Lost Lady

by Octavus Roy Cohen

  He didn’t duck that one. He said, “About Dean Halliday? Sure, I know. I think her suspicions are absurd.”

  “Why?”

  “They aren’t based on anything except that she doesn’t like Dean. Let’s be honest. He’s not the kind of man I’d like my son to grow up to be if I had a son. I check in with her verdict that he’s studying hard to be a complete louse. But that doesn’t make him a murderer any more than Dorothy’s unusual absence from home justifies Iris in thinking she’s been killed.”

  “Suppose she had been,” I persisted. “How would Dean shape up then?”

  “I’d have to know more. Somehow I’d have a hard time classifying Halliday as a murderer. You’d have to catch him standing over a dead body to make him add up that way to me.”

  Iris said, somewhat impatiently, “You’re doing the same thing you’re blaming me for doing, Robert. You’re claiming Dean is innocent of anything that might have happened, simply on a hunch.”

  “My hunch makes more sense than yours, honey.” He was patient as hell. “Mine checks in with the man’s character. I think Dean Halliday would sponge to the last dollar. But I can’t regard him as a violent villain.”

  “You haven’t lived with him.”

  “I’ve been close enough.” Bayless lighted a cigarette and blew a couple of neat, precise smoke rings. He said, “Look, Iris. I’m going to say something frankly, right in front of Danny O’Leary. I’m saying it because O’Leary must have been thinking it himself. For some reason you’re trying to build up a case against Dean Halliday. Just Dean, nobody else. You’re virtually accusing him of something that hasn’t happened. It doesn’t sound right, honey. It comes out as though you had a special reason.”

  I wanted to applaud. This Bayless had more on the ball than I credited him with. I had wondered about that, too. Aside from dislike, which was understandable, why had Iris been squeezing this idea so hard? Why had she persisted in thinking murder? Did she know something no one else knew? Was she holding out? Did she have personal reasons?

  I waited for Iris to explode, but she didn’t. She said, almost humbly, “I suppose I had that coming, Robert. You’re always so damned reasonable and logical. Maybe if I’d read more about psychology and things like that I could explain myself—a fear complex or whatever you’d call it, connected with living in an atmosphere of tension in this house. Add to that a—well, I guess you’d call it a hope or something that if anything did happen, Dean would be in the middle.” She got up and smiled. To me she said, “You see why I wanted you to talk to Robert. I’m always going to extremes. He’s always right down the middle. At least credit me with wanting you to hear both versions.”

  I said I saw her point, and appreciated it. I also reminded her that I wasn’t on duty until four o’clock. About that time, Robert said if she was finished with him, he’d be trotting back to the office. As we told each other good-by, he winked at me over Iris’ head as much as to remind me that she was just a well-meaning, good-looking, somewhat flighty kid, and that I wasn’t to pay too much attention to her screwy ideas.

  They made a nice picture walking off toward the front of the house, where he’d left his car. From where I was sitting Iris looked just as cute as when she was facing me; just as cute and slightly more naked. They were gone for perhaps two minutes, and then she returned to the pool. She had taken off her robe some time ago, the sun being good and hot, and she seemed as totally unaware of her lack of clothes as an artist’s model would have been. But I’m no artist.

  I said, “Nice joe, that Bayless. When are you going to marry him?”

  My question surprised her. She said, “You sound like my sister.” She hesitated before going on. “I doubt whether I’ll ever marry him.”

  “I thought you were engaged.”

  “Halfway. I string along to make Dorothy happy, and to please him. I can’t figure myself following through, though. When he kisses me I simply don’t ignite.”

  “Do you usually?”

  She smiled impishly. “You’d be surprised. I’ve always believed my mother must have been frightened by a firecracker.”

  The idea was interesting. You never know about a girl until you’ve tried. There are guys who think they’re all alike that way. Me, I think different. I hadn’t had too much experience, but I’d been around enough to know what she was talking about.

  We sat in our beach chairs and dried out. We took a second, quick plunge into the pool. We climbed out, stretched side by side on sun mats, and started drying out again.

  The mats were close together, and so were we. We were facing each other, I on my left side, she on her right. It was cozy and intimate, like a couple in bed. And there was something in her eyes, in the parted softness of her lips, that seemed to make my idea valid.

  I let my glance stray. It was a pleasant and rewarding process and she didn’t seem to mind, although her eyes held a mocking light as though she were aware of where I was looking and what I must be thinking.

  I said to myself, Just a kid. But I knew I was lying like hell. She wasn’t just a kid. She was all woman, from the lips to the throat to the soft curve of firm young breasts, which seemed more exposed than if she hadn’t been wearing the halter.

  From the shoulder, her body curved down to a slender waistline, then upward—beautifully—to a hip that was exaggerated by the way she was lying. I saw a lot of maturity and a lot of invitation. Being human, I commenced to hope that the invitation might be meant for me. After all, I wasn’t on duty, and there’s no restriction in the manual against personal ambition.

  Her eyes were deep with shadow and rich with promise. We moved imperceptibly closer to each other and suddenly my lips felt dry and hot. I was as keenly aware of her as though a high-voltage current had swept from her body to mine. Her meager excuse for a bathing suit wasn’t even an excuse any more. I was suffused by a feeling of languor and of alertness, of desire and of timidity. I was afraid to make a pass and afraid not to.

  It was exciting and bewildering. I didn’t know whether what I was contemplating would be all right or all wrong. But I did know this: That this was not a problem to be settled on the intellectual level. There was too much woman lying too close to me, too many feminine curves, too much languor, too much promise in the sultry, half-closed eyes, too much richness in the young breasts.

  Tentatively, I moved my right hand. It touched her hip and slid upward. I felt her body quiver. For an instant we lay that way, on the threshold of a universal experience that is somehow never universal but always individual.

  Suddenly she jumped to her feet. She looked down at me and tried to laugh, but it didn’t quite come off. She started to crack wise, but that didn’t come through, either. She turned and walked toward the playhouse, and I scrambled to my feet and followed, feeling like a mountain climber who has been snatched back from an ugly fall. Only this tumble wouldn’t have been ugly. It would have been—and I knew it—incredibly beautiful and satisfying.

  We were inside the playhouse then. No more sunshine, no more of the dangerous intimacy that had existed a few moments previously. We were alone with a pingpong table, a dart board, a couple of card tables, a cute little bar—and ourselves.

  She turned abruptly and faced me. Her eyes were hot and her lips parted. Suddenly, and without speaking, she put her arms about my neck and her lips found mine.

  For just a fraction of an instant, surprise held me motionless. Then I got slugged by a carload of biology. I forgot I was a cop, forgot that this was a girl from another league, forgot everything except that I was a man and she was a woman.

  It was a long, dizzying, devastating kiss; a kiss that made time stand still and caused the world to rock. Her lithe young body fitted tight against mine, her bare flesh was hot under my palms. Eternity swept by and there was nothing between us but a consuming, unreasoning urgency.

  She pulled away and we stood staring, each knowing what the other was thinking, each knowing what the other wanted.


  “That’s enough,” she said, not quite steadily, “for now.”

  But it wasn’t enough. I felt that it couldn’t ever be enough. I closed in on her, put my arms around her again, quested for her lips. She turned her head away and said in an oddly beseeching, almost helpless voice, “Danny … please.”

  I let go. I watched her disappear through a door and I stood there feeling foolish and inadequate, and breathing like a marathon runner.

  I felt weak and dragged out and alive and vital and depressed and eager. I had a feeling that this should be classified under the heading of unfinished business, and I didn’t want it to be unfinished business. But I was alone now, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  My head was still whirling, my heart still pounding, and my imagination running riot, when I finished dressing and joined her by the pool. She had changed her wisp of a bathing suit for a demure little dress. Her eyes were no longer smoldering; instead, they held a teasing light.

  She said, casually and with a certain grotesque formality, “Can we get together again soon?”

  I said the sooner, the better, but I warned her that if she ever pulled a stunt like that again she’d better be prepared for a fate worse than death.

  “I will be,” she promised. “Except that it isn’t worse than death.”

  “You mean … ?”

  “Look,” she said, half seriously, half mockingly. “I’m a lady. When there’s any seducing to be done, that’s strictly the gentleman’s job.”

  Even on the way to the station, I didn’t know whether she had been taking me for a ride. I’d never met her type before. I didn’t know where the kidding ended and the serious part started.

  I got to the Detective Bureau at five minutes to four, and the boys started asking me about my swimming party. They wanted to know how I got along with the butlers and footmen and whether I saluted properly; they asked whether Iris looked as nifty in a bathing suit as they believed she would. They did a lot of rough, good-natured kidding and I played dumb, which wasn’t difficult for me, ever.

  Lieutenant Lane wanted to know whether I’d got anything out of the deal, and I confessed I hadn’t. I reviewed the portions of the session that were of interest in a police way. I told them about Halliday and Robert Bayless and the girl. I said I thought Halliday and Iris were screwballs. I said I wouldn’t believe anything Iris said about her brother-in-law because they hated each other with an intensity you could cut with a knife.

  Things were going along smoothly, easily, and normally when the first telephone call came. Bert Lane took the call and reached for the log.

  “D.B. at the Nite-Lite Motel,” he said, as he made his notation. “Sixty-five is on it.”

  D.B. means Dead Body. The Nite-Lite was a new, nifty motel just off Sunset Boulevard in our division. Sixty-five was the number of the radio car answering the call.

  A few seconds later there was another call, this time from headquarters: a repetition of the first. Lane turned around and said maybe Carl and I had better get on it. We picked the keys to a patrol car off the hook and started out. But before we got to the head of the steps the telephone rang again, and I halted Carl, figuring maybe this had something to do with our mission.

  I was right. I heard Lane’s voice, sharp, incisive, and with that undertone of excitement which a good cop gets when something big is on the fire.

  I heard him say he had two men on the way, and that he’d be along, too. He asked whether Homicide had been notified. Then he came pelting out of the office and started down the steps with us.

  “That was Sixty-five on the phone,” he told us. “They’re at the Nite-Lite. It’s murder. The victim is Mrs. Dorothy Halliday. She’s deader’n hell.”

  Chapter Six

  The Nite-Lite is a neat spot. It’s a half block north of the Boulevard, and word must have got around, because in addition to the two radio cars already there, a bunch of citizens had gathered.

  Two of the uniformed boys were out front, waiting for us. They said the others were inside, and they were keeping the crowd away. While we were standing there three press cars came screaming up, loaded with reporters, and photographers. Bert Lane, as the senior detective then on the job, took over and told them to keep out until he’d had a chance to look things over or until Homicide took the reins away from him.

  The boys from downtown were on the way, but even with red light and siren it was a long journey from City Hall. Lane started firing questions at the radio-car boys, moving out of earshot of the press. I listened.

  “Murder?” he asked.

  “That’s for sure,” answered one of the uniform men. He was young and excited and trying not to show he was excited. “Shot.”

  “You’re sure it was Dorothy Halliday?”

  “Yep. At least, that’s what the driver’s license said.”

  “Who found her?”

  “The wife of the motel manager. Rented the place night before last. She got paid two days in advance, and didn’t think anything of it. Went in a little while ago, using her pass key. Idea of cleaning up. She saw the body and called downtown.”

  Just about that time Homicide arrived. Two men I knew: Lieutenant Marty Walsh, slender, wiry, and efficient as hell, and Officer Thalman, who was rangy and keen-eyed and quiet, but had a reputation as a good man to have with you when the going got tough.

  We said hello to each other and compared notes. That is, the two lieutenants compared notes while Carl and Thalman and I stood around trying to look important.

  Bert Lane and Marty Walsh had worked together before. Each had a wholesome respect for the other, and they spent their first few moments observing police protocol. Finally Lane laughed and said, “Hell, Marty, let’s quit kidding. You’re Homicide, so it’s your baby. We’re just standing by to help.”

  With that they started inside. They told me to come along. They suggested that Thalman and Carl Lindstrom nose around outside the room to see what they could learn.

  While they were talking I’d had a chance to do a bit of thinking, and the more I thought, the less I knew.

  Something was wrong somewhere, aside from the fact that a murder had been committed. And the wrongest thing was Mrs. Dorothy Halliday being in a motel.

  Let me explain about that. Around Los Angeles there are a million motels, more or less. They’re not as cheap as they used to be, and most of them are pretty good. The rooms of the nice ones—and I’d say the Nite-Lite belonged in that classification—are well furnished, comfortable, and in almost all ways better than the average medium-priced hotel. For the casual traveler or tourist, a motel was a better bet than a hotel: no bellboys to tip, no red tape, and no garage fees for your car.

  The Nite-Lite was even better than that. There were four rows of cottages and between each two cottages was a garage. You could drive into the garage, close the garage door, and step from the car into the room you had rented. Of course, the first step was always to stop by the office and register. If there were two of you, the register always said you were man and wife, and there were always a hell of a lot of Mr. and Mrs. John Smiths on tap. The light in the office is usually dim, to help you to feel anonymous, and you get the impression that even the manager hasn’t noticed you.

  Under the law, the person in charge is then supposed to note the license number of your car and to enter that notation alongside the names and the room assignment. The collecting of dough in advance is standard procedure, since many motel clients have no baggage at all.

  There are three kinds of motels: A, those that discourage passionate interludes and cater to legitimate trade as much as possible;. B, those that are hospitable to any person or couple having the price; and C, the ones that are known as quickie joints. Some of these are flagrant enough to inquire whether you’ll be wanting the room for a couple of hours or for the legal twenty-four. If it’s the former, they’ll charge you only a shade more than half price. If you’re legitimate, they’ll stick you the full tariff, and not
like you at all. They live on quick and frequent turnovers. Sometimes you’ll find that four or five different Mr. and Mrs. John Smiths have occupied the same room during a single night.

  I had always figured the Nite-Lite as falling into the B category. It was new enough and nice enough to attract a lot of legitimate trade, but that garage setup where you couldn’t be seen for a moment going from your car into the room, or vice versa, was too neat to be passed up by couples seeking seclusion. On the other hand, while quickie trade was not discouraged, it was the sort of place that wouldn’t be surprised any time a real Mr. and Mrs. stayed for several days and didn’t seem to be afraid of being seen.

  So what? So Mrs. Dorothy Halliday, wife of Dean Halliday, sister of Iris Kent, was lying in one of those rooms completely defunct. That checked with the missing-person report and with Iris’s odd hunch. But—and this I couldn’t figure—how come she could be the sort of dame to play the motel game, how come she could have been leading that kind of life without Iris even suspecting, how come she hadn’t been a trifle more circumspect two nights previously when she’d driven Iris to the Ambassador and had merely told the younger sister that she had an important engagement? It wasn’t that I was criticizing Dorothy Halliday’s morals. Hell, if someone wants to enjoy herself, and especially if it’s a gal married to someone like Dean Halliday, I’m all for her. So it wasn’t the sex angle, but the motel angle—the furtiveness of it—that didn’t fit.

  We went inside the room, entering through the front door, not the garage. The overhead door of the garage was still closed. One of the radio-car officers in the room greeted us with the information that there was no car in the garage. Walsh and Lane looked at each other and one of them said, “Hmphl” The picture was clear enough: Whoever had knocked off Mrs. Halliday had calmly driven away knowing that a long time would elapse before the chase would be on. Real cute. I decided that if I ever committed a murder and wanted a good, long head start, I’d use the same technique.

  The uniformed men stepped outside and we three went to work. There wasn’t any overhead light, just a standing lamp in one corner and a smaller lamp on the table near the bed, so we pulled our flashlights. It’s funny about a cop and a flashlight; he’d almost rather be without a gun than without his flashlight.