“You dropped in on your favorite person,” I finished for her. “What’s in the bag, something from Magnin’s?”
“In a brown paper bag? Lox and bagels, my friend, and cream cheese. I noticed how low your larder was this morning. Did Les Denton phone you?”
I shook my head.
“I bumped into him in front of the UCLA library this morning,” she said, “and gave him the old third degree. He swore to me that he and Janice were alone over the weekend, so she couldn’t have given her house key to anybody. I was right, wasn’t I?”
“I guess you were, Miss Marple. Tea or coffee?”
“Tea for me. I can’t stay long. Robinson’s is also having a sale.”
“How exciting! Your mama must have given you a big fat check again when you were up in San Francisco.”
“Don’t be sarcastic! I stopped in downstairs and asked your uncle if you’d ever had a dog named Norah.”
“And he confirmed it.”
“Not quite. He said he thought you had but he wasn’t sure. Of course, he probably can’t even remember half the women he’s—he’s courted.”
“Enough!” I said. “Lay off!”
“I’m sorry. Jealousy! That’s adolescent, isn’t it? It’s vulgar and possessive.”
“I guess.”
“You’re not very talkative today, are you?”
“Cheryl, there is a young girl out there somewhere who has run away from home. That, to me, is much more important than a sale at Robinson’s or whether I ever had a dog named Norah. This is a dangerous town for seventeen-year-old runaways.”
“You’re right.” She sighed. “How trivial can I get?”
“We all have our hang-ups,” I said. “I love you just the way you are.”
“And I you, Petroff. Do you think Janice is in some kind of danger? Why would she leave Les’s place without even leaving him a note?”
“That I don’t know. And it scares me.”
“You don’t think she’s—” She didn’t finish.
“Dead? I have no way of knowing.”
Five minutes after she left, I learned that Janice had still been alive yesterday. Les Denton phoned to tell me that a friend of his had seen her on the Santa Monica beach with an older man, but had not talked with her. According to the friend, the man she was with was tall and thin and frail, practically a skeleton.
“Thanks,” I said.
“It’s not the first time she’s run away,” he told me. “And there’s a pattern to it.”
“What kind of pattern?”
“Well, I could be reading more into it than there is. But I noticed that it was usually when her mother was out of town. Mrs. Bishop is quite a gadabout.”
“Are you suggesting child molestation?”
“Only suggesting, Mr. Apoyan. I could be wrong.”
And possibly right. “Thanks again,” I said.
A troubled relationship is what Mrs. Bishop had called it. Did she know whereof she spoke? Mothers are often the last to know.
Ismet Bey phoned half an hour later to tell me he had located a three-by-five Kerman owned by a local dealer and had brought it to his shop. Could I drop in this afternoon?
I told him I could and would.
And now what? How much did I know about antique Kermans? Uncle Vartan would remember the rug he had sold, but he sure as hell wouldn’t walk into the shop of Ismet Bey.
Maybe Mrs. Bishop? She could pose as my wife. I phoned her unlisted number. A woman answered, probably a servant. Mrs. Bishop, she told me, was shopping and wouldn’t be home until six o’clock.
I did know a few things about rugs. I had worked for Uncle Vartan on Saturdays and during vacations when I was at UCLA.
I took the photograph of Janice with me and drove out to Santa Monica. Bey’s store, like the building Vartan and I shared, was a converted house on Pico Boulevard, old and sagging. I parked in the three-car graveled parking lot next to his panel truck.
The interior was dim and musty. Mrs. Bey was not in sight. The fat rump of a broad, short, and bald man greeted me as I came in. He was bending over, piling some small rugs on the floor.
He rose and turned to face me. He had an olive complexion, big brown eyes, and the oily smile of a used-car salesman. “Mr. Stein?” he asked.
I nodded.
“This way, please,” he said, and led me to the rear of the store. The rug was on a display rack, a pale tan creation, sadly thin and about as tightly woven as a fisherman’s net.
“Mr. Bey,” I said, “that is not a Kerman.”
“Really? What is it, then?”
“It looks like an Ispahan to me, a cheap Ispahan.”
He continued to smile. “It was only a test.”
“I’m not following you. A test for what?”
He shrugged. “There have been some rumors around town. Some rumors about a very rare and expensive three-by-five Kerman that has been stolen. I thought you may have heard them.”
What a cutie. “I haven’t heard them,” I said. And added, “But, of course, I don’t have your contacts.”
“I’m sure you don’t. Maybe you should have. How much did you plan to spend on this rug you want, Mr. Stein?”
“Not as much as the rug you described would cost me. But I have a rich friend who might be interested. He is not quite as—as ethical as I try to be.”
“Perhaps that is why he is rich. All I can offer now is the hope that this rug will find its way to me. Could I have the name of your friend?”
I shook my head. “If the rug finds its way to you, phone me. I’ll have him come here. I don’t want to be involved.”
“You won’t need to be,” he assured me. “And I’ll see that you are recompensed. You were right about this rug. It is an Ispahan. If you have some friends who are not rich, I hope you will mention my name to them.”
That would be the day. “I will,” I said.
I drove to Arden from there, and the boss was in his office. I told him about my dialogue with Bey and suggested they keep an eye on his place. I pointed out that they could make some brownie points with the Santa Monica Police Department.
“Thank you, loyal ex-employee. We’ll do that.”
“In return, you might make some copies of this photograph and pass them out among the boys. She is a runaway girl who was last seen here on your beach.”
“You’ve got a case already?”
“With my reputation, why not?”
“Is there some connection between the missing girl and the rug?”
“That, as you are well aware, would be privileged information.”
“Dear God,” he said, “the kid’s turned honest! Wait here.”
He went out to the copier and came back about five minutes later. He handed me the photo and a check for the two days I had worked for him last week and wished me well. The nice thing about the last is that I knew he meant it.
From there to the beach. I sat in the shade near the refreshment stand with the forlorn hope that the skeleton man and the runaway girl might come this way again.
Two hours, one ice cream cone, and two Cokes later, I drove back to Beverly Hills. Uncle Vartan was alone in the shop. I went in and related to him my dialogue with Ismet Bey.
“That tawdry Turk,” he said, “that bush-leaguer! He doesn’t cater to that class of trade. He’s dreaming a pipe dream.”
“How much do you think that rug would bring today?” I asked.
“Pierre, I do not want to discuss that rug. As I told you before, that was a sad day, maybe the saddest day of my life.”
Saddest to him could be translated into English as least lucrative. A chauffeured Rolls-Royce pulled up in front of the shop and an elegantly dressed couple headed for his doorway. I held the door open for them and went up my stairs to sit again.
I typed it all down in chronological order, the history of my first case in my own office, from the time Mrs. Whitney Bishop had walked in to my uncle’s refusal to talk about the
Kerman.
There had to be a pattern in there somewhere to a discerning eye. Either my eye was not discerning or there was no pattern.
Cheryl had called it right; my larder was low. I heated a package of frozen peas and ate them with two baloney sandwiches and the cream cheese left over from lunch.
There was, as usual, nothing worth watching on the tube. I went back to read again the magic of the man my father had introduced me to when I was in my formative years, the sadly funny short stories of William Saroyan.
Where would I go tomorrow? What avenues of investigation were still unexplored? Unless the unlikely happened, a call from Ismet Bey, all I had left was a probably fruitless repeat of yesterday’s surveillance of the Santa Monica beach.
I went to bed at nine o’clock, but couldn’t sleep. I got up, poured three ounces of Tennessee whiskey into a tumbler, added a cube of ice, and sat and sipped. It was eleven o’clock before I was tired enough to sleep.
I drank what was left of the milk in the morning and decided to have breakfast in Santa Monica. I didn’t take my swimming trunks; the day was not that warm.
Scrambled eggs and pork sausages, orange juice, toast, and coffee at Barney’s Breakfast Bar fortified me for the gray day ahead.
Only the hardy were populating the beach. The others would come out if the overcast went away. I sat again on the bench next to the refreshment stand and reread Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. It had seemed appropriate reading for the occasion.
I had been doing a lot of sitting on this case. I could understand now why my boss at Arden had piles.
Ten o’clock passed. So did eleven. About fifteen minutes after that a tall, thin figure appeared in the murky air at the far end of the beach. It was a man and he was heading this way.
Closer and clearer he came. He was wearing khaki trousers, a red-and-tan-checked flannel shirt, and a red nylon windbreaker. He nodded and smiled as he passed me. He bought a Coke at the stand and sat down at the other end of the bench.
I laid down my book.
“Ralph Ellison?” he said. “I had no idea he was still in print.”
He was thin, he was haggard, and his eyes were dull. But skeleton had been too harsh a word. “He probably isn’t,” I said. “This is an old Signet paperback reprint. My father gave it to me when I was still in high school.”
“I see. We picked a bad day for sun, didn’t we?”
“That’s not why I’m here,” I told him. “I’m looking for a girl, a runaway girl. Do you come here often?”
He nodded. “Quite often.”
I handed him the photograph of Janice. “Have you ever seen her here?”
He took a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on to study the picture. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Was it yesterday? No—Wednesday.” He took a deep breath. “There are so many of them who come here. I talked with her. She told me she had come down from Oxnard and didn’t have the fare to go home. I bought her a malt and a hot dog. She told me the fare to Oxnard was eight dollars and some cents. I’ve forgotten the exact amount. Anyway, I gave her a ten-dollar bill and made her promise that she would use it for the fare home.”
“Do you do that often?”
“Not often enough. When I can afford it.”
“She’s not from Oxnard,” I told him. “She’s from Beverly Hills.”
He stared at me. “She couldn’t be! She was wearing a pair of patched jeans and a cheap, flimsy T-shirt.”
“She’s from Beverly Hills,” I repeated. “Her parents are rich.”
He smiled. “That little liar! She conned me. And what a sweet young thing she was.”
“I hope ‘was’ isn’t the definitive word,” I said.
He closed his eyes and took another deep breath. He opened them and stared out at the sea.
I handed him my card. “If you see her again, would you phone me?”
“Of course. My name is Gerald Hopkins. I live at the Uphan Hotel. It’s a—a place for what are currently called senior citizens.”
“I know the place,” I told him. “Let’s hold our thumbs.”
“Dear God, yes!” he said.
From there I drove to the store of the tawdry Turk. He was not there but his wife was, a short, thin, and dark-skinned woman. I told her my name.
She nodded. “Ismet told me you were here yesterday.” Her smile was sad. “That man and his dreams! What cock-and-bull story did he tell you?”
“Some of it made sense. He tried to sell me an Ispahan.”
“He didn’t tell me that!”
“He also told me about some rumors he heard.”
“Oh, yes! Rumors he has. Customers is what we need. Tell me, Mr. Stein, how can a man get so fat on rumors?”
“He’s probably married to a good cook.”
“That he is. Take my advice, and a grain of salt, when you listen to the rumors of my husband, Mr. Stein. He is a dreamer. It is the reason I married him. I, too, in my youth, was a dreamer. It is why we came to America many years ago.”
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door …
I smiled at her. “Keep the faith!” I went out.
My next stop was the bank, where I deposited the checks from Mrs. Bishop and Arden and cashed a check for two hundred dollars.
From there to Vons in Santa Monica, where I stocked up on groceries, meat, and booze. Grocery markups in Beverly Hills, my mother had warned me, were absurd. Only the vulgar rich could afford them.
Mrs. Bey might believe that all the rumors her husband heard were bogus. But the rumor he had voiced to me was too close to the truth to qualify as bogus. It was logical to assume that there were shenanigans he indulged in in the practice of his trade that he would not reveal to her. To a man of his ilk the golden door meant gold, and he was still looking for the door.
I put the groceries away when I got home and went out to check the answering machine. Zilch. I typed the happenings of the morning into the record. Nothing had changed; no pattern showed.
There was a remote chance that Bey might learn where the rug was now. That was what I was being paid to find. But, as I had told Les Denton, the girl was my major concern.
It wasn’t likely that she was staying at the home of any of her classmates. Their parents certainly would have phoned Mrs. Bishop by now if she hadn’t phoned them.
Which reminded me that I had something to report. I phoned the Bishop house and the lady was home. I told her Janice had been seen on the Santa Monica beach on Wednesday and that a man there had told me this morning that he had talked with her. She had lied to him, telling him that she lived in Oxnard.
“She’s very adept at lying. Did you learn anything else?”
“Well, there was a rug dealer in Santa Monica who told me he had heard rumors about a three-by-five Kerman that had been stolen. I have no idea where he heard them.”
“There could be a number of sources. My husband has been asking several dealers we know if they have seen it. And, of course, many of my friends know about the loss.”
“Isn’t it possible they might inform the police?”
“Not if they want to remain my friends. And the dealers, too, have been warned. If Janice has been seen on the Santa Monica beach, the rug could also be in the area. I think that is where you should concentrate your search.”
It was warm and the weatherman had promised us sunshine for tomorrow. Cheryl and I could spend a day on the beach at Mrs. Bishop’s expense.
“I agree with you completely,” I said.
I phoned her apartment and Cheryl was there. I asked her if she’d like to spend a day on the beach with me tomorrow.
“I’d love it!”
I told her about the groceries I had bought and asked if she’d like to come and I’d cook a dinner for us tonight.
“Petroff, I can’t! We’re going to the symphony concert at the pavilion tonight.”
“Who is we?”
“My ro
ommates and I. Who else? Would you like to interrogate one of them?”
“Of course not! Save the program for me so I can see what I missed.”
“I sure as hell will, you suspicious bastard. What time tomorrow?”
“Around ten.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
I made myself a martini before dinner and then grilled a big T-bone steak and had it with frozen creamed asparagus and shoestring potatoes (heated, natch) and finished it off with lemon sherbet and coffee.
I had left Invisible Man in the car. I reread my favorite novel, The Great Gatsby, after dinner, along with a few ounces of brandy.
And then to my lonely bed. All the characters I had met since Wednesday afternoon kept running through my mind. All the chasing I had done had netted me nothing of substance. Credit investigations were so much cleaner and easier. But, like my Uncle Vartan, I had never felt comfortable working under a boss.
Cheryl was waiting outside her apartment building next morning when I pulled up a little after ten. She climbed into the car and handed me a program.
“Put it away,” I said. “I was only kidding last night.”
“Like hell you were!” She put it in the glove compartment. “And how was your evening?”
“Lonely. I talked with the man Denton’s friend saw with Janice on the beach. She told him she had come down from Oxnard. He gave her the bus fare to go back.”
“To Oxnard? Why would anybody want to go back to Oxnard?”
“She claimed she lived there. Don’t ask me why.”
“Maybe the man lied.”
“Why would he?”
“Either he lied or she lied. It’s fifty-fifty, isn’t it?”
“Cheryl, he had no reason to lie. He told me the whole story and he has helped other kids to go home again. He gave me his name and address. Mrs. Bishop told me yesterday afternoon that Janice was—she called her an adept liar.”
“And she is a creep, according to Les. Maybe Janice had reason to lie to the old bag.”
“A creep she is. A bag she ain’t. Tell me, what are you wearing under that simple but undoubtedly expensive charcoal denim dress?”
“My swimsuit, of course. Don’t get horny. It’s too early in the day for that.”
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