Sleeping Beauty

chapter 20

Several cars were already parked under the cypresses in Sylvia Lennox’s courtyard. Captain Somerville’s car pulled up behind mine. He got out and shook my hand, quite heartily, though his eyes were looking past me.

“I have to thank you for your intervention. This is Leroy Ellis, of our public-relations department. Let’s see, your name is Archer, isn’t it?”

The younger man climbed out from behind the wheel and gave me a limp handshake. He wasn’t really young – he was close to my age – but was one of those middle-aging men who have never lost the mannerisms of youth. His eyes were damp and emotional. He smelled as if he had somehow managed to get hold of some whisky.

“Leroy’s an old shipmate of mine.” Somerville spoke with rather forced nostalgia. “He was with me at Okinawa. Today was the most excitement we’ve had since, wasn’t it, Leroy?”

Leroy said that it was. He seemed upset and embarrassed, and I got the impression that the Captain, with a kind of affectionate sadism, was subtly needling him. The two men went inside, Leroy trailing behind. I waited a moment, listening to the pigeons talking in the cypresses.

Tony Lashman appeared beside the garages. His face was pale and intent, and he moved like a man with a grievance. He gestured toward the house.

“What’s going on in there?”

“I was going to ask you. I just arrived.”

“They’re having one of their family conferences. I’m supposed to be Mrs. Lennox’s confidential secretary, but she told me to stay out. Are they letting you in?”

“I hope so.”

I started toward the house, but Lashman stepped in front of me. He was beginning to turn into a nuisance.

“Look,” he said. “I want to know what goes on in there. If you can give me the info, I’ll pay you for it.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know how much. But it could be quite a lot – a lot more than a hundred dollars a day.”

“And where would the money come from?”

He saw that I was trying to pump him, and it made him angry:

“All right. I’ll handle it myself.”

He turned on his heel and walked away from me.

Emerson Little, the lawyer, was waiting for me at the door. He was a bald-headed man with a funereal taste in clothes and an undertaker’s exaggerated poise.

He gave me a soft hand and a hard look. “You’re a bit late, Mr. Archer.”

“I know that. I’m sorry.”

“I had quite a time holding Jack Lennox in place. He’s a headstrong man.”

“Where is he?”

“Inside with his mother. Sylvia Lennox is my client. She wouldn’t release the hundred thousand until you got here, and I supported her in that. The essential point of this operation is to get her granddaughter back safely. The money is quite secondary. Still, we don’t want it wasted on a wild-goose chase.”

“What form is the money in?”

“Unmarked twenties in a plain cardboard carton, as requested.”

“And where’s the drop?”

“Jack Lennox won’t divulge that.” Little’s bland face was moved by a spasm of irritation. “Well. We have to do our best with what we have.”

He went ahead of me into the front room. Sylvia was there with her family. Captain Somerville sat by Elizabeth, his eyes distracted and remote.

Elizabeth gave me a faint smile. Jack Lennox refused to look at me, and his wife Marian looked at me without appearing to see me.

There were spatterings of oil on the windows. A brown cardboard box on the floor beside Sylvia’s chair drew attention like a ticking bomb.

The old woman lifted her hand. “Come and sit down beside me for a minute, Mr. Archer.”

Lennox said, “We’re wasting time, Mother.”

“Please try to be patient, Jack.” She turned to me. “My husband – my ex-husband wants to see you and Jack in El Rancho after you’ve delivered the money. I’m afraid I needed some help from him in raising it this morning. It gives William an interest in it, and he isn’t one to let such an interest go unused.”

“It’s a natural interest, Mother,” Elizabeth said. “Laurel’s his only grandchild.”

Somerville turned and looked at Elizabeth as if perhaps she was criticizing his potency.

“I’m not suggesting that William’s interest in Laurel is unnatural,” Sylvia said dryly. “I’m sure he has his hands full with that young woman of his. And I’m afraid this business won’t improve his feelings toward the rest of us. It’s too bad he had to find out about it.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Marian Lennox said. “What matters is getting my daughter back. Everything else is unimportant.” Her tormented gaze moved around the room as if daring anyone to contradict her.

“I quite agree,” Emerson Little said.

Jack Lennox rose half out of his chair. “Then why don’t we get moving?”

It was a nervous meeting, buzzing with unspoken thoughts. Before it broke up, I asked Sylvia Lennox if she had seen the man in the tweed suit or his companion the night before.

“What time were they here?”

“I’m not sure they were here. But if they were, it was probably around eight last night.”

“I was out for dinner. Perhaps Tony Lashman saw them. You’ll probably find him sulking in his room.”

“Sulking?”

“I had to put him in his place. He’s becoming much too inquisitive about my affairs.” She gave me a bright look. “You’re rather inquisitive yourself, aren’t you?”

I didn’t have to answer her. Jack Lennox stood up and looked at his watch dramatically:

“Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

He was wearing a brown suede jacket, and the gun in his side pocket was obvious. He turned and strode out toward the courtyard. I followed him, carrying the box of money. The man in the tweed suit would have to wait.

“We’ll take my car,” Lennox said. “It has a telephone in it, which could turn out to be handy. And I’ll do the driving.”

“All right.”

He said impatiently, “I wasn’t asking your permission, I was stating my intention. I’d prefer to go alone. But for some reason my mother insists that I take you along. Against my wishes. Is that clear?”

Under his impatience I could sense his deep fatigue. I was determined to go along with him. “You make it very clear.”

I put the money on the seat between us. Lennox drove out of the courtyard on whining tires which seemed intended to let his family know that nobody cared as much as he did.

I didn’t speak until we were on the old highway heading south. “Where are we going, Mr. Lennox?”

“Sandhill Lake. It’s between the Point and El Rancho.”

“Isn’t there a hunting club on the lake?”

“There used to be. My father was one of the members in the old days.” He drove for a mile or so before he added, “That’s where I learned to shoot.”

“Who picked Sandhill Lake?”

After another silence, he said, “I don’t understand your question.”

“Did you or the kidnapper pick Sandhill Lake for the money drop?”

“He did, of course.”

“That’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”

“Where’s the coincidence?”

He sounded genuinely puzzled. I wondered how much drinking he had done in the course of the night, and how little sleeping. I said:

“That he should pick a place you know. A club your father belonged to.”

He answered after a while. “I see what you mean.”

“It suggests he knows your family.” Or at least knows Laurel, I thought. “I take it you talked to him on the phone yourself.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“Yes. I did.”

“Did you know him?”

“Of course not. What are you getting at?”

He gave me an angry questioning look, and the black Cadillac swerved onto the shoulder. Lennox pulled it back onto the road without slackening speed. We were going about eighty.

I didn’t quite dare to answer him directly, that I suspected his daughter of conning him and the rest of the family. He had some of Laurel’s wildness in him – or she had some of his – and he was capable of going into a blank rage and wrecking the car.

“I’m only speculating, trying to get a lead on the people involved.”

“There’s only the one, so far as I know.”

“A man?”

“That’s right.”

“But you didn’t recognize his voice on the phone?”

“No, I did not. And while we’re on the subject, I don’t give a damn about nailing him, is that clear? It isn’t my money, anyway. It belongs to my father and mother, and they’ve got more than they’re ever going to need.”

“I realize the money isn’t important.”

“I’m glad you do,” he said. “At least we’ve got that straight.”

“But even after the money is delivered, there’s still the question of getting Laurel back. Did he give you any idea of where she is?”

“Of course not. But there’s no problem. He gets the money, we get Laurel.”

“What if you don’t get her?”

“We will, though,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”

“Do you think he’s got Laurel with him at Sandhill Lake?”

He turned on me, his face suffused with blood. “How the hell do I know?” The Cadillac had wandered out of its lane again, as Lennox’s attention swerved to me. I took hold of the wheel with both hands, found the brake with my foot, and brought the heavy car to a screeching stop on the shoulder of the highway.

“What do you think you’re trying to do?” he said.

“Not get killed.”

“Then get out and walk.”

“My orders are to go along with you.”

“I’m changing the orders. Get out.”

I went on sitting where I was, beside the money. Lennox thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and pointed the pocket at me.

“Out,” he said.

I didn’t think he’d shoot me deliberately. But he seemed accident-prone, and his hand was hidden. All I needed was a bullet in the kidneys. I opened the door and climbed out and watched him drive away.

Then I followed along on foot. The Cadillac climbed a long rise and disappeared over its crest. There were few cars on the old highway, and none of them stopped to pick me up. But it was a clear bright day, and I felt a certain pleasure in being alone and on foot, listening to the meadowlarks in the fields.

Eventually I reached the top of the rise. Beyond it was a series of dunes which marched in giant rhythm along the shore. Sandhill Lake lay on their landward side, an irregular oval which looked like a spattering of sky.

On its near side I could see the green buildings of the hunting club, with Lennox’s black Cadillac parked beside them. Farther away, at the end of the lake, was a wooden lookout tower with gray shingled sides. A dirt road ran from the main buildings to the tower.

Jack Lennox was walking away from me along the dirt road, carrying the carton of money in his hands. He reached the tower and went inside. I heard a muffled explosion, and then another. Ducks rose from the lake, pintails and shovelers. They moved like visible echoes in wide expanding circles. Lennox came out empty-handed and ran along the road and fell down and crawled and lay still.

Another man emerged from the tower, carrying the brown carton of money in his hands. He paused beside Lennox. Then he turned in the other direction and began to run, limping, toward a eucalyptus grove that stood between the tower and the highway.

He moved like a young man, in spite of his limp, and he could have been the one I had seen at Blanche’s with the man in the tweed suit. He was too far away for me to be sure. I started to run down the highway, regretting the fact that I had no gun with me, and no binoculars.

It was a long run. Before I reached the foot of the hill, the ducks had circled out over the sea and were coming back and dropping down to the lake again. As if to preserve some kind of natural balance which required live things to be in the air at all times, a flock of band-tailed pigeons exploded out of the eucalyptus grove.

Then a small green car shot out of its far end and turned down the highway away from me. It was too far away for me to catch the license number, but it looked like an old Falcon two-door.