Stuart Kaminsky - He Done Her Wrong

Delores Ressner picked up a towel from a lounge chair near the pool and began to dry herself, giving her time to think, which was all right with me. I had no place to go, and I didn’t mind looking at her. When she was through toweling, she slipped into a blue robe. Finished, she turned toward me, folded her arms, and asked: “What do you want to know about my father?”

“I want to know where he is.”

“Who are you?” Her eyes had narrowed, and she shook her hair to rid it of a few remaining drops of water or to let it hang loose. It was a nice gesture.

“I’m a private detective. Name’s Toby Peters. I’ve been hired by Dr. Winning of the Winning Institute to find your father. He broke out of the institute four days ago.”

“And Dr. Winning thinks he might come here?” Her hands tightened and turned white as they clutched her arms. I couldn’t tell if there was an undercurrent of fear or disbelief in her voice.

“No,” I said, looking at the house for signs of life before turning back to her. “It’s a place to start. Dr. Winning doesn’t want him hurt and doesn’t want him to hurt anybody.”

“My father never hurt anybody,” she fired back.

“Maybe,” I said. “I think we met the other night, and he expressed something more than verbal hostility.”

“I never wanted him in that place,” she said. “That was my mother and her husband’s idea.”

“Maybe I could talk to your mother and …” I said, taking a step toward the house.

She unfolded her hands and stepped in front of me.

“My mother isn’t here. She went to San Diego to visit her sister. My stepfather is in the house sleeping. He hasn’t been feeling well and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

We stared at each for two or three minutes, waiting for a break. She didn’t give me one, so I tried, “I’ve got a warm carton of milk and some Wheaties in my car. Maybe we can share a bowl and watch the sun go down while we wait for stepdaddy to wake up.”

She couldn’t stop the corners of her mouth from curling up from her full lips in a near smile, so I went on.

“I could sew on my button while we laugh at my clothes and you show me the family album. I’d like to see a picture of your father.”

She thawed a little and let her palms up.

“There are no decent photographs of my father. There used to be when he was acting, but when he grew … when he began to have problems, he tore them all up and refused to have another one taken. We’ve got one of him dressed as King Lear, but you can’t really recognize him in it.”

“He played Lear?” I said, taking another step toward the house.

“No.” Her head bent and shook sadly. “He dressed as Lear but never played him. Knew the part. I remember when I was a little girl he did scenes for me in our kitchen back in Ventura. He was really good.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said. “Can I put my milk in your refrigerator?”

Her head came up cocked to one side quizzically.

“O.K., but let’s keep it quiet. Harold can be a bit difficult, especially when he’s disturbed during his nap or when my father’s name comes up.”

She led the way in through the back door. The kitchen was large, pine, and modern with shining steel and a double sink. The refrigerator in the corner made self-satisfied gurgling sounds, and we sat at a kitchen table made of redwood. My milk could wait. I’d drink it on the way back to L.A. Through the side window on the opposite side of the house I could see a big blue car, probably a Packard.

Delores Ressner was tight and edgy as she turned the coffeepot on and sat. She scratched at a bothersome cuticle and bit her lower lip before looking up at me.

“What do you do?” I said. “Besides swimming.”

She shrugged. “Some acting. Nothing much. A few small parts at Twentieth Century-Fox. I was in Blood and Sand . One of the ladies-in-waiting. Things like that. A little modeling, mostly for mail-order catalogs. Now”-she looked out the window-“Now I’m resting before I go back into the jungle.”

“Have you heard from your father in the last four days?”

She looked down at a knot in the wooden table. Behind us the coffeepot bubbled.

Somewhere deeper in the house the floor creaked. It wasn’t the creak of weather and sundown, but the creak of a human moving.

“He needs help,” she said. “Not the kind of help Dr. Winning gives, imprisoning him. My stepfather, if you want the simple truth, pays to keep my father locked up and out of the way. My mother goes along with it because she can’t bear the idea of facing my father again. It wasn’t easy for her.”

“Or you either,” I said.

Her eyes were a little moist.

“I think I hear Grayson getting up,” I said.

She touched her cheek nervously and stood.

“Let’s have coffee. He can find us here.”

“Your father,” I repeated, turning toward her. “You’ve heard from him. I don’t want to hurt him. I just want to keep him from hurting you and your mother, other people, maybe even himself.”

“Maybe even you?” she said, turning to me from the stove with the coffeepot in her hand.

“Maybe. And maybe I’m doing it for my fee and for a friend. But maybe or no maybes, your old man will be a lot better off if I find him before he gets in more trouble. Delores, believe me, he is in trouble, but not in it so far that he can’t be eased out of it with some help from you and me.”

It was warm in the kitchen, but Delores pulled her robe across her chest with her free hand and shivered as she stepped forward to pour me a cup and one for herself. Then she sat down again, placing the pot on a wooden trivet. She was working herself up to say something, and I wanted to give her room.

I poured a few spoons of sugar in my cup, put my open palm over the cup to feel the moist warmth, and took a sip.

“He’s here,” she said softly, so softly that I didn’t hear it the first time, or maybe I didn’t believe what I heard.

“What?” I said, leaning forward.

“Here. He’s here in the other room. In the living room. We were waiting for my mother to come back to decide what we’d do. Harold’s not sick or napping. He and my father are trying to work things out, see what …”

I got up slowly, very slowly.

“I think I’ll just go in and join the conversation,” I said gently. “No trouble. Why don’t you just sit there and finish your coffee. I’ll introduce myself to Grayson. Your father and I have already met, I believe.”

She nodded in resigned agreement, her shoulders slumping down as if she had done a day of hard labor.

I walked to the doorway leading into the house from the kitchen and considered taking off my shoes to keep from making noise, but every time I have removed my shoes on a case things have got worse instead of better. I moved on. There were no voices ahead of me, but something was creaking. The hallway I found myself in carried on the lacquered dark wood motif. A print on the wall showed the driving of the golden spike. Leland Stanford glared down on me and the future of the West. To my right I found the living room, but no one was in it. There were two sofas, both oversize and masculine brown, a grand piano, and a rocking chair. The rug was an Indian design with a pattern in the center that looked to me like a snarling demon.

Across the hall opposite the living room were three doors, all closed. Still no voices. I tried the first door. It opened and showed me a bedroom, bright and orange, a woman’s room, probably Delores’s. There was a faint pleasant odor of scented soap or perfume.

The next door was partly open. I stepped in. It was a much larger bedroom than Delores’s. In one corner stood a desk. In another a dresser and twin beds beyond which was a view of the town through a big floor-to-ceiling window. The beds were made up with brown Indian spreads. I could see the design clearly on one bed. The other was obscured by the body of the man on top of it.