Shot on Location Read Free Page B

was spread on the vacant chair beside her. He picked it up and swabbed his face and shoulders.
    The girl on the foam rubber pad raised her head. “Hey,” she protested, “that’s my towel!”
    “Thanks,” Brad said, and tossed it back on the chair.
    It was all right for an opener. The brunette had looked up from the book and smiled at him. He would get back to that later. Now he crossed the pool decking to the glass doors leading into the lobby of the complex, ignored the “No Bare Feet” sign and went inside. A pleasant red-head of about thirty-five was on duty at the reception desk. He asked for his mail. She gave it to him and he asked for a dime for the paper-vending machine.
    “You owe me for three papers already this week,” she chided, “and I’m all out of dimes. All I have are quarters—”
    “And that’s exactly what I need,” Brad said. “Thanks. Put it on my bill.”
    He plucked the quarter from her hesitating hand and stepped into the recreation room, where a coffee machine dispensed a cup of hot black and a dime in change. The dime went into the paper vender and he was then ready to return to the pool area and a chair far enough away from the two girls to avoid overhearing the blonde’s description of her latest session in nude group therapy and close enough to keep the brunette in view. He glanced at his mail: two throwaways and a credit card billing and an unexpected windfall—a reproduction fee from a long forgotten script he had written for a now defunct radio series. The cheque was for almost six hundred dollars. It gave a bright sparkle to the morning, and he thought of asking the brunette to have dinner with him, at the Century Plaza, because a first impression was always important. He tucked the letter with the cheque and the bill under the belt of his trunks and picked up the newspaper to look at the obituary columns. It wasn’t a morbid act. It was one of the tricks of the trade that Estelle had taught him.
    “People die and leave estates to be settled. Check out the obits every day. You’ll be surprised how many leads you pick up.”
    And so this was breakfast: a cup of coffee and the obituary column—but Brad didn’t get that far this morning, because a late bulletin on the front page magnetized his attention and sent time spinning backwards again.
    LOCAL PRODUCER IN MISSING GREEK PLANE—ATHENS (AP) Harry Avery, Hollywood film and television producer, was reported to be a passenger on a chartered sports plane which failed to return to its base on the Greek island of Corfu last night. A brief radio message believed sent from the plane late yesterday afternoon indicated some unspecified trouble in flight.
    Greek authorities have ordered a search of the mountainous area where the plane was apparently downed.
    Mrs. Avery, the former actress Rhona Brent, is in seclusion in a hotel suite in Athens where Avery was preparing for the production of a major film.
    Somewhere in Europe. Of course that bland receptionist at Harry’s office had known all the time where to reach him. But now nobody knew where to find Harry Avery, and that left Rhona sitting alone in an Athens hotel, possibly a widow, with all Harry’s money and nobody to protect her from the scavengers who would move in when she was most vulnerable. More important at the moment, she was the only person, aside from Harry, who knew the origin of
The Bandits;
she was the only person who knew what had happened to the carbons of the scripts he had left in the garage of her now-extinct bungalow court. Brad’s coffee turned cold while he thought about it. He wasn’t superstitious and he didn’t consider himself psychic; but he had survived the jungle by instinct and hunches, and instinct was giving him strong vibrations now. It seemed strange that he had awakened thinking of Rhona. Strange how the unexpected cheque came in the mail. Strange how there was just one woman he could never get out of his mind.
    Instinct was followed