A Gambling Man

Chapter 37

“Have you always lived in bay town?” asked Archer as Beth Kemper started the Triumph and pulled out from the curb. He had helped her put the top down because it was such a fine night.

The wind whipped Kemper’s hair, and a few errant strands landed across Archer’s face. Lilac, he thought as he leaned away from its clutches.

“Yes. My father was born here. His family’s been here for generations.”

“Willie Dash mentioned something about the cattle business from a long time ago.”

“My grandfather, Atticus, raised and sold cattle, as did his father before him and so on and so on. Then he started investing in real estate, among other things. My father took over the family business when Atticus died. This was a long time ago. My grandfather died before I was even born. That’s when my father and Andrew Smalls started working together. My mother, Eleanor, was born and raised in Seattle, but her family moved here when she was a teenager. She and my father met here and got married.”

“I understand she died in a plane crash. Was it a passenger airliner?”

In a somber tone, Kemper said, “No, it was her plane. She was a licensed pilot.”

“Female pilot? That’s pretty nifty.”

Kemper smiled sadly. “I used to go up with her all the time. My father was quite a bit older than she was. She had me when she was twenty-one. I couldn’t imagine having a baby of my own at that age. She volunteered to fly during World War II, but they said she was too old. She was really upset about that. She used to be a barnstormer and trick pilot in the 1920s. She was really amazing.”

“So what happened?”

“We don’t know. It was a terrible accident. She was flying in her plane, a Stearman 75. It was a military trainer plane, but after the war they were sold to civilians and my mother bought one. She named it... she named it Elizabeth, after me, her only child.”

“She must have loved you very much,” observed Archer quietly.

She shot him a glance as though to check whether he was being sincere or not. “No more than I did her. Anyway, it was a two-seater single prop biplane. She could make it do anything she wanted. I was supposed to go up with her that day. It was beautifully clear, but Douglas had arranged a luncheon with some important clients and insisted that I be there. So, my mother went up... all alone.”

She slowed the Triumph and put a trembling hand to her face. “It’s been two years. You’d think I would have gotten past this.”

“It’s okay,” said Archer. “I don’t think you ever get past it.” He pulled out his flask and handed it to her. “Rye whiskey always works for me.”

She took a sip and let it go down very slow. She handed back the flask. “Thank you. That does do the trick.”

The smell of the ocean hit them as they rounded a curve and the Pacific came into view. The breakers were rolling in hard and grinding the sand into even smaller particles.

“Did you learn how to fly?” he asked.

“No, I don’t like to fly, really. In fact, I only flew with her.”

“What about your husband? You said he was a pilot.”

“After the war, he said he never wanted to get in another airplane. He was shot down, landed in the Pacific, and floated in a raft for two weeks before being rescued.”

“I had some ‘plane’ trouble in the war, too.”

“But with my mother in the cockpit I was never worried or anxious. She would do barrel rolls and loop-the-loops and dives, and I would be screaming and laughing at the same time. It was the most exhilarating... the most...” She stopped and looked at Archer, her cheeks flushed. “I don’t usually go on and on like that with someone I barely know.”

“Yeah, I saw that personality trait the first time we met. But this is the second time, so there’s that.”

She smiled. “Are you going to make me change my opinion of you, Archer?”

“Oh, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

She laughed.

“But not being a pilot, there was nothing you could have done to save your mother that day, if that’s what’s hanging around your neck. You both would have died.”

Her laugh died in her throat and her face flamed. She snapped, “You don’t know that. You have no way of knowing that. You couldn’t—”

He interjected. “I spent three years in Europe playing the what-if game. If I had only heard the sound a second later, or aimed a little less sharply, or turned left instead of right, I’d be dead instead of the other guy. It can eat you up, if you let it. So don’t let it eat you up. From what you’ve said about your mother, she wouldn’t have wanted that for you.”

She slowed the car again and looked at him. And this time it seemed to Archer that Beth Kemper was actually seeing him for the very first time. “I... I didn’t expect such nuance from you, Archer.”

“I almost never expect it from myself. Sometimes it just pops out all by its lonesome.”

She smiled and dabbed at her eye with her knuckle. She glanced to her left, toward the ocean. “She crashed about two miles off the coast. They found the wreckage the next day. People saw the plane just go into a dive. She never parachuted out. I guess she didn’t have time. She wasn’t flying that high.”

“I’m really sorry, Beth.”

“The news reached me when we got home from the luncheon. I... I couldn’t believe it, not at first. They never did find her body. The water is very deep out there. And undercurrents are very fast.” She hit the gas and they sped up. “And from that moment on my marriage seemed more a burden than a blessing.”

“I doubt your husband wanted anything to happen to your mother.”

“They got along all right, actually. More than Douglas and my father do.”

“But your husband must owe a lot to your father. I mean, it must have helped his business prospects to have Sawyer Armstrong as his father-in-law.”

“I believe Douglas thinks he’s paid back any debt in spades. And maybe he has.”

“How long have you two been married?”

“Nearly eight years. I met Douglas while I was in college. It seemed like a perfect match. We married after I graduated.”

“Any kids running around?”

“No, Douglas... No. We don’t plan to have a family.”

“You’re still young if you change your mind.”

“That won’t be happening.”

She said nothing else, and Archer could think of nothing else to say, so they rode the rest of the way with only the Triumph’s engine noise in their ears. When they reached Porter Street and the boardinghouse, Archer climbed out and tipped his hat.

“Thanks for the ride.”

“I don’t make it to this side of Sawyer Ave much. It’s nice.”

“You don’t have to say that to make me feel better. I don’t have a horse in that race.”

“What will you do now?”

“Sleep. Then I’ll hook up with Willie Dash and see where we go from there. He might not know about Ruby Fraser.”

“This blackmail scheme. Was she involved in it?”

“She said not, but who knows?”

“But with her dead, does that mean the blackmail plan will fall apart?”

“You would think so, but honestly, my gut tells me no.”

“You follow your gut?”

“It usually points me in the right direction. And I haven’t found anything better, yet.”

“Well, maybe I should follow my gut more. Good night, Archer.”

“Good night, Beth.”

She pulled off and he watched the little Triumph spurt along, and her long hair trailing out with the car’s wake, until it turned at an intersection and she disappeared. Maybe back safely on the other side of Sawyer Avenue to her hidey-hole, where she would go to bed alone or with someone else. Or maybe the lady was going to go all the way back up the mountain and lose herself in her gated estate built by Daddy with the letter A all over the place to remind her — and, maybe more important, her hubby — that it wasn’t really theirs.

Archer went to his room and wrote everything down he could remember about their conversation. Then he quickly undressed and got into bed in his skivvies and with his socks still on. He slept like a dead man for more than eight hours and awoke with bright afternoon sunlight dipping its toe into his room.

Shit.

He jumped out of bed, put on his robe, and headed to the communal bath at the end of the hall with his soap, scrubber, and shave kit. The water was lukewarm, and by the smell of it he wasn’t sure it wasn’t being piped in directly from the ocean. He dried off, combed his wet hair, and shaved in the humidity of the tiny room, where he had to keep rubbing the fog off the round mirror. Finished, he put his robe back on, and opened the door to find Callahan standing there in a sheer black number and white fluffy slippers and holding a shower cap and a scrub brush, along with a small leather toiletry kit.

“Wow, you’re up bright and early, Archer,” she said sarcastically.

“Look who’s talking.”

She rubbed his jaw with her hand. “You’re all nice and clean and shaved.”

“And a little salty, yeah.”

“Where were you last night?”

“In bed.”

She lightly slapped that shaved jaw. “Don’t lie to me. You went out.”

“How do you know that?”

“I got eyes and ears. And I saw you come back with the little dish in the convertible in the middle of the night like Cinderella getting dumped from the pumpkin.”

“That little dish is Beth Kemper, the wife of my client.”

“So why are you out with her in the middle of the night and not your client?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You couldn’t sleep?”

“Not after what happened, no. But I understood you were sleeping like a baby.”

“I was, until I wasn’t. Are you sleeping with her, Archer?”

“I don’t sleep with married women, even unhappily married ones.”

“Says you, chump. And as a reminder, I’m not married and I’m happy as a clam.”

She used her hip to bump him out of the doorway and she closed the door in his face.

He walked back to his room and dressed meticulously, down to his pocket square. He put his PI license in his jacket pocket, clipped the .38 to his belt, and drove out to the same diner near the wharf where they served breakfast all day. He ordered coffee and two over-easy eggs with crispy bacon, toast, and orange juice, which he knew they made in California in abundance.

He laid out the map of Bay Town on the table and started going over it. But this time with a different focus. He was looking at the water instead of the land.

He didn’t know how far out Armstrong had gone in the boat, but common sense told him it couldn’t have been too far. They sure weren’t going to Hawaii in a boat that size.

His breakfast came and he ate and drank while he studied the map.

“What are you doing, Mr. Archer?”

He turned to see Madame Genevieve standing next to him clutching a sack about the size of his old Army duffel.

“Just learning more about the town. What are you doing here?”

She held up the sack. “I was at the dock buying fish for dinner tonight from a vendor and saw you through the window.” She sat down across from him. “You know, for two dollars more per day you get breakfast and supper at my place. I make a better breakfast than they do here. And I get my fish fresh for dinner, as I just told you.”

He lit a cigarette and nodded. “Thanks, I’ll sure keep that in mind.” He glanced at the map and then back at her. “Hey, how well do you know this area?”

“What do you want to know?”

He stabbed the Pacific with his finger. “What’s off the coast here that a person could get to relatively fast by boat? I know about the northern and southern Channel Islands. Anacapa is the closest to the coast but it’s still about twelve miles out and over an hour by boat. And it’s about an hour-and-a-half boat ride to Santa Cruz. The others are a lot farther out, up to seventy miles or so. Anything closer than that?”

Madame Genevieve studied the map for a few moments. “I do remember hearing about an island that was built about three miles out, so you could get there in about fifteen or twenty minutes in a fast boat depending on the sea conditions.”

He looked at her strangely as his smoke dangled from his mouth. “Wait a sec, you said an island that was built?”

“During the war the military took over the Channel Islands, but they needed more capacity for some sort of special work. There was a very shallow spot about three miles directly out from here, where the land was just at the surface. The military built upon that base of earth to make a new island there.”

“Who owns that piece of rock now?”

“I suppose the military still does. Why all the interest?”

“Just curious.”

“I suppose all good private eyes are.”

“We can assume that, yeah.”

“Where did you go last night?”

“Just out for a walk. Found this place and had some coffee.”

“And now you go to work as a detective?”

“That’s right. A very tardy detective.” He folded up his map and put it in his pocket. “See you later.”

He put down money for his meal, tipped his hat, and left. She watched him every step of the way.