Sleeping Beauty

by Ross Macdonald

  “Far from it. I hadn’t seen him in years. I didn’t know who he was until he told me. He’s much better-looking than he was in his teens. But I’m afraid he’s still the same old Harold.”

  “Exactly what do you mean?”

  “He pretended to have come on a friendly visit, to get my forgiveness for the past or something of the sort. He’d already been in touch with Laurel and she had forgiven him, or so he said. But I’m sure he didn’t come to see me for any friendly reason.” She paused, and her face turned quite bleak as she remembered the conversation. “I got the impression that he was trying to ferret out the family secrets.”

  “What secrets?”

  “You know one of them,” she said without meeting my eyes. “I shouldn’t have told you what I did last night, about Ben and that young woman who came to our house with the boy. I’ll ask you not to repeat it.”

  “I don’t intend to. Was that one of the things that Harold was interested in?”

  “Yes. But he had it wrong. Harold Sherry is one of those people who always get things wrong. He seemed to think that it was Jack who had been the woman’s lover.” She smiled very dimly. “I wish it had been.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t?”

  “Absolutely certain. Jack was still in the East attending Navy Communications School when the woman came to Bel-Air and talked to me. And it was definitely Ben she was talking about.”

  “Did Harold tell you where he got the information? Or misinformation?”

  “He’d been in touch with Laurel, as I said. But it’s hard to imagine Laurel talking about her father in those terms. It’s possible that Harold heard the story from someone, and got it distorted in his own mind. He really hates my brother Jack, you know.”

  “That’s obvious. I’m more interested in what he had to say about Laurel.”

  She sat in silence for a while. Outside the house I could hear the dull surf measuring off its long-drawn-out intervals. “He said that they were friends again. He’d had dinner at her house, and he liked her husband.”

  “Was he sincere, do you think?”

  “It’s hard to say. A man like Harold is never completely honest. He doesn’t like himself enough really to like anyone else. And he’s always got more than one thing going on in his head.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “He didn’t talk about them to me—at least not openly. But I can imagine the kind of things they are. Blackmail and fraud and what have you? He’s a very mixed-up person.”

  “I know that. What I’m trying to find out is this. Did Harold kidnap Laurel this time around, as he claims? Or did the two of them take off together and make the money demand on her parents?”

  “I simply can’t believe that Laurel would do that.”

  “She did once.”

  “When she was a fifteen-year-old. She’s changed since then. Laurel’s really quite a well-intentioned person. She tries very hard. And she’s always been more of a victim than a victimizer.”

  We were back again at the riddle of Laurel. “Perhaps,” I said, “it doesn’t make so much difference whether she’s consciously one or the other. Harold is the one that makes the difference. He may have a kind of hex on her, going back to adolescence. I’ve seen it happen to other girls, especially ones that don’t get along with their parents.”

  “I know what you mean.” She added thoughtfully, “Jack can be pretty hard to take.”

  “Tell me this. When Harold Sherry came to your house, did he say anything about where he was staying? Or a phone number where you could get in touch with him?”

  She considered the question. “No, he didn’t.”

  “What kind of a car was he driving?”

  “An old green compact.”

  There was a telephone in the room, and with Elizabeth’s permission I used it to make a call to Dr. Lawrence Brokaw in Long Beach. The woman who answered said that Dr. Brokaw was with a patient. If I’d leave my name and number, the Doctor would call me back.

  Sylvia Lennox had come into the room as I was talking. She peered at my face as if she was afraid of what she might find there.

  “What happened to my son, Mr. Archer?”

  “He was wounded by a man named Harold Sherry.” I was sure of it now.

  “But I sent you with him to look after him.”

  “He needed more looking after than I could give him. He wanted to take care of the situation all by himself.”

  She didn’t seem to hear me. Her mind was moving like a flightless bird among her troubles. “And now Tony Lashman has deserted me. What do you think has happened to Tony?”

  “I don’t know. When did you see him last?”

  “This morning, when I put him in his place.”

  She moved between her daughter and me to the window. Her lean wrinkled face looked softer and more shapeless, as though the blows that had fallen on her had been physical. She said, in a thin and mournful voice which was shaken by gusts of fury:

  “All my life I’ve tried to do my duty, and this is what it’s come to. My only son has been shot. My beach is covered with filth. My granddaughter is missing. And Tony left without even saying goodbye.” She turned from the window, her eyes wide, full of the dark scene. “I blame the men for this.”

  “What men, Mother?”

  “All the men. I’ve sat back all my life and watched them operate. If they want a woman, they take her. William did that. Ben put an oil well where no oil well belongs. Look at what he’s done to my beach. And Jack has been shot. I want to go and see him.”

  Elizabeth put an arm around her mother’s shoulders. “Stay here with me. You wouldn’t like it at the hospital, Mother.”

  “I don’t like it here, either.” She turned to me and spoke in a more reasonable tone: “Did you say Harold Sherry shot Jack?”

  “Yes.”

  The old woman nodded grimly. “I warned Jack to take it easy on that boy. I told him when a girl runs off with a boy, you can’t always blame the boy one hundred percent. But Jack was determined to destroy him. He wouldn’t let the court give him juvenile treatment, and William used his influence to see that he was put in jail. And now the boy is striking back at us.” She shuddered, and wagged her head. “I want no part of it. I’m opting out. Let the men handle it. It’s all their doing.”

  She turned and left the room, moving uncertainly. She had stumbled under the pressures of the day, and age had overtaken her.

  “Mother’s always felt like that, really,” Elizabeth said. “She’s never said it quite so explicitly, but it’s been her philosophy of marriage all along. Let the men go ahead and take the responsibility and make the mistakes. And then the women can sit back and feel superior. It’s not a very good kind of innocence.”

  “Any innocence may be better than none.”

  “I used to think so. But I’m beginning to wonder. You’ve got to use your innocence for something. You can’t just keep it in a hope chest.”

  Her voice was low and very personal. She was talking about herself as well as her mother, and she sounded young for her age.

  “What’s bothering you, Beth?”

  Her head came up in response to her name. “It isn’t what you think it is, exactly. The fact is I’ve been giving my husband a very hard time generally—ever since Harold Sherry came and talked to me. I bitterly resented that young woman, whoever she was, and I took it out on Ben every way I could. And I wonder, if I’d given him some peace—a chance to think—if he might not have made the mistake that blew the well.”

  “You’re reversing your mother’s philosophy,” I said, “and really reaching for a piece of guilt.”

  “Because it belongs to me. To the extent that Ben was responsible, then I’m responsible, too.”

  “How do you know he was responsible?”

  “He told me. He allowed the well to be drilled without adequate casing, and even after there were signs of trouble he ordered the drilling to go ahead.”

  “That
was his mistake in judgment. You can’t make yourself responsible for it.”

  “I am, though, partly.”

  “You mean you want to be.”

  “I am, and I want to be.”

  The phone rang beside me. I picked it up:

  “Archer speaking.”

  “This is Dr. Brokaw. Did you call me?” The voice was youngish, and a little breathy.

  “Yes. It’s about a patient of yours.”

  “What patient?”

  “Harold Sherry. He’s in trouble.”

  There was a flat silence. “I’m very sorry to hear that. Is it serious?”

  “Just about as serious as it can get. He’s wanted for kidnapping. He was wounded by gunfire and dropped out of sight. I thought he might go to you.”

  “He hasn’t. Are you a policeman?”

  “A private detective. Do you have an address for Harold?”

  “I may have.”

  “Will you look it up for me?”

  There was another silence, divided into equal segments by his breathing. “I’m afraid I can’t give out patients’ addresses over the phone.”

  “Not even when a young woman’s been kidnapped?”

  “You say you’re a private detective. If a woman’s been kidnapped, why haven’t I heard from the police?”

  “I’m the one who has your name. I got it from Harold’s mother. If you want me to give it to the police—”

  “No. Look. Where are you now?”

  “Pacific Point.”

  “Can you come here to my office? I’ll be finished with my other—with my patients by half past five. Then we can talk about Harold.” He hung up on me.

  Elizabeth moved across the room and stood above me with her fists clenched. “Won’t he help?”

  “I think he will.”

  “If he’s a local doctor, my family can bring pressure to bear on him.”

  “He isn’t, though. He practices in Long Beach. And I’ll probably get further with him by myself.”

  Her general anger focused on me again. “You’re very self-confident, aren’t you? Overconfident, perhaps, considering your failure to protect my brother.”

  “The only way I could have protected your brother was by putting him in irons. He didn’t want me to go to Sandhill Lake with him. It looked as if he wanted to have a shoot-out. Anyway, he got one. And I’m not taking any responsibility for it. Your brother pointed a gun at me and ordered me out of the car.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m not making this up.”

  “But why would he do a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know, but I plan to ask him. I’m going over to the hospital now.”

  Elizabeth didn’t put up any further argument. Letting me out into the courtyard where I had left my car, she tried the knob of an outside door between the back door and the garages. The door failed to open. I said:

  “What’s in there?”

  “It’s Tony Lashman’s room. I keep hoping he’ll turn up. I’m worried about him.”

  “Are you sure he isn’t in his room?”

  “I’m not sure about anything.”

  The lock on the door was of the Yale type, easy to open with a plastic credit card. The room on the other side of it was large but rather makeshift, incompletely walled with knotty pine. The single bed was unoccupied and unmade. There was no one under the bed and no one in the closet. The floor of the closet was piled with dirty clothes intermingled with sections of a black rubber wet suit.

  A windup alarm clock sat on the table beside the bed. It wasn’t ticking. It had stopped a few minutes short of midnight, or of noon.

  chapter 26

  I drove across town to the hospital and learned, after some palaver at the front desk, that Jack Lennox was in a private room on the top floor. In the hallway outside his door, I found Sergeant Shantz sitting on a metal folding chair which his flesh overlapped.

  “Where have you been?” he said.

  “I returned Jack Lennox’s car, and got involved with the family. How is he doing?”

  “Okay. His wife is in there with him.” Shantz rose heavily, pushing his chair back against the wall. “If you’re going to be here for the next few minutes, I should make a phone call. The Sheriff asked me to let him know when Lennox was able to talk.”

  The Sergeant moved down the hall toward the elevators, and I went into the room. It was dim, with the curtains partly closed over the windows.

  Marian Lennox was standing in a protective attitude by the head of the bed. She looked rather resentful of my intrusion, as if she valued this time alone with her husband. His face was sallow and pinched under a turban of bandage.

  “Archer?”

  He tried to sit up. His wife pushed him gently back against the pillows. “Please, Jack. You’re not supposed to get up.”

  “Stop making like a nurse, for God’s sake.” He moved rebelliously under her hands. “You’re not good at it.”

  “But the doctor says you need complete rest and quiet. After all, you’ve been shot.”

  “Who shot me?”

  “Don’t you remember?” I said.

  “No. The last thing I remember is opening the door of the tower—the lookout tower at Sandhill Lake.” He groaned.

  “Why did you go there?”

  “It’s where I was supposed to leave the money.” His voice was losing its force.

  “Who asked you to leave it there?”

  “Nobody I knew.” He looked at his wife. “Do you know who it was?”

  She shook her head. “I only talked to him once, when he made the first call. I didn’t recognize his voice.”

  “It hardly matters, anyway,” I said. “It was probably the same man who shot you. And I know who that was.”

  They waited in silence for me to tell them. When I gave them Harold Sherry’s name, Jack Lennox seemed blankly puzzled by it, as if the shot that had wounded him had driven all memory of Harold from his brain. But Marian’s face changed. She looked as if she could feel the recurrence in her body of an old illness.

  “Don’t you remember Harold?” I said to him. “You shot him in the leg.”

  “I shot him? You’ve got to be kidding.” He sat up, balancing his head like a heavy weight. “Does that mean you’ve captured him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What about the money? The hundred thousand?”

  “He got away with it, at least for the present. I’m going to have to tell the police about the money.”

  Lennox seemed uninterested. He didn’t ask me about his daughter Laurel. I wondered if he had perhaps forgotten her, too. He let out a long sigh and collapsed against his pillows.

  Marian interposed herself between us. “I’m afraid Jack is exhausted. Couldn’t we talk outside?”

  “Of course.”

  She pulled up her husband’s covers, pressed his shoulder, and followed me out. She seemed to be under better control than she had been earlier. Her face was strained but focused. It occurred to me that she was one of that disappearing species of women who live in their husbands’ shadow and can only step out of it when the husbands are out of action. She said, when the door had closed behind her:

  “You haven’t said anything about Laurel, Mr. Archer.”

  “There hasn’t been any word on Laurel.”

  “You don’t know where she is, then?”

  “No. The way to her is through Harold Sherry.”

  “He got his money. What more does he want?”

  “I don’t know. He may want some assurance of personal safety. The money’s no good to him if he doesn’t live to spend it.”

  Her gaze moved past me, pale and desolate, looking down the long arctic slope of the future. “Jack shouldn’t have shot him.”

  “No. It upset the bargain. But Harold may have fired at your husband first.”

  A puzzled cleft appeared between her eyes. “Why would he do that?”

  “I’ll have to ask him.”

&nbs
p; “Do you have any hope of finding Harold Sherry?”

  “Some. I know the name of a doctor he’s gone to in the past. With his leg wound, he’ll be wanting to get to a doctor.”

  “Would I know the doctor’s name?”

  “I doubt it. He practices in Long Beach.”

  “We know quite a few people in Long Beach.”

  “But I don’t think I better mention his name to anyone, even you. He’s my only decent lead so far. The chances of getting Laurel back aren’t quite as good as they were this morning. I guess you know that, Mrs. Lennox.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Everything is so confused. It was a sorry day for Laurel—for all of us—when she met Harold Sherry. This isn’t the first time he’s abducted her, did you know that? He ran away with her when she was just fifteen.”

  “I’ve heard about it. But I don’t understand his motive.”

  “He was always envious of our family.”

  “Was he attracted to Laurel?”

  “Perhaps he was, in a sick way. I remember once he came to the house—this was before he took her to Las Vegas. He couldn’t keep his hands off her. She had to ask her father to intervene.”

  “Laurel asked your husband to intervene?”

  “That’s correct. Jack threw him out of the house.” Her voice was cold and featureless, like a medium reciting words whose meaning was not clear to her. “My husband has always had a violent temper.”

  “I’ve seen a few indications of that. Tell me, Mrs. Lennox, has his temper ever been turned against Laurel?”

  “Of course it has. Many times.”

  “Recently?”

  “Yes. They haven’t been getting along at all well lately. Jack hasn’t been too happy about her marriage. In fact he’s done his best to break it up.” She overheard herself and gave me a worried look. “What do you suspect Laurel of doing?”

  “There is a possibility that she threw in with Harold of her own free will.”

  “When they went to Vegas?”

  “Then,” I said, “and now. Do you think Laurel was genuinely kidnapped last night?”

  “I don’t know what to think.” She looked at me suspiciously. “What are you getting at, exactly?”

  “The possibility of collusion. There’s some evidence that Laurel and Harold have been seeing each other.”