The Man Who Cried All the Way Home

by Dolores Hitchens

  Say this for Doris, she hadn’t lost her composure. She’d packed a small bag with cosmetics and night things; she had signed some blank checks and turned them over to Uncle Chuck, and she had gone off with Martin, holding her head high. Not a tear, not a quiver, thank God.

  I’m the one with the shakes. Old fool that I am.

  I’d better have a cup of coffee and begin thinking over the smart young lawyers I know. That fellow from Santa Ana, for instance. Baylor.

  Uncle Chuck took his coffee to the breakfast nook. Then he got the telephone directory and laid it beside his cup and looked for Baylor’s number.

  When he had finished the coffee and went to the phone, Baylor’s secretary told him that her boss was in court. She took the phone number and promised to have him call Uncle Chuck as soon as possible.

  Pete was scratching at the back door. Uncle Chuck let the dog in, inspected the ear, fed him. Pete would fatten up now. Doris was softhearted; she would soon forget all the rules and regulations Sargent had laid down. Pete would snack all day, whenever he wanted to. Probably it wouldn’t be good for him, either—a short life and a merry one.

  After Pete had wolfed his meal he wandered off into the other part of the house, a puzzled and disconsolate air about him, as if searching for Doris.

  “Nobody’s home but me,” Uncle Chuck told him.

  Pete stopped and looked back.

  “I sure wish you could talk. You could tell me what happened and how you got yourself shot.”

  Pete whined as if he, too, were wishing he could talk.

  There was still one job to be done, the job he and Doris had been discussing on the way back—to give Sargent’s room and belongings a thorough going over. Uncle Chuck took his cup to the sink and rinsed it out, then headed for Sargent’s room. As he opened the door, a strong feeling of Sargent’s presence seemed to strike him; here were all of the things Sargent had chosen and lived with, his personal possessions and trinkets, the collection of a lifetime.

  Surveying the neat but somewhat barren room—barren of knicknacks and souvenirs—Uncle Chuck began to suspect that Sargent’s intimate possessions might tell him very little. Sargent’s life had had its secret side. You don’t keep souvenirs of a secret. Perhaps Kat Knowles had clung to souvenir matchbooks and night-spot menus and theater programs—provided Sargent had taken her out to such places. It was a cinch Sargent hadn’t done so.

  I have to look, thought Uncle Chuck. Can’t be telling myself it’s useless even before I start.

  Well, I might as well start with the biggest thing in the room, the bed.

  He stripped off the heavy quilted spread, turned back the blanket and sheets, pulled everything off to the bare mattress. Then he lifted the mattress off the box springs, let it slip aside to the floor. There was nothing at all out of the ordinary. He managed to pull the bed from against the wall and inspected the opposite side of the headboard, and again there was nothing. With some awkwardness he managed to get low enough to see under the bed, telling himself as he did so that Sargent wouldn’t have put anything under it—Doris would be running the vacuum on the floor; she would have found anything here. After he had put the bed back together again, Uncle Chuck went to the armchair by the window and sat down.

  Tuckered out, he told himself scornfully. And I haven’t even begun.

  Thank God it’s wall-to-wall carpeting and I don’t have to search under any rugs.

  He put his head back against the brocade cushion and shut his eyes for a moment. And again came the feeling of being an intruder, an interloper, in a place that belonged—still belonged—to Sargent. Suddenly Uncle Chuck’s eyes snapped open. Doggone it, there had to be something here. Some scrap, some tiny bit of evidence. With all that Sargent had been up to, his schemes with Cannon, with Kat Knowles, with God only knew who else—some traces had to remain. Sargent couldn’t have kept it all safely at the office; true, the travel folders about Brazil and the passport had been there in the unlocked drawer, but there must be an explanation for that. What really had gone on, the plots and the scheming, had to leave a tag end somewhere.

  It had to be here.

  Uncle Chuck got up and grabbed the cane, circled the room in an exasperated dilemma.

  “Sargent, damn your hide, you must have left something …” He found that he had spoken aloud, as if Sargent were actually present.

  He went to the closet, pushed aside the door. Sargent had had a pretty good selection of clothes. Nothing fancy, nothing loud, but good substantial-looking suits and slacks, jackets and topcoats. He took care of himself, Uncle Chuck thought, as he propped the cane aside and went through the coat pockets. He found two books of matches with Owens’s insurance-company ads on them. He found a well-worn newspaper clipping about Wally Wiegand’s proposed store expansion, something Sargent must not have had time to file. In another pocket was a torn slip from a financial page—Diamond Tunnel had shown a sharp gain and there had been rumors of even further findings of rare minerals in an isolated area of Canada.

  Uncle Chuck tossed the matchbooks and the two scraps of newsprint on the bed. He studied them grimly; there was nothing new here.

  The top dresser drawers were filled with underwear and socks. Uncle Chuck took everything out, including the tissue-paper lining at the bottom, the fresh-looking clean wood at the bottom seeming to mock him.

  He thought of Dorrie in that moment. She was being booked downtown now, going through all the humiliating procedures of being mugged, fingerprinted, and the rest of the routine; the stench of guilt was being applied by implication. Uncle Chuck’s heart thudded painfully. This was the little girl he and Tippie had cherished; this was the one whose loving ways had made all the time of her childhood a joy for Tippie. This was the one who had turned to them for comfort against small hurts—and now there was being inflicted a huge, shameful hurt. And he was helpless to do anything about it.

  He sat down on the chair, and in spite of an effort at control, he felt his face twist, the tears start. He tried to regain control by drawing in a deep breath; it turned into a gasping sob. For several minutes he sat with tears running down his face, his shoulders shaking. He tried to get out some words—“Danged old fool”—but they didn’t come. He could think only of Dorrie and of how they were treating her.

  I should have gone with her.

  He started to get up, compelled by the thought that he must reach Dorrie somehow and make sure that her courage, her faith, was still intact. I have to explain, he thought, shocked at his neglect—I have to make her see that they do these things to everybody, that the guilty and the innocent all must go the route. I should have prepared her. I should have explained about the glaring lights and the police photographer’s cynical and hurried indifference, the matron’s arrogant presence, the sense of having become, not a human being, but a thing, an object without rights.

  He staggered against the dresser and his arm fell across the leather box, tipping it, loosening the lid so that Sargent’s cuff links and tie tacks spilled out with a metallic rattle. For an instant he seemed to see something more. It was like a glimpse of white—something white and shiny that vanished as soon as the box was righted.

  He braced himself against the dresser, picked up the box. It was fairly heavy, obviously a wooden frame covered by the worked leather. An antique maybe—it looked old. A strange sense of excitement came over Uncle Chuck. The wetness dried on his cheeks. He turned the box so that light from the windows shone into the interior. The velveteen lining showed long years of wear. He had thought that Sargent’s room contained no trinkets or mementos, but this thing had been Sargent’s for a long time; it was perhaps the most intimate possession that the room contained.

  He tried to pry the fitted velveteen from the sides, from the bottom, but it seemed firmly attached. Had that glimpse of something white been a mirage, a trick played by old eyes half blinded by tears? Uncle Chuck shook his head at his own doubt. The thing, whatever it was, had been real. It was some
where inside the box.

  He removed the tray from its flanges and tapped the box upside down on the dresser surface. A dusty breath, a sigh of slipping fabric, seemed to rise in the silence. He turned the box to look into it again. The bottom panel had loosened, had almost fallen clear. Uncle Chuck got a pocketknife from his pants pocket and prized up the edge.

  The white, shiny thing had been the border of the snapshots hidden here in the false bottom of the leather box. There were two color prints, perhaps three inches square. Uncle Chuck took them over to a window.

  The scene in the color prints was that of a street, a sidewalk. The camera had been some distance from the things photographed—the parked cars, the figures of people, were small.

  Uncle Chuck sucked in a deep breath. The little foreign car in the middle of the picture was unmistakable—it was Kat Knowles’s. Sleek, small, and red, it shut off at the knees the view of the two persons behind it on the sidewalk. A man and a woman—the print was not sharp enough to make out the features—but Uncle Chuck was positive that it was Kat and Sargent. Something in their attitude hinted at parting, at being about to separate. Behind them was the façade of what looked like a big apartment house, a new and luxurious-looking one, and he recalled Mrs. Criff’s remarks about the expense of keeping a place on Barranca Drive.

  The second print was so much like the first that it was almost a duplicate. Studying the two, he saw that in the second Kat Knowles had a hand on Sargent’s arm; Sargent seemed about to bend and kiss her. These two were saying goodbye—somewhere.

  I’ve got to go and look, Uncle Chuck told himself.

  Barranca Drive wasn’t a long street, being in an area which up until recently had still been in orange groves. If this apartment house was the one where Sargent had kept an extra home-away-from-home, it shouldn’t be hard to find.

  I’ll come back and look the room over some more later, he promised himself. He put the color prints into a coat pocket and went out. On the way he debated what he should do about Pete. In the end he left the dog locked in the house.

  Outside the sun seemed less bright than it had earlier, and looking into the sky, he saw that a high cloudiness had filmed the light. The ground and the surrounding pine trees looked darker, gloomier, and he thought suddenly, when this is over Dorrie mustn’t stay up here. Her grief won’t die; the hurt won’t go away. The isolation, the loneliness, will keep the bad memories alive. I’ll get Dorrie to move as soon as she can, he thought. Maybe she’d come to my place, if only temporarily.

  He got into his car, started the motor, released the brake.

  Crazy old coot, his thoughts mocked, as he turned the corner below the house where Kat had died. What do you think you’ll be able to do? What can you prove—that Martin might think important, for instance? So, Sargent had a couple of snapshots hidden in his cuff-link box. This changes whatever Martin has on Dorrie?

  Like hell it does.

  He found himself shaking his head, his hands clenched on the wheel in anger.

  Sargent thought that the prints were important enough to keep and to conceal. Someone had caught Sargent and Kat Knowles together, outside that secret apartment, maybe; and they’d thought it important enough to take a color print.

  For a brief instant the idea flickered—Dorrie had taken the pictures. The prints were something to hold over Sargent, a way of getting something she had wanted, proof of his infidelity, his rottenness. Well, if Martin saw them, that’s what he would think.

  Logically, the one most to be interested, the one most to be hurt by a man’s philandering, was his wife.

  Who else?

  Chapter 17

  Uncle Chuck parked across the street. The big new apartment building was exactly as it looked in the color snapshot he’d found in Sargent’s room. There was no small red car at the curb, of course. Looking from the print in his hand to the scene across the street, Uncle Chuck decided that the picture had been taken from down the street, probably where there were some hibiscus which would have made a concealing screen for the picture taker. The two in the snapshot were gone, murdered. Where—and who—was the third member of the triangle?

  By now the cops would have gone through the apartment, searching for any evidence of threat or danger to the two who had kept their rendezvous there.

  A man in a dark business suit had come from inside the building, had crossed a strip of lawn to the walk which led to the street. Uncle Chuck watched him, wondering if this could be a plain-clothes officer—and then sudden recognition jerked him erect in the seat behind the wheel.

  The man was Bill Knowles.

  He had lost the disheveled appearance of the previous night. His hair was combed sleekly, his clothes looked trim and neat. There was a certain hesitation, caution, in the way he approached the sidewalk and the street. He paused there to look in both directions, as if seeking a watcher. Then he headed for his car, and looking down the street, Uncle Chuck saw it and saw the open space in front of it, the rear blocked by another car. There was no way that Uncle Chuck could intercept the man on foot—Knowles could simply sprint away and be gone before he could hobble after him. But if he could squeeze into the space ahead of Knowles’s car, if he could block the other car with his own … Even as the thought came, Uncle Chuck was reaching for the key in the switch.

  He turned with a squeal of tires that brought Knowles’s head swiveling to watch him. Knowles stopped in his tracks. Uncle Chuck rolled past, to angle in toward the curb, cutting off any chance of getting the other car out of its slot. He set the brake and looked back. Knowles still wasn’t moving. He seemed to be trying to make up his mind what to do next. Of course he could simply take off in the other direction, abandoning his car for the time being, and Uncle Chuck’s maneuver would be meaningless.

  Apparently he decided to accept the challenge. He settled his shoulders under the coat as if getting ready for a fight. As he came close, Uncle Chuck could see the angry congestion in his face. Knowles was boiling.

  “Look, Chump—”

  “For Pete’s sake, can’t you even remember a person’s name?” Uncle Chuck burst out, putting all the anger he could summon into his tone. “Are you such a damned stupid idiot that you can’t keep a simple name like mine in your head?”

  There was a flicker of surprise; Knowles hadn’t expected a quick attack before his own had a chance to get off the ground.

  “My name is Chuck Sadler. You can call me Mr. Sadler. I don’t want a liar, and a stupid liar at that, calling me Chuck.”

  Knowles’s heavy face twitched. He put a hand on the open window of the door opposite the driver’s seat. “Get your car out of my way, old man. Before I punch holes in it with my front bumper.”

  Uncle Chuck nodded as if with satisfaction. “Well, I’m glad of one thing. You’re not denying it was all a lie.”

  “Look, I’m not going to stand here and—”

  “Sure, they’ve got Dorrie in jail. That must make you happy. But what’s going to happen when Martin decides to hike down the hill in the woods and look up into Dorrie’s living room, the way you claim to have done? Who’s going to believe your lies then?”

  “I don’t have to—” Knowles’s voice choked off and he peered in at Uncle Chuck. He was either extremely surprised or he was an extremely good actor. “What did you say about Doris?”

  “Don’t give me that baby stare,” Uncle Chuck jeered. “You lying snake.”

  “No, I mean … Honestly, I mean—”

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t relay that yarn to Martin when he caught up with you—Doris was talking to Wally Wiegand and waving a poker. Only Wiegand says it didn’t happen.”

  Knowles seemed more astonished than ever. “He didn’t!”

  “He most certainly did. He says you’re a liar, Dorrie didn’t wave any poker, didn’t act wildly or make any threats. And for the book, you couldn’t have looked in at them anyway.”

  Knowles’s astonishment seemed to be giving way to guilt. D
ammit, Uncle Chuck thought, this must be what they call method acting—at its best too. Knowles looked to either side, up and down the street, as if expecting to catch some hidden watcher—Martin himself, perhaps.

  “You know what I think, Knowles?” Uncle Chuck said quietly.

  Knowles glanced at him briefly, licked his lips. “No.”

  “I think you were in on it.”

  Knowles tried to smile. “In on what? What the devil are you hinting around about?”

  “I’m talking about Sargent’s plan. The scheme that was going to get him off the hook, the glorious finale that would make everything right. He was going to disappear with your daughter, and you were going to help cover his tracks. The story about Dorrie waving the poker was a figment, something to be told after Sargent’s disappearance, so the cops would give Dorrie a bad time for a while and keep her busy. Only Sargent must have known that in the end it wouldn’t hold water; he must have had sense enough to go out and try to see into the house from the hill below. So actually the story wouldn’t just direct suspicion on Dorrie. In time the cops would wake up and wonder why you were lying, and then you’d be kept busy.”

  The astonishment in Knowles’s manner appeared to deepen, coupled with chagrin which he tried to conceal.

  Brother, Uncle Chuck told himself. This character can ring all the changes. And did he ever miss his calling, running a chain of restaurants.

  “There had to be more against Dorrie than the yarn about your seeing her with the poker. My guess is, the cops showed you the personal effects found with your daughter’s body. And something didn’t jibe. Something was there that clinched Dorrie’s guilt—or anyway her presence at the scene of Kat’s murder.”

  A shutter seemed to drop invisibly, cutting off guilt, surprise, and anger. Now he merely looked thoughtful. But he spoke evenly: “There was a plastic hood, one of those little things women carry in their purses, put on their heads when it rains. Black. The case it was in had Doris’s name scratched on it in gold paint, something she might have had done at one of those dime-store counters—you know what I mean. Martin wanted to know, would Sargent have given it to Kat, would Kat have wanted it, kept it, and I said no, she wouldn’t have touched it.”