Sleeping Beauty

chapter 22

The keys were in Jack Lennox’s Cadillac, and I took it. Instead of turning north toward Pacific Point, I went south to El Rancho, where his father lived.

Since I had last seen the place, an electronic gate had been installed at the entrance. The armed guard on duty refused to let me in until he had phoned William Lennox at his house. He came out of his kiosk wearing a respectful expression.

“It’s okay, Mr. Archer. Mr. Lennox says you can come right out. Know where to find his place?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

He showed me a large-scale map attached to the wall of his office. “Turn left at the far end of the golf course. That will take you past River Valley School. Then turn sharp right up the hill, and you’ll see Mr. Lennox’s mailbox at the top.”

I followed his directions, paying special attention to River Valley School. It was a scattering of weathered redwood buildings dwarfed by the great native oak trees that surrounded it. Though I’d never been inside it, the school had associations for me. Both Laurel and Elizabeth had been students there. I wondered what it had been like to grow up in the protective shadow of those trees.

William Lennox’s mailbox was made of stone and attached to a stone wall which ran parallel with the ocean in both directions as far as I could see. In the fields beyond it, on either side of the lane that led to the house, there were horses grazing. They looked like racing stock, and one of them, a sorrel mare, was running in irregular circles, apparently for the fun of it. She came to an uncertain stop near the wall, about a hundred feet from me.

Then I noticed the woman standing inside the wall. She was wearing a riding costume topped off with a Mexican hat, and held a long-handled whip upright in her hand. She flicked it harmlessly in the air. The mare started off on another circuit, arching her neck and swinging her head like a hammer from side to side.

I got out and approached the woman. “Nice-looking horse.”

She regarded me coolly over the stone wall. “She isn’t bad.”

She was a nice-looking woman, probably in her early forties, but holding hard to what she had left of her youth. Her waist, cinched in by a wide Western belt, looked as if I could span it with my two hands. Her dark eyes looked at me as if that might be a dangerous thing to try.

“My name is Archer. I’d like to see Mr. Lennox.”

Her voice sharpened. “Is he expecting you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you the detective?”

I said I was.

She looked along the fence at the Cadillac. “Is that Jack Lennox’s car?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to him?”

“He got shot.”

“Fatally?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it.”

She looked at me so impassively that I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or relieved. Her eyes softened as the mare came running up to her, hoofs drumming. The woman leaned her whip against the wall and stroked the mare on the nose, then sent her trotting away into the field.

The woman turned back to me. “Did someone in the family shoot Jack?”

“No.”

Her eyes hardened. “You don’t have to answer me in monosyllables. I’m Mrs. Hapgood, and I have a serious interest in what’s happened. I’m trying to protect my hus – Mr. Lennox.”

“Your husband?”

“That was a slip of the tongue,” she said. “We’re not married yet. But I take my responsibility seriously. Believe it or not, I’m trying to keep this family together.”

“Why?”

“Because William wants it that way,” she said. “So what happened to Jack?”

I told her over the stone wall as we walked back toward the car. She climbed on a stile into the lane and got into the front seat beside me.

“Jack’s always been wild and impulsive. He shouldn’t have been the one to go.”

“I know that. But he was determined. And Laurel’s his daughter.”

“Is she not.”

“Have you known Laurel for a long time?”

“A very long time indeed, yes. But please don’t try to interrogate me.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Weren’t you? I think you were. But I’m not your problem, or any part of it.”

“Then maybe you’re part of the solution.”

She gave me a flashing smile, like a knife gleaming briefly from concealment. “As a matter of fact, I think I am. Let’s get one thing straight. I love William Lennox. That’s more than you can say for the members of his family – certainly more than you can say for his wife.”

I drove down the long lane, which was almost blocked at one point by a bulldozer pulled to the side. I maneuvered the Cadillac around it.

The house stood on a rise above the beach. It was two-storied, white with a red tiled roof, and it stretched out for a hundred feet on either side of the entrance. Mrs. Hapgood took me into an oak-beamed room furnished like a medieval castle, with high-backed chairs and massive tables and couches too large for ordinary human use. She left me there and went to find Lennox.

I stood by one of the great windows and looked out over the ocean. It was a clear day and I could see, almost halfway to the horizon, a flight of shearwaters like a scrap of dark chiffon blowing along the blue surface. Off to the north, the color seemed to change from blue to brownish, and the sea seemed flat and inert. The oil slick was moving south with the current from Pacific Point.

William Lennox and Mrs. Hapgood came into the room. They weren’t touching, or even close, but they seemed to be very conscious of each other. They moved together with a certain pride.

Lennox wasn’t a big man like his son, but he was one you would notice anywhere. He was wearing a white shirt with a green stone at the throat. He walked upright, with his white head held high, and came across the room with his hand outstretched to greet me.

His hand was thin and frail, scrolled with enormous blue veins. His eyes peered at me from their wrinkles like blue lights shining through a screen.

“Mr. Archer? How are you?” His handshake was firm. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Not when I’m working, thank you.”

“You’re very austere,” the woman said dryly.

The old man cleared his throat. “Connie tells me that my son has been shot. Is it bad?”

“A bullet creased him just above the ear. It didn’t look as if it penetrated the skull. I called an ambulance right away, and they took him back to the hospital in Pacific Point. The other man was shot, too, but he got away with the money.”

“Jack shot him?”

“In the leg, apparently.”

“Where were you when it happened?” His voice was quiet and even, but his blue gaze stayed on my face like a palpable force.

“About half a mile up the road.” I explained why.

Lennox’s face reddened slightly, and then grew pale. “The whole thing’s been bungled. I’m not blaming you, Mr. Archer. I blame my wife and that stupid lawyer of hers. I should have gone there myself.”

“And been shot?” Connie Hapgood said.

“I would have shot first. I would have blown his head off.”

The woman touched his arm, reminding him that he was getting excited. He took a deep breath and turned away. He walked to the end of the room, stood facing the wall for a moment, and then came back.

“Have the F.B.I. been called in?”

“No.”

“Why not? What’s Sylvia doing?”

“Trying to protect your granddaughter, I believe.”

“This is a hell of a way to protect her.” He gave me a hot and narrow look. “Did you recommend this?”

“I was in favor of keeping them out, yes. I still haven’t told the whole story to the police.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t get excited, William,” the woman said. “Why don’t we all sit down and relax a bit?”

“I prefer to stand.” He turned to me. “I don’t understand your purpose in concealing evidence from the police and the F.B.I.”

“You may not want to hear my reason.”

“On the contrary, I insist on hearing it.”

“Whatever you say. Do you want me to talk in front of Mrs. Hapgood?”

“Yes. Quit stalling, man.”

“This may not be a kidnapping in the ordinary sense. It doesn’t feel like a kidnapping to me.”

“What in hell does it feel like?”

“I can’t say. But I found out last night that Laurel has been involved in a similar case before. When she was fifteen or sixteen, she ran off to Las Vegas with a boy. The two of them asked Laurel’s parents for ransom money – a thousand dollars, I believe. And apparently they collected.”

He squinted at me from a network of wrinkles. “I knew that she’d run off that time, of course. But Jack never told me about the money angle.”

“He wouldn’t,” Connie Hapgood said. “He wasn’t going to tell you this time either. But Sylvia couldn’t raise the hundred thousand, so you had to be told.”

He shook his head as if her words were insects attacking him. “I don’t believe that Laurel would do such a thing. She isn’t a cheat. And if she needed money, she could have come to me directly.”

“She’s afraid of you,” the woman said. “She always has been, since she was a girl in school. And remember it isn’t the first time she’s played this trick on the family.”

“I don’t believe it.”

He turned to me again. His shoulders were visibly bowed now and his arms were hanging loose, as if he’d lost the principle that kept him controlled and upright.

“I know that Laurel has had her emotional problems. But she wouldn’t lie to me, or cheat her own family. She simply isn’t that kind of a girl.” He seemed close to breaking down and crying; then his grief changed back to anger. “Damn it to hell, if she did do it, somebody put her up to it. If it was that husband of hers, I’ll blow his head off. What’s his name? Russo?”

“It wasn’t Tom Russo.” But even as I said that, I realized that I couldn’t be quite sure. Tom had his problems, too; death haunted his dreams and perhaps his waking life.

The woman was watching Lennox with sharp attention. She may have realized that she had spoken too harshly. Driving her wedge into Lennox’s family, she had inadvertently driven it into him. She moved toward him and put her arm around him.

“It’s time you took a rest, William. You’ve had too much for one day.”

“I can’t rest. Who will look after things?” He spoke with an old man’s querulousness. “Everything’s going to pieces. Jack is shot and Laurel’s missing and our new well blew out. And Sylvia sits up there and laughs about it. Damn Sylvia to hell. And damn Ben Somerville. Why did I have to surround myself with losers?”

The woman led him out of the room by the hand. As she passed me, she gave me a keen promising look which made me wait for her to come back.