Sleep with Strangers

by Dolores Hitchens

  The nurse came back, looking busy and indifferent. “She isn’t here.”

  “It’s very important that I talk to her or to Mr. Ajoukian.”

  “Mr. Ajoukian isn’t at all well. He had a heart attack late this afternoon. Maybe I could take a message for him.”

  “They found the body of his son tonight.”

  She looked so shocked that Sader knew she’d been unaware of the son’s disappearance. “Oh, dear!” She wavered in indecision, then added, “I’ll call the doctor. Perhaps you could see Mr. Ajoukian for a minute.” She rushed off again.

  This time she came back quickly, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. Dr. Bell doesn’t want Mr. Ajoukian to be told of his son’s death until he can see him again tomorrow.” She eyed Sader curiously. “Was it an accident?”

  “His son’s been missing several days. I don’t think they know yet what killed him.” He nodded good-by and walked away. He was in his car, his fingers on the key in the switch, when headlights turned in at the other end of the lane, crept toward the house. He waited. The other car stopped at the edge of the drive, a door slammed, quick steps crunched in the gravel. Sader opened his door again and got out.

  The lights behind her lit up Mrs. Ajoukian’s silver hair like a halo. She peered toward him. “Mr. Sader? You’ve brought news?”

  “Bad news, I’m afraid.”

  She seemed to fall crookedly against the side of her fender. He sprang to catch her, but she said breathlessly, “I turned my foot on a stone. Have you told Daddy?”

  “The doctor wouldn’t give permission.”

  Her head bent; she seemed to collect herself. “He had a bad day. After you went he had a crying fit, and then coughed a lot, and finally went into a sort of convulsion. Dr. Bell said his heart is weak. We found another nurse.” The rain was settling in the silver hair, on the shoulders of her fur coat. “Is—is Perry dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you find him?”

  “We found his body in an oil sump. The police want you to identify him if you feel up to it. Otherwise, a family friend will do.”

  She stumbled back to the door of her car, cut the switch on the motor and killed the lights, came back to him in the dark. He smelled the perfume she wore, dry and winy. Her hand touched his, the cool fingers clinging. “Let’s go in and sit down. You tell me more, then.”

  There was a fire in the enormous fireplace—not very big; it looked lost in the cavern of brick. She shed the fur coat on a checkered lounge and walked to the fire and looked at it somberly. “It doesn’t seem possible. I can’t believe he’s dead. He had a kind of—well, animal vitality is the way I thought of it. Like a gorilla. Invincible.”

  She didn’t sound as if she’d loved the gorilla overly much, Sader thought, but you never could tell. He was surprised at the lack of reaction in her. It seemed to be a mask, covering shock perhaps. She turned around to look at Sader. In that moment he decided that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. There wasn’t a flaw in the soft face, the silver curls, the slim figure dressed in red wool. Almost too perfect, he added to himself, to be real. A doll that had learned to talk, to move, to understand. A doll with a steel spring instead of a heart.

  No, that wasn’t being fair to her. “Do you want me to call someone to identify your husband?”

  “I’ll go.” Her tone was quiet and composed. “Let me think for a little bit, and get warm.” She pushed aside the coat on the checkered couch and sat down, pointed to a chair for Sader. “How did Perry die?”

  “I saw what looked to be a gunshot wound over his temple. But there was so much oil on him, too—don’t take it as final.”

  “Do you think he’s been dead ever since he went away?”

  “Only a post-mortem would give that information. And maybe even then not definitely. Personally, I think he died shortly after eleven o’clock on Tuesday night.”

  The big brown eyes grew puzzled “Why are you so sure?”

  “I think the person who called him at the barbecue bar is the last person who saw him alive.” He turned away from that other conviction, for Kay’s sake, that Mrs. Wanderley had used the gun.

  “Why should anyone want to murder my husband?” The firelight on the silver curls dappled them with gold. “He was young, a little ruthless, maybe. But what had he done, that he should be killed?” She seemed so intent on his answer that Sader was almost embarrassed.

  “Can’t you supply that information?”

  She averted her face. The fire painted a golden line on her profile. “I guess—sometimes a wife is the last to know. If there was anything——”

  “Well, perhaps you’d quarreled——”

  She shook her head. “Not over women. Please don’t think that. It was about money. The old man thought I spent too much. Perry tried to keep the peace.” She looked at Sader, the brown eyes velvety in regret. “Ask him, ask Mr. Ajoukian.”

  Well, Sader thought, she’s stopped calling him Daddy. He studied the huge, luxurious room. He wondered how much of this would be claimed by the widow. If she had no claim here, where would she go; what would she do?

  Perhaps Sader’s interest in the house displeased her subtly. She rose, lifted the coat. “Where do we go to see about Perry?” For just an instant he imagined a catch in her voice—had it been real?—and he wondered if under the gorgeous surface there lurked grief he couldn’t even imagine, whether inwardly she could be lost, terrified. He stepped over to help her with the coat. “Did you talk to Mr. Ajoukian tonight?”

  “No.”

  “I’d better speak to the nurse before I leave. Can you let yourself out?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be out beside the cars.”

  She hesitated, looking back at the warm hearth as though envying the comfort of that spot. Was she thinking just then of the cold depths of the sump? Apparently not——

  “We’ll go in my car,” she said, touching his hand with her cool fingers. “When we get home again, I’ll write a check for you.”

  It was a funny time to think about settling his account. “There’s no hurry. You can mail it anytime.”

  “Please come back with me.” She moved over to the door as if embarrassed that she should have to beg for his company at such a time. There was nothing Sader could do but to agree, though he had wanted to be with Kay Wanderley when the police interviewed her about her mother’s handbag.

  At twelve-fifteen Sader went back to the Pike. It had been a quiet night because of the bad weather; most of the concessions were closed. In Milton’s booth, however, lights burned and the little pigs still peered from behind the wire netting. Sader walked over to an open-front café where the cook at the griddle stood facing the traffic. The smell of coffee and fried hamburgers and fish and chips drowned out the rainy tang on the night air. “Do you know Milton, the guy with the pigs?”

  The cook flipped a couple of meat patties. “Yeah. He’s around somewhere. Saw him tonight.”

  Sader went to the bar, but Milton wasn’t in it. Finally he returned to the booth, hopped the counter, and investigated the space behind the pigs. It was a crudely boarded-in closet, the width of the room, perhaps four feet deep, furnished with some sacks of feed, a tottering card table, and an army cot. Milton lay on the cot, his face turned to the bare bulb that burned in the ceiling. He was asleep with his mouth open.

  Sader shook him awake. “You’re wanted at police headquarters on the Hill.”

  “About that dead guy at the field office?” Milton said, after yawning himself awake. He bent to put on his shoes. “I don’t know anything about him.”

  “New client this time. There was a dead man in the sump. They want you to look him over.”

  Milton went on lacing his sneakers, his fingers awkward with the ties. He kept his head down. “I still don’t know anything. Why can’t they leave me alone? Next thing you know, they’ll jump on me for keeping my pigs in the house.”

  “Couldn’t your pigs stay do
wn here for one night?”

  “You crazy?” Milton shot him an angry look from below. “There’s no way to lock this place good. I got to take my prizes and the pigs home every night. Wouldn’t be nothing left here in the morning.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” Sader said. “You run up there and talk to the cops and I’ll stay here with your pigs and merchandise.”

  The offer seemed to surprise Milton. “You will?”

  “Sure. I’ve been almost everything else. Let me be a pig sitter once in my life.”

  “It’s good of you to offer.” Milton seemed to turn Sader’s generosity over in his mind, as if seeking something ulterior in it. “I couldn’t pay you for it, though. I know your time’s worth money.”

  “This is on me,” Sader told him.

  Milton picked a leather jacket up off the broken table, nodded to Sader and went out. The narrow room grew quiet except for the minor trottings of the pigs in their cages. Once in a while he could catch the singsong chant of the cook in the open-front café, the invitation to dine having about as much relation to normal speech as the hamburgers had to ordinary food. Sader picked around through the magazines and comics Milton had on the floor at the head of the cot. He decided that Milton liked stories about space men with antennas on their heads who were thwarted by earth heroes. He noted the presence, in these yarns, of lovely young ladies in danger of being carried off to set up housekeeping on Mars. This could mean that Milton had a subconscious compulsion about being a hero. It could even mean, Sader thought wistfully, that Milton had shot young Ajoukian because in the heat of an argument he thought Ajoukian was threatening Mrs. Wanderley. This was interesting.

  Even more interesting was Milton’s lack of curiosity about the identity of the man in the sump.

  Sader sat on the army cot and lit cigarettes one after another. He thought about Milton, Milton’s possible motives as a murderer; but in dealing with the Wanderley cousin he knew he had to allow for certain deviations from normal behavior because of Milton’s head injury. It would be hard to be logical and consistent with a steady throb in your brain.

  The pigs seemed restless, so Sader went over and looked into the back doors of their pens, and filled their water cups from a faucet in the corner, and gave them some of the grain in the sacks. They regarded him with eager affection and ignored the corn. Sader decided they were already full, had only craved attention. He was returning the metal scoop to the open bag of grain when he heard a noise at the back door. Someone had rapped faintly on the panel.

  Sader walked to the other end of the narrow space, turned the key, pulled the door inward. The row of concessions backed up to the side of the pier at this point. There was a promenade of a few feet in width, then the pier railing, the sea beyond. The light wasn’t too good, but Sader made out the figure of a woman in a dark coat and hat. It was a moment before he recognized her, before the strange blue eyes under the hat brim registered and brought back her name. Margot Cole.

  “I’m looking for Milton,” she said, and her tone showed that she had not as yet recognized Sader. She tried to peer past him into the room. Over her temples her hair was pulled tight as he remembered it and the heavy bun on her neck distorted the line of the brim. “Isn’t he here?”

  “Come in,” Sader invited, stepping back. She looked at him quickly, knowing him now. “Milton’s out on an errand.”

  She came in, turned swiftly to face him. “The police have been to my house. I think you must have suggested that they come there and question me. I’ve been trying quietly to work out a reconciliation with my husband. That’s ruined now. He’s leaving.” Sader recalled the quiet steps he’d heard in Margot Cole’s house, her secretive attitude. “None of my friends liked him, but I was willing to give them up. Now the police have barged in, asking about Ajoukian and his business, and my husband knows I was trying to raise money. It wasn’t really for a divorce, though I told you so; and it’s what my husband believes.”

  She was shaking with anger, her heavy face taut with repressed hatred and indignation. Sader thought, remembering her calm demeanor in her home, that she was probably a woman slow to rouse to rage; but once roused she’d hold a grudge forever.

  Sader tried to explain. “I didn’t have any choice. There has to be a connection between young Ajoukian and Mrs. Wanderley—her purse was with his body in that sump. But the only link I can find was the meeting between Ajoukian’s father and Mrs. Wanderley at your house Monday night.”

  She stuck her face up close to his. He felt the heat of her breath. She’d had a drink recently—perhaps after the police had gone, after her husband had denounced her for perfidy. “There has to be another way! She exchanged only a few words with the old man.”

  “He says she wanted to know what he was doing there.”

  Mrs. Cole stamped her foot hard. “She wouldn’t kill a man over his wanting to buy my oil shares! It’s the craziest idea I’ve ever heard of! That’s why I came to see Milton. He lives right above that oil sump. He must know what happened down there!”

  “He says he doesn’t.”

  She walked to the army cot and sat down on it. “I’ll get it out of him.”

  “You’re going to wait for him?”

  She looked at Sader with loathing. “As much as I hate being in the same room with you—yes.”

  “I’ll leave, then.” Sader went over to the other door, the one that led to the front of the concession. The pigs oinked lonesomely at him. “Milton wanted someone to stay here until he got back. I was just watching his stuff. Goodnight, Mrs. Cole.”

  She bared her teeth at him in a grimace that had no resemblance to a parting smile. With this catlike farewell fresh in his mind, Sader crossed the Pike to the bar and used the telephone to ring his office. He had expected Dan to be gone home by now, and was surprised when Dan answered his call. “Tell me about Kay Wanderley.”

  “Papa, I hate to say this, but she blames you.”

  “Were you with her when the police showed her the handbag?”

  “Yeah, I was right there all the time. She wants a lawyer now. I guess we’re out of two jobs.”

  Sader’s forehead wrinkled; he ran a hand across the stubby, red-gray hair, and it sprang back like mown wheat under the scythe. “I’ve got to see her.”

  “She won’t let you in that big house any more. I think she expected us to keep that handbag to ourselves.”

  “I’m going out there anyway.”

  Sader hurried back to the lot where he kept his car, drove out Ocean Avenue to Scotland Place. There was no rain now. The big avenue was wide and empty. He saw no lights in the Wanderley house, but rang the bell anyway. He figured she’d send Annie down to drive him away with a scathing tongue; but instead, when the door opened, there was Kay. She was so exactly the image he’d carried all day, that for an instant he couldn’t speak.

  She hesitated, then said formally, “It’s too late, Mr. Sader, to ask you in.”

  “I know. I’d be intruding, according to my partner. I just came to ask you a question.”

  The big solemn gray eyes were steady on his. “What is the question?”

  He put a hand on the doorframe as if to brace himself. “Something I haven’t figured out yet. Miss Wanderley—what happened to your dog?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SHE MOVED swiftly to slam the door, then must have seen his fingers curled around the doorframe. There was an instant, he thought, in which she would have liked to cut him across the knuckles; but she’d had a good bringing-up, and she controlled the desire for mayhem. “Wh—what did you say?”

  “The dog,” he reminded quietly. “Your mother wrote down an appointment for getting a dog license; and you said you had checked and she had been at the animal shelter when she was supposed to be. Only it occurs to me that I haven’t seen any dog. You do let it inside, don’t you, when it rains?”

  There was a light behind her in the hall, but her face was shadowed. He couldn’t judge w
hat she went through just then. Probably some instinct urged her to protect her mother’s reputation, and she already hated him for leaving the handbag with dead young Ajoukian. There was no doubt but that she was frightened and despairing. “Will you come inside?”

  “I don’t have to. Just answer that one query, and I’ll go.”

  “I . . . I can’t answer with a couple of words. The little dog is dead. There’s more to it than—just that.”

  “How much more?”

  She bent her face into her cupped hand; her voice came muffled. “I’ll tell you the whole story if you come inside. I don’t want to disturb Annie. She might hear us. Her room’s right over our heads.”

  Sader thought of Annie’s rigid propriety and walked softly. He went with Kay to the living room. It was cool in there as if the heat had been turned off hours ago, and the only smells were those of wax and polish. All the fine furniture had been placed chummily as if at any moment some very exclusive guests might want to come in and sit down—Annie’s doing, Sader thought. She wouldn’t like it if she were down here now and saw him sitting in a chair fixed for somebody who was somebody. He knew suddenly that he never came into this room without realizing that the city in which he had grown up had a side to it he had never known.

  Kay Wanderley was dressed in a loose-fitting pique housecoat, bright ruby red that made her skin look white as cream. Her hair fell loose on her shoulders. She sat down and put her knees together, rubbed her hands over them, and said, “I found Tootsie early Wednesday morning. She was lying at the door, on the terrace.” Kay’s glance flickered over to the terrace entry. “I rushed her to a veterinarian. He said she was dead, that she’d been beaten, her skull crushed. I—I did a kind of crazy thing. I brought her home and tried to keep her warm in some blankets. I wouldn’t believe she was . . . gone.”

  Sader began to light a cigarette. “Did your mother ever get mad at the dog when she was drinking?”