Росс Макдональд - The Zebra-Striped Hearse

“To do that, you’d have to prove that he’s committed a jailable offense.”

“What about taking a girl across a state line for immoral purposes?”

“Has he done that?”

“He transported my daughter from Mexico–”

“But marriage isn’t considered an immoral purpose under the law.”

Isobel Blackwell tittered unexpectedly.

He turned on her. “You think it’s funny, do you?”

“Not particularly. But it’s better to laugh than to weep. And better to marry than to burn. I’m quoting your own words to me, remember?”

Her tone was serious, but there was irony in it. Blackwell stalked toward the house, picking up his shotgun on the way. He slammed the front door so violently that the dove flew up with whistling wings from the television antenna. Isobel Blackwell spread her arms as though a larger bird had escaped from them.

“What am I going to do with him?”

“Give him a tranquilizer.”

“Mark has been eating tranquilizers all week. It doesn’t seem to help his nerves. If he goes on at this rate, I’m afraid he’ll shake himself to pieces.”

“It’s other people I’m worried about.”

“You mean the young man – Damis?”

“I mean anyone who crosses him.”

She touched me lightly on the arm. “You don’t think he’s capable of doing actual harm to anyone?”

“You know him better than I do.”

“I thought I knew Mark very well indeed. But he’s changed in the last year. He’s always been a gentle man. I never thought he belonged in the military profession. The Army came to agree with me, as it happened. They retired him after the war, very much against his will. His first wife, Pauline, divorced him about the same time.”

“Why, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“You’d have to ask her. She went to Nevada one day and got a divorce and married another man – a retired dentist named Keith Hatchen. They’ve lived in Mexico ever since. I suppose Pauline and her dentist have a right to whatever happiness they can muster. But it left poor Mark with nothing to fill his life but his guns and his sports and the Blackwell family history which he has been trying to write for lo these many years.”

“And Harriet,” I said.

“And Harriet.”

“I’m beginning to get the picture. You say he’s changed in the past year. Has anything special happened, besides Harriet’s taking up with Damis?”

“Mark took up with me last fall,” she said with a one-sided smile.

“You don’t strike me as a malign influence.”

“Thank you. I’m not.”

“I had the impression that you’d been married longer than that.” It was partly a question and partly an expression of sympathy.

“Did you now? Of course I’ve been married before. And I’ve known Mark and Harriet for a great many years, practically since she was a babe in arms. You see, my late husband was very close to Mark. Ronald was related to the Blackwells.”

“Then you probably know a lot of things you haven’t told me,” I said.

“Every woman does. Isn’t that your experience, Mr. Archer?”

I liked her dry wit, even if it was cutting me off from further information. I made a gesture that took in the big house and the roses and the gap in the boxwood hedge where Harriet’s car had last been seen.

“Do you think I should go on with this?”

She answered deliberately: “Perhaps you had better. Mark certainly needs another man to guide his hand and advise him – not that he’s terribly good at taking advice. I liked the way you handled this crisis just now. It could have erupted into something terrible.”

“I wish your husband realized that.”

“He does. I’m sure he does, though he won’t admit it.” Her dark eyes were full of feeling. “You’ve done us all a good turn, Mr. Archer, and you’ll do us another by staying with us in this. Find out what you can about Damis. If you can give him a clean bill of health, morally speaking, it should do a lot to reconcile Mark to the marriage.”

“You’re not suggesting a whitewash job on Damis?”

“Of course not. I’m interested in the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. We all are. Now if you’ll excuse me I think I’d better go in and look after my husband. Holding his hand seems to be my function in life these days.”

She wasn’t complaining, exactly, but I detected a note of resignation. As she turned away, very slim in her linen sheath, I caught myself trying to estimate her age. If she had known the Blackwells since Harriet was a baby, and had come to know them through her first husband, she must have married him more than twenty years ago. Which suggested that she was over forty.

Well, so was I.

I USED BLACKWELL’S KEY to let myself into the beach house. Nothing had changed in the big upstairs room, except that there were black paper ashes in the fireplace. They crumbled when I tried to pick them up on the fire shovel. The painting hung on its easel, still gleaming wet in places. In the light that slanted through the glass doors, the spot of cobalt blue which Damis had added last glared at me like any eye.

I backed away from the picture, trying to understand it, and went down the stairs to the master bedroom. The louvered doors of the closet were swinging open. It had been cleared out. There was nothing in the chest of drawers, nothing in the bathroom but some clean towels. The back bedroom was empty.

I moved back into the front bedroom and went through it carefully. The wastebasket had been emptied, which probably accounted for the burned paper in the upstairs fireplace. Damis had gone to a lot of trouble to cover his traces.

But he had overlooked one piece of paper. It was jammed between the sliding glass door and its frame, evidently to keep the door from rattling. It was thick and yellowish paper, folded small. When I unfolded it, I recognized it as one of those envelopes that airlines give their passengers to keep their tickets in.

This was a Mexicana Airlines envelope, with flight instructions typed inside the flap. Mr. Q. R. Simpson, the instructions said, was to leave the Guadalajara airport at 8:40 A.M. on July 10 and arrive at Los Angeles International at 1:30 P.M. the same day.

I messed around in the bedroom some more, discovered only some dust mice under the bed, and went upstairs. The painting drew me back to it. It affected me differently each time. This time I saw, or thought I saw, that it was powerful and ugly – an assault of dark forces on the vision. Perhaps I was reading my fantasy into it, but it seemed to me that its darkness was the ultimate darkness of death.

I had an impulse to take it along and find an expert to show it to. If Damis was a known artist, his style should be recognizable. But I couldn’t move the thing. The oils were still wet and would smear.

I went out to the car to get my camera. The zebra-striped hearse was standing empty beside it. The sky had cleared, and a few sunbathers were lying around in the sand like bodies after a catastrophe. Beyond the surf line the six surfers waited in prayerful attitudes on their boards.

A big wave rose toward them. Five of the surfers rode it in, like statues on a traveling blue hillside. The sixth was less skillful. The wave collapsed on her. She lost her board and swam in after it.

Instead of taking it out to sea again, she carried it up the beach on her head. She left it on the sand above the tide line and climbed the rocky bank to the parking space. She had the bust and shoulders of a young Amazon, but she was shivering and close to tears.

It was the girl who had made the face at me, which gave us something in common. I said: “You took quite a spill.”

She looked at me as if she had never seen me before, almost as if she wasn’t seeing me now. I was a member of another tribe or species. Her eyes were wet and wild, like the eyes of sea lions.