Sleeping Beauty (25 page)

“How close were they?”

The question bothered him, perhaps because his father was there to listen to the answer. Tom got up from his hassock and moved away from both of us, very tentatively, like a blind man exploring a strange room. He turned and spoke softly across it:

“They weren’t sleeping together, if that’s what you mean. I mean, Gloria was the one he was interested in in that way. But he had a very peculiar effect on Laurel. He could make her get excited by saying things. I don’t mean in a sexual way, exactly—it was more like somebody taking amphetamines and drinking. I don’t mean she was doing that, but that was the way she acted. She’d get funny and loud and silly. I didn’t like it. So the last time he came here, a week or so ago, I told him not to come back.”

“And Laurel moved out on you?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you think she’s been seeing Harold since?”

“You told me he kidnapped her. That’s seeing him,” he said miserably.

I repeated the question I had asked him that morning. “Could it be a fake kidnapping, Tom? Something they cooked up together to raise money from Laurel’s relatives?”

Tom had been avoiding his father’s eyes. Now he turned and looked at him. The old man’s face had darkened and changed shape, as if it had been squeezed into a rectangular box.

“It’s getting late, Dad. I better take you back to the home.”

“So I won’t hear what’s been going on in this house?”

“Nothing’s been going on in this house.”

“Don’t try to kid me, and don’t try to kid yourself. You’ve been sitting around and letting it happen, making my mistakes all over again. I thought you’d learn from what happened to your mother.”

“What
did
happen to my mother?” Tom’s voice was thin and desperate, as if he dreaded the answer to his question.

“She was murdered here in this house, in the back bedroom.” Russo spoke with the half-conscious cruelty of an old man who had failed to learn from his suffering. “You ought to remember, you were here in the house when he did it to her. You remembered at the time.”

Tom’s face lost blood as if a plug had been pulled. He clenched his fists and raised them beside his head and ran at his father. Old Russo half rose to meet him, but was flung back into his chair by Tom’s assault.

I caught Tom around the waist and dragged him clear. The old man was bleeding at the side of the mouth. I maneuvered Tom into a chair against the opposite wall and stood over him. He began to sob.

“Ask him who shot his mother,” the old man said behind me. “He was here in the house when it happened. Go ahead and ask him.”

Russo was angry and excited. The harsh memory of the past had been too much for him, and he seemed to be taking revenge on his son for the loss of his wife. I wondered if he had been doing that ever since he came back from Bremerton to look after the boy.

Tom’s dry sobs were like hiccups which convulsed his entire body. The old man took him by the shoulders. “Was it Nelson Bagley?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” His voice was high and level.

“Was he wearing a sailor suit?”

“Yes. But he took it off and they made jingle bells.”

Violence repeats itself like a tic, and the room was full of potential violence. Old Russo began to shake Tom.

“Why didn’t you tell the police that at the time? It’s too late now.”

“That’s right, Mr. Russo. It’s too late. Why don’t you lay off him now?”

“He’s my son.”

“Treat him like one. He’s scared and upset and he’s lost his wife—”

“I lost my wife, too,” the older man said.

“I’m aware of that. All the more reason why you should go easy on your son.”

Like a fighter after a hard round, Russo moved to the far side of the room. He sat down and looked at the floor. I could hear his breathing gradually slowing down.

He rose and approached his son and touched him on the face. Tom returned the gesture.

“It’s okay, Dad,” he said.

Then Tom walked a little unsteadily out of the room. I followed him down the hall toward his bedroom. I had an impulse to stop him, keep him out of the dangerous lair of the past. But when he turned the light on it looked no worse than any other room with an unmade bed.

I stood in the doorway. “When did you start remembering your mother again?”

“I never forgot my mother.”

“I mean about her death—how she was killed.”

“It just started today, I think. Anyway, since Laurel went away. It keeps running through my head like a film clip—her on the bed, and the man on top of her.”

“Was there more than one man?”

“No. 1 don’t know.”

His voice was rising again. He sat abruptly on the edge of the bed and, like a bivalve closing, covered his face with his hands.

“I won’t make you talk about it now. But think about it, will you?”

“I don’t want to think about it,” he said behind his hands.

“Give it a try anyway. Make some notes, if you can. Anything you remember may be important.”

“Why? It won’t bring her back.”

“No, but it may help with Laurel. Did you see Laurel today, Tom?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Where do you think she is?”

He dropped his hands. “How should I know? Laurel doesn’t tell me where she goes.”

I sat on the bed beside him. “Do you think she’s been kidnapped?”

“No.” Then he reconsidered. “I don’t know. I didn’t think Harold was that rough.”

“He’s rough.”

Tom screwed up his face. “I must have been crazy to let him into the house. I thought he was her old school friend. And then he got interested in Gloria. Since she divorced Flaherty, she hasn’t had too many fellows interested in her.”

“Harold was interested in her car, wasn’t he?”

“That’s right. Her car was one of the main attractions.”

“Did he give any indication of what he wanted it for?”

“He wanted to take somebody for a ride. I don’t mean that the way it sounds, exactly. They were just going to take somebody to her mother’s place for dinner. I heard Gloria talking to him about it on the phone.”

“When?”

“A couple of days ago. What day is this?”

“Thursday.”

“Then it was Tuesday.”

“Who were they going to take for dinner?”

“Somebody from the hospital. I didn’t catch the name.”

“Where does her mother live?”

“Aunt Martie runs a motor court on the Coast Highway. It isn’t much of a place. She’s had some reverses since her husband left her.”

“Topanga Court?”

“That’s right. Do you know the place?”

“I was there this morning.” And Aunt Martie had lied to me about the tweed suit.

There were several cars in the yard under the cliff, but none of them was the green Falcon that belonged to Gloria. I parked in front of the office and went inside.

The bell jingled over the door. Behind the archway, the television set was talking in brash young voices that sounded like descendants of the voices I’d heard that morning. Mrs. Mungan appeared, wearing her red wig lower on her forehead.

“How are you, Mrs. Mungan?”

“Surviving,” she said. “Do I know you?”

Her eyes seemed to peer at me through a glaze of time or distance, as if my morning visit had occurred a long time ago. Then she remembered me.

“What do you want now?”

“A little help. You weren’t much help this morning. You said you gave Joe Sperling’s tweed suit to a little old man who took off down the beach. You didn’t mention his name or his background, but I’m pretty sure you knew both. You didn’t mention that he came here in the company of your daughter and her boy friend, and probably took off with them as well.”

She didn’t deny any of it. She leaned across the counter, supporting her weight on her arms. If I had lit a match, I could have set fire to her breath.

“What have you got against us, anyway?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why don’t you go away and leave us alone? My daughter is a good girl. All she ever did was try to do the right thing. Which is more than you can say for most of us.”

“What about Harold?”

She considered the question. “I didn’t say I’d vouch for him.”

“Are they here?”

“No. They’re not.”

“Have you seen them tonight?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t see Gloria last night, either. She lent her car to Harold, and spent the night at her cousin’s.”

“Where is Gloria spending tonight?”

She looked through the open door toward the highway. Her eyes seemed to reflect the light-streaked darkness.

“I wish I knew. I’ve been expecting to hear from her.”

“I know where she was a couple of hours ago,” I said. “In a motel in Redondo Beach looking after Harold.”

“Is there something the matter with Harold?”

“He was shot. He kidnapped Tom Russo’s wife, and her father shot him when he picked up the ransom money.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

But she knew I wasn’t. She put her face down on her arms and rested it there for a moment. When she lifted it and showed it to me again, it hadn’t changed very much, except for the glint of terror in the eyes.

She licked her dry lips. “I was afraid she’d get into trouble if she took up with Harold.” She paused, and sucked her breath in. “Did you say he kidnapped Laurel?”

“That’s right. Could we sit down in the back and have a talk, Mrs. Mungan?”

She glanced behind her through the archway as if she had
to ask permission of someone or something there, perhaps the television voices. “I don’t know.”

“It could be important, to you and Gloria. She’s in trouble, probably through no fault of her own.”

“That was the story of her marriage. Bob Flaherty ran up a pile of debts and left her holding the bag. The same thing happened with me and her father—”

I cut in: “This is worse. If Gloria goes along with Harold and helps him get away, she’ll be treated the same as he will. And Harold has a good chance of being shot on sight.”

Her fingers went to her mouth, pressing it back into shape. “What can I do?”

“You can talk to me. I think this present trouble goes back a long way, at least as far as the murder of your sister Allie.”

“You know about that?”

“Not as much as you do, Mrs. Mungan. May I come in?”

She opened the gate at the side of the desk and let me into the back room, where she turned off the television set. I could hear the background noises of the highway. Before I sat down in the armchair she offered me, I glanced at the pictures on the walls. One of them was a photograph of a young woman who looked as Mrs. Mungan might have looked when she was young.

Her breast nudged my arm. “That was my sister Allie. I guess you’ve seen her picture?”

“No, I haven’t. She was very pretty.”

“Yes, she was the pretty one in the family.” She opened a drawer and handed me a smaller and younger photograph. “This was her graduation picture when she graduated from Fresno High in 1935. She was a real stunner, as you can see.”

I nodded in agreement, though the fine eyes which confronted me in the picture had long since been closed.

“She was nice, too,” the woman said. “It isn’t fair, what happens to some people. It would have made more sense if I’d been shot instead of Allie.”

She slumped in a chair. I was afraid she might dissolve in
tears, and be lost as a witness. But perhaps her tears had all run out long ago. The only effect of the shocks she’d been experiencing seemed to be that she was sobering up.

“Who shot Allie?” I said.

“That’s the question I’ve been asking myself for more than twenty-five years. I lie awake in the middle of the night thinking about it.”

“And what do you think, Mrs. Mungan?”

“I used to think it was her husband, Russo. Allie married beneath her, and he was an older man, insanely jealous.” It sounded like a line she had repeated many times, until it had become a piece of family folklore. “But the police said he couldn’t have done it. He didn’t miss a day of work in the shipyards, and it would have taken him a couple of days anyway to make the trip back and forth between here and Bremerton.”

“What made Russo jealous?”

“That’s just the way he was.”

“Were there other men in your sister’s life?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I’m asking you, Mrs. Mungan.”

“I’m not answering. Let her rest in peace, why can’t you?”

“Other people are being killed. Tom Russo’s wife has been kidnapped, and your daughter Gloria is involved with the kidnapping.”

“You told me that before. I don’t believe it.”

“After everything that’s happened in your family, you don’t believe it?”

Her mouth opened and stretched wide. The flesh around her eyes crinkled. She looked as if she had seen a ghost and was getting ready to scream. But she was silent, looking inward as if the ghost was in her mind.

“Was Nelson Bagley your sister’s lover?”

“No. He wanted to be. He used to follow her around like a dog. But Allie wasn’t really interested in him.”

“How do you know that?”

“She wrote me about him from Bremerton. Russo was jealous of him, but he was a joke to Alison.”

“Sometimes a joke like that turns out to be not so funny.”

“What do you mean?”

“Russo thinks Bagley killed her.”

“I know that. He tried to nail Bagley after he got back from the war. But by that time Bagley was a helpless cripple. His ship burned and he went overboard and it knocked all the sense out of his head. The police said even if it was true they had no way of proving it at that late date. And they couldn’t drag a man like Bagley into a courtroom.”

“But you dragged him here Tuesday night.”

“I didn’t drag him. I had him here for dinner. Anyway, it was Harold’s idea. He was interested in what caused the fire on the ship, and he thought maybe Nelson Bagley could tell him something.”

“What did Nelson tell him?”

“I don’t know. I got pretty upset myself, and I drank too much before dinner. When I saw Nelson Bagley and tried to talk to him, the whole thing fell on me like a ton of bricks and I started drinking. I didn’t sober up until the next morning, and by that time they were long gone.”