Dress Her in Indigo by John D. MacDonald Page B

Nesta. He wrote to a friend in Miami and gave his Mexico City address. So we looked him up, of course."
    "Naturally. Part of your investigation. Go on."
    It was turning sour. You can take only so many chances. But when it does turn sour, at least you know at what point it started to go bad, and that can be useful. "Go on with what?"
    "With what he said to you about me, of course."
    "Just that if you seemed uncooperative, to mention his name."
    He finished the wine, licked his finger, ran it around and around the edge of the wine glass until he created a thin, high musical note.
    He smiled at me. It was a mocking and flirtatious smile. "Bullshit," he said softly.
    I smiled back. "At least I gave it a try, Bruce."
    "Dear fellow, little games of intrigue, little fabrics of deception, they're too much a part of my scene. I had years of stage design in New York, and years of set design on the Coast. I'll give you one little gold star for your forehead, though. You are a little more subtle than you look. Your type, all huge and hearty and outdoorsy, I expect just a kind of clumsy blundering about. Rocko, for example. Dear God, if at this stage of my life I hadn't learned how to protect myself from anything any piece of rough trade could dream up, I'd be terribly vulnerable and innocent, wouldn't I? Don't you think you'd best leave now?"

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    "Never argue with the umpire. Come on, Meyer."
    He walked us out to the gate. As he unlocked it he said, "I suppose that if you are really what you claim to be, and you really want to know whether it was an accident or suicide, I'd think that that little brunette friend of the Bowie girl's would give you the most clues. Actually, her father is clomping all over town trying to locate her. A perfectly dreadful, dreary man from one of those ghastly midwest states that begin with a vowel. Product of Kiwanis and Dale Carnegie, and once he affixes himself to you, you have to pry him off as if he were a fat little pilot fish."
    As I thanked him his two guests arrived, spectacularly, in a little custom Lotus Elan convertible in bubblegum pink with black upholstery. The woman came out from under the wheel, leggy, slender, tall, nimble, in light-blue linen sheath dress to midthigh, sleeveless. She had a wild and riotous ruff of wind-spilled lion-mane hair, high-heeled sandals and purse to match the car. For just an instant she was twenty-something, but then in the light across her face she was thirty-something, with a twenty odd body. The boy was in his early twenties, in white shirt open at the throat, crisp khakis, and a powder blue jacket that was a precise match with the lady's dress. He was brick-red from the sun. His hair was cropped to a copper bristle. He had a sullen face, heavy features, and he moved with the indolent, indifferent grace and ease of one of the big hunting cats, or one of the many imitations of Brando.
    "Brucey!" she cried in joyous greeting.
    "Becky darling!" he cried.
    Giving us a sidelong questing glance, she ran to embrace the host, saying in a British accent,
    "David had the most fascinating day at the dig. They came upon a whole pocket of tiny beads of bone and jade, and the poor darling had to spend practically the entire day on his knees in the bottom of a monstrous hole, brushing the dust away and picking them up with tweezers. He desperately needs a Iarge whiskey, don't you, darling?"
    The sunbaked boy grunted, and Bruce tried to wove them inside. We had gone a half dozen steps when Becky gave that upperclass commanding caw. "You! I say, you two! Wait up a moment! Bruce? Dearheart, why must one set of guests leave when the next arrives? Your house is rather small, I grant that. But not that small."
    I saw the way it might go, and came back as he murmured protestations to her. I said, "It really wasn't a social call, ma'am. In fact we wouldn't have even got inside the gate if I hadn't tried a little doubletalk. But it only worked for a little while. Mr. Bundy called