Darkest Hour

by Nielsen, Helen

  Hannah smiled wickedly. “You are so right. Look at me. Without my after-dinner Drambuie I couldn’t make it into the drawing room. But you, a strapping young bachelor in your prime, need a double shot to steady your nerves just because you found a bomb under the hood of the car.” She paused, thoughtfully. “Simon, isn’t that a gangster sort of thing? A bomb in a car, I mean. What would Monte have been doing with gangsters?”

  It was a gangster sort of thing, but they were getting nowhere with Monterey. Simon decided to take another route. “What about Sam Goddard’s great love? You were all for telling me the story back in La Verde.”

  Hannah seemed relieved at the change of subject. “It was delicious,” she said, “but common knowledge. Sam married Lola for love, as Whitey said, but Sam grew, not merely financially. That too, but he grew intellectually and Lola was satisfied with a society-page sort of life. Sam was ambitious. He saw visions of the governor’s mansion for a time, but we were more prudish then. More hypocritical. It was pointed out to Sam that his long-standing affair with his secretary was too flagrant. Not that Lola objected. She was a good Catholic girl and accepted man for what he is, but Sam minded. He didn’t want the governorship without her. I don’t think he could have managed it without her. He was beaten badly, but that wasn’t only because of Vera—”

  “Vera?” Simon echoed.

  “Vera Raymond, the other woman. Most of Sam’s trouble politically was that he’d become too much of an idealist. That’s considered an encumbrance in the mature. We Americans expect it in youth—it’s considered bland but wholesome like Girl Scout cookies. But we can’t tolerate it in the sophisticated who are supposed to know enough to speak out of both sides of the mouth. With Sam it might have been a stroke of conscience. He made his fortune in land, not publishing. Land bought at a fraction of the real value when the Japanese were deported from California during the Second World War. Oh, how things did escalate in those days! Prices, black markets and that dirty rape of the Japanese. Most of us who lived here never understood why it was so important to save us from our gardeners and greengrocers—or was it done to protect them from us? With the military mind one never knows what cockeyed idea is coming next. But profits were made and Sam Goddard got his. I confess, Simon, that I don’t understand war. As I recall we got involved in that one because Hitler was burning people in ovens and that’s not nice and then we got out of it by dropping A-bombs and burning people without ovens which was patriotic and wonderful! I admit that I’m only a woman but I just don’t get it.”

  Gently but firmly, Simon led Hannah back to the subject at hand.

  “Vera Raymond,” he said, “what happened to her? Is she still alive?”

  Hannah reflected. “As far as I know—yes. She stayed with Sam when his world went smash. He lost his wife, his son, his political status and his newspaper. But he still had his land. Do you still have that paper with Sam’s obituary? Does it mention Vera? No, of course it wouldn’t. Newspapers are for facts, not realities. Just the same, if Vera’s still alive she’ll be at Sam’s funeral. You can make book on that.”

  The telephone rang. Simon answered. It was the man with the watchdog calling from a highway booth for directions to The Mansion. His timing was perfect. The sun was slipping behind a fog bank brooding over the coastline, and the shadows that were lengthening across the grounds didn’t seem as picturesque as usual. Simon related the route to the listener on the line and then placed a call to the editor of the Marina Beach Tribune. The paper had run a brief obit on Sam Goddard and had the information Simon needed. Burial was at 2 P.M. of the following day from Willows Mortuary in a small retirement community called Enchanto-by-the-Sea, located fifty miles south on the Coast Highway.

  • • •

  Enchanto-by-the-Sea was some developer’s idea of a way to make a few million and retire to Las Vegas, but his timing or his bankroll had been amiss and what was to have been a paradisaical resort had become a cluster of dated, peeling stucco buildings housing the low-income overflow from the wealthier coastal towns to the north and to the south. Enchanto-by-the-Sea enchanted only from a distance with a wide-angle lens. Close up, it lost glamour like a sex-pot starlet without a press agent.

  Willows Mortuary was easily identifiable. It was the most prosperous-looking building in town. When Simon pulled his black XK-E into the patron’s parking area only three other vehicles were in evidence: a Willows limousine, a huge blue Cadillac sedan with a La Verde dealer’s name on the license plate holder, and a five-year-old Ford coupé with a press card fastened to the under side of the sun visor. It wasn’t much of a gathering for the departure from earth of the flamboyant Sam Goddard, but the notice on the chapel door stated that the service was private and Simon was prepared to wait out the interval in the patio when the chapel door opened and to his surprise, Whitey Sanders beckoned him inside. Sanders seemed even larger in a black lounge suit and no less rugged.

  “Saw you drive in, Drake,” he whispered. “Nice of you to come. The service is starting now.”

  It was a decently brief affair. The Unitarian minister managed to review Sam’s life without making him sound like either a candidate for an equestrian statue or somebody who shouldn’t have been born, and whatever was erratically mortal about Sam was rightfully left to the judgment of God. The chapel was fairly light and Simon had no difficulty identifying Vera Raymond. She was a slender woman—probably in her late forties—smartly dressed in a navy blue knit suit and a beret-type hat small enough to show traces of gray in her severely cropped dark brown hair. Her features were small and finely chiseled, and she wore dark glasses which were probably a concealment for tear-reddened eyes. She had a fragile dignity, and when Sanders offered his arm she took it with one gloved hand in a gesture that indicated a deep need for masculine support. For a few moments Simon was so engrossed with the woman that he failed to notice the third mourner. He was a slightly seedy-looking man of about sixty, lean and stooped of shoulder. He showed emotion only in the way his fingers clutched the brim of a gray felt porkpie hat as if it were the guard rope separating him from a plunge into eternity.

  There were flowers in the chapel (one large spray was from Hannah), and the sermon was followed by an organ interlude played by someone who had knowledgeable rapport with Bach. It was as simple a departure as could be arranged, but nothing could make a funeral service a happiness time and Simon was relieved when the last words of the benediction were spoken and all that was mortal of Sam Goddard was removed in its closed casket to the crematorium.

  Simon was the first one to step outside into the sunlight, his fingers groping through his pockets for a cigarette. It was then that he noticed a fourth vehicle had come into the parking area: a dark green Cougar with dirty license plates. Two men wearing sunglasses were seated inside the car. Simon glanced back at the chapel schedule board and saw that no other funerals were listed for the day. Then he heard Vera Raymond speak and forgot the new arrivals. Her voice was soft and a bit hoarse. He was right about the reason for the dark glasses. The woman had been weeping.

  “Charley Leem!” he heard her say. There was more than surprise in her tone. There was an undercurrent of dismay, as if she had been startled by the physical deterioration of the man who stood before her. She recovered grace quickly. “It was so nice of you to come,” she added. “It’s been such a long time!”

  Vera Raymond had a good, honest voice. Simon pushed the cigarette back into his pocket and eavesdropped. He saw her hand grasp the hands of Charley Leem, who immediately dropped his hat and had to stoop to retrieve it. There was a bald spot in the center of his crew cut.

  “I saw the teletype when it came into the newsroom,” he said. “It didn’t seem possible that Sam could be gone—like that. We had a good paper back in the old days, didn’t we, Miss Raymond?”

  “We had a great paper, Charley,” she answered almost too emphatically, “and largely because you were on the city desk. What have you been doing with yourself all
these years?”

  “Oh, I’m still in the business. Got me a nice spot on a San Diego daily. Not like the old days, but a nice spot. Got me an apartment with a view of the bay and enough work to keep me out of trouble. Not that I can get in much trouble any more.”

  “You look frisky enough to me to tackle the Hollywood jungle all over again,” Sanders broke in.

  Charley Leem’s lips parted in what was probably as close to a smile as his face could manage. “Don’t try to make me feel good, Mr. Sanders,” he said. “With crutches and a liver transplant, I might make it, but I’d as soon not try. I hear the elegant times are gone. The damn town’s nothing but a bunch of TV factories now. That’s no way to run show business—with a slide rule and a bunch of frigging accountants in the front office! No thanks, Whitey, I’ll stick to my view of the harbor—which reminds me, I’m on the desk tonight.”

  It was like old-home week and Simon was beginning to feel very much the uninvited guest until Charley Leem shuffled off toward the Ford and Sanders introduced him to Sam Goddard’s common-law widow. It was assumed that he understood everything about the relationship, and that was good. Vera Raymond’s hand was a little hesitant in his. She was wondering why he was present.

  “Mr. Drake is a very good friend of Hannah Lee,” Sanders said. “He was in La Verde yesterday.”

  That statement meant that Sanders had told Vera about the death of Monte Monterey. It was a natural thing to do. In a strange Hollywood way they had been almost related.

  “I see,” Vera remarked. As long as she wore the glasses Simon could only guess how much she saw.

  It was an awkward time when people said words just to break up the silence and cling to the time before Sam Goddard was an urn full of ashes. “Hannah wanted to come,” Simon said, “but she had enough excitement yesterday. Look, why can’t we go somewhere and have a drink even if it’s coffee?”

  “I’d like to,” Vera Raymond said.

  Sanders looked at his wrist watch and scowled. “I would too,” he said, “but I promised Buddy that I’d be on the floor tonight when he goes to work. The reaction to opening night was tremendous, and that business with Monterey has shook him up more than he thinks. I told Vera that I’d drive her home. She came in the Willows limousine.”

  “I’ll drive Miss Raymond home,” Simon said. “If she trusts me.”

  Whitey Sanders looked at Simon sharply. His eyes were hard and penetrating.

  “I have my own car today,” Simon added.

  There was no response, verbal or otherwise. Somebody in La Verde had wired Hannah’s Rolls for extermination, and two people had cautioned Simon to drive carefully. One of them was Whitey Sanders. But there was no response and so Simon let the remark die. Sanders caught a sign of acceptance from Vera Raymond and rolled off in his Cadillac. That left two men seated in a Cougar. They were still there when Simon wheeled the Jaguar out of the lot with Sam Goddard’s woman in the bucket seat beside him. They pulled onto the highway and Simon asked, “Where’s the nearest respectable spa?”

  “Go south to Delaney Road,” she said.

  Delaney Road was about half a mile down the highway. There was a Standard gas station on one corner, a real estate office on the opposite corner and a hamburger stand and a vacant lot with a “For Sale” sign on the remaining corners. Simon shifted to low gear. “Turn east,” Vera Raymond told him, and he turned east. Less than a mile later they reached a big rural mailbox mounted on the corner of a white plank fence with the gate standing open at the driveway. The box was lettered “Sam’s Place” and Vera nodded for Simon to turn in. The lane curved up to where a white clapboard ranch house with a glassed-in lanai faced the sea from a nest of rose trees and bougainvillaea. Simon braked the car and cut the motor.

  “You did say ‘even if it’s coffee,’” Vera reminded him.

  She was a wise woman. The sun was still bright and the roses were in bloom. It would have been much harder to come home to an empty house after dark.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sam Goddard’s last home was a far cry from the castles of Stone Canyon. They entered off the lanai through a pine-paneled living room with a huge log-burning fireplace, a pegged-wood floor and just enough maple and leather furniture. Vera removed her hat and dropped it on the old sea chest that served as a coffee table and then went directly to the kitchen. Moments later Simon heard a coffee grinder and began to envy the late Sam Goddard. His woman was intelligent, sophisticated and capable of making genuine coffee. She would, he fancied, also be able to broil a steak blood rare and concoct a salad dressing that would make the chef at Perrino’s want to turn in his union card. She had undoubtedly read all the rare volumes in the glass-faced bookcases lining the side walls of the long room and had shared many evenings with Sam listening to the records in a collection that ranged from Vivaldi to Turk Murphy. She had shared the good times, the bad times, and Simon wondered why Sam hadn’t married the girl.

  When Vera came in with the coffee it was in an old-fashioned blue porcelain pot carried on a tray with two diner-type mugs. The sugar was still in the cube box and the cream was homogenized in a pint carton of milk. She set the tray down on the coffee table and invited Simon to sit down. She poured and the aroma was as fine as he expected it to be.

  “Did Whitey Sanders tell you about Monterey’s death?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “When he called last night. He asked the time and place of Sam’s funeral and if there was anything he could do, and then he told me that Monte was dead. It was an accident, he said, or possibly suicide. He was making the arrangements for Monte’s funeral, but I wasn’t to come. One funeral was enough for me.”

  She picked up her coffee mug and drank deeply. Her hands were steady, but she used them both.

  “What about Sam?” Simon asked.

  She lowered the mug slowly. “What do you mean?”

  “Wasn’t his funeral a little sudden? Was there an autopsy?”

  “I—I suppose so,” she said. “I’ve been too upset to think of things like that. He was killed when his Porsche ran off the highway in the fog. You know they call that stretch of highway Slaughter Alley when the fog’s heavy.”

  “I didn’t realize it was that heavy Monday afternoon,” Simon said. “But I was in San Francisco.”

  “It was bad from what I’ve heard. I didn’t leave the house all day, but we lost sight of the sea about two in the afternoon. That means the fog was over the highway. And Sam was tired. He’d been up all night. I shouldn’t have let him go, but when Sam had wind of a story he was like a bright-eyed cub reporter with the ink wet on his journalism diploma. He made his own deadlines, and they were fierce.”

  “Did he tell you what kind of story he was working on?”

  “No, but I was used to that. Sam was a brilliant man, but a little superstitious, too. He thought it was bad luck to talk about a story before it broke.”

  “But Sam was retired.”

  She smiled. It was a wan and melancholy smile, but it was an improvement over that tear-edged tension. “Sam could never completely retire,” she said. “He free-lanced for the past eight or ten years. He never made much money, but he kept his hand in. It gave him pride and pocket money.”

  “I thought Sam owned a lot of land.”

  “Once. It was sold bit by bit—all but this place. Lola, Sam’s wife, was extravagant, and Sam felt he owed her a high standard of living. Sam was a kind of man who’s becoming rather rare, Mr. Drake. He had a sense of responsibility.”

  “Is that why he never divorced Lola?”

  “Partly. Mostly it was because of her religion. And Steve, his son.”

  “But Steven’s been dead a long time.”

  “Yes. So has Lola. I know what you’re thinking, Mr. Drake. It was the classic question of our set until we moved out here and stopped having a set. Why didn’t Sam marry Vera Raymond? Well, I’ll tell you why. Because the Sam Goddard who fell in love with Vera Raymond was an important man. By
the time he was free it was downhill all the way but with bumps. I might as well tell you the truth. It will all come out in probate anyway. Sam deeded this place to me five years ago. All the rest of his property was sold for taxes, hospital bills, court costs. Sam was a hothead, always getting into trouble. I hold a real estate license and work at it. I work out of an office in Enchanto. Well, you’ve seen Enchanto. When the freeway cut above us we began to depress. Then loan money got so tight even the resorts began to suffer. The hot swirlpools were drying up all along Pacific Coast Highway. What I’m telling you is that it’s been a rough go for us, and I couldn’t marry Sam without his pride. To the very last he had the idea that he would make the right contact—break the hot story or write the best seller that would give him back his manhood. Then he would have asked me to marry him. I knew that and he knew that I knew it. There was no need to discuss the matter.”

  Simon’s coffee was tasting better all the time. Hannah would have warned him against the protectiveness he was feeling toward the common-law widow, but Hannah wasn’t sitting beside Vera Raymond on the wide divan facing the seaward windows of Sam’s place. And talking at such a time was good therapy. Simon waited and she continued.

  “That’s the only reason I let him go after being out all the night before,” she said. “He was so excited—so enthusiastic I had to let him follow his lead.”

  “What lead?” Simon demanded.

  “I told you, I don’t know. All I know is that Sam got a telephone call the night before he was killed. It was from San Diego. I heard him repeat the name of a hotel there—the Balboa. Then he wrote down some directions on the memo pad—but I never saw what they were. I didn’t get in on the beginning of the conversation. I did hear him ask where the caller was calling from, and then he said, “If you’re in trouble it will be worse if you run.” I had the impression it was some teen-age boy. Sam’s done a lot of volunteer work with juveniles in trouble. It wasn’t the first time he’d taken off in the middle of the night to help someone.”