Free The Killer Touch by Ellery Queen

of bongo drums. His hands, pink-scarred by fish-bites, fluttered like black wings on the taut drum-skin. Godfrey’s face hung vacuous over a guitar almost as large as himself.
    Rolf pulled Joss up to dance on the wooden floor; he acted like someone playing a hilarious game—and winning it. Burt hesitated to trust his leg, but when Joss and Rolf began their third twist, he asked Mrs. Keener to dance.
    â€œIf I pop out of my dress,” she said, getting up, “will you look the other way?”
    â€œWe’ll have to wait and see,” said Burt.
    Burt found to his surprise that he enjoyed dancing with her. She moved with a boneless, sinuous grace which never brought her into contact with him, but nevertheless made him totally aware of her body. He glanced down at her muscular calves, saw that her feet were shod in flat-heeled, ballet-style slippers.
    â€œDid you used to be a professional dancer?”
    She dimpled in a way she must have practiced. “You say the nicest things.”
    Burt thought: She’s certainly no junkie. She’s a healthy female animal with beautiful coordination, a gargantuan appetite, and none of the addict’s sexual apathy. He could feel her physical warmth surrounding him like a blanket. On their third dance he spoke softly in her ear: “On the slope behind your cabin, there’s a concrete water catchment with a tile-roofed cistern at the lower end. Have you seen it?”
    â€œYes.” She whirled away once and came back into his arms. “In an hour?”
    So simple, he thought, like meeting her for coffee. “That’s fine.”
    She came against him for an instant as though sealing the bargain with a sample. Burt found himself looking over her head into the icy blue eyes of Rolf. There was no jealousy there, only a crinkle of mild amusement.
    But then, he asked himself, why should Rolf be jealous? For he had just learned, with a certainty that dispelled all doubt, that the woman in his arms was not Tracy Keener.
    The woman pleaded a headache fifteen minutes later and the pair left despite Joss’s protest that parties didn’t end this way in the islands. Joss decided to stay and finish the wine and Burt stayed with her.
    â€œJoss, what’s the best way to get to this island without the authorities knowing?”
    â€œIn the hold of a ship, I guess.”
    Burt thought of Mrs. Keener’s tight clothing, he’d returned to the theory that they’d belonged to a smaller woman. She couldn’t have carried much luggage as a stowaway.
    â€œIs there a quicker way?”
    â€œFlying in at Grenada.”
    â€œShe’d go through immigration.”
    â€œNot our immigration. We come under St. Vincent, the southern islands come under Grenada. People cross all the time and nobody knows unless they get in trouble.”
    â€œThen Rolf could have picked her up in the launch from Grenada. Of course.”
    â€œWho, Mrs. Keener?”
    â€œShe isn’t Mrs. Keener.”
    Joss’s mouth dropped open. “You mean he sent his girl friend down here—”
    â€œI mean that the woman who came on O’Ryan’s schooner is not the woman we had dinner with tonight. There’s been a switch, and it happened sometime between last night and the night before.”
    She stared at him a moment, then shook her head. “I’ve had too much to drink, Burt. I can’t figure it.”
    â€œOkay. I searched the purse while I was on the schooner. Her driver’s license said she was five-feet-four, and weighed a hundred and five pounds. Now this woman was nearer one-twenty, wouldn’t you say?”
    â€œAt least, but women change their weight.”
    â€œBut not their height, Joss. While we were dancing I noticed that she was wearing low heels. The top of her head came to the tip of my nose. I’m six feet and a quarter inch tall. My nose is approximately five inches below the top of my head.