The Moving Target

13

It was a two-hour drive at sixty from Los Angeles to Santa Teresa. The sun was past its zenith when I reached the Sampson house, declining toward the sea through scattered clouds that made moving shadows on the terraces. Felix admitted me and led me through the house to the living-room.

It was so big the heavy furniture seemed sparse. The wall that faced the sea was a single sheet of glass, with spun-glass curtains at each end like gathered lengths of light. Mrs. Sampson was a life-size doll propped in a padded chair beside the giant window. She was fully dressed, in lime-colored silk jersey. Her gold-shod feet rested on a footstool. Not a hair of her bleached head was out of place. The metal wheelchair was beside the door.

She was motionless and silent, making a deliberate tableau that verged on the ridiculous as the seconds passed. When the silence had twisted my arm for a quarter of a minute, “Very nice,” I said. “You were trying to get in touch with me?”

“You’ve taken your time about coming.” The voice of the still mahogany face was petulant.

“I can’t apologize. I’ve been working hard on your case, and I relayed my advice to you. Have you taken it?”

“In part. Come closer, Mr. Archer, and sit down. I’m perfectly harmless, really.” She indicated an armchair facing her own. I moved across the room to it.

“Which part?”

“All of me,” she said, with the carnivore smile. “My sting has been removed. But of course you mean the advice. Bert Graves is attending to the money now.”

“Has he seen the police?”

“Not yet. I want to discuss that with you. But first you’d better read the letter.”

She picked up an envelope from the coffee table beside her and tossed it to me. I took out the empty envelope’d found in Mrs. Estabrook’s drawer and compared the two. They differed in size and quality and the handwriting of the address. The only similarity was in the Santa Maria postmark. Sampson’s letter was addressed to Mrs. Sampson and had been collected at four thirty the previous afternoon.

“What time did you get it?”

“About nine o’clock last night. It’s special delivery, as you can see. Read it.”

The letter was a single sheet of plain white typewriter paper covered on one side with a blue-ink scrawl:

“It’s carefully done,” I said, “but not convincing. The reason he gives for not going to the bank himself sounds pretty weak. What does Graves think of it?”

“He pointed that out, too. He thinks it’s a put-up job. But, as he says, it’s my decision.”

“Are you absolutely certain this is your husband’s writing?”

“There’s no doubt about that. And did you notice the spelling of ‘utmost’? It’s one of his favorite words, and he always misspells it. He even pronounces it ‘outmost.’ Ralph isn’t a cultivated man.”

“The question is, is he a living one?”

Her level blue eyes turned to me with dislike. “Do you really think it’s as serious as that, Mr. Archer?”

“He doesn’t normally do business like this, does he?”

“I know nothing about his ways of doing business. Actually he retired from business when we were married. He bought and sold some ranches during the war, but he didn’t confide the details of the transactions to me.”

“Have any of his transactions been illegal?”

“I simply don’t know. He’s perfectly capable of it. It’s one of the things that ties my hands.”

“What are the others?”

“I don’t trust him,” she said thinly. “I have no way of knowing what he intends to do. With all that money he may be planning a trip around the world. Perhaps he intends to leave me. I don’t know.”

“I don’t either, but this is my guess. Your husband is being held for ransom. He wrote this letter from dictation with a gun at his head. If it was really a business deal, he’d have no reason to write to you. Graves has his power of attorney. But kidnappers prefer to deal with the victim’s wife. It makes things easier for them.”

“What am I going to do?” she said, in a strained voice.

“Follow instructions to the letter, except that you should bring in the police. Not in an obvious or public way, but so they’ll be standing by. You see, Mrs. Sampson, the easy way for kidnappers to dispose of a victim, after the money’s been collected, is to blow his brains out and leave him. He’s got to be found before that happens, and I can’t do it alone.”

“You seem very sure he’s been kidnapped. Have you found out anything you haven’t told me?”

“Quite a few things. They add up to the fact that your husband’s been keeping bad company.”

“I knew it.” Her face slipped out of control for an instant, sprang into curves of triumph. “He loves to pose as a family man and a good father, but he’s never fooled me.”

“Very bad company,” I said heavily. “As bad as there is in Los Angeles, and that’s as bad as there is.”

“He’s always had a taste for low companions–” She broke off suddenly, raising her eyes to the door behind me.

Miranda was standing there. Wearing a gray gabardine suit that emphasized her height, her copper hair swept up on top of her head, she looked like an older sister of the girl I’d met the day before. But her eyes were wide with fury, and her words came out in a rush.

“You dare to say that about my father! He may be dying, and all you care about is proving something against him.”

“Is that all I care about, dear?” The brown face was impassive again. Only the pale eyes moved, and the carefully painted mouth.

“Don’t ‘dear’ me.” Miranda strode toward us. Even in anger her body had the grace of a young cat. She showed her claws. “All you really care about is yourself. If I ever saw a narcissist, you’re one, Elaine. With your precious vanity, your primping, and your curling, and your special hairdresser, and your diet – it’s all for your own benefit, isn’t it? – so you can go on loving yourself. You surely don’t expect anyone else to love you.”

“Not you, certainly,” the older woman said coolly. “The thought repels me. But what do you care about, my dear? Alan Taggert, perhaps? I believe you spent last night with him, Miranda.”

“I didn’t. You lie.”

She was standing over her stepmother with her back to me. I was embarrassed, but I stayed where I was, balanced on the edge of my chair. I’d seen verbal cat fights end in violence more than once.

“Did Alan stand you up again? When is he going to marry you?”

“Never! I wouldn’t have him.” Miranda’s voice was breaking. She was too young and vulnerable to stand the quarrel for long. “It’s easy for you to make fun of me; you’ve never cared for anyone. You’re frigid, that’s what you are. My father wouldn’t be God knows where if you’d given him any love. You made him come out here to California, away from all his friends, and now you’ve driven him away from his own house.”

“Nonsense!” But Mrs. Sampson too was showing the strain. “I want you to think that over, Miranda. You’ve hated me from the beginning and sided against me whether I was right or wrong. Your brother was fairer to me–”

“You leave Bob out of this. I know you had him under your thumb, but it’s no credit to you. It pleased your vanity, didn’t it, to have your stepson dancing attendance?”

“That’s enough,” Mrs. Sampson said hoarsely. “Go away, you wretched girl.”

Miranda didn’t move, but she fell silent. I turned in my seat and looked out the window. Below the terraced lawn a stone walk led out to a pergola that stood on the edge of the bluff overlooking the sea. It was a small octagonal building with a conical roof, completely walled with glass. Through it and beyond it I could see the shifting colors of the ocean: green and white where the surf began, sage-honey-colored in the kelp zone further out, then deep-water blue to the deep-sky-blue horizon.

My eye was caught by an unexpected movement beyond the belt of white water where the waves began to break. A little black disk skimmed out along the surface, skipped from wave to wave, and sank out of sight. Another followed it a moment later. The source of the skimming objects was too near shore to be seen, hidden by the steep fall of the cliff. When six or seven had skipped along the water and disappeared, there were no more. Unwillingly I turned to the silent room.

Miranda was still standing above the other woman’s chair, but her posture had altered. Her body had come unstarched. One of her hands was lifted from her side toward her stepmother, not in anger. “I’m sorry, Elaine.” I couldn’t see her face.

Mrs. Sampson’s was visible. It was hard and clever. “You hurt me,” she said. “You can’t expect me to forgive you.”

“You hurt me too,” with a sobbing rhythm. “You mustn’t throw Alan in my face.”

“Then don’t throw yourself at his head. No, I don’t really mean that, and you know it. I think you ought to marry him. You want to, don’t you?”

“Yes. But you know how Father feels about it. Not to mention Alan.”

“You take care of Alan,” Mrs. Sampson said, almost gaily, “and I’ll take care of your father.”

“Will you really?”

“I give you my word. Now please go away, Miranda. I’m dreadfully tired.” She glanced at me. “All this must have been very instructive to Mr. Archer.”

“I beg your pardon?” I said. “I was admiring your private view.”

“Yes, lovely, isn’t it?” She called to Miranda, who had started out of the room: “Stay if you wish, dear. I’m going upstairs.”

She lifted a silver handbell that stood on the table beside her. Its sudden peal was like the bell at the end of a round. Miranda completed the picture by sitting down, with her face averted, in a far corner of the room.

“You’ve seen us at our worst,” Mrs. Sampson said to me. “Please don’t judge us by it. I’ve decided to do as you say.”

“Shall I call the police?”

“Bert Graves will do it. He’s familiar with all the Santa Teresa authorities. He should be here any minute.”

Mrs. Kromberg, the housekeeper, entered the room and wheeled the rubber-tired chair across the carpet. Almost effortlessly she raised Mrs. Sampson in her arms and placed her in the chair. They left the room in silence.

An electric motor murmured somewhere in the house as Mrs. Sampson ascended toward heaven.