She didn’t want to talk but he was a decent-looking young fellow waiting for a bus. And the mist grew cold on the lonely corner. When he knew she was ripe for the suggestion, he mentioned coffee at the drive-in up at the corner of Linden Drive. The pert car-hop remembered Mildred when she saw the picture in the paper. She’d been carrying out a tray when they entered. Remembered possibly because by then Mildred was pleased at having coffee with a good-looking young fellow. She’d preened a little.
The car-hop told the other girls, “That’s her”; the boss heard the gabble and he called the Beverly Hills police. The car-hop couldn’t describe the man, sort of tall, nice looking in a tan suit. She was sure he couldn’t be the strangler; he wasn’t that kind of a man at all. She would always be sure that what happened to Mildred happened after she left her drive-in escort.
He read every line of every story in the morning paper. He felt good today after last night’s sleep. It was a wonderful summer day. He stretched out in bed lazily and he thought about the redhead. She would be poison but it wouldn’t hurt to think about her. He couldn’t get mixed up with a woman, with a damn snooping dame. But God, she’d be worth knowing. It had been so long a time since he’d had a woman to hold to. He hadn’t wanted one.
He didn’t want one now; it was hangover from seeing Sylvia and Brub looking at each other. Maybe the crazy thought that had flickered in his mind about the little brown girl and her seven million dollars. It would be a good day to lie on the beach at Santa Monica. In front of Betsy Banning’s house at the foot of the California Incline. He might even find out which house was Banning’s.
He stretched off the bed. If he were going to sun on the beach, it might be smart to call Brub. Brub shouldn’t be working on Sunday. He should be beaching. Talking about the case. New developments. He smiled. It was neat to have a source of information on a case.
A quick shot of thought jabbed him. The tires. They were good tires, no patches, no distinguishing marks. Only somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered that all tires had distinguishing marks, like fingerprints. Could they get a cast of tire marks from dry concrete? He doubted it. As he had doubted it last night. But he should make sure.
Certain gambles were legitimate. Like appearing in a lighted place with Mildred. Gambling on the muddled memory of waitresses and countermen who served hundreds of average-looking men and women every day, every night. Risks were spice. Stunt flying. As long as you used them like spice, sparingly; like stunts, planning them with precision, carrying them out boldly.
He fingered his lip. He could grow a mustache. No reason why he should. He didn’t like lip brushes. He looked like a thousand other men. He’d never been in that drive-in before. He never intended to go in it again. Risks he took; mistakes he didn’t make.
It would be better to call up the Nicolais. He could find out where the Bannings lived easily enough. If he was going to marry the girl he’d have to find out where she lived. Too bad she wasn’t a pal of Sylvia’s. That would make it easy. He lifted the phone, dialed the Santa Monica number. There was no answer, only metallic ringing. Too late; they’d probably already gone to the beach. It was past one o’clock.
He wasn’t too disappointed. He dressed leisurely, tan gabardine slacks, a white T-shirt. He left the house by the front door. On the balcony were open doors, musical radios, laughter. If she lived in Virginibus Arms—he was certain she did; she hadn’t walked like a visitor—he’d run into her again. Plenty of time. Mel Terriss wouldn’t be back for a long time.
He walked around the block to the garage, opened the noiseless doors. Before taking out the car he circled it, kicking the tires. They were in good shape, not worn, good solid tires. He didn’t need new ones; there was no reason to go to that expense. Brub had said it: the police couldn’t check every pair of tires in L.A.
He backed out and swung over to Wilshire, turned west. The road to the beach. About three million other drivers had the same idea on this blue-sky, golden-warm day in late September. He took the San Vicente cut-off, as he turned noting the eucalyptus grove with one small corner of his mind. Not exactly secluded, yet late enough . . . At Fourth Street in Santa Monica he right turned again, descending into the canyon. The sign pointed this as an alternate road to the beach. He was prospecting. This descent would be pretty well deserted at night. But no underbrush except fenced. He dropped into the canyon and found Mesa Road. He didn’t expect to find the Nicolais at home, but it was worth a try.
It was well worth it; the door was open, through the screen he could see into the hallway. He pushed the bell, pleased with himself, relaxed, comfortable. It was Sylvia who answered and she was surprised to see him. By her startled look, you’d think he was someone unexpectedly returned from Limbo.
“Hello,” he said easily. “Anyone home?”
“Dix—” She unhooked the screen, pushing it open. “I didn’t recognize you at first. The sun behind you.” She had an open white beach robe over brief white shorts and a white cleft brassiere. Her skin was deep tan and her gilt hair was loose about her shoulders. Without the cool poise she seemed much younger. She was flustered. “Excuse the way I look.” Her feet were bare and dappled with sand. “We’ve just come up from the beach and Brub beat me to the shower. I didn’t expect you. Some friends were coming over—”
He cut her off, I’m a friend too.”
She colored. “Of course, you are. I mean, old friends.” She sighed. “I’m making it worse. Go on in and get comfortable. Help yourself to a drink. I’ll tell Brub.” She went quickly, too quickly.
Maybe his open admiration embarrassed her. He didn’t understand Sylvia. She was too many women. He settled himself on the living-room couch. Friends coming in. He wouldn’t stay on. He’d have a dinner date.
Brub wasn’t long. His face lighted when he saw Dix, it had been heavy at the doorway. “Where’s that drink? Sylvia said you were mixing them.”
“What am I, the bartender?” Dix lounged off the couch. “Name it.”
“No,” Brub waved him down. “I’ll do it. I’m handy.”
He felt too good to bother with a drink. “I don’t care. Whatever you’re having.”
“Then you’ll settle for Scotch and splash,” Brub said from behind the bar. “That’s the only English I learned in the service. We’ll have it with ice though.” He filled the glasses. “What you been doing all day?”
“Working,” Dix answered. “Tried to reach you earlier. I wanted to play hookey on the beach.” He took the glass. Thanks. I thought you were probably on the job.”
Brub frowned a little. “I worked this morning.” He pushed away the frown. “Spent the afternoon on the beach.”
Dix tasted his highball. “How’s the case coming?” He had just the right casual curiosity in his voice. It pleased him.
The frown returned to Brub’s forehead. “It’s not. Right where it was.”
Dix’s foot edged the paper on the floor. “But you found someone who saw her with the man.”
“Yeah.” Brub’s voice was flat. “Maybe if he’d walk in again, that car-hop would remember him.” He was disgusted. “She’s looked through the files of every known offender and she can’t even describe the guy any more. She thinks he was this and maybe he was that. She doesn’t even know the color of his eyes.”
“That’s too bad.” Dix was gravely sympathetic. “No one else noticed the couple?”
“If they did. they’ve got stage fright. No one else has volunteered any information. And it was a crowded time at the drive-in. The after-movie crowd. Somebody else must have seen them.”
“Yeah.” Dix said. “Though you can see people without noticing them.” He enlarged on it as if he’d never thought of it before. “How many times in a restaurant do you notice people around you? You don’t pay any attention to them when they come or when they go. At least I don’t.’”
“That’s it.” Brub agreed. He went on, “There’s one thing we do know.”
Dix li
fted his eyes with renewed interest.
“We know he was in Beverly Hills on Friday night.” Brub was sardonic. “But whether he was in the neighborhood for an evening’s pleasure”—he bit his lip—”or whether he lives there, we don’t know. He can’t live all over Southern California. He’s probably never operated in his own neighborhood; he’d be too cagey for that.”
Sylvia came in on the end of his sentence. “Brub, you’re not talking the case again. I can’t take it.” She was as different from the girl who’d opened the screen door as from the frightened woman of last night. She looked glowing, slim as a birch, in pale gray slacks, a brilliant green sweater. Her damp hair was braided on top of her head. “That’s all I’ve heard this afternoon. Everyone on the beach hounding Brub for details. Do I get a drink, darling?”
“You do. Same as us?” Brub went to the bar again.
“Please, darling.” Sylvia dumped ash trays with zeal. “Why people are so damn morbid.” she returned to the subject with emphasis. She’d set up a hearty defense mechanism to battle her fears.
Dix remonstrated. “I don’t know that it’s exactly morbidity. Isn’t it rather self-importance?” He grinned. “It isn’t everyone who can get a first-hand account from the detective in the case.”
Brub said. “Yeah. Junior G-Man tells all. He don’t know nothing but he gotta say something.” He swizzled the soda.
Dix smiled into his drink. “I’m different. I have a personal interest in the case.” He let his eyes lift lazily as he spoke. Sylvia had frozen where she stood, her eyes alone moving, her eyes slewing swiftly to his face as if he’d suddenly revealed himself as the strangler. Brub went on swizzling.
“You see, I’m writing a detective novel,” Dix added.
Sylvia moved then, setting down the ash tray she held. It made a small clack on the glass-topped end table.
Brub brought her the highball. “Here you are, skipper.” He sat down, hanging his feet over the arm of the green chair. “So that’s what you’re writing. Who you stealing from. Chandler or Hammett or Gardner?”
“Little of each.” Dix agreed. “With a touch of Queen and Carr.”
“It should be a best-seller if you combine all those,” Sylvia said. She sat opposite Brub.
“Can’t miss.” Dix admitted. “But for God’s sake don’t tell Uncle Fergus what I’m doing. He thinks I’m writing literature.”
“I don’t know Uncle Fergus,” Sylvia murmured.
“You wouldn’t like him. He’s vehemently conservative. He hasn’t relaxed since Hoover left Washington,” he added cheerfully. “He won’t mind what I’ve written when the royalties roll in. He won’t read it anyway.” She tried to stymie him on his questioning; he’d fixed that. He said. “Now you take that business about tire tracks that Brub mentioned last night. Instead of beating my brains out at the library, all I have to do is ask him. It’s a good touch for a story. Makes you sound like an expert.” He lifted his glass. “Do they really make plaster casts of tracks. Brub?”
“They try,” Brub said gloomily. “But it takes cooperation. For good ones you need skid marks or mud or virgin territory. No chance this time. There weren’t more than several hundred tracks superimposed on that particular stretch. Not worth lifting them.”
“But you lifted them, didn’t you?” Dix wondered. “The thoroughness of the police—”
“Sure,” Brub grunted. “Thorough as hell. Maybe next time—” He broke off. Sylvia had gone tense. “There mustn’t be a next time,” he said heatedly. “Only now—”
Dix said seriously, “Let’s skip it. Brub. With you working on it, feeling the way you do, you’ll get him.” Sylvia’s eyes were grateful. “I’ll take a refill and I’ll tell you about the redhead at my apartment. You still like redheads?”
Sylvia’s gratefulness was gay. “He’d better not.”
“Who is she?” Brub played up, taking Dix’s glass and his own. But it was an effort, he was pulling by his bootstraps.
“Well, I haven’t met her yet,” Dix laughed. “But I’m working on it.” He knew better than to be talking about a woman publicly; he knew he shouldn’t even think about her. “As soon as I find which apartment is hers, I’m going to get a job reading the light meter or delivering laundry. She”s the sweetest built job I’ve seen in Hollywood.”
“You better have me look her over before you make any commitments.” Brub said. “Don’t forget that blonde in London. Whew!”
“How was I to know her husband was a brass hat? With brass knuckles.” He wanted the second drink less than the first but it tasted good.
“You’d better let me look her over,” Sylvia suggested. “I don’t trust Brub’s taste. He just looks at the envelope. Now I’m a psychologist. I find out what’s inside.”
“You’re both invited. As soon as I read the meter.”
“That shouldn’t take you long,” Brub railed. “Unless you’re getting old.” He squinted his eyes. “You don’t show much wear.”
Voices clacked on the porch.
“That’ll be Maude and Cary,” Sylvia said. She called. “Come on in.”
They were about what Dix had expected. A cute, babbling brunette, big-eyed, hips too wide for her salmon slacks. A nice, empty-looking guy in gabardine slacks and a sports shirt. The Jepsons. Maude liked Dix. She baby-eyed him while she headed for the couch. He’d finish the drink and get out.
She said, “You’re the ace, aren’t you? I’ve heard all about you.” There was a Texas drawl in her voice. She put a cigarette in her mouth and waited for him to light it. She smelled of perfume and liquor. “Make mine weak, Brub. We had one before leaving.” She turned back to Dix. “You were in England with Brub.” She babbled at Dix until Brub put the drink in her hand. She started on Brub then; it was inevitable what she would say.
“Have you caught that man yet. Brub? I tell you I’m so scared I don’t know what to do. I won’t let Cary leave me alone for a minute. I tell him—”
She ought to be scared. It would be a pleasure to throttle her.
“Anything new?” Cary put in. “No,” Brub said.
Sylvia said firmly, “We’re not going to talk about it tonight.”
Maude ignored her. “Why can’t the police catch him?” She was highly indignant. “Nobody’s safe with him running around loose.” She whispered in sepulchre tones, “The strangler.” She shivered closer to Dix. She was having a swell time.
Sylvia took a preparatory breath but Maude raced on, “How are we supposed to know who he is? He could be anybody. I tell Cary maybe he’s our grocery man or the bus driver or those dreadful beach athletes. We don’t know. Even the police don’t know. You’d think they could find out.”
Sylvia said desperately, “For God’s sake, Maude. Don’t you think they’re trying?”
“I don’t know.” Maude tossed her head. “Maybe it’s one of their own men. Well, it could be,” she insisted to the rejection on the faces of the others. “How do we know? It’s simply silly to think that this nice-looking fellow she had coffee with is the one. How did he get her into Beverly Glen Canyon?” she demanded. “Did they walk?”
Cary grunted, “He had a car, of course, Maude.”
“Ah.” She pounced on it. “But he didn’t have a car. They went into the drive-in for coffee.” She cocked her triumph at all of them. Her husband looked tired of it all but a thin layer of fear came over Sylvia’s doubt.
Brub was scowling. He said, “That’s just one of the things we’re trying to find out, Maude. He must have had a car.”
“I don’t get it,” Dix admitted.
“Our effete Easterner.” Brub seized the diversion. “Dix is from New Jersey,” he explained and turned to Dix again. ”No one goes into a drive-in for a cup of coffee. Not if he has a car to sit outside in.”
“But I’ve seen people in the drive-ins,” Dix argued.
“Kids without a car. Or folks who’ve walked to the neighborhood movie. Or someone who’s after a full meal,
something he doesn’t want to balance on a tray. But not for a shake or a cup of coffee. That’s the point of a drive-in. You don’t have to get out of your car.”
“If you don’t have a car, then you have to sit inside.” Maude wagged her head. “He couldn’t have had a car. Because,” she took a deep breath, “because if he was the strangler and had a car, he never would have taken her inside where people could identify him. That man didn’t have a car. But the one who killed her did have a car or she wouldn’t have been found up Beverly Glen.” Her triumph skittered joyfully. “There has to be another man with a car.”
Dix narrowed his eyes, as if with the others he was pondering her conviction.
Sylvia broke the pause. “You think then that there was a second man, an accomplice.” She looked quickly at Brub.
Brub shook his head. “He works alone.” There was certainty in him.
Dix didn’t jump on the statement. He asked simply, “How do you know that?”
“His kind of killer always works alone. He can’t risk an accomplice.”
Cary said. “He’s insane, of course.”
Dix turned his glass in his hand. Cary Jepson was a clod. He wouldn’t be married to a stupid little talking machine if he had any spirit. The obvious reach of his imagination was, “He’s insane, of course.” It would never occur to him that any reason other than insanity could make a man a killer. That’s what all the dolts around town would be parroting: he’s insane of course he’s insane of course. It took imagination to think of a man, sane as you or I, who killed. He hid against his highball glass the smile forming on his lips.
In a Lonely Place Page 5
