“Not exactly.” The young man sounded a little ashamed. “But I’ve got no place to spend the night.”
“You’re not going to spend it here.”
“No. I realize that.”
He ran out of words. With a parting look at the gun in Kilpatrick’s hand, he walked quickly to a station wagon which was parked beside my taxicab. A number of children peered out through the back windows of the wagon, like prisoners wondering where they might be taken next. A woman sat in the front seat, looking straight ahead.
I said to Kilpatrick: “I’m glad you didn’t shoot him.”
“I had no intention of shooting him. But you should have heard the names he was calling me. I don’t have to take–”
I cut in: “What area did he live in?”
“Canyon Estates. I’m the developer.”
“Did the canyon go?”
“Not all of it. But several houses burned, including his.” Kilpatrick jerked his angry head toward the departing station wagon. “He isn’t the only one who took a beating. I’m still paying interest on some of those houses, and I’ll never be able to move them now.”
“Do you know what happened to Elizabeth Broadhurst’s house?”
“The last I heard it was still standing. Those old Spanish-type structures were built to resist fire.”
The dark-haired woman came up behind Kilpatrick. She had put on a light coat over her bikini and she looked quite sober, but sick.
“For heaven’s sake,” she said to him, “put that gun away. It scares the living hell out of me when you wave that gun around.”
“I’m not waving it around.” But he shoved it down out of sight in his pocket.
The three of us stepped out onto the asphalt pad. The cabdriver was watching us like an observer from Mars.
Kilpatrick wet his finger in his mouth and held it up. A cool wind was blowing up the canyon.
“That’s sea air,” he said. “If it keeps blowing from that direction we’re going to be A-O.K.”
I hoped he was right. But the eastern edges of the sky were still burning like curtains.
chapter 13
It cost me fifty dollars, paid in advance, to be driven to Northridge, where I’d left my car in Stanley Broadhurst’s garage. The driver wanted to talk, but I shut him off and caught an hour’s sleep.
I woke up with a pounding head when we left the Ventura Freeway. I told the driver to stop at a public pay phone. He found one and gave me change for a dollar. I dialed Lester Crandall’s number.
A woman’s voice which sounded as if it was being kept under strict control said: “This is the Crandall residence.”
“Is Mr. Crandall home?”
“I’m afraid he isn’t. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”
“Where is he?”
“On the Strip.”
“Looking for Susan?”
Her voice became more personal. “Yes, he is. Are you a friend of Lester’s?”
“No. But I’ve seen your daughter. She isn’t in Los Angeles. May I come and talk to you, Mrs. Crandall?”
“I don’t know. Are you a policeman?”
I told her what I was, and gave her my name, and she responded with her address. It was on a street I knew off Sunset Boulevard.
The cab took me under the freeway to Northridge. I’d kept the key to the Broadhurst garage. I asked the driver to wait while I used the key and made sure my car was still there. It was, and it started. I went out to the street and dismissed the driver.
When I went to the back of the house a second time, I looked around more carefully. Some light came from the neighbor’s on the other side of the grape-stake fence. I noticed that the back door of Stanley Broadhurst’s house was slightly ajar. I opened it all the way and turned on the kitchen lights.
There were marks in the wood around the lock which showed that it had been jimmied. It occurred to me that the man who had done the job might still be inside. I didn’t want to run into him accidentally. Burglars seldom intended to kill anyone, but they sometimes killed when they were caught by surprise in their dark fantasy.
I turned off the kitchen lights and waited. The house was silent. From outside I could hear the pulsing hum of the arterial boulevard I had just left.
The neighbors were listening to the late news on television. In spite of these normal sounds, I felt a physical anxiety close to nausea. It got worse when I went into the hallway.
Perhaps I smelled or otherwise sensed the man in the study. In any case, when I switched on the light he was lying there in front of the broken desk, grinning up at me like a magician who had pulled off the ultimate trick.
I didn’t recognize him right away. He had a black beard and mustache and long black hair which seemed to grow peculiarly low on his forehead. I found on closer inspection that the hair was a wig which didn’t fit him too well. The beard and mustache were false.
Under the hair was the dead face of the man who called himself Al and had come to the house to ask for a thousand dollars. Come once too often. The front of his shirt was wet and heavy with blood, and there were stab wounds under it. He smelled of whisky.
The inside breast pocket of his cheap dark suit bore the label of a San Francisco department store. The pocket itself was empty, and so were his other pockets. I lifted him to feel for a wallet in his hip pockets. There was none.
I checked my notebook for the address he had given me: the Star Motel, on Pacific Coast Highway below Topanga Canyon. Then I looked at the rolltop desk which he had evidently broken open. The wood around the locking mechanism was splintered, and the rolltop section was stuck in a half-open position.
I couldn’t force it far enough back to release the drawers, which stayed locked. But in one of the pigeonholes I found a pair of photographs of a young man and a young woman who at first glance looked alike. Clipped to the photographs was a piece of paper with the printed heading: “Memo from the desk of Stanley Broadhurst.”
Someone, presumably Stanley, had written laboriously on it: “Have you seen this man and woman? According to witnesses they left Santa Teresa early in July, 1955, and traveled to San Francisco by car (red Porsche, Calif. license number XUJ251). They stayed in San Francisco one or two nights, and sailed July 6 en route to Honolulu via Vancouver on the English freighter Swansea Castle. A thousand-dollar reward will be paid for information about their present whereabouts.”
I took another look at the pictures attached to it. The girl had dark hair and very large dark eyes which looked up rather dimly out of the old photograph. Her features seemed to be aquiline and sensitive, except for her heavy passionate mouth.
The man’s face, which I took to be Captain Broadhurst’s, was less open. There were well-shaped bones in his face and hard, staring eyes set obliquely in them. The resemblance between him and the girl turned out to be superficial when I compared them. His bold stare kept him hidden in a way, but I guessed that he was a taker. She looked like a giver.
I turned to the filing cabinet. Its top drawer had been forced, so violently that it couldn’t be properly closed. It was full of letters carefully arranged among manila dividers. The postmarks ranged over the past six years.
I picked out a fairly recent one whose return address was the Santa Teresa Travel Agency, 920 Main Street.
Dear Mr. Broadhurst [the typed letter said] :
Have checked our files as per your request and confirm that your father, Mr. Leo Broadhurst, booked double passage on the Swansea Castle, due to sail from San Francisco for Honolulu (via Vancouver) on or about July 6, 1955. Passage paid for, but we cannot confirm that it was used. Swansea Castle has changed to Liberian registry, and 1955 owners and master are hard to trace. Please advise if you wish us to check further.