She stared at me, her face red, her chin quivering.
A door opened and a man almost as big as I asked, “Everything all right, Miss Cornelius?”
“Why shouldn’t it be?” I asked him. “Go back into your hole.”
“It’s — a private detective, Dr. Carlson.” Miss Cornelius told the big man. “He’s seeking information on Mary Mae Milgrim.”
“And who,” he asked coolly, “is Mary Mae Milgrim?”
Miss Cornelius said nothing. She stared at the top of her desk.
Dr. Carlson looked sharply at me. “Do you want to leave now, quietly, or shall we call the sheriff?”
“I want you to call the sheriff,” I said. “I’ll wait right here.” I went over and sat in a maple pull-up chair. I picked up a copy of Newsweek.
Miss Cornelius said, “It was — before your time, Doctor. It was years and years ago.”
“And the records?”
“They were destroyed in that fire we had eight years ago,” she said softly.
He said, “All right, mister, what more do you want.”
“The sheriff,” I said. “I’ll wait.”
“Why?” he asked. “Have we been unco-operative?”
“Yes.” I looked at him levelly. “Miss Cornelius has admitted Miss Milgrim was here by speaking of the records being destroyed. I’d like a quiet talk with Miss Cornelius.”
“You’ll go,” he said. “Right now.” He paused. “Or I’ll call a couple of our bigger attendants to put you out. “
“Call ‘em,” I said. I reached under my jacket and took out my.38, holding it lightly in my hand.
A startled exclamation came from Miss Cornelius. Dr. Carlson moved nervously toward the door behind him, staring at the gun in my hand.
“Call the sheriff,” I said. “Call him now and we’ll get everything ironed out. Maybe you ought to call the County Medical Board at the same time.”
Carlson licked his lips and said softly, “That was a highly irrational action, mister. That — ”
“My name is Callahan,” I told him. “Brock Callahan. You can call any of a dozen chiefs of police in this end of the state if you’d like a report on my integrity or rationality. This.38 was simply protection against the voiced threat of your underpaid and overweight attendants. I didn’t come here for violence. You were the first to suggest it.”
He frowned. “Callahan — ? Brock, did you say?”
“I remember you,” Miss Cornelius said. “You played with the Dodgers.”
“Not quite, ma’am. Are we going to talk or fight?”
Miss Cornelius said primly. “We aren’t going to do anything until you put that gun back where you got it from. A big man like you, an athlete, waving a gun like some juvenile-”
I gazed at her in candid admiration. She had regained the dominance while the big slob behind her was still quaking. I put the gun back and bowed in surrender.
She turned in her chair. “Dr. Carlson, none of this will be or can be connected with you. I’ll talk with Mr. Callahan on my lunch hour.”
“Fine,” he said. “Fine.” He went back into his office and quickly closed the door.
Miss Cornelius told me, “It’s a little restaurant called The Fireside. It’s on the south side of the road, just on the limits of Oak City.” She looked at her watch. “Oak City is about half a mile down this road we’re on. I should be there in half an hour.”
FIFTEEN
THE FIRESIDE WAS an exceptionally attractive spot for a rural restaurant. It had a fairly large, circular dining room, all tables within view of the mammoth fireplace of fieldstone. It had a small bar in a separate room, cool and quiet.
It had a small bartender too, a bald, thin gentleman with an Irish face and a mellow voice. He didn’t have Einlicher, but he had High Life, which is the next best.
As he poured it, he said, “You wouldn’t be the Rock, would you?”
I nodded, and held out a hand.
“I thought I recognized you,” he said, “My name is Joe Nolan. What was the matter with our boys last fall?”
“Nothing,” I said. “The opposition was better. Every year it gets to be a tougher league.”
“I guess,” he said. “Up here on business?”
“With Miss Cornelius,” I agreed. “Know her?”
“Kitty? Everybody around here knows Kitty. Wonderful girl to be working at an abortion mill like that Sanitarium. Yet she’s been there thirty-five years.” He paused. “You know, maybe it would be a worse place if Kitty wasn’t there.”
“Maybe,” I agreed.
“And I suppose,” he went on, “that some of them imitation religions don’t consider abortion as murder, probably not even a sin, huh?”
“Imitation religions?” I asked.
“Protestant,” he explained. “Don’t tell me you’re a left-handed Irishman?”
“I — uh — haven’t been to Mass lately,” I admitted.
His pale blue eyes looked at me accusingly. “Why not?”
“Let’s not fight, Joe,” I said. “Tell me more about Kitty.”
Some of the warmth had left the room. “You’re a private eye now, right?”
I nodded.
“You planning some trouble for Kitty Cornelius?”
“Never. She’s going to give me some information. Is Miss Cornelius Catholic?”
“Naw. Her old lady was a Swede and her pa half German. Kitty’s all right, though, even if she works at that place. The kids she’s helped around here — ” He poured half a glass of beer and sipped it. “Don’t you ever think about dying?”
“Frequently.”
“And aren’t you scared, when you think about it?”
“Usually.”
“Then why don’t you go to Mass?”
“Joe,” I said, “you go, and I’ll bet you don’t want to die either.”
“That’s different,” he said. “You wait, Callahan, you wait ‘til the time comes. You’ll be sorry.”
“Probably,” I agreed, and then Miss Kitty was there and I went out to sit at a table with her in a corner of the dining room.
She ordered a whiskey sour and I ordered another beer and we studied the luncheon menu.
Then she put the menu down and said, “You certainly flexed your muscles back there, didn’t you?”
“It seemed to be the time for it,” I said.
“I’m not criticizing,” she said. “I can understand it. I’m Irish, myself.”
“Only one fourth,” I corrected her.
Her eyes widened. “Now who told you that?” She looked toward the barroom. “Oh, I suppose — Well, anyway, I like to think of myself as Irish.”
“Why are we sparring?” I asked her. “Did you change your mind? Did you decide not to tell me about Mary Mae?”
She looked at the linen on the table. “Mary Mae was a sweet, sweet girl and now she’s dead. What good can it do to go digging into her history?”
“If it wouldn’t do any good, I wouldn’t be here. Miss Cornelius, you have to trust me. I don’t reveal any scandal unless it has to be done. I have never willfully damaged anyone’s reputation.”
She said nothing, looking at her whiskey sour.
I asked, “Did Mary Mae come there for an abortion?”
Without looking at me, she nodded.
“And then changed her mind?”
She nodded again, and looked up at me. “I — talked her out of it. I’ve — talked a number of them out of it. That’s why I stay there, year after year.”
“Couldn’t you do better by reporting them?”
“Could I? If an abortion will save a life, it’s legal. And there are any number of doctors in Los Angeles who will diagnose an abortion as life-saving.”
“Couldn’t the State Medical Board do something?”
“I suppose. So then, all the girls who were determined to have abortions would go to men even less qualified. Or the button hook witches. My God, some of the places — ” She sipped he
r drink.
The waitress came, and we ordered. Kitty Cornelius said, “You didn’t come up here to get the lowdown on the sanitarium racket, I’m sure. This much I’ll tell you — Mary Mae had her baby and it was a healthy baby. That’s all I can tell you because it’s all I know.”
“She wasn’t married at the time?”
“Of course not. You know that. She never married.”
“Why not?”
“How do I know? I didn’t marry because nobody worthwhile ever asked me. Maybe that was her problem too.”
“It couldn’t have been,” I said. “Millions of men must have loved her.”
“How many million does it take, though, to find one worthwhile man? Don’t tell me about men, Callahan; I’ve had more experience with their evil doings than you have.”
“Kitty,” I said, “you malign us.”
“You’re not married,” she said. “Why not?”
“Because my true love won’t have me.”
“Get another then. There are a lot more worthwhile women than men in this world, you can be damned sure of that.”
“Kitty,” I said, “what you need is another whiskey sour.”
She shook her head.
I asked, “Who paid for the abortion that Mary Mae didn’t get?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. But you can be sure he had money, the way Dr. Frank Newton used to charge. I never handled the books.”
Our lunches came and we ate without any further informative dialogue. Her whole life, she told me, had been spent within ten miles of this restaurant where we sat; she was one of those rare creatures, a native Californian.
“Do you get into Los Angeles much?” I asked her.
“I used to,” she said. “Not lately. It’s turning into a horrible town, isn’t it?”
“Noisy, dirty and evil-smelling,” I admitted, “but it has its offbeat charm, too. This rural life can get dull, can’t it?”
“Not at the Village Sanitarium. Maybe, if I didn’t have that, I’d be happy to join your ratrace, Callahan.”
“It’s quite often depressing,” I told her, “but it’s never dull. Kitty, think back, try to remember if there isn’t something you can tell me that will point a finger at the murderer.”
She finished her coffee. “I’ve been thinking ever since I read about Miss Milgrim in the paper. And all I can remember is what I’ve already told you. And now I have to get back to my repulsive work.”
“You’re a saint,” I told her, “a saint in hell. If you ever need a strong arm, I hope you’ll think of me.”
I left her there and went out to the flivver. A huge sign across the street advertised lots for sale in “Smog-free, secluded, pastoral Oak City — Exceptional investment opportunities — ”
Through the windows of the barroom, I could see Joe Nolan’s disapproving eyes and I waved, but he didn’t wave back. I opened the windows in my hot car and turned west toward Highway 101.
Peaceful and pastoral this area might be, but I had a hunch it would drive me nuts. People were sickening but I had to have them around; I needed them.
My psychic flivver snorted in derision; she can read my thoughts and usually holds them in contempt. We had been together a long time. I was much more tolerant with her than she with me.
Mary Mae, Mary Mae, Mary Mae. … So now the pattern was forming, the events leading up to the act were coming into focus. But to what avail? Mary Mae would be just as dead. And would solving this murder stay some other murderer’s hand? Perhaps, though it was doubtful.
Today, I wasn’t even being paid. Today, I was working in the interest of justice.
The sun was out in all its glory now and heat waves shimmered off the road. We were going steadily uphill on a long seven-per-cent grade and the speedometer needle kept dropping. This was quite a grind for my old girl.
At the top, we were down to forty, and ahead of us now, and below us, was the San Fernando Valley, the fastest growing area in the world. A yellow layer of smog hung over it to the horizon.
I cut off the Ventura Freeway onto Sepulveda and cut off that on Wilshire, heading for the ocean.
In an area of small homes, in Santa Monica, I walked past the larger house on the front of the lot to the smaller home in the rear. The flowers were still there.
And Blanche Arden Thorne was spraying her roses. She turned and smiled as I came up. I thought it was an uncertain smile.
“It’s too late for lunch,” she said. “I’ve already had it. A beer?”
“No, thanks. Herbie around?”
“He’s playing golf,” she said. She set the sprayer down carefully and went over to wash her hands at a hose tap. “Damned aphids,” she said.
I sat on a redwood bench and waited for her to turn around.
She stood up, dried her hands on a rag and came over to sit quietly on the bench on the other side of the table. She finally looked at me.
I said, “I’ve just come from the Village Sanitarium. Do you know where it is?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“You knew Mary Mae better than anyone. You knew all about her. You didn’t tell me she’d been up there.”
Her voice was dull. “What business was it of yours?”
“You were her best friend,” I went on. “In all the world, you were her closest friend.”
“Probably,” she admitted.
“But she didn’t leave you her money, did she?”
“I don’t know. If she did, I haven’t been informed.”
“She didn’t.”
Blanche Arden Thorne shrugged and said nothing.
“Should we start over?” I asked. “Should we start with the truth, for a change?”
“You’re not a police officer,” she said.
“Shall I get one, and then we can start over?”
“Go ahead,” she said defiantly. “Get one. And I’ll tell him I don’t know who killed Mary Mae Milgrim. And that’s all he’s got a right to ask me, isn’t it? He can’t ask me about things that happened thirty years ago, can he?”
“He can ask,” I said, “but I can tell him that. I’m trying to do this my way, Mrs. Thorne. I’m trying to keep the lambs from being hurt and still catch the wolf. The police haven’t time to worry about the lambs. And the newspapers then have a field day with the lambs.”
“Don’t threaten me,” she said quietly.
“Believe me, I’m not. I’m explaining my position and why it would be best all around for you to confide in me. I have a certain right to privacy so long as it doesn’t interfere with justice. I can use it to help the innocents.”
“But you wouldn’t,” she said. “I was in the industry for twenty-five years, Mr. Callahan. Don’t you think, in that time, I learned about men like you, scandalmongers, Peeping Toms?”
“I’m not one of those,” I said, “and you know it. I can give you any number of first-class references.”
She said nothing, staring at her flowers.
“Two are already dead,” I said. “A vein of violence has been brought into life. The first murder is always the hardest one; a killer gets hardened quickly after that.”
“The murderer is dead,” she said. “We know that. You know that.”
“Who murdered him?”
She continued to look at her flowers. “What does it matter, who murdered Enrico Rivali? His death was long overdue.”
I swore and she looked up, startled. I said, “How do you develop that kind of callousness — by spraying roses, by planting marigolds? Is that how you build up a stomach for murder?”
She looked at the ground.
“You didn’t call me a scandalmonger the first time I came here,” I went on. “Why do you want to hate me now? So you don’t have to hate yourself?”
She continued to look at the ground.
I stood up. “All right. I’ll go get a police officer. You’ve withheld information and they consider that the same as a lie. I’m sick of trying to protect the i
nnocent.”
She looked up and her look was doubtful. She said, “Is this another threat?”
I shook my head.
She said, “Mary Mae is dead and nothing can bring her back. Enrico is dead and nobody will cry. Nothing more is going to happen. You know that. That corny pitch about a ‘a vein of violence,’ you know that’s nonsense. It’s the kind of excuse people like you use in order to — ” She broke off, staring past me.
My peasant prescience made the hair tingle at the back of my neck. I was almost afraid to turn around, to see what she was staring at.
But I did.
It was George Parkas, coming across the grass toward us, a big old Western six-shooter in his shaking hand.
SIXTEEN
BLANCHE ARDEN THORNE opened her mouth wide, but no sound came out.
Parkas said, “Nobody hollers and maybe nobody gets hurt. Answers, that’s all I want. From Callahan.”
George was nervous but that didn’t make me fear him any less. He was nervous enough to pull the trigger on that old Colt without actually meaning to.
“What kind of answers, George?” I asked quietly.
“Who got Enrico, that’s what I want to know.”
“I’m trying to find out,” I said patiently. “My client left me yesterday, because he wasn’t interested, so I’m trying to find out on my own time, in the interest of justice.”
“Huh!” he said. “You lying bastard!”
“Call my client,” I told him. “Do you have a permit for that gun, George?”
“My name is Mr. Parkas, to you,” he said.
Blanche Arden Thorne said shakily, “Mr. Callahan is telling the truth. He really is trying to find out who killed Mr. Rivali.”
George’s ugly face hardened as he stared at her. “Oh? And he came here to find out? Why here?”
There was a silence. The gun was probably a prop used by George when he played heavies. I wondered if it was loaded with something besides blank cartridges. There was a way to find out, but I didn’t feel lucky.
“Why here?” he repeated. “Come on, somebody better start talking damned quick.”
I thought I heard a sound from the house and I glanced that way. Luckily, George was looking at Blanche and didn’t notice my glance. For Herbie had come home from golf, his bag over his shoulder. He stood on the back porch, taking it all in.
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