The Wycherly Woman

by Ross Macdonald

  “Is Godot travelling by plane these days?”

  “Har dee har,” she said.

  “My car’s parked on the other side. Do you want me to get the bags?”

  “What bags?” She overacted, exaggerating her natural stupidity.

  “The brown bag and the white bag you checked an hour ago. It looks as though you won’t be needing them.”

  Her pentup anger burst out on me. She came up close to me shaking and whispering, calling me various names. “You’ve been spying on me.”

  “A little. Give me the checks and I’ll go and collect the bags. You can wait in the car.”

  “The hell I will.”

  But when I gave her my arm she came along quietly. She was a girl who needed an arm, any arm. I made sure the key wasn’t in the ignition and left her sitting in the front seat while I reclaimed her baggage.

  The bags were surprisingly light. Neither of them was locked. I opened them on a bench inside the entrance. The brown one held several men’s sports shirts, a dark blue suit on the verge of shabbiness, a set of the “trail clothes” affected by sports-car drivers: white ducks and black wool sweater; an electric razor, and a pair of military brushes in a pigskin case which had Stanley’s initials engraved on it in gold.

  The other bag smelled of Jessie. Her meager wardrobe was wadded into it: sweaters and slacks and underwear with her initials on it, a couple of gaudy dresses, a little collection of toilet articles, a carton of cigarettes, and her typescript. It began: “I was always wild from the time my mother’s currant love siezed me in a passionate embrace on my twelfth birthday.” With my hands in the flotsam of her life, I was oddly relieved that the trip with Stanley hadn’t taken place. It would have been a trip to nowhere anyway.

  I closed the bags and carried them out to my car. Jessie said when I got in:

  “Stanley stood me up. I guess you figured that out for yourself.”

  “Where were you supposed to be going?”

  “Away, he said. That suited me. I’ve had enough of this place.” She looked around at the great lighted buildings.

  “You were going to take a plane?”

  “No, we were going to travel by oxcart. That’s why he told me to meet him at the airport.”

  “Where was he calling from?”

  “His store, maybe. I heard music behind him.”

  “He could still be there.”

  “Yeah.” Her voice brightened. “Maybe he got held up by something.”

  I put the car in gear. Bayshore took us up in its rush and disgorged us in San Carlos a few minutes later. I drove across the town to the shopping center on Camino Real. The parking space around it was almost deserted. Not quite. Stanley’s red sports car was parked in front of his shop. There was a light inside, and the sound of music.

  Jessie took hold of my shoulder with both hands. “You stay out of it. Please? Just set the suitcases out and blow. He’ll hit me again if he sees me with you.”

  “I won’t let him.”

  It sounded like a commitment, the way it came out. Her hands became more conscious of my shoulder; they lingered there with something like possessiveness. Her breast came up against me:

  “You’re sort of sweet.”

  “I always thought so.”

  “Conceited, too,” she said indulgently.

  She kissed me lightly. I think she was trying to nail me down just long enough to see if she still had Stanley. She climbed out of the car, and I handed her the suitcases. With one in each hand, like a German wife, she marched up to the front door of Stanley’s shop.

  I heard the surge of music when she opened it. It was musical-comedy music, loud and insistently happy. I followed her in under cover of the music. It burbled out of the glass-walled listening room at the rear of the store.

  Stanley was sitting in the glass room with his back to me. He was listening very intently to the music. I couldn’t see Jessie, but the two suitcases were standing outside the door of the cubicle. I took out my gun and approached the open door.

  Jessie was down on her knees behind the door. She was picking up money like a red-headed chick in a corn bin. Hundred-dollar bills spilled from a black leather satchel onto the floor. Jessie was stuffing them into the pockets of her coat.

  Stanley was paying no attention to her. He was sprawled in his chair with a bullet hole in his forehead, listening to the happy music with dead and dreamy eyes.

  It was the perfect time for the law to arrive. It arrived.

  chapter 19

  A BAD HOUR LATER the case was all wrapped up and I was discussing it with Captain Royal on the second floor of the Hall of Justice and Records in Redwood City. The case was all wrapped up in wet tissue paper. I suggested this fact to Royal, more than once, but he was not impressed by my criticisms. My status in his clean, well-lighted office was somewhere between witness and suspect, veering towards the latter.

  It was Captain Royal’s theory, to put it in the nutshell where it belonged, that Stanley Quillan had murdered Ben Merriman for the fifty thousand dollars, that Jessie Drake had murdered Stanley Quillan for the fifty thousand dollars, and that I had knowledge, probably guilty knowledge, of both crimes.

  “This isn’t an open-and-shut case,” I told him for the second or third time. “Even if Quillan killed Merriman, which I very strongly doubt—”

  “He very strongly doubts it,” Royal said to an invisible poltergeist beside his desk. To me he said: “Do you have evidence that you’re suppressing?”

  “No,” I lied. “But I do know Quillan and Merriman were partners.”

  “Thieves fall out. They both wanted the fifty grand. They both wanted the Drake woman. She admitted that herself.”

  “But she also said she wanted no part of Merriman. She had her chance at Merriman and the money.”

  “You believe that?” Royal gave me a pitying look and a smile which resembled a crack in granite.

  “I believe it. In any case, she couldn’t have shot Quillan. I was at their apartment with her when he phoned from his store. Since then I’ve had her under constant surveillance.”

  “So you tell me,” Royal said blandly.

  “You can check it out. I’ll give you a complete account of her movements and you can match it with her story. That is, if you want to go to the trouble. I realize it’s a lot less trouble sitting here on your can think-talking.”

  Royal’s granite smile didn’t change, but his eyes glinted like mica. “I’m a patient man. Don’t take advantage of it.”

  “Or you’ll throw me in a cell along with Jessie Drake, no doubt.”

  “A different cell,” he said equably, “on a different floor. How do you know it was Quillan who phoned the apartment?”

  “I have no reason to doubt it.”

  “He has no reason to doubt it,” Royal said to his poltergeist. “It could have been somebody else. Quillan was dead already, maybe, and maybe the redhead was using you for a patsy.”

  “It’s possible,” I admitted against my will.

  “There are other possibilities. I’m not throwing any of them out. Just how well do you know this Drake woman?”

  “I met her today.”

  “Pickup?”

  “You can call it that if you want to.”

  “I want to call it what it was. What was your business with her?”

  “I had some questions to ask her about a case I’m on.”

  He leaned across his desk in a confidential way. “Tell me about the case you’re on.”

  “I prefer not to.”

  “You have no preference in the matter, mister. You’re a private detective, not a lawyer, and you have no right of privilege. You’re obliged to co-operate with the properly constituted authorities. Me.”

  “I’m obliged to answer questions in court. Your case against Jessie Drake will never get that far.”

  “We’ll see.” The Captain’s face was very close to mine. I examined it with all the interest of a rock-hound who had jus
t discovered a mineral specimen resembling human flesh. “Did you know she has a record?”

  “I’ll lay odds it isn’t a violent one.”

  “Narcotics and prostitution. They often lead to violence. In the long run they nearly always do.”

  “Come off it, Captain. Jessie Drake didn’t shoot Quillan. He phoned the apartment while I was there. After that she was hardly out of my sight.”

  “She was out of your sight long enough to shoot him, according to both your accounts.”

  “When?”

  “When she walked into his store.”

  “I would have heard the shot.”

  “Maybe.” Royal leaned back in his chair. “Deputy Snider said the music was turned up loud—it’s what attracted him to the scene. You have to admit Drake had an opportunity to shoot him. She certainly had a motive. All that money.”

  “But no gun.”

  “You were carrying a gun,” Royal said mildly.

  “It hasn’t been fired since I had it out on the range three weeks ago Sunday. Incidentally, I want it back. I have a permit to carry it, and I need it in my business.”

  “Sure you do. You’ll get it back when our ballistics men are through with it—provided that the tests turn out in your favor.”

  “You know that gun wasn’t fired tonight.”

  “Do I? You could have cleaned it and loaded it right there in the store.”

  “I had no time.”

  “So you tell me. I don’t know how long you were in there. I don’t know you. Tell me about yourself. Tell me about this case you say you’re on. Where did all those hundred-dollar bills come from?”

  “I’ve been trying to find that out.” I was on shaky ground, and I decided to bolster it up with a little truth: “Merriman evidently made some kind of a deal.”

  “With anyone you know?”

  I avoided a direct answer. “I believe it was some kind of a real-estate deal involving several people. Have you been through his office records, the contents of his safe?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “I’m not in a position to get a search warrant.”

  Royal got up cumbrously out of his chair. I stood up, too. He was taller than I was, broader, a little older, perhaps a little stupider. “What would you look for if you had a warrant to search Merriman’s office premises?”

  “Whatever I found.”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “Not so very. You made an accusation which amounts to murder. You don’t believe in your lousy accusation. You’re simply trying to use it for leverage. I’m not playing.”

  Royal shook his head at me in a disappointed way. “I don’t know how the people down South deal with people like you. Maybe you got a pull in Southland enforcement circles. Up here you don’t have the pull of a broken elastic. Think about it.”

  “I’ve thought about it. And I’m not playing. You can book me, or let me go.”

  “Or I can hold you for twenty-four hours on an open charge. Which is precisely what I’m going to do.” He switched on the box on his desk and spoke into it briskly: “Thorne? I have another roomer for you. Come and get him, will you?”

  I was bothered. A night in a nice modern jail was one thing. Sitting still for twenty-four hours while the Wycherly case went on without me was another thing. I said to Royal:

  “Do you know Colton of the Los Angeles D.A.’s staff?”

  “Heard of him.”

  “Call him, will you? His home number is Granite 3-7481. Ask him about my record.”

  “I’m not interested. Also, the County doesn’t have funds for long-distance calls on behalf of private parties. Call him yourself if you like—you’re entitled to a call.”

  A stout man in deputy’s uniform came in without knocking. He gave me a practised look. “This the man, Captain?”

  “This is the man. I want him in a cell by himself, and be sure to take his belt. Mr. Archer is very emotional.”

  “Are you kidding?” I said.

  Royal turned and looked at me the way men look at dogs. “This is no practical joke, if that’s what you’re thinking. You’re in, brother.”

  “You said I could make a call.”

  “To Colton in L.A.? You’ll be wasting your time. Colton or nobody else cuts any ice with us. This is a clean county, even if you and your buddies have been littering it up with corpses.”

  I almost swung on Royal. I think he wanted me to, if only to take the dubiety out of the situation. Thorne inserted his shoulder between us and nudged me with it. “Do I take him away, Captain?”

  “First I’ll make my call.”

  “That’s your right and privilege,” Royal said with some unction. “My best advice to you is call your principal, if you have one, get his release on the information you’re sitting on. Maybe then—I say maybe—you and me can have a meeting of minds.”

  “Intellectual slumming bores me.”

  He missed it, or let it pass. “I’ll get your principal for you. Say the word.” He picked up one of the telephones on his desk.

  “I’ll talk to Carl Trevor in Woodside.”

  Thorne and Royal looked at each other. Then they both looked at me, with dawning approval. The atmosphere in the room began to warm up, as if Trevor’s name had jiggled a thermostat.

  “Mr. Trevor was in this office just last night,” Royal said. “You’re working for Mr. Trevor?”

  “I’m working for his boss.”

  “You’re on the Wycherly disappearance?”

  I nodded.

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I don’t like being squeezed.”

  “You got to admit you were asking for it,” Royal said. “Here. Sit at my desk.”

  The atmosphere was getting so warm it made me a little sick. Royal dismissed Deputy Thorne, placed me in his own chair, gave Carl Trevor’s home number to the switchboard. He didn’t have to look it up.

  He exchanged a few cordial words with Trevor and handed me the receiver. Trevor sounded old and spent:

  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you, Archer. Why didn’t you tell me you were going to be in Redwood City?”

  “I didn’t know it. I walked in on a killing.”

  “Another killing?” he said wearily.

  “Man named Quillan, ran a hole-in-the-wall record shop in San Carlos.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “Captain Royal thinks I did.”

  Royal began to smile and wag his head.

  “Is everybody going crazy?”

  “Yes,” I said with my eye on Royal. “Everybody is going crazy. Do you feel like coming over here and straightening the Captain out?”

  Royal made a pooh-pooh mouth and pantomimed with his hands a smooth unbroken flow of good fellowship and tolerant understanding.

  “I’ll talk to him on the phone, that will be quicker.” Trevor’s voice faltered as though it had come up against an obstruction. “Archer. I want you to make a journey with me. Tonight.”

  “Whereto?”

  “Medicine Stone. I have a summer place there, as I think I told you. The local sheriff knows I’m Phoebe’s uncle, and he called me a little while ago. He thinks they may have found her car.”

  “At your place?”

  “A few miles from there. Underwater, in the sea. A fisherman spotted it the other day, but Sheriff Herman isn’t on the ball and he didn’t think anything of it until he got the teletype on Phoebe’s disappearance. I urged him to try and dredge it up tonight.”

  “Is it a Volkswagen?”

  “Apparently it is.”

  He took a shuddering breath, as if he was coming up from underwater. I said I would pick him up in a few minutes. Royal followed me downstairs to give me back my gun.

  chapter 20

  THE FLOODLIGHTS were on at Leafy Acres. Helen Trevor came out when I mounted the front steps. She shut the door softly behind her:

  “May I speak to you for a moment, Mr. Archer?”


  “Go ahead.”

  “Please don’t tell my husband I intervened. I’m worried about Carl, deeply concerned for his health. I’m convinced he shouldn’t make this—this nocturnal excursion with you.”

  “It’s his idea.”

  “I realize that.” She sighed, and rubbed her gray throat. The glare of the floodlights made her eyes seem huge and frantic. “Carl has always taken on more than his strength can bear. I know he appears to be a powerful man. He isn’t, really. He had a coronary less than two years ago.”

  “How bad a coronary?”

  “He barely survived it. Only my prayers brought him through, I do believe. The doctor told me another attack would—might possibly kill him. And I can’t live without him, Mr. Archer. Please don’t let him go with you.”

  “I can hardly stop him. Don’t worry, I’ll do the driving.”

  “It’s not just the driving I’m worried about. It’s the emotional shock he may meet at the other end. He’s had a night and a day of terrible strain already. The only thing that’s kept him going is the hope that she is alive. If he should discover that Phoebe is dead—”

  Her voice lost itself in dry shallows. She turned her face away from the light, perhaps for fear of what I’d see in it. Her hatchet profile was caricatured by her shadow on the door. She was an unattractive woman who knew she was unattractive, had probably known it the day she lifted her bridal veil for her husband’s kiss. Such knowledge could make a wife possessive as hell.

  “You’d better take it up with your husband directly, Mrs. Trevor.”

  “I tried to. He wouldn’t listen. He treats me as an enemy, when all I’m trying to do is save his life. He insists on rushing around like a madman—it’s part of his illness.”

  “I doubt that. Phoebe is important to him.”

  “Too important,” she said bitterly. “He puts her ahead of me—ahead of his own welfare. I wasn’t able to give him a child, you see. He’s been fixated on my brother’s child ever since she was born.” She added on a deep breaking wave of feeling: “God chose to make me barren.”

  Her fingers crept down from her throat to her meager breast. Her face was fierce and haggard. I was beginning to feel some of the angry strain that knotted Trevor’s arteries.