Росс Макдональд: The Name is Archer

“You have privacy,” I said to Mrs. Dreen.

She stretched, and touched her varnished hair with her fingers. “One tires of the goldfish role. When I lie out there in the afternoons I – forget I have a name.” She pointed to the middle of the cove beyond the breakers, where a white raft moved gently in the swells. “I simply take off my clothes and revert to protoplasm. All my clothes.”

I looked up at the plane whose pilot was doodling in the sky. It dropped, turning like an early falling leaf, swooped like a hawk, climbed like an aspiration.

She said with a laugh: “If they come too low I cover my face, of course.”

We had been moving away from the house towards the water. Nothing could have looked more innocent than the quiet cove held in the curve of the white beach like a benign blue eye in a tranquil brow. Then its colors shifted as a cloud passed over the sun. Cruel green and violent purple ran in the blue. I felt the old primitive terror and fascination. Mrs. Dreen shared the feeling and put it into words:

“It’s got queer moods. I hate it sometimes as much as I love it.” For an instant she looked old and uncertain. “I hope she isn’t in there.”

The tide had turned and was coming in, all the way from Hawaii and beyond, all the way from the shattered islands where bodies lay unburied in the burnt-out caves. The waves came up towards us, fumbling and gnawing at the beach like an immense soft mouth.

“Are there bad currents here, or anything like that?”

“No. It’s deep, though. It must be twenty feet under the raft. I could never bottom it.”

“I’d like to look at her room,” I said. “It might tell us where she went, and even with whom. You’d know what clothes were missing?”

She laughed a little apologetically as she opened the door. “I used to dress my daughter, naturally. Not any more. Besides, more than half of her things must be in the Hollywood apartment. I’ll try to help you, though.”

It was good to step out of the vibrating brightness of the beach into shadowy stillness behind Venetian blinds. “I noticed that you unlocked the door,” I said. “It’s a big house with a lot of furniture in it. No servants?”

“I occasionally have to knuckle under to producers. But I won’t to my employees. They’ll be easier to get along with soon, now that the plane plants are shutting down.”

We went to Una’s room, which was light and airy in both atmosphere and furnishings. But it showed the lack of servants. Stockings, shoes, underwear, dresses, bathing suits, lipstick-smeared tissue littered the chairs and the floor. The bed was unmade. The framed photograph on the night table was obscured by two empty glasses which smelt of highball, and flanked by overflowing ash trays.

I moved the glasses and looked at the young man with the wings on his chest. Naïve, handsome, passionate were words which suited the strong blunt nose, the full lips and square jaw, the wide proud eyes. For Mrs. Dreen he would have made a single healthy meal, and I wondered again if her daughter was a carnivore. At least the photograph of Jack Rossiter was the only sign of a man in her room. The two glasses could easily have been from separate nights. Or separate weeks, to judge by the condition of the room. Not that it wasn’t an attractive room. It was like a pretty girl in disarray. But disarray.

We examined the room, the closets, the bathroom, and found nothing of importance, either positive or negative. When we had waded through the brilliant and muddled wardrobe which Una had shed, I turned to Mrs. Dreen.

“I guess I’ll have to go back to Hollywood. It would help me if you’d come along. It would help me more if you’d tell me who your daughter knew. Or rather who she liked – I suppose she knew everybody. Remember you suggested yourself that there’s a man in this.”

“I take it you haven’t found anything?”

“One thing I’m pretty sure of. She didn’t intentionally go away for long. Her toilet articles and pills are still in her bathroom. She’s got quite a collection of pills.”

“Yes, Una’s always been a hypochondriac. Also she left Jack’s picture. She only had the one, because she liked it best.”

“That isn’t so conclusive,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’d know whether there’s a bathing suit missing?”

“I really couldn’t say, she had so many. She was at her best in them.”

“Still was?”

“I guess so, as a working hypothesis. Unless you can find me evidence to the contrary.”

“You didn’t like your daughter much, did you?”

“No. I didn’t like her father. And she was prettier than I.”

“But not so intelligent?”

“Not as bitchy, you mean? She was bitchy enough. But I’m still worried about Jack. He loved her. Even if I didn’t.”

The telephone in the hall took the cue and began to ring. “This is Millicent Dreen,” she said into it. “Yes, you may read it to me.” A pause. “‘Kill the fatted calf, ice the champagne, turn down the sheets and break out the black silk nightie. Am coming home tomorrow.’ Is that right?”

Then she said, “Hold it a minute. I wish to send an answer. To Ensign Jack Rossiter, USS Guam, CVE 173, Naval Air Station, Alameda – is that Ensign Rossiter’s correct address? The text is: ‘Dear Jack join me at the Hollywood apartment there is no one at the beach house. Millicent.’ Repeat it, please.… Right. Thank you.”

She turned from the phone and collapsed in the nearest chair, not forgetting to arrange her legs symmetrically.

“So Jack is coming home tomorrow?” I said. “All I had before was no evidence. Now I have no evidence and until tomorrow.”

She leaned forward to look at me. “I’ve been wondering how far can I trust you.”

“Not so far. But I’m not a blackmailer. I’m not a mindreader, either, and it’s sort of hard to play tennis with the invisible man.”

“The invisible man has nothing to do with this. I called him when Una didn’t come home. Just before I came to your office.”

“All right,” I said. “You’re the one that wants to find Una. You’ll get around to telling me. In the meantime, who else did you call?”

“Hilda Karp, Una’s best friend – her only female friend.”

“Where can I get hold of her?”

“She married Gray Karp, the agent. They live in Beverly Hills.”

Their house, set high on a plateau of rolling lawn, was huge and fashionably grotesque: Spanish Mission with a dash of Paranoia. The room where I waited for Mrs. Karp was as big as a small barn and full of blue furniture. The bar had a brass rail.

Hilda Karp was a Dresden blonde with an athletic body and brains. By appearing in it, she made the room seem more real. “Mr. Archer, I believe?” She had my card in her hand, the one with “Private Investigator” on it.

“Una Sand disappeared yesterday. Her mother said you were her best friend.”

“Millicent – Mrs. Dreen – called me early this morning. But, as I said then, I haven’t seen Una for several days.”

“Why would she go away?”

Hilda Karp sat down on the arm of a chair, and looked thoughtful. “I can’t understand why her mother should be worried. She can take care of herself, and she’s gone away before. I don’t know why this time. I know her well enough to know that she’s unpredictable.”

“Why did she go away before?”

“Why do girls leave home, Mr. Archer?”

“She picked a queer time to leave home. Her husband’s coming home tomorrow.”

“That’s right, she told me he sent her a cable from Pearl. He’s a nice boy.”

“Did Una think so?”

She looked at me frigidly as only a pale blonde can look, and said nothing.