“I beg your pardon?” I said. “I was admiring your private view.”
“Yes, lovely, isn’t it?” She called to Miranda, who had started out of the room: “Stay if you wish, dear. I’m going upstairs.”
She lifted a silver handbell that stood on the table beside her. Its sudden peal was like the bell at the end of a round. Miranda completed the picture by sitting down, with her face averted, in a far corner of the room.
“You’ve seen us at our worst,” Mrs. Sampson said to me. “Please don’t judge us by it. I’ve decided to do as you say.”
“Shall I call the police?”
“Bert Graves will do it. He’s familiar with all the Santa Teresa authorities. He should be here any minute.”
Mrs. Kromberg, the housekeeper, entered the room and wheeled the rubber-tired chair across the carpet. Almost effortlessly she raised Mrs. Sampson in her arms and placed her in the chair. They left the room in silence.
An electric motor murmured somewhere in the house as Mrs. Sampson ascended toward heaven.
chapter 14 I sat down beside Miranda on the divan in the corner of the room. She refused to look at me.
“You must think we’re terrible people,” she said. “To fight like that in public.”
“You seem to have something to fight about.”
“I don’t really know. Elaine can be so sweet at times, but she’s always hated me, I think. Bob was her pet. He was my brother, you know.”
“Killed in the war?”
“Yes. He was everything I’m not. Strong and controlled and good at everything he tried. They gave him the Navy Cross posthumously. Elaine worshipped the ground he walked on. I used to wonder if she was in love with him. But of course we all loved him. Our family’s been quite different since he died and since we came out here. Father’s gone to pieces, and Elaine’s come up with this fake paralysis, and I’m all mixed up. But I’m talking much too much, aren’t I?” The turning of her half-averted head to me was a lovely gesture. Her mouth was soft and tremulous, her large eyes were blind with thought.
“I don’t mind.”
“Thank you.” She smiled. “I have no one to talk to, you see. I used to think I was lucky, with all of father’s money behind me. I was an arrogant little bitch—maybe I still am. But I’ve learned that money can cut you off from people. We haven’t got what it takes for the Santa Teresa social life, the international-Hollywood set, and we have no friends here. I suppose I shouldn’t blame Elaine for that, but she was the one that insisted we come here to live during the war. My mistake was leaving school.”
“Where did you go?”
“Radcliffe. I didn’t fit in too well, but I had friends in Boston. They fired me for insubordination last year. I should have gone back. They would have taken me, but I was too proud to apologize. Too arrogant. I thought I could live with father, and he tried to be good to me, but it didn’t work out. He hasn’t got along with Elaine for years. There’s always tension in the house. And now something’s happened to him.”
“We’ll get him back,” I said. But I felt that I should hedge. “Anyway, you have other friends. Alan and Bert, for example.”
“Alan doesn’t really care for me. I thought he did once—no, I don’t want to talk about him. And Bert Graves isn’t my friend. He wants to marry me, and that’s quite different. You can’t relax with a man that wants to marry you.”
“He loves you, by all the signs.”
“I know he does.” She raised her round, proud chin. “That’s why I can’t relax with him. And why he bores me.”
“You’re asking for a hell of a lot, Miranda.” And I was talking a hell of a lot, talking like somebody out of Miles Standish. “Things never work out quite perfectly no matter how hard you push them. You’re romantic, and an egotist. Some day you’ll come down to earth so hard you’ll probably break your neck. Or fracture your ego, anyway, I hope.”
“I told you I was an arrogant bitch,” she said, too lightly and easily. “Is there any charge for the diagnosis?”
“Don’t go arrogant on me now. You already have once.”
She opened her eyes very wide in demure parody. “Kissing you yesterday?”
“I won’t pretend I didn’t like it. I did. But it made me mad. I resent being used for other people’s purposes.”
“And what were my sinister purposes?”
“Not sinister. Sophomore stuff. You should be able to think of better ways to fascinate Taggert.”
“Leave him out of this.” Her tone was sharp, but then she softened it. “Did it make you very mad?”
“This mad.”
I took hold of her shoulders with my hands, of her mouth with mine. Her mouth was half open and hot. Her body was cool and firm from breast to knee. She didn’t struggle. Neither did she respond.
“Did you get any satisfaction out of that?” she said, when I released her.
I looked into her wide green eyes. They were candid and steady, but they had murky depths. I wondered what went on in those sea depths, and how long it had been going on.
“It salved my ego.”
She laughed. “It salved your lips, at least. There’s lipstick on them.”
I wiped my mouth with my handkerchief. “How old are you?”
“Twenty. Old enough for your sinister purposes. Do you think I act like a child?”
“You’re a woman.” I looked at her body deliberately—round breasts, straight flanks, round hips, straight round legs—until she squirmed. “That involves certain responsibilities.”
“I know.” Her voice was harsh with self-reproach. “I shouldn’t fling myself around. You’ve seen a lot of life, haven’t you?”
It was a girlish question, but I answered her seriously. “Too much, of one kind. I make my living seeing a lot of life.”
“I guess I haven’t seen enough. I’m sorry for making you mad.” She leaned toward me suddenly and kissed my cheek very lightly.
I felt a letdown, because it was the kind of kiss a niece might give to an uncle. Well, I had fifteen years on her. The letdown didn’t last. Bert Graves had twenty.
There was the sound of a car in the drive, then movement in the house.
“That must be Bert now,” she said.
We were standing well apart when he entered the room. But he gave me a single glance, veiled and questioning and hurt, before he found control of his face. Even then there were vertical lines of anxiety between his eyebrows. He looked as if he hadn’t slept. But he moved with speed and decision, cat-footed for a heavy man. His body, at least, was glad to get into action. He said hello to Miranda and turned to me.
“What do you say, Lew?”
“Did you get the money?”
He took the calfskin brief case from under his arm, unlocked it with a key, and dumped its contents on the coffee table—a dozen or more oblong packages wrapped in brown bank paper and tied together with red tape.
“One hundred thousand dollars,” he said. “A thousand fifties and five hundred hundreds. God knows what we’re going to do with it.”
“Put it in the safe for now. There’s one in the house, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” Miranda said. “In father’s study. The combination’s in his desk.”
“And another thing. You need protection for this money and the people in this house.”
Graves turned to me with the brown packages in his hand. “What about you?”
“I’m not going to be here. Get one of the sheriff’s deputies to come out. It’s what they’re for.”
“Mrs. Sampson wouldn’t let me call them.”
“She will now. She wants you to turn the whole thing over to the police.”
“Good! She’s getting some sense. I’ll put this stuff away and get on the phone.”
“See them in person, Bert.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I said, “this has some of the earmarks of an inside job. Somebody in this house could be interested in the conversatio
n.”
“You’re ahead of me, but I see what you mean. The letter shows inside knowledge, which they might or might not have got from Sampson. Assuming there is a ‘they,’ and he has been kidnapped.”
“We’ll work on that assumption till another turns up. And for God’s sake make the cops go easy. We can’t afford to frighten them. Not if we want Sampson alive.”
“I understand that. But where are you going to be?”
“This envelope is postmarked Santa Maria.” I didn’t bother telling him about the other envelope in my pocket. “There’s a chance he may be there on legitimate business. Or illegitimate business, for that matter. I’m going there.”
“I’ve never heard of his doing any business there. Still, it might be worth looking into.”
“Have you tried the ranch?” Miranda said to Graves.
“I called the superintendent this morning. They haven’t heard from him.”
“What ranch is that?” I said.
“Father has a ranch on the other side of Bakersfield. A vegetable ranch. He wouldn’t be likely to go there now, though, on account of the trouble.”
“The field workers are out on strike,” Graves said. “They’ve been out for a couple of months, and there’s been some violence. It’s a nasty situation.”
“Could it have anything to do with this one?”
“I doubt it.”
“You know,” Miranda said, “he may be at the Temple. When he was there before, his letters came through Santa Maria.”
“The Temple?” Once or twice before, I’d caught myself slipping off the edge of the case into a fairy tale. It was one of the occupational hazards of working in California, but it irked me.
“The Temple in the Clouds, the place he gave to Claude. Father spent a couple of days there in the early spring. It’s in the mountains near Santa Maria.”
“And who,” I said, “is Claude?”
“I told you about him,” Graves said. “The holy man he gave the mountain to. He’s made the lodge over into some kind of a temple.”
“Claude’s a phony,” Miranda put in. “He wears his hair long and never cuts his beard and talks like a bad imitation of Walt Whitman.”
“Have you been up there?” I asked her.
“I drove Ralph up, but I left when Claude started to talk. I couldn’t bear him. He’s a dirty old goat with a foghorn voice and the nastiest eyes I ever looked into.”
“How about taking me there now?”
“All right. I’ll put on a sweater.”
Graves’ mouth moved silently as if he was going to protest. He watched her anxiously as she left the room.
“I’ll bring her home safely,” I said. I should have held my tongue.
He moved toward me with his head down like a bull’s, a big man and still hard. His arms were stiff at his sides. The fists were clenched at the end of them.
“Listen to me, Archer,” he said in a monotone. “Wipe the lipstick off your cheek or I’ll wipe it off for you.”
I tried to cover my embarrassment with a smile. “I’d take you, Bert. I’ve had a lot of practice handling jealous males.”
“That may be. But keep your hands off Miranda, or I’ll spoil your good looks.”
I rubbed my left cheek where Miranda had left her mark. “Don’t get her wrong—”
“I suppose it was Mrs. Sampson you were playing kissing games with?” He uttered a small heartbroken laugh. “No soap!”
“It was Miranda, and it wasn’t a game. She was feeling low and I talked to her and she kissed me once. It didn’t mean a thing. Purely a filial kiss.”
“I’d like to believe you,” he said uncertainly. “You know how I feel about Miranda.”
“She told me.”
“What did she say?”
“That you were in love with her.”
“I’m glad she knows that, anyway. I wish she’d talk to me when she’s feeling low.” He smiled bitterly. “How do you do it, Lew?”
“Don’t come to me with your heart problems. I’ll foul you up for sure. I have one little piece of advice, though.”
“Shoot.”
“Take it easy,” I said. “Just take it easy. We’ve got a big job on our hands and we’ve got to pull together. I’m no threat to your love life and I wouldn’t be if I could. And while I’m being blunt, I don’t think Taggert is, either. He simply isn’t interested.”
“Thanks,” he said in a harsh, forced voice. He wasn’t the kind of man who went in for intimate confessions. But he added miserably : “She’s so much younger than I am. Taggert has youth and looks.”
There was a soft plopping of feet in the hall outside the door, and Taggert appeared in the doorway as if on cue. “Did somebody take my name in vain?”
He was naked except for wet bathing trunks, wide-shouldered, narrow-waisted and long-legged. With the wet dark hair curling on his small skull, the lazy smile on his face, he could have posed for the Greeks as a youthful god. Bert Graves looked him over with dislike and said slowly:
“I was just telling Archer how handsome I thought you were.”
The smile contracted slightly but stayed on his face. “That sounds like a left-handed compliment, but what the hell! Hello, Archer, anything new?”
“No,” I said. “And I was telling Graves that you’re not interested in Miranda.”
“Right you are,” he answered airily. “She’s a nice girl but not for me. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll put on some clothes.”
“Gladly,” Graves said.
But I called him back: “Wait a minute. Do you have a gun?”
“A pair of target pistols. .32’s.”
“Load one and keep it on you, eh? Stick around the house and keep your eyes open. Try not to be trigger-happy.”
“I learned my lesson,” he said cheerfully. “Do you expect something to break?”
“No, but if something does, you’ll want to be ready. Will you do what I said?”
“I sure will.”
“He’s not a bad kid,” Graves said, when he was gone, “but I can’t stand the sight of him. It’s funny; I’ve never been jealous before.”
“Ever been in love before?”
“Not until now.” He stood with his shoulders bowed, burdened by fatality and exaltation and despair. He was in love for the first time and for keeps. I was sorry for him.
“Tell me,” he said, “what was Miranda feeling low about? This business of her father?”
“Partly that. She feels the family’s been going to pieces. She needs some sort of steady backing.”
“I know she does. It’s one reason I want to marry her. There are other reasons, of course; I don’t have to tell you that.”
“No,” I said. I risked a candid question. “Is money one of them?”
He glanced at me sharply. “Miranda has no money of her own.”
“She will have, though?”
“She will have, naturally, when her father dies. I wrote his will for him, and she gets half. I don’t object to the money—” he smiled wryly “—but I’m not a fortune-hunter, if that’s what you mean.”
“It isn’t. She might come into that money sooner than you think, though. The old man’s been running in some fast and funny circles in L.A. Did he ever mention a Mrs. Estabrook? Fay Estabrook? Or a man called Troy?”
“You know Troy? What sort of a character is he, anyway?”
“A gunman,” I said. “I’ve heard that he’s done murders.”
“I’m not surprised. I tried to tell Sampson to keep away from Troy, but Sampson thinks he’s fine.”
“Have you met Troy?”
“Sampson introduced me to him in Las Vegas a couple of months ago. The three of us went the rounds, and a lot of people seemed to know him. All the croupiers knew him, if that’s a recommendation.”
“It isn’t. But he had his own place in Las Vegas at one time. He’s done a lot of things. And I don’t think kidnapping would be beneath his dignity. How did Tr
oy happen to be with Sampson?”
“I got the impression that he worked for Sampson, but I couldn’t be sure. He’s a queer fish. He watched me and Sampson gamble, but he wouldn’t himself. I dropped an even thousand that night. Sampson won four thousand. To him that hath shall be given.” He smiled ruefully.
“Maybe Troy was making a good impression,” I said.
“Maybe. The bastard gave me the creeps. Do you think he’s mixed up in this?”
“I’m trying to find out,” I said. “Does Sampson need money, Bert?”
“Hell, no! He’s a millionaire.”
“Why would he go into business with a jerk like Troy?”
“The time hangs heavy on his hands. The royalties roll in from Texas and Oklahoma, and he gets bored. Sampson’s a natural money-maker the way I’m a natural money-loser. He’s not happy unless he’s making it; I’m not happy unless I’m losing it.” He broke off short when Miranda entered the room.
“Ready?” she said. “Don’t worry about me, Bert.”
She pressed his shoulder with her hand. Her light-brown coat fell open in front, and her small sweatered breasts, pointed like weapons, were half impatient promise, half gradual threat. She had let down her hair and brushed it behind her ears. Her bright face slanted toward him like a challenge.
He kissed her cheek lightly and tenderly. I still felt sorry for him. He was a strong, intelligent man, but he looked a little stuffy beside her in his blue pin-stripe business suit. A little weary and old to tame a filly like Miranda.
chapter 15 The pass road climbed through sloping fields of dust-colored chaparral and raw red cutbacks. By holding the accelerator to the floor I kept our speed at fifty. The road narrowed and twisted more abruptly as we went up. I caught quick glimpses of boulder-strewn slopes, mile-wide canyons lined with mountain oak and spanned by telephone cables. Once through a gap in the hills I saw the sea like a low blue cloud slanting away behind. Then the road looped round into landlocked mountain wilderness, grayed and chilled suddenly by the clouds in the pass.
The clouds looked heavy and dense from the outside. When we entered them they seemed to thin out, blowing across the road in whitish filaments. Barren and dim through the clouds, the mountainside shouldered us. In a 1946 car, with a late-model girl beside me, I could still imagine we were crossing the watershed between Colton’s atomic age and the age of stone when men stood up on their hind legs and began to count time by the sun.
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