Saving Susy Sweetchild by Barbara Hambly

Author:Barbara Hambly [Hambly, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2024-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

However, a telegram arrived just as pre-­dawn breakfast was concluding in the Araby’s exotically decorated dining room (fake palm trees not nearly as convincing as those that decorated the Coconut Grove, murals more reminiscent of The Sheik than of anything actually seen in Algeria, and a menu consisting chiefly of pancakes, shredded wheat and fried eggs).

Upon entering the long room, Kitty made straight for Frank Pugh, who was sharing a table with Neil Bandog and the smilingly attentive Darlene Golden, Mel Lutz and the smilingly attentive Dove Singleton, and a grim-­faced Irving Goldman. Pugh beamed a greeting – secure in his own virtue (Miss Golden having been otherwise occupied last night) – and was rewarded with a smile that could indeed have launched a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium. Kitty had told him last night she was going with Gren Torley (no romantic or financial competition in anyone’s books) to observe the night fauna of the desert. (‘I want to understand what this place is, Frank! I want to understand the desert at night!’ She had clasped her hands passionately to her bosom. ‘And besides, Emma is coming with me.’) Seeing her re-­enter with her chaperone still in tow, his faith in her devotion was renewed. Moreover, she had completely reapplied her make-­up by flashlight in the cab of the truck during the last hour and a half of the journey, so it had taken her but a moment to cache her bundle of charred evidence in her room on the way to the dining room. (And she looked, Emma had to admit, radiant.)

It was just as well that she had. Entering the long room, they had found every table around Pugh occupied by journalists, and every journalist – while ostensibly slurping up cereal – focused on the studio chief and his financial backers. ‘I don’t even want to think about how much they had to pay the waiters to arrange that,’ Emma murmured in Zal’s ear, as they joined Harry Garfield, Roger Clint and Ruby Saks at a table in the corner, and Harry poured them all coffee. Torley, as always more concerned about his animals than breakfast, had taken the truck and gone on ahead to Camp Turpitude to feed the carnivores and prepare them for the long drive back to the San Fernando Valley. (‘Sheba gets car-­sick,’ he had confided worriedly as he cranked the engine once more.)

At a table near that of Garfield’s little party – and hemmed in protectively by Dr Plaister, Mary Blanque and two of the studio guards – Selina Sutton dipped toast into her tea and winced theatrically at every sound. Looking across at her in the electrical glare of the dining room’s lights, Emma observed that even in her hour of travail, the bereft mother was again completely made-­up (whose cosmetics did she borrow for that?). Despite her apprehensions, she could not but wonder how much those hollow eyes and pale lips owed to rice powder and kohl.

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