The Brink of Murder Read Free Page A

explained. “The trunk goes all the way up to the front seat.”
    “And the front seat sits over the bumper,” Simon said. “Where’s the motor?”
    Chester scowled. “I knew there was something I forgot to ask the salesman. Well, let’s all pile into the front seat and see what happens when I turn on the ignition.”
    The little car took off with a surprising burst of power. The marina receded in the rear-view mirror as Chester turned off on a winding street that would take them across Pacific Coast Highway and thence through the fringes of Marina Beach up to the old section called Marina Heights. Destination was a restored Victorian mansion that Simon had purchased for a song and refurbished for a few grand operas and a concert season. Left behind were the tiny weekend cottages and the plate-glass and concrete boxes of the new tracts. Left behind was the sea that now blended with the lowering sky until only the foam of white water lashing against the rocks gave evidence of its presence.
    Chester shifted into low gear for the climb. “Hannah was ready to try communicating with a ouija board before we got your ship to shore,” he said.
    “Doesn’t she know I’m a big enough boy to play with boats and girls?” Simon asked.
    “Correction,” Wanda insisted. “Not girls, plural; girl, singular.”
    “See?” Chester chided. “I told you that Justice of Peace in Vegas meant business. Which reminds me, Simon, in your gay bachelor days did you know a classy-looking brunette named Carole Amling?”
    “I knew her best when her name was Carole Ehrenberg,” Simon answered. “When she married Barney Amling it put our relationship on a different level.”
    “Barney Amling?” Wanda echoed. “The name is familiar.”
    “It should be. You must have been about eight years old and still trilling hymns in your father’s gospel choir when Barney Amling won his first all-American football honours. He racked up a couple more and a Heinzman trophy before he turned pro’. That’s when he married Carole and broke my sophomore heart. It’s harder to lose an older woman.”
    “I didn’t know that,” Wanda said.
    “When one is a sophomore,” Simon explained. “Later in life the situation reverses. What sparked this discussion of Carole Amling? Where did you meet her, Chester?”
    “She’s at The Mansion right now,” Chester said, “listening to Hannah’s memoirs of her show-biz days. When I left Hannah had covered the phase when the ardent lover crippled her with a Luger fired in jealous rage and was working up to the time you bought The Mansion from her, when she was down to her last annuity, and kept her on as house mother.”
    “Poor Carole,” Simon said.
    “Serves her right!” Wanda insisted. “She should stay at home with her football player.”
    “That,” Chester remarked drily, “is what she wants to do but she needs help. Barney Amling has disappeared.”
    By this time the little car had passed through the wrought-iron gates that marked the entrance to Simon’s property. The doors of a carriage house turned garage stood open and Hannah’s red Rolls-Royce, vintage of 1926, was in its place beside Simon’s new Jaguar. In addition, a new black Cadillac sedan took up half the driveway. Spying a medical symbol attached to the rear licence plate, Simon asked:
    “Is Hannah ill?”
    “Hannah’s fine,” Chester said. “The Caddy belongs to a doctor named Larson. He brought Mrs Amling to see you. She’s too uptight to do any driving herself.”
    Leaving Chester to manage the sea-bag, Simon slipped his arm about Wanda’s shoulder and walked her into the house. Hannah and the unexpected guests were in a first-floor sitting room just off the foyer.
    When Hannah Lee found Chester Jackson, complete with new teaching credentials and an unemployment card, sitting out the line at the local unemployment office, she had hired him on the spot, ostensibly as cook and houseman, which he was not, but actually as