Sleeping Beauty

chapter 34

There were several cars in the yard under the cliff, but none of them was the green Falcon that belonged to Gloria. I parked in front of the office and went inside.

The bell jingled over the door. Behind the archway, the television set was talking in brash young voices that sounded like descendants of the voices I’d heard that morning. Mrs. Mungan appeared, wearing her red wig lower on her forehead.

“How are you, Mrs. Mungan?”

“Surviving,” she said. “Do I know you?”

Her eyes seemed to peer at me through a glaze of time or distance, as if my morning visit had occurred a long time ago. Then she remembered me.

“What do you want now?”

“A little help. You weren’t much help this morning. You said you gave Joe Sperling’s tweed suit to a little old man who took off down the beach. You didn’t mention his name or his background, but I’m pretty sure you knew both. You didn’t mention that he came here in the company of your daughter and her boy friend, and probably took off with them as well.”

She didn’t deny any of it. She leaned across the counter, supporting her weight on her arms. If I had lit a match, I could have set fire to her breath.

“What have you got against us, anyway?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why don’t you go away and leave us alone? My daughter is a good girl. All she ever did was try to do the right thing. Which is more than you can say for most of us.”

“What about Harold?”

She considered the question. “I didn’t say I’d vouch for him.”

“Are they here?”

“No. They’re not.”

“Have you seen them tonight?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t see Gloria last night, either. She lent her car to Harold, and spent the night at her cousin’s.”

“Where is Gloria spending tonight?”

She looked through the open door toward the highway. Her eyes seemed to reflect the light-streaked darkness.

“I wish I knew. I’ve been expecting to hear from her.”

“I know where she was a couple of hours ago,” I said. “In a motel in Redondo Beach looking after Harold.”

“Is there something the matter with Harold?”

“He was shot. He kidnapped Tom Russo’s wife, and her father shot him when he picked up the ransom money.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

But she knew I wasn’t. She put her face down on her arms and rested it there for a moment. When she lifted it and showed it to me again, it hadn’t changed very much, except for the glint of terror in the eyes.

She licked her dry lips. “I was afraid she’d get into trouble if she took up with Harold.” She paused, and sucked her breath in. “Did you say he kidnapped Laurel?”

“That’s right. Could we sit down in the back and have a talk, Mrs. Mungan?”

She glanced behind her through the archway as if she had to ask permission of someone or something there, perhaps the television voices. “I don’t know.”

“It could be important, to you and Gloria. She’s in trouble, probably through no fault of her own.”

“That was the story of her marriage. Bob Flaherty ran up a pile of debts and left her holding the bag. The same thing happened with me and her father–”

I cut in: “This is worse. If Gloria goes along with Harold and helps him get away, she’ll be treated the same as he will. And Harold has a good chance of being shot on sight.”

Her fingers went to her mouth, pressing it back into shape. “What can I do?”

“You can talk to me. I think this present trouble goes back a long way, at least as far as the murder of your sister Allie.”

“You know about that?”

“Not as much as you do, Mrs. Mungan. May I come in?”

She opened the gate at the side of the desk and let me into the back room, where she turned off the television set. I could hear the background noises of the highway. Before I sat down in the armchair she offered me, I glanced at the pictures on the walls. One of them was a photograph of a young woman who looked as Mrs. Mungan might have looked when she was young.

Her breast nudged my arm. “That was my sister Allie. I guess you’ve seen her picture?”

“No, I haven’t. She was very pretty.”

“Yes, she was the pretty one in the family.” She opened a drawer and handed me a smaller and younger photograph. “This was her graduation picture when she graduated from Fresno High in 1935. She was a real stunner, as you can see.”

I nodded in agreement, though the fine eyes which confronted me in the picture had long since been closed.

“She was nice, too,” the woman said. “It isn’t fair, what happens to some people. It would have made more sense if I’d been shot instead of Allie.”

She slumped in a chair. I was afraid she might dissolve in tears, and be lost as a witness. But perhaps her tears had all run out long ago. The only effect of the shocks she’d been experiencing seemed to be that she was sobering up.

“Who shot Allie?” I said.

“That’s the question I’ve been asking myself for more than twenty-five years. I lie awake in the middle of the night thinking about it.”

“And what do you think, Mrs. Mungan?”

“I used to think it was her husband, Russo. Allie married beneath her, and he was an older man, insanely jealous.” It sounded like a line she had repeated many times, until it had become a piece of family folklore. “But the police said he couldn’t have done it. He didn’t miss a day of work in the shipyards, and it would have taken him a couple of days anyway to make the trip back and forth between here and Bremerton.”

“What made Russo jealous?”

“That’s just the way he was.”

“Were there other men in your sister’s life?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I’m asking you, Mrs. Mungan.”

“I’m not answering. Let her rest in peace, why can’t you?”

“Other people are being killed. Tom Russo’s wife has been kidnapped, and your daughter Gloria is involved with the kidnapping.”

“You told me that before. I don’t believe it.”

“After everything that’s happened in your family, you don’t believe it?”

Her mouth opened and stretched wide. The flesh around her eyes crinkled. She looked as if she had seen a ghost and was getting ready to scream. But she was silent, looking inward as if the ghost was in her mind.

“Was Nelson Bagley your sister’s lover?”

“No. He wanted to be. He used to follow her around like a dog. But Allie wasn’t really interested in him.”

“How do you know that?”

“She wrote me about him from Bremerton. Russo was jealous of him, but he was a joke to Alison.”

“Sometimes a joke like that turns out to be not so funny.”

“What do you mean?”

“Russo thinks Bagley killed her.”

“I know that. He tried to nail Bagley after he got back from the war. But by that time Bagley was a helpless cripple. His ship burned and he went overboard and it knocked all the sense out of his head. The police said even if it was true they had no way of proving it at that late date. And they couldn’t drag a man like Bagley into a courtroom.”

“But you dragged him here Tuesday night.”

“I didn’t drag him. I had him here for dinner. Anyway, it was Harold’s idea. He was interested in what caused the fire on the ship, and he thought maybe Nelson Bagley could tell him something.”

“What did Nelson tell him?”

“I don’t know. I got pretty upset myself, and I drank too much before dinner. When I saw Nelson Bagley and tried to talk to him, the whole thing fell on me like a ton of bricks and I started drinking. I didn’t sober up until the next morning, and by that time they were long gone.”

“Harold and Gloria and Nelson Bagley were gone?”

“That’s right. I naturally thought they took him back to the hospital. When you came in this morning – and told me Bagley was dead, I panicked. I told you the first thing that came into my head.”

“Did you say you talked to Bagley Tuesday night?”

She hesitated. “We exchanged some words, yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that he was sorry about Allie.”

“Is that all?”

“Let me think.” She frowned as if she was listening to an imperfect playback. “He didn’t say much, and even then I wasn’t able to catch everything he said. He couldn’t talk very well, and I was upset just having him here. He was like a ghost from the past, you know? A poor little roughed-up hammered-down ghost.”

“Did you ask him any questions?”

“I tried to, but we didn’t get very far. I asked him who killed my sister. He said he didn’t know. I finally got him to admit that he knew Allie in Bremerton before she left her husband. He claimed he didn’t know her intimately, that she was interested in another man. I asked him some questions about the man. He said he didn’t remember. It may have been true – he had a memory like a sieve. And the truth is, I got tired of pressing him. Talking to that poor little incinerated man made me realize that Allie had been dead for over twenty-five years and no amount of questions or answers would bring her back.

“Anyway, Harold came in and broke it up. He said it was time to watch some television. I needed a drink real badly by that time – to put down the past, you know? I try not to drink in front of Gloria – it sets a bad example – so I took the bottle into my room and locked the door and I guess I must have passed out.” She closed her eyes, miming the passage of the night. “When I woke up, it was morning and they were gone and all the dirty dishes were in the sink.”

“Have you seen Gloria since Tuesday night?”

“I don’t think so. No, I haven’t. She phoned me last night, from Tom Russo’s house. She said she couldn’t get home because Harold had her car. It’s the only car in the family, and I’m dependent on Gloria for transportation since I lost my license–”

I interrupted her. “If Gloria calls again, will you tell her I want to talk to her? Tell her it’s a matter of life and death.”

“Whose life and death? Hers?”

“It could be. Did she tell you what Harold was doing with her car?”

“No. I didn’t ask her. I thought it was sort of funny, though, since they just started going together.”

“How long ago did they start?”

“A week or two, maybe. But things happen fast these days. The men are so impatient, and the girls have to go along.”

“Did Gloria mention Nelson Bagley on the phone last night?”

Mrs. Mungan hesitated. She looked at me sidewise and licked her upper lip with the tip of her tongue.

“Did she mention Nelson Bagley?” I repeated.

“I guess she did, at that.”

“What did she say about him?”

“That Harold was taking him for a little vacation. And if anybody asked about him, I wasn’t to tell them anything. That was why I lied to you this morning. God knows I didn’t know he was dead.”

“How did he happen to be wearing that tweed suit?”

“I gave it to him. The clothes he had on weren’t warm enough for him when he got here. It struck me that he was about Mungan’s height – when Mungan was younger, I mean. I got out the old tweed suit and it was big, but he could wear it. I had to help him on with it, though, he was so shaky on his pins. When I saw that shriveled little throwaway of a man without his clothes, it really brought it home to me.”

“Brought what home, Mrs. Mungan?”

“That we’re all human. And we’re all due to waste away and die. I felt as though he climbed out of the same grave where my poor sister was buried. Now he’s dead, too.”

She fell into silence, peering from under the low red fringe of her wig at the blind eye of the television set. Gradually her face composed itself, as if everything she had told me had happened on an external screen which could be switched off.

I said, “What did Harold want to watch on television?”

My question startled her. “When do you mean?”

“You said he interrupted your talk with Bagley because he wanted to watch some television.”

“That’s right. He said that Bagley’s old Captain was scheduled to come on at the start of the ten o’clock news.”

“Captain Somerville?”

“I guess so. I didn’t pay much attention. It was supposed to be something about oil. Did somebody spill some oil someplace?”

“Captain Somerville did.”

“That’s too bad,” she said without comprehension.

“What was Bagley’s reaction?”

“He came and sat where I’m sitting now.”

“Did he see Somerville on the screen?”

“I don’t know. That was when I went to get a drink.” She gestured toward the closed door, and moved impatiently in her chair. “Would you object if I had a small one now? I didn’t realize this was going to last so long.”

“Neither did I. Go ahead and have a drink.”

She got up and crossed the room, turning at the kitchen door. “I’d offer you one, but I’ve barely got enough for myself. You know how it is.”

I knew how it was with drunks. They ran out of generosity, even for themselves. I was glad to be left alone in the room, relieved of the woman’s worried presence.

Sitting among the sibilant echoes of her voice, I remembered something I had been told the night before by another woman. According to Elizabeth Somerville, a woman with a little boy had visited the Somervilles’ house in Bel-Air when Elizabeth first came to live there. By now, the little boy would be thirty or so, Tom’s age. The woman would be fifty or so, or dead.

I put my business card on the table beside Allie’s graduation picture. Then I picked up the picture and took it with me into the wilds of Bel-Air.