Archer - The Chill Part 3

chapter 4.

A mechanic lying face up on a creeper rolled out from under the raised front end of a Jaguar sedan. I saw when he stood up that he was a plump Mediterranean type with "Mario" embroidered on his coverall. He nodded enthusiastically when I asked him about the old Rolls and the old lady.

"That's Mrs. Bradshaw. I been looking after her Rolls for the last twelve years, ever since she bought it. It's running as good now as the day she bought it." He looked at his greasy hands with some satisfaction, like a surgeon recalling a series of difficult but successful operations. "Some of the girls she gets to drive her don't know how to treat a good car."

"Do you know the girl who's driving her at present?"

"I don't know her name. Mrs. Bradshaw has quite a turnover with her drivers. She gets them from the college mostly. Her son is Dean at the college, and he won't let the old lady do her own driving. She's crippled with rheumatics, and I think she was in a smashup at one time."

I cut in on Mario's complicated explanations and showed him the print. "This girl?"

"Yeah. She was here with Mrs. Bradshaw the other day. She's a new one. Like I said, Mrs. Bradshaw has quite a turnover. She likes to have her own way, and these college girls don't take orders too well. Personally I always. .h.i.t it off with Mrs. Bradshaw--"

"Where does she live?"

Alex sounded anxious, and Mario was slightly infected by his anxiety. "What is it you want with her?"

"She's not the one I'm interested in. The girl is my wife."

"You and her are on the outs?"

"I don't know. I have to talk to her."

Mario looked up at the high corrugated-iron roof of the garage. "My wife divorced me a couple years ago. I been putting on weight ever since. A man don't have the same motivation."

"Where does Mrs. Bradshaw live?" I said.

"Foothill Drive, not too far from here. Take the first cross street to the right, it runs into it. You can look up the house number in the phone book, on the desk there. It's in her son's name, Roy Bradshaw."

I thanked him. He lay down on the creeper and slid back under the Jaguar. The directory was under the telephone on top of the battered desk which stood in a corner. I found the listing: "Roy Bradshaw, 311 Foothill Drive."

"We could phone from here," Alex said.

"It's always better in person."

In spite of the housing tracts and the smokeless industries proliferating around it, Pacific Point had kept its ident.i.ty. Foothill Drive was lined with trees, and had a dusty changeless quality. Settled old families still lived here behind mortised walls that had resisted earthquakes, or hedges that had outlived generations of gardeners.

The towering cypress hedge of 311 masked the house completely from the road. I turned in through the open iron gates with Alex following me. We pa.s.sed a small white gatehouse with a green door and green shutters, rounded a bend in the driveway, and came in sight of the white Colonial house.

A woman with a wide straw hat tied under her chin was kneeling shoulder deep among the flowers in front of it. She had a pair of clippers in her gloved hands. They snicked in the silence when our engines died.

She rose c.u.mbrously to her feet and came toward us, tucking wisps of gray hair under her hat. She was just an old lady in dirty tennis shoes but her body, indeterminate in a loose blue smock, carried itself with heavy authority, as if it recalled that it had once been powerful or handsome. The architecture of her face had collapsed under the weight of flesh and years. Still her black eyes were alert, like unexpected animal or bird life in the ruins of a building.

"Mrs. Bradshaw?" Alex said eagerly.

"I am Mrs. Bradshaw. What do you gentlemen want? I'm very busy, as you can see." She flourished the clippers. "I never trust anyone else to clip my roses. And still they die, poor things." Regret rustled in her voice.

"They look very beautiful to me," I said in an encouraging way. "Mr. Kincaid and I hate to bother you. But he seems to have misplaced his wife, and we have reason to think she's working for you."

"For me? I employ no one but my Spanish couple. My son," she added with a trace of pride, "keeps me to a strict budget."

"Don't you have a girl driving for you?"

She smiled. "I completely forgot about her. She's just on a part-time basis. What's her name? Molly? Dolly? I never can remember the girls' names."

"Dolly," I said, and showed her the print. "Is this Dolly?"

She removed one gardening glove to take the picture. Her hand was gnarled by arthritis.

"I do believe it is. But she said nothing to me about being married. I'd never have hired her if I'd known, it makes for too much involvement. I like to take my little drives on schedule."

Alex interrupted her rather garrulous chatter. "Where is she now?"

"I couldn't say. She's done her day's stint for me. She may have walked over to the college, or she may be in the gatehouse. I let my girls use the gatehouse. Sometimes they abuse the privilege, but so far this one hasn't." She gave Alex a sharp black glance. "I hope she won't begin to, now that you've turned up."

"I don't expect she'll be going on--"

I cut him short. "Go and see if she's in the gatehouse." I turned back to Mrs. Bradshaw: "How long has she been with you?"

"About two weeks. The semester started two weeks ago."

"Is she attending the college?"

"Yes. I get all my girls from there, except when I have to have a regular attendant, as I did when my son was abroad last summer. I hope I don't lose Dolly. She's brighter than most of them. But if she goes I suppose there are always others. You'll realize, when you've lived as long as I have, that the young ones leave the old ones . . ."

She turned to her roses, glowing red and yellow in the sunlight. She seemed to be looking for some way to finish the thought. None occurred to her. I said: "What name is she using? What surname?"

"I'm afraid I don't remember. I call them by their first names. My son could tell you."

"Is he here?"

"Roy is at the college. He happens to be the Dean there."

"Is it far from here?"

"You can see it from where you stand."

Her arthritic hand curled on my elbow and turned me gently. Through a gap in the trees I could make out the metal cupola of a small observatory. The old lady spoke close to my ear, in a gossipy way: "What happened between your young friend and his wife?"

"They came here on their honeymoon and she walked out on him. He's trying to find out why."

"What a strange thing to do," she said. "I'd never have acted like that on my honeymoon, I had too much respect for my husband. But girls are different nowadays, aren't they? Loyalty and respect mean nothing to them. Are you married, young man?"

"I have been."

"I see. Are you the boy's father?"

"No. My name is Archer. I'm a private detective."

"Really? What do you make of all this?" She gestured vaguely with her clippers toward the gatehouse.

"Nothing so far. She may have left him on account of a girlish whim. Or she may have had deep dark reasons. All I can do is ask her. By the way, Mrs. Bradshaw, have you ever heard her mention a man named Begley?"

"Begley?"

"He's a big man with a short gray beard. He visited her at the Surf House the day she left her husband. There's some possibility that he's her father."

She wet her seamed lips with the purple tip of her tongue. "She didn't mention him to me. I don't encourage the girls to unburden themselves to me. Perhaps I should."

"What kind of a mood has Dolly been in lately?"

"It's hard to say. She's always the same. Quiet. She thinks her own thoughts."

Alex appeared, walking rapidly around the bend in the driveway. His face was bright.

"It's her definitely. I found her things in the closet."

"You weren't authorized to go in there," Mrs. Bradshaw said.

"It's her house, isn't it?"

"It happens to be mine."

"But she has the use of it, hasn't she?"

"She does. You don't."

A quarrel with Dolly's employer was the last thing Alex needed. I stepped between them, turned him around, and walked him away from trouble for the second time.

"Get lost," I said when he was in his car. "You're in my way."

"But I have to see her."

"You'll see her. Go and check in at the Mariner's Rest Motel for both of us. It's on the strip between here and the Surf House--"

"I know where it is. But what about Dolly?"

"I'm going over to the college to talk to her. I'll bring her back with me, if she's willing."

"Why can't I go along to the college?" he said like a spoiled child.

"Because I don't want you to. Dolly has a separate life of her own. You may not like it, but you have no right to jump in and wreck it for her. I'll see you at the motel."

He drove away rapidly and angrily, spinning the wheels of his car. Mrs. Bradshaw was back among her roses. I asked her very politely for permission to examine Dolly's things. She said that would have to be up to Dolly.

chapter 5.

The campus was an oasis of vivid green under the brown September foothills. Most of the buildings were new and very modern, ornamented with pierced concrete screens and semi-tropical plantings. A barefoot boy sitting under a roadside palm took time out from his Salinger to show me where the Administration Building was.

I parked in the lot behind it, among a scattering of transportation clunks with faculty stickers. A new black Thunderbird stood out among them. It was late Friday afternoon by now, and the long collegiate weekend was setting in. The gla.s.s information booth opposite the entrance of the building was empty. The corridors were practically deserted.

I found the Dean's office without much trouble. The paneled anteroom was furnished with convertible Danish pieces, and with a blonde secretary who sat at a typewriter guarding the closed inner door. She had a pale thin face, strained blue eyes that had worked too long under fluorescent light, and a suspicious voice: "Can I help you, sir?"

"I'd like to see the Dean."

"Dean Bradshaw is very busy, I'm afraid. Perhaps I can a.s.sist you?"

"Perhaps. I'm trying to get in touch with one of your girl students. Her name is Dolly McGee, or Dolly Kincaid."

"Which?" she said with a little gasp of irritation.

"Her maiden name is McGee, her married name is Kincaid. I don't know which she's using."

"Are you a parent?" she said delicately.

"No. I'm not her father. But I have good reason for wanting to see her."

She looked at me as if I was a self-confessed kingpin in the white slave traffic. "We have a policy of not giving out information about students, except to parents."

"What about husbands?"

"You're her husband?"

"I represent her husband. I think you'd better let me talk to the Dean about her."

"I can't do that," she said in a final tone. "Dean Bradshaw is in conference with the department heads. About what do you wish to see Miss McGee?"

"It's a private matter."

"I see."

We had reached an impa.s.se. I said in the hope of making her smile: "We have a policy of not giving out information."

She looked insulted, and went back to her typewriter. I stood and waited. Voices rose and fell behind the door of the inner office. "Budget" was the word I caught most frequently. After a while the secretary said: "I suppose you could try Dean Sutherland, if she's in. Dean Sutherland is Dean of Women. Her office is just across the hail."

Its door was standing open. The woman in it was the wellscrubbed ageless type who looks old in her twenties and young in her forties. She wore her brown hair rolled in a bun at the back of her neck. Her only concession to glamour was a thin pink line of lipstick accenting her straight mouth.