Lost Lady

by Octavus Roy Cohen

  “Just put on a pair of swimming trunks,” he advised, “and flex your muscles.”

  “But this lunch business. She’s probably got six liveried flunkies. What I want to know is, which knife do I eat with?”

  “Both. One in each hand. You use the fork to spear the olives.”

  “That I know.” We were both smoking now, and kidding along the way two guys can do when they know and like each other and have been through things together. “She’s a nifty” little number, Chuck. What a woman needs, she’s got ‘em.”

  “What are you—serious or sexy?”

  “Ask me tomorrow night. But all kidding aside, I’m getting a bang out of it. I’ll get up early and put a high polish on the ol’ bus. Then I’ll go zipping in under her porte-cochere—or is that proper on the first visit?”

  He got up and went into the kitchen. I followed. We found some cheese and bologna in the icebox and made ourselves a couple of sandwiches, which we washed down with beer. Then we showered and turned in.

  I lay awake for a while, thinking. Pretty nice, this setup.

  Sharing an apartment with a real friend, one of those guys you know would go all out for you, a fellow that someday you’d be happy to say you knew him when; doing police work, which I loved, and getting along pretty well with it; being singled out by a rich and beautiful kid to go swimming.

  I was twenty-six. I was healthy. I didn’t have a girl of my own, not anyone I was going steady with, but I managed to get around and have fun. Tomorrow, for instance. This, I reflected, was the life.

  Nothing to go sour. Take it in stride, that was me. Enjoy the good things and shrug off the bad. Nothing, I thought, can hurt that kind of life.

  I thought that.

  That’s what I thought.

  And I was wrong.

  Chapter Four

  As a young patrolman I’d served my time on radio car, some of it right in the Hollywood Division. Many’s the day, many’s the night, I’d patrolled through the beautiful Los Feliz district, admiring the stately homes and having only a vague and impersonal curiosity about the folks who lived in ‘em.

  I don’t know what I expected, but whatever it was, it came out different. I timed myself to get there ten minutes late, which I had heard was the correct thing to do.

  The Halliday house was a great, rambling brick affair with a slate roof and heavy fieldstone construction. There was a curving driveway, and a veranda around two sides. It not only denoted wealth, but it was the kind of place an ordinary man couldn’t afford to live in if they gave it to him for free.

  I snuggled my car against the curb and walked up the driveway. I pressed a button at the door and heard four gentle musical chimes sound somewhere inside, then repeat themselves. Right after the encore the door opened and, instead of a lug in livery, Iris Kent was standing there looking as fresh and as pretty as seventeen dollars’ worth of lettuce.

  Her eyes were-bright, her manner was eager. You’d have thought I was at least Aly Khan as she held out her hand and said in that delightfully husky voice of hers, “Danny O’Leary! Come right in.”

  I held her hand for a moment and took the plunge. I said, “Howdy, Iris.”

  Iris, no less. Just like that. It didn’t seem to get a rise out of her.

  I followed her inside. The living room was just a trifle smaller than the Union Station, but much prettier. Kind of homey, in spite of its size and the general air of correctness and money. Soft wall-to-wall carpeting, the right sort of unobtrusive furniture, a couple of tables, a few lamps in the right places, two or three books and magazines, a vase of flowers on the piano, a huge radio-television-phonograph combination.

  Iris didn’t offer to take my hat because I didn’t have a hat. All I had was a little brief case in which I’d brought a pair of bathing trunks. I had debated whether to bring a towel, but figured the house might supply those; this wasn’t any beach excursion.

  She asked me how I was feeling and I told her I felt swell. I asked her the same question and got the same answer. She said she was delighted I’d been able to come, and I said I was delighted to have been able to come. While I was wondering what conversational merry-go-round we’d climb on next, she said, “Let’s go out by the pool.”

  She led me back into the hallway and then into a den, which had redwood-paneled walls and a picture window that gave a view of the grounds at the rear. That’s one thing strangers don’t know about California. No matter how large the house or how small, how attractive in front or how unattractive, the real beauty is in the back.

  This place was notably not an exception. There was a tremendous lawn in the very center of which was a swimming pool that an Olympic team could have trained in. Off to the right was a tennis court and in the middle of it yellow lines marked a badminton court. At the rear was a three-car garage, the doors up, and in it I saw two convertibles: the Cadillac that had been outside the station last night and a 1951 Buick Roadmaster. The third slot was empty, and that told me what I wanted to know, which was that Mrs. Halliday hadn’t showed. I didn’t ask about her. I figured I’d be questioned about it when Iris got ready to bring up the subject.

  We walked through the den and into the patio. Iris conducted me to a big playhouse that had two sets of dressing rooms and showers, one outfit for men and the other for women. I said, “That pool’s a honey,” and she said yes, she enjoyed it. Then she asked whether I’d like to go into one of the dressing rooms and put on my trunks. She noticed that I hadn’t brought a beach robe and said I’d find a dozen hanging up in there.

  There was plenty of class, even inside the place. Big mirrors, the fanciest plumbing I’d ever seen, everything. One thing I knew for sure, the missing Mrs. Halliday was obviously lousy with dough.

  I stripped and then slipped into my trunks. I took a look at myself in the mirror. What I saw wouldn’t drive you crazy, but it wasn’t so bad, either. I didn’t have an ounce of fat on me.

  I put my clothes on hangers and hung them in a locker. I was glad I hadn’t brought my gun, even though a policeman is supposed to carry it with him wherever he goes. For a moment I had an odd feeling about leaving my pants, because in one of the pockets was my wallet, containing all of sixteen dollars. After considering it for a while, I figured nobody would make off with it. Where I usually went swimming you locked up anything and everything of value. It wasn’t an easy habit to break.

  I drew a deep breath and stepped out to the tiled border of the pool. I started for a beach chair under a yellow umbrella that sprouted from a steel table. On it were cigarettes, a slick table lighter, and two big, comfortable ash trays. I was about to sit down when a door in the main house opened and Dean Halliday appeared. He, too, was wearing swimming trunks and a beach robe. The robe was open, which was plenty justified by what was underneath.

  That guy was built. At the station he’d given his age as thirty-seven, and all I can say is that I’d like to think I’d be in his sort of shape when I reached that age. He had the long, lean lines of the trained athlete. His muscles looked hard without being bulgy. His hair was still too wavy and still too immaculate, but you couldn’t mistake that he was all man.

  He saw me, looked surprised for a moment as he tried to place me, and then came forward with his hand out. He said, “Weren’t you at the police station last night when I visited there?”

  I nodded. “I’m Danny O’Leary,” I said.

  “Iris invited you out?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t just drop in.”

  He smiled, as much as to say that Iris was always doing crazy things, and that having a cop out for a swim was odd, but not as odd as it would be if I’d been an elephant.

  He flopped into a beach chair and motioned me to the one opposite. “Must be interesting,” he commented, “being a cop.”

  I said that it was. I said we met such unusual people, some of them more unusual than others. He looked at me sharply when I said that, and I made up my mind I didn’t like him. He was too sure of him
self, too cocky, too perfect.

  “Any word about my wife?” he asked abruptly.

  I said nothing had been heard up to midnight the previous night, and that I hadn’t been in touch with the station since then. I told him I’d be back on the job at four p.m.

  He said, “I suppose they’d have called me if they’d heard anything, wouldn’t they?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  He looked me over for a few moments, and then he said, again without preamble, “Lot of damned foolishness.”

  “What?”

  “That missing-person report. But Iris insisted.”

  I recalled what Bert Lane had counseled, and tried to play it cagey. “Seems all right to me,” I said. “She is missing, isn’t she?”

  “She’s over twenty-one.” His voice had an unpleasant ring. “If she wants to go places, that’s her business. Once they told me she hadn’t been smashed up in an auto accident, I quit worrying.”

  I lighted a fresh cigarette. “Has she ever done anything like this before?”

  “No, but there’s always a first time. Way I figure it, when she gets ready to come home, she’ll come.”

  Nobody had to diagram that for me. He just didn’t care. He wasn’t even curious. Or—and this was, of course, possible—he was putting on a top-flight act.

  Maybe Iris hadn’t been too far off the beam. Then I caught myself up short. I was thinking like a human being, not like a detective. Just because I disliked a guy didn’t mean I should get suspicious of him.

  And suspicious of what? Of something that hadn’t happened. Of a wife who had apparently walked off and left him, which seemed like the most natural act in the world. I started thinking in circles, which was no good, so I changed the subject. I told him he had a beautiful home, and he purred over that. He took it so big I even wondered whether Iris had given me a straight steer about the joint’s belonging to Mrs. Halliday.

  I noticed that he was staring over my shoulder. He said, “This is my cue to check out. Be seein’ you.”

  He dropped his beach robe, walked to the end of the diving board, and stood there long enough to be admired. And, whether I liked him or not, admiration was what he got from me. I’ve never seen a more symmetrical hunk of man in my life. Or a prettier dive as he took off, clipped the water without a splash, and came up at the far end of the pool. The guy could do everything perfectly—even make me mad.

  A husky voice said, “Charming, isn’t it?”

  Iris was standing there. She was looking at the figure of her brother-in-law as he did his daily nautical dozen. What I saw on her face wasn’t pretty. It came pretty close to being hate.

  And suddenly I stopped noticing her face. Not that it wasn’t a good face, but what went with it …

  I’ll admit the cards were stacked. What Iris was wearing could have been put into a cigarette case, and even then there’d be enough room left over for a suit of clothes. She had a fragment of something across a pair of lovely young breasts, and the meagerest pair of panties I’d ever looked at.

  She started to laugh. She said, “Haven’t you ever before seen a girl in a bathing suit?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Sure I have. But I’ve never before seen one in public without.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” she prophesied. “Let’s go.”

  I followed her to the diving board. She took off neatly, and I did the best I could, but I wasn’t in their class.

  The water was cold and invigorating. The kind you love to get out of. She swam swiftly, up and down the pool. Her lovely young body flashed beneath the surface of the water. Her stroking was sure and strong. She swam the length of the pool four times, then put her hands on the edge and was out without clambering. Just out, in one smooth, effortless motion. Me, I climbed. I hoisted myself to my feet and stood looking down at her. I was breathing hard, and it wasn’t from passion. I simply shouldn’t have tried to race with her.

  Dean Halliday got out at the other end and went into his setting-up exercises. “Greek god,” commented Iris. “And doesn’t he know it.”

  “The guy’s good,” I said grudgingly.

  “Sure. And why not? He doesn’t do anything else. Just takes care of that gorgeous body of his.”

  I grinned. “Speaking of bodies,” I commented, looking down at her. She knew what I was staring at, but she didn’t assume a false modesty.

  “Surprised I’m not embarrassed?” she inquired.

  “Maybe.”

  “That’d be silly, wouldn’t it? When I put on something like this, I know I’ll be stared at. I like it. It’s also comfortable for swimming.”

  We seated ourselves at the table where Halliday and I had been. We put on robes, and Halliday joined us. He had managed to slick his hair down so that it looked as neat as it had before he’d gone into the water.

  As he seated himself and reached for a cigarette, Iris looked at him with distaste. I got the idea that she didn’t welcome his intrusion.

  A rather young woman in a maid’s uniform appeared from what I judged was the kitchen. “Lunch out here, Miss Iris?” she asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Good idea,” broke in Halliday. “Make it for three.”

  Iris said, “Four, Ellen. Mr. Bayless will be here, too.”

  This was getting to be quite a party. I recalled her mention of Robert Bayless at the station the previous night. Obviously she had planned to have me meet him. Halliday was something she hadn’t counted on, and I saw that Halliday knew it. He seemed to take a delight in tormenting her, but always politely, always suavely.

  “Her boy friend,” Halliday commented to me. “Neat, quiet, and safe. He’ll amuse you.”

  That was when Bayless showed. He couldn’t have timed it better. He came around the house, not through it.

  He was nice-looking without being handsome: the sort of average-looking person who could blank out in a crowd without half trying. He was a slender five-eight and couldn’t have weighed more than 155 pounds. He was garbed in a business suit, rather than in the usual Hollywood sports coat and slacks. He had brown hair and eyes and a pleasant warm smile.

  Iris introduced him to me, and he gave my hand a firm clasp. “Iris told me you were coming,” he said cordially. “She invited me over.” He said it so I’d understand that he hadn’t barged in. I appreciated it.

  Halliday said, “How’s the real-estate business, Robert? Caught any suckers lately?”

  “A few.” Robert Bayless seemed imperturbable. He turned to me. “Any news yet, O’Leary?”

  I repeated myself; said I hadn’t contacted the station. I was looking at Iris when I said it. Her expression was suddenly drawn, and I realized it must have been an effort for her to have kept off the subject.

  “I called Missing Persons,” said Robert. “They hadn’t heard anything.” He reached across the table and touched Iris’ hand. “Sorry, kid,” he said gently.

  There was a moment of awkward, uncomfortable silence. Then Ellen appeared bearing a tray of cocktails: three martinis and a glass of tomato juice. Bayless took the juice. “On the wagon,” he said. “Not morals. Just don’t like alcohol.”

  And so we sat there sipping our cocktails, chatting lightly and waiting for lunch. This was the life, all right. I was feeling more at ease, and getting a few ideas.

  This much I knew: I liked Robert Bayless. I’d give you Dean Halliday and twenty points. Iris Kent I didn’t understand at all.

  Chapter Five

  We took time with the lunch. Then Dean Halliday checked out and we started relaxing, Iris and myself on beach chairs side by side, Bayless leaning back in what is called a director’s chair, an affair of chromium and canvas that’s more comfortable than it looks.

  I was at peace with myself and the world, excepting always Halliday, who affected me like a dash of horse liniment. I half closed my eyes, letting a glimpse of the pool and the big house behind it creep in every once in a while, looking at the velvety lawn and the flowers when I
found the energy for it, and reflecting generally that if I were a good-looking guy like Halliday I’d try to promote myself a gal who owned a layout like this. I’d never seen Mrs. Halliday, but if she looked anything like her younger sister she wouldn’t be too hard to take.

  I didn’t fall asleep, but I could have. In fact, I would have, except that Iris edged her chair closer to mine and leaned over to comment that I was a lazy lug. When she did that, the scenery was still good.

  I roused myself. “So first you tire me out,” I commented, “and then you stuff me. I’m storing up energy for a night of hard work.”

  She laughed. “I saw you working last night,” she said. “How do you stand it?”

  “Don’t judge detectives by what you see them doing in the station,” I said. “We work ourselves to skeletons protecting the public, trailing dangerous criminals to their lairs, shooting it out with bad men, and trying to find out who stole whose hub caps off whose car. You’ve no idea.”

  I sat up. The others were already doing that. Bayless said, somewhat uncertainly, “You had something in mind, didn’t you, Iris, when you asked me to drop by?”

  “Yes.” The laughter left her eyes. “I thought maybe you could add something to what I told Danny last night.”

  He looked thoughtfully at the pool and then at me.

  “I don’t know what to say, O’Leary. I’ve known Dorothy for as long as I’ve known Iris. She’s just as sweet as Iris and not half as flighty. This disappearance of hers simply doesn’t figure.”

  “In what way?”

  “In any way. It isn’t in character. If she’d had an engagement that was to keep her away this long, she’d have told some sort of story that would have kept Iris from worrying.”

  “Then you think that whatever is keeping her is something she didn’t anticipate?” “Definitely.”

  “What, for instance?”

  He shrugged apologetically. “I couldn’t guess, O’Leary. I don’t even have the beginning of an answer.”

  “Do you think what Iris is thinking?”