She'll Hate Me Tomorrow Page 6

“I meant to say, I like being here with you,” she said primly. “It just started to come out wrong. I don’t think those men will come back. I shouldn’t impose on you any more.”

  “It’s hardly an imposition, the way I’ve been making use of your soft white body.”

  Her color had started to fade, but now she blushed again. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No, I’m not. Just building up to making fun with you.”

  She had started to raise her coffee cup, but she set it down again and gave him an interested look.

  “Any-time Annie,” he said wickedly. “The only time she ever said no, she didn’t understand the question.”

  Leaping to her feet, she stood glaring down at him. With a lithe movement he got to his feet, moved around the table and took her in his arms. Momentarily she struggled, her expression angry, then suddenly her arms shot around his neck and her lips came up to his.

  “All right,” she whispered. “So I’m a pushover for you. I’m not for just anybody.”

  “That’s the way I want you,” he said, sweeping her up into his arms and heading for the bedroom. “I think I’ll keep you around a while longer.”

  “As long as you want,” she murmured into his neck. “When I get to be a nuisance, just tell me and I’ll go.”

  It was an hour later before they got around to their second cup of coffee.

  That same evening, about midnight, Ross was making a tour of the gaming room when a striking brunette in a low-cut black evening gown approached him. Several times earlier he had noticed her at the roulette table and wondered who she was, for he had never spotted her in the club before.

  About thirty, she had smooth, dusky skin and sensual lips which pouted as though they had been freshly bitten. A small, attractive but slightly flat nose and almond-shaped eyes gave her a faintly oriental look. Slim-waisted, she had a bosom like a pouter pigeon, a good deal of it exposed by her low-cut gown.

  “You’re Clancy Ross, aren’t you?” she inquired in a husky voice.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “My name is Christine Franklin. I’ve been having a run of bad luck, and they tell me I have to see you to cash a check.”

  “That’s right, miss—” Glancing at her left hand, which bore a sparkling diamond and a wedding band, he amended it to, “Mrs. Franklin. How large a check do you want to cash?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Hmm. Are you local?”

  Shaking her head, she drew a white card from her evening bag and handed it to him. The card read: FRANKLIN REAL ESTATE COMPANY, INC. and gave a Kansas City address and phone number. In the lower left hand corner was printed: GORDON FRANKLIN, PRESIDENT

  “Gordie is my husband,” she explained. “I’m vacationing here.”

  “I see. If you’ll step into my office for a minute I can probably accommodate you.”

  He escorted her out into the foyer and down the hall to his office. Stella, behind the cloakroom counter, gave the brunette an appraising look as they passed.

  Inside the office the woman gave a quick glance around, noting the huge mahogony desk, the fireplace in one wall, the small bar along the opposite wall, and the single surrealistic painting over the desk. Her face registered approval at Ross’ decorating taste. Approaching the bar, she placed her evening bag on it and opened it.

  “You’ll want some identification other than my husband’s business card, I suppose.”

  “Naturally,” the gambler said pleasantly.

  Drawing a wallet from the bag, she produced a Missouri driver’s license made out to Mrs. Christine Franklin. Glancing at the physical description, Ross noted that she was five feet five, weighed a hundred and twenty-four pounds, had black hair and brown eyes. Her age was given as thirty-one.

  “The description tallies,” he said, handing it back. “But those cold statistics hardly do you justice.”

  Her full lips formed into a smile. “Thank you, sir.”

  Returning the license to the wallet, she replaced it in her bag and drew out a checkbook. Ross moved over to the desk, lifted a desk pen from its holder and carried it to her.

  “Thank you,” she said again. “Shall I make it out to the club or just to cash?”

  “Either.”

  There was a safe in one corner of the room, but Ross didn’t bother to open it. Instead he drew ten fifty-dollar bills from his wallet as she wrote the check.

  When she finished writing the check and handed it to him, he examined it carefully. It was made to cash and was drawn on a Kansas City bank. He noted that she had numbered it “1.”

  “First check you ever drew on this account?” he asked.

  She looked startled, then smiled. “You mean because I numbered it one? I start numbering over each month.”

  Feminine logic in business matters had always rather escaped the gambler, but her explanation was so typically feminine, he lost all suspicion of the check. He was sure no professional check passer would offer such an explanation. He placed the check in his wallet. She tucked the bills into her bag and returned his pen.

  She showed no immediate intention of leaving when he returned the pen to its desk holder. With one elbow on the bar, she glanced about the office again.

  “This is a very pleasant room,” she said. “However, except for the desk, it looks more like a playroom than an office.”

  “Some play takes place here occasionally,” he admitted.

  “I’ll bet. I imagine more than one lonely widow has made the excuse of wanting to cash a check in order to become better acquainted with the club’s handsome proprietor.”

  He grinned at her. “Is that a confession?”

  “Oh, I needed to cash a check. Your wheel had me quite broke. But I noticed you several times tonight and had been hoping for an excuse to meet you.”

  “You’re not a lonely widow.”

  “In a way I am. I’m a business widow. I see my husband at odd moments when he isn’t showing clients properties. We haven’t taken a vacation together in five years. He’s always too busy making more money.”

  “If your hobby’s roulette, he probably needs to,” the gambler suggested.

  She shook her head. “Usually I’m more lucky. Roulette has paid for my last several vacations. I’ll probably get even and stick you for some money before the night’s over.”

  “You have my best wishes,” he said with a shrug. “Would you like a drink before you start trying your luck again?”

  “I’ve been waiting for an invitation,” she said with a smile. “Straight bourbon with water behind it, please.”

  The bar was set flush against the wall, with the liquor and glass racks above it and a refrigerating unit with sliding doors beneath it. Without stirring from his position Ross poured her a shot of bourbon, dropped cubes from the automatic ice maker into a pair of glasses, filled one with water, and put soda and a mere dash of Scotch in the other.

  “To your improved luck,” he said, raising his glass.

  Smiling acknowledgement of the toast, she tossed off the bourbon in one gulp and took a sip of water. Ross took a bare taste of his own drink and offered her a cigarette. When she accepted, he held his lighter to it and then lit one of his own.

  “Another drink?” he inquired.

  “All right,” she agreed instantly.

  He poured the shot-glass full.

  “I probably drink too much,” she said, toying with the glass.

  He made no comment.

  “The gypsies call alcohol ‘the little death’,” she said. “Sometimes it’s easier to be only partially alive than to face life with all your faculties alert.”

  “You have some gypsy in you?”

  “Half. My husband doesn’t know that. He’d turn green if he did.”

  “Why?” Ross asked in honest surprise. “Romany blood is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “You don’t know my husband. He traces his family back to the Revolution. They were Tories, of course. No relation to Benjamin F
ranklin. He thinks anything but Anglo-Saxon blood is tainted. He forgave me for being part French, but he’d never recover from the shock of learning the French is French-gypsy.”

  “Doesn’t sound as though you and your husband share many confidences,” he ventured.

  “How close can a woman my age get to a man of sixty-three?” she inquired. She tossed off her second drink, took another sip of water and smiled at him. “But I’m sure you’re not interested in my marital problems. That ends my complaints about Gordie. I promise not to mention him again.”

  So she was married to a man thirty-two years older than she, Ross thought. It had been his experience that women who made a point of emphasizing a large age difference between themselves and their husbands were usually obliquely announcing their availability.

  In most cases he carefully avoided entanglement with married women, but if Christine Franklin was telling the truth, she was married in name only. And she was certainly physically beautiful. He began to generate a little interest.

  “Another drink?” he asked.

  Killing her cigarette in an ash tray on the bar, she shook her head. “You’ll think I’m an alcoholic. I’d rather go thirsty and keep your opinion of me higher.”

  “I don’t care how much a woman drinks, providing she can handle it.”

  “Now you’ve put your finger on my problem. I get drunk and maudlin. I’ve really had enough, thanks. I’ll get back to the table and let you get back to work.”

  Punching out his cigarette, he took another bare sip of his drink and left the rest standing on the bar. He accompanied her back as far as the archway into the gaming room, then stood watching the seductive sway of her hips as she made for the roulette table.

  From a few feet away Stella’s voice said, “Quite beautiful, isn’t she?”

  Turning, Ross walked over to the cloakroom counter. “Yes. She’s vacationing here from Kansas City.”

  “An old friend of yours?” Stella asked.

  “No. Just met her.”

  “Oh. You were so long in your office, I thought perhaps you were discussing old times.”

  Ross gave her an amused look. “Why, you’re jealous, aren’t you?”

  “Of a woman that age?” Stella said with raised brows. “She must be close to forty.”

  “Thirty-one. I saw her driver’s license.”

  “Oh, you traded vital statistics? I was going to say she was well preserved, because I thought she was older. But if she’s only thirty-one, she must have lived a hard life.”

  “Not half as hard as the one you’re going to live if you start getting possessive,” he growled at her, and walked away.

  CHAPTER IX

  ABOUT FIFTEEN MINUTES before closing time Ross was watching one of the dice games when a hand touched his arm. Turning, he looked down into the dark, smiling eyes of Christine Franklin.

  “Hi,” he said. “Any better luck?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Didn’t I warn you? I’d like to buy back my check, if you don’t mind.” She fanned out and extended five one-hundred-dollar bills.

  “Sure,” he said agreeably, taking out his wallet and removing the check.

  As he put away the money, she shredded the check into small pieces and dropped it in a nearby ash tray.

  “I took your wheel for over two thousand dollars after I got even,” she said. “With what I brought in with me, I have quite a roll in my bag. I’m a little afraid of carrying so much money around in a strange town at this time of night. Do you furnish escort service for big winners?”

  “The taxi drivers in this town make sure casino patrons get home safely,” Ross told her. “It’s part of the system. But if you prefer a personal escort, I’d be glad to drive you home.”

  “I’d feel safer, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. You ready to leave now?”

  “Any time you’re ready.”

  Calling over his head croupier, Ross gave him instructions about closing up. Then he escorted Christine to the cloakroom, got her evening wrap from Stella and held it for her. As they stepped onto the elevator, Ross glanced back. Stella threw him a bright, brittle smile which exposed all of her small white teeth. The gambler noted that they were clamped tightly together.

  As they climbed into Ross’ Lincoln, he asked, “Where are you staying?”

  “I’ve rented a beach cottage at Stowe Point.”

  Stowe Point was on Muskie Lake, at the north edge of town. He took Lakeview Drive to Halfway Junction, then turned off the main road onto the gravel road which circled the small lake.

  Stowe Point was about a mile and a half from the highway and consisted of some two dozen rental cottages strung along the water’s edge on both sides of the narrow point. During the summer season it was a pretty populous place, but as it was now mid-September, few of the cottages were occupied. There was a single light some hundred yards beyond Christine’s cottage, on their side of the point, another they could barely see about a quarter mile away on the opposite side of the point. Otherwise all the cottages within their range of vision seemed to be vacant.

  When Christine pointed out her cottage, Ross parked alongside it, got out, rounded the car and held open the door for her.

  As she climbed out and probed in her bag for a key, she said, “I haven’t any Scotch, but I can give you some bourbon if you’d like to come in.”

  “I drink rather sparingly,” Ross said. “I’ll settle for a cigarette while you have a nightcap.”

  Keying open the door, she led him into a large room furnished with rustic furniture padded with tied-on cushions. In one corner of the room, a single low-watt bulb glowed in a lamp made from a fancy liquor bottle. By its light Ross could dimly make out an open door which seemed to lead to a kitchen, and another closed door which he guessed was to the bedroom. The cottage seemed to contain only three rooms.

  As Ross closed the entrance door behind him, Christine said, “The liquor’s in the cabinet next to the kitchen sink, if you’d like to pour me a drink while I shed my wrap. The wall switch is to the right of the kitchen door. If you change your mind, mix yourself a drink, too.”

  She crossed to the closed door, opened it, switched on the overhead light, and smiled back at him before closing the door behind her. Ross moved into the kitchen, found the wall switch and flicked it upward. A light over the sink went on.

  It was an old-fashioned kitchen with painted wooden cupboards and waist-high wooden wainscoting around the walls, but it was furnished with all modern conveniences, including an electric stove and a purring refrigerator.

  He found a three-quarters-full bottle of bourbon where she had told him it would be, located a shot-glass and water tumbler in another cabinet and set them on the sink. He got some ice cubes from the refrigerator, made a glass of ice water and carried it, the bottle and shot-glass into the front room. Setting them on an unfinished wooden cocktail table in front of the rustic sofa, he poured the shot-glass full and set the bottle next to it. Then he seated himself, lit a cigarette and waited.

  Five minutes passed. When his cigarette got down to a stub, he walked over to the wide fireplace and tossed it into the cold ashes there. Moodily he contemplated the moose head mounted over the mantel and the moose stared back at him sightlessly from its glass eyes.

  There was a small envelope lying on the mantel. Idly he moved closer to look at it. The light flowing from the kitchen doorway supplemented the dim corner lamp enough for him to see that it was an airline ticket envelope.

  Ross did not make a habit of prying into others’ personal business. If it had been a letter, he wouldn’t have thought of opening it. But he figured there was nothing very personal about an airline ticket. He lifted the envelope and drew out the ticket with the sole purpose of seeing on what date Christine planned to fly back to Kansas City.

  The ticket didn’t tell him, because the return date was left open. But it told him something else. The woman who called herself Christine Franklin hadn’t
come from Kansas City. The ticket was a round trip from Chicago.

  Replacing the ticket in its envelope, he returned the envelope to the mantle and went back to the divan. Seating himself, he thoughtfully regarded the closed bedroom door.

  Another five minutes passed before the door finally opened and Christine appeared. She had shed considerably more than her evening wrap. She wore a dark blue negligée of some filmy material which dimly showed the whiteness of her body beneath it. She had left the bedroom overhead light on, and it silhouetted her lush figure as though she were stark naked. He could clearly see the smooth roundness of her full hips and the tapered length of perfectly formed legs.

  She stood for a few moments, smiling at him, giving him time for a thorough study of her silhouette before slowly swaying toward him on slippered feet. Sinking onto the cushion next to him, she picked up the shot-glass and tossed off its contents. Without touching the water chaser, she leaned back and looked up a him with a mixture of challenge and anticipation in her eyes.

  Without a word Ross rose and walked into the bedroom. There were two doors, one leading into a closet, the other into a bathroom. After glancing into both and finding them empty, he checked the single bedroom window. It was locked shut.

  Leaving the bedroom, he circled into the kitchen and checked a small pantry he had not previously looked into. The single window there was also closed and locked.

  There were two windows in the front room, one on either side of the door. When he pulled back the drapes, he discovered both were closed and locked. Sliding home the bolt on the front door, he returned to the sofa and seated himself.

  Christine was staring at him in astonishment. “What was all that?”

  “Just checking to make sure your husband hadn’t planted a photographer to get divorce evidence,” he said easily.

  Her eyes widened. “Silly. He’s in Kansas City.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess I’m just overcautious.”

  She leaned forward to pick up the bourbon bottle and pour herself another shot. The movement caused her negligée to part at the top and one plump, red-tipped breast popped into view. When she raised the glass to drink, the negligée parted even farther, exposing her clear to the waist. She set down the empty glass and gave him a dreamy smile, seemingly unaware that both breasts were totally bare.