“Keep it nonchalant,” Clavery said nervously. “Nobody’s paying any attention to you.”
It was true. Most of the guests were drifting inside, toward the savage throbbing of bongos as the drums provided a background for a sensually wailing saxophone. People in the living room were beginning to beat their hands and chant in time to the music.
From the inner part of the courtyard, we were able to see the spectacle inside. Elena Sigmon had claimed the center of the floor and was doing a solo. In a piratess costume covering her like a tight bikini, she was answering the tempo of the insistent drums with writhing twists and turns of her slender, long-legged body.
The beat was gradually and subtly accelerating. Flushed from drink, Elena’s small face grew dewy hot with a vicious excitment. She closed her eyes, threw back her head as a frenzied quivering poured through her lithe, firm muscles.
Beyond her, Keith Sigmon killed a drink, tossed the glass to one side. He beat his hands together and yelled encouragement to his daughter. “Do it, baby! Do it!”
Elena responded by pirouetting to tiptoe, arms and body suddenly motionless — except for the unbelievable gyrations of her slender hips.
The guests began to whistle and stamp their feet.
“Now’s your chance to slip inside,” Clavery said tightly.
I nodded and started toward the shadows of the portico. I was almost out of the lighted area when Elena Sigmon went to the next phase of her routine. Her bare legs flashed as her feet began an intricate pattern of movement.
She spun in a half turn. She suddenly faltered. She jerked to a stop; then whipped back to face again in the direction of the courtyard.
Beside me, a sound of frustration rasped from Clavery. “Don’t try it, Rivers,” he said, a quick droop in his voice. “Chill it. She’s spotted you.”
Beyond the tall, open windows, Elena had stood as if recovering from a trance. The lines of her pixie face sharpened, taking the prettiness from the small features. She pushed a couple of people aside as she started from the room, moving toward me. The bongo rhythm hesitated, broke. The high, skirling note of the saxophone dribbled to nothing.
With glances at her and at each other, the guests became uncertain, less at ease. In foggy bewilderment, the first of them followed her into the courtyard. The remainder followed as she planted herself before me.
Under the short, tousled, dark-blond hair, her face was that of a little fox with glittering eyes. “It really is you,” she said, getting back her breath after her exertions. “The unforgettable face. When I glimpsed it, I thought for a second I was seeing things.”
Her glance passed from me, over Van, Fred, and Natalie. “Did you bring Rivers?” Elena asked coolly.
Equally cool, Natalie said, “We thought the added masculinity would be welcome at your party, my dear.”
Elena smiled slyly, dropped a glance at Van, and told Natalie, “I’m sure masculinity is a quality you’d appreciate.”
“The real thing comes in various profiles, sometimes in unsuspected places, my dear.”
“Does it really?”
“Oh, yes,” Natalie said. “Perhaps one day you’ll have the chance to get acquainted with it.”
Elena’s hand half raised, as if she’d take a dig at Natalie’s eyes with her nails. Then she forced her shoulders to relax and gave a soft laugh. “You know how to make with the fancy words, don’t you?” The upraised hand reached to pat Natalie’s cheek. The suppressed urge to scratch was in the motion. “We’re, after all, neighbors and friends and linked by business ties, Mrs. Clavery.” Elena spoke with the condescension of the very young for the very old. “We really shouldn’t argue, you and I.”
Additional guests had arrived, enlarging the group surrounding me in the courtyard. Conversation was buzzing as people wondered what was going on. Even the caterers had drifted toward the promise of excitement.
Keith Sigmon shouldered his way until he was standing before me. He took Elena by the arm, pressuring her aside.
Sigmon’s classically chiseled, once-handsome face was pulling its edges tautly together. Some of the whisky fog was clearing from his eyes.
“Rivers, I thought I made it clear—”
“Really, Keith,” Natalie Clavery said, “we had no idea his presence would prove such an upsetting—”
“Are you telling me you brought him?”
“Of course.”
Sigmon looked at Natalie closely. “I don’t believe you,” he said flatly. “There isn’t a reason in the world why you should bring this two-bit private eye to a party.”
Van Clavery said with a quietness that got through to me at least, “I’d rather you didn’t accuse my wife of being a liar, Keith.”
Natalie moved between her husband and Sigmon. As she looked at Sigmon, a brief, secretive expression came to her eyes. “I’m sure Keith didn’t mean it that way. Did you?” With a slow curving of her lips and a smoldering upsurge of the thing in her eyes, Natalie gave Sigmon a brief charge of her allure.
Looking at her, he swallowed slowly. “Naturally I meant no offense to you, Van, or Fred.”
The buzz of conversation had trickled off. The crowd was restless but quiet, wanting to hear everything that went on. Sigmon was turning toward me. Before he said anything, a voice piped out of the crowd, “That cat came on his own ankles. I’ll clue you. He was here before anybody else.”
Both Sigmon and I looked toward the speaker. It was the combo leader, simpering under the sudden shift of attention.
“What do you mean?” Sigmon asked in a thick voice.
“Like I have said it, Pops,” the musician lighted one of his own breed of cigarettes. “Rivers was making the scene when I got here. We ankled into the house together.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pops, like how could I be otherwise? Who could forget that puss?”
Natalie Clavery edged toward Sigmon. “Keith, we saw him and simply didn’t want to spoil a party.”
He wiped the back of his hand across his high, widow’s-peaked forehead. “I understand,” he said. “It’s okay. But we’ll make with a party. A memorable event. A blast to be long remembered.”
“Take it easy, Keith,” Fred Eppling said.
Sigmon jerked himself away from the lawyer’s touch. “Rivers is trespassing. Makes him fair game, doesn’t it?”
Sigmon’s tone and expression communicated a message to the swarm of guests. Some of them eased fearfully away; other began to crowd in.
“Keith,” Eppling tried again, “why don’t we talk this over?”
“Nothing more to be said,” Sigmon replied. He measured me with his eyes, conscious that every other eye was on him.
Several things didn’t have to be spelled out to me. Sigmon was pretty well drunk, dosed with cockiness and false courage, not a good combination for a man whose secret self-doubts must have plagued him for a long time. He was a man who needed to bully others, to break them, to degrade them as in the case of his daughter. A sick man, maybe. But sick like Ben McJunkin.
Unlike McJunkin, Sigmon didn’t quite have the guts to create frequent opportunities to strut. The opportunities had to be handed to Sigmon.
He thought he had the opportunity now. He reasoned drunkenly that I was in no position to make an overt move. He was confident that his friends would talk him out of it before it was too late, seize his arms, cajole him.
He put a heavy sneer on his face, which I didn’t mind. He took the initial step forward, his hands turning into fists.
I minded. I hit him across the mouth with the back of my right hand. I felt his lips slide across his teeth like banana peels under a heavy rubber heel. A gasp came from the crowd as Sigmon stumbled backward, tripped on his own feet, and fell full length on the flagstones.
He lay there at the feet of all his friends. His face twisted in a grimace of hate. He hated everything and everybody right then, I’m sure. His friends for not having moved on cue. Me for having moved at all.