In the not unnatural belief that he was watching a getaway, De La O had kept repeating the car’s license number aloud while he fumbled in his pockets for a pen and something to write on, with the result that when he glanced up, alerted by motion outside a van parked at the side of the store toward the back, and saw what had frightened the black girl, it was almost with the effect of an after-image.
There was only a bare light bulb at the corner of the building, and not a very powerful one at that, but another girl, this one in a light-colored shirt and dark slacks, was being forced into the van by a dark-haired man with a knife. Yes, he was sure she was struggling. By the time De La O had assimilated this astonishing fact, the van, gray or tan, he couldn’t swear which, was speeding away, headed west. The light which should have illuminated its license plate was out.
He hadn’t seen the man’s face, but would describe his hair as medium length, his height as maybe five-ten or eleven. As to clothes, he could only say that they were darkish and could have been denims.
De La O, having already recounted his tale once before the arrival of the police, had now calmed down to a point where he was trying to buy a quart of acidophilus milk from the shocked and inattentive manager. The police took his name and address and agreement to sign a statement in the morning; then, accompanied by the manager, they tramped off to the back of the store to examine the exit. De La O took his milk and departed.
The name on the mailbox at the small house where Ellie Peale lived was Chenowyth. A Christmas tree glimmered in a picture window, a ribbon-tied wreath encircled the knocker. The carport, the deputies noted, was empty.
Mrs. Chenowyth, they discovered presently when she gave them a photograph of her daughter, had handed on her looks with an almost eerie faithfulness: Small, housecoated, she had the same dark eyes and pale slender face. She had been telephoned earlier by the manager, on the chance that De La O had seen another girl entirely and Ellie was at home wrapping Christmas presents, and had had time to assume a desperate calm. “I can’t break down, I know. Ellie makes fun of me when I get—”
Her voice broke and then steadied. “What do you want to know? What can I tell you to help?”
It would be a good idea, said one of the deputies tactfully, if they could talk to her and her husband at the same time, to double-check little things and save everybody time and trouble.
“Roy. Yes, well, but he’s at his company’s Christmas party, and I don’t know when he’ll be back. You can’t just walk out on parties like that, or they get—” Mrs. Chenowyth stopped, looking amazed at herself.
Then maybe she would call him there? They really thought she should.
They looked at each other when she had disappeared into another room, and shrugged. Most crimes of violence were family connected, and the man in question was a stepfather. The Christmas tree shone at them while they waited. A number of bulbs, larger than the others, had “Ellie” and a year iced on them in silver.
Mrs. Chenowyth came back. “One of the officers, a vice-president, had too much to drink, and Roy’s driven him home. Please, let’s get on with this, I can’t bear—”
“What kind of car does your husband drive, m^’am?”
“A Volkswagen van,” said Mrs. Chenowyth, still clearly too much in shock to consider the implications of this question. “Ellie had no boyfriends who would do a thing like this, I’m sure of that. She was dating a very nice boy in the summer, but he’s gone into the army, in fact he’s in Korea. Since then she hasn’t really—”
“Color?”
“White,” said Mrs. Chenowyth with some indignation, and then, told that they were referring to the van, “Brown. Tan, rather.” Her eyes snapped wide open. “My God. You’re actually sitting there and thinking—”
The front door opened and Roy Chenowyth came in, a monumental ash-blond man well over six feet and topping two hundred pounds, and to all intents and purposes that was that.
Santa Fe had responded with the name and address of the car owner whose license number De La O had so assiduously written down while missing almost everything else, and the deputies proceeded there.
It was a battered, thick-walled old adobe structure converted to apartments, built around a center courtyard with a statue of Saint Francis and a leafless mulberry tree now twinkling with strings of tiny green and white lights. The tenants were evidently a lively lot: At close to midnight music came from a number of directions, along with an occasional flurry of stamping that sounded like flamenco.
James Jepp, a short columnar man in rubber sandals and a karate robe which looked businesslike, ushered them into a huge firelit room obviously, from its pair of daybeds and kitchen fenced off by a counter with bar stools, the whole apartment except for a closed door which must indicate the bathroom. After the tidily matched furniture and blameless carpeting of the house they had just left, the decor here—bare polished wood floor, tables which were really sawn-off logs, a vivid, fraying wall hanging, candlesticks in frivolous places, and a single lumpy armchair—struck both deputies as Early Flea Market.
Jepp’s companion, Beryl Green—she produced an ID card instantly and in silence, as if it were required of her often—was piquant-featured under her enormous Afro. She was also hostile and defensive,- somewhere along the line she had learned to fear and distrust the police.
She said that she hadn’t gotten a very good look at the man in the Speedy-Q when she went in to buy cigarettes because he and the clerk were at the dimly lit back of the store, sort of wrestling with each other. “I thought they were just, you know, fooling around.” Then the girl saw her and screamed and the man turned his head.
“I got the hell out of there,” said Beryl Green succinctly, gaze daring either deputy to challenge her.
You go mixing in things like that, you wake up dead.”
She couldn’t say whether the man was Spanish or Anglo. She only knew that he had dark hair and that he wasn’t a kid; given a choice of ages she said maybe twenty-five. Pressed further, she said with a reminiscent shudder that he was funny-looking, and seemed to regret that at once, inspecting a thumbnail in adamant silence.
She didn’t want to be involved; she might as well have said it aloud. James Jepp, who had remained silent throughout, stirred and said in a surprisingly rich deep voice, “You told me he looked like he had a stocking mask on.”
She turned her stiff frothy head and gave him a stare of strong resentment. “Did I? I don’t remember.”
A stocking mask flattened and distorted the features, and she agreed reluctantly and at last that she supposed this was what she had meant. As to the man’s clothes, she could only suggest a Levi jacket or something like it. Would she be able to identify him? Furious look at Jepp—there was clearly trouble brewing in this alliance —she guessed she could try, and gave her telephone number at work in case it should be necessary to contact her there.
Belatedly, one of the deputies asked if she had seen a knife or other weapon. She said a firm no, but it wasn’t an entirely trustworthy one under the circumstances.
Could De La O have imagined the knife, painting it in simply because there was a struggle going on between the man and the girl before she was forced into the van? As against that, he had been a capable observer in the matter of Jepp’s license plate, and a responsible citizen, going into the empty store and using the telephone to call the police at once. And, outside, the girl had not repeated her scream. They would have to presume the knife.
A small and isolated business like the Speedy-D would not have a humming trade trade during Christmas week. With the prospect of supermarkets closed for the holiday, people tended to do a comprehensive shopping when they bought their glacially frozen turkeys, so that late errands would be mainly to stores which carried tree lights, bulbs, last-minute stocking presents.
Still, what kind of man would go boldly into a public place, without even an elementary disguise—Beryl Green was sure there had been no actual mask—and abduct a clerk
? An estranged husband or a furiously jealous boyfriend—but, according to the evidence so far, neither existed in the case of Ellie Peale.
The effect suggested by a stocking mask, features blurred and slipped, was unpleasant from the outset, and the night was very cold. Where, among the luminarias and windows with silver-hung blue and red and green and gold, the illuminated rooftop sleighs, and the festive gatherings, was a small slender girl in only shirt and slacks? Where, having screamed and struggled, was Ellie Peale?
Teresa Sweet, returning home after delivering presents to her parents and sister and nieces and nephews, heard the telephone ringing as she let herself in, and then her husband’s tense, “Christ!” and, “Where are you?” and, “Stay there,” and something else, quietly into the mouthpiece, which she didn’t catch.
She had brought back reciprocal presents, which she piled in a chair. “Who was that?”
“A friend of mine,” said Sweet, brief and brilliant-eyed and quite safe in this economy; although Teresa was well aware of the source of their extra income, she did not care to know details. He was moving as he spoke, going into the kitchen for his jacket, coming back moments later to write on the message pad beside the telephone.
“Don’t you get mixed up in it,” said Teresa automatically, but Sweet only glanced at his watch. “Call that number in . . . an hour and tell Mrs. Balsam that her mare is loose.”
Balsam was an utterly strange name to Teresa. She began mystifiedly, “How do you know—?”
“An hour,” said Sweet tersely, and was out the door. An exit from the next house coincided with his, carrying called goodnights and a fragment of choir song: “. . . all is calm, all is bright . . .”
Chapter 5
Amanda, with a vivid memory of the hospital room and the intravenous solution, felt callous as she took out the piece of round steak, the mushrooms, and the ripe tomato probably intended for her aunt’s dinner tonight. But she was starving and deprived of her own kitchen, and even the best of refrigerators would not keep food indefinitely.
Here, a whole thicket of worries would spring up if she let it. But Mrs. Balsam was in good hands, the doctor had implied that only time would tell, and in the meantime the Lopezes’ long-anticipated Christmas reunion had been retrieved. Amanda presently carried her plate into the living room and switched on the television set, low, so as not to wake the child in the guest room.
She had missed the first part of the local news, something to do with a downtown fire; there was a play of hoses and then the announcer appeared, promising to be right back. She always watched this man with great fascination because of his moustache, two thick, black downcurving wings which seemed to be attached directly to his prominent nose, creating for both a haunting impression of falsity. Occasionally, as if he had delved deeper into a disguise kit, he wore round steel-rimmed glasses.
When he returned, it was with the now-familiar inset of a young girl’s face, turned and somewhat surprised, accompanied by a stark question mark. There was still no trace of Ellie Peale or the man described by two witnesses, and her parents had received no ransom demand or other communication. Anyone who had seen this girl, or the man who now appeared as sketched by a police artist, was to call the number flashed on the screen.
How casual, thought Amanda when the announcer had removed his preposterous nose and moustache into another period of invisibility: the takeover, and very possibly the taking, of someone’s life on what had all the earmarks of a deadly impulse. Vans had grown in popularity over the last few years and there must be thousands of them in the city, with light colors predominating in a hot dry climate. The one which had been used to transport Ellie Peale could be standing quite openly in a driveway or parking lot.
A slice of bread danced its way across the screen, winking roguishly and piping that it was ready for anything—and, from outside and with no preliminaries, there was a deep commanding bark.
Amanda rushed to the front door, snapping on the outside light, and opened it. The Afghan stood there in the showering gold, silky hair blowing in the wind, ropy curlicued tail going still in puzzlement because this was not her owner.
“Come, Apple. Good girl,” called Amanda wooingly, and Apple ducked her head in pleased recognition and took a prancing step forward and was cut off by the sudden emergence from nowhere of a tall, lean Doberman pinscher so black that it might have been a cutout of the surrounding dark. The two communed briefly and then the Doberman bounded out of the light and was gone, with Apple in his wake.
“Apple? Apple! Oh, you horrible animal,” Amanda cried after her, and slammed the door.
Still, the dog had almost obeyed, and knew now that there was someone here to feed her. Even if she were safely inside, Amanda had decided at some point not to go home tonight. The prospect of waking and dressing Rosie, and then settling her all over again at the end of a fifteen-minute drive, would not have been appealing even in midsummer; as it was, the cold was daunting. Moreover, it would be far simpler to set out from here in the morning with a suitcase already packed to bring to the hospital.
“. . . surrendered at shortly after noon today at the home of a brother. The other escapee is still at large,” said the announcer. Amanda noticed for the first time that he was wearing a bow tie which had a clip-on air. “And now, a look at the weather. . . .”
She left the set on for the forecast. She looked in on Rosie, peacefully asleep with her knotted rag on the pillow beside her, and returned to wash her dinner utensils, not really listening yet because there was always a good three minutes of auctioneerlike babble about other places, including some handy information about the Dakotas and northern Michigan, preceding any word about the local weather. When she had turned off the faucet she stood still at the sink, blotting out the voice from the living room and trying to assess some subtle change in the house, or the night.
The wind had dropped with the abruptness of a switched-off electric fan; everything, including the cottonwood tree, was stilled. Did that mean a possibility of snow? Yes, said the announcer promptly; beginning after midnight, with an expected accumulation of two to four inches.
In a perverse way Amanda missed the wind, because now the silence of the house in which she was in charge of a fragile two-year-old had the quality of a blackboard which might be written upon at any moment. She thought uneasily that if she strained hard enough she might be able to hear leaves or buds in the plant room stirring in the moist dark, communicating with each other. In spite of the wholesome atmosphere which surrounded growing things, it was not a pleasant idea.
Distantly, the palomino whinnied, as if aware, too, of the altered fabric of the night. Amanda switched off the television set, found herself a novel, gave the telephone a resentful glance as she passed it. Why hadn’t Justin, if in fact it had been Justin calling the Lopezes in search of her, tried her here, attempting, in this season of goodwill, to leave a message with her aunt?
The telephone remained silent for the time being. When it did ring, it wasn’t Justin.
“You know, I think we might drift out of here and have some reviving Irish coffee at my place,” said Lucy Pettit.
Justin was in hearty agreement with the first half of this proposal. There were two topics of discussion at the party: how Edie was taking the divorce and whether Max had really resigned from his highly paid public relations job or, as a majority seemed to think and hope, been fired. Justin was the only guest present not up on these matters—even Lucy had said to him disbelievingly, “Oh, but you must know Max. Everybody does” —and whatever he had been drinking (punch, he was beginning to suspect) had given him a severe headache.
Although the headache might have had its real birth in the crash with which the poetry-reciting head-stander had suddenly overbalanced without warning. His nimble-looking sneakers had the impact of ski boots, and the leg of a coffee table had flown free, striking the shin of an elderly woman in unguarded lavender chiffon. The magicians, true to their calling, had surveyed
the shards of their cloisonne cigarette box and said with a kind of anguished imperturbality that it didn’t matter at all, just so long as he hadn’t hurt himself.
Now, headache notwithstanding, Justin wanted to have another try at reaching Amanda while there was a telephone readily available. Mrs. Balsam must be home by now. He said to Lucy, “Will you cast an eye around for our hosts? I’ll be right back,” and began to thread his way through clusters of people to the room with the photographs and the caged doves.
Here he met with an obstacle. A blond woman as large and slippery as a walrus was seated at the desk, one hand firmly and protectively on the receiver. “I hope you don’t want to use this,” she said, “because I’m waiting for the New York operator to call back.”
“No, that’s all right,” said Justin, and gave the doves a hypocritical greeting and withdrew. Wait? No. Longdistance circuits tended to busy around holidays, the blond woman looked implacable, the need for solid food was becoming imperative. Feeling manipulated by an unfriendly fate, he went in search of Lucy, the magicians, and, as soon as possible, the door.
“Mrs. Balsam?”
It was a woman’s voice this time. Amanda, who had had time to reflect that Mrs. Balsam’s situation was not a fleeting one and there might well be arrangements which she would want cancelled, said, “My aunt is in the hospital, I’m afraid. May I take a message for her?”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” It was detached, perfunctory. “This is a neighbor, and I’m calling to say that her horse is out.”
“Again?” Still, for Amanda, it had no significant echo. Horses got loose with frequency; on a number of occasions she had tethered one to a tree on her front lawn so that the cruising owners could locate it easily. “Thank you for letting me know. I wish I could go after her, but I can’t right now.”
There was a severe silence; she had sinned against a code. Horse owners got up at all hours in all weathers to retrieve animals who might cause property damage, or get a leg caught in a barbed-wire fence or fall and become wedged in a dry irrigation ditch.
The Menace Within Page 4
