Росс Макдональд - The Instant Enemy

Mrs. Sebastian was watching me from the doorway. “You’re very thorough, Mr. Archer. What is that?”

“A little verse. I wonder if Davy wrote it.”

She snatched it from between my fingers and read it. “It sounds quite meaningless to me.”

“It doesn’t to me.” I snatched it back and put it in my wallet. “Is Heidi coming?”

“She’ll be here in a little while. She’s just finishing breakfast.”

“Good. Do you have any letters from Davy?”

“Of course not.”

“I thought he might have written to Sandy. I’d like to know if this verse is in his handwriting.”

“I have no idea.”

“I’m willing to bet it is. Do you have a picture of Davy?”

“Where would I get a picture of him?”

“The same place you got your daughter’s diary.”

“You needn’t keep flinging that in my face.”

“I’m not. I’d simply like to read it. It could give me a lot of help.”

She went into another of her somber hesitations, straining her eyes ahead over the curve of time.

“Where is the diary, Mrs. Sebastian?”

“It doesn’t exist any longer,” she said carefully. “I destroyed it.”

I thought she was lying, and I didn’t try to conceal my thought. “How?”

“I chewed it up and swallowed it, if you must know. Now you’ve got to excuse me. I have a dreadful headache.”

She waited at the doorway for me to come out of the room, then closed and locked the door. The lock was new.

“Whose idea was the lock?”

“Actually it was Sandy’s. She wanted more privacy these last few months. More than she could use.”

She went into another bedroom and shut the door. I found Sebastian back at the kitchen counter drinking coffee. He had washed and shaved and brushed his curly brown hair, put on a tie and a jacket and a more hopeful look.

“More coffee?”

“No thanks.” I got out a small black notebook and sat beside him. “Can you give me a description of Davy?”

“He looked like a young thug to me.”

“Thugs come in all shapes and sizes. What’s his height, approximately?”

“About the same as mine. I’m six feet in my shoes.”

“Weight?”

“He looks heavy, maybe two hundred.”

“Athletic build?”

“I guess you’d say that.” He had a sour competitive note in his voice. “But I could have taken him.”

“No doubt you could. Describe his face.”

“He isn’t too bad-looking. But he has that typical sullen look they have.”

“Before or after you offered to shoot him?”

Sebastian moved to get up. “Look here, if you’re taking sides against me, what do you think we’re paying you for?”

“For this,” I said, “and for a lot of other dull interrogations. You think this is my idea of a social good time?”

“It’s not mine, either.”

“No, but it belongs to you. What color is his hair?”

“Blondish.”

“Does he wear it long?”

“Short. They probably cut it off in prison.”

“Blue eyes?”

“I guess so.”

“Any facial hair?”

“No.”

“What was he wearing?”

“The standard uniform. Tight pants worn low on the hips, a faded blue shirt, boots.”

“How did he talk?”

“With his mouth.” Sebastian’s thin feelings were wearing thinner again.

“Educated or uneducated? Hip or square?”

“I didn’t hear him say enough to know. He was mad. We both were.”

“How would you sum him up?”

“A slob. A dangerous slob.” He turned in a queer quick movement and looked at me wide-eyed, as if I’d just applied those words to him. “Listen, I have to get down to the office. We’re having an important conference about next year’s program. And then I’m going to have lunch with Mr. Hackett.”

Before he left, I got him to give me a description of his daughter’s car. It was a last year’s Dart two-door, light green in color, which was registered in his name. He wouldn’t let me put it on the official hot-car list. I wasn’t to tell the police anything about the case.

“You don’t know how it is in my profession,” he said. “I have to keep up a stainless-steel front. If it slips, I slip. Confidence is our product in the savings and loan industry.”

He drove away in a new Oldsmobile which, according to his check stubs, was costing him a hundred and twenty dollars a month.

A FEW MINUTES LATER I opened the front door for Heidi Gensler. She was a clean-looking adolescent whose yellow hair hung straight onto her thin shoulders. She wore no makeup that I could see. She carried a satchel of books.

Her pale-blue gaze was uncertain. “Are you the man I’m supposed to talk to?”

I said I was. “My name is Archer. Come in, Miss Gensler.”

She looked past me into the house. “Is it all right?”

Mrs. Sebastian emerged from her room wearing a fluffy pink robe. “Come in, Heidi dear, don’t be afraid. It’s nice of you to come.” Her voice was not maternal.

Heidi stepped inside and lingered in the hallway, ill at ease. “Did something happen to Sandy?”

“We don’t know, dear. If I tell you the bare facts, I want you to promise one thing: you mustn’t talk about it at school, or at home, either.”

“I wouldn’t. I never have.”

“What do you mean by that, dear: ‘You never have’?”

Heidi bit her lip. “I mean– I don’t mean anything.”

Mrs. Sebastian moved toward her like a pink bird with a keen dark outthrust head. “Did you know what was going on between her and that boy?”

“I couldn’t help it.”

“And yet you never told us? That wasn’t very friendly of you, dear.”

The girl was close to tears. “ Sandy is my friend.”

“Good. Fine. Then you’ll help us get her safely home, won’t you?”

The girl nodded. “Did she run away with Davy Spanner?”

“Before I answer that, remember you have to promise not to talk.”

I said: “That’s hardly necessary, Mrs. Sebastian. And I really prefer to do my own questioning.”

She turned on me. “How can I know you’ll be discreet?”

“You can’t. You can’t control the situation. It’s out of control. So why don’t you go away and let me handle this?”

Mrs. Sebastian refused to go. She looked ready to fire me. I didn’t care. The case was shaping up as one on which I’d make no friends and very little money.

Heidi touched my arm. “You could drive me to school, Mr. Archer. I don’t have a ride when Sandy isn’t here.”

“I’ll do that. When do you want to go?”

“Any time. If I get there too early for my first class I can always do some homework.”

“Did Sandy drive you to school yesterday?”

“No. I took the bus. She phoned me yesterday morning about this time. She said she wasn’t going to school.”

Mrs. Sebastian leaned forward. “Did she tell you where she was going?”

“No.” The girl had put on a closed, stubborn look. If she did know anything more, she wasn’t going to tell it to Sandy’s mother.

Mrs. Sebastian said: “I think you’re lying, Heidi.”

The girl flushed, and water rose in her eyes. “You have no right to say that. You’re not my mother.”

I intervened again. Nothing worth saying was going to get said in the Sebastian house. “Come on,” I told the girl, “I’ll drive you to school.”

We went outside and got into my car and started downhill toward the freeway. Heidi sat very sedately with her satchel of books between us on the seat. She’d probably remembered that she wasn’t supposed to get into an automobile with a strange man. But after a minute she said: “Mrs. Sebastian blames me . It isn’t fair.”