Sleep with Strangers

by Dolores Hitchens

  “It’s about the party at Mrs. Cole’s house last Monday night.”

  Ott retreated behind the door. “I wasn’t there long.”

  “You did see Ajoukian there, didn’t you?”

  An eye came into view, glaring anger. “No. If he came, it was after I’d gone home.”

  “Did you hold a conversation with Mrs. Wanderley?”

  “Go to hell.” The door slammed.

  Sader went back to his car and headed through the rain toward Garden Grove. Once he was past the fringes of the city, the traffic lightened. There were places in the brown fields where the rain had gathered into pools. The orange groves looked fresh-washed, thriving. He turned on the car radio and let the thud of jazz underline his thoughts. Pettis wasn’t through with Tina Griffin, of course. He had her on the run and if what she’d told him wasn’t the truth, he’d break the truth out of her. Ott’s behavior had seemed overly belligerent. It could be the drinking that had made him irascible. At their first meeting Sader had sensed in Ott an inner deterioration, a letting-down of barriers and standards. It happened sometimes without obvious cause. Ott, in possession of a well-kept piece of property worth a good chunk of change on today’s market, shouldn’t be plagued with the more mundane worries.

  Into Sader’s mind came a brief, unwilling memory of his own days as a problem drunk, with it a bitter taste, the sting of remembered humiliation. He forced his thoughts back to the matter at hand and began to check street names at intersections. The country had begun to look more settled, glossy, prosperous. A lot of well-to-do people were experimenting with a streamlined version of country life. The houses were big and ranchy, the outbuildings and fences gleamed with paint, the surviving orange trees looked self-consciously fruitful. The only chickens he noticed were some pure-bred Brahmas, big as turkeys, put out on a lawn to show them off. The rain had wet their black-and-white plumage a little, but not enough to spoil the show. The rooster by the fence gave Sader a hard look, and Sader said, “I’m just passing by,” in apology.

  He found the Ajoukian place at the end of a lane. The house was a white clapboard affair, roofed with redwood shakes, low and rambling. A grapefruit tree sat in the front yard, surrounded by dormant roses and shut off from the street by a split-rail fence. Sader drove into the graveled driveway and left his car, went up to the front door, and pushed the button and heard chimes ring far away.

  She opened the door and Sader was aware of being unprepared. Dan had raved about her, of course; but somehow he hadn’t visualized this creature. She was the most glittering silver blonde Sader had ever seen. She had skin the color of cream, fine small features, a round chin with a big dimple. Her eyes were the soft brown of velvet. Inside the pale green sweater, the black skirt, she had a figure nobody ever whistled at—they might pucker up, Sader thought, but they’d be breathless. He said, “Mrs. Ajoukian?” She nodded, her glance curious. “My name is Sader.”

  The brown eyes searched him. “Mr. Scarborough’s partner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come in, please.”

  She led him down a tiled hall. The walls were of glass brick and there were big brick planters full of greenery. It smelled of water and fertilizer. She paused before a door. “I’m taking you in to meet Mr. Ajoukian.”

  “Thanks, I’d like that.”

  She opened the door and Sader looked in on what seemed to be a square acre of gray carpeting, a fireplace built to barbecue a couple of steers, and scattered ranch-style furniture. Overhead was a beamed ceiling stained dark to look old and smoky. A bank of windows faced the grapefruit tree and the roses outside.

  Over by the fireplace was a dark-skinned mummy wrapped in a white blanket. She led Sader that way.

  The old man watched their approach with eyes like a bird’s. He made coughing noises, then offered Sader his hand. His skin was cool, dry as dead leaves, and his nails scratched like the overgrown claws of an old hawk. “You found my son?” he asked hopefully.

  Sader sat down facing them, loosened the raincoat, lit a cigarette. “No. I’ve come to ask questions.”

  “More questions?” The birdlike eyes pinned him with displeasure. “Connie and I have answered questions until we’re hoarse. Can’t you find my boy?”

  “Not yet. I want to know about the party you attended at Margot Cole’s.”

  “Mrs. Cole’s?” Ajoukian licked his lips. “It’s slipped my mind a bit. Last week, wasn’t it?”

  “Last Monday,” Sader corrected. The old man was sparring.

  “I dropped in after most of the guests had gone,” Ajoukian said in a high, complaining tone. “Nothing happened of importance. Who told you I was there?”

  “I just happened to hear of it. You met a Mrs. Wanderley there?”

  In the seamed face shaded by the folded blanket there was any expression you cared to read. Smiles, frowns, grimaces, all were welded together in a network of lines. Sader thought the old man’s eyes grew cautious, but this could have been founded on previous expectation. The girl sat passively in the depths of a chair, watching old Mr. Ajoukian and Sader in turn.

  “Yes, I guess I did.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  The old man turned to the girl. “Connie, bring me a little brandy.” As she rose, the silver hair catching the light, the old man’s gaze dropped from her. “I’ve been laid up with a chill. Can’t seem to get my strength.” He looked at Sader to see what Sader meant to do.

  “About Mrs. Wanderley.”

  The girl was gone. The old man leaned from the blanket. “She was drunk. She kept pestering me to find out what I wanted of Mrs. Cole.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  “Of course not. The Cole woman’s in trouble with her husband. She’s selling what she’s got on the quiet. She doesn’t want anybody to know.”

  “No figures were mentioned, no amount of money?”

  Ajoukian shook his head firmly. Inside the collar of his robe, his throat worked as if he were swallowing something. Nervousness, perhaps. “I wouldn’t tell Mrs. Wanderley anything. Why should I? And what’s she got to do with my son Perry?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing, maybe. She disappeared Tuesday night, at least she left home Tuesday night and didn’t come, back. She was on the Hill sometime during Tuesday evening.”

  “So were a lot of people.” The old man’s fingers strayed over the fringe of the blanket, twisting it through his knuckles. “What connection have you proved?”

  “None so far,” Sader said patiently. “Except through you, your meeting Mrs. Wanderley at the party the night before her disappearance.”

  The black eyes under parchment lids took on a fixity of stone. “Is somebody paying you to find this Mrs. Wanderley?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re looking for her instead of Perry?”

  “My partner, Scarborough, is doing everything he can to find your son, Mr. Ajoukian. He traced Perry to a bar on the way to Long Beach. Your son stayed there until almost eleven o’clock on Tuesday night. Then he received a telephone call and left.”

  The old man took a handkerchief from his robe and coughed into it.

  “I can’t help wondering if the call might not first have been put through to his home here, that information was given where to reach him.”

  Sader waited; the old man fumbled with his handkerchief.

  “Did you receive a call for your son, Mr. Ajoukian?”

  “No, sir.”

  Mrs. Ajoukian came in at that moment, a small tray in her hands. “I took the liberty——” She smiled, gave Sader a tall greenish drink. She handed the old man a beaker with a couple of inches of brandy in it. Her own drink looked like a Coke, straight. She sat down. Below the hem of the black skirt her legs were long and lovely and Sader caught himself staring at them.

  “Ask her,” suggested Ajoukian across his brandy beaker.

  “Your husband received a telephone call at a bar around eleven o’clock on the night he dropped from sigh
t. I wondered how the caller knew where to reach him, whether either you or his father——”

  She cut in, “I had no idea where he went, once he left here.”

  “You knew his favorite places, I guess.”

  Her pink mouth pinched up as if with embarrassment. She turned her head to one side, the silver hair glowing as the light crossed it. “No. Not lately. We’d been—we’d had a little falling out.” Her eyes stole over to the old man, then hurried on.

  Sader said, “I don’t think my partner knew that you and your husband were on the outs. That’s a pretty important piece of information in a case of disappearance.”

  “Is it?” she asked, contrite.

  “Had either of you thought about getting a divorce?”

  “Oh, no.”

  The old man’s harsh voice broke in. “It wouldn’t have had anything to do with Perry’s going away, if they had. He’s in business with me, he wouldn’t just walk out on what he had here.” Ajoukian cast a fierce glance around, like a brigand totting up his spoils. “Women . . . any woman . . . wasn’t worth that to him.”

  Mrs. Ajoukian looked at her father-in-law and he stared back. Sader got an impression of hatred, thinly concealed. Then she murmured, “We still loved each other, Daddy,” and Sader wondered if he had imagined the hostility.

  The old man leaned forward from the blanket. “This is what you came to say, isn’t it? You haven’t found out a thing.”

  “What did you expect in the space of twenty-four hours?” Sader said.

  “More than you’ve done.”

  The girl put in, “Mr. Sader, you’re not drinking your drink. Isn’t it what you like?”

  “I’m a high-dive drinker,” Sader told her. “That first taste of alcohol is the same as jumping off a ten-story building. I’d like to get back up, but I can’t.” He had put the greenish drink on the table by his chair. “So excuse me, and thanks anyhow.”

  “You’re fired,” said Ajoukian abruptly.

  Sader looked into the black reptilian eyes. “I’ll send my bill.”

  “I won’t pay it.” A funny color had come into the parchment skin, a reddish bloom that was far from the blush of health. The old man’s mouth began to tremble. “Get out of here.”

  “Now, Daddy,” cried the girl, springing up to run to him. “You’ve got to keep quiet. Dr. Bell told you to avoid any excitement.”

  “I won’t pay you a cent,” Ajoukian spat at Sader. “Throw him out, Connie. He’s a fake.”

  She tried to smooth the shaking head, to pull the blanket around him. The old man struck at her with a clawlike hand. She looked over at Sader. “He’s going to have one of his fits. He ought to be put in bed. I can’t carry him. He drove off his nurse.”

  Sader walked to Ajoukian’s chair, avoided a swipe of the hawk’s claws, threw the blanket around the old man, and lifted him. She ran ahead, opening doors. They went down a carpeted hall past several rooms, into a big bedroom. She hurried to the bed, turned down the coverlets. Sader put Ajoukian into the lavender sheets, had his face raked in parting.

  “Oh, I’m sorry! He got you, didn’t he?” The velvety eyes seemed ready to weep velvet tears. She touched Sader’s jaw with finger tips as cool as snow. On the bed, the old man was convulsed with coughing. “Wait here for just a moment, will you? I’ve got to telephone Dr. Bell.”

  Sader put a handkerchief to the welts on his cheek and sat down by the bed. “Mr. Ajoukian, a man was murdered today. His name was Mullens. He was a bookkeeper in a field office on Signal Hill. I think he knew something about the disappearance of Mrs. Wanderley. He might also have known something of the whereabouts of your son. Tell me—did this man contact you?”

  The old man seemed torn by some terrible dilemma. His breathing had a broken, sucking sound like a pump thrown off beat. “Who’s this fellow you’re talking about?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Mullens?” He seemed to sort hurriedly the clutter in his mind. “Well, maybe. Maybe.”

  “Maybe you went down to his office last night to meet him. Maybe that’s when you caught your chill. There’s a woman who saw you, who can identify you.” Sader was convinced now that Tina Griffin had recognized that elderly man in the field office. That was why she’d kept harping on the clothes, the outward trappings, keeping off the subject of identity. She’d seen Ajoukian previously, of course, at Margot Cole’s party, even though she may not have been introduced or have learned his name. Was she, like Mullens, trying to salvage something to sell?

  A dangerous game. . . . Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to make positive identification to spite Pettis. Or to keep herself from further questioning.

  Ajoukian was whispering. “If Mullen is dead, it means he really did know something. Something more than . . .” The words died in a rattle. “It means my son is dead, perhaps.” He turned his face, retreating into grief.

  Mrs. Ajoukian came back. She bent above the old man. “Dr. Bell is coming right away.”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  She threw a glance at Sader. “What have you told him?”

  “There’s been a murder. A man who may have known something of your husband’s disappearance was killed this morning.”

  She seemed almost to stagger, her right ankle turning loosely. “Why should that happen?”

  “My son is dead,” said Ajoukian in his harsh broken whisper.

  The room grew still. The girl’s hands twisted, fumbled with her bracelets. “It isn’t true, is it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sader. My best line, he thought grimly. In this affair I’m Johnny Know-Not. All I can find out is that there was a party, old man Ajoukian wanted to buy oil shares, and Mrs. Wanderley didn’t like a job involving pigs. He walked to the door, turned back. “I hope I won’t offend you, asking this. Was your husband interested in another woman?”

  All at once old man Ajoukian sprang up in bed and roared, “Women! Women! Can’t you get women out of your head for a minute? My son had money! He didn’t have to worry over women!” Then he flopped back and lay wheezing.

  The girl in the middle of the room flinched, turning from Sader. “If he had anyone, he’d met her recently. And perhaps, as Daddy says, it wouldn’t have been serious.”

  Sader hated to leave her there. She was young and lovely, and her life under the thumb of the fierce old man couldn’t be pleasant. He wondered what her marriage had been like, why she’d come to live here with her father-in-law and what sort of husband the son had been. Maybe Dan knew.

  “I think your father-in-law had better get in touch with the police about the death of Mullens—when the doctor gives permission, of course.”

  “I’ll see that he does.”

  “And you should call the Santa Ana sheriff’s office, too.”

  She nodded obediently.

  “Don’t take anything for granted.”

  She smiled at his effort to cheer her, though the velvet eyes did not light up. She escorted him to the door. “Daddy didn’t really mean to fire you.”

  “I’m not quitting whether he did or not. We’re working on another disappearance. It seems to coincide oddly with that of your husband.”

  “Oh? And who is that?”

  “A Mrs. Wanderley.”

  “She disappeared Tuesday night? When Perry did?”

  “Not exactly. She was seen Wednesday morning.” He saw the curiosity, and something like a touch of unwilling fear, in her glance. “I wish I could explain the connection. Let’s just say it’s a hunch.”

  “Who is she?”

  “A well-to-do woman, came from an old Middle Western family, has a big house on Ocean Avenue, a daughter about your age.”

  She gave a husky breathless laugh. “You mean, an old woman?”

  “Forty-seven,” Sader said, feeling like a dinosaur. “Didn’t look it. But I don’t think your husband would have been attracted.”

  He expected her to be relieved, since he had thought her suspicions had been r
oused by the idea of some sort of elopement. But she shook her head as if mystified, a pinched expression settling on her lips. It seemed to Sader that all at once she had admitted to herself the things her husband had been—a chaser of women among others only she could know. “It’s hard to say,” she murmured. “It’s hard to say just whom he might have liked.” The words seemed dragged from her.

  On this awkward note, Sader took his departure.

  The rain had fined to a scattered, erratic sprinkling. He drove from Ajoukian’s leafy lane to the highway, turned toward Long Beach. He switched on the radio, then clicked it off. At a service station on the edge of town he parked, went into the telephone booth, rang the office. Nobody answered. He tried the Wanderley house. Dan was there, apologetic about taking Miss Wanderley home. She’d looked lonely, he offered.

  Sader, shut in the close stuffiness of the booth, seemed all at once to smell Kay’s fresh perfume, and the memory of the way she’d turned to Dan tore through him. He knew how she’d look, looking lonely. “Sure,” he said, “but you’d better start putting on the brakes. I think what you’re experimenting with is polygamy, sort of.”

  “You met Mrs. Ajoukian?” Dan said, his voice suddenly warm.

  “Still interested?”

  “Oh, you know how it is.”

  Kay was within hearing distance, Sader judged. “I’ve got an idea for a job.”

  “Yours or mine?”

  “Both. I want you to go over to San Pedro to a boat-supply shop and buy a couple of grappling hooks. Some rope. Check our flashlights.”

  The silence was long, drawn out, as if Dan had forgotten how to talk. Then he laughed unevenly and stammered, “Perish the thought——”

  “Take a good look at Kay Wanderley,” Sader said through his teeth. “She deserves a decent job done for her, not to have you hold her hand to console her. Get on it.” He knew that Dan must sense the savage jealousy that stabbed him.

  “Sure, Papa. Right away. Two grap——”

  “Shut up.” He rammed the phone into place and opened the booth.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IN THE office Sader opened a drawer of Dan’s desk and looked long at the rum bottle. Then he shut the drawer, went around to his own desk, and got a box of aspirin. He stepped into the outer office to draw a cup of water. He tossed two tablets into his mouth, washed them down, tasted the bitterness on the back of his tongue. The office was dark, the light almost gone, though it was scarcely five yet.