Double

by Bill Pronzini

  I crept back to the door and crouched, listening. There was no sound out there. Had the person left, or was he in some other part of the house? Would he leave me here to starve? Or come back and kill me? There was no way of knowing. I had to chance trying to pick the lock on the door.

  That type of lock wasn’t going to yield to my favorite implement, the credit card. I looked around for something to use, wishing there were some way to tone down that blood-red glare without plunging myself into total darkness. Then I noticed that—quite incredibly—I still carried my purse, hanging now from the crook of my elbow rather than my shoulder. I thought of the Swiss Army knife Don had given me a couple of months ago—a decidedly unromantic gift by most people’s standards, but one that suited both of us—and I reached inside the rear pocket of the bag. The knife caught on something and I gave it a vicious tug to get it out. Then I went to work on the latch.

  After what seemed like an hour, I had to admit there was no way I was going to pick the lock. I flung the knife down in frustration, got off my knees, and started to pace the room—avoiding the ell where Sugarman’s body hung.

  In any other house there would have been some way out besides the door. Other houses had windows, heating ducts, air vents. But this place defied all normal concepts of construction. Or did it?

  I began at the door and worked slowly toward the outside wall, tapping against the vinyl stones with the hilt of the knife. It was a large room and it took me a long while to cover it; I became accustomed to my surroundings and even the red light ceased to bother me. I tapped exhaustively, everywhere I could reach, but each tap struck solid adobe. There were no hollow-sounding spots, no open spaces that had been covered over by the wallpaper.

  My lack of success only made me more determined. I went on, even along the wall where Sugarman’s body hung. When I went by it, I kept my eyes averted.

  What if I were stuck in here for days? I thought. Sugarman’s killer hadn’t come back; there was no reason to suppose he would now. What if nobody ever came and I died in here?

  My stomach lurched again, and I fled the ell for the other part of the room. I sank to the floor, my back against the wall, breathing hard. I sat there for a long time before I roused myself and looked at my watch.

  It seemed an eternity since I’d started tapping the walls, and indeed it was after ten. When had I been locked in here? Five o’clock? Six? I’d lost all track of time.

  After a moment I told myself I had to resume tapping in the ell; it was the only chance I had. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to get up off the floor and go back in there by the body.

  Look, I told myself, your life depends on this.

  And somewhere inside me, a voice replied: I can’t do it.

  Yes, you can. Don’t think about the body. Just do it!

  I did it. But the effort was futile—the walls in the ell were also uniformly solid.

  What now? I thought, sitting back down on the floor where I’d been before. Wait for someone to come? Will someone come, someone other than Sugarman’s killer?

  For some inexplicable reason I had a sudden sharp hunger pang. I remembered I hadn’t eaten since the potato salad I’d gobbled out of the refrigerator last night. I never ate breakfast, and I hadn’t been hungry later on because of the desert heat. I shouldn’t be hungry now, not under this stress, but I was. Also I was thirsty. It had been a long time since I’d finished the bottle of Calistoga Water.

  Well, hunger I could do something about, and maybe eating would distract me for a moment from the awful situation I was in. As a chocaholic, I always carry a couple of Hershey bars in my purse. I crawled over to where I’d left it in the middle of the floor and felt around where the candy usually was.

  It wasn’t there.

  This was impossible! I always—

  And then I remembered that a few days ago, two of Charlene’s kids had been beating the hell out of each other and I’d bribed them to be good with the last remaining squares of chocolate. Charlene had been furious with me and had given me a big lecture on child-rearing.

  Hunger was the least of my problems, however. I could live without food for quite a while. Water was a more serious deprivation. And what about air? How well was this room ventilated? How long would the oxygen supply hold out?

  In response to that thought, I began to feel light-headed and leaned my head forward against my knees.

  “Stop it, Sharon,” I said aloud, sitting erect. “You’ve been in worse situations before.”

  Oh, yeah? the small voice answered.

  “Yeah. Remember when that murderer had the knife at your throat? How about when you were almost trapped in that burning Victorian? And don’t forget when you were locked in the storeroom of the old winery, with all those lunatics with guns outside.”

  There could be a lunatic with a gun here, too.

  “Don’t think about that.”

  Then I realized I was talking to myself, and put my fingers to my lips. All I’d need was to sit here babbling like some wino on a Mission Street bus, while I should be thinking my way out of here. Logic dictated there must be some way....

  But I was tired and, try as I might to think, my mind wandered. Finally I looked at my watch again, then stared at it in amazement. It was well after midnight. I’d been here six hours, maybe seven. I slumped against the wall, looking despondently at a piece of crumpled paper—

  Paper? I didn’t remember seeing it when I’d come in. Probably, like the note Alice had found in one of my favorite childhood tales, it would say “Drink me.”

  I giggled at that. “Drink me.” As if paper would assuage my thirst.

  “Sharon, you’re getting giddy,” I said sternly. “And I don’t care if I’m talking to myself, because there’s no one to hear me and think I’m odd.” Then I crawled forward, picked up the paper, and smoothed it out.

  It was the piece of scratch paper on which Sugarman had written June Paxton’s address and phone number on Sunday morning. Probably it had fallen from my purse when I yanked out the Swiss Army knife. June Paxton’s name, written in bold, strong letters. Black felt tip on white, both now bathed in that bloody glow. Forceful letters, full of life . . .

  And then I was suddenly alert, staring at them. My mind cleared. I sat back on my heels, holding the paper in both hands. And stayed there, frozen for a long time, while I began to put it all together....

  I got up and went into the ell where Sugarman’s body hung. I stared at it without the pity and horror I’d felt earlier. And then, knowing I sounded half cracked—probably was half cracked—but not giving a damn, I began to talk to her.

  “You loved Elaine, didn’t you?” I said. “I know you did because I found that note at her house, in your handwriting. You said you couldn’t get her out of your mind ever since that night at the club. This club. Isn’t that right?”

  I paused as if waiting for an answer, then went on.

  “Which one of you introduced the other to Les Club? You, probably. You and Elaine had become friends, and you sensed she was ripe for a double life. The kind of double life you and all the other members of Les Club led. But she was heterosexual, not bisexual like you. What attracted her to a wide-open sex club? Lots of men, with no strings attached? Bondage? S and M?

  “Sure, I bet that was it. She liked that sort of kinky stuff, just like you did. I should have realized that—you both seemed to know something about Beddoes and his porn collection, which is definitely oriented that way. More than you would have known if he’d been merely Elaine’s employer. I’m willing to bet he’s a member here too. And then Elaine had that paddle in her closet—a paddle with the insignia of the sorority you belonged to. I remember now—Elaine never went to college. We talked about that when she urged me to go—she told me how she regretted it. You gave her the paddle, didn’t you? It was a joke. Some joke, Karyn.”

  I sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and resumed my monologue. “But then things stopped being so funny, didn’t th
ey? Something happened out here. What? Well, that’s easy to imagine, even for an innocent like me. Lots of people messing around in that living room—high on booze or grass or coke. Who? You, Elaine, Beddoes, maybe Rich Woodall. Or Rick, the masseur from that health club who wasn’t above selling his body on the side. Who knows? It doesn’t matter. What matters is what happened with Elaine and you. There you were—all ending up on that round bed in the room with the mirrors. And who does what—and to whom? What’s the difference what sex they are?

  “Elaine was probably horrified by what she’d done with you. That would partly explain her very noticeable depression. And she also must have realized she’d gotten in over her head with Les Club. After all, Rich Woodall had started bothering her. Her life was no longer contained, compartmentalized.

  “So what did she do about it? I think she probably quit coming here. I found all those slinky, sexy clothes exiled in the back of her closet, the handcuffs and thongs stuffed in a bottom drawer, your paddle tossed in with her mementos. I think she decided to get out while she still could. But she found she couldn’t get away from it—not even at work. After all, her boss was a member of Les Club. I bet she got her job because she met him here. And he knew he could control his chief of security—because he had something on her.”

  My voice was growing hoarse from thirst and talking too much. But I kept on; I had to work this out.

  “Okay, when Elaine quit coming here, what did you do? Probably not much at first. Continued to see her. Lunches, committee meetings for the Women’s Forum. Little dinners. You thought you could win her over. You thought she’d be better off with you. Remember what you said to me about Elaine’s sexual orientation? That she wasn’t bisexual or lesbian and perhaps that was her problem. So you decided to court her. And when she still resisted, you wrote that note.

  “And she crumpled it and tossed it away. She rejected you and your offer of love. When she didn’t respond to the note, you tried to talk to her. I think you’d been trying for some days before she died. You must have been frantic—you knew you were going to lose her.”

  I knew I was going a little crazy, holding a conversation with a dead woman, but it seemed so normal to be confronting her with it all.

  “I think you gave it one last try, Karyn, that morning after the breakfast meeting in her office at Casa del Rey. Remember how you told her you were going to escort June to her car so she’d leave Lloyd Beddoes alone? And on your way out to the door, you looked back and said—ever so meaningfully—‘And remember—we have to talk about that other matter.’ And Elaine nodded—ever so wearily—and said, ‘Yes, I know.’ ”

  I leaned back, propping myself on my elbows, tired of sitting erect.

  “There may be no way I can prove it, Karyn, but I think you came back to the office after you escorted June to her car. You waited until Elaine came out of the meeting with Beddoes and Ibarcena. And you had that talk. Why didn’t you have it in the office? Because there were too many people around, and besides Elaine was due to chair a panel at the convention soon. So you went upstairs and into the tower, where it was secluded and quiet.

  “Did you go up there with the intention of killing her if she rejected you? I don’t think so. I think going there might even have been her suggestion—just a quiet, out-of-the-way place. Did you beg her? Plead with her? I guess you must have. And once again she turned you down.

  “And that was it for Elaine Picard. Jealousy and rage made you shove her, and over the rail she went.”

  I paused. The words rang with such finality in the empty room.

  “In a way,” I went on after a moment, “it was also the end for you. Because somebody figured it out just as I have. Somebody who belonged to Les Club, probably. Somebody who cared for Elaine. He got you out here, and he killed you. I won’t know who or why or how until I get out of here and find him.”

  If I get out of here, my inner voice said.

  “When I get out of here,” I said.

  There was still a lot I didn’t understand, however. I lay back on the floor, closing my eyes. For one thing, I didn’t see where Jim Lauterbach’s murder fit. He couldn’t have known that Sugarman had killed Elaine—or could he? Well, maybe. And maybe not. And what about Roland Deveer? And Timmy Ferguson? And Beddoes’s and Ibarcena’s scheme? Were all these things connected with Elaine’s death? Or were they merely confusing side issues?

  And then I slept, the heavy sleep of the truly exhausted. Slept on and on, wasting precious time....

  36 “WOLF”

  The guy who flew me to San Diego from Los Mochis was an American named Bradley. He regaled me with an endless string of ribald stories in a buttery Southern drawl, some of them pretty funny, which helped to ease my terror at being up in his small, cramped, and speedy Beechcraft. But he was a good pilot—a professional who operated a full-time shuttle service—and we didn’t run into any bad weather or other airplanes en route. So it wasn’t a bad trip, all things considered. And he had me back on U.S. soil before noon.

  I went through Customs in less than five minutes. Out on the concourse I spotted a bank of public telephones and started in that direction. The first person I wanted to talk to was McCone—to tell her that I’d soft-hearted us out of Ruth Ferguson’s reward money, to find out if she’d learned anything, and to confer with her on my suspicions about Rich Woodall. She might have more information that I could arm myself with when I went to see the San Diego cops, something more concrete that would nail down Woodall as the murderer of Jim Lauterbach; if so, I would have an easier time keeping Timmy and Carlton Ferguson and Nancy Pollard out of it.

  But I didn’t get to the telephones immediately. What delayed me was a guy sitting in one of the waiting areas, reading a copy of the San Diego Union that he held wide open in front of him so the front page faced outward. I glanced at it as I went by, the way you do, and one of the larger headlines caught my attention and held it. I stopped and stared at the headline for a couple of seconds. Then I went on a quick hunt for a newspaper-vending machine. When I had my own copy of the Union, I sat down with it to read the story on page 1.

  The headline said: HOTEL MANAGER IN MYSTERIOUS SUICIDE. And the story under it began:

  The body of Lloyd R. Beddoes, 48, manager of the fashionable Casa del Rey on the Silver Strand, was found in his Point Loma home late last night, an apparent victim of suicide.

  An empty bottle of sleeping pills and a suicide note were found nearby. County sheriff’s investigators would not reveal the contents of the note pending the outcome of their investigation.

  The mysterious death of Beddoes comes less than one week after Elaine Picard, Casa del Rey’s chief of security, fell to her death from one of the hotel towers. Lieutenant Thomas J. Knowles, the officer in charge of both cases, refused to speculate as to a possible connection between the two....

  There wasn’t much in the rest of the story. No mention of Victor Ibarcena; Beddoes’s body had been discovered by a neighbor. The reporter did bring in the shooting of Jim Lauterbach, as “a third unexplained death in the past week,” and hinted that it, too, might be connected to Beddoes’s suicide. He also managed to deepen the mystery and hint at a bizarre angle by mentioning Beddoes’s penchant for erotic art.

  I put the paper down. Murder? Maybe; his death was no less suspect, on the basis of the skimpy information given in the news story, than Elaine Picard’s. But I remembered McCone’s assessment of Beddoes, that he knew his world was coming apart and that he seemed to be coming apart with it. That type—weak, afraid of losing everything that mattered to him, afraid of prison—was a prime candidate for self-destruction. The odds were that he’d taken the easy way out.

  But where did that leave the sheriff’s-department investigation into the illegal goings-on at the Casa del Rey? Had Beddoes confessed his part in the escape network in his suicide note? Had Ibarcena been taken into custody or had he cut and run, as McCone had believed he might? I wouldn’t know the answers until I talked to T
om Knowles. And if he didn’t know about the escape network, then I would have to tell him; I couldn’t withhold information like that from the authorities. The tricky part, again, would be finding a way to do it without revealing the whereabouts of Timmy Ferguson and my own peripheral involvement in his kidnapping.

  Knotty problem. But there wasn’t any point in worrying about it now; I would just have to see how things stood when I conferred with Knowles. And hope I didn’t make a mistake that cost me my license again: I’d lost it once, through a set of circumstances that weren’t really my fault, and if I lost it a second time I’d never get it back.

  Meanwhile, there was McCone. Maybe she knew something about Beddoes’s suicide. I hurried to the telephones and called her parents’ house.

  Her mother answered. “Sharon’s not here,” she said. There was both annoyance and concern in her voice. “I don’t know where she is. She didn’t come home last night.”

  “Didn’t come home?”

  “She said she was going out on a date with some man she met at the convention. A lie-detector salesman. If she’d been hooked up to his machine when she told me that, it would have gone crazy.”

  “You mean she lied to you?”

  “Right in my face. The salesman called up here last night looking for her. He hadn’t even talked to her since Saturday.”

  “Do you have any idea where she might be?”

  “No. All I get from that girl is lies and double-talk. She makes me crazy sometimes. What she needs is a husband.”

  “When did you last see her, Mrs. McCone?”

  “Yesterday morning. Around eleven.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t believe her. More lies and double-talk. ‘I’m going shopping,’ she said. ‘If I go to dinner, I have to have something nice to wear.’ Then she said, ‘I might take a drive out into the desert,’ and off she went.”

  Borrego Springs, I thought. “Did she say anything about a man named Arthur Darrow?”