Greer left by the side entrance. His car was parked about twenty yards behind the black Lincoln with the engine running and Frank in the front seat looking a little worried.
“Listen, Jim. It’s nearly eight o’clock.”
“I know it.” Greer got in behind the wheel. “So?”
“Miriam expected me home an hour ago.”
“Miriam’s a nice girl. How is she, by the way?”
“You asked me that before.”
“I did? Well, it just goes to show how my thoughts dwell with her. A very fine girl, Miriam, admirable.”
“Cut it out, will you?” Frank said. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must have some idea.”
“What are you so concerned about? For a solid week you’ve been horning in on this case, hanging around, getting in my hair. Now when the time comes for you to make yourself useful, you want to back out because you’re afraid you’ll catch hell from your wife.”
“How am I making myself useful?”
“You’ll see,” Greer said. “Here they come now.”
Lora and Willett came down the front steps of the building, Lora walking briskly and a little ahead of Willett like an older sister impatient with the slowness of her little brother. At the curb she paused to wait for him and the two of them stood silhouetted by the headlights of an approaching car. The car passed and they crossed the road and got into the black Lincoln.
It was obvious from the beginning that neither of them expected to be followed. The Lincoln went directly to its destination, a dilapidated two-story building on Third Street with a green neon sign across the entrance which said tersely, Food. Inside, a fat Mexican was sleeping at the counter, his right hand still holding a half-empty beer bottle.
Willett parked at a yellow curb and Lora Dalloway got out and walked swiftly around the side of the building and up an open flight of stairs that led to a narrow balcony circling
the second story.
“Part of the place is the old Pico adobe,” Greer said. “The top was added later, converted into studios that are rented out to artists.”
“What kind of artists?”
“All kinds, mostly bad.”
Lora paused at one of the arched doors on the balcony and pounded on it with both fists. The door opened inward and a woman stood outlined in the lighted arch, an enormous woman with clipped grey hair. She wore green plaid slacks and a white turtleneck sweater and she had a cigarette tucked behind her left ear.
Lora went inside and the door closed, but not for long. Within a minute she came out again and hurried along the balcony and down the steps. Before she got into the Lincoln she looked carefully up and down the street as if it had occurred to her for the first time that someone might be following her. Her eyes slid past Greer’s car without hesitating.
“Think she spotted us?” Frank asked.
“If she did, she covered it up nicely.” The Lincoln pulled away from the curb and Greer followed. “Did you recognize the woman in the green plaid slacks?”
“I’ve seen her around.”
“Name’s Billy McKeon. Between gin bouts she makes puppets and paints scenery for the various little theatre groups.”
“What possible connection could she have with Mrs. Goodfield?”
“I’m hoping Lora Dalloway will tell us that.”
At the next stop light Willett braked the Lincoln, made a careful hand signal and turned right onto Anacapa Street.
Greer leaned back, relaxed and smiling.
“For cripe’s sake,” Lora said. “Can’t we go any faster?”
“I don’t like to drive fast. Besides, it’s against the law.”
“Against the law. You kill me, you really kill me.”
“I’d like to.” Willett made the statement without emotion of any kind. “I’d like to see you dead.”
“Don’t get nasty. I might get nasty right back at you, and then you’d never find her.”
“I don’t expect to anyway.”
“We’ll find her.”
“She could be five hundred miles away by this time.”
“Well, she isn’t,” Lora said crisply. “Billy McKeon saw her this morning.”
In the dim light of the dashboard Willett’s face had a luminous pallor. “Is she—was she all right?”
“Alive and kicking.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Certainly she was all right. She bummed some food and a package of cigarettes. She wanted to stay there but Billy wouldn’t let her. She’s superstitious.”
“Can the McKeon woman be trusted?”
“Trusted to do what?”
“Not to call the police.”
“Billy wouldn’t call the police if someone had a knife at her throat. Turn left at the next corner.”
Once again Willett made a careful signal before turning. “Didn’t she tell this McKeon woman anything, where she was going, when she’d be back?”
“Nothing.”
“Did she have any money with her?”
“Where would she get any money?”
“From you.”
“I didn’t give her any money.”
“Thank God for that. It means she can’t be very far away.”
“I told you I don’t think she intended to go far. She just wanted to throw a scare into us. And,” Lora added with a bleak little smile, “she did.”
“I’m not exactly scared.”
“You exactly are. Don’t kid me. You won’t look any better in stripes than I will.”
“It’s all your fault, not mine.”
“My fault. Listen, mister, don’t make me lose my temper. Stick to the facts. I just came into the middle of a very fancy little game you’d rigged up by yourself.”
“I didn’t, I didn’t. It was her. She did it!”
“Well, don’t get hysterical. And for Pete’s sake watch the road, do you want to get us killed?”
“I don’t care. It may be the only way out.”
“Well, it’s not the only way out for me!” Lora screamed. “I’ve got a future.”
“Have you?”
“What do you mean, have I?”
“You didn’t think so much of your future when you were buying that ether.”
“I had a fit of depression, that’s all. I couldn’t see my way clear.”
“Now you can?”
“With your help, I can. I need your help and you need mine. We’re a sort of mutual aid society.”
Willett took his eyes off the road for a second and stared at her. “How much are you going to try and swindle out of me?”
“I want the money you promised my mother plus a little extra for myself.”
“I never promised your mother any lump sum. I couldn’t afford to then and I can’t now. That three thousand dollars was the last cash I have in the world. I’m at the end of my rope.”
“You’ve got the kind of rope that stretches.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she said carefully, “your stock in the doll factory.”
“That must never be touched. I’ll go to prison, I’ll kill myself, before I disregard my mother’s wishes.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re sacred to me.”
“Oh nuts.”
Willett’s jaw clenched. “They are. You wouldn’t understand about human feelings.”
“Forget about feelings and let’s get back to factories. Ethel says you’re not even interested in the doll factory, and what’s more she says it’s losing money and the place is falling apart.”
“Ethel knows nothing about business. The factory is not losing money and it’s not falling apart. It simply needs recapitali
zation and a firm hand.”
“Yours?”
“I’m certainly going to try. I’ve had very little chance to take care of the business this past year because I’ve been traveling around with Mother.”
“Maybe that was her idea.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Skip it.”
They were passing through the oldest section of town where front parlors had become little grocery stores or antique shops, and bright new gas stations rubbed shoulders with shabby-looking mansions that had been converted into boarding houses or two-room apartments.
Traffic was heavy and sluggish, slowed down by pedestrians ambling across the streets and children on bicycles and dogs of every size and shape and breed and mixture of breeds. These dogs were different from the dogs in the other parts of town—they had seen everything, and having seen everything, they were not so curious or so friendly. They moved in and out of traffic, skillfully, knowing which cars to step in front of and which to avoid, using their right of way with more insight and consideration than the pedestrians. Lora turned and looked out of the rear window. “Greer is still with us, six cars back.”
“What will we do?”
“I know this neighborhood. There’s a Texaco station in the next block. Drive in very slowly and I’ll duck out and hide in the restroom. Then you can lead Greer around for awhile while I walk over to the house. It’s only half a block from the gas station.”
“I can’t lead him around all night.”
“Give me half an hour.”
“You don’t even know for sure that she’s at the house.”
“Where else would she go if she was broke? She’ll be there, all right,” Lora said grimly. “She’d better be.”
“I can’t drive around all night,” he said again.
“You don’t have to. Just go home. That will give me a chance to talk to her. Then if things work out we’ll take a cab and meet you at home.”
“I hope—”
“Here’s the station. Turn in.”
He turned in, very slowly, passing within two yards of the ladies’ restroom. Lora jumped out of the car while it was moving.
She was quick, but not quick enough.
Both Frank and Greer spotted her in the three seconds that it took her to reach the door. But instead of stopping the car and waiting for her to come out Greer pressed on the accelerator.
“Aren’t you going to follow her?” Frank said.
“I don’t have to. I know where she’s going. So I think we’ll get there first and surprise her.”
Half a block down the street Greer turned into a long narrow driveway, drove to the end of it, and switched off his car lights.
Within five minutes Lora Dalloway went past the driveway and up the geranium-lined sidewalk of the house next door.
25
The house was old but in better repair than most of its neighbors. The wooden steps had been rebuilt and the paint on the four Doric pillars that supported the veranda had been touched up. A twenty-watt bulb lit up the framed sign on one of the pillars, Room and Board, Ladies Only.
Lora pressed the doorbell and then stepped back so that she could get a better view of the front room through the window. Under a blue-beaded chandelier three middle-aged women were playing bridge at a large, old-fashioned, round table. One of them, a plump brunette in a faded blue housedress, was talking and eating potato chips out of a cellophane bag.
Lora rang again and at the second ring the door was opened by a thin pallid-faced woman about forty.
She spoke in a hushed, sibilant whisper like a librarian. “Yes?”
“I was passing by and happened to see your sign.”
“My sign? Dear me, it isn’t my sign, I just board here.” The woman laughed deprecatingly, making it clear that while she might have to live in a boarding house she’d certainly never stoop to running one. “There’s no vacancy anyway, that I know.”
“Oh.”
“There was a room vacant for some time, but only this morning someone came and rented it, an elderly woman. I haven’t seen her myself. She doesn’t come down for meals and I hear she’s not going to. In fact, what I heard is that she’s a little—you know, in the head.” She touched the side of her own head lightly with one forefinger. “Poor soul.”
Lora murmured, “It happens in the best of families.”
“It does for a fact. Only it seems to me that a respectable boarding house isn’t quite the place for such people. I said to Blanche—that’s Mrs. Cushman, the landlady—I said, great Caesar, Blanche, haven’t you enough to do without taking on the burden of carrying trays up and down stairs? Poor Blanche, she just can’t resist trying to help people. Sometimes I think it’s a weakness rather than a strength.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Well, I must go back to the game, I’m dummy this hand. Sorry there’s no vacancy, it would be nice to have a few younger people around. Maybe you’ll try again?”
“It looks like a well-run place.”
“Oh, it is. I’ve lived here since the beginning of the spring semester—we have loads of fun.”
“I’d like to leave my name with Mrs. Cushman.”
“That’s a good idea. Just a sec and I’ll call her. Oh, Blanche. Blanche? Come here, will you? Someone to see you.”
The plump brunette in the blue dress came into the hall, still holding the bag of potato chips as if she didn’t trust the discretion or appetite of her friends in the front room. When she saw Lora she put the bag on the seat of the hall rack and wiped her hands unobtrusively on the back of her dress.
The thin woman looked at her questioningly. “Did we—?”
“We lost,” Mrs. Cushman said.
“Oh dear.”
“It wasn’t my fault, Madeleine. You had no cards.”
“If you only wouldn’t bid so wildly.”
Madeleine returned to the game, shaking her head in sorrow at the folly of wild bidding.
Mrs. Cushman, too, shook her head. “I can’t stand a bum sport.”
“Nor can I.”
“After all, it’s only a game.”
“You don’t play for money?”
“No.”
“I do,” Lora said. “I play for money.”
Mrs. Cushman began to look a little uneasy. “That’s very interesting, I’m sure. I—are you selling something?”
“No.”
“If it’s a room you want, sorry, we’re all filled up.”
“As of this morning, in fact.”
“That’s right.”
“Who moved in here this morning?”
“I can’t see it’s any of your business.”
“It’s my business, believe me,” Lora said. “What room is she in—the front room on the left—Rose’s room?”
Mrs. Cushman was breathing heavily and noisily through her mouth. “It isn’t Rose’s room anymore. Rose is dead. Her stuff was all taken out days ago. I’ve got a perfect right to rent it again.”
“Who rented it?”
“Say, I don’t like the way you’re acting, young woman. You better get out of here.”
“I’ll get out after I see your new boarder.”
“You can’t see her. She’s sleeping. She wasn’t feeling so well.”
“She’ll feel a lot worse when the police arrive.”
“Police?”
“The police are looking for her. So am I. I got here first.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Cushman said heavily. “Yes, I see you did. You’re Rose’s daughter, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I should of guessed it right away. There’s a resemblance around the eyes and mouth. You’re not as pretty as Rose was in her youth.”
“My mother’s looks never d
id her much good.”
“No.” Mrs. Cushman turned with a sigh and started up the steps, leaning her weight on the banister. “No, they never did.”
The door of the front room on the left was closed. On the other side of it someone was humming softly and off-key.
Lora looked grimly at Mrs. Cushman. “Sounds happy, doesn’t she?”
“She is happy. Seems like a cruel shame to bust it up.”
“She’d bust it up herself if nobody else did.”
“You want me to stick around?”
“I can handle her myself.”
“I feel,” Mrs. Cushman said, “I just feel like crying, I do. She came to me for help, poor soul. I didn’t know the police were after her. How was I to know?”
“I wish you’d go downstairs.”
“Well, all right, but you got a real rude way of expressing yourself. Like your mother.”
“I’m tired of being compared with my mother.”
“Yes.” Mrs. Cushman headed for the stairs. “I can see you are.”
On the other side of the closed door the humming had stopped. A woman’s voice, husky and slightly slurred, called out, “Who’s there? That you? Blanche?”
“Yes,” Lora said.
“Come in.”
“I’m coming.” She went into the room, closing the door swiftly behind her as if she was afraid that the older woman would make some protest or outcry.
There was neither. “So you found me. Aren’t you smart!”
“You’re potted.”
“The cup that cheers, Murphy, old girl, the cup that—”
“You can stop calling me Murphy. Everybody knows.” She picked up a black wool coat that was lying across a chair. “Put it on.”
“Why?”
“Every cop in town is looking for you. We’ve got to get out of here.”
The old woman chuckled and clapped her hands like a delighted child. “They’ll never think of looking here.”
“I thought of it.”
“That’s because you’re so smart. I said that before, didn’t I? You’re smart.”
“Put your coat on.”
“All right, all right, don’t nag.” She struggled out of the rocking chair, using her arms like a tightrope walker to keep her balance. “Who’s potted? I’m not.”
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