“Yes, I know that.” Sader moved toward the hall. I’m so used to driving a car, he thought in self-scorn, I forget that some people still use public transportation. And his thoughts added, if Mrs. Wanderley took a bus from Scotland Place and got off downtown, you’ll have one hell of a time tracing her. Unless she asked for a transfer, and the driver remembers.
At the door he offered his hand to Ott and the big man took it, though with a hint of reluctance. Ott’s fingers were flabby and warm and a little sticky. He muttered, half embarrassed, “Well, now, I’ll go back to my nap.”
He hadn’t been about to don a shirt, then, nor shave. He’d been in bed. Sader said, “If you hear from Mrs. Wanderley, hear anything about her, will you call her daughter, or me?” He gave Ott his business card.
“Sader and Scarborough,” Ott read aloud, slowly. “Sure, I’ll call.”
Sader went back to his car and drove away. The hope that Mrs. Wanderley had taken a bus on Tuesday night stayed with him until evening, until he had run down and questioned the last driver who might possibly have picked her up in the vicinity of Scotland Place. Then Sader was faced with the truth. It was beginning to look as if Mrs. Wanderley had vanished in the very instant in which she had closed the door of Kay Wanderley’s bathroom
There was some other explanation, of course. Someone in a car had picked her up. A mythical somebody. Yeah, Sader told himself, a wraith.
Among the tangle of other ideas, he played with one which suggested that Mrs. Wanderley might never have left home at all.
CHAPTER THREE
SADER DROVE back downtown, turned west on Broadway, left the car in a parking lot, and walked to his office just off Pine. It was dark now. The pavements were black and shining under the street lights. In the office he found Dan putting on his overcoat. “Going to eat?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a treat coming. Mrs. Ajoukian just called. She thinks I ought to come out to their place and let them feed me. She wants to know, do I like lobster? I said yes, if it’s thermidor, and since this is Friday.”
“You’d say yes anytime.” Sader threw down his raincoat and sat down at his desk and ran a hand over his reddish, graying head.
“You look tired, Papa,” Dan said solicitously. “How’s Mrs. Wanderley coming along? You want her daughter to ask you to dinner? I could drop a hint.”
Sader leaned back in the chair, took out cigarettes.
“That’s another thing. You’re smoking yourself to death.”
Sader struck a match. “Tell me about young Ajoukian.”
“I can’t get a lead,” Dan complained. “Oh, I don’t mean I didn’t get information. I went up on the Hill, I talked to guys in field offices, in tool warehouses, on derricks, on top of tanks. They all know young Ajoukian. Nobody seems to dislike him too much.”
“And—Tuesday?”
“Some of them thought they might have seen him Tuesday. Nobody was sure.”
Sader blew smoke at the olive-green desk top; it fanned there, floated in the air. The rain was a whisper at the window, underlining the quiet of the room. Dan took the bottle from his desk drawer, and poured himself a shot of rum, and tossed it off. Sader watched his movements without seeing them. He was reviewing the day. It had begun with the call from Mr. Ajoukian. After the nondescript cases which had filled recent weeks, the Ajoukian affair had roused Sader’s interest and promised something more involved than shadowing dead beats and errant husbands. He was vaguely familiar with the career of Ajoukian, Sr., since the rise of the immigrant had been spectacular enough to invite newspaper comment. Ajoukian was always referred to as an oil-tool tycoon. The yard at the top of the Hill, tucked in among pumping wells, as Sader recalled it, had been full of rusty junk; and he seemed to recall also that more than once the police had been interested in Mr. Ajoukian’s sources of supply.
The thought of young Ajoukian walking out on all this had intrigued Sader.
“I ran into a coincidence,” he told Dan. Dan paused at the door. Sader continued, “I scratched an old friend of Mrs. Wanderley and uncovered an old enemy of Ajoukian’s.”
Dan hurried back to the desk. “Hey, you remember what I said this morning? I told you——”
“I said coincidence,” Sader put in. He went on to tell Dan about Ott, what Ott had said about young Ajoukian’s dead mother. “Ott lives just below Signal Hill. He used to drill up there. Of course he’d know Ajoukian. There must be hundreds like him scattered all over Southern California.”
Dan drummed his fingers on the desk. “Yeah, but he knows Mrs. Wanderley. There’s a connection, Jim. I feel it. I’ve got a hunch.”
“You’re hypnotized by Tuesday,” Sader said calmly. “When you’ve been in this racket as long as I have, you’ll learn better.”
“You sound old, Papa.”
Sader got up and went out to the water cooler and got a drink. When he came back, he said, “Run along to dinner. I’m going to phone Miss Wanderley. Then I’m going home.” He turned his back to Dan and began to dial Kay Wanderley’s number.
He knew she was crying before she said a word. Then he had to listen to her apologies. She didn’t want him to think she had expected results so quickly.
“What is it, then?” he asked.
“I—I kept thinking she’d just walk in,” Kay Wanderley sobbed. “Any minute, I expected her step in the hall. I listened for her voice. Only now it’s raining, a rainy night, and all at once I don’t—I don’t really expect her any more.”
“Yes, I know what you mean. Shall I come out and talk to you?”
Her voice was a whisper. “Please. Would you?”
Dinner postponed, Sader told himself, getting his raincoat.
It turned out that there was a housekeeper, a gray mouse of about fifty with an air of motherly distinction. She took his coat in the hall, surveyed his suit as if resisting an impulse to jerk it off him for cleaning and pressing, and told him Miss Wanderley was waiting for him in the living room. He lit a cigarette before moving on, and she said, “Lovely tobacco!” in a noticeably English accent.
Kay Wanderley was standing at the living-room door. “Annie, we might as well eat at once.” She looked at Sader. “That is, if you’ll have dinner with us.”
“Thanks, I’d appreciate that.” Out of Sader’s mind drifted the prospect of the cafeteria meal, the steam-washed food, crowded tables.
Annie had turned, but Kay said, “Mrs. Simms, I’d like to present Mr. Sader. He’s the private detective who’s looking for Mother.”
“So happy to meet you.” Maybe she meant it. She bustled away like a small busy hen.
Kay led him into the living room. As she walked ahead, he sized up her outfit. She wore a gray dress, a glowing misty silk that reminded him of the color of her eyes. Black pumps. The rhinestones, glittering under the lights. She turned, and he noted the soft hair curling in gauzy feathers over her temples. She was a pretty woman, he thought. Kid, he corrected himself.
The marks of tears had been dusted over with powder, but they were there.
Sader said, “I take it you’ve talked thoroughly with your housekeeper.”
She faced him in the middle of the room. “She knows just what I do. She was in bed when Mother left Tuesday night.” There was an instant’s hesitation, as though she was tempted to add something to this. Sader was aware of prickling impatience, sensing a fact being withheld. Then Kay sat down, indicating a chair for him. “Annie’s been with us for years. She’s an extremely motherly woman. She never had a family of her own. She emigrated from England when she was a girl. She talks often of going back there, and she has spells of sticking to her position, as she calls it. At such times she’s a bit formal in manner. Sometimes she and Mother had little spats. Annie can be dictatorial in a sweet way.”
Sader could well imagine the dignified, motherly Annie running the house to suit herself. “Did you ask her if she’d heard a car in Scotland Place at about the time your mother left?”
Kay shook
her head. “She would have mentioned it. You mean, the taxi?”
“I don’t believe your mother took a taxi. And belatedly, I found she didn’t ride the Ocean Avenue bus downtown, either. Could someone have picked her up?”
“You mean, a friend happening by? It doesn’t seem likely.”
“She didn’t telephone a cab company,” Sader pointed out. “She may have expected to hail one. That doesn’t seem logical, though, considering how late it was. I keep wondering if, for some reason of her own, she deliberately misled you about the cab.”
He saw fresh tears in the gray eyes and disliked himself heartily.
He added, “I’ve been wondering who advised you to go slow about making inquiries, who told you not to go to the police.”
She bit her lip. “I wanted to do what Mother would prefer. She literally loathed the police. She had a run-in with them about a traffic fine; she said they were goons and liars. She said it right out in court.”
Now Sader suddenly recalled where he had seen the photograph of Mrs. Wanderley. It had been printed in the local paper some months past, under a line that read something like Society Matron in Tantrum before Bar. He smiled a little to let Kay Wanderley know he didn’t take it too seriously. “I think the time has come to bring the police in.”
“But aren’t you——” She broke off. Annie had stopped before the door.
“Dinner is served, Miss Kay.”
They went into the dining room. The long mahogany table was set with a full formal service, snowy linen mats, sparkling crystal and china, ornate silver that looked old and well buffed from years of polishing. Candles glowed in tall silver holders. Sader felt awkward as he pulled out Kay’s chair, pushed it under her as she sat down. He offered to do the same for Annie, but she smiled sweetly. “I’ll serve, sir.”
“Oh, just bring the food and sit down, Annie,” said Kay.
Annie brought the soup and they began to eat it. Annie kept an eye on Kay as if the girl were a child who might be stubborn and have to be fed. When the soup was gone Annie took away the plates.
Kay said, “Aren’t you going on with the job?”
“Yes,” Sader answered, “I’ve just begun. But I want the police to know, to have a record of your mother’s, disappearance. Then if something comes in, something I’d have no chance of knowing, they’ll fit it in.” As he said this and waited for her answer, he was struck by a comparison between this case and the one involving young Ajoukian. Why did he have this sense of urgency over Mrs. Wanderley, and not about the junk-dealer’s son? He rejected Dan’s theory of snobbery and then found himself trying to explain his idea to Kay. “You see, with a woman, there’s always an added risk beyond mugging and robbery. And frequently that added element leads to violence. If your mother turns up somewhere——”
Her gaze seemed turned inward, looking at such scenes as Sader could only guess.
“—in such condition that she isn’t able to tell them what has happened to her, or even who she is; for example, too hysterical or ill——”
Kay’s thoughts went a step beyond; he saw her lips form the word dead soundlessly.
“—then the police, looking through their records on missing people, will check with you. You’d want to know at once, wouldn’t you, if your mother is found? It could be anywhere. She could have been taken to another town, even another state.”
She sat rigid, unanswering, and he couldn’t tell if he had made any impression. Annie came in with a roast of beef, which she carved expertly on a serving cart. She whittled the potato she allowed the girl, and Sader got the impression that Kay’s every bite was carefully totted up in calories. No gravy, though he was given a double ladleful. Kay ate the lean meat, the vegetables, and salad without paying any attention to the food.
Annie said to Sader across the candle glow, “It’s been ages since we had a guest to dinner.” She smiled; but Sader decided that she wouldn’t consider him as being in the same category as the Wanderleys’ usual company. The remark had been made for the girl’s benefit.
If Kay heard the remark, she ignored it. She finished the plate of food with an air of relief. Sader got the impression she was very near the breaking point. She had faced something, the possibility her mother might be dead, which she had denied to herself up until now. The dreadful word must be chasing itself in her head. Behind the exhaustion in her eyes he saw despair like a closing vise.
He pulled out her chair. “I’ve been a rude guest. I’ve spoiled dinner for you.”
She stood, looked at him blankly. “Wait till tomorrow to tell the police. When I—when I turn it over to them, I’ll know for sure. I’ll give up hope.”
“Do you want me to go on, then?”
“Of course.” She led the way back toward the living room, but Sader stopped in the hall. He had a hunch that if he left now she might fall into bed where she belonged. Sweetly tyrannical Annie would see to that.
“I’ve got some more to do tonight,” he said. “I’m going to run down your mother’s bar-hopping friend, the one you said called her sometimes.”
“Tina didn’t see Mother Tuesday.”
“I just want to talk to her,” Sader said firmly. “What’s the usual hangout this early in the evening?”
“Try the Starshine on Third between Pine and Locust.”
He nodded. “I know the place.” He’d been there for drinks when he had been a drinking man and remembered the place perfectly.
A few minutes later he stood outside her door, looking at the broad avenue, the big homes with their cheerful lights glowing through the rain. A long time ago he had had illusions of hoping to live here, a youthful dream of success crowned with the badge of fortune, a mansion facing the exclusive strip of bluff. Now it didn’t seem to matter much. He drew on his cigarette thoughtfully. These homes, big and imposing as they were, looked old-fashioned compared to newer districts being built by the wealthy. As Dan had said, a few miles away in Garden Grove you could have a mock ranch on one and a half acres. And your neighbors weren’t elderly and stuffy mortgage owners from Kansas; they were young doctors and dentists and super-merchants, and they’d be fun to meet over cocktails in somebody’s imitation ghost-town saloon.
Sader laughed shortly and bitterly to himself, he couldn’t have said why; except that the dwindling of his old ambitions seemed to deserve a farewell toast of humor.
His bare head was getting wet. He turned to touch the door handle of his car and then changed his mind and went back into the short block that was Scotland Place. At the end of the street, past a white railing that stood out against the dark, he could see the empty blackness that must be the sea, and he suddenly smelled salt spray above the smell of the rain. He walked to the white railing, turned left into the walk that should lead to the terrace of the Wanderley house.
He found the flagstone paving, the furniture left out to bear the brunt of the storm. All the cushions were sodden; the awning above the swing flapped wetly. There was not much light out here, since the draperies were drawn over the windows in the house, but he made out that now the swing was empty. There was no roll that might be bedding. There was nothing resembling wet fur under a blanket, wet fur that might or might not be a beaver coat. A good beaver coat, he added to himself.
It’s funny, he told himself, that even when I’m feeling sorriest for her I don’t quite believe she’s told me all she knows. She’s holding something back. Maybe she’s too scared to talk about it.
He went back to his car and drove downtown to the Starshine Bar where he inquired of the bartender if Tina Griffin was in the place. The bartender seemed to be a little deaf until Sader tipped him a dollar; then he decided that Mrs. Griffin wasn’t here yet, but she would be. Maybe ten minutes. She’d gone home to feed her cat.
“I like people who are kind to animals,” Sader said, and the bartender agreed that this was an admirable quality. Sader inquired whether the bartender might tip him off when Mrs. Griffin came in, and the bartender lo
oked deaf again and had to be revived with another tip.
With the dollar in his hand, he asked, “What’s it about?”
“Nothing to do with Mrs. Griffin, actually. I’m trying to find a lost friend of hers.”
“Mrs. Wanderley?”
Sader’s face grew still. “What do you know about it?”
“Just what Mrs. Griffin was telling me this afternoon. Missing friend. I know her. Mrs. Wanderley’s been in here a lot of times.”
“Drink much?”
The bartender looked thoughtfully at the dollar, but Sader made no further move toward his wallet. The bartender said, “Sometimes. She couldn’t handle it, when she did. She’s got an ugly temper.” This was a dollar’s worth, so the bartender asked Sader what he wanted, brought the drink, and went away again. Sader waited.
Some instinct told him who she was, even before the bartender caught her eye significantly and jerked a head in Sader’s direction. He could not place the source of his instinctive recognition. There was no aura about her suggesting the female bar fly. She was a slim woman with black hair, frosted now with rain. She wore a red plastic raincoat over some other dark wrap. She had neat ankles, small slender feet. She brought with her a kind of electric presence, and Sader thought that perhaps in summing up Mrs. Wanderley from her photograph, he’d decided subconsciously, that this was the type of woman she’d try to run around with. There was contrast between them. Mrs. Griffin put up no show of pouting bee-stung mouth, no fuzzy mist of hair. She had fine white skin and brown eyes set widely apart and somewhat tilted, and with these items she somehow created an impression of exotic good looks.
She came directly to Sader’s stool at the bar. She seemed to be smiling to herself. “You’ve irritated Charlie Ott almost into a fit. What are you going to do to me?”
Sader thought, well, that gets rid of a lot of preliminaries. He said, “May I buy you a drink?”
She sat down on the stool next to his. “What’s that you’re having?”
“Ginger ale.”
Sleep with Strangers Page 3