Murder Queen High Read Online Free PDF Page B

drive from San Diego,” agreed the restaurant owner, fiddling with the card again. “The queen symbol intrigues me — it might be the calling card of a wealthy woman. Yet you say it or this ‘your deal’ inscription has no significance for you.” Insistence raised subtle spikes in his deep voice. Sin shook her dark-red locks.
    “What are you going to do about the waiter responsible?” John Henry wanted to know.
    “Get him up here,” said Barselou decisively. “What’d he look like?”
    That stopped Conover. How do you remember a waiter? “I think he was short and kind of fattish — ”
    “He had red eyes,” added Sin.
    Barselou said, “I know all the waiters who work here at the Ship — I should, since I see to my own hiring and firing. The simple fact, Mr. Conover, is that we have no such waiter.”
    “That’s ridiculous.” The young man shoved to his feet. “Don’t tell me a stranger could walk in here, serve us our meal — and nobody would know the difference! How about the headwaiter? How about the cook?”
    Barselou remained undisturbed, almost mocking. “I hate to think it’s possible. But what else are you suggesting, Mr. Conover?” Before the other man could think of a specific accusation, “Why don’t you come out on the balcony, both of you, and we can watch the staff at work?” He led the way, his nimble bulk dwarfing the slender St. Clair.
    The late supper crowd had thinned out. The small orchestra drifted syrupily through a pit-a-pat chorus of “I’ll See You in My Dreams.” Barselou leaned big fists on the balcony railing, a roughly adzed palm trunk, and stared down. “See him now?”
    The brown head and the red head swiveled slowly, surveying the shadowy pit below. Figures in flowing burnooses flitted like clumsy moths among the candle-lit tables. But after a moment, John Henry nudged his wife’s middle. “See anything, Sin?”
    “They’re all too thin or too tall.”
    “I didn’t expect he’d hang around. He did his job and made a getaway.” He turned around to face Barselou’s big smile.
    “Perhaps it was a joke, Mr. Conover. Perhaps even a joke intended for somebody else. Some of these wealthy visitors have elaborate senses of humor. About all I can do is apologize profoundly — which I do — on behalf of the Ship of the Desert. And to pick up your check, of course.”
    Sin’s hand was tugging at his sleeve but John Henry’s stubborn chin jutted out. Barselou’s bland assumptiveness annoyed him. “That’s very nice,” he said, “but if it’s all the same to you I think we’ll take a look around before we go.”
    When Barselou spoke his voice had changed but his words were still polite. “Naturally. I’m anxious to find out anything I can.”
    Odell lounged restlessly against the stucco wall of the restaurant about ten paces up the alley from Date Street and smoked his cigarette with short, nervous blasts. Wadded up under his left arm was an Arab burnoose.
    The luminous dial of his wrist watch read 9:15 and he wondered if Barselou had gotten anything out of the young couple. They hadn’t left yet, so maybe the deal had worked out. He believed in forcing the issue, and the queen right in their laps ought to start some fireworks. Behind Odell’s vacuously cherubic countenance a constant flame of impatience sputtered. He prided himself — and his employer agreed dryly — that he was a man of action rather than of ideas. No use fooling around with these Conovers or Joneses or whatever their real names were. The girl wasn’t a bad-looking head, at that. He let his mind roam sensuously.
    A faint scuff of shoes against the pavement twirled him alertly around, head cocked. Somebody was coming down the alley from the other direction, the direction of Andreas Street. Odell strained his eyes through the dimness and cursed the buildings for being high enough to keep out the moonlight.
    The man stumbled as if he too were having trouble with the dark. Odell slid