Undercurrent nd-3

by Bill Pronzini

  I brushed the thought aside and put on a polite smile for her. "Miss Winestock?"

  She nodded. I gave her my name, and then I said, "I wonder if I might talk to you for a few minutes? It's rather important."

  She looked at me steadily. "You're the man who found Walter Paige last night, aren't you? The private detective?"

  Her voice was cool and matter-of-fact, and it gave substance to her and destroyed some of the ephemeral quality. I said, "Yes, that's right."

  "I heard about it on the midnight news. Is that why you're here?"

  "Yes."

  "I expected someone would be, sooner or later," she said. "How did you get my name?"

  "From Russ Dancer."

  "Mmmm," she said without inflection.

  "There was an old paperback book of his among Paige's effects," I told her. "One called The Dead and the Dying. The police released it to me earlier today, and I followed up a hunch that led me to Dancer."

  "Now what would a man like Walt Paige be doing with one of Russ's books?"

  "That's one of the things I'd like to know."

  "Doesn't Russ have any idea?"

  "No, he doesn't."

  "I didn't even know Walt could read," she said, and smiled faintly. "Well, won't you come in?"

  "Thank you, Miss Winestock."

  "Beverly," she said. "I'm not quite an old maid, and Miss Winestock makes me sound like one."

  "Beverly," I said.

  She took me inside and down an arched hallway hung with Spanish murals and into a tile-floored parlor, darkly furnished. There, she asked, "Would you like a drink? I think we have some beer and wine in the refrigerator; we're out of anything stronger at the moment, I'm afraid."

  "Nothing, thanks."

  I sat down on a tapestried-cloth sofa and she took the chair across from me and crossed her ankles and smoothed her hands along her upper thighs in a gesture that was sensual and yet seemingly unaffected. I kept my eyes on her face as she said, "There's not very much I can tell you about Walt Paige. I didn't know that he was back in Cypress Bay, and I wouldn't have cared if I had. And I have no idea who could have killed him, though God knows, enough people might have had justification. He was a thorough bastard, you know."

  "So I've learned," I said. "How well did you know him when he lived here originally?"

  "Not as well as he would have liked."

  "Did you ever talk to him about personal matters?"

  The faint smile again. "His or mine?"

  "His."

  "Not really. Russ told you about our group, didn't he?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, we were a winy bunch. Laughter and liquor, and never a serious moment. At least, not while the group was together. And that's the only place I ever saw Walt Paige, though he tried to change that enough times."

  "Do you have any idea who he might have been involved with?"

  "Who he was sleeping with, you mean?"

  "Well-yes."

  "Half the women in Cypress Bay and vicinity, no doubt. He had no morals, and general tastes."

  "Any one woman more than another?"

  "If so, I never knew about it."

  "How about Robin Lomax-or Tolliver at that time?"

  Beverly laughed softly; it was the kind of laugh that put cool fingers on your spine and made you think of warm, dark bedrooms. She said, "I doubt it. Robin was hardly a virgin when she married Jason Lomax, although she'd like everybody to think so; but she was more or less going with Jason when Walt Paige was here, and she paid no more attention to Walt than I did. I think we both saw him for exactly what he was."

  "I see."

  "Do the police think it was a woman who killed him? Is that why you're asking about his former love life?"

  "There's a good possibility of it," I said. "He was seeing a woman here in Cypress Bay recently."

  "Are there any clues as to who she is?"

  "Not at the moment."

  "What makes you think she's someone he knew six years ago? Passions cool considerably in six years-unless, of course, he was seeing her fairly regularly since then."

  "He didn't see her for at least four years, except maybe on visitors' day."

  "I don't think I understand."

  "Walter Paige spent four years for burglary in San Quentin," I said. "He was released five months ago."

  She frowned deeply. "I didn't know that."

  "Does it surprise you?"

  "Not much, I guess. I always wondered where he got the money he used to spread around so freely. Was he arrested around here?"

  "No. In Santa Barbara."

  "Maybe he just never got caught in this area."

  "Maybe not."

  She moved restlessly on her chair. "Well, if any woman waited four years or more for Walt Paige, she's the biggest fool in creation. Or just plain blind."

  "That happens-too often."

  "Don't I know it!" Beverly said. "The radio mentioned that Walt had a wife and that you were doing some kind of job for her. Did it have to do with this woman, the one here in Cypress Bay?"

  "Yes. He'd been leaving his wife alone on the weekends, and she wanted to know why."

  "And now she knows."

  "Not yet. She isn't ready to know."

  "She must be taking it pretty hard."

  "Pretty hard."

  "What's she like?"

  "Nice. Very nice and very young."

  "I thought she might be. That's the only kind of woman Walt Paige would have bothered marrying. She'll be all right, though; you learn to accept the crap life deals out to you."

  "Sometimes you do."

  "You have to if you want to get along in this world," Beverly said. "Voice of experience."

  "Has it been that rough for you?"

  "And then some. I've led a hell of a life." She shrugged. "But then, I've made my own bed most of the time-literally as well as figuratively."

  "What do you do for a living, if I can ask?"

  "I'm a potter. How about that?"

  "I didn't think there was any money in it."

  "There is when you make cheap souvenirs for the tourists," she said, and shrugged again. "Well-do you have any more questions about Walt Paige?"

  "Not directly," I answered. "Did your brother know Paige very well?"

  She seemed to tense slightly, but I could not be sure in the room's lighting. "About as well as I did, I suppose."

  "Do you think he might know anything that would help?"

  "I doubt it."

  "Is he here now?"

  "No, he went out earlier today. I can ask him about Walt when he gets home, and have him call you if he can help by some chance."

  "I won't be pursuing things much further-as a matter of fact, I'll probably be returning to San Francisco tonight-so you'd better have him call Chief Quartermain at the City Hall."

  "All right."

  "One last thing, Beverly. Do you know a short, bald guy in his forties, dark and heavy-featured?"

  "That doesn't sound like anybody I know. Why?"

  "Paige talked with him not long before he was killed."

  "A stranger in Cypress Bay?"

  "There's no way of knowing just yet," I said. I got up on my feet. "I guess that's about all, Beverly. Thanks for your time and cooperation."

  "Not at all."

  She smiled and rose, and she was standing close enough to me so that I could look into her eyes. There was nothing there for me; I had simply not registered with her. So we went to the door and I did not say any of the tentative things a man says to a woman who appeals to him. But maybe it was just as well, I thought. She would not want another loveless affair, a man who had an itch to scratch, a man who was thinking of her only as pure sweet hell in bed; and I had absolutely nothing to offer her along any other lines.

  We said goodbye on the porch and touched hands very briefly, and I went down the slab-stone steps without looking back at her. Bonificacio Drive was empty and quiet, like a street in Old Monterey when the ai
r and the land and the sea were clean and you could take your time about living-and the tomorrows were all filled with promise.

  Nine

  The Cypress Point estate belonging to Robin and Jason Lomax was located on Inspiration Way, and I decided to make that my next stop. I took my car down to Ocean Boulevard and along to where it swung sharply to the east and became San Lucas Avenue. From there I could see Cypress Point-thickly wooded, rolling, moneyed acreage-extending into the aquamarine Pacific to form the southern boundary of the bay. Inspiration Way, according to my map, was a short street like the cross bar of an A, running north to south between two large drives that intersected out on the tip of the point. I turned off San Lucas and found it all right, and the Lomax estate came up on the left midway along.

  One of those old-fashioned black-iron fences that look like connected rows of upright spears stretched away on both sides of a meandering entrance lane; the iron gates which normally would bar admittance to the grounds were standing open. I turned in and followed the lane through half an acre of moss-laced pine and carefully arranged ferns and rock terracing and miniature stone waterfalls that fed into glistening water-lilied pools. You half expected to see naiads and wood sprites cavorting in the ribbons of sunlight filtering through the tree branches. A Disney-world, created for fanciful children-or for nostalgic adults.

  The drive leveled out finally on the floor of a tiny valley, with a solid wall of pine gently inclined to the rear and around on the left. The house was situated in the middle of the glen-a sprawling, modern, country-style home constructed of redwood and fieldstone, adorned by long eaves and high chimneys and old-bronze fittings. There was a flagstone terrace enclosed by moss-covered stone walls at the right, and beyond that more of the storybook landscaping; on the other side I could see a mesh-screened tennis court, floored in a thin layer of reddish-brown loam. A man and a woman were working a new tennis ball back and forth across a chain-link net, with the kind of fluid ease that comes from long practice and a genuine enthusiasm for the game. They were both dressed in solid white-the man in shorts and an Italian knit pullover; the woman in a short pleated tennis skirt and a sleeveless blouse-and they made a sharp contrast against the burnt-sienna color of the court, the dark greens and browns of the pines of the glade slopes.

  I parked my car in front of the terrace wall, next to a new forest-green Mercedes. As I got out, a dark-haired little boy of five or six, wearing dungarees and a striped T-shirt, came running across the terrace and jumped up onto the moss-topped wall. He said "Hi!" exuberantly.

  "Hi, guy."

  "I've got a pet rabbit. Want to see him?"

  "Well, maybe a little later."

  "My name's Tommy Lomax. What's yours?"

  I told him.

  "My rabbit's name is Bugs," he said. He jumped down off the wall. "I'm feeding him carrots."

  "Good for you."

  He gave me a gap-toothed grin and ran back across the terrace again. I watched him out of sight, and then I turned, smiling a little, and followed a flagstone path through a facing rock-and-lady-fern garden, toward the tennis court.

  The couple had stopped playing now and had come over to stand by the entrance to the enclosure. The guy had his racket turned horizontally, and he was bouncing the fuzzy white ball up and down on it like one of those rubber-band-and-rubber-ball paddle sets you used to see the kids playing with. He was about thirty-five, I saw as I approached, lean and trim and athletic and tanned; he wore a neatly barbered mustache, of the same rust-brown color as his razor-cut hair, and he had a Kirk Douglas cleft in the middle of his chin and an expression of mild curiosity on the good-natured mouth above it. The woman stood relaxed, arms down at her sides. Pale-gold hair-lighter than Judith Paige's, pulled into a horsetail and tied with a white ribbon-accentuated features as tanned as the guy's: button nose, quiet blue eyes, the kind of soft, small mouth that would smile often. She was very slim, with narrow hips, long coltish legs, apple-shaped breasts. They made a nice couple, standing there like that: health and perpetual youth, clean bodies and clean minds.

  The woman said, "Hello," and smiled questioningly at me as I stepped up to the gate entrance.

  "Mr. and Mrs. Lomax?"

  "Yes," the guy said. "I don't believe we've had the pleasure?"

  "No, we haven't." I introduced myself, and waited-but neither of them seemed to recognize my name; it was possible that they had not heard about Paige's death or about the small part I had played in it. I went on, "I have your name from Russell Dancer."

  "Oh-really?" she said. There was no warmth, no feeling of any kind in her tone; apparently she had no fond memories about Russ Dancer or her days as a member of the laughter-and-liquor group. Maybe she thought guys like Dancer were beneath her now-or maybe I was just overreacting. "Are you a friend of Mr. Dancer's?"

  "In a way," I said. "The reason I'm here has to do with a mutual acquaintance of yours and his, several years ago. A man named Walter Paige."

  She jerked as if I had slapped her, and her color dissolved suddenly and completely under the tan. Lomax lost his polite smile and his eyes turned brittle and angry and his mouth pinched white at the corners. They stood staring at me, and it was abruptly very quiet in the small Disney valley; even the birds that had been singing soft medleys in the surrounding woods seemed breathlessly still. You could feel the sudden tension like a dark, chill wind.

  Lomax said in a thin, tight voice, "Who the hell are you? What do you want here?"

  "I'm a private detective. I'd like to-"

  "Oh God!" Robin Lomax said.

  She sounded stricken, and her husband put his arm around her and hated me too passionately with his eyes. "So that's the way it is," he said.

  "The way what is, Mr. Lomax?"

  "Get off my property."

  "Just like that?"

  "Just like that."

  "Why?"

  "Damn you, if you don't leave, I’ll call the police."

  "Maybe you'd better do that, Mr. Lomax," I said quietly. "I was at City Hall not long ago, but Chief Quartermain was out. He might have come back by now. You can tell him I'm here, if so, and you can tell him why I'm here. I think he'll be interested."

  Some of the volatile anger went out of his eyes. He looked at his wife for a long moment, and then the two of them looked at me again. "Why should Chief Quartermain be interested?" Lomax asked.

  "You don't know?"

  "No. Look, just why are you here?"

  "I want to ask you some questions about Walter Paige."

  "What's your involvement with Paige?"

  "I found his body, for one thing."

  "His… body?"

  "That's right."

  "He's dead?"

  "He was murdered last night."

  Deepening silence. They looked at each other again, but I could not read what passed between them-if anything passed between them. A muscle jumped on Lomax's left cheek, but there was nothing on his face or in his eyes that told me much. There was nothing in Robin Lomax's expression either as she stepped out of the half-circle of his arm, and the sighing breath she took might have meant anything at all.

  "Who… killed him?" she asked softly.

  "No one knows yet."

  "Where did it happen?"

  "In Cypress Bay. The Beachwood motel."

  Lomax said, "Why was he back in Cypress Bay?"

  "To meet a woman-and possibly for some other reason as well. He'd been coming here for the past five weekends."

  "What woman? Someone from this area?"

  "It would seem that way. She was with him shortly before he died."

  Lomax wet his lips. "And what time was that?"

  "Between five-thirty and quarter of six."

  "You think we know something about it, is that it?"

  "I didn't say that, Mr. Lomax."

  "Well, we don't know anything about it. Robin and I were right here all of yesterday. We played tennis from midafternoon until dusk."

  "Yes," she
said. "Yes, that's right."

  I studied their faces and I had the feeling that they were both lying, but it was Quartermain's place and not mine to break them down on it. I said, "What can you tell me about The Dead and the Dying?"

  I had dragged that one out of left field, but it did not get me anything. Lomax looked surprised, and his wife still had that pale, stricken, withdrawn look about her. He said, "The what?"

  "It's an old book of Russ Dancer's. Paige had a copy of it in his overnight bag. Do you know the book?"

  "Hardly. We don't read the kind of trash Dancer writes."

  Trash, I thought. A man's livelihood, a man's talent no matter how limited, a man's thoughts and feelings and impressions and guts. Trash. I said, "You didn't know that Paige had returned to Cypress Bay, I take it."

  "Of course not. How would we know?"

  "Mrs. Lomax?"

  "No," she said. "No."

  "He didn't try to contact you at any time?"

  "Why should he contact me?"

  "You didn't know him well originally?"

  "No. I never cared to know him well."

  "Why not?"

  "He was vain and… crude."

  "Who did know him well?"

  "I have no idea."

  "You were a regular member of the group, Mrs. Lomax."

  "The affairs of others are no concern of mine," she said. "I never gave a thought to Walter Paige then, and I haven't since."

  "Then why were you so upset when I first mentioned his name?"

  Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, and she clutched at her husband's arm and put her eyes imploringly on his face. Lomax said with tremulous anger, "Listen, we don't have to talk to you any longer. You're not the police."

  "The police will ask the same questions, Mr. Lomax."

  "I don't care about that. Now get off my property."