Sleep with Strangers
Page 20
He was too keyed up to go home. He drove downtown, parked the car, went up to his office. He’d snatch an hour’s nap on the couch, then go out to a café for lunch, then feel like a million all over. The fuzziness behind his eyes would be gone, the bubbling excitement about Dan would die down. Maybe the terrible heavy feeling inside somewhere would go away, too.
There were some pretty quick remedies available, of course. He tried to force from his thoughts the image of Dan’s bottle, but it stayed as if caught in some cobweb in a corner of his mind. The tantalizing rum . . .
Whiskey was better, but of course he’d learned long ago he couldn’t drink, not anything. He let himself into the office, shed the coat, looked blankly at his and Dan’s desks. What had he come here for?
There was a step in the outer room. Sader swung around. There was a sort of cloud in front of his eyes, and he couldn’t breathe. The light steps came close to the door. The door swung open.
He saw the check in her hand through the quivering light, so it had to be Kay—she’d come to pay him. An excuse. He said hoarsely, “You didn’t have to do that.”
“She wanted you to have it,” said Tina Griffin. It was Tina Griffin’s voice, so he took a quick look at the face. And that was Tina’s too, a lovely face with exotic eyes. Very white skin, like the petals of a white camellia. Black hair as fine as silk. “I was at her house when she got home. That Annie character was boarding up the windows, practically, getting ready to stave off a siege by the police. It took a little straightening out. Then Kay said, she owed you so much. And she sent this. A thousand dollars, for finding her mother.”
Sader took the check and shredded it all over the top of the two desks like a cloud of confetti.
Tina Griffin sat down in a chair, then noticed the couch, moved over there. “I thought you’d do that, so I had Kay make out another, a second check, just in case. It’s made out to your partner, and I’ll keep it in my purse until I can give it to him.”
Sader leaned on the desk, looking at her. “That was very clever of you.”
“Not so clever. Kay told me about the trip to Las Vegas.” She was getting a cigarette from her handbag. Sader took out matches, lit it for her, still watching her angrily. “Kay has so much money. She won’t miss the thousand. She’s going away.”
“Going——”
“Just a trip. Hawaii, or somewhere.” The exotic eyes on his had no pity in them, Sader saw; and for this he was relieved. She was explaining something to him, very matter of fact, so he’d understand why his client might not have time for a final interview.
“I never intended to try to see her again.”
“I guessed that, too.”
He walked around, looking at the furniture. Dan had bought it, picked it out, saying that he was determined it shouldn’t look like a private eye’s office. That’s exactly what it looked like, of course. Every TV studio, every movie lot, had its duplicate, always used by private detectives for interviewing clients.
Or for fighting villains who’d come to raid the safe.
Or for drinking . . .
He took out Dan’s bottle, put it on the desk, went to the outer room and came back with a couple of paper cups.
She leaned forward, amused. “What are you doing?”
Sader smiled tightly. “I, too, am going on a trip.”
“Are you, really? Or are you trying to get rid of me?” She got up from the couch and came over to the desk. “I was hoping you’d be around. I like you very much,” she added, on a note of shyness that Sader thought intriguing.
He gave her a paper cup with rum in it. “Need a chaser?”
She shook her head, her eyes on his over the rim of the cup. “No, thanks.”
She was a very good-looking woman, Sader thought. He remembered the scene in Mullens’s office—she’d hoped to meet him again when he wasn’t working. It occurred to Sader that this was it. He was fresh out of jobs. He put an arm around her slender waist. She was supple and yielding, her hair satiny against his cheek, her perfume mixing itself with the warmer, rather medicinal odor of the rum.
Sader touched his cup to hers. “Here’s to high diving,” he said.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
DOLORES HITCHENS
Born Julia Clara Catherine Dolores Birk on December 25, 1907, in San Antonio, Texas. Published poems while completing graduate studies at the University of California; enrolled in a nursing school. She worked as a nurse at Hollywood Hospital, and later became a teacher before pursuing a professional writing career. Married T. K. Olsen, whom she later divorced. Married Hubert Allen “Bert” Hitchens, a railroad investigating officer, who had a son, Gordon (later founder of Film Comment and contributor to Variety). Together they had a son, Michael. As D. B. Olsen, published two novels featuring Lt. Stephen Mayhew, The Clue in the Clay (1938) and Death Cuts a Silhouette (1939); twelve novels featuring elderly amateur sleuth Rachel Murdock: The Cat Saw Murder (1939), The Alarm of the Black Cat (1942), Catspaw for Murder (1943), The Cat Wears a Noose (1944), Cats Don’t Smile (1945), Cats Don’t Need Coffins (1946), Cats Have Tall Shadows (1948), The Cat Wears a Mask (1949), Death Wears Cat’s Eyes (1950), Cat and Capricorn (1951), The Cat Walk (1953), and Death Walks on Cat Feet (1956); and six novels featuring Professor A. Pennyfeather: Shroud for the Bride (1945), Gallows for the Groom (1947), Devious Design (1948), Something About Midnight (1950), Love Me in Death (1951), and Enrollment Cancelled (1952). Published play A Cookie for Henry (1941) as Dolores Birk Hitchens; novel Shivering Bough (1942) as Noel Burke; and novels Blue Geranium (1944) and The Unloved (1965) as Dolan Birkley. Cowrote five railroad detective novels with Bert Hitchens: F.O.B. Murder (1955), One-Way Ticket (1956), End of Line (1957), The Man Who Followed Women (1959), and The Grudge (1963). As Dolores Hitchens, published two private detective novels featuring California private eye Jim Sader: Sleep With Strangers (1955) and Sleep With Slander (1960); as well as stand-alone suspense novels Stairway to an Empty Room (1951), Nets to Catch the Wind (1952), Terror Lurks in Darkness (1953), Beat Back the Tide (1954), Fools’ Gold (1958), The Watcher (1959, adapted for the television series Thriller in 1960), Footsteps in the Night (1961), The Abductor (1962), The Bank with the Bamboo Door (1965), The Man Who Cried All the Way Home (1966), Postscript to Nightmare (1967), A Collection of Strangers (1969), The Baxter Letters (1971), and In a House Unknown (1973). Jean-Luc Godard adapted Fools’ Gold into the 1964 film Band of Outsiders. Died in August 1973 in San Antonio, Texas.