Росс Макдональд - The Far Side of the Dollar

“Well, he actually dragged Stella with him to one of those awful dives. Can you imagine, taking an innocent sixteen-year old girl to a wino joint on lower Main? That was the end of Tom Hillman, as far as we were concerned.”

“What about Stella?”

“She’s a sensible girl.”

She glanced up toward the head of the stairs. “Her father and I made her see that it wasn’t a profitable relationship.”

“So she wasn’t involved in the borrowing of your car?”

“Certainly not.”

A small clear voice said from the head of the stairs: “That isn’t true, Mother, and you know it. I told you–”

“Be quiet, Stella. Go back to bed. If you’re ill enough to stay home from camp, you’re ill enough to stay in bed.”

As she was talking, Mrs. Carlson surged halfway up the stairs. She had very good calves, a trifle muscular. Her daughter came down toward her, a slender girl with lovely eyes that seemed to take up most of her face below the forehead. Her brown hair was pulled back tight. She had on slacks and a high-necked blue wool sweater, which revealed the bud-sharp outlines of her breasts.

“I’m feeling better, thank you,” she said with adolescent iciness. “At least I was, until I heard you lying about Tommy.”

“How dare you? Go to your room.”

“I will if you’ll stop telling lies about Tommy.”

“You shut up.”

Mrs. Carlson ran up the three or four steps that separated them, grabbed Stella by the shoulders, turned her forcibly, and marched her up out of sight. Stella kept repeating the word “Liar,” until a door slammed on her thin clear voice.

Five minutes later Mrs. Carlson came down wearing fresh makeup, a green hat with a feather in it, a plaid coat, and gloves. She walked straight to the door and opened it wide.

“I’m afraid I have to rush now. My hairdresser gets very angry with me when I’m late. We were getting pretty far afield from what you wanted, anyway.”

“On the contrary. I was very interested in your daughter’s remarks.”

She smiled with fierce politeness. “Pay no attention to Stella. She’s feverish and hysterical. The poor child’s been upset ever since the accident.”

“Because she was involved in it?”

“Don’t be silly.”

She rattled the doorknob. “I really have to go now.”

I stepped outside. She followed, and slammed the door hard behind me. She’d probably had a lot of practice slamming doors.

“Where’s your car?” she called after me.

“I parachuted in.”

She stood and watched me until I reached the foot of the driveway. Then she went back into her house. I plodded back to the Hillmans’ mailbox and turned up their private lane. The rustlings in the woods were getting louder. I thought it was a towhee scratching in the undergrowth. But it was Stella.

She appeared suddenly beside the trunk of a tree, wearing a blue ski jacket with the hood pulled up over her head and tied under her chin. She looked about twelve. She beckoned me with the dignity of a full-grown woman, ending the motion with her finger at her lips.

“I better stay out of sight. Mother will be looking for me.”

“I thought she had an appointment with the hairdresser.”

“That was just another lie,” she said crisply. “She’s always lying these days.”

“Why?”

“I guess people get in the habit of it or something. Mother always used to be a very straight talker. So did Dad. But this business about Tommy has sort of thrown them. It’s thrown me, too,” she added, and coughed into her hand.

“You shouldn’t be out in the wet,” I said. “You’re sick.”

“No, really, I mean not physically. I just don’t feel like facing the kids at camp and having to answer their questions.”

“About Tommy?”

She nodded. “I don’t even know where he is. Do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Are you a policeman, or what?”

“I used to be a policeman. Now I’m a what.”

She wrinkled her nose and let out a little giggle. Then she tensed in a listening attitude, like a yearling fawn. She threw off her hood.

“Do you hear her? That’s Mother calling me.”

Far off through the trees I heard a voice calling: “Stella.”

“She’ll kill me,” the girl said. “But somebody has to tell the truth some time. I know, Tommy has a tree house up the slope, I mean he used to have when he was younger. We can talk there.”

I followed her up a half-overgrown foot trail. A little redwood shack with a tar-paper roof sat on a low platform among the spreading branches of an oak. A homemade ladder, weathered gray like the tree house, slanted up to the platform. Stella climbed up first and went inside. A red-capped woodpecker flew out of an unglazed window into the next tree, where he sat and harangued us. Mrs. Carlson’s voice floated up from the foot of the slope. She had a powerful voice, but it was getting hoarse.

“Swiss Family Robinson,” Stella said when I went in. She was sitting on the edge of a built-in cot which had a mattress but no blankets. “Tommy and I used to spend whole days up here, when we were children.”

At sixteen, there was nostalgia in her voice. “Of course when we reached puberty it had to stop. It wouldn’t have been proper.”

“You’re fond of Tommy.”

“Yes. I love him. We’re going to be married. But don’t get the wrong idea about us. We’re not even going steady. We’re not making out and we’re not soldered.”

She wrinkled her nose, as if she didn’t like the smell of the words. “We’ll be married when the time is right, when Tommy’s through college or at least has a good start. We won’t have any money problems, you see.”

I thought she was using me to comfort herself a little with a story, a simple story with a happy ending. “How is that?”

“Tommy’s parents have lots of money.”

“What about your parents? Will they let you marry him?”

“They won’t be able to stop me.”

I believed her, if Tommy survived. She must have seen the “if” cross my eyes like a shadow. She was a perceptive girl.

“Is Tommy all right?” she said in a different tone.

“I hope so.”

She reached up and plucked at my sleeve. “Where is he, Mister–?”

“I don’t know, Stella. My name is Lew Archer. I’m a private detective working on Tommy’s side. And you were going to tell me the truth about the accident.”

“Yes. It was my fault. Mother and Dad seem to think they have to cover up for me, but it only makes things worse for Tommy. I was the one responsible, really.”

Her direct upward look, her earnest candor, reminded me of a child saying her prayers.

“Were you driving the car?”

“No. I don’t mean I was with him. But I told him he could take it and I got the key for him out of Mother’s room. It’s really my car, too – I mean, to use.”

“She knows this?”

“Yes. I told her and Dad on Sunday. But they had already talked to the police, and after that they wouldn’t change their story, or let me. They said it didn’t alter the fact that he took it.”

“Why did you let him take it?”

“I admit it wasn’t such a good idea. But he had to go someplace to see somebody and his father wouldn’t let him use one of their cars. He was grounded. Mother and Dad were gone for the evening, and Tommy said he’d be back in a couple of hours. It was only about eight o’clock, and I thought it would be okay. I didn’t know he was going to be out all night.”

She closed her eyes and hugged herself. “I was awake all night, listening for him.”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was he after?”

“I don’t know that, either. He said it was the most important thing in his life.”