Sleeping Beauty

chapter 25

When I passed Sandhill Lake on my way north, it was swarming with uniforms. It looked like the scene of the annual picnic of the Sheriff’s Officers’ Benevolent Association. I didn’t stop. I would have had to tell them about Harold Sherry.

I drove directly to Seahorse Lane and found Elizabeth alone in what appeared to be an empty house. She greeted me without warmth and led me in silence into the big front room. Its front windows were now heavily smeared with oil. Through them I could see that the receding tide had left the beach dark and glistening, as if it had been covered with black oilcloth.

“Where have you been?” Her tone was faintly accusatory.

“El Rancho.”

“You chose a strange time to go there.”

“It paid off, though not in the way I expected. Is your mother here?”

“She’s in her room. Mother is quite upset.”

“About Jack?”

“It’s naturally hit her very hard. And now Tony Lashman is missing. It makes me wonder if he isn’t involved in what’s happened to Laurel. Mother must be having the same idea.”

“How did he leave?”

“Apparently he just walked away down the beach. He has no car.”

“Where are the others?”

“My husband took Marian to the hospital, to be with Jack.”

“How is your brother?”

“He’s surviving, that’s all I know.” She gave me a long cold look. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you were doing when Jack was shot.”

The angry feeling in her voice was more pronounced. It seemed to be directed against the world and against me as its representative. The change I sensed in her probably reflected a change in her entire family. One of them had been taken, and one wounded, and they felt under siege.

“I saw what happened at Sandhill Lake from a distance.” I explained to Elizabeth how that was. “I didn’t actually witness the shooting of your brother but I’m reasonably sure who did it.” I got the photo of Harold out of my inside pocket. “Do you recognize him?”

She held the picture close to one of the smeared windows. “It’s Harold Sherry, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I knew he was up to something. He came out to my house in Bel-Air and did some pretty wild talking.”

“When was that?”

“Just last week.”

“And what did he say, exactly?”

“I prefer not to tell you.”

“I would prefer not to be here at all.”

I realized as I said it that I was angry with her now, furiously angry in a quiet way. We had been intimate the night before, not only in the physical sense. But the morning and the afternoon had carried us far apart, and we seemed to blame each other for the distance.

“You’re perfectly free to leave,” she said.

“I didn’t mean that.”

“But I did.”

I sat down facing her. “We’re both under strain. We both want to get Laurel back. That’s the main thing, isn’t it?”

She took a deep breath. “I suppose you’re right. But where is she?”

“I’m reasonably sure that Harold knows.”

“Then where is Harold?”

“That’s the question. The things he said to you might bear on it.”

She sat down, studying the photograph as if it was a mirror in which she could see that she had lost her looks. I said:

“Was Harold in the habit of visiting your house?”

“Far from it. I hadn’t seen him in years. I didn’t know who he was until he told me. He’s much better-looking than he was in his teens. But I’m afraid he’s still the same old Harold.”

“Exactly what do you mean?”

“He pretended to have come on a friendly visit, to get my forgiveness for the past or something of the sort. He’d already been in touch with Laurel and she had forgiven him, or so he said. But I’m sure he didn’t come to see me for any friendly reason.” She paused, and her face turned quite bleak as she remembered the conversation. “I got the impression that he was trying to ferret out the family secrets.”

“What secrets?”

“You know one of them,” she said without meeting my eyes. “I shouldn’t have told you what I did last night, about Ben and that young woman who came to our house with the boy. I’ll ask you not to repeat it.”

“I don’t intend to. Was that one of the things that Harold was interested in?”

“Yes. But he had it wrong. Harold Sherry is one of those people who always get things wrong. He seemed to think that it was Jack who had been the woman’s lover.” She smiled very dimly. “I wish it had been.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t?”

“Absolutely certain. Jack was still in the East attending Navy Communications School when the woman came to Bel-Air and talked to me. And it was definitely Ben she was talking about.”

“Did Harold tell you where he got the information? Or misinformation?”

“He’d been in touch with Laurel, as I said. But it’s hard to imagine Laurel talking about her father in those terms. It’s possible that Harold heard the story from someone, and got it distorted in his own mind. He really hates my brother Jack, you know.”

“That’s obvious. I’m more interested in what he had to say about Laurel.”

She sat in silence for a while. Outside the house I could hear the dull surf measuring off its long-drawn-out intervals. “He said that they were friends again. He’d had dinner at her house, and he liked her husband.”

“Was he sincere, do you think?”

“It’s hard to say. A man like Harold is never completely honest. He doesn’t like himself enough really to like anyone else. And he’s always got more than one thing going on in his head.”

“What kind of things?”

“He didn’t talk about them to me – at least not openly. But I can imagine the kind of things they are. Blackmail and fraud and what have you? He’s a very mixed-up person.”

“I know that. What I’m trying to find out is this. Did Harold kidnap Laurel this time around, as he claims? Or did the two of them take off together and make the money demand on her parents?”

“I simply can’t believe that Laurel would do that.”

“She did once.”

“When she was a fifteen-year-old. She’s changed since then. Laurel’s really quite a well-intentioned person. She tries very hard. And she’s always been more of a victim than a victimizer.”

We were back again at the riddle of Laurel. “Perhaps,” I said, “it doesn’t make so much difference whether she’s consciously one or the other. Harold is the one that makes the difference. He may have a kind of hex on her, going back to adolescence. I’ve seen it happen to other girls, especially ones that don’t get along with their parents.”

“I know what you mean.” She added thoughtfully, “Jack can be pretty hard to take.”

“Tell me this. When Harold Sherry came to your house, did he say anything about where he was staying? Or a phone number where you could get in touch with him?”

She considered the question. “No, he didn’t.”

“What kind of a car was he driving?”

“An old green compact.”

There was a telephone in the room, and with Elizabeth’s permission I used it to make a call to Dr. Lawrence Brokaw in Long Beach. The woman who answered said that Dr. Brokaw was with a patient. If I’d leave my name and number, the Doctor would call me back.

Sylvia Lennox had come into the room as I was talking. She peered at my face as if she was afraid of what she might find there.

“What happened to my son, Mr. Archer?”

“He was wounded by a man named Harold Sherry.” I was sure of it now.

“But I sent you with him to look after him.”

“He needed more looking after than I could give him. He wanted to take care of the situation all by himself.”

She didn’t seem to hear me. Her mind was moving like a flightless bird among her troubles. “And now Tony Lashman has deserted me. What do you think has happened to Tony?”

“I don’t know. When did you see him last?”

“This morning, when I put him in his place.”

She moved between her daughter and me to the window. Her lean wrinkled face looked softer and more shapeless, as though the blows that had fallen on her had been physical. She said, in a thin and mournful voice which was shaken by gusts of fury:

“All my life I’ve tried to do my duty, and this is what it’s come to. My only son has been shot. My beach is covered with filth. My granddaughter is missing. And Tony left without even saying goodbye.” She turned from the window, her eyes wide, full of the dark scene. “I blame the men for this.”

“What men, Mother?”

“All the men. I’ve sat back all my life and watched them operate. If they want a woman, they take her. William did that. Ben put an oil well where no oil well belongs. Look at what he’s done to my beach. And Jack has been shot. I want to go and see him.”

Elizabeth put an arm around her mother’s shoulders. “Stay here with me. You wouldn’t like it at the hospital, Mother.”

“I don’t like it here, either.” She turned to me and spoke in a more reasonable tone: “Did you say Harold Sherry shot Jack?”

“Yes.”

The old woman nodded grimly. “I warned Jack to take it easy on that boy. I told him when a girl runs off with a boy, you can’t always blame the boy one hundred percent. But Jack was determined to destroy him. He wouldn’t let the court give him juvenile treatment, and William used his influence to see that he was put in jail. And now the boy is striking back at us.” She shuddered, and wagged her head. “I want no part of it. I’m opting out. Let the men handle it. It’s all their doing.”

She turned and left the room, moving uncertainly. She had stumbled under the pressures of the day, and age had overtaken her.

“Mother’s always felt like that, really,” Elizabeth said. “She’s never said it quite so explicitly, but it’s been her philosophy of marriage all along. Let the men go ahead and take the responsibility and make the mistakes. And then the women can sit back and feel superior. It’s not a very good kind of innocence.”

“Any innocence may be better than none.”

“I used to think so. But I’m beginning to wonder. You’ve got to use your innocence for something. You can’t just keep it in a hope chest.”

Her voice was low and very personal. She was talking about herself as well as her mother, and she sounded young for her age.

“What’s bothering you, Beth?”

Her head came up in response to her name. “It isn’t what you think it is, exactly. The fact is I’ve been giving my husband a very hard time generally – ever since Harold Sherry came and talked to me. I bitterly resented that young woman, whoever she was, and I took it out on Ben every way I could. And I wonder, if I’d given him some peace – a chance to think – if he might not have made the mistake that blew the well.”

“You’re reversing your mother’s philosophy,” I said, “and really reaching for a piece of guilt.”

“Because it belongs to me. To the extent that Ben was responsible, then I’m responsible, too.”

“How do you know he was responsible?”

“He told me. He allowed the well to be drilled without adequate casing, and even after there were signs of trouble he ordered the drilling to go ahead.”

“That was his mistake in judgment. You can’t make yourself responsible for it.”

“I am, though, partly.”

“You mean you want to be.”

“I am, and I want to be.”

The phone rang beside me. I picked it up:

“Archer speaking.”

“This is Dr. Brokaw. Did you call me?” The voice was youngish, and a little breathy.

“Yes. It’s about a patient of yours.”

“What patient?”

“Harold Sherry. He’s in trouble.”

There was a flat silence. “I’m very sorry to hear that. Is it serious?”

“Just about as serious as it can get. He’s wanted for kidnapping. He was wounded by gunfire and dropped out of sight. I thought he might go to you.”

“He hasn’t. Are you a policeman?”

“A private detective. Do you have an address for Harold?”

“I may have.”

“Will you look it up for me?”

There was another silence, divided into equal segments by his breathing. “I’m afraid I can’t give out patients’ addresses over the phone.”

“Not even when a young woman’s been kidnapped?”

“You say you’re a private detective. If a woman’s been kidnapped, why haven’t I heard from the police?”

“I’m the one who has your name. I got it from Harold’s mother. If you want me to give it to the police–”

“No. Look. Where are you now?”

“Pacific Point.”

“Can you come here to my office? I’ll be finished with my other – with my patients by half past five. Then we can talk about Harold.” He hung up on me.

Elizabeth moved across the room and stood above me with her fists clenched. “Won’t he help?”

“I think he will.”

“If he’s a local doctor, my family can bring pressure to bear on him.”

“He isn’t, though. He practices in Long Beach. And I’ll probably get further with him by myself.”

Her general anger focused on me again. “You’re very self-confident, aren’t you? Overconfident, perhaps, considering your failure to protect my brother.”

“The only way I could have protected your brother was by putting him in irons. He didn’t want me to go to Sandhill Lake with him. It looked as if he wanted to have a shoot-out. Anyway, he got one. And I’m not taking any responsibility for it. Your brother pointed a gun at me and ordered me out of the car.”

“Really?”

“I’m not making this up.”

“But why would he do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know, but I plan to ask him. I’m going over to the hospital now.”

Elizabeth didn’t put up any further argument. Letting me out into the courtyard where I had left my car, she tried the knob of an outside door between the back door and the garages. The door failed to open. I said:

“What’s in there?”

“It’s Tony Lashman’s room. I keep hoping he’ll turn up. I’m worried about him.”

“Are you sure he isn’t in his room?”

“I’m not sure about anything.”

The lock on the door was of the Yale type, easy to open with a plastic credit card. The room on the other side of it was large but rather makeshift, incompletely walled with knotty pine. The single bed was unoccupied and unmade. There was no one under the bed and no one in the closet. The floor of the closet was piled with dirty clothes intermingled with sections of a black rubber wet suit.

A windup alarm clock sat on the table beside the bed. It wasn’t ticking. It had stopped a few minutes short of midnight, or of noon.