The Chill (4 page)

Mario looked up at the high corrugated-iron roof of the garage. “My wife divorced me a couple years ago. I been putting on weight ever since. A man don’t have the same motivation.”

“Where does Mrs. Bradshaw live?” I said.

“Foothill Drive, not too far from here. Take the first cross street to the right, it runs into it. You can look up the house number in the phone book, on the desk there. It’s in her son’s name, Roy Bradshaw.”

I thanked him. He lay down on the creeper and slid back under the Jaguar. The directory was under the telephone on top of the battered desk which stood in a corner. I found the listing: “Roy Bradshaw,
311
Foothill Drive.”

“We could phone from here,” Alex said.

“It’s always better in person.”

In spite of the housing tracts and the smokeless industries proliferating around it, Pacific Point had kept its identity. Foothill Drive was lined with trees, and had a dusty changeless quality. Settled old families still lived here behind mortised walls that had resisted earthquakes, or hedges that had outlived generations of gardeners.

The towering cypress hedge of
311
masked the house completely from the road. I turned in through the open iron gates with Alex following me. We passed a small white gatehouse
with a green door and green shutters, rounded a bend in the driveway, and came in sight of the white Colonial house.

A woman with a wide straw hat tied under her chin was kneeling shoulder deep among the flowers in front of it. She had a pair of clippers in her gloved hands. They snicked in the silence when our engines died.

She rose cumbrously to her feet and came toward us, tucking wisps of gray hair under her hat. She was just an old lady in dirty tennis shoes but her body, indeterminate in a loose blue smock, carried itself with heavy authority, as if it recalled that it had once been powerful or handsome. The architecture of her face had collapsed under the weight of flesh and years. Still her black eyes were alert, like unexpected animal or bird life in the ruins of a building.

“Mrs. Bradshaw?” Alex said eagerly.

“I am Mrs. Bradshaw. What do you gentlemen want? I’m very busy, as you can see.” She flourished the clippers. “I never trust anyone else to clip my roses. And still they die, poor things.” Regret rustled in her voice.

“They look very beautiful to me,” I said in an encouraging way. “Mr. Kincaid and I hate to bother you. But he seems to have misplaced his wife, and we have reason to think she’s working for you.”

“For me? I employ no one but my Spanish couple. My son,” she added with a trace of pride, “keeps me to a strict budget.”

“Don’t you have a girl driving for you?”

She smiled. “I completely forgot about her. She’s just on a part-time basis. What’s her name? Molly? Dolly? I never can remember the girls’ names.”

“Dolly,” I said, and showed her the print. “Is this Dolly?”

She removed one gardening glove to take the picture. Her hand was gnarled by arthritis.

“I do believe it is. But she said nothing to me about being married. I’d never have hired her if I’d known, it makes for
too much involvement I like to take my little drives on schedule.”

Alex interrupted her rather garrulous chatter. “Where is she now?”

“I couldn’t say. She’s done her day’s stint for me. She may have walked over to the college, or she may be in the gatehouse. I let my girls use the gatehouse. Sometimes they abuse the privilege, but so far this one hasn’t.” She gave Alex a sharp black glance. “I hope she won’t begin to, now that you’ve turned up.”

“I don’t expect she’ll be going on—”

I cut him short. “Go and see if she’s in the gatehouse.” I turned back to Mrs. Bradshaw: “How long has she been with you?”

“About two weeks. The semester started two weeks ago.”

“Is she attending the college?”

“Yes. I get all my girls from there, except when I have to have a regular attendant, as I did when my son was abroad last summer. I hope I don’t lose Dolly. She’s brighter than most of them. But if she goes I suppose there are always others. You’ll realize, when you’ve lived as long as I have, that the young ones leave the old ones …”

She turned to her roses, glowing red and yellow in the sunlight. She seemed to be looking for some way to finish the thought. None occurred to her. I said:

“What name is she using? What surname?”

“I’m afraid I don’t remember. I call them by their first names. My son could tell you.”

“Is he here?”

“Roy is at the college. He happens to be the Dean there.”

“Is it far from here?”

“You can see it from where you stand.”

Her arthritic hand curled on my elbow and turned me gently. Through a gap in the trees I could make out the metal
cupola of a small observatory. The old lady spoke close to my ear, in a gossipy way:

“What happened between your young friend and his wife?”

“They came here on their honeymoon and she walked out on him. He’s trying to find out why.”

“What a strange thing to do,” she said. “I’d never have acted like that on my honeymoon, I had too much respect for my husband. But girls are different nowadays, aren’t they? Loyalty and respect mean nothing to them. Are you married, young man?”

“I have been.”

“I see. Are you the boy’s father?”

“No. My name is Archer. I’m a private detective.”

“Really? What do you make of all this?” She gestured vaguely with her clippers toward the gatehouse.

“Nothing so far. She may have left him on account of a girlish whim. Or she may have had deep dark reasons. All I can do is ask her. By the way, Mrs. Bradshaw, have you ever heard her mention a man named Begley?”

“Begley?”

“He’s a big man with a short gray beard. He visited her at the Surf House the day she left her husband. There’s some possibility that he’s her father.”

She wet her seamed lips with the purple tip of her tongue. “She didn’t mention him to me. I don’t encourage the girls to unburden themselves to me. Perhaps I should.”

“What kind of a mood has Dolly been in lately?”

“It’s hard to say. She’s always the same. Quiet. She thinks her own thoughts.”

Alex appeared, walking rapidly around the bend in the driveway. His face was bright.

“It’s her definitely. I found her things in the closet.”

“You weren’t authorized to go in there,” Mrs. Bradshaw said.

“It’s her house, isn’t it?”

“It happens to be mine.”

“But she has the use of it, hasn’t she?”

“She does. You don’t.”

A quarrel with Dolly’s employer was the last thing Alex needed. I stepped between them, turned him around, and walked him away from trouble for the second time.

“Get lost,” I said when he was in his car. “You’re in my way.”

“But I have to see her.”

“You’ll see her. Go and check in at the Mariner’s Rest Motel for both of us. It’s on the strip between here and the Surf House—”

“I know where it is. But what about Dolly?”

“I’m going over to the college to talk to her. I’ll bring her back with me, if she’s willing.”

“Why can’t I go along to the college?” he said like a spoiled child.

“Because I don’t want you to. Dolly has a separate life of her own. You may not like it, but you have no right to jump in and wreck it for her. I’ll see you at the motel.”

He drove away rapidly and angrily, spinning the wheels of his car. Mrs. Bradshaw was back among her roses. I asked her very politely for permission to examine Dolly’s things. She said that would have to be up to Dolly.

T
HE CAMPUS
was an oasis of vivid green under the brown September foothills. Most of the buildings were new and very modern, ornamented with pierced concrete screens and semi-tropical plantings. A barefoot boy sitting under a roadside palm took time out from his Salinger to show me where the Administration Building was.

I parked in the lot behind it, among a scattering of transportation clunks with faculty stickers. A new black Thunderbird stood out among them. It was late Friday afternoon by now, and the long collegiate weekend was setting in. The glass information booth opposite the entrance of the building was empty. The corridors were practically deserted.

I found the Dean’s office without much trouble. The paneled anteroom was furnished with convertible Danish pieces, and with a blonde secretary who sat at a typewriter guarding the closed inner door. She had a pale thin face, strained blue eyes that had worked too long under fluorescent light, and a suspicious voice:

“Can I help you, sir?”

“I’d like to see the Dean.”

“Dean Bradshaw is very busy, I’m afraid. Perhaps I can assist you?”

“Perhaps. I’m trying to get in touch with one of your girl students. Her name is Dolly McGee, or Dolly Kincaid.”

“Which?” she said with a little gasp of irritation.

“Her maiden name is McGee, her married name is Kincaid. I don’t know which she’s using.”

“Are you a parent?” she said delicately.

“No. I’m not her father. But I have good reason for wanting to see her.”

She looked at me as if I was a self-confessed kingpin in the white slave traffic. “We have a policy of not giving out information about students, except to parents.”

“What about husbands?”

“You’re her husband?”

“I represent her husband. I think you’d better let me talk to the Dean about her.”

“I can’t do that,” she said in a final tone. “Dean Bradshaw is in conference with the department heads. About what do you wish to see Miss McGee?”

“It’s a private matter.”

“I see.”

We had reached an impasse. I said in the hope of making her smile: “We have a policy of not giving out information.”

She looked insulted, and went back to her typewriter. I stood and waited. Voices rose and fell behind the door of the inner office. “Budget” was the word I caught most frequently. After a while the secretary said:

“I suppose you could try Dean Sutherland, if she’s in. Dean Sutherland is Dean of Women. Her office is just across the hall.”

Its door was standing open. The woman in it was the well-scrubbed ageless type who looks old in her twenties and young in her forties. She wore her brown hair rolled in a bun at the back of her neck. Her only concession to glamour was a thin pink line of lipstick accenting her straight mouth.

She was a good-looking woman in spite of this. Her face was finely chiseled. The front of her blouse curved out over her desk like a spinnaker going downwind.

“Come in,” she said with a severity that I was getting used to. “What are you waiting for?”

Her fine eyes had me hypnotized. Looking into them was like looking into the beautiful core of an iceberg, all green ice and cold blazing light.

“Sit down,” she said. “What is your problem?”

I told her who I was and why I was there.

“But we have no Dolly McGee or Dolly Kincaid on campus.”

“She must be using a third name, then. I know she’s a student here. She has a job driving for Dean Bradshaw’s mother.” I showed her my photograph.

“But this is Dorothy Smith. Why would she register with us under a false name?”

“That’s what her husband would like to know.”

“Is this her husband in the picture with her?”

“Yes.”

“He appears to be a nice enough boy.”

“Apparently she didn’t think so.”

“I wonder why.” Her eyes were looking past me, and I felt cheated. “As a matter of fact, I don’t see how she
could
register under a false name, unless she came to us with forged credentials.” She rose abruptly. “Excuse me for a minute, Mr. Archer.”

She went into the next room, where filing cabinets stood like upended metal coffins, and came back with a folder which she opened on her desk. There wasn’t much in it.

“I see,” she said more or less to herself. “She’s been admitted provisionally. There’s a note here to the effect that her transcript is on the way.”

“How long is provisional admission good for?”

“Until the end of September.” She consulted her desk calendar. “That gives her nine days to come up with a transcript. But she’ll have to come up with an explanation rather sooner. We don’t look with favor on this sort of deception. And I had the impression that she was a straightforward girl” Her mouth turned down at the corners.

“You know her personally, Dean Sutherland?”

“I make a point of contacting all the new girls. I went out of my way to be useful to Miss or Mrs. Smith-Kincaid. In fact I helped to get her a part-time job in the library.”

“And the job with old Mrs. Bradshaw?”

She nodded. “She heard that there was an opening there, and I recommended her.” She looked at her watch. “She may be over there now.”

“She isn’t. I just came from Mrs. Bradshaw’s. Your Dean lives pretty high on the hog, by the way. I thought academic salaries were too low.”

“They are. Dean Bradshaw comes from a wealthy old family. What was his mother’s reaction to this?” She made an impatient gesture which somehow included me.

“She seemed to take it in stride. She’s a smart old woman.”

“I’m glad you found her so,” she said, as if she had had other
kinds of experience with Mrs. Bradshaw. “Well, I suppose I’d better see if Mrs. Smith-Kincaid is in the library.”

“I could go over there and ask.”

“I think not. I had better talk to her first, and try to find out what’s going on in her little head.”

“I didn’t want to make trouble for her.”

Of course not, and you didn’t. The trouble is and was there. You merely uncovered it. I’m grateful to you for that.”

“Could your gratitude,” I said carefully, “possibly take the form of letting me talk to her first?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“I’ve had a lot of experience getting the facts out of people.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Her mouth turned down at the corners again. Her bosom changed from a promise to a threat.

“I’ve had experience, too, a good many years of it, and I am a trained counselor. If you’ll be good enough to wait outside, I’m going to try and phone her at the library.” She flung a last shaft as I went out: “And please don’t try to intercept her on the way here.”