do you want?”

  He came in and closed the door behind him. “I waited until the girl left,” he said calmly. “I didn’t want her to get involved in this.”

  “Involved in what?” I said, playing it straight. “If you’re after money, buster, you’re wasting your time. I’m as broke…”

  “I want the film,” he said.

  “You want the what?”

  “The film,” he said. Then impatiently, “Don’t play games with me, Wonder. You’re a private detective. I asked one of your neighbors. Jenny wanted you to follow me, didn’t she?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You were taking pictures of me at the beach,” he said. “Pictures of me and—and a blonde I was with.”

  “I like to take pictures of blondes. If you were in the picture it was an accident. You’re not my type at all.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you, Wonder. I love Jenny, but—” He faltered, searching for words, “—but a man’s only human. He’s got to have something besides companionship. It doesn’t happen often, and when it does I don’t want anybody taking pictures of it.”

  “Maybe you’ve got me mixed up with somebody else,” I suggested.

  “I followed you all the way from the beach. No, I haven’t got you mixed up with somebody else. I want those films, Wonder. I’ll kill you to get them if I have to.”

  He meant it, too. I could see that plain as Catalina on a clear day. I could also see a fat green wad of bills going down the drain, but that was better than my going down with them.

  “Don’t get yourself in an uproar. I’ll give you the film. I’ve never seen your wife and I don’t know what kind of woman she is, but she loves you. Why, I don’t know. As far as I can see, you wouldn’t win booby prize at a dog show. But she seems to think these sixteen years you’ve spent together should count for something.”

  Like alimony, I thought, but didn’t because that wasn’t part of the good-will I was trying to peddle.

  “Okay,” Abernathy said, with an impatient wave of the gun, “you’ve made your little speech. Now, let’s have the film.”

  I shrugged—there are times a guy can’t do much else—and went to the coffee table where I’d left the gadget bag. The bag was open, and I frowned at the discovery; I was sure I’d zipped it. I frowned even more as I fumbled around inside the bag. The camera wasn’t there, so neither, of course, was the exposed cartridge it contained.

  I wondered why Cherry wanted that film.

  I also wondered if Abernathy were bluffing about shooting me, and what I was going to tell him that he’d believe. I couldn’t come up with anything, so I took the unexposed cartridge, twisting back the leader so the film would appear exposed. Then I turned and tossed it to him.

  He caught it and examined the cartridge as though he could see the pictures inside. He waved me aside and went to see the gadget bag himself. Satisfied there was no more film, he backed toward the door.

  “This had better be it,” he said, “or I’ll come back and kill you, Wonder.”

  I was going to suggest he go take a flying leap at his wife and not bother me, but I was looking at an open doorway. I went to the door and looked out in time to see him climbing into a late-model Chrysler. He was alone. He screeched from the curb and disappeared down the street.

  I closed the door and locked it. Generally, irate husbands didn’t bother me. Generally, I’m fully dressed with a weapon nearby and not caught by surprise in my bathing trunks. Generally, I’m not sweating as coldly as I was just then. I didn’t know if he really would have shot me, but he could have. Could have, for one thing, because I might not have had an extra roll of film to bluff my way.

  I thought of Cherry. Why? I asked the empty Scotch glass on the floor. Why go to all the bother of picking me up at the beach, going to my apartment, leading me on, and then running out? And why steal the camera and film? If it was a hobby, it was a damned annoying one, and I planned on running out to the Nocturne Club to take up the matter with her. I’d have to get that film back before Abernathy made a return visit.

  Meanwhile, I climbed out of my trunks and headed into the shower. I got all soaped up when the telephone began to ring. Muttering curses at Alexander Graham Bell didn’t do me a bit of good, so I draped a towel around me and tracked soapy footprints over the wall-to-wall carpeting.

  “Yes?” I said, in a not-too-friendly manner.

  “Mark, this is Lenny,” a familiar voice said at the other end. “Things are pretty dull. I got over my cold and I thought we might get together tonight for a game of cards or a movie.”

  “No!” I said, and slammed the receiver down into its cradle.

  I marched back into the shower. Lenny was a wonderful guy, and a fine friend, and a good photographer, and I owed him a lot, but there were times when he insisted on planting both of his size nines in my mouth.

  I put down the soap again and said a nasty word. The phone was ringing again. I didn’t bother with the towel this time. I just marched, dripping a Niagara of water, across the floor.

  “Hello, Mark,” Lenny said. “You sounded sore. You’re not mad at me, are you, Mark?”

  I closed my eyes and continued dripping. “No,” I said slowly, “I’m not mad at you, Lenny.”

  “Fine,” he said enthusiastically. “How about that movie tonight?”

  “Can’t,” I said. “I’ve got a case to go on.”

  “Another divorce?”

  “I don’t think so. Wife called for the husband. Maybe you’ve heard of them in your travels. Name’s Dutton.”

  “Dutton?” He thought about it.

  “Harvey and Eloise,” I supplied. “They live in the Beverly Hills area.”

  “The name sounds vaguely familiar,” Lenny said, “but offhand I don’t know where I’ve heard it.”

  “He’s probably a member of Millionaires Anonymous,” I said. “Anyway, I’ll find out tonight.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t make it today, Mark. How’d the pictures come out? Have any trouble?”

  “None to speak of,” I told him truthfully. I certainly didn’t want to speak of it right then and there. I was stark naked, dripping wet, and standing in a draft. Besides, I didn’t know of a reasonable way to tell Lenny I’d lost his favorite Leica. I was hoping to retrieve it bef
ore we met again. “I’ll check with you tomorrow, Lenny, and give you the details.”

  “Maybe you could drop off the film on your way,” he suggested. “I could be processing it tonight.”

  “Haven’t got time. Tomorrow’ll be soon enough.”

  “Okay, Mark, see you then.”

  I hung up and hurried back to the shower. As I was going past the couch, I noticed a small card under Cherry’s glass. I stopped and picked it up. It was a business card with the name CHERYL COLLINS printed on it, and under the name Park Vista Apartments, Apt. 320, Santa Monica. In a lower corner was an Exmont phone number. On the back of the card was written: After the show tonight, in neat penmanship.

  After the show tonight, what? Would she steal the camera and then invite me out to look for it? Or didn’t she steal it and, somehow, I was barking up the wrong suspect. I stared at the card, wondering ungallantly if she had a lot of them made up for just such emergencies, and then I decided maybe she really had to leave suddenly and knew (rightly enough) that I’d try to stop her. Maybe everything was going to be all right, after all. Where there was hope, there was life, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t have much choice. I put the card in my wallet. And I wondered why she wanted that film.

  I got through the shower this time without an interruption. I pulled on my fresh socks and underwear, struggled into a shirt and tie, put on my blue gabardine suit, and with my big feet stuffed into a pair of shoes found myself ready for whatever Mr. and Mrs. Dutton had to offer. Practically.

  I strapped on my belt holster and checked my faithful snub-nosed thirty-eight special. There is nothing so embarrassing as reaching for a gun and not having one. Now, if the Duttons were as rich as the area they lived in promised they’d be, it would be a worthwhile venture. I would collect a retainer and expense money and do my usual fine job for another satisfied customer.

  This reminded me that I was hungry, and I had visions of a four-inch steak smothered in goodies. I was sorry to disappoint my stomach, but as yet I couldn’t afford this vision. So I went out to the Chevvy and pointed it at Jerry’s Coffee Shop several blocks away on Sepulveda. It wasn’t the Mocambo or the Brown Derby, but it was a good place to eat if you wanted food and didn’t have a bankroll the size of your stomach. I parked the car out front, wandered in off the street, climbed aboard a stool and ordered a hamburger and fries.

  There was a pay phone hanging on the wall nearby. I took Cherry’s card from my wallet, dropped a dime in the phone slot, and dialed her number. I let it ring for a while and then decided she wasn’t home. Probably down at the beach, I thought bitterly.

  I returned to the stool as the waitress came up with the food and some coffee. It was a lot better than my own cooking. I gobbled it down and returned to the outside world.

  I climbed aboard the Chevvy and headed north toward the land of promise, toward the home of a rich tycoon who used thousand dollar bills for bookmarks and scratch paper.

  My Chevvy was nine years old but it was a car I’d become fond of, especially since the last payment. Besides the sentimental attachment for every bruise and scrape on its tired old body, I liked the car because it was inconspicuous. You drive around tailing somebody with a car that has an acre of chrome and tail lights like church windows, and you’re not long for the detective business.

  Finally, I reached Sunset and made the turn to find Beverly Glenn Road. I located it, and turned through a wrought iron gate. The road climbed upward, and I threw the Chevvy into second to meet the challenge. It was a long narrow road, practically all uphill.

  In the rear view mirror I caught a glimpse behind me of a pair of headlights rounding a corner. Then I rounded a corner myself, and the lights were lost to darkness. The area was heavily wooded. Sections like that come high. The lights flashed on me suddenly from behind. It was a sports car coming up fast, growling in annoyance that I was blocking its path. It stayed on my exhaust briefly and then whipped around me and flashed around the turn ahead and out of sight.

  I started looking for house numbers. Most of the houses were large, two-story affairs set well back from the road, but there were rural-type mailboxes out front for mailmen to put dividend checks in. In the correct numerical slot I found a box labeled DUTTON in big bold letters and drove into the circular driveway.

  The house was smaller than Grand Central Station, not much smaller, though.

  Parked in front of the house was a big, gold-colored Cadillac and directly behind the Cad was a small black Austin-Healey sports car. I parked my Chevvy right behind them both, and got out to ring the bell or cross the moat or whatever an ordinary mortal had to do to get in the place.

  Chapter Three

  I WALKED THROUGH the center columns holding up the porch roof and discovered a large door knocker shaped like the head of a Texas longhorn. I took the bull by the horns, and chimes answered from inside.

  A minute later the door opened, and a hawk-nosed butler in full uniform squinted at me with more than a trace of suspicion.

  “Yes?” he said. I had the impression he’d rather have said “no” and closed the door and gone back to chasing the upstairs maid. He didn’t like me. I could tell. And I didn’t care much for him. I hoped he could tell. If I could ever pin the blame for something on a butler, this guy had my ballot.

  “I’m Mark Wonder,” I told him brightly. “I’m expected.”

  His expression, or lack of it, didn’t change. But he sniffed as though my smell were my credentials and opened the door and allowed me in. “Mrs. Dutton is in the study,” he said. “Follow me, please.”

  I followed him, please, as he walked stiffly across the hallway. Off to one side, a circular staircase spiraled to the second floor. He led me to a pair of massive oak doors, knocked, opened one of the doors and said, “Mr. Wonder is here, Mrs. Dutton.” Then he stepped back to let me pass.

  I went into the study, and he closed the door behind me. The room looked like a branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, with maybe a museum and a music room thrown in. There was a grand piano, chairs, couches, lamps. The room was full without being cluttered. It had a woman’s touch. Probably a woman interior decorator. One wall was solid books, another a draped portion that probably covered windows, a third a built-in fireplace that had a real hideous portrait of somebody who seemed to be in intense pain, and the fourth was a miscellany of small paintings and expensive bric-a-brac.

  The big attraction in the room, though, was not the furniture. It was something that sat on one of the chairs. Something you could tell was feminine by the pretty oval face framed by brown hair, and the bare shoulders and cleavage shown off by her strapless evening dress, and the trim ankles folded under her and the high heels that gave her legs a running start in their long marvelous curve upward.

  “Mrs. Dutton?” I said.

  She rose and gave me her hand, which for want of something better to do with it, I shook. “You’re Mark Wonder,” she said in a soft voice.

  I pleaded guilty to that.

  “Please sit down.”

  I did that, too.

  “Would you care for a drink, Mr. Wonder, while were waiting for my husband?”

  “A drink would be very nice, Mrs. Dutton. Scotch and water, if you have it.”

  She smiled at that. “We have it,” she said, “but I thought all private detectives drank Scotch and soda.”

  “I’m a rebel,” I told her.

  She went to the bookcase, beneath her touch, the shelves split, swung back on hinges to reveal a liquor cabinet. She poured, mixed, clunked in an ice cube and came across the room with the glass in her hand, the ice cube jiggling merrily against the side of the glass. But it wasn’t the jiggling ice cube I was concentrating on. Her walk was as good from the front as it was from the back.

  “You’re staring, Mr. Wonder,” she said, smiling in amusement.

  I averted my eyes quickly, embarrassed. “Sorry, Mrs. Dutton, but you do have a great deal of obvious talent.”
/>   She handed me the drink. “So I’ve been told,” she said. “I’m surprised, though, that a private detective hasn’t better control of his emotions.”

  “One of my many faults, Mrs. Dutton, is my disgusting sincerity.”

  “I’m sure of that, Mr. Wonder. Would you stand up please.”

  “Would I what?”

  “Stand up. I won’t bite.”

  I wasn’t so sure of that. But I stood up, putting my drink on an end table beside the chair. When I straightened, Mrs. Eloise Dutton was standing very close to me, her face tilted upward, her arms crawling up my chest and over my shoulders. The move took me completely by surprise, and I just stood there while her hands caressed my neck and she thrust herself against me and mashed her lips against mine.

  I didn’t stay surprised for long. I pulled her arms away and pushed her from me. Under other circumstances I wouldn’t have minded, but I could picture the headlines: MILLIONAIRE KILLS PRIVATE DETECTIVE DISCOVERED ATTACKING WIFE. I’d seen shorter and cheerier headlines.

  She was smiling like the cat that ate the parakeet. “I was trying to prove a point.”

  I was about to delve into the problem a bit further, when Harvey Dutton came bustling into the room.

  “Well, well,” he said in a Western accent you could cut with a Colt .45, “glad you could make it, Mr. Wonder.” He was a caricature of a Texan: six-feet-three in his fancy leather riding boots, tight-fitting pants with a razor crease on each leg, silky black shirt sprinkled with silver branding-iron patterns, a white neckerchief roped around his neck. He must have been about forty-five, but he had a thick mass of wavy black hair; he didn’t have a ten-gallon hat on it, but I was sure there was one around somewhere, in case of emergency.

  He thrust out an enormous paw that swallowed my outstretched hand. This boy could be a cowpuncher literally. One slap from him and a poor cow would be in sad shape.

  He collapsed in a chair and waved me to one opposite. “Sorry I’m late,” he apologized, grinning lopsidedly. “I was talking on the phone to a business associate. You’ve met my little prairie flower here, Mr. Wonder?”