Sleeping Beauty

chapter 39

I took the freeway south to Pacific Point, then switched to the old highway. Where it veered close to the ocean, I could see oil lying thin and rainbowed on the water, thick and black on the beaches.

Sandhill Lake was once again deserted. I could see no official cars and no Sheriff’s men around the hunting club. But I remembered something I had forgotten. There was an armed guard and a barrier at the entrance to El Rancho; and I couldn’t ask Harold’s mother to pass me in.

I asked the guard to call William Lennox’s house. A servant brought Connie Hapgood to the phone:

“Mr. Archer? I’ve been thinking about getting in touch with you. William appears to be missing.”

“For how long?”

“At least an hour. His bed was empty when I went to wake him with his Postum. All of the cars are here, which means that someone took him, doesn’t it?” Her voice rose high and cracked on the question.

“What do you mean took him?”

“I don’t know exactly what I mean. But I’m frightened, and I don’t frighten easily. Somehow this place seems terribly empty and dead.”

“He could have left under his own power. He almost did yesterday.”

“That worries me, too,” she said. “We have a very large acreage here. Some of it is rough country. His heart isn’t in very good shape, and he tends to overdo, and if he wandered off by himself–” She left the sentence unfinished.

“I’ll get there as soon as I can. That won’t be immediately, though.”

“Where are you going first?” Her voice was sharp with a kind of jealousy.

“I’m on the track of Laurel.”

I hung up before she could question me further. The guard lifted the barrier and waved me through.

I parked on Lorenzo Drive below Mrs. Sherry’s hedge and walked up her driveway. It wasn’t very steep, but it felt that way to the muscles of my legs and to my will. Harold had a gun and was probably in good enough shape to fire it.

I studied the windows for any gleam of metal or movement. But the only movements around the house were those of a pair of hummingbirds making aerobatic love.

I walked around to the back, as I had done the day before, and inspected the contents of the open garage. Very little seemed to have changed. The aging gray Mercedes was there, but this time the lid of the trunk was up and when I looked inside I found dried blood on the floor.

The back door of the house creaked. Mrs. Sherry appeared, moving rather stealthily toward the garage. She started when she saw me. But she had enough presence of mind to come up close to me before she spoke, and then to speak in a whisper.

“What are you doing here?”

“I want to talk to Harold.”

“Harold isn’t here. I told you that yesterday.”

“Then why are we whispering?”

She touched her mouth with her hand as if it had given her away. But she couldn’t bring herself to raise her voice.

“I’ve always had a very low voice,” she whispered.

She moved past me in an elaborately casual way and shut the lid of the trunk as noiselessly as possible. Her movements were tense and awkward, and interrupted by glances in my direction. Her eyes had grown deeper and brighter in the course of the night.

“Where is he, Mrs. Sherry?”

“I don’t know. We went into that subject yesterday, I believe. I gave you all the information I had – all there was.” She spread her hands to show me how clean they were, and how empty.

“But this isn’t yesterday. Harold is here with you, isn’t he?”

Her deep bright eyes made the rest of her look even more faded and forlorn. She didn’t answer my question directly:

“Some German philosopher – I think it was Nietzsche – said that history just goes on repeating itself – the same old story, like a worn-out record endlessly repeating itself. When I first heard that in college, it didn’t make sense to me. But now I think he was right. It’s the story of my own life.”

“Can you tell me what the story is?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what it is. That’s the strangest part of it. It seems to be repeating itself, and yet it always takes me by surprise.”

“It’s true of all of us, Mrs. Sherry. But not all of us have sons.”

“I wish I didn’t.” But then she rebuked her mouth with her stern fingers. “No, that isn’t true. I don’t wish Harold dead, or unborn. I know if I didn’t have him, I’d be even less of a person than I am.”

“How is he, Mrs. Sherry?”

“He seems feverish. I’ve been making up my mind to call a doctor. Do you think Dr. Brokaw would come out here from Long Beach?”

“You could ask him. But I think you’d do just as well to call a local doctor.”

Her face crumpled. “I can’t. The whole thing would be common knowledge in no time.”

“It’s going to become common knowledge anyway. It already is, except for the names and the places. The one positive thing you can do for Harold is to get him to talk before he’s forced to. If he’ll tell us where Laurel Russo is, it should count for something with the law.”

Mrs. Sherry’s face lengthened as if of its own weight, like dough. “He doesn’t know where she is. I’ve asked him.”

“He doesn’t know?”

“That’s correct. He says he hasn’t seen her for several days.”

“Then he’s lying.”

“He may be.” The admission came hard to her. “I don’t always know when Harold is lying.”

“Where is he?” I repeated.

“In the house. In his own room.”

“Is he armed?”

“He was,” she said. “But I took it away from him. He got quite excited in the course of the night – I think it was the fever. He was calling me names and cursing and waving the gun at me. So I took it away from him.” She sounded ashamed, as if in some way she had defrauded Harold of his manhood.

“What did you do with the gun?”

“I unloaded it and put it away in my closet. I put the shells in another place, in the laundry hamper in my bathroom.”

“You acted wisely. Now will you let me talk to him?”

The shadow of imminent loss fell across her face, dulling her eyes. “Harold will never forgive me.”

“Worse things could happen. There’s no future in the present situation, Mrs. Sherry. I’m surprised the county police aren’t here now. And when they do get here you’re going to be in trouble yourself, for harboring a fugitive.”

“But I’m his mother.”

“Then let me talk to him. And while I’m doing that you better call your doctor. Don’t you have one in the neighborhood?”

“There’s Dr. Langdale. He lives in El Rancho.”

She took me to the back door and let me into the kitchen. A pan of burned bacon was smoking on the electric stove. She lifted it and burned her hand and dropped it. It was a day when nothing was going right for Mrs. Sherry.

While she was running cold water on her hand, her son called from somewhere in the house:

“What’s going on out there? Mother?” He sounded angry and frightened.

“I’m coming,” she said in a voice that was probably too low to be heard by him.

She led me quietly through the house to the door of his room, made a sign for me to wait, and went in.

“What is this?” I heard him say. “I thought you were making breakfast.”

“I was. I burned my hand.”

“Is that what it was? I thought I heard you talking to somebody.”

There was a silence in the room. I could hear one of them breathing.

“There is someone here,” she said at last. “A man in the hall wants to talk to you.”

“What are you trying to do to me?”

He hopped on one foot to the door, swung it wide, and saw me. There was a bloody bandage on his leg, with the pajama leg cut off above it. His hair hung down in his hot eyes.

“Who are you? I don’t know you.”

“My name is Archer. I’m a private detective.”

“What do you want?”

“I want Laurel.”

He turned on his mother once again, as if she was the source of his whole troubled life. “Was this your idea, you rotten old fool?”

She bowed her head as if she was accustomed to such epithets. “You mustn’t talk to me like that, Harold. I’m your mother.”

“Then why don’t you act like it?”

I put my hand on his chest – his heart was beating wildly – and I pushed him backward into the room. He sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed.

“Harold and I have things to discuss,” I said to Mrs. Sherry. “It’ll be easier for you if you don’t listen in. Easier for all of us.”

She gave Harold her look of unbearable loss and moved past me toward the door.

“One thing before you go,” I said to her. “Where’s the box of money?”

“I put it in my closet.” She added in a flustered voice, “I wasn’t intending to keep it, you understand. Do you want me to get it?”

“Leave it where it is for now. It might give you a little something to bargain with.”

She looked at me without comprehension. There had been too many demands on her understanding. Harold was watching us like a spectator at a ping-pong match on which he had bet heavily and was losing.

“That’s my money you’re talking about,” he said. “I got that money the hard way.”

“You seem to do everything the hard way, Harold. If I had your percentages, I’d start looking for a little advice.”

“And how much is that going to cost me?”

“Nothing. I already have a client. His name is Tom Russo. But what you’ve done to Russo’s wife may cost you the rest of your life.”

He looked up at me in fear. “I didn’t do anything to her. I haven’t even seen her this week.”

“That’s the truth,” his mother said. “He said the same thing to me.”

“I heard you, Mrs. Sherry. Now could I possibly have a few minutes alone with Harold? The police will be turning up here any time now. The first thing they’ll want to know is where Laurel is. If he can tell them, they may be prepared to forget some things.”

“I don’t know where Laurel is. Isn’t that true, Mother?”

“Yes.” She moved protectively between us. “Harold would never do anything to Laurel. He’s always adored her.”

“That’s right, I’ve always adored her.”

I sensed what was happening. Mother and son were picking up on a dialogue which had probably been going on for fifteen years and become as unreal and powerful as a dream. And I was cast in the third role in this dream play – the punitive father who had gone to live with another woman but returned to haunt them.