Free Murder Queen High by Bob Wade Page B

sniffed more happily and stretched her figure toward him as if she expected to be stroked. Her hand rubbed her hip about where John Henry estimated the card had slipped to. “I’m impressed,” Faye whispered. “I’ll bet we’ll be as close as friends can get — darling.”
    John Henry gulped.
    Sin clenched her fists hard. She said to herself: now look here, St. Clair, you are not — positively not — going to lose your temper. Across the pool, Miss Jordan was smiling sleepily up at John Henry’s attentive face. Sin closed her eyes tight and gritted her teeth. Now look here, she began again.
    But she was on fire, from the dark red page-boy down to the crimson toenails that peeked out of her suede sandals. I don’t look so bad, either, she thought. In fact, I look darn good. She was wearing the filmy white blouse that her husband liked — “you know, Sin, one of the ones you can see through” — and the full peasant skirt. The ensemble chopped at least five years off her age and made her look a saucy eighteen again. Anyway, not like a cast-aside wife of three year’s standing.
    She speared another angry glance at the couple across the pool. John Henry was helping the Jordan girl to her feet. Her husband flashed a guilty look at Sin and then the brunette seized his hand gaily and started to drag him along the jagged path toward the guest cottages. Sin’s lips pressed out flat in a thin red line and she clenched her fists.
    The reluctant Conover was pulled out of sight between screening palms. A few paces away, Thelma Loomis and Mr. Trim were nodding and talking — probably about John Henry. Sin flushed at the thought.
    Two brawny hands appeared on the tile bank at her feet. Sin moved out of the way to let the swimmer hoist himself from the pool. She kept going, her mind made up. Fists still clenched, Sin marched determinedly after her husband.
    On the other side of the palm trees, she felt the grip on her elbow, a cold wet hand. Sin shied away, startled.
    A toneless voice said, “We had better have a talk.”
    Towering over her was the swimmer who had climbed from the pool at her feet. His short hair stood up in wet silver barbs. Water still trickled down his lean hard face and over the wiry muscles of his darkly tanned body. Only the girdle of muscle around the waist was beginning to soften into middle-aged heaviness.
    “Well, I’m sorry,” Sin said. Annoyance began to weave into her surprise. “I have to catch my husband before he — ”
    Iron fingers tightened on her elbow. “Talk first,” the man said flatly. “One short warning before it’s too late.” His voice didn’t match the vibrancy, the keen aliveness of the rest of him. The words came from between his white even teeth with scholarly precision. But his factual intonation made them colorless words, dead words.
    The damp hand urged her off the main path onto a shady graveled way. “Who are you?” said Sin faintly. Jealousy of the seductive Faye Jordan had vanished. The cold tight hand on her elbow spread by implication to the rest of her body.
    “A person who permits no interference,” was the man’s answer. “I’ll make you see the reason of that.” Sin found herself trotting to keep up with his long strides. They were headed for a huge brick and screen building that loomed through the tropical foliage. She thought of screaming just as he stopped.
    “Call for help all the help you like,” the white-haired man intoned. “No one will notice another noise from this direction.” He folded his arms and his hawklike mask was intent, fierce.
    They stood before the building. Its four corner pillars were bare adobe bricks. The rest was wire mesh that curved up until it seemed to melt into the bright sky.
    Inside the aviary, hordes of bright-winged birds darted and soared in whirlwinds of color, enraged at the disturbing visitors. They flapped and cawed and screamed piercingly, flooding the air with outcry. It was inhuman noise, full of