The Watcher
Page 14
She got back on the stool.
She looked carefully all over the inside of the small office, trying to see something that might indicate that Larry had been here. It was very clean, no dust anywhere, no tracked-in oil spots or greasy rags or stray nuts and bolts. Mr. Bob Maule was obviously proud of his new place. He kept it nice. The only thing the least bit out of place was an empty cardboard box sitting on the end of the counter. It had held an inner tube. Molly looked at it for a long minute before getting off the stool to go closer.
She put out a hand to touch it. The halves of the box were laid open; the tube which had been inside was gone. She bent above it in sudden suspicion, but the odor of fresh rubber reassured her. It had held a new inner tube until recently. She picked up the cardboard lid, turned it over to read the label, tried to figure the size of the tire from the printed figures. They meant nothing to her.
She heard a step behind her and turned. Uncle Florian had come in. He looked tireder than she’d ever seen him; his face seemed to sag from its bones and his eyes were heavy-lidded. He put a hand on her arm. “Baby, they’re letting us go. I’ve told them everything I can. They’re taking him to the hospital, going to lock up the place until the fingerprint men get here. We can roll.”
She jabbed the lid of the box against his chest. “Look at this!”
He took it, turned it over. “What about it?”
“It had an inner tube in it!”
She seemed to make no impression on his tired preoccupation.
“Don’t you understand? Larry came here, the tube in the tire couldn’t be repaired. He bought a new one.”
“He had money for it? I thought you said he hadn’t.”
It brought her up short. Larry usually carried less than a dollar with him. He made little at the boatyard, and what he made he threw away.
“No.” She hated to admit it. “But look. Maybe the man in the black car loaned him the money. As a sort of . . . of way to get his confidence.”
Uncle Florian laid the cardboard lid back on the counter. “Honey babe, we’ve got to head for home. There’s a party going on in a few hours. You’re expected to be there.”
She couldn’t credit her ears. “Now? Go home to a party now?”
“We’ve got to show up. As I say, I knew Clara when she still wet her pants. But that was a long, long time ago. She’s had the whip hand for years now. We both know it. I’d damned well starve to death if she didn’t let me live with you there, worse, I’d never have a damned thing to drink.”
Molly felt dizzy with the pounding of blood in her temples. “But Larry’s a million, million times more important——”
“I know. I agree completely. But if the two of us stay out here on this highway, roaming up and down looking for Larry while that party goes on, we’re dead. She’ll make you wish you never heard of Larry Lebracht. She’ll get his ass kicked out of the job in the boatyard, and then where will he be? She’ll put me out on the street, for being with you, for not corraling you and taking you home.”
“She couldn’t!” Molly’s eyes were filling with tears now, at last. Her throat was one great tormenting ache.
“She sure as hell will.”
“Just look, then, just tell me. Is this the size of tubes in the Ford?”
“I should know but I don’t.” He pushed the lid further away on the counter, took Molly’s arm and drew her outside. One of the State Patrol men was at the car, leaning in through the open door, talking to the radio. The ambulance was pulling out with a crunch of gravel.
“What did he tell them?” Molly cried, staring after it.
“Nothing, baby. My guess, he won’t talk for some spell.”
“It had to have something to do with Larry!” She was wringing her hands in agonized fright.
“Maybe it did.” He was leading her to the convertible.
She pulled free of his hand. “I won’t go! How could I make small talk with Mother’s friends, and drink cocktails, and dance . . . and all the time——”
“We’ve got to put in an appearance. Then we could leave, I guess. Or I could, without her noticing. I could come back up to check on the Ford. Maybe Larry’d be back there by then.” He looked at Molly wistfully. “Or maybe he’s there now, waiting for you.”
She didn’t want to turn north again. The car had taken Larry south, where the coast was lonely; there were long vacant stretches of bean fields and grazing lands. “I just don’t see how I can do it!”
He didn’t argue any more. The gray light shone in his face and she saw how wrinkled and sagging he looked. He was an old, old man, though she hadn’t thought of it before this. He was scared, too. She knew that her mother was perfectly capable of turning Uncle Florian out to shift for himself; she had no sympathy with his alcoholism. He was looking at the probable future and its bleakness lay in his eyes.
He glanced at the convertible. “Okay. Where do we go now?”
Molly went over, opened the door, and slid in behind the wheel. He came around, got in beside her. He sat slumped in the seat.
“We’ll go home,” she said softly.
He didn’t say anything.
“The State Patrol have my description of the black car, Larry’s name, and his description. They’ll be looking for him. They can do a much better job of it than I can,” she explained. For a moment she looked back down the highway towards the south. “We’ll just have to leave it to them.”
“Baby, I know. You’re doing it for me.”
For a moment her hands tightened on the wheel; she looked sick. “Don’t worry about that,” she told him. She turned the key in the switch and drove the car from the paved drive to the highway and swung north.
When they crested the rise they could see the Ford sitting alone in the distance, still jacked up. Twilight was settling. The grassy distances were gray, brushed with a foggy glow from the west. She turned into the dirt track. The heavy convertible rolled in the ruts, losing its insolent ease of handling. At the Ford, Molly jumped from the car and ran over, looking for she knew not what. Then she ran on to the edge of the bluff and looked down into the little cove. The tide was high now, lapping at the foot of the bluff, and most of the cove was under water. There was a cold, foggy smell that made Molly think of death and set her shivering.
“This is the end of the day,” she whispered to herself, “the day that was made for loving and remembering. It’s finished.”
Uncle Florian was beside her. “Don’t stand so close to the edge.” Then he suddenly took her hand firmly. “Come away from there.”
She went with him to the car, and then suddenly got a pen and paper from the glove compartment and began to write a note.
Larry, dear,
I had to go home.
Molly.
She ran to the Ford and tucked the paper under one of the windshield wipers. It fluttered, the sea wind twisting it. She thought: it’s going to blow away before he comes, but it doesn’t matter. Larry’s dead. The whole world will blow away before he ever comes to me again.
Uncle Florian was watching her closely; she knew he was worried about her. “Shall I drive home, baby? You could lie back and shut your eyes and rest a little.”
“I’ll drive.” She slid in behind the wheel.
They came down off the curving highway from Corona del Mar, and all the big bay and the closely built islands lay spread out below in the twilight. Beyond was the Pacific, pretty foggy now. All light had died in the west. “I don’t see how I can do it,” Molly said, thinking of her mother’s party that night.
“You’ll be fine,” Uncle Florian assured her. He seemed suddenly confident. He opened the glove compartment and took out the pint of whisky and poured some into the plastic shot measure which made the cap. “Here. Get this down.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need it.”
He drank it himself.
She turned left at the first intersection, crossed the causeway to Balboa Island, drove through the
small business district to the ferry ramp. The streets began to fill with lights. She braked the car and they waited in a line with four or five other cars for the ferry.
“I was going to do your hair,” Uncle Florian recalled.
“There isn’t time now.” She brushed the rough black locks off her forehead. There was sand in her hair, sea salt crusted along her temples. Molly thought, “I’ll brush it out.” She remembered that her mother wanted her to wear the eyelet-embroidery dress. It was supposed to do something for her. In the shop, the woman with the gray eyes and the steel-colored smile had brought it out for her and her mother, and her mother had said at once that this was what she had been looking for. Something young and yet not too naïve. Molly had not known what they were talking about, but she had sensed that she was a marketable product being wrapped for display.
The ferry came hooting and honking into its slip, and a couple of cars felt their way off it and up the ramp. Molly put the convertible into gear. She had a sudden almost irresistible desire to crash through the guardrail into the bay. People would say that it was an accident. She reached a toe for the gas pedal. But of course, there was Uncle Florian to be considered. He might not be ready to die.
They drove down the peninsula, turned into the alley. Molly parked the car in its slot and they went at once to the house.
Her mother was in the kitchen with the colored maid, inspecting a great tray, of hors d’oeuvres. She had her hair piled high in a coronet shape which was glossy with spray, rigid; and she wore the diamond necklace her husband had given her on their last anniversary. She looked at Molly with cold distaste. “I think you do these things on purpose,” she said
Uncle Florian went past to the stairs without a word; Clara’s eyes followed him. She seemed to be making some promises to herself about him. Then she glanced again at Molly. “It’s not that you’re ragged or unclean,” she said almost thoughtfully, examining Molly with her eyes. The colored girl went hastily to the sink and busied herself. “There’s actually nothing wrong with the swim suit, and your hair might almost just be wind-blown. But somewhere about you, I can’t quite figure where, there’s the look of a tramp.”
Molly swallowed the dry spasm in her throat.
Her mother nodded slowly. “That’s what it is. I’ve finally figured it out. In spite of a fine home and a decent family, you’ve turned out to be a tramp.”
There was a stretched-out moment of silence and then Molly said, “You’re right, Mother. You have no idea how right you are.”
There was a flash of surprise in her mother’s face, which she almost instantly repressed.
Molly went up to her room, took off the suit, got in under the shower. A few minutes later when she came out, the colored girl had laid the eyelet-embroidery dress on the bed and was fussing over shoes and hose. Molly told her she could manage alone and the girl left, though rather reluctantly.
Molly took a bra and slip from the dresser and put them on. Then she went to a window and opened it wide. Something tight and panicky, like a band across her chest, seemed to interfere with her breathing. She leaned in the open window, sucking in air and looking at the gray sky above the close-packed line of roofs. Downstairs she heard the first of the guests arriving, full of laughter and chatter.
She went to the dressing table and sat down on the stool facing the mirror and began to cream her skin. There was still the difficulty with breathing, and now her head throbbed, too. Things on the dressing table caught and reflected the light queerly; bottles of cologne, a silver picture frame, a rack of earrings, scissors, all glowed and sparkled.
Her eyes returned to the scissors.
She picked them up, then laid them down again. They were manicure scissors with a pink plastic grip.
She brushed her hair, then removed the cream and put on make-up. She got up and slipped on the nylon hose, the slippers, gathered the eyelet-embroidery skirt and slid the dress on over her head.
She sat down at the dressing table to apply the finishing touches. She found herself staring at her own face in the mirror. Uncle Florian hadn’t had time to do anything to her hair, but it didn’t matter. No hair-fixing could repair the flaw her mother had noticed tonight for the first time. Nor any cosmetic, nor the eyelet-embroidery dress. It was past fixing, like what had happened to Larry.
More guests were coming in downstairs, and her father had put a musical comedy score on the hi-fi.
Molly laid her right wrist on the edge of the dressing table, took up the scissors and began to saw on the flesh. When she had worked a while on one wrist she tried the other. The small blades were dull, and her flesh was stubborn. There was blood. Quite a bit of blood. But not enough. No, not enough to die.
She stood, and blinked at the stained apparition in the mirror. A cry burst from her stiffened lips; she clapped a hand to cover it.
Stumbling, terribly afraid now, she went out into the hall, down the front stairs. She could see faces lifted towards her. There was sudden quiet, and the music of the hi-fi seemed unusually loud.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WHEN HE saw the back door ajar, the empty gloom within, Archer knew that the bird had flown. He thought, right under my nose. What in the hell had alarmed and warned him? Why had he decided to run?
Archer pushed in the door with his toe, stepped in over the sill. He noted at once the closed, stuffy smell. No windows open, and the day had been warm; still this didn’t account for all of it. There was an odor of storage, saved papers—that was it. He looked around the kitchen. There was the usual white range, refrigerator, sink and drainboard, table and chairs. Quite domestic. He wrapped his hand in a kerchief and lifted the refrigerator latch.
There were a couple of bottles of milk, bacon, eggs, sandwich meat, a bottle of mayonnaise, and some lettuce wrapped in waxed paper.
One of the cops from the radio cruiser had come in behind him. Archer said, “Go tell Matthews to send the experts and give it the works. Nobody’s home.” He went on into the other room. It was quite dark with the blinds drawn. He switched on a couple of lamps, then walked around. The furniture wasn’t much. Either the landlord had supplied what was here, or the tenant had hit the second-hand stores—except for the desk and the typewriter. They looked new, first-class. A lot of neat stacks of paper, some blank and some typed on. His eye caught a title page.
My Life As A Murderer
Archer studied the sheet for a silent moment. His mouth twisted over a bitter taste. He sat down before the desk. “All I need,” he muttered.
He read other scattered sheets and the look of sour dismay increased. Restlessly he left the desk and went into the short hall, found the bathroom and looked around there, then walked into the bedroom beyond. Here was a lot of what seemed to be trash, boxes and crates, old newspapers, big hard-backed scrapbooks, all piled out into the middle of the floor.
Archer looked it over and decided that the tenant had been sorting and packing the stuff when some interruption had stopped him.
He went back to the living room, and now the indications of haste and a task cut short were more apparent.
“Baby, you were busy in here.”
The cop came back from his errand. “Did you say something, Mr. Archer?”
“I was wondering if they’d found any trace of Miss Tomlinson.”
“No, sir. Nothing yet.”
Archer thought, I wonder if the bastard took her with him? Hoodwinked her or scared her, so that she went along? We lost an hour there, trying to get hold of the landlord and find out who his tenant was, comparing the typing on the two notes, and all the other piddling around, and in that hour, the creep slipped out and the girl left too—somehow.
“Anyhow, we know. The typing compares,” Archer said absently, aloud.
“Yes, sir.” The uniformed cop was looking at the typewriter. Then he added confidently, “There’s something else, too. He must still be in the neighborhood. We covered the ferry and the intersections at the highway.”
“We’ll find him.”
“Let’s hope. Let’s just damned well hope.”
The cop was peering at the stack of typescript. “Is he a writer of some kind, do you think?”
“I don’t know. He’s been playing at something.”
“This seems to be part of a story, how somebody committed a crime. I see the word victim here and there.”
Archer muttered an agreement.
The cop wandered out to the bedroom and came back in a couple of minutes. “He’d been packing up in there. Looks like he kept clippings and papers. Doing research, like. Stuff dragged from the closet and spread all over the bed. Then he took off and left it.”
“Something scared him. I don’t think it was us. I keep wondering if Miss Tomlinson could have investigated.” Archer stood frowning and worried.
The cop scratched his head. “Wonder what the neighbors thought of him?”
Archer was at the window which faced the bay. He had drawn the drapes back and the dark water glittered out there under its reflected lights. “The way this place is laid out the neighbors might not have seen much of him. Courtyard out front gives a lot of privacy. Apartment upstairs is vacant. Miss Tomlinson could have seen him coming and going, of course, but she may have been the only one. At the back, that rear door, it’s all closed in with an alleyway.”
The cop nodded. “Yes, I sized up that part of it. You think he might have picked this place because of the way it’s laid out?”
“I wouldn’t be a damned bit surprised.”
“And because of the young kid, Miss Tomlinson’s sister?”
“We’ve still got to find out if he was living here at the time she died. A minor item—I’d bet my bottom dollar he was.”