by Amanda Quick
Pete chuckled. “I don’t think you’ll have a problem using the Herald’s darkroom. All it will take is a phone call to the editor.”
Vivian raised her brows. “Who makes the call?”
“Luther Pell or, more likely, the owner of this hotel, Oliver Ward,” Pete said. “Ward’s wife, Irene, is the local crime beat reporter.”
“Why do I have the feeling this town is run by Luther Pell and Oliver Ward?” Vivian asked.
Pete shrugged. “Probably because that’s pretty much the way it is. Every town is run by someone or some group. L.A. is run by the big movie studios. Burning Cove is run by a nightclub owner who used to be a government spy and the proprietor of a hotel who used to be a magician.”
“California,” Vivian said. “Land of opportunity.”
Chapter 19
Here you go, the Herald’s darkroom.” Irene Ward waved a hand at the partially open door. “Take your time. Don’t forget the deal I made with my editor. The paper gets first crack at any photo that’s worth a headline while you’re visiting Burning Cove.”
Vivian smiled. “And you get the story.”
“Yep.” Irene laughed. “It’s always nice to work with another professional, someone who understands the news business.”
Pete Sundridge had been right about one thing: All it had taken to obtain permission to use the Herald’s darkroom was a phone call. But that call had been made by Irene Ward, not her husband. Irene was the Herald’s star reporter. Her editor trusted her instincts and was willing to accommodate her because she had provided the paper with so many hot, front-page headlines.
Vivian had liked Irene Ward on sight when they had been introduced in Oliver Ward’s private office. Vivian sensed a kindred spirit. They were both interested in the mystery beneath the surface.
“I’ll wait out here in the hallway while you work your magic with the photos,” Nick said.
“There are several films to be developed and printed,” Vivian said. “I’m going to be in here most of the afternoon.”
“Take your time,” Nick said. He held up the briefcase that contained Pete’s transcription of the poems. “I’ve got a little light reading to do.”
Irene looked at Nick. “I’ll get you some coffee.”
* * *
It was nearly five before they finally got back to the hotel. They went out onto the villa’s patio. Vivian opened the folder of large prints she had made. One by one she arranged them on the table. Nick examined each with an intense expression.
“These are excellent,” he said. “Sharp focus. Fine grain.”
“The Speed Graphic is a very good camera.”
He smiled. “And you are a very good photographer.”
“Thanks.”
She moved to stand beside him and pointed out the people she could identify. “Some of these folks are my neighbors, of course. I know their names. Most of them have lived on Beachfront Lane for years.”
“What about the others?”
Vivian used the magnifying glass, which had been magically produced by the hotel’s front desk, to examine every unknown face in the scenes.
“The fire drew quite a crowd,” she said. “There are a lot of people I don’t recognize. Any one of them could be the firebug.”
“We’re looking for someone who will be hanging back, trying to stay in the shadows,” Nick said, “trying to be invisible. By the time these photos were taken, everyone standing around in the street, including him, knew that we made it out of the house. He knew he failed.”
Nick spoke in a cool, detached manner as if he were a calculating machine. But his eyes seemed to heat a little and she could have sworn she felt electricity shivering in the air around him.
“If he knows he failed, why would he stick around and take the risk of being noticed?” she asked.
“Wrong question,” Nick said absently. “Why not stay to enjoy the show? He’s not afraid of being recognized. He’s been getting away with murder for years. He has confidence in his camouflage, whatever that is.”
Vivian shuddered. “A real wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“He’s not afraid that he will be noticed but he is bound to be unnerved because he failed,” Nick continued, very focused now. “He’s not accustomed to failure. He’ll be trying to put together another plan and he’ll be in a hurry. Time is running out. He’s going to have to improvise. He’ll make mistakes because he’s not used to changing his plans.”
“You’re getting all that from those poems?”
“Yes. He thinks of himself as a creative artist but he’s actually obsessively rigid when it comes to murder.” Nick took a close look at a figure dressed in a workman’s dark jacket and trousers. A cap angled low over the eyes concealed most of the man’s face. “Do you recognize him?”
Vivian scrutinized the figure. “No. He’s dressed like a deliveryman or maybe a cabdriver.”
“The clothes are right but there’s something wrong with the way he’s leaning against your neighbor’s fence.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the pose. He’s trying to imitate the casual slouch of a workingman but it’s off somewhat. He’s lounging against that fence in the manner of a man who is accustomed to lounging at the bar of his club. His shoes are wrong, too. They’re not boots. They don’t belong to someone who delivers fish or drives a cab. They look expensive. He was in a rush tonight. Didn’t get the costume right. He just made his first mistake.”
Vivian took a closer look.
“I see what you mean,” she said. She shuffled through the photos, looking for other pictures that included the man in the cap. “He’s in the first couple of photos but not in the last ones. He must have taken off when he saw me shooting the crowd.”
“It would have been easy for him to slip away, especially after the fire department arrived. He probably had a car parked on a nearby side street.”
Vivian crossed her arms. “So much for hoping these pictures would enable us to spot the guy.”
Nick looked up. There was a lot of heat in his eyes now. The anticipation of the hunter, she thought.
“We don’t have him yet,” he said, “but we have a lot more information about him.”
“We can’t be sure of that. The man in the cap might be a perfectly innocent bystander.”
Nick glanced at the photo and shook his head once. “Whatever else he is, he’s not an innocent bystander. He was a man playing a part, I’m certain of it.”
Vivian froze. “An actor?”
“A talent for acting is a job requirement for a man who has made a career of getting away with murder.” Nick paused, eyeing her closely. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Probably nothing.” She folded her arms. “But an actor showed up at the scene of the Clara Carstairs murder. He begged me not to take his picture. I didn’t. There were no other photographers there so, in the end, no photos of him at the crime scene ever appeared in the papers.”
“Did you recognize the actor?”
“Oh, yes. There was no mistaking that good-looking face. Ripley Fleming.”
Chapter 20
Adelina Beach
That night . . .
Toby Flint adjusted the focus of his camera and peered through the lens. Much better. Now he had a detailed close-up of the woman’s excellent breasts. He could see every detail of the nipples. It was as if he could reach out and touch them. Unfortunately touching the models was not allowed. That did not stop him from getting hard.
He was not the only man in the studio with a stiff cock. It was the weekly meeting of the Adelina Beach Photography Club. Tonight’s theme was Women of the Ancient World. The room was packed, mostly with men. They had formed a circle around the nude model who was stretched out in a languid position on a cheap bedsheet that was supposed to be exotic silk drapery.
Toby was pretty sure that every man in the club had turned up for the event because it was understood that Cleopatra would be posing nude or nearly so. After all, you couldn’t do serious, artistic photography without nude models.
The truth, Toby thought, was that taking pictures of naked young women was about as close as he could get to sex these days. He couldn’t afford the kind of classy lady who insisted on being taken out to dinner and a show before falling into bed with a guy. Couldn’t afford the type who worked in brothels, either. He was almost broke. Again.
He’d made a few bucks with his shots of the Clara Carstairs murder—enough to buy some film and flashbulbs—but that was it. He didn’t have nearly enough cash to pay off his gambling debts and he could not see any way to obtain the amount that he needed.
He probably should have been down at the police station, hovering over the teletype machine in hopes of getting early word of a nice little murder or car wreck or fire, but what was the point? He was in too deep. He could not possibly make enough with a few crime-and-fire shots to get free of the very dangerous man who had loaned him the money for the last, ruinous night on board the offshore gambling ship.
He had attended the photography club meeting tonight in a desperate effort to distract himself from the hopelessness of his financial situation.
The model’s name was Millie Crosley, and under other circumstances he would have been very distracted. She was a real looker, another aspiring actress who was doing photography modeling to pay the rent while she waited to be discovered by Hollywood.
She was good, Toby decided. There was a lot of sensuality in her pose. Her dark hair tumbled in waves across her rounded shoulders. One long leg was drawn up in a seemingly casual manner that revealed the luscious curves of her thigh and hip. Her heavily made-up eyes were half-closed in a way that was meant to project sultry, seductive heat. A gossamer-thin scarf was draped in a coy fashion across the dark triangle of hair between her thighs. Aside from that, her only attire consisted of a lot of cheap dime-store necklaces that fell artfully across her bare breasts.
Several shutters snapped. The model smiled, reached down, and removed the scarf that had veiled her privates. She separated her thighs just enough to reveal a little more forbidden territory. It was the moment everyone had been waiting for. The temperature in the room shot up several degrees. There was a lot of commotion as most of the men frantically tried to get the close-up.
Toby reached into the pocket of his coat and discovered that he had used his last film holder. Briefly he considered trying to talk one of the other artists into loaning him some spare film but he saw at once it was hopeless. Every man around him was lost in the hot excitement of the moment.
No one noticed when Toby left the circle of photographers and headed for the door.
He went outside into the night. A light fog partially obscured the quiet street. He opened the door of his battered Ford sedan and got behind the wheel. For a moment he sat quietly staring into the mist-shrouded darkness while he considered his options. There was only one left. Time to head for Mexico. If he hung around Adelina Beach he was a dead man. He had forty-eight hours to come up with the cash. That was simply not going to happen.
It wouldn’t be a quick, clean death. The loan shark would make an example of him.
A rustling sound in the back seat warned him he was not alone in the sedan. He froze, terrified. The shark had sent his enforcers after him before the deadline.
He lurched out of his paralysis and grabbed the door handle in the vain hope of escaping from the car. But it was too late. He heard the snick of a gun being cocked.
He had waited too long to make a run for the border. He was out of time.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later he discovered somewhat to his amazement that he was still alive.
He was alone in the Ford now. There was a thousand dollars in fresh, crisp bills in his wallet and the promise of another thousand if he carried out his end of the deal. It would be more than enough to pay off his gambling debts. He would be free of the shark. He would give up the gambling and concentrate on his photography. Maybe go back to his art work or come up with a proposal for a Life magazine piece. A bright new future glittered on the horizon.
All he had to do was find Vivian Brazier and make a phone call. He did not want to think about what might happen after he made that call. It was none of his business.
Chapter 21
Burning Cove
The next day . . .
Nick spent most of the day on the villa’s patio, immersed in the poems. From time to time he was aware that Vivian was growing restless. Irene Ward came by at noon and invited her to lunch in the hotel dining room. Nick ordered room service. He took a couple of breaks to walk Rex and clear his mind, but for the most part he concentrated on the killer’s words.
The details the FBI and the cops would need to close at least some of the murders were in the lines that Pete had succeeded in deciphering. Names. Dates. Addresses. Motives. Amounts paid.
But the killer’s secrets were buried in the encrypted verses.
. . . The tide of night rolls in consuming the glorious moments of transcendence.
Once again the hunter is lost in the devouring mist, drowning in it.
The path back to the brilliant, dazzling clarity of dawn appears . . .
“Nick.”
Vivian’s voice pulled him out of the harrowing poem. He looked up and saw her standing in front of him. She was holding a newspaper in her hands.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Sorry to interrupt you but I thought you should see this. It’s the afternoon edition of the Burning Cove Herald. Take a look at the photo on page two.”
She handed him the paper. He turned to the second page. The photo showed a well-dressed man emerging from the rear of a limo in front of the grand entrance of the Burning Cove Hotel.
“That’s Ripley Fleming,” Vivian said. “According to the Herald he checked in earlier today.”
Chapter 22
It was an eerie stillness that awakened her that night. Not silence, not exactly, Vivian decided. More like a sudden, bone-deep awareness.
Nick.
She did not understand how she could be so sure that the feeling was connected to him but she did not question it. Linked to that certainty was a sense of urgency. She did not question that, either.
She opened her eyes to the moonlit shadows of the bedroom and listened closely. The strange sensation of stillness that had aroused her was something of an illusion. If she concentrated she could hear the music of the hotel’s lounge trio. Laughter and voices drifted from the vicinity of the bar. Nothing had changed since she and Nick had gone into their separate bedrooms a couple of hours earlier.
And yet . . .
Just my imagination. You’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Don’t worry, nothing’s wrong.
Rex would be barking a warning if someone had somehow managed to get through the multilayered rings of hotel security protecting the villa.
On the other hand, she was being hunted by a professional killer, an assassin skilled in the art of making it look as if his victims had all died in accidents and of natural causes.
The edgy restlessness became more intense. She had always believed she possessed strong nerves but there were limits to what anyone could handle. In the past year her night work as a freelance photojournalist had exposed her to some grisly, deeply disturbing sights. Not long ago someone had
tried to murder her in her own darkroom. Then someone had firebombed her cottage. She was the target of a paid killer.
A woman could take only so much. Given the circumstances it would have been astonishing if her nerves hadn’t been affected.
She needed to get up, to move. A medicinal shot of whiskey might help. She remembered seeing a bottle in the liquor cabinet.
Pushing the covers aside, she rose, slipped her feet into a pair of slippers, and reached for her robe. The door of her room was slightly ajar. She had opened it just before getting into bed because she found it comforting to know that Nick was right next door. He had told her that he would leave his door partially open, too, so that Rex could patrol the villa.
She slipped through the doorway. In the dim glow of the wall sconce she saw that Nick’s door was no longer ajar; it stood wide open. The bed was revealed in a shaft of moonlight. Nick was not in it.
She sensed movement and turned to look into the living room. Rex loomed in the shadows. He padded forward to greet her. He did not appear concerned. She took that as a good omen. She gave him a couple of pats and then moved on across the room.
There was no sign of Nick but the French doors were open to the night. She went to the threshold and studied the enclosed patio and garden. Nick stood quietly in the moonlight, gazing through the wrought iron gate at the silvered ocean.
“Nick?”
He turned slowly to face her, but in the dense shadows she could not make out his expression.
“It’s all right,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong. I just came out here to do some thinking.”
She walked across the patio to join him. When she got close she was aware of a little heat in his eyes. As if he was running a low-grade fever, she thought. He had a towel draped around his neck.