This Girl for Hire by G. G. Fickling Page B

intestine. If you want the facts, ma’am, you tossed me one below the belt.”
    â€œI’m sorry.” Then I suddenly remembered Lori Aces. With her talent for swimming she should easily have maneuvered her ninety-odd pounds to a safe landing place. Maybe even the beach.
    He interrupted my train of thought. “How about some coffee?”
    â€œFirst things first,” I said. “How about some clothes?”
    â€œFresh out of clothes,” he teased. “Plenty of coffee.”
    â€œHow’d you get me here?” I asked, trying to sit up. He pushed me down in a firm, nice manner. “You swallowed a lot of water. I had to carry you up the hill. You weren’t about to walk on your own two feet. What were you doing swimming around half naked in the first place?”
    â€œAn old custom of mine. It scaresthe tar out of sharks.”
    â€œGreat!” he said. “You scared the tar out of me. I thought you were a shark for a few seconds. That is, until I put my arm around your waist.”
    â€œAnd that convinced you?”
    â€œWell, no shark I ever knew had what you’ve got,” he laughed. There was a long silence.
    â€œWhat’s your name?” I asked.
    â€œRalph—Ralph Smith. What’s yours?”
    â€œHoney West.”
    â€œThe female private eye?”
    â€œYou carried me up the hill,” I said. “Have you got any doubts about my sex?”
    â€œNot in the least. What are you doing at Catalina?”
    â€œInvestigating the buffalo. What’s your excuse?”
    â€œI’m writing a novel.”
    â€œWhat’s it about?”
    Smith walked over to stoke the fire. “That nasty, dirty little business called television.”
    â€œYou sound as if you know something about the subject.”
    He was pensive for a moment. “I do. I was around when the first TV show went on the air in Los Angeles.”
    â€œAre you still in television?”
    â€œNope. It got too dirty for me.”
    â€œYou ever know a writer named Rod Caine?” He bent over the fire and tossed on another log. “Yeah,” he said after a pause, “I know him.”
    â€œWhat’s he like?”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œHe may be working his way to thegas chamber. If he’s the sensible type maybe I can warn him off before he kills a client of mine.”
    Smith stood up, turned and looked at me, half grinning, half serious. “You’re kidding! Who’s your client?”
    I told him the story. He listened attentively, especially when I mentioned the poisoned drink mixed at the Golden Slipper and Lori’s disappearance earlier in the huge swell. Smith, expressing concern for her safety, pulled on a raincoat and hat.
    â€œYou should have told me there were two of you,” he said. “Even if she made shore, she might be battered to pieces in this storm.”
    He ran out of the cabin and the wind lashed the door shut behind him. It was a furious gale leadened with rain. If Lori hadn’t found shelter, her chances for survival in this kind of storm were about as good as a hundred-mile-an-hour approach to a hairpin curve with no warning signs. I wondered how
Hell’s Light
was taking the blow. Probably the customers in the swimming-pool bar were so frightened, they were drinking with both hands and getting stiffer than boards. I hoped Sam Aces wasn’t too stiff. His kind of stiffness could turn out to be permanent if he didn’t keep a weather eye open.
    I searched around for some clothes. In the closet was an old pair of white dungarees with the cuffs rolled up. There was quite a space to make up for around the middle, but an old piece of rope helped cinch in the waist A red-striped cotton shirt, minus any buttons, hung on the same hook. I slipped it onand tucked the tails inside the trousers to keep the shirt together.
    Smith returned a few minutes later soaked to the skin and breathing heavily. “I