Free Ashes To Ashes: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective by Don Pendleton Page A

area, so fifty people could have been standing around
down there and never noticed her. Actually I understand that
several guests were on the patio and thought it was just some kind
of stunt when you came sailing overhead fully clothed. That was a
hell of a nervy thing to do, I have to tell you."
    He was inspecting my hurts during that
little monologue.
    "Damned lucky, I'd say, that this is all you
got out of it. One inch less stretch and you would have ended up a
leaky bag of bones at poolside."
    I winced at that analogy, but let it pass
without comment.
    He flipped the sheet back over me and
repeated, "Damned lucky."
    I asked him, "Are you finished?"
    He sighed as he replied, "Yeah. Just wanted
to check you out, firsthand. Don't get much chance to play doctor
around here, you know."
    I sat up and reached for the cigarette he
was then lighting. He passed it over and lit another for himself.
I said, "Thought doctors are against smoking."
    "Sure we are," he replied. "Damned things
will kill you. But then so will sex, booze, airplanes and
automobiles, and just plain food if you eat too much. Actually we
start dying at conception. It would be just as valid to describe
living as controlled dying. It's always in process."
    "Matter of spatial relationships," I
suggested.
    "More or less," he agreed.
    I asked, "Why was Marcia in the pool? I saw
her at about a quarter after seven, at which time she had not yet
dressed for dinner. Thought that's where she was headed when she
left me."
    He said, "Too much to drink, no doubt.
Happens every week. Probably wanted to take a little dip and sober
up. Guess she just passed out in the pool."
    I reminded him, "She was naked."
    He informed me, "Nothing
unusual about that. Soon as the sun goes down ... Marcia prefers
nature in the raw."
    I said, "She was wearing half a bikini and a
hip- length robe when I saw her earlier."
    "Yes. We found them in a chair on the patio.
Also the dregs of pure whiskey in the bottom of a water glass."
    I made a guilty face and told him, "It was
still half full when she carried it away from my room. And a fifth
of Jim Beam was half empty."
    He asked, casually, "Did you two get it
on?"
    I replied, "Not at all. She was in my face
over Karen. Called me a bastard and a con man, ordered me out of
the house."
    Powell grinned. "Well, that's Marcia."
    I asked, casually, "What is Karen?"
    The grin faded. He took a
thoughtful pull at his cigarette and told me, "I studied your
portfolio quite thoroughly, you know. I recommended your contract.
You should accept it. I feel that you can be very helpful with
Karen, maybe decisively so, lord knows more helpful than I have
been."
    I grunted.
    He continued without pause: "I like your
background, Ash. Nicely rounded, and you've gone into areas I've
only recently begun to think about. I believe that could be Karen's
out, perhaps her only out."
    "Out of what?" I wanted to know.
    He ignored my curiosity. "Indirectly, at
least, I suppose I'm responsible for you two getting together in
the first place. I sent her to Zodiac."
    That one surprised me. I told him so.
    He ignored that too, went on to say:
"Reality can be very elusive any time you try to pin it down. I
have spent the past twenty-two years studying the mind and, hell, I
still usually feel like a blind man trying to lead the blind."
    The guy was reaching me. I found myself
wondering more about him than about my client. I asked him, "Is
that why you sold your soul to the Highlands?"
    The grin came back as he inspected that
query. "Don't make the mistake of thinking that your soul is an
island, Ash. It's as much a part of the continent as your body is.
It is immune to being bought and sold because the original owner
will not release the title."
    Well, anyway, that was an alternate point of
view to the one offered by Kalinsky. Or was it?
    I said, "Which original owner is that?"
    He said, "Good and evil
are mere states of mind, aren't they? I know I don't have to tell
you that because I