The Corpse Without a Country by Louis Trimble Page A

blonde, Maslin.”
    He didn’t even bother to answer me. I heard the outer door slam and then looked at Jodi. “Willie was only an excuse,” I said. “Maslin knows I like to keep a few cards in my pocket and he doesn’t like it when I do.”
    “And you have some, Peter—really?”
    I didn’t want to tell her about the picture I’d seen on that slide either. I said, “Not any more. He cleaned me out just now.”
    We sipped coffee and thought about it. Suddenly Jodi said, “Peter, what
were
you and Ilona doing in the bedroom?”
    I could feel myself blushing. I said, “We were fighting for her gun.”
    “And she won?” I nodded. Jodi said, “I thought maybe she was trying to take your clothes off you.”
    I didn’t think that was funny. I said, “She got them, all right, but I can’t see why she’d rip them apart like that. I couldn’t carry the report in the seams of my suit, damn it.”
    Jodi merely shook her head. We were back where we started. She said after a bit, “Just what
is
going on, Peter?”
    I said deliberately, “I think Arne might be able to answer that.”
    I wasn’t looking at her but at her reflection in the glass of the view window. Her body stiffened noticeably. I said, “I think you could supply a few answers too.”
    “Why do you say that, Peter?” She sounded genuinely puzzled.
    I couldn’t say, “Because you lied to me earlier.” I still had nothing definite to put my finger on to prove she had lied.
    I said finally, “I wonder if you aren’t protecting Arne or Reese?”
    I turned toward her in time to catch a quick smile. She said, “You just don’t like Reese, do you?”
    “I think he fits into the picture,” I said. “I can’t prove it, but I’m going to start trying come daylight.”
    She said softly, “I’m sorry you think that of me, Peter. I’ll answer any question I can if it will help prove that I’m not holding out on you.”
    I took her up on that. I said, “How is Reese’s financial condition?”
    “It’s very good,” she said.
    I said, “Considering you two are engaged, how come you waste so little affection on one another?”
    She said, “We ran into one another in England, by accident. And sometimes when two people a long way from home and from familiar surroundings find one another …”
    Even after that explanation, I had no right to feel possessive toward Jodi or jealous of Reese Fuller, but it was after midnight and the room was dim and Jodi was very close and warm.
    She said, “It was just a little over two years ago. Reese came to England to do a salvage job on a freighter that had run aground. He had a lot of waiting around to do, and so he came up to London. I was there working, and we got together. You know how those things go. Before he left, he bought me this ring. I just never had the courage to give it back.”
    I didn’t have the feeling Reese was eager to get inside a church. I said, “Just give it to him.”
    She laughed at my tone and rubbed her cheek against my shoulder. “Don’t sound so jealous. If you’re going to be that way, maybe I should get heated about what went on in the bedroom between you and Ilona.”
    I said, “As long as you’re wearing that ring, what happened in the bedroom is none of your business.”
    “Oh,” she murmured. She took off the ring and tossed it into a big vase by the window. “There.” She smiled up at me. “Was it fun, wrestling with Ilona?”
    “For a while,” I admitted.
    Jodi touched my swollen hand. “She plays hard.” She put her finger to my lip. “She kisses hard too.”
    I said, “She knows jujitsu.”
    “If you’re thinking of Mike Fenney,” she said, “remember that I threw Emily.”
    I said, “Sure, and I’ll bet you can wrestle good.”
    She said softly, “Let’s find out, shall we?”

XIII
    J ODI DIDN’T SEEM TO KNOW the first thing about wrestling. Once she did manage to wriggle free, but that was only to get up and turn off the light.
    When the