The Chill

Chapter 3

We parked our cars at the top of the access lane, and I persuaded Alex to stay in his, out of sight. Shearwater Beach turned out to be a kind of expensive slum where several dozen cottages stood in a row. The changing blue reflection of the sea glared through the narrow gaps between them. Beyond their peaked rooftops, out over the water, a tern circled on flashing wings, looking for fish.

Number seventeen needed paint, and leaned on its pilings like a man on crutches. I knocked on the scabbed gray door. Slowly, like bodies being dragged, footsteps approached the other side. The bearded man opened it.

He was a man of fifty or so wearing an open-necked black shirt from which his head jutted like weathered stone. The sunlight struck mica glints from his eyes. The fingers with which he was holding the edge of the door were bitten down to the quick. He saw me looking at them and curled them into a fist.

“I’m searching for a missing girl, Mr. Begley.” I had decided on the direct approach. “She may have met with foul play and if she did, you may have been one of the last people who saw her alive.”

He rubbed the side of his face with his clenched knuckles. His face bore marks of old trouble, some of them done by hand: faintly quilted patches around the eyes, a thin scar on his temple divided like a miniature ruler by stitch-marks. Old trouble and the promise of further trouble.

“You must be crazy. I don’t even know any girls.”

“You know me,” a woman said behind him.

She appeared at his shoulder and leaned on him, waiting for somebody to second the self-administered flattery. She was about Begley’s age, and may have been older. Her body was very assertive in shorts and a halter. Frizzled by repeated dyeings and bleachings, her hair stuck up on her head like a yellow fright wig. Between their deep blue artificial shadows, her eyes were the color of gin.

“I’m very much afraid that you must be mistaken,” she said to me with a cultivated Eastern-seaboard accent which lapsed immediately. “I swear by all that’s holy that Chuck had nothing to do with any girl. He’s been too busy looking after little old me.” She draped a plump white arm across the back of his neck. “Haven’t you, darling?”

Begley was immobilized between the woman and me. I showed him Fargo’s glossy print of the honeymooners.

“You know this girl, don’t you? Her name, her married name, is Dolly Kincaid.”

“I never heard of her in my life.”

“Witnesses tell me different. They say you went to see her at the Surf House three weeks ago this coming Sunday. You saw this picture of her in the paper and ordered a copy of it from the photographer at the Surf House.”

The woman tightened her arm around his neck, more like a wrestling partner than a lover. “Who is she, Chuck?”

“I have no idea.” But he muttered to himself: “So it’s started all over again.”

“What has started all over again?”

She was stealing my lines. “Could I please talk to Mr. Begley alone?”

“He has no secrets from me.” She looked up at him proudly, with a wilted edge of anxiety on her pride. “Have you, darling? We’re going to be married, aren’t we, darling?”

“Could you stop calling me darling? Just for five minutes? Please?”

She backed away from him, ready to cry, her downturned red mouth making a lugubrious clown face.

“Please go inside,” he said. “Let me talk to the man.”

“This is my place. I have a right to know what goes on in my own place.”

“Sure you do, Madge. But I have squatter’s privileges, at least. Go in and drink some coffee.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No. Of course I’m not.” But there was resignation in his voice. “Beat it, eh, like a good girl?”

His last word seemed to mollify her. Dawdling and turning, she disappeared down the hallway. Begley closed the door and leaned on it.

“Now you call tell me the truth,” I said.

“All right, so I went to see her at the hotel. It was a stupid impulse. It doesn’t make me a murderer.”

“Nobody suggested that, except you.”

“I thought I’d save you the trouble.” He spread out his arms as if for instant crucifixion. “You’re the local law, I gather.”

“I’m working with them,” I said hopefully. “My name is Archer. You haven’t explained why you went to see Mrs. Kincaid. How well did you know her?”

“I didn’t know her at all.” He dropped his outspread arms in emphasis. The sensitive areas around his mouth were hidden by his beard, and I couldn’t tell what he was doing with them. His gray eyes were unrevealing. “I thought I knew her, but I didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought she might be my daughter. There was quite a resemblance to her in the newspaper picture, but not so much in the flesh. The mistake on my part was natural. I haven’t seen my daughter for so long.”

“What’s your daughter’s name?”

He hesitated. “Mary. Mary Begley. We haven’t been in touch for over ten years. I’ve been out of the country, on the other side of the world.” He made it sound as remote as the far side of the moon.

“Your daughter must have been quite young when you left.”

“Yeah. Ten or eleven.”

“And you must have been quite fond of her,” I said, “to order a picture just because it reminded you of her.”

“I was fond of her.”

“Why didn’t you go back for the picture then?”

He went into a long silence. I became aware of something impressive in the man, the untouchable still quality of an aging animal.

“I was afraid that Madge would be jealous,” he said. “I happen to be living on Madge.”

I suspected he was using the bald statement to tell a lie. But it may have come from a deeper source. Some men spend their lives looking for ways to punish themselves for having been born, and Begley had some of the stigmata of the trouble-prone. He said:

“What do you think happened to Mrs. Kincaid?” His question was cold and formal, disclaiming all interest in the answer to it.

“I was hoping you’d have some ideas on the subject. She’s been missing for nearly three weeks. I don’t like it. It’s true that girls are always disappearing, but not on their honeymoons – not when they love their husbands.”

“She loves hers, does she?”

“He thinks so. How was she feeling when you saw her? Was she depressed?”

“I wouldn’t say that. She was surprised to see me,”

“Because she hadn’t seen you for so long?”

He sneered at me hairily. “Don’t bother trying to trap me. I told you she wasn’t my daughter. She didn’t know me from Adam.”

“What did you find to talk about with her?”

“We didn’t talk.” He paused. “Maybe I asked her a few questions.”

“Such as?”

“Who her father was. Who her mother was. Where she came from. She said she came from Los Angeles. Her maiden name was Dolly something – I forget the name. Her parents were both dead. That’s about all.”

“It took you quite a while to get that much out of her.”

“I was only there five or ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”

“The desk clerk said an hour.”

“He made a mistake.”

“Or maybe you did, Mr. Begley. Time passes very rapidly sometimes.”

He clutched at this dubious excuse. “Maybe I did stay longer than I realized. I remember now, she wanted me to stay and meet her husband.” His eyes held steady, but they had taken on a faint lying sheen. “He didn’t come and didn’t come, so I left.”

“Did you suggest seeing her again?”

“No. She wasn’t that interested in my story.”

“You told her your story?”

“I told her about my daughter, naturally, just like I told you.”

“I don’t understand it. You say you were out of the country for ten years. Where?”

“In New Caledonia, mostly. I worked for a chrome mine there. They shut it down last spring and shipped us home.”

“And now you’re looking for your daughter?”

“I’d certainly like to put my hands on her.”

“So she can be a bridesmaid at your wedding?” I wanted to see how sharp a needle he would take.

He took this one without a word.

“What happened to your wife?”

“She died.” His eyes were no longer steady. “Look, do we have to go into all this? It’s bad enough losing your loved ones without having it raked up and pushed in your face.” I couldn’t tell if his self-pity was false: self-pity always is to some extent.

“It’s too bad you lost your family,” I said. “But what did you expect when you left the country for ten years?”

“It wasn’t my choice. How would you like to get shanghaied and not be able to get back?”

“Is that your story? It isn’t a likely one.”

“My story is wilder than that, but we won’t go into it. You wouldn’t believe me, anyway. Nobody else has.”

“You could always try me.”

“It would take all day. You’ve got better things to do than talk to me.”

“Name one.”

“You said there’s a young lady missing. Go and find her.”

“I was hoping you could help me. I still am hoping, Mr. Begley.”

He looked down at his feet. He was wearing huaraches. “I’ve told you all I know about her. I should never have gone to that hotel in the first place. Okay, so I made a mistake. You can’t hang a man for a little mistake in judgment.”

“You’ve mentioned murder once, and hanging once. I wonder why.”

“It was just a manner of speaking.” But the confidence was seeping out of him through the holes my needle had made. He said with a rising inflection: “You think I murdered her?”

“No. I do think this. Something happened between you, or something was said, that might explain why she left so suddenly. Give it some thought, will you?”

Slowly, perhaps involuntarily, he raised his head and looked up at the sun. Under his tilted beard his neck was pale and scrawny. It gave the impression that he was wearing the kind of mask Greek actors wore, covering him completely from my eyes.

“No. Nothing was said like that.”

“Was there any trouble between you?”

“No.”

“Why did she let you come to her room?”

“I guess she was interested in my story. I talked to her on the house phone, said she resembled my daughter. It was just a foolish impulse. I knew as soon as I saw her that she wasn’t.”

“Did you make arrangements to see her again?”

“No. I’d certainly like to.”

“Did you wait outside the hotel for her, or agree to meet her at the bus station?”

“I did not. What are you trying to nail me for? What do you want?”

“Just the truth. I’m not satisfied I’ve been getting it from you.”

He said in a sudden spurt of fury: “You’ve got as much as–” He began to regret the outburst before it was over, and swallowed the rest of the words.

But he turned his back on me and went inside, slamming the door. I waited for a little while, and gave up on him. I walked back along the sandy access lane to our cars.

The blonde woman, Madge Gerhardi, was sitting beside Alex in his red Porsche. He looked up with shining eyes.

“Mrs. Gerhardi has seen her. She’s seen Dolly.”

“With Begley?”

“No, not with him.” She opened the door and squeezed out of the little car. “It was at that garage that specializes in fixing foreign cars. I drive an MG myself, and I had it in for a lube job. The girl was there with an old woman. They went away together in an old brown Rolls. The girl was doing the driving.”

“Are you certain of the identification?” I showed her the picture again.

She nodded over it emphatically. “I’m certain, unless she has a twin. I noticed her because she was so stunning.”

“Do you know who the old woman was?”

“No, but the man at the garage ought to be able to tell you.” She gave us directions, and started to edge away. “I better get back to the house. I snuck out along the beach, and Chuck will be wondering where I am.”