This was what was in his mind as he stepped up and opened the door. Then he stepped quickly back, mouth gaping as he brought his stare to focus on the blond and ripely rounded figure of Muriel Miranda.
She was clad in a black silk suit with a short jacket and a snug-fitting skirt. Her straw-blond hair had a carelessly combed look, her tanned, broad-cheeked face was set and unsmiling. The eyes still looked as if they'd had their mom-ing rinse in bluing but they seemed alert and purposeful as they gave him a quick inspection and slid beyond him to scan the room. When she stepped silently past him he voiced the first thing that entered his mind.
'How did you know I was here?'
'I followed your girl friend,**
'But-'
'I decided if anyone knew where you'd been hiding, she would.' She stopped in the center of the room and waited for him to close the door. 'You sent her, didn't you? You thought Luis might have beaten your stepbrother with one of his canes, didn't you?'
'By the looks of his face, somebody had, 5 *
'Have you got that metal tip?'
Jeff took the golden thimble from his pocket and slipped it over the end of his little finger. She looked at it and then began to unbutton her jacket.
'I got to thinking after your girl left,' she said. 'There were only three canes, but Luis likes to ride, and I decided to do some more looking,'
She pushed back the front of the jacket and now Jeff saw the leather loop hanging over the waistband of the skirt. While he stood there wondering what came next, she pulled her stomach in and elevated her chest. With the pressure eased on the skirt, she withdrew a plaited, alii-
gator-leather riding crop. She tapped it lightly across her palm and thrust it at him, her blue gaze bright and intent.
'Try that for size/' she said.
Jeff took the crop. It was heavier than it looked and as he tried to flex it he found it had the hard resiliency of a thin steel spring. When he slipped the ferrule over the end it fitted exactly.
He hefted it again before he put it on the table, the ferrule still in place, and now, recalling his impressions of Luis Miranda, he understood that this was a proper instrument for such a man to use.
'He knew you were planning to go away with Grayson/* Jeff said,
'I guess he did.'
''What changed your mind about your husband?'
She scowled at him. 'How do you mean? 3 '
**Sit down a minute,' Jeff indicated a chair by the windows. He watched her hesitate and then accept his suggestion. 'I know my stepbrother/' he said. 'And maybe a little about your husband. You'd been around when you married him, hadn't you? You were no shrinking violet. You must have either been in love with him or thought you had a good deal, or was it a little of both?'
She had taken a small gold case from her bag as he was speaking and now she put a cigarette in her mouth and held her face up for a light. When she had it she inhaled. She blew smoke at the ceiling and then she laughed, an abrupt sardonic sound.
Td been around all right,' she said. 'Ever since I got out of business school I've been standing on my own two feet. I started out as a sort of typist-secretary with a hotel When I had some experience I did a lot of things. I've been a secretary, hostess, publicity woman, social director. I worked for hotels in New York, the White Mountains, Florida, Montauk. When they were getting the staff to-
gether for the Tamanaco It sounded Hie a good deal so I came down.
'In the hotel business you see a lot of men. All kinds of men with all kinds of ideas. I learned how to handle them, how to get along with them, how to spot the different types. I thought I'd seen about everything, until I met Luis and changed my mind,' She flicked ashes in the general direction of a metal tray and considered the past a moment before she continued.
'A girl gets tired of standing on her own two feet after a while. Sure, I wanted to get married. I always intended to. But with men around you all the time and plenty of chances, you put it off. You want to be sure you're getting something good for what you have to give. Well, Luis was different. I didn't pay too much attention to him at first. He was older and had grown children, but that didn't seem important because he didn't look old, or act it.
'He was handsome, distinguished-looking. He came from a fine family and I knew he had money, which isn't something you readily do without. He was considerate and polite and he was persistent. So'—she lifted one hand and let it fall—'I fell for him. I was more in love with him than Td ever been before, and I knew something else, which to a woman is important. He loved me; he still does. Probably too much/'
'He was jealous,' Jeff prompted when she hesitated.
'God, yes! But it was more than that. They don't think the way we do down here. Luis's idea of a wife was a woman who stayed home and sat on her fanny when he wasn't around. It didn't matter if I was bored stiff. It didn't matter if I got fat or lazy or drank too much—just so I stayed home. When we went to parties, and because of his business that was fairly often, he was always at my elbow. Like a leech. The minute I talked to some attractive guy we had a threesome. It was awful. I told him so. Sometimes
I'd scream at Mm and I couldn't even get an argument out o? him. It is the custom/' she said, mimicking. 'One must be proper. The wife of Luis Miranda must conform at all times.
'Well, I wasn't cut out for the hothouse treatment. I'd been around too much. What good is money when you can't have any fun with it? He had most of the servants bribed and until recently I couldn't even drive the car by myself. I was practically a prisoner, and if I could have got my hands on any money I would have left him long ago. But I made up my mind I wasn't going back to New York empty-handed. I never had any cash. I could charge what I needed. I might have managed the price of a plane ticket, but that wasn't enough. I figured I'd earned a lot more than that.'
'Where'd you get the tan—Macuto?' Jeff asked, remembering the beach cottage Miranda had mentioned.
'Macuto? Hah!' She mashed out her cigarette and sat back, brow still furrowed and distance in her hard, fixed gaze. 'I got it in the back yard. We got a pool with a high fence. I sit out there stripped down as much as I dare and bake.'
'What about those?' Jeff pointed to the emerald solitaire, the platinum watch with the diamond-studded band, the diamond-and-aquamarine cocktail ring.
'The emerald is mine. The others belonged to his' first wife. He loans them to me and keeps the rest locked up. He puts them out on consignment from week to week.'
'If he kept you handcuffed the way you say he did, how did you manage those afternoons at Macuto with my stepbrother?'
That brought her eyes into focus. 'How did you know?'
'Your husband told me.'
She considered this a moment; then shrugged. 'He didn't know about it at first. I suppose I raised such a fuss he
decided to see what would happen if he let down the bars a little. He said I could drive my car without a chauffeur and go out afternoons by myself/'
'By that time you already liked my stepbrother/' Jeff said. 'You were beginning to fall for his charming ways- ox was it just the idea that he might be the answer to your problem of getting back to the States?'
'Maybe I was a little in love with him/ 5 she said. 'But there was never any talk about my going away with him until that detective—* 5
'Harry Baker.'
'—told him about the stock he was going to get if he went home.'
'You knew about the Las Vegas thing?'
'Yes. Arnold told me everything.'
'Not everything,'
'What?'
Jeff took a breath and then, not quite knowing why he bothered, he spoke of the Arnold Grayson he had known as a boy, the trouble he had been in, the mean and vicious things he had done. He watched the blue eyes
