“There were men in her life?”
“She was attractive to men. You saw her, even as she is.” He gulped. “Don’t get me wrong. Ginnie was never a bad girl. She was a little headstrong, and I made mistakes. That’s why I blame myself.”
“What sort of mistakes, Mr. Green?”
“All the usual ones, and some I made up on my own.” His voice was bitter. “Ginnie didn’t have a mother, you see. Her mother left me years ago, and it was as much my fault as hers. I tried to bring her up myself. I didn’t give her proper supervision. I run a restaurant in town, and I don’t get home nights till after midnight. Ginnie was pretty much on her own since she was in grade school. We got along fine when I was there, but I usually wasn’t there.
“The worst mistake I made was letting her work in the restaurant over the weekends. That started about a year ago. She wanted the money for clothes, and I thought the discipline would be good for her. I thought I could keep an eye on her, you know. But it didn’t work out. She grew up too fast, and the night work played hell with her studies. I finally got the word from the school authorities. I fired her a couple of months ago, but I guess it was too late. We haven’t been getting along too well since then. Mr. Connor said she resented my indecision, that I gave her too much responsibility and then took it away again.”
“You’ve talked her over with Connor?”
“More than once, including last night. He was her academic counselor, and he was concerned about her grades. We both were. Ginnie finally pulled through, after all, thanks to him. She was going to graduate. Not that it matters now, of course.” Green was silent for a time. The sea expanded below us like a second blue dawn. I could hear the roar of the highway. Green touched my elbow again, as if he needed human contact.
“I oughtn’t to’ve blown my top at Connor. He’s a decent boy, he means well. He gave my daughter hours of free tuition this last month. And he’s got troubles of his own, like he said.”
“What troubles?”
“I happen to know his wife left him, same as mine. I shouldn’t have borne down so hard on him. I have a lousy temper, always have had.” He hesitated, then blurted out as if he had found a confessor: “I said a terrible thing to Ginnie at supper last night. She always has supper with me at the restaurant. I said if she wasn’t home when I got home last night that I’d wring her neck.”
“And she wasn’t home,” I said. And somebody wrung her neck, I didn’t say.
4.
The light at the highway was red. I glanced at Green. Tear tracks glistened like snail tracks on his face.
“Tell me what happened last night.”
“There isn’t anything much to tell,” he said. “I got to the house about twelve-thirty, and, like you said, she wasn’t home. So I called Al Brocco!s house. He’s my night cook, and I knew his youngest daughter Alice was at the moonlight party on the beach. Alioe was home all right.”
“Did you talk to Alice?”
“She was in bed asleep. Al woke her up, but I didn’t talk to her. She told him she didn’t know where Ginnie was. I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. Finally I got up and called Mr. Connor. That was about one-thirty. I thought I should get in touch with the authorities, but he said no, Ginnie had enough black marks against her already. He came over to the house and we waited for a while and then we went down to Cavern Beach. There was no trace of her. I said it was time to call in the authorities, and he agreed. We went to his beach house, because it was nearer, and called the sheriff’s office from there. We went back to the beach with a couple of flashlights and went through the caves. He stayed with me all night. I give him that.”
“Where are these caves?”
“We’ll pass them in a minute. I’ll show you if you want. But there’s nothing in any of the three of them.” Nothing but shadows and empty beer cans, discarded contraceptives, the odor of rotting kelp. I got sand in my shoes and sweat under my collar. The sun dazzled my eyes when I half-walked, half-crawled, from the last of the caves.
Green was waiting beside a heap of ashes.
“This is where they had the wienie roast,” he said.
I kicked the ashes. A half-burned sausage rolled along the sand. Sand fleas hopped in the sun like fat on a griddle. Green and I faced each other over the dead fire. He looked out to sea. A seal’s face floated like a small black nose cons beyond the breakers. Farther out a water skier slid between unfolding wings of spray.
Away up the beach two people were walking toward us. They were small and lonely and distinct as Chirico figures in the long white distance.
Green squinted against the sun. Red-rimmed or not, his eyes were good. “I believe that’s Mr. Connor. I wonder who the woman is with him.”
They were walking as close as lovers, just above the white margin of the surf. They pulled apart when they noticed us, but they were still holding hands as they approached.
“It’s Mrs. Connor,” Green said in a low voice.
“I thought you said she left him.”
“That’s what he told me last night She took off on him a couple of weeks ago, couldn’t stand a high-school teacher’s hours. She must have changed her mind.”
She looked as though she had a mind to change. She was a hard-faced blonde who walked like a man. A certain amount of style took the curse off her stiff angularity. She had on a madras shirt, mannishly cut, and a pair of black Capri pants that hugged her long, slim legs. She had good legs.
Connor looked at us in complex embarrassment. “I thought it was you from a distance, Mr. Green. I don’t believe you know my wife.”
“I’ve seen her in my place of business.” He explained to the woman: “I run the Highway Restaurant in town.”
“How do you do,” she said aloofly, then added in an entirely different voice: “You’re Virginia’s father, aren’t you? I’m so sorry.”
The words sounded queer. Perhaps it was the surroundings: the ashes on the beach, the entrances to the caves, the sea, and the empty sky which dwarfed us all. Green answered her solemnly.
“Thank you, ma’am. Mr. Connor was a strong right arm to me last night, I can tell you.” He was apologizing. And Connor responded:
“Why don’t you come to our place for a drink? It’s just down the beach. You look as if you could use one, Mr. Green. You, too,” he said to me. “I don’t believe I know your name.”
“Archer. Lew Archer.”
He gave me a hard hand. His wife interposed: “I’m sure Mr. Green and his friend won’t want to be bothered with us on a day like this. Besides, it isn’t even noon yet, Frank.”
She was the one who didn’t want to be bothered. We stood around for a minute, exchanging grim, nonsensical comments on the beauty of the day. Then she led Connor back in the direction they had come from. Private Property, her attitude seemed to say: Trespassers will be fresh-frozen.
I drove Green to the Highway Patrol station. He said that he was feeling better, and could make it home from there by himself. He thanked me profusely for being a friend in need to him, as he put it. He followed me to the door of the station, thanking me.
The dispatcher was cleaning her fingernails with an ivory-handled file. She glanced up eagerly.
“Did they catch him yet?”
“I was going to ask you the same question, Miss Brocco.”
“No such luck. But they’ll get him,” she said with female vindictiveness. “The sheriff called out his air squadron, and he sent to Ventura for bloodhounds.”
“Big deal.”
She bridled. “What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t think the old man of the mountain killed her. If he had, he wouldn’t have waited till this morning to go on the lam. He’d have taken off right away.”