Sleeping Beauty

chapter 38

My apartment looked as if years had passed in the thirty hours since I had been there with Laurel. There was a drabness in the light, a sourness in the air. It gave me a shock to realize that the change was not in the apartment but in me.

I sat down on the chesterfield and closed my eyes, trying to separate myself from what had happened to the room and the light. Waves of darkness started to come in level with my eyes.

They carried with them a message which was repeated over and over: Laurel was long gone, and very likely dead; the empty vial in Somerville’s garage had probably been left there to mislead us. I tried to explain to myself how this could happen, but I was too tired to think straight. I lay down with a cushion under my head and sank into sleep.

The telephone dredged me up from the black depths. I made my way across the room and picked up the receiver. It was my answering service.

“Mr. Archer? There’s a woman trying to get in touch with you. I told her it was too early, but she insisted–”

“What woman?”

“She wouldn’t leave her name.”

“Did she leave any message at all?”

“She said something about her daughter coming home – the one you wanted to talk to.”

“Did she say her daughter had come home?”

“I think that was the message. It didn’t come through too clear. She talked as if she was slightly looped.”

I thanked the operator, shaved myself and changed my shirt, and went out into the gray early morning. The traffic on Wilshire was sparse. I turned off onto Pico and followed it down toward the sea, then turned north on the highway.

A yellow miasma of smog left over from the day before floated above the coast and out over the water. The morning light that filtered through it was unkind to Topanga Court. With the broken cliff and the earth slide rising behind it, it looked like an abandoned mining settlement, a ghost town dominated by a pile of slag.

Remembering that Harold had a gun and the will to use it, I parked my car a couple of hundred feet up the highway. On the way back, I passed a carful of children parked on the shoulder. They were sitting in an old Cadillac with a Texas license and fenders like crumpled wings.

A sticker on the rear bumper of the Cadillac read, “Honk if you love Jesus.” The children’s dark eyes looked out at me in solemn question. Was this the promised land?

Gloria’s green Falcon was standing under a carport at the rear of Topanga Court. Its license plate, caked with what looked like carefully hand-molded mud, was illegible. I moved around the building to the front. There was a light inside and, stitched among the sounds of highway traffic, I could hear the murmur of voices.

I tried the front door. It was locked. Then there were footsteps, and Mrs. Mungan looked out at me through the glass pane. If the place resembled a ghost town, she looked like a buried miner who had struggled up for one last glimpse of daylight.

She unlocked the door and stepped outside. The bell jangled harshly over her head. I could smell whisky on her, but her eyes were cold sober.

“You got my message, did you?”

“Yes.” I thanked her.

“You took long enough to get here. I’ve had a hard time holding Gloria. She’s scared.”

“She has some reason to be. She’s been involved in a kidnapping.”

“She says not. She claims she hasn’t set eyes on Laurel.”

“May I talk to her directly, Mrs. Mungan?”

“Yes. I want you to. Why do you think I called you?” She peered up at the yellow sky. “I realize we’re in trouble.”

Gloria was waiting in the room behind the archway. She stood up when I came in, raising her clenched hands to the level of her breast, as though I might attack her physically.

“Good morning, Gloria.”

“Good morning,” her dubious mouth said.

She had lost her cheerfulness and her looks together. She was one of those girls who were almost pretty when they were feeling good, and almost ugly when they were depressed. She turned to her mother, scowling with apprehension:

“Martie? Could I please talk to him in private?”

“But you’ve already told me everything.” The older woman looked at her suspiciously. “Or haven’t you?”

“Certainly I have, but that’s not the point. I’m embarrassed.”

Mrs. Mungan retreated, closing a door behind her. Gloria turned to me:

“My mother means well, but she’s got so many problems of her own, particularly since my father walked out on us. I’ve really been mothering Martie since I was about twelve. Her problems always loomed so large that I never had time to wonder if I had problems, let alone do anything about them.”

This came out in an emotional rush, but the emotion dissipated as she spoke, and the words slowed. I didn’t interrupt her. Every witness has his own way of creeping up on the truth. She said:

“It isn’t easy to grow up with an alcoholic mother. Martie’s been drinking for as long as I can remember – ever since Aunt Allie died. Do you know about Aunt Allie?”

“I know she was murdered. You told me about her yesterday morning, remember?”

“Was that just yesterday morning? It seems like about a year ago. Anyway, I know more about it now. Aunt Allie was shot by one of the men in her life – a man that she rejected.”

“How did you find that out?”

“Harold told me last night, in the motel.”

“In Redondo Beach?”

“No. We went to another motel after that. Harold didn’t trust the Doctor not to turn him in.”

“Is Harold still in the other motel?”

“Not any more,” she said.

“Where is he?”

She looked at me in distress. She had given her feelings to Harold and, damaged and disappointed as they were, they were hard for her to withdraw.

“Tell me where he is, Gloria. He’s the key to this whole business.”

“That isn’t true,” she said defensively. “Harold never kidnapped anybody. And he never shot anybody, either.”

“Who told you that?”

“He did, and I know he was telling the truth. He was just trying to bring Aunt Allie’s murderer to justice.”

“Do you mean Nelson Bagley?”

She nodded. “He was the one who did the actual shooting. But there were other people involved – people who covered it up.”

“Who were they, Gloria?”

“Harold made me promise not to tell. He said that he could take care of it himself.”

“Are we talking about Captain Somerville?” I said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But wasn’t that the point of bringing Bagley here, to catch Somerville on television?”

She turned and looked at the television set as if it might be able to answer for her. But it was dark and silent.

“If you know so much,” Gloria said, “why ask me about it?”

“All right, I’ll tell you. Somerville was your aunt’s lover. Bagley either had been or wanted to be. She rejected Bagley, and I think she took another lover. Bagley shot her. Somerville used his influence to keep the whole thing quiet, probably because he was afraid of being connected with it. But Harold Sherry’s been digging it up again. Is that the general picture?”

“You know more about it than I do.”

“But you spent considerable time with Harold last night. Didn’t he tell you anything? Didn’t he even explain how he got shot?”

“Laurel’s father tried to kill him, he said.”

“Why?”

“He said that Laurel’s family always hated him.”

“Did he tell you the reason?”

“No.”

“Or mention that he tried to kill Laurel’s father?”

“No.” But her eyes were wide and thoughtful, scanning the night she had just gone through with Harold and watching all its meanings change their shape.

“How did Harold explain the box of money?”

“He said he cashed in his securities. His father left him all those securities, stocks and bonds. He was planning to leave the country and take me along.”

I was getting tired of Harold’s lies and her reluctance to let go of them. “Look, Gloria. You called me and I came here on the supposition that you wanted to talk. There’s not much use in your holding back now.”

“I didn’t call you. My mother called you.”

“Anyway, here we are. And you’re not talking.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me where Harold is.”

“I don’t know where he is, and I don’t care.”

“Where did you leave him?”

“I didn’t leave him. He left me.”

“How could he do that? Did somebody come and pick him up?”

“That’s one thing I’m not going to tell you.”

But something in her voice told me, and something in the angle at which she held her head, as if she had been struck by a human hand, or was about to be.

“Was it another woman, Gloria?”

After a long silence, she said, “Yes. It was an older woman. Harold made me promise not to look, but I peeked out the motel window and saw her.”

“How old?”

“At least Martie’s age. She was driving a big Mercedes. Harold crawled into the trunk and rode that way.”

“With the money?”

“Yeah, he took the money with him.”

“And the gun?”

She nodded dismally. “What’s the matter with me?” she said. “Why do I always have to get the wrong ones?” She sat hunched over like a woman trying to give birth to a new life. “My cousin Tom was the one I really wanted. But the one he wanted was Laurel – ever since he was a little boy.”

After a moment’s delay, I was struck by the implications of what she said. “Since he was a little boy?”

“That’s right.”

I sat up straight. “Has Tom known Laurel that long?”

“Almost all his life,” Gloria said. “They used to play together when he was four or so, and she was three. After his mother died, he lost track of Laurel, and he didn’t see her again until a couple of years ago. Then she walked into the drugstore in Westwood one day and asked him to fill a prescription for her. Her name was on the prescription. It was a name that he had never forgotten and he sort of recognized her, too, from her baby days. But she was out of the store before he believed that she could actually be the same Laurel Lennox. Then he ran after her into the parking lot and told her who he was, and she remembered. It wasn’t more than two months before they were married.”

I had heard the end of the story before. “Who told you this, Gloria?”

“Tom did. Many times,” she added with a hint of bitterness. But the bitterness was mixed with more positive feelings, including a touch of bridesmaid’s sentimentality. The coming together of Laurel and her cousin was probably the main romantic event in her family’s history.

But I was interested in its unromantic aspects. “I wonder how Tom and Laurel happened to be playmates when they were children?”

“I don’t really know. I never thought about it. Maybe Martie will know.”

Gloria opened a door into the back passageway and called her mother, who came out walking in a mist of alcohol. Her long day’s drinking had already begun. But the eyes with which she searched her daughter’s face were as sharp as a fortune-teller’s.

“Is he taking you in?” She turned to me. “Do you have to take her in?”

“I don’t think so. But it would be a good idea if Gloria went to the police on her own and gave them a full account. Do you have any friends in the Sheriff’s department?”

The two women exchanged glances. “There’s Deputy Stillson,” the older one said. “He always liked you.”

“Will you go and talk to Deputy Stillson, Gloria?” I said.

She clenched her fists and shook them, sending a tremor through her entire body. “I don’t know what to say to him.”

“Just tell the truth – what you told me – and ask him to pass the word to Captain Dolan in Pacific Point. Dolan is in the Sheriff’s office there.”

Tears sprang into her eyes, as if her head had been subjected to sudden pressure. “I don’t want to tell on Harold.”

“You have to, Gloria. And you better do it before I bring him in.”

“You’re going to bring him in?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“I think so.”

“Where?” She stepped toward me eagerly.

“I can’t tell you.” I turned away from her and spoke to her mother: “Gloria’s just been saying that your nephew Tom used to play with Laurel Lennox when they were children. Do you know anything about that, Mrs. Mungan?”

“I have a vague memory of it. Why?”

“Do you know how the connection came about?”

“I can’t say I do.” She spoke brusquely to Gloria, “If you’re going to go and talk to a deputy sheriff, you better wash your face and change your clothes.”

Gloria gave her mother a defiant look, but turned submissively and left the room.

“I didn’t want her to hear this,” Mrs. Mungan said. “I don’t recall if I told you last night about my sister and Captain Benjamin Somerville.”

“No, I don’t think you did. What about Somerville, Mrs. Mungan?”

“He was the one that Allie fell for when she was in Bremerton. She thought for a while he was going to help her get a divorce and marry her. But then he turned around and married a girl half his age – a girl with high connections in the oil business. That girl was Elizabeth Lennox, Laurel’s aunt.”

She gave me a look of satisfaction, like a mathematician who had solved an equation. Then her face darkened, as if the product of the equation had saddened or frightened her.

“It all comes back to me now,” she said. “Allie was hard up for money after she left her husband in Bremerton and came back here with Tom. Mungan and I helped her out as much as we could. But she was having a hard time holding on to the house and living from day to day. So I suggested she should go to Somerville and get something from him. After all, he was the one who broke up her marriage. And, being in real estate, we knew that he’d just paid fifty thou for a big new house in Bel-Air. That was a lot of money in those days, back in the spring of 1945.

“Allie told me she went to his house, but he wasn’t there. He was at sea. His new little wife was at home, though, and Allie got some money from her, enough to carry her for a few weeks. Then she ran out again.

“Mungan and I couldn’t help her. In those late war years, we were just about losing our real-estate business, which we eventually did. So she went back to Somerville’s place again. This time his new wife wasn’t there, but her brother was – the same man we saw with Captain Somerville on TV Tuesday night. The brother and his wife hired her to do some babysitting for them, which Allie did right up to the day she died. That was how Tom and their little girl got together.”

She stood in silence, swaying a little, listening to the flat echoes of her story. But her eyes remained uncomprehending. She wasn’t a mathematician after all: more like an idiot savant who remembered all the details of her own and her sister’s life but couldn’t detect any over-all meaning in them.