She pushed her hands against my chest. I caught her wrists and held her:
“Did you have something to do with Merriman’s death?”
“I didn’t know he was dead. Let me go.”
“In a minute. I want you to tell me where Phoebe is.”
“Phoebe?” The sly dull look came back into her eyes. “What about Phoebe?”
“Your husband Homer employed me to look for her. Your daughter’s been missing for over two months. You probably know all this. I’m telling you anyway.”
“Who are you?”
“A private detective. That’s why I carry a gun.”
I let go of her wrists. She slumped onto the bed, digging her fingers into her hair as if she could hold her thoughts steady:
“Why do you come sneaking around me? I never see Phoebe. I haven’t seen her since the divorce.”
“You’re lying. Don’t you care what’s happened to her?”
“I don’t even care what’s happened to me.”
“I think you care. You wrote her name on the window of your room.”
She looked up in dull surprise. “What room?”
“In the Champion Hotel.”
“Did I do that? I must have been crazy.”
“I think you were lonely for your daughter. Where is she, Mrs. Wycherly? Is she dead?”
“How do I know? We haven’t seen each other since the divorce.”
“You have, though. On November second, the day your husband sailed, you left the ship with Phoebe—”
“Don’t call him my husband. He ishn’t—isn’t my husband.”
“Your ex-husband, then. The day he sailed, you drove away in a taxi with your daughter. Where did you go?”
She was a long time answering. Her face changed as she thought about the question. Her mouth moved, trying out words.
“I want the truth,” I said. “If you ever cared for your daughter, or care for her now, you’ll give it to me.”
“I went to the station. I took the train home.”
“To Atherton?” She nodded.
“Did Phoebe go along with you?”
“No. I dropped her off at the St. Francis on the way to the Station. She never came anywhere near the Atherton house.”
“Why did you sell that house and hide out here in Sacramento?”
“That’s my own business.”
“Business with Ben Merriman?”
She kept her head down and her eyes hidden. “I’ll take the Fifth on that.” More than the cold water, the strain of the interview was sobering her.
“On grounds of self-incrimination?”
“If that’s the way you want it.”
“It isn’t. I want Phoebe.”
“I can’t give her to you. I haven’t seen her since that day in Union Square.” She couldn’t keep the feeling out of her voice, the sense of loss.
“You knew she was missing, didn’t you?”
There was another long silence. At last she said:
“I knew she planned to go away somewhere. She told me in the taxi that she didn’t want to return to Boulder Beach. She had a boy friend there, she wanted to get away from him. And other things,” she concluded vaguely.
“What other things?”
“I don’t remember. She wasn’t happy at college. She wanted to go away somewhere and live by herself and work out her own salvation.” She spoke in a steady monotone like a sleep-talker or a liar, yet there seemed to be truth in what she was saying, the truth of feeling. “That’s what Phoebe said.”
“What did you say?”
“Go ahead, I told her. People have a right to live their lives.” She raised her eyes to mine. “So why don’t you get out and leave me alone?”
“In a minute.”
“That’s what you said before. It’s a long minute, and my head hurts.”
“Too bad. Did she say where she was going?”
“No. Maybe she didn’t know.”
“She must have given you some indication.”
“She didn’t. She was going a long way, that’s all I know.” She might have been talking about her own long journey down. Grief pulled like wires at the corners of her mouth.
“All the way out of life?”
She shuddered. “Don’t say that.”
“I have to. She’s long gone, and people are dying.”
“You really believe Phoebe is dead?”
“It’s possible. It’s also possible that you know who killed her. I think you do, if she’s dead.”
“Think away, sonny boy. You’re away off orbiting by yourself, in an eccentric orbit. Why don’t you go away now, and be the first man in space?”
Her broken wit, her rapid shifts in mood and temper, disturbed me and made me angry. I said:
“You’re a strange mother, Mrs. Wycherly. You don’t seem to give a damn if your girl is dead or alive.”
She laughed in my face. I almost hit her. The horror in her was infecting me. I turned on my heel and crossed the room to the door, followed by girlish laughter.
A man was waiting for me on the other side of the door. His face was like a shiny, lumpy sausage, bulbous and queer under a silk-stocking mask. He swung a tire-iron in his hand. It came over in a looping arc and reached the side of my head before my fingers touched my gun butt. I fell backwards into the room and darkness.
chapter 12
BEN MERRIMAN’S HEAD hung like a ruined planet in the darkness. I crawled away from it and woke up scrabbling at the door of the room. The room was empty. It was after three by my wrist watch, which I saw double. I had been out for some time.
My gun was still in its holster. I fingered the side of my head. It was wet and numb. My fingers got blood on them, dark as axle grease. I tried standing up. It worked.
The room was clean. The woman and her protector, if that is what he was, had left nothing but the empty bottle and my half-finished drink. I finished it.
I washed my cut head in the bathroom sink and improvised a bandage out of a clean towel. In the bathroom mirror, I looked like an Indian holy man who had run out of holiness and just about everything else.
“What happened to you?” the night clerk said when I walked into the Hacienda lobby.
“I had a little run-in with a friend of Miss Smith’s.”
“I see.” His expression combined sympathy and a hotelman’s allergy to trouble. “Who did you say you had a run-in with?”
“Miss Smith’s friend. Have they checked out?”
“Miss Smith has checked out,” he said with great distinctness, as if I might have difficulty hearing him. “There was nobody with her when she checked out or when she checked in.”
“Who carried her bags?”
“I did.”
“How did she leave?”
By car.
“What kind of a car?”
“I didn’t notice.”
Now I knew he was lying.
“How much did they pay you?”
He flushed up to the eyes, as if his trouble-allergy had brought on a sudden rash. “Listen, fellow, I don’t like your allegations. I gave you civil answers. Now beat it, or I’ll call the sheriff’s office.”
I was feeling weak. I beat it, on my fine new imitation rubber legs. He forgot to ask me for the towel.
I made my way to my car and drove on instruments into the city. The towers of the capital loomed in the pre-dawn sky. Guided by some perverted homing instinct I found myself going the wrong way on the one-way street that led past the parking lot of the Champion Hotel. I drove in.
Next thing I knew, Jerry Dingman’s face came out of a yellow fog. We were in the alley under the insect-repellant light. All the insects in the world were buzzing in my ears. Through them the old man was saying:
“Take a sup of water, Mr. Wycherly. You’ll feel better.”
He squashed a paper cup against my mouth. His other hand was behind my head. I swallowed some water and spilled some. The buzzing began to fade. The ye
llow fog shrank to an aureole around the old man’s head. The Good Sacramentan.
“What happened to you, Mr. Wycherly?”
“Accident.”
“Traffic accident or people accident?”
“People.”
“You want me to call the police?”
“No. I’m all right.” I sat up.
“You’re not as all right as you think. You got a nasty wound on the temple. I’ll take you up to your room and you lie down. Then you better let me get you a doctor, you’ll be needing stitches. I know one that makes night calls, and he don’t charge too much.”
Dr. Broch arrived in a few minutes, as if he sat up all night waiting for emergencies. His breath smelled of Sen-Sen, and the hands with which he opened his worn black bag trembled constantly. Behind horn-rimmed glasses his face had a washed and formless, almost marinated look. I was beginning to wonder if the Sacramento River ran alcohol instead of water.
The doctor spoke with a slight Middle European accent. “Mr. Wycherly, eh? There is or was a Mrs. Wycherly staying in this hotel. A relative, perhaps?”
“My wife. We’ve been divorced. You know my wife?”
“I can’t say I know her, no. The manager Mr. Fillmore called me in to treat her one day last week. He was worried about her condition.”
“What was the matter with her?”
He shrugged, turning up his hands over the open black bag. “It is not possible for me to say. She would not let me enter her room to examine her. Perhaps it was a physical illness, perhaps an illness of the psyche. Melancholia, perhaps.”
“Melancholia is a form of depression, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I believe she was depressed. She hadn’t got up out of bed for several days. She wouldn’t let the cleaning woman come into the room. That is why the manager was concerned. But I was unable to help her. All she let me see of her was the body under the bedclothes.” His hand described shaky sinuosities in the air.
“How do you know she wasn’t hurt, or physically sick?”
“She was eating well, very well indeed. Mr. Fillmore said she was eating a great deal—enough for two. She kept ordering food from the restaurant in the daytime and also at night—meats and pies and cakes and ice cream and beverages.”
“Was she drinking hard?”
“Some, I believe. But alcoholics don’t eat like that, you know.” He smiled dimly, as if he had private sources of information. “Perhaps her problem is an eating problem. I suggest this to you so you can get her help, perhaps.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “Or there may have been someone with her in the room.”
His eyebrows went up. “I had not thought of the possibility. Yes. It would explain her refusal to let me in, to let anyone in, wouldn’t it?”
I left the question hanging. In spite of their alcoholic tremor, his hands worked on me quickly and efficiently, cleaning and stitching up the cut in my head. It took six stitches. When he had put away his sewing materials, he told me that I was indubitably concussed, and ought to go to bed for several days. I said I would, gave him the twelve dollars he asked for, and suggested that he make no police report. He didn’t argue.
I went to bed for several hours, at least. Raw morning light at the window woke me out of raw black nightmare. I called the desk and after some negotiations got Jerry Dingman on the line.
“I’m just going off duty, Mr. Wycherly.”
“Stay on a few minutes for me. Is the restaurant open next door?”
“I think so.”
“Bring me three eggs, ham, hotcakes, a quart of black coffee, and a clothesbrush.”
He said he would. I took a long hot bath. Jerry knocked while I was drying myself. I fastened a towel around my waist and let him in. He sat on the bed and brushed my clothes while I ate.
Over the rim of the coffee cup, the harsh light at the window seemed to be softening down. The pulsing nightmare had dwindled to an all but forgotten blues with Phoebe’s name running through it. I couldn’t remember what I had dreamed about her.
“Feeling better?” Jerry said when I’d finished eating.
“I feel fine.” This was an exaggeration.
“Enjoy your breakfast?”
“Very much.” I put a dollar on the tray for him. Then I added another dollar. “Those days when Mrs. Wycherly wouldn’t get out of bed and had all the food sent up—who brought it up besides you?”
“Sam Todd, he’s one of the day men. Sam was amazed by all the eats she guzzled. So was I, for that matter. For a while there she was ordering up a big steak every night around midnight. Sometimes two.”
“Did she eat them herself?”
“She always licked the platter clean,” he said. “With double orders of French fries and everything.”
“Was there anybody in the room to help her eat them?”
“I never saw nobody, I told you that. I figured she just had a hearty appetite, or maybe she was feeding a cold, like.”
“Could there have been someone in the room?”
“A man, you mean?”
“Or another woman.”
He considered this. “Could be. When she was holed up like that, she never let me in. She made me set the tray outside the door, and then she’d take it in after I went away. I never even saw her for four-five days at a time. She telephoned her order down to the desk.”
I picked up my jacket from the bed and brought out Phoebe’s picture once again. “You never saw this—my daughter in the room?”
He took the colored photo to the window, and shook his head over it. “No siree, I never saw her anyplace around the hotel. I’d remember a pretty girl like her, too. I guess Mrs. Wycherly was pretty like her at one time. Before she started to eat so much?” He glanced up quickly. “No offense intended.”
“None taken.”
“Did you get to see her last night?”
“We won’t go into it, Jerry.”
“I was just wondering who clobbered you.”
“So was I. Are the cleaning women on yet?”
“They ought to be by now.”
He went away, looking slightly betrayed by my failure to confide in him. I dressed and went downstairs to the third floor. A linen cart stood in the hallway outside the open door of 323. Inside the room a vacuum cleaner whined.
The brown-armed woman operating it jumped when I spoke to her back, and turned with one hand in her asphalt-colored hair.
“Yessir?”
“My wife has been in this room for the last couple of weeks. Are you the one who cleans here every day?”
“Every day when they let me in.” She switched off the vacuum cleaner, looking at me somberly as if I was about to accuse her of a crime. “Is something missing?”
“Nothing like that. Jerry the bellhop says she wouldn’t let anyone into the room for four or five days last week.”
She inclined her head. “I remember. I was worried about her.”
“Why?”
“I think she had a spell on her,” the woman said with conviction, “My sister Consuela had a spell when we were living in Salinas. She put the bed against the bedroom door. She wouldn’t talk or show her face. I had to sleep in the kitchen for a week. Then I found a curandero and brought him to Consuela. He lifted the spell, and she was my sister again.”
I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice: “Was there anybody living in this room with her?”
“Nobody living.” She crossed herself unobtrusively.
“What do you mean by that?”
My tone was wrong, and she didn’t answer. I said more gently.
“Did you see anyone in the room, or anything out of the ordinary?”
“No. I see—I see nothing.”
“Hear anything?”
“She cried. I heard her cry. I wanted to go in and comfort her, but I was afraid.”
“No voices?”
“No voices. Only hers.”
“I’m told she ordered up a great deal of food—enough
for two people.”
“Yes. I took the dirty dishes. She put them out in the hall every morning.”
“What was she doing with all that food?”
“Feeding them,” the woman said. Her eyes burned like candles in the niches of her brows. “They are hungry when they come back.”
“Who are we talking about, Mrs._____?”
“Tonia. Everybody calls me Tonia. You know, I can see, you think I am a stupid woman. But I have had transactions with the spirits of the dead. They would not let Consuela sleep or eat or talk for seven days, until I fed them. The curandero reminded me to feed them, and she was my sister again.”
She spoke in a whisper, so that the spirits would be less likely to hear her. She glanced furtively towards the window. Phoebe’s name was still there, written large on the grimy pane. In spite of the bright morning, I was almost ready to believe in Tonia’s theories.
“You believe that she was feeding the spirits of the dead?”
“I know she was.”
“How do you know it, Tonia?”
She pulled at the small gold ring in her left ear lobe. “I have ears. I heard her crying for the dead. I do not listen at doors but I could hear her from the hallway, crying.”
“What did she say?”
“She called on the murdered one to come back to her.”
“The murdered one? She used those words?”
“Yes. She spoke of murder, of death and murder and blood, and other things I didn’t understand.”
“Try to remember.”
“I can’t. I didn’t hear much. I was afraid. When the dead come back they attach themselves to anyone who is waiting. I ran and shut myself up in the linen room.”
“When was this?”
“Six days ago, or seven.” She counted on her fingers. “Six. It was the day before the Feast of the Three Kings—a bad time to call the dead.”
“Did she say who was dead?”
“No, but the grief in her voice was very bad. Perhaps a member of the family? A son, or daughter?” Her look was sympathetic and inquiring.
I showed her Phoebe’s picture. “This is her daughter—her daughter and mine.” For some reason, it was hard to tell her the lie.
“She is beautiful.” Tonia smiled. “I have one blue-eyed daughter who is almost as beautiful. Her father, who was my husband at that time, was also blue-eyed.”
The Wycherly Woman Page 11