Ross MACDONALD - Sleeping Beauty

“I tried to. Mrs. Langdale said he was at the William Lennox house, and she could reach him there. Apparently something has happened to old Mr. Lennox.”

“Did she say what happened?”

“He had a heart attack and fell off a tractor. I don’t know what a man his age was doing on a tractor.”

“That’s all the Lennox family needs,” I said.

Mrs. Sherry’s eyes failed to soften. She had no sympathy for the Lennox family.

I asked her for the money and the gun. Without argument, she brought them out of her bedroom into the hallway. I checked to make sure that the carton of money was full and the gun empty.

“May I use your phone, Mrs. Sherry?”

“You’re going to phone the police?”

I said, on the spur of the moment, “It would be better if you did.”

“Better for Harold?”

“Yes. Call the Sheriff’s office in Pacific Point. Ask for Captain Dolan.”

She nodded once and didn’t raise her head. I followed her into the room where we had talked the day before. The drapes were closed against the morning sun, and shadows lay behind the furniture like vestiges of the night.

She dialed the Sheriff’s number and asked for Dolan. “This is Mrs. Sherry – Harold Sherry’s mother. Mr. Archer suggested I call you. Harold has been shot, and he isn’t armed. He wants to give himself up and turn over the money to you.”

She began to answer questions, and was still on the phone when the front doorbell rang. I let in a heavy white-haired man who said he was Dr. Langdale. I told him that Harold was in his room.

“How is William Lennox doing, Doctor?”

“Mr. Lennox is dead.” His strained blue eyes came up to my face. “He was dead before I got to him. He was driving a bulldozer down the beach, and he had a heart attack.”

“What was he doing on a bulldozer?”

“Trying to get rid of the oil, apparently. Mr. Lennox always hated any kind of pollution on his beach.”

I passed Dolan’s official car on the highway a few miles beyond the entrance to El Rancho. I kept going toward Pacific Point.

It was still fairly early in the morning when I stepped off the elevator on the top floor of the hospital. There was no deputy on duty outside Jack Lennox’s door.

Lennox was sitting up in bed with a breakfast tray in front of him. His face was stippled with beard. His eyes looked jaded under the helmet of bandage. But there was nothing edible left on his tray.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Lennox.”

“What’s up now?”

“We’ve taken Harold Sherry and recovered your hundred thousand. He made a rather full statement.”

The air in the room seemed to freeze into solid silence. Outside, the sounds of life went on, the clink of dishes and the other morning noises of the hospital, the intermittent sounds of traffic sixty feet down in the street.

Lennox looked at the window as if he might decide to jump out through it. I moved around to that side of his bed. He averted his face and looked at the blank television set which hung like a scanning device high on the gray wall.

He gathered his strength and his wits together, and faced me. “What did Sherry say?”

“He made some serious allegations against you.”

“He would. Sherry is a psychopathic liar, and he hates me. He hates my entire family. He mistreated Laurel when she was just a child, and I clobbered him for it. Ever since then, he’s been trying to pay me back. What lies has he been telling now?”

“He said that in the spring of 1945 you shot two people. One of them, Allie Russo, died. The other one, Nelson Bagley, was wounded in the head and burned in the ensuing gasoline fire on the Canaan Sound.”

Lennox swung his arm in a wide gesture of dismissal. “That’s a lot of garbage.”

“I wonder. Nelson Bagley identified you himself.”

“How could he? Bagley is dead.”

“He saw you on television Tuesday night. Wednesday night he went to your house with Harold Sherry. According to Sherry’s story, you pushed Bagley over the cliff. Then you set up a meeting with Sherry intending to kill him. Unfortunately for you, he survived.”

“And you buy this nonsense?”

“I wanted to check with you first. But you’re not very responsive.”

“What do you expect? You accuse me of a couple of murders that I had nothing to do with. You expect me to fall over backwards and confess?”

“Three murders,” I said. “I omitted one. Your mother’s secretary, Tony Lashman, was killed because he knew that Harold Sherry and Bagley went to your house Wednesday night.”

Lennox looked really dismayed for the first time. “I didn’t even know Lashman was dead.”

“His body is in the cold room on the ground floor of this hospital. So is Bagley’s. As soon as you’re strong enough, I’ll be glad to take you down and show them to you.”

“You’re helpful, aren’t you? Now why don’t you get out of here?”

“We haven’t finished. I want to hear you tell me how Bagley died, and why. I have a kind of personal interest in him. I was the one who pulled him out of the water.”

“I didn’t put him there.”

“Sherry says you did.”

“That doesn’t make it so. Sherry probably drowned him himself.”

“What was his motive?”

“A psycho like Sherry doesn’t need a motive. But if you have to have one, Sherry probably did it so he could pin it on me.”

“That isn’t very credible.”

“You don’t know Sherry, or how he feels about me.”

“I think I know. I also know he didn’t kill Bagley.”

“But I did?”

“Either that,” I said, “or you’re covering for someone.”

His eyes came back to my face, exerting an almost tangible pressure there, as if he was trying to read what was in my mind.

A nurse’s aide knocked lightly and came in for his tray. “Did you enjoy your breakfast, Mr. Lennox?”

He was so deep in thought that he didn’t hear her. She gave him a reproachful look and me a questioning one, then rattled out. When the automatic door had closed itself completely, I said to Lennox:

“Who are you covering for?”

There was a second interruption which postponed his having to answer me. The phone beside his bed rang. He picked it up:

“Jack Lennox here.… He’s dead? … Why in God’s name was he driving a tractor? … I see.… Really? Where is she? … I see. Well, take it easy. And don’t let anyone in.”

He hung up and leaned back against his pillows, drawing a series of deep breaths which didn’t appear to be manifestations of grief. Excitement had colored his cheekbones and lit his eyes.

After a while, he sat up tall in bed. “That was my wife. My father was killed this morning. I happen to be his main heir, which means I’ve taken all the crap I’m ever going to take from anybody.”

“Good for you.”

“Don’t mock me, little man.” His gaze roved around the walls, as if the room had become too small to contain him, and came back to my face. “What would you do for a hundred grand?”

I was silent.

“Would you keep quiet about the subject of our conversation this morning?”

“Are you offering me a hundred grand?”

He nodded, watching me the way a cat watches a bird.

“The same hundred grand you offered Harold Sherry?” I said.

“Maybe that could be managed.”

“And do I get a bullet to go with it, the way Harold did?”

He wrinkled up his face and made a dry spitting noise. “To hell with you. You’re not serious.”

“It’s too late to make a deal,” I said. “Harold is talking to the Sheriff’s men now. They’ll be coming to you shortly.” I waited, giving him a chance to absorb this information. “What are you going to tell them?”