Росс Макдональд - The Zebra-Striped Hearse

Her eyes had changed now. They were large and unfocused, looking a long way past me. Under her smudged make-up the skin around her mouth had a bluish tinge, as if my hammering questions had literally bruised her. She got to her feet, swaying slightly, and ran out of the room on awkward high heels.

I followed her. The threat of violence, of homicide or suicide, had been gathering in the house for days. She flung herself along the hallway and through the master bedroom into a bathroom. I heard her being sick there in the dark.

A light was on in the great bedroom. I opened one of the wardrobe closets and found Mark Blackwell’s clothes. He had a couple of dozen suits, hanging in a row like thin and docile felons.

I turned back the right cuff of one of the jackets. Written in the lining in indelible ink was the same cleaner’s code that Leonard had found in the sleeve of the topcoat: BX1207.

THE MAID APPEARED in the doorway. She was back in uniform but still using her unzipped personality.

“Now what?”

“Mrs. Blackwell is ill. You’d better see to her.”

She crossed the bedroom to the dark bathroom, dragging her feet a little. I waited until I heard the two women’s voices. Then I made my way back through the house to the telephone I had used before. The Citrus Junction paper with the Simpson story on the front page lay untouched on Isobel Blackwell’s desk. If she had guilty knowledge of it, I thought wishfully, she would have hidden or destroyed the newspaper.

Arnie Walters answered his phone with a grudging “Hello.”

“This is Archer. Have you seen Blackwell?”

He ignored the question. “It’s about time you checked in, Lew. I heard you took Campion last night–”

“I want to know if you’ve seen Mark Blackwell, Harriet’s father.”

“No. Was I supposed to?”

“He set out early Thursday morning for Tahoe, at least that was his story. Check with the people there, will you, and call me back. I’m at Blackwell’s house in L. A. You know the number.”

“Is he on the missing list, too?”

“Voluntary missing, maybe.”

“Too bad you can’t keep track of your clients. Have they all flipped?”

“Everybody’s doing it. It’s the new freedom.”

“Stop trying to be funny. You wake me up in the middle of the night, and you don’t even tell me what Campion had to say.”

“He denies everything. I’m inclined to believe him.”

“He can’t deny the blood on the hat. It’s Harriet’s blood type, and she was last seen with him. He can’t deny the murder of his wife.”

“That was a bum beef, Arnie.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“A semi-fact, anyway. Campion’s no Eagle Scout, but it looks as though somebody made a patsy out of him.”

“Who?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Then what’s your theory about Harriet? She’s vanished without a trace.”

“She may have met with foul play after Campion left her. She was carrying money and driving a new car. We ought to bear down on finding that car. One place to look would be the airport parking lots at Reno and San Francisco.”

“You think she flew some place?”

“It’s a possibility. Look into it, will you, but call me back right away on Blackwell. I have to know if the Tahoe authorities have seen him.”

Isobel Blackwell spoke behind me as I hung up: “Do you doubt everything and everyone?”

She had washed her face and left it naked of make-up. Her hair was wet at the temples.

“Practically everything,” I said. “Almost everyone. It’s a little habit I picked up from my clients by osmosis.”

“Not from me. I’ve never learned the habit of distrust.”

“Then it’s time you did. You’ve been deliberately cutting yourself off from the facts of life, and death, while all hell has been breaking loose around you.”

“At least you believe I’m innocent.”

She came all the way into the room and sat in the chair I’d vacated, turning it sideways and resting her head on her hand. She had drenched herself with cologne. I stood over her with the distinct feeling that she had come to place herself in my power or under my protection.

“Innocence is a positive thing, Mrs. Blackwell. It doesn’t consist in holding back information out of a misplaced sense of loyalty. Or shutting your eyes while people die–”

“Don’t lecture me.” She moved her head sideways as though I’d pushed her. “What kind of woman do you think I am? I’ve asked you that before.”

“I think we’re both in the process of finding out.”

“I already know, and I’ll tell you. I’m an unlucky woman. I’ve known it for many years, since the man I loved told me he was diabetic and couldn’t or shouldn’t have children. When he died it confirmed my unluck. I made up my mind never to marry anyone or love anyone again. I refused to expose myself to suffering. I’d had it.

“I moved to Santa Barbara and went on schedule. My schedule was chock full of all the activities a widowed woman is supposed to fill up her time with – garden tours and bridge and adult education classes in mosaic work. I got myself to the point where I was reasonably content and hideously bored. I forgot about my basic unluck, and that was my mistake.

“Mark came to me late last summer and told me that he needed me. He was in trouble. My heart, or whatever, went out to him. I allowed myself to feel needed once again. I’d always been fond of Mark and his blundering boyish ways. That may sound like a queer description of him, but it’s the Mark I know, the only one I’ve known. At any rate I married him and here I am.”

She turned her head up to meet my eyes. The tendons in her neck were like wires in a taut cable. An obscure feeling for her moved me. If it was pity, it changed to something better. I wanted to touch her face. But there were still too many things unsaid.

“If you’ve been unlucky,” she said, “you become unwilling to move for fear the whole house will come tumbling down.”

“It’s lying in pieces around you now, Mrs. Blackwell.”

“I hardly need you to tell me that.”

“Was Mark in trouble with a girl last summer?”

“Yes. He picked her up at Tahoe and got her pregnant. She was plaguing him for money, naturally. He didn’t care about the money, but he was afraid she’d press for something more drastic. Marriage, perhaps, or a lawsuit that would ruin him in the public eye. What people think is very important to Mark. I suppose he thought that marriage to me would protect him and tend to silence the girl.” Stubbornly, she refrained from naming her.

“Did he have the gall to spell this out to you?”

“Not in so many words. His motives are usually quite transparent. He gives himself away, especially when he’s afraid. He was terribly afraid when he came to my house in Santa Barbara. The girl, or one of her friends, had threatened him with criminal charges. Apparently he’d driven her across the state line.”

“Did you know the girl was Dolly Stone?”

“No.” The word came out with retching force. “I’d never have married Mark–”

“Why did you marry him?”

“I was willing to feel needed, as I said. He certainly needed me, and so did Harriet. I thought a marriage that started badly couldn’t fail to improve. And Mark was so desperately afraid, and guilty. He believed he was on the moral skids, that he might end by molesting little children on the streets. He said I was the only one who could save him, and I believed him.”

“You didn’t save him from murdering Dolly. I think you know that by now.”

“I’ve been afraid of it.”

“How long have you suspected?”

“Just tonight, when we were talking about his topcoat, and I got sick. I’m not feeling very well now.”