Archer - The Chill Part 5

"The kind of work I do has to be done," I said a little defensively. "Mrs. Kincaid ran out on her husband, and some explanation is due him. Did she give any to you?"

Dean Sutherland put on her grim face. "She's not returning to him. She found out something on their wedding night so dreadful--"

Bradshaw raised his hand. "Wait a minute, Laura. The facts she divulged to you are in the nature of professional confidences. We certainly don't want this chap running back to her husband with them. The poor girl is frightened enough as it is."

"Frightened of her husband? I find that hard to believe," I said.

"She didn't pour out her heart to you," Laura Sutherland cried warmly. "Why do you suppose the poor child used a fake name? She was mortally afraid that he would track her down."

"You're being melodramatic, you know." Bradshaw's tone was indulgent. "The boy can't be as bad as all that."

"You didn't hear her, Brad. She told me things, as woman to woman, that I haven't even told you, and I don't intend to."

I said: "Perhaps she was lying."

"She most a.s.suredly was not! I know the truth when I hear it. And my advice to you is to go back to that husband of hers, wherever he is, and tell him that you haven't been able to find her. She'll be safer and happier if you do."

"She seems to be safe enough. She certainly isn't happy. I talked to her outside for a minute."

Bradshaw tilted his head in my direction. "What did she say?"

"Nothing sensational. She made no accusations against Kincaid. In fact she blamed herself for the breakup. She says she wants to go on with her education."

"Good."

"Are you going to let her stay here?"

Bradshaw nodded. "We've decided to overlook her little deception. We believe in giving young people a certain amount of leeway, so long as it doesn't impinge on the rights of others. She can stay, at least for the present, and continue to use her pseudonym if she likes." He added with dry academic humor: "'A rose by any other name,' you know."

"She's going to have her transcripts sent to us right away," Dean Sutherland said. "Apparently she's had two years of junior college and a semester at the university."

"What's she planning to study here?"

"Dolly is majoring in psychology. According to Professor Haggerty, she has a flair for it."

"How would Professor Haggerty know that?"

"She's Dolly's academic counselor. Apparently Dolly is deeply interested in criminal and abnormal psychology."

For some reason I thought of Chuck Begley's bearded head, with eyes opaque as a statue's. "When you were talking with Dolly, did she say anything about a man named Begley?"

"Begley?" They looked at each other and then at me. "Who," she asked, "is Begley?"

"It's possible he's her father. At any rate he had something to do with her leaving her husband. Incidentally I wouldn't put too much stock in her husband's Asiatic perversions or whatever it was she accused him of. He's a clean boy, and he respects her."

"You're ent.i.tled to your opinion," Laura Sutherland said, as though I wasn't. "But please don't act on it precipitately. Dolly is a sensitive young woman, and something has happened to shake her very deeply. You'll be doing them both a service by keeping them apart."

"I agree," Bradshaw said solemnly.

"The trouble is, I'm being paid to bring them together. But I'll think about it, and talk it over with Alex."

chapter 6.

In the parking lot behind the building Professor Helen Haggerty was sitting at the wheel of the new black Thunderbird convertible. She had put the top down and parked it beside my car, as if for contrast. The late afternoon sunlight slanting across the foothills glinted on her hair and eyes and teeth.

"h.e.l.lo again."

"h.e.l.lo again," I said. "Are you waiting for me?"

"Only if you're left-handed."

"I'm ambidextrous."

"You would be. You threw me a bit of a curve just now."

"I did?"

"I know who you are." She patted a folded newspaper on the leather seat beside her. The visible headline said: "Mrs. Perrine Acquitted." Helen Haggerty said: "I think it's very exciting. The paper credits you with getting her off. But it's not quite clear how you did it."

"I simply told the truth, and evidently the jury believed me. At the time the alleged larceny was committed here in Pacffic Point, I had Mrs. Perrine under close surveillance in Oakland."

"What for? Another larceny?"

"It wouldn't be fair to say."

She made a mock-sorrowful mouth, which fitted the lines of her face too well. "All the interesting facts are confidential. But I happen to be checked out for security. In fact my father is a policeman. So get in and tell me all about Mrs. Perrine."

"I can't do that."

"Or I have a better idea," she said with her bright unnatural smile. "Why don't you come over to my house for a drink?"

"I'm sorry, I have work to do."

"Detective work?"

"Call it that."

"Come _on_." With a subtle movement, her body joined in the invitation. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. You don't want to be a dull boy and make me feel rejected. Besides, we have things to talk about."

"The Perrine case is over. Nothing could interest me less."

"It was the Dorothy Smith case I had in mind. Isn't that why you're on campus?"

"Who told you that?"

"The grapevine. Colleges have the most marvelously efficient grapevines, second only to penitentiaries."

"Are you familiar with penitentiaries?"

"Not intimately. But I wasn't lying when I told you my father was a policeman." A gray pinched expression touched her face. She covered it over with another smile. "We do have things in common. Why don't you come along?"

"All right. I'll follow you. It will save you driving me back."

"Wonderful."

She drove as rapidly as she operated, with a jerky nervousness and a total disregard for the rules of the road. Fortunately the campus was almost empty of cars and people. Diminished by the foothills and by their own long shadows, the buildings resembled a movie lot which had shut down for the night.

She lived back of Foothill Drive in a hillside house made out of aluminum and gla.s.s and black enameled steel. The nearest rooftop floated among the scrub oaks a quarter of a mile down the slope. You could stand in the living room by the central fireplace and see the blue mountains rising up on one side, the gray ocean falling away on the other. The offsh.o.r.e fog was pus.h.i.+ng in to the land.

"Do you like my little eyrie?"

"Very much,"

"It isn't really mine, alas. I'm only renting at present, though I have hopes. Sit down. What will you drink? I'm going to have a tonic."

"That will do nicely."

The polished tile floor was almost bare of furniture. I strolled around the large room, pausing by one of the gla.s.s walls to look out. A wild pigeon lay on the patio with its iridescent neck broken. Its faint spreadeagled image outlined in dust showed where it had flown against the gla.s.s.

I sat on a rope chair which probably belonged on the patio. Helen Haggerty brought our drinks and disposed herself on a canvas chaise, where the sunlight would catch her hair again, and s.h.i.+ne on her polished brown legs.

"I'm really just camping for now," she said. "I haven't sent for my furniture, because I don't know if I want it around me any more. I may just leave it in storage and start all over, and to h.e.l.l with the history. Do you think that's a good idea, Curveball Lefty Lew?"

"Call me anything, I don't mind. I'd have to know the history."

"Ha. You never will." She looked at me sternly for a minute, and sipped her drink. "You might as well call me Helen."

"All right, Helen."

"You make it sound so formal. I'm not a formal person, and neither are you. Why should we be formal with each other?"

"You live in a gla.s.s house, for one thing," I said smiling. "I take it you haven't been in it long."

"A month. Less than a month. It seems longer. You're the first really interesting man I've met since I arrived here."

I dodged the compliment. "Where did you live before?"

"Here and there. There and here. We academic people are such nomads. It doesn't suit me. I'd like to settle down permanently. I'm getting old."

"It doesn't show."

"You're being gallant. Old for a woman, I mean. Men never grow old."

Now that she had me where she apparently wanted me, she wasn't crowding so hard, but she was working. I wished that she would stop, because I liked her. I downed my drink. She brought me a second tonic with all the speed and efficiency of a c.o.c.ktail waitress. I couldn't get rid of the dismal feeling that each of us was there to use the other.

With the second tonic she let me look down her dress. She was smooth and brown as far as I could see. She arranged herself on the chaise with one hip up, so that I could admire the curve. The sun, in its final yellow fiareup before setting, took possession of the room.

"Shall I pull the drapes?" she said.

"Don't bother for me. It'll be down soon. You were going to tell me about Dolly Kincaid alias Dorothy Smith."

"Was I?"

"You brought the subject of her up. I understand you're her academic counselor."

"And that's why you're interested in me, n'est-ce pas7' Her tone was mocking.

"I was interested in you before I knew of your connection with Dolly."

"Really?"

"Really. Here I am to prove it."

"Here you are because I lured you with the magic words Dorothy Smith. What's she doing on this campus anyway?" She sounded almost jealous of the girl.

"I was sort of hoping you knew the answer to that."

"Don't you?"

"Dolly gives confficting stories, probably derived from romantic fiction--"

"I don't think so," she said. "She's a romantic all right--one of these romantic idealists who are always a jump or two behind her unconscious mind. I ought to know, I used to be one myself. But I also think she has some real trouble--appalling trouble."

"What was her story to you?"

"It was no story. It was the lousy truth. We'll come to it later on, if you're a good boy." She stirred like an odalisque in the dying light, and recrossed her polished legs. "How brave are you, Mr. Lew?"

"Men don't talk about how brave they are."

"You're full of copybook maxims," she said with some malice. "I want a serious answer."

"You could always try me."

"I may at that. I have a use--I mean, I need a man."

"Is that a proposal, or a business proposition, or are you thinking about some third party?"

"You're the man I have in mind. What would you say if I told you that I'm likely to be killed this weekend?"

"I'd advise you to go away for the weekend."

She leaned sideways toward me. Her breast hardly sagged. "Will you take me?"