“What was the fight about?”
“I don’t know – all I heard was the shouting. You’ll have to take it up with them yourself. Only don’t quote me. I’ve got to ask the son-of-a-gun for references.”
Crandall called me from the top of the stairs. I went up, lifted by a certain excitement. I was eager for a second look at Martha Crandall, against the background I had been filling in.
The suite was furnished in cheap luxury. She was sitting in an overstuffed chair with her legs crossed in front of her and thick new makeup on her face.
I was struck again by the beauty and grace of her body. No matter how she placed herself, it seemed to organize the room around her, as a light or a fire does. But her eyes were strained and cold. They looked at me through her mask of makeup as if she had had a bad night and I had been responsible for it.
She gave me her hand and held on as she said: “You’ve got to get Susie back for me. She’s been gone for three days now and I can’t stand it.”
“I’m doing my best.”
“Lester says she’s on her way to Sausalito. Is that right?”
“It’s a fairly good possibility. Anyway, I’m acting on it. You may be able to help me.”
“How?” She leaned toward me in an eager posture, but her eyes didn’t change. They seemed jaded, as if she was watching her life repeat itself. “I’ll do anything I can, I mean it.” Her voice was rougher, taking on the accent of her surroundings.
“Do you know Ellen Kilpatrick?”
Her glance caromed off her husband, and came back to me. “It’s strange you should ask me that. I was thinking of calling her.”
“Why?”
“She lives in Sausalito.”
“Under what name?”
“Ellen Storm. She’s an artist, she uses that name.”
“She calls herself an artist,” Crandall said. “But she’s a phony. She can’t even draw.”
His voice was choked, and his face reddened. I wondered if he had reason to be angry with Ellen, or if he had simply attached his general anger to her.
“Have you seen her work?” I said.
“I’ve seen a sample of it. She wrote us a letter in the summer offering to sell us a painting. So I sent her some money, and she sent back this painting.”
“Do you have it here?”
“I chucked it out. It was just a piece of junk – an excuse to ask me for money.”
“It was not,” his wife said. “She said she wanted to give us first chance.”
“Nobody was standing in line.”
I turned to her. “Have you seen Ellen recently?”
She glanced nervously at her husband. “She was my homeroom teacher. Isn’t that right, Les?”
He didn’t answer her. He seemed to be absorbed in his own glum thoughts.
“And she’s Jerry Kilpatrick’s mother,” I said. “Did you know that?”
“No.” She looked at her husband again and added after an embarrassed pause: “Not until I figured it out, I mean.”
Crandall moved between his wife and me, standing over her like a prosecutor. “Did you invite Jerry Kilpatrick to the house?”
“What if I did? It was a nice thing to do.”
“It was a lousy thing to do. You can see what’s come of it. Who put you up to it? Did she?”
“It’s none of your business. And don’t loom over me like that.”
Intent on their intramural game, they seemed to have forgotten me. Partly to break it up and partly because the question needed asking, I said to her:
“Was Albert Sweetner in your home room in high school?”
She sat very still and quiet for a time. Her husband was quiet, too, his eyes rather absent-looking as if he had been sandbagged by the past.
“It was a big class,” she said. “What was that name again?”
“Albert Sweetner.”
She uncrossed and recrossed her legs like soft and elegant scissors and looked up at her husband. “Don’t stare at me like that. How can I think with you staring at me?”
“I’m not staring.” He tried to remove his gaze from her, and couldn’t.
“Why don’t you go and have a drink?” she said. “I forget how to talk with you standing there staring.”
He put out his hand. Without quite touching her, it traced the contour of her head. “Take it easy now, Mother. We’ve got to stick together – you and me against the world.”
“Sure. Only give me a chance to think for a minute, will you? Go have a drink.”
He left the room slowly. I waited until I heard the click of the latch behind him, and his reluctant footsteps going downstairs.
“What are you trying to do?” the woman said. “Break up my marriage?”
“It seems to be slightly bent already.”
“That isn’t true. I’ve been a good wife to Lester, and he knows it. I’ve done my best to make up for any harm I did him in the past.”
“Such as stealing his car?”
“That was nearly twenty years ago. You’ve got your nerve raking it up, and throwing Albert Sweetner in my face.”
“I brought him up last night. Remember? You said you didn’t know him.”
“All you gave me was his first name. And I haven’t even seen him since high school.”
“Are you sure, Mrs. Crandall? He came here to your motor inn fifteen years ago.”
“A lot of people come to this place.”
“And just this week he took your daughter to another motel.”
She pushed the idea back with her hands. “Susan wouldn’t go with a man like that.”
“I’m afraid she did.”
She stood up in agitation. “What was he trying to do? Get back at me for turning him in?”
“You turned him in?”
“I had to. It was that or go to Juvenile Hall. But that was before Susie was even born.”
“Al wouldn’t forget it, though.”
“No. He wouldn’t forget it. He came here fifteen years ago like you said, to try and break up my marriage. That was right after he got out of Preston.”
“How did he try to break up your marriage?”
“He told my husband a lot of lies about me. I don’t want to go into what he said. In fact, I don’t know why I’m talking to you at all.”
“Al Sweetner was murdered last night.”
She looked at me in silence. Her eyes were frightened. Her body kept its feline confidence.
“I see. You think I killed him.”
I neither affirmed nor denied this. Her look grew chillier: “Susan? You think it was Susan?”
“She isn’t a suspect. I don’t have a logical suspect.”
“Then why did you throw it at me like that?”
“It’s something I thought you ought to know.”
“Thanks very much,” she said bitterly. “What was Al doing with my daughter, anyway?”
“Mainly, I think, he was trying to use her as a source of information. Al was on the run, and he came south looking for money. He was trying to finance a trip to Mexico.”
“Came south from where?”
“Sacramento. I think he stopped in Sausalito on the way.”
She stood in a listening attitude, like a woman hearing footsteps in a graveyard. “Did Ellen point him in our direction?”
“I don’t know what she did. But I’m reasonably certain he went to see her before he came south. He was after a reward which Stanley Broadhurst offered for her and his father.”
“What kind of a reward?”
“A thousand dollars cash. Al probably hoped to get more.” I produced my clipping of the ad, which was gradually wearing out. “This is Ellen, isn’t it?”
“Yes. That’s the way she used to look when she was teaching high school in Santa Teresa.”
“Have you seen her since those days?”