TROUBLE SHOOTER

I looked around the office wondering where to start. It wasn't a pleasant moment. I didn't want to start at all, didn't want to leave. But this was like a lot of Hollywood offices — lavish, expensive, all front, and a broke tenant.

The tenant — that's me, Shell Scott. And it looked as if Shell Scott was Hollywood's latest casualty. It had been great for a year, anyway. This one I'd liked. After the advertising agency, the stint on a newspaper, the odd jobs around Hollywood, I'd wound up a private investigator — I owned the license. Three years of it I'd had now, the last year in my office here on the Sunset Strip. That's right, the Sunset Strip.

A private detective is supposed to be unobstructive, a man who can fade away into the shadows. But this is Hollywood. The clients I want, the men and women of the movie industry, don't feel right hiring somebody who can fade away into the shadows. They don't want a shrinking violet, but a blooming eucalyptus with morning glories springing out all over it. So, after two meager years in downtown L.A. I'd bloomed and sprung out. On the Sunset Strip — the expensive Sunset Strip. Expensive, like Mocambo, Ciro's.

The office, like the address, is front. In Hollywood you have to have a front. A producer working on a two-million-dollar comic-strip-with-people doesn't — if he's in trouble and needs some kind of troubleshooter — get into the right mood, the paying mood, when he leaves his walnut paneled office, his mahogany desk, his pith helmet, his blonde, and enters a one-room office complete with green wooden filing cabinet. So, I've got the place fixed up to sock out the proper impression. Both rooms. Take a look at it. Squint, though, or close one eye.

In front is a wide, shallow office with black carpet, over-stuffed red-and-gray chairs, white desk at which sits — all in black — Yolanda. Yolanda, of whom more later. Then through the connecting door into the next room, my office. Desk made from the stump of a mangrove tree from Florida's Okefenokee Swamp, complete with roots. Zebra-striped chairs. Red chaise lounge. Scattered around, or hanging on the walls are my own pith helmet, blowgun, pictures of some stars and directors and Hollywood people, and many pictures of Shell. Shell — with an elephant gun in Africa, in mountain gear climbing an Alp, skiing at Sun Valley, and so on. When a potential Hollywood client walked into my office, he knew I was good.

Several clients had been satisfied this last year, too, but I hadn't had a real smash case for three months. Three months without a hit. Two months without even a divorce investigation. Just about everybody in the movie industry knew my name, but I was, as actors say, between engagements. Hollywood has a short memory. What counts is now, not then. You've got to keep producing.

Finally I started packing by gathering up the pictures, stacking them on my Okefenokee-Swamp-mangrove-tree-with-roots desk. Not another one in Hollywood like it. Then Yolanda came in. That's not quite right. Yolanda doesn't come in. She walks, she floats, she soars, she dips and dives and gyrates and wiggles and flows — in a word, Yolanda enters. Yolanda entered.

"We should have a wake or something, Shell."

"We should have some money."

"You're really moving it all out today?"

I nodded, looking at her. Yolanda, tall, black-haired, lithe and luscious, white-skinned, full red lips and huge nearly black eyes. In this town, where front is so important, Yolanda had it made. She also had it made behind and sideways, and in any town. I hated to give up the office, true; but most of all I hated to lose Yolanda.

She's my girl Friday, my secretary, phone-answerer, confidante, pal and what-not. She'd come to Hollywood to crash the movies, a dream she still clung to, but she couldn't act. She can't type either, can't take shorthand, but you can't have everything. The chaise lounge in my office is for her; that's where she takes dictation. Yolanda doesn't know Gregg, but she can invent pothooks like crazy, and the faster I talk, the more she squirms on the chaise lounge. I've had directors, writers, even producers, watching open-mouthed as I dictated a hundred and fifty words a minute, not hearing a word I said.

"Seems a shame," Yolanda said, her voice poured through honey.

"It is a shame."

"Isn't there anything we can do? Can I help any way, Shell?"

"All we need is several thousand dollars for rent and beans. I thought about putting on a turban and becoming a high-priced mystic. Records playing 'Swami River,' and all that."

She made a face. "A very bad idea. Also unfunny. You're just discouraged."

"I'm never discouraged. You don't appreciate me."

"Yes, I do. So much, that as long as you're taking down the pictures I'd like the one of you with the elephant gun. You're magnificent in that one. Did Bruno take it?"

"Nope. It was taken in Africa. Just after I shot an elephant."

"Really? You should have saved the tusks for this museum." She indicated the office. "Or maybe the whole head. Or the whole elephant —"

"I missed him."

"You missed an elephant?"

"I'm a lousy shot."

"It's a lousy day." I knew what she meant. We both looked around us, at the gorgeously ugly office.

Chimes played a soft, minor chord. That meant the door had opened out front. Yolanda and I looked at each other. It was only seven-thirty a.m.; usually we opened the office at ten. Yolanda swung around and entered the front office.

In a minute she returned. "Mr. Scott, I know you're busy, but Mr. Jay Kennedy is in the outer office. Can you see him for a moment?" She winked.

The door was naturally cracked so the words could be heard in the outer office. I'm always busy. "Why yes," I said. "My appointment isn't for a half an hour. Show Mr. Kennedy in, please."

Could I see Jay Kennedy? He was only a couple million dollars on the hoof, an independent producer who'd recently turned out a fine Western called Wagon Wheels.

He came in and shut the door behind him, a tall, erect man with gray hair, horn-rimmed glasses on his sharp nose, wearing a well-tailored gray suit. Even his face looked gray, drawn and worried.

He said, "Mr. Scott, I'll get straight to the point. I've heard a lot about you, and I need a good man to investigate a murder."

He stopped and the word hung there. None of my clients had brought me a murder case before. "Murder?" I said. "The police —"

"Hang the police! You'll understand why, in a moment. . . ."

Last night there had been a small party at the home of Bill and Louise Trent in the Hollywood hills. All ten persons present were connected with the movie Wagon Wheels, which Kennedy was currently co-producing with A.A. Porter, another well-known name. The party had been a wild-type party, which was one big reason Kennedy was here; he wanted the thing hushed fast. Kennedy had left early with one of the female stars of the movie, later returned to the address and discovered a young and lovely starlet named Melba Mallory face down in the swimming pool, dead, and the star of Wagon Wheels, Alan Grant, lying on the grass nearby, dead drunk. A few feet from him had been an empty whisky bottle, cracked, a smear of blood on it.

I said, "You're sure the girl was dead, Mr. Kennedy?"

He grimaced. "Yes, I . . . She was close to the edge at the shallow end. I touched her, lifted her a little." He swallowed. "She was dead, all right. Been hit over the head, cut there. Then in the water all that time . . ."

"Why did you say you went back to the Trents' home?"

"I didn't say. Alan was supposed to call me this morning, early. At five. We were doing some retakes today and I wanted to try to keep him reasonably sober. He's a terrible lush, you know. When I couldn't reach him at his suite, I assumed he was probably still at the party and went there." He sighed. "Alan couldn't tell me anything. He's the star of Wagon Wheels. And we've got another of his movies not yet released. I want this murder solved fast, before scandalous rumors spread. And if there are any more delays on this film I'll have to dig up more money — which I can't do. A few thousand left, naturally —" he smiled — "for your fee."

I smiled.

Still smiling, I said, "Ah, yes. Let's talk about that." We did. The upshot of it was that if all went well and Kennedy wasn't ruined, I'd be able to pay my rent for several months in advance.

Kennedy said, "All I want's the truth. And fast action. If Grant did it, then that's that. I don't think he did. I hope to God he didn't — he's a drunk, and weak, but not a murderer." He paused. "And almost anybody might have had reason to kill that little — that Melba."

"You say she was in the picture?"

"Yes. That was one of the conditions A.A. insisted on himself — A.A. Porter, co-producer with me." Kennedy's voice became more anguished. "Wagon Wheels is the biggest thing since Cimarron, a Birth-of-the-Nation Western in Deep Screen, Technicolor and CinemaScope, and A.A. insisted Melba play in it. Minor role, but she stank up every scene she was in." His face got bleak. "Supposed to be a poor ranch woman. She acts like Mata Hari spying on the cactus. We've cut out all we could without ruining the continuity, but it's not enough. I'd shoot Melba's scenes over with somebody else, if I had any money left, and if A.A. would allow it — which he wouldn't. But, then, she's dead now, isn't she?" Kennedy ran his hands through his graying hair. "Ulcers," he mumbled abstractedly. "Pills . . . worry. Sometimes I think maybe it isn't worth it."

"What isn't?"

He stared at me as if I'd asked a very stupid question. Lovingly he said, "Money. Yes, sometimes I . . . good heavens!" Kennedy was looking about in dazed fashion. He'd finally got a real penetrating look at my office. Now was the time to clinch the deal, while he was dazed; I always clinch my deals while the clients are dazed. I rang for Yolanda, and she entered.

"Take a memo," I said. She advanced to the chaise lounge and poised a pencil over her memo pad. I said, "Agreement between Mr. Jay Kennedy of Gargantua Productions and Shell Scott, Investigator, dated . . ." Yolanda began making pothooks and wiggling. Kennedy was middle-aged, getting younger. I stepped up my delivery and named a figure two thousand dollars higher than anything Kennedy had mentioned. His mouth sagged open. Just for fun, as I sometimes do, I threw in, "And the party of the first part agrees with the party of the second part, agreeing to pay the third part all the other parts plus a million dollars." Kennedy didn't hear a word. They never do, not when I'm dictating two hundred words a minute to Yolanda. With my brain I should be a millionaire.

Alan Grant was unconscious in his suite of rooms on the fourth floor of the Graystone. But he was becoming conscious. I had him in the shower and was pouring it to him, hot and cold, then hot and cold again. Kennedy hadn't called the police earlier, so I'd told him to take care of that detail and then join me here. He arrived just as I hauled Grant out of the shower.

Kennedy said, "I phoned the police. Didn't mention my name. They'll get to me soon enough. Too soon." He glanced at the bed on which I'd dumped Alan Grant.

Grant mumbled some swear words. I'd fixed hot coffee, and started pouring it down him. "While we're waking this guy up," I said, "you'd better give me a list of everybody at the party, what they do in the movie, where they live, if you know, and so on."

He got pencil and paper and began writing. Ten people had been at the party, all of them in some way connected with Wagon Wheels. Bill Trent was director; he and his wife Louise had been the host and hostess. Alan Grant had taken Melba Mallory to the party. Kennedy and Porter, co-producers, had gone to the party alone; so had the two feminine leads, Miss Le Braque and Evelyn Druid. The two others present had been Simon French, who'd done the Wagon Wheels screenplay, and his wife, Anastasia.

From Kennedy I got a pretty good mental picture of the murder scene. The swimming pool was beyond twenty yards of lawn at the rear of the big house in the Hollywood Hills. Kennedy had found Alan Grant passed out on the lawn at the base of some thick bushes about ten yards from the pool. Between him and the pool's edge had been the whisky bottle.

I said, "About that bottle, Mr. Kennedy. Looks as if Melba could have been slugged with it and then pushed into the water. Maybe the glass has fingerprints on it that the police can bring out. Might make everything simple."

He smoothed his gray hair. "I won't try to make excuses. I . . . I got a little panicked, I suppose. Wiped the bottle off and threw it into the pool. I was afraid then that Alan had . . . Anyway, that's what I did."

"Oh." After digesting that I went on. "Before long we'll know the approximate time Melba was killed. Might be a good idea if I knew where you were at the time of the murder."

He thought about that for a while, then said, "As I have intimated, the party last night was somewhat . . . abandoned. Consequently I left early, about midnight, with Miss Le Braque. Went to her apartment and had a drink or two. She'll tell you the same thing. Keep it to yourself. Business, you understand. But keep it to yourself, anyway."

Across the room there was a deep sighing sound. Grant said, "What's going on here?"

It took ten more minutes of coffee, conversation, and threats from Kennedy, to get any kind of story from Grant, and even then it wasn't very coherent. Grant swore he hadn't known Melba was dead, he positively hadn't killed her, hadn't even touched her. He'd seen her with somebody, though. Alan Grant was the tall, rangy rawboned type that looks good whispering sweet nothings to a horse, but this morning the horse would have run away neighing. The flesh hung slack on Grant's face, sagged and spread; his eyes were two small sunrises in a field of putty. His curly brown locks had become unlocked.

"Must've passed out," he said. "All seems like a dream. Remember lying there on the grass, everything swimming. Saw them by the pool. Lights were on. They didn't see me, or else they didn't give a damn. Didn't appear to have any clothes on. They were unclothed, yes. There right alongside the pool." He shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut. "Some man with Melba, but all I know is it was her. Then there was somebody came running up, and shome — some talk. And a kind of a fright. Whoever it was ran away. And the guy ran away. Then somebody came back, or somebody else did. I don't know. Leave me alone."

"You said somebody came back — after these two ran away. Where was Melba?" I asked.

"Still lying there."

"Who pushed her?"

"Hell, I don't know. Maybe I dreamed it. Pushed her in and ran away. Leave me alone."

That was all we could get out of him. He lay back on the bed and started snoring. Kennedy said, "How much of that do you think happened?"

"Well, you know this guy better than I do. Any chance he's faking part of this drunk act?"

"It's no act. He's probably telling the truth as well as he knows it, or remembers it. I hope so." Suddenly he winced and snapped his fingers. "A.A. — he's got to know about this." He wheeled, went to the phone alongside the bed.

By the time I got to the door, Kennedy was talking to A.A. Porter and I'd heard the words "Wagon Wheels" three or four times. Before I went out I told Kennedy to inform Mr. Porter that I'd be right out to see him. Kennedy nodded, waved a hand, and I left.

Miss le braque's home was on the way out to Porter's mansion, so I stopped there. She was a blonde, in less than dishabille, and she opened the door, then slammed it in my face, reappearing in a white robe. "Come in," she said.

I showed her the photostat of my license, told her who I was and why I was here. After a while, she corroborated Jay Kennedy's story in all details. Only they'd had several highballs together.

"Like one?" she asked me.

"No, thanks."

She simpered and smiled. "I'm going to have the lead in Wagon Tracks, Jay's next sequel to Wagon Wheels. Clever title, isn't it? After the Wagon Wheels, the Wagon Tra —"

"Please. You say Mr. Kennedy was with you at the party, then from midnight till he phoned Alan Grant's place at five you were alone together."

"Yes. Like a drinkie?"

"No. I don't drinkie in the morning. Thanks. Good-by. . . ."

A.A. Porter was waiting for me in the front doorway of his two-story auditorium. He was short, heavy, red-faced, with thinning strands of black hair on the top of his large head. Looking shaken and shocked, he pumped my hand and pulled me inside. "Terrible . . . terrible," he said in a deep, rumbling voice. "Jay just finished talking to me. Murdered. God! And Grant — do you think he did it, Scott?"

"I don't know who did it. I haven't even been to the Trents' house yet. Mr. Kennedy came to see me only about an hour ago."

He was nodding his big head. "Yes. But that fantastic story of Grant's."

"We can drag the pool, but I'll hazard a guess there's not even a minnow in it. Just Melba — though the police will have fished her out by now." I stopped. "Did Mr. Kennedy tell you the whole story that Grant gave us?"

He nodded. "Of course. Wagon Wheels must —"

"Forget Wagon Wheels for half a second, will you? And you'd better call Kennedy back and tell him to keep his mouth shut about your star's story. It's all right for the three of us to know about it, maybe, but it better not go any farther."

"See here!" He didn't like my tone and language. He was A.A. Porter.

I went on, "Look, by now the police are at the scene. I have to find out all I can before they put the whole bunch of you in jail. Besides which, I've got a lease expiring."

"A what?"

"And Yolanda. Never mind. Mr. Porter, I know there were ten people at the party; one of them was murdered. Of the nine remaining, I've learned that Mr. Kennedy and another person can alibi each other. It would help both of us if you could tell me, quick-like, where you were from, say, midnight on."

"That hardly seems necessary." His tone was frigid.

"You don't have to tell me a thing. But you're going to have to tell the police officers who'll soon be here. The quicker I can eliminate eight people, the quicker this mess will be over. Probably the police will get there sooner than I, but I'm going to have a good try at it. And that would make the mess smell sweeter for you and Kennedy. Make up your mind."

One thing I'd noted and liked about men like Kennedy and Porter, the big-wheel, executive, accustomed-to-command type, was that they made their decisions quickly and acted on them. Porter frowned at me for perhaps a second, then said briskly, "I suppose you're right. I was with Mrs. Trent, the hostess. We were —" he fixed his eyes on me, scowling slightly, and went on deliberately — "in the bedroom. Having . . . a . . . drink. A highball. It was necessary that we talk, and it was quiet there. We were together from shortly after midnight, say twelve-thirty, until four this morning, when I left."

This was the drinkingest gang I'd ever run across. Porter's story was so similar to Kennedy's that a man might almost think they'd compared them.

I said, "How is Melba Mallory's death going to affect the release of Wagon Wheels?"

"We'll probably have to shoot several scenes over. Actually, it may well improve the production. I had very high hopes for Miss Mallory, but she wasn't as good as I'd expected."

"Mr. Kennedy told me you insisted she have a pretty good part in the film."

"That's true." He nodded his big head. "I made a mistake. A man can't always be right." He paused. "I discovered Sandra Storme, you know. I rather hoped that Melba would be . . ." He shrugged.

Sandra Storme was the number-four box-office attraction. Everybody knew that Porter had discovered her. He told everybody. After another minute's conversation I left and drove to the Hollywood Hills.

Two police cars and an ambulance were parked in front, but I didn't see any policemen. Mrs. Trent answered my ring. Yes, she'd been with Mr. Porter. Yes, business. Yes, in the bedroom. Yes, of course, for a highball. Couldn't stand noise when she was drinking.

Mrs. Trent and I went back to the bedroom. We didn't drink anything. It was a lovely bedroom, with soft pastels dominating the color scheme, an enormous bed, dressing table, high beamed ceiling. This bedroom was at the rear of the house, one door leading from the hall into here, one other door, closed, in the left wall. "I guess that's all the questions I wanted to ask, Mrs. Trent. Thanks very much for letting me ask them. I know you've already talked to the police. You were with Mr. Porter for all that time. With him every minute?"

"Every minute." She paused. "Oh, he went in there for perhaps a couple of minutes."

I took a look. In "there" was a small chunk of Rome before the decline and fall. To be perfectly accurate, it was a bathroom, but with a sunken tub larger than some people's swimming pools, mosaic-tile walls, and the usual. A mink cover, even. Imagine. A big window was open in the rear wall and I looked out it at the lawn behind the house. And it appeared I was going to meet the police about now.

Several uniformed and plainclothes officers were grouped twenty yards away from the pool, one man taking pictures. One of the officers I'd come to know well in these last three years was looking this way, saw me and motioned for me to join them. I went back into the bedroom. Mrs. Trent took me down the hall to a side door and showed me out. I walked around the side of the house and up to Sergeant Casey, the man who had waved at me.

"Hi, Shell. Important people in this one, huh?"

"Yeah. I'm in it, you're in it. Kennedy's retained me."

"I heard. Three thousand policemen isn't enough?"

"Anything you can pass on? Free, I mean." Casey shook his head. I said, "How about the time of death?"

"Coroner can't tell this soon. You know that. Oh — he gave us a guess. Between two and three this a.m. Give or take a couple days. But he's usually close. Good man." He paused. "I suppose you just got up?"

"Been up for minutes. Even talked to a couple people."

"Suspects?" I nodded and he continued, "You might have to talk to them in jail pretty quick. We're rounding them up for interrogation. Got one downtown now. Guy named Simon French. Had him in jail since a little after three this morning."

"French?" He was the Wagon Wheels writer.

"Yeah. Writer who was at the ball here last night. One of the Hollywood Division's F cars picked him up. He was running down the street naked about half a mile from here."

"Naked, huh? Well, that's at least a misdemeanor. Also a little uninhibited."

"Yeah, these people are free as birds. You know what he said when the policemen asked him what the hell? The guy said he loved the cool, moist fingers of the morning wind on his burning flesh. He's a writer?"

"That's what they say. Thanks, Casey. Think I could talk to French at the jail?"

"You can ask."

"Sure. How about French's wife, Anastasia? She say anything about her hubby's track suit?"

"Haven't located her yet, far as I know. Not home. She's probably being ravished by the cool, moist fingers of the morning —"

I left before he got carried away. At the jail I was told that Simon French hadn't talked to anybody since being picked up in Hollywood. They let me see him, but he wouldn't tell me much, either. Just before I left, though, I said to him, "The police told you Melba was murdered, of course."

"Of course."

"I don't suppose you killed her."

"I don't suppose."

"French, your dialogue is lousy."

"Who's paying me?"

"The state may, if you keep it up. Look, French. Melba was minus clothes when she was killed. You were flying down the street, a Hollywood nudist, half a mile from where Melba was killed. Coincidence? And word floats around that more than two people cavorted about the Trents' pool around two or three this morning. Maybe four people. Maybe five. Maybe a few words from you could get you out of big trouble?"

Oddly enough, his face got a puzzled expression on it and he started to speak. But he didn't say anything.

I left and drove to French's home just off Beverly Boulevard. Nobody was there. I didn't see any police cars around. After waiting five minutes I started to leave when a big Cadillac pulled into the driveway. A short, pretty woman with her hair piled on top of her head got out of the Cad and walked toward the house.

There was a chance, since Anastasia French hadn't been available or talked to the police, that she didn't know much about what was going on this morning. Anyway, I was going to play it that way. She hadn't seen me yet, and I said, "Hello, Anastasia."

She looked up toward me, startled. "Hello . . . who are you?"

"Shell Scott, Mrs. French. Your husband around?"

"He — no." She unlocked the front door. "What do you want?"

I followed her inside, showed her my license, told her I was a detective. "Your husband's in jail," I said.

"Jail! What for?"

"Same deal I'm working on. The Melba Mallory thing?"

She gasped. "But that . . . he shouldn't be in jail."

"He is. Your husband was running down the street with no clothes on, and there seems to be some kind of law about —"

I broke it off because she was laughing. But it was stretched thin, close to hysterical laughter. She calmed herself, her face twitched, and words poured from her. "I've been driving around ever since it happened, trying to get my thoughts straight. I guess I went a little crazy."

I held my breath. It sounded as if I were about to get a lot of answers. She went on, "It was about two-thirty this morning, maybe three. I was alone. Everybody else was with somebody. I went looking for Alan. He'd gone out back with a bottle. I went out to the pool. Alan wasn't around, but I saw them — Melba and Si. My husband, with her!"

She stopped. Quietly I said, "By the pool, you mean?"

"Yes. And the lights were on. Not bright, but . . . right there, out in the open. I ran up to them. I guess I did what I did because of what he said — damn him! I yelled at him, 'Stop that this minute!'" She laughed shortly. "That damn living creep said, 'Really, darling. Not this minute.'"

She swung around and walked away from me, then turned and said, "I just got crazy mad. There was an empty whisky bottle there, and I picked it up, Officer. I'm sorry now for what I did, Off —" She stopped suddenly. "Let me see that — that thing you showed me again."

She meant the photostat of my license. I hadn't told her I was a policeman, hadn't realized till just now that she must have assumed that "detective" meant "police officer." I took out the photostat and told her, "I said I was a detective, Mrs. French. And I am. But I don't want to commit a misdemeanor here. I'm a private detective. Not that it makes much difference, really. How about finishing what you were saying?"

"You told me Si was in jail," she said. "Why would a private detective be interested in that?" She paused again. "I think you'd better leave."

I tried to get her talking again, but it was over. She told me to get out. Before I reached the door somebody knocked on it. Mrs. French opened the door and admitted two men. "Police officers," one of them said, showing his I.D. card. "You'll have to come downtown with us, Mrs. French."

I didn't know the man speaking; the other was an officer I knew casually, a man named Lake. He nodded briefly to me as Mrs. French said, "Downtown? What for? What right have you —"

"Come along, Mrs. French. You're under arrest."

"Arrest?" She sank into a chair. "What for?"

"Suspicion of murder."

Her face got ashen; shock spread over her features. "Who . . . Murder? Whose murder?"

I said, "Melba Mallory's."

She fainted. Her body slumped and she fell out of the chair.

Both of the officers jumped forward; they picked her up, placed her on a divan. The phone rang. Lake took it, listened a moment, then said to me, "It's for you, Scott. Guy named Kennedy."

Kennedy had been calling all over for me, had located me by going down the list of names he'd supplied me with this morning until he'd caught me here. He said, "Get over to the Graystone quick, Scott. Something's happened."

"If it's about the case, it's probably not important now. Mrs. Simon French just got through confessing. At least she started to. The police will get the rest of it. Looks as if this is working out about as well as it could."

He was silent for quite a while, letting what I'd said soak in, then his voice went on, "Not quite. Alan Grant just fell out of his fourth-floor window."

"He what?"

Kennedy said it again. "Either fell or jumped. I thought maybe he'd given us a false story this morning, and jumped . . . You say Anastasia confessed?"

"Well, not exactly. Now I think of it, she didn't actually get to the important points. I'll be right over."

I hung up and turned around. "It's okay if I leave, isn't it?" I asked Lake. "Client wants to see me."

"Yeah, you can go. But it's a good thing you didn't try to pass yourself off as a policeman."

"You heard that part?"

"We heard it all."

In Grant's room at the Graystone were Kennedy, a doctor, and Alan Grant — on the bed. I pointed at him and said to Kennedy, "I thought he'd be dead. Or at least in the hospital."

"Dead? That sodden, limp, drunken idiot? No. He fell on the awning over the apartment entrance. Bruised a good deal, but that's all. And drunk. That's mainly what's wrong with him now. He's so drunk he could have missed the awning and, anyhow, he'd probably lay there asking for bourbon." Kennedy pointed to a half-full bottle of bourbon on a stand beside the bed. "I left Alan passed out, but he must have come to wanting a drink. He always comes to wanting a drink."

The doctor straightened up, put some machinery back into his black bag. "He'll be all right. If he quits hitting the bottle."

That phrase made me think of Mrs. French again. She'd mentioned picking up the empty whisky bottle on the lawn by the pool; I was sure her next sentence would have been that she started swinging it at her hubby and Melba. Or just Melba. I looked at Alan Grant's sprawled body and asked the doctor if Grant would be able to talk to us. The doc said he would be able to talk all right, once he swam out of his alcoholic stupor. I sat down and thought about several bits of information I'd picked up.

After the doctor left I turned to Jay Kennedy. "You told me earlier that there were supposed to be some retakes made today at the studio. Is there a camera crew ready?"

"Yes. There's other work in progress. The whole crew, not just the cameramen."

"I'd like to borrow a cameraman, lighting expert, camera, film, the works. I want to make a movie."

He looked at me as if I'd just told him I wanted to hang him. "Why in the world do you want to make a movie?"

"So I can do the job you hired me for. Catch a killer, clean this up. I've been thinking, and it seems to me this might be the best way to do it. Maybe the only way. Well?"

He thought about it for a few seconds, then the quick decision and the immediate action. "All right." He walked to the phone, dialed, and barked a few orders into the phone, telling somebody to get a crew ready.

"This is, in a way, protection for you, Mr. Kennedy. It's pretty certain that one of nine people at the Trents' party killed Melba. It looks as if it was Mrs. French, but maybe not — and you were, after all, one of the nine. I'm personally convinced that you wouldn't kill the girl and then hire a detective to find out who killed her, which would be some kind of record for going crazy in a hurry. Besides which, both you and Miss Le Braque can alibi each other. But others might not be as convinced as I. And if this little movie is supposed to catch the right one of the nine, then none of the nine should know what's going to happen."

He nodded. "I believe I see what you're up to. Are you going to recreate the crime, Mr. Scott?"

"In a way. You'll see tonight. Oh, when your cameraman shoots what I tell him to, how soon can the film be ready for showing? I'd like to have this all set by four or five p.m. Projection room ready and so on."

He glanced at his watch. "Make it six tonight and I think it can be handled, if you don't spend more than an hour filming. This will cost a lot of money —"

"So did Wagon Wheels."

That hit him in his heart, right in the hundred-dollar bills. He spoke into the phone some more, talking about cameramen, cutters, technicians I hadn't even heard of, then he said, "One final point. For the rest of the afternoon, Mr. Shell Scott has carte blanche; the crew will take his orders. Anything he says, they are to consider my orders." Kennedy hung up.

A little worry seeped into my brains. I said, "It sounded as if I were going to shoot Gone With The Wind. This is just a simple, amateur —"

He interrupted. "You'll need all of them. The film has to be shot, processed, cut, spliced — this is my department, Mr. Scott. Yours is solving the murder."

I got a cold, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I had been buzzing around pretty fast today, and this film idea had just entered my head. If it was a flop, I was dead. It had to work now; the wheels were rolling at what I imagined was ten thousand dollars an hour. I had done it. Oh, boy, I had done it. If this thing merely popped instead of exploding, the next murder would be Shell Scott's. Maybe Jay Kennedy would get the gas chamber for it, but he'd die laughing.

As if he'd read my thoughts, Kennedy looked at me soberly and said, "Mr. Scott, one of the reasons I'm agreeing to this — this scheme of yours, in the dark, so to speak, is that the police have already talked to me at some length. After leaving them I returned here and learned of Alan Grant's mishap. But they were rather rough on me — not physically, of course, but their questions . . . it was a disturbing experience. And I had to tell them about wiping that whisky bottle clean and throwing it into the water. They were most unhappy about that. I want no more of it. I want this cleaned up. I don't want newspapers filled with conjectures, innuendoes, damaging remarks about me or any other innocent persons, remarks that might be remembered later even after all the truth is known. While Los Angeles and Hollywood are reading about the murder, I want it known that the case is closed, Melba's killer in jail. And, too, there must not be the slightest suspicion that Gargantua Productions would attempt to shield anyone in this matter, even myself. I want this matter closed tonight." He paused, and then said, so slowly that I missed not a single inflection, "That, Mr. Scott, is what I expect from you."

I grinned like a man whose teeth had just fallen out — painfully. "That, Mr. Kennedy, is what you're going to get." But I was thinking: I've never solved a murder; I've never even worked on a murder case. Good-by, office; good-by, Yolanda; good-by, Hollywood.

But then I got a grip on myself. "Good-by, Mr. Kennedy," I said. "I mean, I'd better get started." He nodded grimly. Maybe one nod is pretty much like another, but not this one. It was really grim.

It was also true that I'd better get started. I had Mr. Kennedy going along with me, but now I had to get the Los Angeles Police Department to cooperate. As long as I was past the point of no return, I told Jay Kennedy a couple other things I needed, and left to burn more bridges.

Well, for the first couple of hours after leaving the Graystone I had myself a ball, even though there were moments when I felt myself becoming appalled all over again. But with Kennedy and Gargantua behind me, I got enough cooperation from everybody, including the police, and was allowed to shoot the film at the murder scene itself, the Trents' home, in the Trents' absence. From the police I learned a few additional items: the time of Melba's death was still figured as between two and three this morning; Melba had been hit hard enough with the bottle — which had been recovered and examined without helpful results — to cause a concussion, but her death had been due to drowning — there was water in her lungs, breathed in when she "was pushed or fell" into the pool.

I arranged for two between-engagements actors, and one actress, to be present at the Trents' home; then I phoned Yolanda at the office.

"Hi, this is Scott." I gave her the address and said, "Grab your bikini and come out here. You're going to be in a movie."

Her delighted squeal drowned me out but I went on, "Hold it. This is a small thing I'm producing. And you play a corpse."

She stopped squealing, asked a couple questions which I answered, then said she was on her way. Actual filming took only about half an hour; I knew what I wanted. I talked a while with the crew, taking a couple aside and giving them instructions, then they left to handle their various jobs. Ten minutes after six p.m. everything was set.

Gathered in the projection room at Gargantua Productions were eleven people: the nine who had been at last night's party, including the partygoers I hadn't yet talked to, Yolanda and me, and a half-sober, and aching, Alan Grant. I'd found time to talk with Grant a short while before. Though more sober, he remembered even less about what had happened at the party. He didn't have the faintest idea whom he'd seen and didn't remember anything about his tumble from the Graystone, so I had to go ahead. Mrs. French had been brought there by policemen. No police officers were now inside the room itself, but a couple were right outside the door. I walked to the front of the room, stood before the white screen, facing the small group. I waited for a while, looking up at the heavy lamps poised above their heads, then down at their faces, letting it get quiet in the room. I was sweating, but not only because of some natural nervousness. The air conditioner hummed a bit noisily, but even with it cooling the air, it was still extremely hot. That was fine, though; I wanted it hot. I hoped to make it hot enough in here to catch a killer. I glanced around again, then started in.

"You all know part of the reason for your being here. It's because Melba Mallory was murdered at the party you all attended last night. One of you killed her. I know which one of you did it, and I'm going to tell you right now — or, better, I'm going to show you. This afternoon a crew from the studio and I shot a movie, a recreation of the murder which occurred last night."

I paused and looked at them. Jay Kennedy stared back at me, still grim. Mrs. Anastasia French, seated by her husband, placed one hand against her throat; her lips were parted, her face pale, and she looked as if she were going to faint again. Simon French chewed on his lip, frowning. A.A. Porter looked intently at me, occasionally nodding his big head. Both Evelyn Druid and Miss Le Braque sat quietly, staring at me. Alan Grant had both hands pressed against his temples. Mr. and Mrs. Trent were holding hands, Mrs. Trent saying something to her husband.

After a few seconds I went on, "One word for the murderer. You can make this a lot easier on everybody, including yourself, by telling us about it now." I didn't expect any results; nor did I get any. I said, "This film was shot in the daytime, with actors and actresses, but as you watch it, imagine that it's between two and three o'clock this morning. You all know where you were, including the killer." I smiled. "And now — if you'll pardon the expression — we'll look at the rushes."

I walked to my seat and slid in next to Yolanda. In the darkness, the killer would see the murder enacted again, the moment of death. His suspense and internal agony would surely, steadily mount. He'd be sweating even more than the rest in here, getting scared. And then he'd give himself away, if I'd set this up right.

As soon as I waved my hand in the air the lights went out, then the sudden darkness was relieved slightly by the faint reflection from the screen as the film began. There was no sound track and as the minutes passed the silence was broken only by the whisper of cloth against leather as somebody shifted position in a seat, the hum of the air conditioner, a heavy sigh or cough.

The action on the screen began with a long shot of the Trents' home, shooting across the pool toward the rear of the house. Nobody was in sight. Then the actor playing the part of Alan Grant strolled, occasionally staggering, into the scene. A partly full bottle of bourbon was in his hand. He sank to the ground at the base of the bushes where Alan Grant had, in fact, passed out. The camera moved in for a close-up as he drained the bottle, looked at it, then threw the bottle as it came to rest; then the bottle dissolved into Yolanda's face. She, playing Melba, whirled and ran around the side of the house toward the pool, followed by the actor representing Simon French. At the edge of the pool they sank to the grass, the writer in swimming trunks, Yolanda in her bikini. There was one kiss, that was all. Then the camera was raised, panned slowly from right to left over the grass, passing the empty bottle, then stopping on Alan Grant as he stirred, raised his head and stared toward the pool, eyes widening.

All of this was in silence in the projection room, but sitting there, watching the action unroll on the screen, I thought that there should have been a sound track. There should have been a burst of sound then, a crash of music. Something to show that this moment was a high point, a part of the climax. But I got something just as good; better, really — the quick, sharp intake of someone's breath. You couldn't tell from the sound where it came from; but I knew who it had been. Then the camera swung to the short, red-haired woman who left the side door, looked around, walked toward the pool. Mrs. French, the real one, would be the first to know who that actress represented.

The redhead walked toward the pool, stopped when she saw the two forms close together, raced to them, waving her arms, her mouth moving. The two on the grass didn't move apart. On the screen, Mrs. French whirled, face angry, saw the bottle on the ground, picked it up and raised it in her hand as she turned again. As her arm started downward a woman screamed, "Stop it! Stop it!" The piercing cry was a physical shock in the silent room.

Immediately the film stopped, the lights went on. Anastasia French was standing, hands pressed hard against her cheeks, eyes closed. "Don't show any more. Please. I'll tell you."

The slowly mounting tension had been too much for her. That was all right with me. In a harsh, fast burst of words, Mrs. French poured out almost the same story she'd told me earlier today, but this time she continued. "I barely hit my . . . husband. He ran. I hit her, hit Melba twice, three times. God, I don't know. I didn't mean to kill her. I was furious. I ran to my car, drove for hours." She pressed her hands against her eyes, sobbing. "I didn't even know I'd killed her."

I stood up. "Just a minute, Mrs. French," I said slowly. "You didn't kill her."

Anastasia turned quickly to look at me. But so did all the others in the room. I had them now, right where I wanted them. And that included the person who'd actually murdered Melba. Anastasia French wasn't the one I was after, but her outburst had helped. That shocking scream, her shrill words and sobs, had drawn the tension even tighter in here, squeezing us all together emotionally — all except one of us.

Mrs. French said, haltingly, "What? I . . ."

"She was drowned," I said. "Did you push her?"

"No . . . but I thought she must have come to . . . hurt. Fallen in —"

"Not quite like that," I said. "She didn't fall in."

It wasn't enough that I knew, or at least felt sure I knew, who'd killed Melba. I didn't have any real proof, nothing with which to convict — not yet. And I had to get it now. I'd burned my last bridge when that film started.

"You'll note that everything so far is just the way it happened," I said. "So is the rest of it. Now let's watch the murder itself. And the murderer."

I sat down, drenched with perspiration, feeling the heat, my throat getting dry with the strain of waiting. The lights went out, the movie began again at a point just before the film had been stopped. On the screen, Mrs. French whirled, the bottle descended, striking Simon French a glancing blow on the shoulder. He sprang to his feet, bending away from her, turned and ran out of the scene. Yolanda, as Melba, couldn't be seen, but the film showed the bottle rise in the air above her and descend rapidly once, twice, three times. Then a brief shot of Mrs. French's fear-struck face. She dropped the bottle, turned and ran. The camera followed her — but only part way.

As Mrs. French ran out of the scene, the camera stopped, focused on the rear of the Trents' house. At first there was nothing to see, but then movement was noticeable. In the window of that lavish Roman bath next to Mrs. Trent's bedroom, there was movement. That was me, Shell Scott. I was playing the murderer, crawling from the window, racing across the lawn, shoving the still body into the pool, then turning, sprinting toward the house, and climbing back through the window.

But the camera panned left again, to Alan Grant's slack features, his half-closed eyes. He shook his head, rubbed a hand over his face, slumped forward to the grass again. On the screen, odd figures and designs danced a moment as the film ended. The lights came on, brilliant after the darkness.

There wasn't a sound except the air conditioner's hum. I said, "Well, Porter?"

His face was ugly, not with anger but with sickness. But A.A. Porter, who'd made his biggest quick decision there at the window last night and followed it with the irrevocable action of murder, made another quick decision and did fairly well. He composed his features somewhat, rose and faced me. His voice was quiet, controlled, as he said, "You've made a terrible mistake, Scott. And I'll have to take you into court. You must realize that." He ran a hand over the thin strands of hair, wet and matted now like black moss. "This is worse than trying to call me a murderer. This is the most obscene, evil —"

"Hot, isn't it?"

He blinked, looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. "What?"

"I said, it's hot, isn't it?"

He shook his head, lack of comprehension on his red face. I said, "Look up above you, Porter. That's why it's hot. Those are lamps. You're a movie man — you were. You should know something about infra-red light. With enough infra-red light and a special fast film, you can take pictures in what appears to be darkness. I know just a little about it, but one of your technicians told me plenty this afternoon."

And at last he was frightened, scared. Scared to death. The fright spread visibly over his face like something poured on his skin.

"Sure," I said. "Only infra-red isn't in the visible spectrum — it's heat, not a light wave but a heat wave. A heat wave you can use for taking pictures. That's why the noisy air conditioner, so we wouldn't roast in here; that, and to cover up the sound of the camera."

He turned away from me, looked at the others, then slowly craned his head toward me again. "You get it now, don't you?" I asked him. "All the time you and the rest of us were watching the film I had run off, a camera was making a filmed record of us all." I pointed to the screen; if you looked for it, you could see the hole, the big lens. "And perfectly timed, Porter, so that every little twitch of expression can be coordinated with the exact scene of the murder picture that caused that expression." I let him think about it, then added, "I'm anxious to see what happened to your face every time the camera panned to the man on the grass, at the base of those bushes — the man who saw you murder Melba. And especially when the film showed me — as you — when I climbed out of that window and shoved the body into the pool. Think about it a little. Eleven people watching the murder film in darkness; no reason to dissemble, or make much effort to hide the expressions of shock or fear or revulsion on your face. Eleven people: Mrs. French, who thought she'd killed Melba, and nine other innocent persons gathered here — and you, Porter, the real murderer. How do you think you'll look in the film we just took with those?" I pointed at the lamps over our heads.

He crumbled. It looked as if he were starting to sag apart, the muscles getting lax under the skin. I gave him the last of it. "This, all of it, was set up just for you. I built it all around you, Porter. The murder re-enaction, the infra-red bit, and even one more thing just to clinch it. Even this is being filmed, Porter, with your guilt and fear all over you. Listen." I walked to the air conditioner, switched it off. In the heavy silence the whir of the camera could be heard, still running. "Everything you've done, almost everything you've thought, since you came into this room, we'll have wrapped up in tin cans by tomorrow. With sound, this time. I had all the facilities of your own studio to work with. You know something, Porter? You're just as dead as Melba."

"Melba," he said. His shoulders slumped and his face lost its twisted look, became quite calm. "She was driving me crazy," he said. "Melba was a beautiful woman. Terribly, horribly attractive. Like a drug, a disease. I was in love with her. I never stopped loving her. I wrote her letters, and she used them to force me to do things. Made me put her in the movie. She . . . humiliated me, told me about other men." His voice was nearly without inflection, a soft, almost casual sound. "I enjoyed killing her. I even waited at the window after I returned to the house, to make sure she didn't have a chance to live. I enjoyed it then for an hour afterward. But not since then. Not since then."

He became quiet, and I glanced around the room at the others. Every eye was on Porter, each face drawn, each frozen in its own fixed expression. I saw it on their faces, not Porter's, and looked back at him.

It was just a little gun, but it was a gun. I didn't see where he'd taken it from. Everybody had been briefly searched before entering the projection room, but Porter had managed to get in here with the gun he now held in his hand. His expression was still the same calm one as he asked me, "How did you know, Scott? How could you be so sure it was I?"

"Alan Grant," I said. He knew what I meant, even if nobody else did yet.

He nodded his big head. "I see. I knew that was a mistake." He raised the gun.

I took a step toward him. "Don't be a fool. Policemen are at both exits." I took another step, hoping I could get close enough to him. "Face it, Porter. There's no way out."

I was wrong. There was one way, and he took it. Before I could stop him he shoved the small gun's muzzle into his mouth and pulled the trigger. The sound was muffled, not loud at all. He stood erect for what seemed a long time; then he fell, and the silence ended.

Women screamed, and even men jumped out of their chairs. Everything was mixed up after that. People milled around, police came into the room, Yolanda hugged my arm. In a relatively quiet moment Jay Kennedy drew me aside. He was sober.

"Fine job, Scott," he said. First time he'd called me Scott. "I don't quite understand just how you were so sure it was A.A. I told A.A. the whole story Alan Grant gave us. But it was so confused —"

"That's not the important point about Grant," I said. "It was the fact that Porter tried to kill Grant. Pushed him out the window. Actually that was the crux as far as I was concerned. Grant's been drunk a thousand times, and I couldn't swallow the unbelievable coincidence of his falling out of his window today, of all days. Too convenient. So I figured he was pushed."

He kept frowning. I went on, "Except for me, only two people knew that Alan saw the murder committed — you and Porter. I told you earlier why I'd eliminated you. That left your co-producer. There were a few other angles. You'd told me he practically forced you to use Melba in Wagon Wheels; if she was such a horrible actress, there had to be some reason other than her ability as an actress. That was enough for me; as long as I felt sure he was guilty, I didn't need to know much about his motive. And I knew Porter could have had the opportunity."

He nodded, clapped me on the back and walked away.

Yolanda squeezed my arm. "Shell."

"Yes?" I looked at her, waiting for the gushing words, ready to say, "Oh, it was nothing much. Not for me." I waited as she smiled up at me. "Shell," she cooed, "didn't I look good?"

"Oh, it was nothing . . . Huh?"

"In the movie. Didn't I look good? Oh, I'm so grateful you let me play the corpse."

"You are, huh?"

"Yes, Shell. It was a real break."

"It was, huh?"

She squeezed my arm. I think I had a premonition then. Well, that about wrapped it up. After a while the hubbub died down. It was all over. . . .

I looked around the office. I sat in my zebra-striped chair, feet propped on my mangrove-root desk. The rent was paid well in advance with the fee from the Melba murder case. That one had caused quite a to-do in Hollywood. The movies all came out beautifully, the whole thing from the murder re-enactment until Porter had shot himself. And, of course, me. Shell Scott in action. Producer, director, writer, and star. Orson Welles crossed with Jack Webb. Hollywood's wonder boy, Shell Scott. But — no Yolanda.

Several prints of my epic had turned up around town and there'd been a good deal of favorable talk, some about me, but it turned out that as an actor I stank like eight-year-old eggs. Some of the talk had been combined with choking laughter. I guess the scene where I shoved Yolanda into the pool and spun about with my eyebrows wig-wagging, lips twitching, might have been a bit overdone. But all the other actors and actresses had got jobs because of the film. And, yes, Yolanda.

Melba's scenes in Wagon Wheels were being shot over, with Yolanda. She was scheduled for a good part in Wagon Tracks. Oh, I saw her once in a while, but not like before, in the office. The place seemed different, lonelier. I pressed the buzzer on the intercom and said, "How about coming in for a bit, Lorene?"

Lorene was blonde, dressed in white. And I'd had the desk in the front office painted black. Those were the only changes. Lorene came in. She didn't enter, and she couldn't yet take dictation like Yolanda had. But she was learning. We talked a while, then Lorene went back to her desk.

I sat with my foot propped on a mangrove pot. It had been a week since the last job. A week. Hollywood has a short memory; what counts is now, not then. So I sat at my desk and waited for a client. And thought about Yolanda.