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Blow Hot, Blow Cold
By Ellery Queen OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1964 Ellery Queen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1839-5
CHAPTER 1
From where she sat at her kitchen table in Shady Acres Addition, Nancy Howell could see through the open window and across the low hedge into the backyard of the next-door house, owned and occupied by Larry and Lila Connor. The Connors had a flagstone terrace behind their house, and Nancy kept waiting and watching for Lila Connor to come out in her modified bikini and start sunning herself on the terrace. This afternoon Lila hadn't come out so far, and it didn't look as if she was going to. The reason was probably that it was just too hot. It was over a hundred degrees in the sun, and you had to be pretty careful about getting burned even if you were already toasty brown all over, as Nancy and Lila both were.
What Nancy had in mind to do if Lila appeared was to get into a modified bikini of her own and go over to join Lila on the Connor terrace. Not that Nancy really wanted to lie in the sun on this particular afternoon. What she had in mind was to get herself invited into Lila's house. It was much too hot to lie in the sun for more than fifteen minutes or so; Lila would surely go inside again, and she would just as surely invite Nancy to go with her.
The point was, Lila's house was air-conditioned and Nancy's was not. Well, that wasn't quite true; actually, the upstairs bedroom that Nancy shared with David had a window unit. But that wasn't the same as central air-conditioning, with breezes flowing deliciously through all the furnace ducts and pouring through the vents into every room. It gave you a kind of exciting — really sensual — feeling (especially if all you had on was a bikini) to move from room to room in all that wonderful coolness. It seemed like such a waste for Lila to be over there alone while Nancy steamed under the hot breath of a mere window fan and perspiration seeped from her brown skin and trickled between her alert breasts.
Nancy felt a twitch of guilt. Not for envying Lila her air-conditioning, but because the envy implied a criticism of David that she certainly did not intend. David was her pleasure and pride. Nancy understood perfectly well that central air-conditioning could rarely be afforded by schoolteachers, of whom David was one, while by successful accountants, of whom Larry Connor was one, it rarely couldn't, so to speak. Her love and loyalty were fiercely David's, no question about that; but at the same time Nancy was compelled to admit to herself that Larry Connor was a pretty attractive guy, too, and was quite capable of arousing ideas in the head of a girl who might have drunk a couple of Martinis on an empty stomach. Mae Walters, who lived in the split-level across the alley on the other side of the block, didn't like Larry and Lila very much; but Nancy liked them both, and so did David, even though they did not seem to be particularly happy and often said cruel things to each other in front of other people.
Nancy looked at her wrist watch, which David had given her for Christmas three years ago, before they were married. It was exactly three o'clock. You couldn't depend on its being exactly three o'clock just because the watch said so, but you could at least depend on its being somewhere near it; anyhow, it was becoming apparent that Lila wasn't coming out on her terrace to sun herself.
Nancy sighed and gave up hope. What she would do, she decided, was fix herself a tall, cold gin-and-tonic and go upstairs to the bedroom with the window unit. Maybe she would lie down and take a nap. Then, before she knew it, it would be five o'clock, and David would be home from high school, where he was working all day even though it was Saturday. (David was teaching corrective English in the summer session because they needed the extra money, and this was quite a sacrifice for him to make, because according to David nobody took corrective English but blockheads. He was often quite cross when he came home, and it required the most careful application of gin and tenderness in the right proportions to get him in a good humor again.)
Having decided what to do, Nancy rose and automatically tugged at her shorts, which had stuck to her thighs. She dropped ice cubes into a tall glass and filled the glass with gin and quinine water. Then she went out into the little hall and upstairs to the bedroom.
It was cool in the room, a sharp change from the rest of the house, and she became aware really for the first time how clammy her blouse and shorts were. She would simply have to take a shower; so she set the glass on a table beside the bed, got out of her shorts and blouse, and pattered to the bathroom. She lingered under a warm shower, then took a quick cold one, wriggling with pleasure under the needle-spray.
Back in the bedroom, Nancy inspected herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. She was pleased with what she saw. It was certainly not inferior to anything Lila Connor would have seen in the same circumstances ... She thought, smiling, that the two lighter bands above and below looked positively obscene. It was a shame that there was nowhere to lie naked in the sun in privacy. It was a necessary concession to neighborhood opinion even to wear modified bikinis instead of extreme ones. Mae Walters, for example, did not approve of bikinis at all, especially when her Stanley was around; Mae had said more than once in the hearing of Nancy and Lila that she considered a clear white skin to be "much more attractive" than skin burned by the sun. Moreover, according to Mae, the sun dried out the natural oils and caused premature wrinkles. Nancy smiled again at her unwrinkled image.
Feeling cool and clean, she went over to the bed and sat on the edge and picked up her glass. She drank the gin-and-tonic slowly, thinking with anticipation of the evening ahead. Jack and Vera Richmond were having a backyard barbecue, to which the Howells and the Connors and the Walterses were invited, and that meant she would not have to fix dinner in a hot kitchen or painfully weigh assets against expenses with David to see if they could possibly afford dinner out. The Richmonds lived in a stone ranch-style to the other side of the Connors; Jack Richmond was a doctor, which was even more profitable than accountancy. But Jack and Vera were unpretentious and good mixers, at ease with everyone. They were perhaps ten years older than the Howells and the Walterses and the Connors, who had all voted nationally at least once but not more than twice.
The gin-and-tonic had moved by swallows from the tall glass to Nancy's stomach, where it was beginning to glow. She deposited the glass on the bedside table and threw herself down on the bed.
She began to wish that David would come home. But he had said five o'clock, and it was now only about three-thirty. An hour and a half was a long time for a girl to lie on her back wishing for her husband, Nancy thought drowsily, and the next thing she knew her eyes flew open and there he was, on the edge of the bed, contemplating her navel. She sat up and put her arms around his neck and the situation immediately became fraught with possibilities.
"Darling," Nancy breathed in David's ear, "here you are at last."
"Here, as a matter of fact," he said, stroking her back, "we both are."
"Have you had a good day?"
"No. My day has been hellishly hot. Also frustrating."
"How frustrating? You don't have classes on Saturday."
"But I have papers to grade that are the work of classes. It's absolutely fantastic how little can be learned by a conscientious blockhead if he really tries."
"You mustn't expect too much from students who are forced to take corrective English, darling. It isn't reasonable."
"True. Thank God for the curve," David said, tracing one of Nancy's with an absent finger. "It's a wonderful device. By applying it, you can change an F to a C and a C to an A in the wink of an eye."
"David, that tickles!" Nancy giggled, slapping his hand.
She leaned shamelessly back against the headboard and observed him with what might have seemed excessive enthusiasm. To be honest, David wasn't exceptional to observe; Nancy's overenthusiasm was the effect of some mysterious affinity she did not understand. She had felt it from the first instant of meeting. She still felt it, and she was ready and willing to feel it forever, even though his short hair was a color you could only call neutral, his hands and feet were a good deal larger than the rest of him called for, and his nose was almost as crooked as his smile. David was nothing, in short, that should be considered a threat to a girl's chemistry or modesty; but here was hers in pleasant peril nonetheless. It was altogether a satisfactory state of affairs.
"Darling," Nancy murmured, her eyes half-closed, "what time is it?"
"Five-thirty. Why?" asked David, reaching.
Nancy rolled swiftly over out of range.
"I am merely budgeting what is left of the day. At seven we're expected in the Richmonds' backyard for the barbecue. Meanwhile a great deal can be accomplished. Would you like to take a shower to begin with?"
"I'd rather not," said David hungrily, "but I guess I'd better."
"As a favor to me, darling, make it ... quick?"
So David leaped for the bathroom, and Nancy waited until she heard the shower. Then she slipped off the bed and over to her dressing table and drew a brush through her fair short hair three or four times with an air of abstraction. Afterward she peered through the curtains at an angle up the macadam street. At the curb in front of the Richmonds' stood the delivery truck of a local beer distributor. The driver was pushing a small hand-truck up the Richmond walk bearing a metal keg of beer with a spigot and pump attachment for drawing the beer under pressure, as at a bar.
Altogether, Nancy thought, what with David here and the keg there, the day was looking up. Then she had no time to think of anything but the immediate present, for David was coming at her, still toweling himself, with a leer of purest lust.
"Defend yourself, baby!"
"Who needs it?" murmured Nancy, opening her arms.
CHAPTER 2
The party, as it turned out, wasn't a barbecue at all. No deception was intended, of course; it had merely become a tribal tradition to refer to backyard cookouts as barbecues. It was actually a hamburger fry, or broil, or whatever — they were cooked by Jack Richmond on a grill over charcoal. Dr. Jack Richmond was positively paranoid about his ability to cook hamburgers just right on a charcoal grill, and it was verboten to help him or interfere in any way. The fact that he wore a starched chef's cap and an apron was misleading; his hamburgers were really as good as he claimed.
Nancy in shorts and David in slacks, having accomplished a great deal in the meanwhile, went over at seven. They cut across the Connors' backyard, and while they were on the way a window was opened suddenly and Larry Connor's voice shouted out.
"Hey, you guys! We'll be with you in a few minutes."
Nancy and David waved at the window, which immediately closed, and went on across a second low hedge into the Richmonds' yard and onto the terrace where Dr. Jack was watching a beautiful bed of glowing coals with stern concentration. He turned and raised a coal tongs in salute, and Nancy was forced to admit — to herself — that he was probably the handsomest man she had ever known. She wondered how she could be so objective about it. Maybe it indicated a kind of perversion or something. Was it abnormal to prefer a crooked nose to a beautifully straight one?
"Welcome, neighbors," Jack said. "Wasn't that old Larry bellowing at you?"
"Yes," Nancy said. "He said he and Lila would be here in a few minutes."
"I must say he sounded in good humor. Let's hope it lasts."
"Oh, Larry's all right," David said.
"Sure, and Lila's a great gal, and they're a charming couple. But when they get to cutting each other up, it makes things a little tense."
Nancy had to concede that it did, but she conceded it silently, to herself. She didn't think Jack Richmond ought to talk about Lila and Larry Connor like that, even though it was true. There was certainly a bitterness between them that exploded unexpectedly, especially when they had been drinking. Nancy supposed it was because Lila wasn't particularly choosy in exploiting her sex appeal, which was considerable. Although Larry wasn't exactly inhibited in certain circumstances either, as Nancy could testify from a couple of personal experiences. Anyhow, she didn't think there was any real nymphomania in Lila. In fact, Nancy suspected that Lila was on the chilly side, under that almost feverish exterior; sometimes Lila gave her the impression of a rather cruel duplicity. Take, for example, the way she worked on poor old Stanley Walters. Stanley was no woman's dream, that was for sure, and there was something sickening in the way Lila deliberately excited him so that he lost the use of the few wits he had. In Nancy's opinion, Lila did it to irritate Stanley's wife; it probably didn't occur to Lila how cruel it was to Stanley, who got nothing from Lila and hell from Mae, and so was the victim of both. Nancy shrugged. She liked Lila in spite of everything, and she had no wish to continue the conversation Jack Richmond had begun.
Fortunately, at that moment Vera Richmond came out of the house toting a large wooden bowl full of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers and onions in sweetened vinegar. Vera set the bowl down on a table, and Nancy went over to greet her and see if she could help. Vera said she could.
"Darling," Vera said, "such beautiful brown legs. It's bitchy of you to wear shorts and show the rest of us up."
Vera herself was wearing shorts, and the reason she was so generous in the matter of Nancy's legs was that she really had nothing to worry about in the matter of her own. Vera's face was characterized by too much nose and too many teeth; but her legs were long and lovely, and if they were in fact slightly inferior to Nancy's, that was surely nothing to make a federal case about.
Nancy said something appropriate, and Vera laughed, showing her long upper teeth. She took Nancy into the kitchen, where other platters and bowls and trays of goodies were waiting to be brought out. One thing about Vera Richmond, you could always expect the best at her parties. Even at a little do like this, for a few close neighbors, featuring hamburgers. No ground meat that was 50 per cent fat — Vera always bought the most expensive grade of ground top round, and delicious side-things to go with them. She had been a nurse at the hospital where Jack Richmond interned, and she had come from a very poor family whose many children never got enough to eat.
It took two more trips to get everything out to the terrace. By that time Lila and Larry Connor had come over from next door and Mae and Stanley Walters from across the alley. Lila was talking with David, Larry was talking with Mae, and Stanley was standing by the grill with Jack, who had started grilling the big luscious-looking patties of dark red beef that he was taking from a portable ice chest. Everyone was nuzzling a goblet of beer.
"Hey," Nancy said, "how come everybody has a beer except the workers?"
Stanley Walters went over to the keg and drew two beers and presented them to Nancy and Vera with what he pathetically meant to be a gallant flourish. Stanley ran to clumsy fat, and there was a kind of unintentional clownishness about everything he did that was more absurd than comic. He had come to town as manager of a chain shoe store, but he had lost his job and Mae had made him take a big bank loan and go into business for himself. His shop (Shoes For The Family At Family Prices) was finally prospering after a shaky start. The bank loan was almost paid off. Mae kept his books straight, and she kept Stanley straight, too. Mae was tall and had light red hair and white skin that couldn't tolerate the sun. She was not overweight for her height, but she had large breasts and hips that made her seem heavier than she was.
"Nectar of the gods," Stanley beamed, "for a pair of goddesses."
"Stanley," Mae said, turning away from Larry, "it's too early to start making an ass of yourself. Wait till you've had at least two beers."
Stanley had no talent for dissimulation. He flushed and bit his lower lip like a small boy fighting tears. Silenced, he started back to the grill. Unfortunately, he had to pass Lila. She reached out and took him by the arm.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Blow Hot, Blow Cold by Ellery Queen. Copyright © 1964 Ellery Queen. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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