Росс Макдональд - Find a Victim

The front veranda was a deep railed platform partly shaded with split-bamboo screening. It was further shielded from the street by a great old monkey-puzzle tree that grew in front of it. I jumped for the railing, caught it, pulled myself up and over.

From where I stood in the corner of the veranda against the wall, I couldn’t see into the house. Moving across the light from the window, I reached the shelter of a green canvas glider. By pulling aside the canvas shade behind the swinging seat, I could see the interior of the room without being seen.

It was a beautiful room, white-carpeted and filled with the suave and fragile curves of eighteenth-century furniture. The airy white ceiling was supported on Ionic capitals, repeated in the pilastered marble mantel. Someone with Europe on his mind had tried to trap a dream of civilization in the room, and almost succeeded. Its present occupants were standing in front of the fireplace, telling each other that the dream was stone dead.

The woman’s back was to me, straight and tense. A pearl collar gleamed coldly on her neck, under the yellow hair. “What I had is gone,” she said, “so you’re running out. I always knew you would.”

“You always knew, eh?” Kerrigan stood facing her, leaning negligently against the mantel. One hand was in his pocket, the other held a short briar pipe. It was an actorish pose.

“Yes. I’ve known for a long time. For four or five years at least, since you took up with the Meyer woman.”

“That was over long ago.”

“So you let me believe. But you’ve never been honest with me.”

“I’ve tried. You want me to level with you? You want the honest truth?”

“You’re not capable of telling it, Don. You’re a helpless liar. You lied to me before we were married, about your resources, your prospects. Your alleged love for me.” Her voice broke scornfully. “Your entire life with me has been a lie. You haven’t even given me common fidelity.”

“Prove it.”

“I don’t have to. I know. You think you fooled me with your childish excuses, when you came home to my house with your clothes disarranged, your mouth red–”

“Wait a minute.” He pointed the stem of his pipe like a gun at her head. “Did you hear yourself, Kate? You know what you just said. Your house, you called it. Not our house. Yours. And you wonder why I feel like an interloper.”

“Because you are one,” she said. “You are an interloper. My grandfather built this house for my grandmother. They left it to my father. My father left it to me. It’s mine. The house is one thing you’ll never get your hands on.”

“Who wants it?”

“You do, Don. It was only the other day you were trying to persuade me to sell it and give you the money.”

“So I was.” He shrugged his shoulders, smiling crookedly. “Well, it’s too late now. You can keep your house and live in it by yourself. I never really lived in this house. I lived in the doghouse behind it, and you put me there. Keep the doghouse, too. You’ll need it for your next husband.”

“Would I be likely to marry again, after my experience with you?”

“It wasn’t as bad as that, now, Kate. You’re no tragic figure, don’t go dreaming you are. I admit I wasn’t in love with you when we got married. Hear me admitting it? I married you for your money. Is that such a terrible crime? Your hotshot friends in Santa Barbara do it every day. Hell, I thought I was doing you a good turn.”

“Thank you for your gracious kindness–”

“No, listen to me for a change.” His voice deepened, and he forgot his pose. “You were all by yourself. Your parents were dead. Your lover got himself killed in the war–”

“Talley wasn’t my lover.”

“That I can believe. Listen to me. You needed a man more than you needed money. Okay. I elected myself to fill the bill. I didn’t make it, but you’ll never know how hard I tried. I went into this thing to make it work, on a fifty-fifty basis. I couldn’t make it work. I had no chance to. You never trusted me. You never even liked me.”

“I loved you, though.” She turned away from him. Her hands went to her breasts and held them as if they ached.

“You thought you loved me, I’ll give you that much. Maybe you loved me in your head. Only what good is love in the head? It’s just a word. You’re still a virgin as far as I’m concerned. Did you know that, Kate? It’s been chilly work, trying to be your husband. You never made me feel like a man. Not once.”

Her face was drawn sharp over the harsh bones. She fingered the collar of pearls at her throat. “I’m not a magician,” she said.

He raised his eyes to the blank patrician ceiling. “What’s the use?”

“No use. It’s over and done with, if there ever was anything there. It only confirmed what I knew when I found you packing your bags. I wasn’t even surprised. I realized what was coming a month ago.”

“Last time it was five years.”

“Yes, but I kept hoping. When you broke off with Anne Meyer, or claimed you did, I thought perhaps our marriage had a chance. I was a fool to allow myself any hope, wasn’t I? I saw what a fool I was last month – the day I met you on the grounds of the Inn with that girl on your arm. And you pretended not to know me, Don. You wouldn’t look at me. You kept looking at her.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said without conviction. “I never was at the Inn with any girl.”

“Of course not.” She turned on him suddenly, clenching her hands. “Does she make you feel like a man, that little tar-haired creature? Does she build you up with flattery and give you delusions of grandeur and renew your youth for you?”

“Leave her out of this.”

“Why should I? Is she so sacred? Aren’t you going away with her? Isn’t that the big project for tonight?”

“You’re crazy.”

“Am I? You’re going away, aren’t you? You’re not the kind of man who goes by himself. You need a woman along to keep your ego wrapped in cotton batting. I don’t know what woman, I don’t care. For all I know, you’ve taken up with Anne Meyer again. Or maybe you’ve kept her on the string all along.”

“Now you’re really getting crazy.”

“Am I? You gave her the keys to the lodge last Friday. I heard her thank you for them. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was up at the lake now, waiting for you to join her.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I told you that was over. I don’t know where she is any more than you do.”

“She spent the weekend at Lake Perdida. Didn’t she?”

“All right. I told her she could have the lodge for the weekend. We weren’t using it. It was standing empty. I gave her the keys. Does that make me a criminal?”

“You’re going there now,” she said accusingly.

“I am not. Anne isn’t there anyway. I drove up to the lake on Monday to look for her, and she was gone.”

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know. Can you get that through your head? I don’t know.” The subject seemed to disturb him. “You’d think I was running a harem.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you were. You don’t even know you exist unless a woman whispers it in your ear. Any woman.”

“Not any woman. Not you.” His voice was soft with malice.

“No,” she said. “Not me. I don’t know who it is this time. But I can tell you one thing, it won’t last. It won’t last seven months.”

“That’s what you think.”

“I know it. You run through sex the way you run through money. They’re the same thing to you, something to soothe your itch and make you forget what a dismal loss you are.”

“You know it all, eh? All you know is what you read in your damn books. I’ll give you a little piece of information, Kate. This wouldn’t have happened if you’d given me a break when I asked you for it.”