The Lady in the Lake (2 page)

“Mr. Kingsley thinks you can give me Chris Lavery’s address,” I told her and watched her face.

She reached very slowly for a brown leather address book and turned the leaves. Her voice was tight and cold when she spoke.

“The address we have is 623 Altair Street, in Bay City. Telephone Bay City 12523. Mr. Lavery has not been with us for more than a year. He may have moved.”

I thanked her and went on to the door. From there I glanced back at her. She was sitting very still, with her hands clasped on her desk, staring into space. A couple of red spots burned in her cheeks. Her eyes were remote and bitter.

I got the impression that Mr. Chris Lavery was not a pleasant thought to her.

THREE

Altair Street lay on the edge of the V forming the inner end of a deep canyon. To the north was the cool blue sweep of the bay out to the point above Malibu. To the south the beach town of Bay City was spread out on a bluff above the coast highway.

It was a short street, not more than three or four blocks, and ended in a tall iron fence enclosing a large estate. Beyond the gilded spikes of the fence I could see trees and shrubs and a glimpse of lawn and part of a curving driveway, but the house was out of sight. On the inland side of Altair Street the houses were well kept and fairly large, but the few scattered bungalows on the edge of the canyon were nothing much. In the short half block ended by the iron fence were only two houses, on opposite sides of the street and almost directly across from each other. The smaller was number 623.

I drove past it, turned the car in the paved half circle at the end of the street and came back to park in front of the lot next to Lavery’s place. His house was built downwards, one of those clinging-vine effects, with the front door a little below street level, the patio on the roof, the bedroom in the basement, and a garage like the corner pocket on a pool table. A crimson bougainvillea was rustling against the front wall and the flat stones of the front walk were edged with Korean moss. The door was narrow, grilled and topped by a lancet arch. Below the grill there was an iron knocker. I hammered on it.

Nothing happened. I pushed the bell at the side of the door and heard it ring inside not very far off and waited and nothing happened. I worked on the knocker again. Still nothing. I went back up the walk and along to the garage and lifted the door far enough to see that a car with white side-walled tires was inside. I went back to the front door.

A neat black Cadillac coupe came out of the garage across the way, backed, turned and came along past Lavery’s house, slowed, and a thin man in dark glasses looked at me sharply, as if I hadn’t any business to be there. I gave him my steely glare and he went on his way.

I went down Lavery’s walk again and did some more hammering on his knocker. This time I got results. The Judas window opened and I was looking at a handsome bright-eyed number through the bars of a grill.

“You make a hell of a lot of noise,” a voice said.

“Mr. Lavery?”

He said he was Mr. Lavery and what about it. I poked a card through the grill. A large brown hand took the card. The bright brown eyes came back and the voice said: “So sorry. Not needing any detectives today please.”

“I’m working for Derace Kingsley.”

“The hell with both of you,” he said, and banged the Judas window. I leaned on the bell beside the door and got a cigarette out with my free hand and had just struck the match on the woodwork beside the door when it was yanked open and a big guy in bathing trunks, beach sandals, and a white terrycloth bathrobe started to come out at me.

I took my thumb off the bell and grinned at him. “What’s the matter?” I asked him. “Scared?”

“Ring that bell again,” he said, “and I’ll throw you clear across the street.”

“Don’t be childish,” I told him. “You know perfectly well I’m going to talk to you and you’re going to talk to me.”

I got the blue and white telegram out of my pocket and held it in front of his bright brown eyes. He read it morosely, chewed his lip and growled:

“Oh for Chrissake, come on in then.”

He held the door wide and I went in past him, into a dim pleasant room with an apricot Chinese rug that looked expensive, deep-sided chairs, a number of white drum lamps, a big Capehart in the corner, a long and very wide davenport in pale tan mohair shot with dark brown, and a fireplace with a copper screen and an over-mantel in white wood. A fire was laid behind the screen and partly masked by a large spray of manzanita bloom. The bloom was turning yellow in places, but was still pretty. There was a bottle of Vat 69 and glasses on a tray and a copper ice bucket on a low round burl walnut table with a glass top. The room went clear to the back of the house and ended in a flat arch through which showed three narrow windows and the top few feet of the white iron railing of the staircase going down.

Lavery swung the door shut and sat on the davenport. He grabbed a cigarette out of a hammered silver box and lit it and looked at me irritably. I sat down opposite him and looked him over. He had everything in the way of good looks the snapshot had indicated. He had a terrific torso and magnificent thighs. His eyes were chestnut brown and the whites of them slightly gray-white. His hair was rather long and curled a little over his temples. His brown skin showed no signs of dissipation. He was a nice piece of beef, but to me that was all he was. I could understand that women would think he was something to yell for.

“Why not tell us where she is?” I said. “We’ll find out eventually anyway and if you can tell us now, we won’t be bothering you.”

“It would take more than a private dick to bother me,” he said.

“No, it wouldn’t. A private dick can bother anybody. He’s persistent and used to snubs. He’s paid for his time and he would just as soon use it to bother you as any other way.”

“Look,” he said, leaning forward and pointing his cigarette at me. “I know what that wire says, but it’s the bunk. I didn’t go to El Paso with Crystal Kingsley. I haven’t seen her in a long time—long before the date of that wire. I haven’t had any contact with her. I told Kingsley that.”

“He didn’t have to believe you.”

“Why would I lie to him?” He looked surprised.

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Look,” he said earnestly, “it might seem so to you, but you don’t know her. Kingsley has no strings on her. If he doesn’t like the way she behaves he has a remedy. These proprietary husbands make me sick.”

“If you didn’t go to El Paso with her,” I said, “why did she send this telegram?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“You can do better than that,” I said. I pointed to the spray of manzanita in the fireplace. “You pick that up at Little Fawn Lake?”

“The hills around here are full of manzanita,” he said contemptuously.

“It doesn’t bloom like that down here.”

He laughed. “I was up there the third week in May. If you have to know. I suppose you can find out. That’s the last time I saw her.”

“You didn’t have any idea of marrying her?”

He blew smoke and said through it: “I’ve thought of it, yes. She has money. Money is always useful. But it would be too tough a way to make it.”

I nodded, but didn’t say anything. He looked at the manzanita spray in the fireplace and leaned back to blow smoke in the air and show me the strong brown line of his throat. After a moment, when I still didn’t say anything, he began to get restless. He glanced down at the card I had given him and said:

“So you hire yourself out to dig up dirt? Doing well at it?”

“Nothing to brag about. A dollar here, a dollar there.”

“And all of them pretty slimy,” he said.

“Look, Mr. Lavery, we don’t have to get into a fight. Kingsley thinks you know where his wife is, but won’t tell him. Either out of meanness or motives of delicacy.”

“Which way would he like it?” the handsome brownfaced man sneered.

“He doesn’t care, as long as he gets the information. He doesn’t care a great deal what you and she do together or where you go or whether she divorces him or not. He just wants to feel sure that everything is all right and that she isn’t in trouble of any kind.”

Lavery looked interested. “Trouble?What kind of trouble?” He licked the word around on his brown lips, tasting it.

“Maybe you won’t know the kind of trouble he is thinking of.”

“Tell me,” he pleaded sarcastically. “I’d just love to hear about some kind of trouble I didn’t know about.”

“You’re doing fine,” I told him. “No time to talk business, but always time for a wisecrack. If you think we might try to get a hook into you because you crossed a state line with her, forget it.”

“Go climb up your thumb, wise guy. You’d have to prove I paid the freight, or it wouldn’t mean anything.”

“This wire has to mean something,” I said stubbornly. It seemed to me that I had said it before, several times.

“It’s probably just a gag. She’s full of little tricks like that. All of them silly, and some of them vicious.”

“I don’t see any point in this one.”

He flicked cigarette ash carefully at the glass-top table. He gave me a quick up from under look and immediately looked away.

“I stood her up,” he said slowly. “It might be her idea of a way to get back at me. I was supposed to run up there one week-end, I didn’t go. I was—sick of her.”

I said: “Uh-huh,” and gave him a long steady stare. “I don’t like that so well. I’d like it better if you did go to El Paso with her and had a fight and split up. Could you tell it that way?”

He flushed solidly behind the sunburn.

“God damn it,” he said, “I told you I didn’t go anywhere with her. Not anywhere. Can’t you remember that?”

“I’ll remember it when I believe it.”

He leaned over to snub out his cigarette. He stood up with an easy movement, not hurried at all, pulled the belt of his robe tight, and moved out to the end of the davenport.

“All right,” he said in a clear tight voice. “Out you go. Take the air. I’ve had enough of your third-degree tripe. You’re wasting my time and your own—if it’s worth anything.”

I stood up and grinned at him. “Not a lot, but for what it’s worth I’m being paid for it. It couldn’t be, for instance, that you ran into a little unpleasantness in some department store—say at the stocking or jewelry counter.”

He looked at me very carefully, drawing his eyebrows down at the corners and making his mouth small.

“I don’t get it,” he said, but there was thought behind his voice.

“That’s all I wanted to know,” I said. “And thanks for listening. By the way, what line of business are you in—since you left Kingsley?”

“What the hell business is it of yours?”

“None. But of course I can always find out,” I said, and moved a little way towards the door, not very far.

“At the moment I’m not doing anything,” he said coldly. “I expect a commission in the navy almost any day.”

“You ought to do well at that,” I said.

“Yeah. So long, snooper. And don’t bother to come back. I won’t be at home.”

I went over to the door and pulled it open. It stuck on the lower sill, from the beach moisture. When I had it open, I looked back at him. He was standing there narrow-eyed, full of muted thunder.

“I may have to come back,” I said. “But it won’t be just to swop gags. It will be because I find something out that needs talking over.”

“So you still think I’m lying,” he said savagely.

“I think you have something on your mind. I’ve looked at too many faces not to know. It may not be any of my business. If it is, you’re likely to have to throw me out again.”

“A pleasure,” he said. “And next time bring somebody to drive you home. In case you land on your fanny and knock your brains out.”

Then without any rhyme or reason that I could see, he spat on the rug in front of his feet.

It jarred me. It was like watching the veneer peel off and leave a tough kid in an alley. Or like hearing an apparently refined woman start expressing herself in four-letter words.

“So long, beautiful hunk,” I said, and left him standing there. I closed the door, had to jerk it to get it shut, and went up the path to the street. I stood on the sidewalk looking at the house across the way.

FOUR

It was a wide shallow house with rose stucco walls faded out to a pleasant pastel shade and trimmed with dull green at the window frames. The roof was of green tiles, round rough ones. There was a deeply inset front door framed in a mosaic of multi-colored pieces of tiling and a small flower garden in front, behind a low stucco wall topped by an iron railing which the beach moisture had begun to corrode. Outside the wall to the left was the three-car garage, with a door opening inside the yard and a concrete path going from there to a side door of the house.

Set into the gate post was a bronze tablet which read: “Albert S. Almore, M.D.”

While I was standing there staring across the street, the black Cadillac I had already seen came purring around the corner and then down the block. It slowed and started to sweep outwards to get turning space to go into the garage, decided my car was in the way of that, and went on to the end of the road and turned in the widened-out space in front of the ornamental iron railing. It came back slowly and went into the empty third of the garage across the way.

The thin man in sun glasses went along the sidewalk to the house, carrying a double-handled doctor’s bag. Halfway along he slowed down to stare across at me. I went along towards my car. At the house he used a key and as he opened the door he looked across at me again.

I got into the Chrysler and sat there smoking and trying to make up my mind whether it was worth while hiring somebody to pull a tail on Lavery. I decided it wasn’t, not the way things looked so far.

Curtains moved at a lower window close to the side door Dr. Almore had gone in at. A thin hand held them aside and I caught the glint of light on glasses. They were held aside for quite some time, before they fell together again.

I looked along the street at Lavery’s house. From this angle I could see that his service porch gave on a flight of painted wooden steps to a sloping concrete walk and a flight of concrete steps ending in the paved alley below.

I looked across at Dr. Almore’s house again, wondering idly if he knew Lavery and how well. He probably knew him, since theirs were the only two houses in the block. But being a doctor, he wouldn’t tell me anything about him. As I looked, the curtains which had been lifted apart were now completely drawn aside.

The middle segment of the triple window they had masked had no screen. Behind it, Dr. Almore stood staring across my way, with a sharp frown on his thin face. I shook cigarette ash out of the window and he turned abruptly and sat down at a desk. His double-handled bag was on the desk in front of him. He sat rigidly, drumming on the desk beside the bag. His hand reached for the telephone, touched it and came away again. He lit a cigarette and shook the match violently, then strode to the window and stared out at me some more.

This was interesting, if at all, only because he was a doctor. Doctors, as a rule, are the least curious of men. While they are still internes they hear enough secrets to last them a lifetime. Dr. Almore seemed interested in me. More than interested, bothered.

I reached down to turn the ignition key, then Lavery’s front door opened and I took my hand away and leaned back again. Lavery came briskly up the walk of his house, shot a glance down the street and turned to go into his garage. He was dressed as I had seen him. He had a rough towel and a steamer rug over his arm. I heard the garage door lift up, then the car door open and shut, then the grind and cough of the starting car. It backed up the steep incline to the street, white steamy exhaust pouring from its rear end. It was a cute little blue convertible, with the top folded down and Lavery’s sleek dark head just rising above it. He was now wearing a natty pair of sun-goggles with very wide white sidebows. The convertible swooped off down the block and danced around the corner.

There was nothing in that for me. Mr. Christopher Lavery was bound for the edge of the broad Pacific, to lie in the sun and let the girls see what they didn’t necessarily have to go on missing.

I gave my attention back to Dr. Almore. He was on the telephone now, not talking, holding it to his ear, smoking and waiting. Then he leaned forward as you do when the voice comes back, listened, hung up and wrote something on a pad in front of him. Then a heavy book with yellow sides appeared on his desk and he opened it just about in the middle. While he was doing this he gave one quick look out of the window, straight at the Chrysler.

He found his place in the book, leaned down over it and quick puffs of smoke appeared in the air over the pages. He wrote something else, put the book away, and grabbed the telephone again. He dialed, waited, began to speak quickly, pushing his head down and making gestures in the air with his cigarette.

He finished his call and hung up. He leaned back and sat there brooding, staring down at his desk, but not forgetting to look out of the window every half minute. He was waiting, and I waited with him, for no reason at all. Doctors make many phone calls, talk to many people. Doctors look out of their front windows, doctors frown, doctors show nervousness, doctors have things on their mind and show the strain. Doctors are just people, born to sorrow, fighting the long grim fight like the rest of us.

But there was something about the way this one behaved that intrigued me. I looked at my watch, decided it was time to get something to eat, lit another cigarette and didn’t move.

It took about five minutes. Then a green sedan whisked around the corner and bore down the block. It coasted to a stop in front of Dr. Almore’s house and its tall buggywhip aerial quivered. A big man with dusty blond hair got out and went up to Dr. Almore’s front door. He rang the bell and leaned down to strike a match on the step. His head came around and he stared across the street exactly at where I was sitting.

The door opened and he went into the house. An invisible hand gathered the curtains at Dr. Almore’s study window and blanked the room. I sat there and stared at the sun-darkened lining of the curtains. More time trickled by.

The front door opened again and the big man loafed casually down the steps and through the gate. He snapped his cigarette end off into the distance and rumpled his hair. He shrugged once, pinched the end of his chin, and walked diagonally across the street. His steps in the quiet were leisurely and distinct. Dr. Almore’s curtains moved apart again behind him. Dr. Almore stood in his window and watched.

A large freckled hand appeared on the sill of the car door at my elbow. A large face, deeply lined, hung above it. The man had eyes of metallic blue. He looked at me solidly and spoke in a deep harsh voice.

“Waiting for somebody?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Am I?”

“I’ll ask the questions.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said. “So that’s the answer to the pantomime.”

“What pantomime?” He gave me a hard level unfriendly stare from his very blue eyes.

I pointed across the street with my cigarette. “Nervous Nellie and the telephone. Calling the cops, after first getting my name from the Auto Club, probably, then looking it up in the city directory. What goes on?”

“Let me see your driver’s license.”

I gave him back his stare. “You fellows ever flash a buzzer—or is acting tough all the identification you need?”

“If I have to get tough, fellow, you’ll know it.”

I leaned down and turned my ignition key and pressed the starter. The motor caught and idled down.

“Cut that motor,” he said savagely, and put his foot on the running board.

I cut the motor again and leaned back and looked at him.

“God damn it,” he said, “do you want me to drag you out of there and bounce you on the pavement?”

I got my wallet out and handed it to him. He drew the celluloid pocket out and looked at my driver’s license, then turned the pocket over and looked at the photostat of my other license on the back. He rammed it contemptuously back into the wallet and handed me the wallet. I put it away. His hand dipped and came up with a blue and gold police badge.

“Degarmo, detective-lieutenant,” he said in his heavy brutal voice.

“Pleased to meet you, lieutenant.”

“Skip it. Now tell why you’re down here casing Almore’s place.”

“I’m not casing Almore’s place, as you put it, lieutenant. I never heard of Dr. Almore and I don’t know of any reason why I should want to case his house.”

He turned his head to spit. I was meeting the spitting boys today.

“What’s your grift then? We don’t like peepers down here. We don’t have one in town.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, that’s so. So come on, talk it up. Unless you want to ride down to the clubhouse and sweat it out under the bright lights.”

I didn’t answer him.

“Her folks hire you?” he asked suddenly.

I shook my head.

“The last boy that tried it ended up on the road gang, sweetheart.”

“I bet it’s good,” I said, “if only I could guess. Tried what?”

“Tried to put the bite on him,” he said thinly.

“Too bad I don’t know how,” I said. “He looks like an easy man to bite.”

“That line of talk don’t buy you anything,” he said.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s put it this way. I don’t know Dr. Almore, never heard of him, and I’m not interested in him. I’m down here visiting a friend and looking at the view. If I’m doing anything else, it doesn’t happen to be any of your business. If you don’t like that, the best thing to do is to take it down to headquarters and see the day captain.”

He moved a foot heavily on the running board and looked doubtful. “Straight goods?” he asked slowly.

“Straight goods.”

“Aw hell, the guy’s screwy,” he said suddenly and looked back over his shoulder at the house. “He ought to see a doctor.” He laughed, without any amusement in the laugh. He took his foot off my running board and rumpled his wiry hair.

“Go on—beat it,” he said. “Stay off our reservation, and you won’t make any enemies.”

I pressed the starter again. When the motor was idling gently I said: “How’s Al Norgaard these days?”

He stared at me. “You know Al?”

“Yeah. He and I worked on a case down here a couple of years ago—when Wax was chief of police.”

“Al’s in the military police. I wish I was,” he said bitterly. He started to walk away and then swung sharply on his heel. “Go on, beat it before I change my mind,” he snapped.

He walked heavily across the street and through Dr. Almore’s front gate again.

I let the clutch in and drove away. On the way back to the city, I listened to my thoughts. They moved fitfully in and out, like Dr. Almore’s thin nervous hands pulling at the edges of his curtains.

Back in Los Angeles I ate lunch and went up to my office in the Cahuenga Building to see what mail there was. I called Kingsley from there.

“I saw Lavery,” I told him. “He told me just enough dirt to sound frank. I tried to needle him a little, but nothing came of it. I still like the idea that they quarreled and split up and that he hopes to fix it up with her yet.”

“Then he must know where she is,” Kingsley said.

“He might, but it doesn’t follow. By the way a rather curious thing happened to me on Lavery’s street. There are only two houses. The other belongs to a Dr. Almore.” I told him briefly about the rather curious thing.

He was silent for a moment at the end and then he said: “Is this Dr. Albert Almore?”

“Yes?”

“He was Crystal’s doctor for a time. He came to the house several times when she was—well, when she had been overdrinking. I thought him a little too quick with a hypodermic needle. His wife—let me see, there was something about his wife. Oh yes, she committed suicide.”

I said, “When?”

“I don’t remember. Quite a long time ago. I never knew them socially. What are you going to do now?”

I told him I was going up to Puma Lake, although it was a little late in the day to start.

He said I would have plenty of time and that they had an hour more daylight in the mountains.

I said that was fine and we hung up.