Ross MACDONALD - Sleeping Beauty

“You took long enough to get here. I’ve had a hard time holding Gloria. She’s scared.”

“She has some reason to be. She’s been involved in a kidnapping.”

“She says not. She claims she hasn’t set eyes on Laurel.”

“May I talk to her directly, Mrs. Mungan?”

“Yes. I want you to. Why do you think I called you?” She peered up at the yellow sky. “I realize we’re in trouble.”

Gloria was waiting in the room behind the archway. She stood up when I came in, raising her clenched hands to the level of her breast, as though I might attack her physically.

“Good morning, Gloria.”

“Good morning,” her dubious mouth said.

She had lost her cheerfulness and her looks together. She was one of those girls who were almost pretty when they were feeling good, and almost ugly when they were depressed. She turned to her mother, scowling with apprehension:

“Martie? Could I please talk to him in private?”

“But you’ve already told me everything.” The older woman looked at her suspiciously. “Or haven’t you?”

“Certainly I have, but that’s not the point. I’m embarrassed.”

Mrs. Mungan retreated, closing a door behind her. Gloria turned to me:

“My mother means well, but she’s got so many problems of her own, particularly since my father walked out on us. I’ve really been mothering Martie since I was about twelve. Her problems always loomed so large that I never had time to wonder if I had problems, let alone do anything about them.”

This came out in an emotional rush, but the emotion dissipated as she spoke, and the words slowed. I didn’t interrupt her. Every witness has his own way of creeping up on the truth. She said:

“It isn’t easy to grow up with an alcoholic mother. Martie’s been drinking for as long as I can remember – ever since Aunt Allie died. Do you know about Aunt Allie?”

“I know she was murdered. You told me about her yesterday morning, remember?”

“Was that just yesterday morning? It seems like about a year ago. Anyway, I know more about it now. Aunt Allie was shot by one of the men in her life – a man that she rejected.”

“How did you find that out?”

“Harold told me last night, in the motel.”

“In Redondo Beach?”

“No. We went to another motel after that. Harold didn’t trust the Doctor not to turn him in.”

“Is Harold still in the other motel?”

“Not any more,” she said.

“Where is he?”

She looked at me in distress. She had given her feelings to Harold and, damaged and disappointed as they were, they were hard for her to withdraw.

“Tell me where he is, Gloria. He’s the key to this whole business.”

“That isn’t true,” she said defensively. “Harold never kidnapped anybody. And he never shot anybody, either.”

“Who told you that?”

“He did, and I know he was telling the truth. He was just trying to bring Aunt Allie’s murderer to justice.”

“Do you mean Nelson Bagley?”

She nodded. “He was the one who did the actual shooting. But there were other people involved – people who covered it up.”

“Who were they, Gloria?”

“Harold made me promise not to tell. He said that he could take care of it himself.”

“Are we talking about Captain Somerville?” I said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But wasn’t that the point of bringing Bagley here, to catch Somerville on television?”

She turned and looked at the television set as if it might be able to answer for her. But it was dark and silent.

“If you know so much,” Gloria said, “why ask me about it?”

“All right, I’ll tell you. Somerville was your aunt’s lover. Bagley either had been or wanted to be. She rejected Bagley, and I think she took another lover. Bagley shot her. Somerville used his influence to keep the whole thing quiet, probably because he was afraid of being connected with it. But Harold Sherry’s been digging it up again. Is that the general picture?”

“You know more about it than I do.”

“But you spent considerable time with Harold last night. Didn’t he tell you anything? Didn’t he even explain how he got shot?”

“Laurel’s father tried to kill him, he said.”

“Why?”

“He said that Laurel’s family always hated him.”

“Did he tell you the reason?”

“No.”

“Or mention that he tried to kill Laurel’s father?”

“No.” But her eyes were wide and thoughtful, scanning the night she had just gone through with Harold and watching all its meanings change their shape.

“How did Harold explain the box of money?”

“He said he cashed in his securities. His father left him all those securities, stocks and bonds. He was planning to leave the country and take me along.”

I was getting tired of Harold’s lies and her reluctance to let go of them. “Look, Gloria. You called me and I came here on the supposition that you wanted to talk. There’s not much use in your holding back now.”

“I didn’t call you. My mother called you.”

“Anyway, here we are. And you’re not talking.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me where Harold is.”

“I don’t know where he is, and I don’t care.”

“Where did you leave him?”

“I didn’t leave him. He left me.”

“How could he do that? Did somebody come and pick him up?”

“That’s one thing I’m not going to tell you.”

But something in her voice told me, and something in the angle at which she held her head, as if she had been struck by a human hand, or was about to be.

“Was it another woman, Gloria?”

After a long silence, she said, “Yes. It was an older woman. Harold made me promise not to look, but I peeked out the motel window and saw her.”

“How old?”

“At least Martie’s age. She was driving a big Mercedes. Harold crawled into the trunk and rode that way.”

“With the money?”

“Yeah, he took the money with him.”

“And the gun?”

She nodded dismally. “What’s the matter with me?” she said. “Why do I always have to get the wrong ones?” She sat hunched over like a woman trying to give birth to a new life. “My cousin Tom was the one I really wanted. But the one he wanted was Laurel – ever since he was a little boy.”

After a moment’s delay, I was struck by the implications of what she said. “Since he was a little boy?”

“That’s right.”

I sat up straight. “Has Tom known Laurel that long?”

“Almost all his life,” Gloria said. “They used to play together when he was four or so, and she was three. After his mother died, he lost track of Laurel, and he didn’t see her again until a couple of years ago. Then she walked into the drugstore in Westwood one day and asked him to fill a prescription for her. Her name was on the prescription. It was a name that he had never forgotten and he sort of recognized her, too, from her baby days. But she was out of the store before he believed that she could actually be the same Laurel Lennox. Then he ran after her into the parking lot and told her who he was, and she remembered. It wasn’t more than two months before they were married.”

I had heard the end of the story before. “Who told you this, Gloria?”

“Tom did. Many times,” she added with a hint of bitterness. But the bitterness was mixed with more positive feelings, including a touch of bridesmaid’s sentimentality. The coming together of Laurel and her cousin was probably the main romantic event in her family’s history.

But I was interested in its unromantic aspects. “I wonder how Tom and Laurel happened to be playmates when they were children?”