The Body Lovers Read Online Free PDF Page B

not. I did get an impression however. Unless they were wealthy, she wasn’t interested.”
    “Gold digger?”
    “What an archaic term,” Cleo told me. “No, not quite that.
    She just was determined to get money. Several times she said she had enough of scraping by. It was there to be had if you looked hard enough.“ Cleo slid off the stool and stretched elegantly, the sheer silk of the kimono pulling taut across the skin beneath it. ”She was a determined kid,” she said. “She’ll make it somehow.”
    “But how?”
    “Women have ways if they want something badly enough. There are always hidden talents.”
    “Yeah, sure,” I said.
    “Cynic.”
    “Anybody around here who might know where she’d be?”
    She gave me a thoughtful look and said, “Possibly. I’d have to ask around some.”
    “I’d appreciate it.”
    Cleo grinned at me. “How much?”
    “What’re you asking?”
    “Maybe you’d like to pose for me.”
    “Hell, I’m not the still-life type,” I said.
    “That’s what I mean,” she said impishly.
    I got up with a laugh. “I’m going to squeal to your boss.”
    “Oh, you’d like her.”
    “Dames,” I said. I walked to the door and turned around. Cleo still had the window at her back and the shadow effect of her body was a tantalizing thing. “I’ll check back later,” I told her.
    “You’d better,” she said.
     
    The R. J. Marion Realty Company on Broadway owned the Village building Greta Service had occupied. The receptionist introduced me to a short, balding man named Richard Hardy who handled the downtown rentals and after he waved me to a chair and I explained what I wanted he nodded and said, “Greta Service, yes, I remember her, but I’m afraid I can’t help you at all.”
    “No forwarding address?”
    “Nothing at all. We held her mail here for a month before returning it to the senders, hoping she might notify us, but there was no word whatsoever. Incidentally, this isn’t exactly uncommon. Some of the tenants down there are, well, peculiar. They come and go and sometimes don’t want anyone to know where they’ve been.”
    “Any of that mail here now?”
    “No ... but it wouldn’t help anyway. It was mostly bills from some of the better stores, a few from model agencies and a lot of circulars. Her rent and utilities were paid up, so we didn’t think much of it.”
    I thanked the guy, left him to a desk full of paperwork and went down to the street. New York still had her gray hat on and the air had a chilly smell to it. I edged to the curb side and followed the crowd up to my corner and headed toward the office.
    Velda was on the phone when I walked in. She finished talking and hung up. “How’d you make out?”
    I gave her what information I had and picked up a couple of folders from her desk. “What’s this?”
    “Background on Helen Poston and Maxine Delaney. I thought you’d want it. They’re mostly newspaper clips, but they cover as much as the police have. I reached some people in the Poston girl’s home town who knew her ... the school superintendent, the principal, two teachers and the man who sold her a used car. She had a good reputation as far as her work was concerned, but I got the impression that teaching wasn’t her main ambition in life.”
    I glanced up from the folder and stared at her. “Like how?”
    “Nothing definite ... it was an impression. The car salesman was the one who put his finger on it. You know the type ... a real swinger ready to sound off about anybody. He was the one who said he’d like to see her in a bikini. She bought the car to make a trip and seemed pretty excited about getting away from the home town and all he could think of was a small-town teacher in a big city having a ball away from the prying eyes of the school board. I said I was doing a feature story on her and he made sure I spelled his name right.”
    “And Maxine Delaney?”
    “I called Vernie in L.A. and he checked with the arresting