Sleeping Beauty (28 page)

He roused himself from his gray dream. “I can assure you I wasn’t joking. Bagley took a gun out of the communications shack and tried to kill himself. He gave himself a superficial wound in the head, but the damage he did was incalculable. This was some time after the avgas tank ruptured. Parts of the ship were awash with gasoline and fumes, and of course the smoking lamp was out. The flash of Bagley’s gun started a fire in the passageway and set fire to him as well. He ran up to the flight deck and jumped overboard. We lost him—it was still dark, and we had to mobilize all hands to fight the fire. But the oiler found him in the sea and picked him up, along with some other men who had gone overboard. My steward Smith was one of them. Several other men were lost, either burned or drowned.”

Somerville was breathing hard. It had cost him an effort to tell me about the fire that had ruined his ship and his career. He closed his eyes as if to shut out the memory.

“I don’t understand why Bagley tried to shoot himself, Captain.”

He opened his eyes reluctantly. “Whoever sent that clipping to me apparently sent one to Bagley as well. Bagley realized the game was up, stole a gun from the comm office, and went down into an empty passageway and shot himself, or tried to.”

“How did he get hold of the clipping? Had the mail been distributed to the crew?”

“No. But remember that Bagley was a messenger in the comm office, where the mail was handled. It gave him special access.”

“Do you
know
he saw a copy of the clipping?”

“I didn’t see it in his hands,” Somerville said. “But a copy of it was later found in a drawer in the comm office. It’s all in the official record of the inquiry into the cause of the fire. You can refer to that if you don’t believe me.”

I neither believed the Captain nor disbelieved him. I had been in the Army, though, and traveled on naval vessels. I knew something about the power of their captains to create their own reality aboard ship—a power that sometimes could extend long past the event, and shape the record of official inquiries. I said:

“I still don’t entirely understand why you didn’t have Bagley brought in and questioned.”

Somerville looked at me in some confusion. “When do you mean?”

“When you sent for him and he didn’t show up.”

“I had more pressing things on my mind. I was sitting on top of an oil spill, man.”

“An oil spill?”

“A gasoline spill.” The Captain turned red, as if the fire in his memory was showing through. “I mean to say a gasoline spill. I’m very tired, I’m afraid.”

“So nothing was said to Bagley?”

“Not that night. Certainly not by me. I didn’t see him at all until several months later. He was in a Stateside hospital, and he was hardly more than a living corpse. There was some idea of prosecuting him, for the sake of the record, but I helped to get it quashed.”

“Prosecuting him for Allie Russo’s murder?”

“Yes. There’s no doubt he was guilty. But the authorities, both naval and civilian, saw no point in pressing the matter further, and neither did I. It appeared very unlikely at the time that Bagley would ever get out of bed again, or regain his powers of speech. It’s a miracle that he did.”

“Maybe that’s why he was killed,” I said. “He was learning to talk again.”

Somerville glanced up sharply. “He was learning to talk again?”

“Yes. I spent some time with his doctor earlier this evening. Bagley had been doing considerable talking.”

“About Allie—about Mrs. Russo’s death?”

“The subject came up,” I said. “Did Bagley confess?”

“Some of the things he said could be taken as a confession. I’m not sure that’s what they were, though. He may simply have been a witness to the murder. Or he may have done something to her after she was dead.”

I watched Somerville as I named the possibilities. His face seemed to undergo a process of aging. “Exactly what did he say?”

“That he did something terrible.”

Somerville inclined his head abruptly, his chin chopping down like an axe. “He killed her. His own death last night only confirms it.”

“How does it do that?”

“I think he was killed in revenge by one of the Russos, Allie’s husband or her son. You may not know those hot-blooded types as well as I do—if they have a stain on the family honor, they wash it away with blood.”

The guilt of one of the Russos was a possibility I had considered. But I wasn’t prepared to discuss it with Somerville. I tried to change the subject, unsuccessfully, since the possible guilt of the Captain himself was involved in what I said.

“Nelson Bagley saw your face on television Tuesday night. Did you know that, Captain?”

“I certainly did not. You mean to say that Bagley was watching television?”

“Somebody put him up to it.”

“Somebody?”

“I think it was arranged by Harold Sherry.”

“What was the point?”

“To get something on you and possibly other members of your family. Apparently Harold Sherry took Bagley out of the hospital for that purpose.”

The Captain’s face went through still another aging process which ended in a bitter smile. “Are you suggesting that I’m a suspect in Bagley’s death?”

“The suggestion is yours.”

“The hell it is. Where would I find the time, man? I’ve been working a twenty-hour day. And if there’s anyone more in the public eye than I’ve been this week—” He opened his hands loosely and let them fall.

What he said was true. But he seemed to be an unreal man even when he was saying true things. We sat and looked at each other, the unreality expanding between us until it lay like a pollution over the endless city and across the endless sea, all the way to Okinawa and the war.

Somerville escorted me to the front door, apologized for being very tired, and said good night. His wife didn’t appear.

I sat in my car for a minute, looking out over the city which stretched like a luminous map to the horizon. It was hard to pick up its ever-changing meaning. Its whorls and dots and rectangles of light had to be interpreted, like an abstract painting, in terms of everything that a man remembered. The thought of Laurel, still lost somewhere in that maze, went through me like a pang.

A door opened at the back of the garage, spilling out light. Smith emerged and came toward me, trampling on the heels of his long shadow. I got out and went to meet him.

“I wanted to ask you,” he said, “has Miss Laurel turned up yet?”

“Not yet. I’ve been looking for her.”

“You’re Mr. Archer, isn’t that correct?”

I said I was.

The black man reached into his trousers pocket and brought out a plastic tube or vial between three and four inches long. “Is this yours?”

I took it into the lighted toolroom at the back of the garage. The label on the vial was that of a Pacific Palisades drugstore which I patronized, and had my name clearly typewritten on it.

“Lew Archer,” it said. “Take one at bedtime as needed for sleep—Dr. Larry Drummond. (Nembutal Gr. 3/4 #100).”

After a blank moment, I realized that it was the vial which Laurel had taken from my medicine cabinet. It was empty. Hope and fear collided in my chest.

I turned to the man behind me. “Where did you get this?”

“Right here. It was in the wastebasket in the toolroom bathroom.”

“And it was empty?”

“It sure was. I didn’t take anything out or put anything in. Was there some medicine in it?”

“Sleeping pills,” I said. “The same ones that Laurel took from my bathroom.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“I’m afraid they are. Will you show me where you found this empty tube?”

He opened a painted green door at the end of the toolroom and pulled the chain of a light over his head. The small room contained a toilet and a washbasin with a mirror on the wall above it and a white plastic wastebasket on the floor underneath.

The wastebasket was empty. There was no sign of Laurel anywhere in the room. I found myself peering intensely into the mirror as if her vagrant image might somehow have left its
traces on the glass. I caught a glimpse of Smith’s face looming dark and opaque over my shoulder.

“When did you find the vial?”

“Just now, since I got back from the Point. I didn’t think it meant anything, and then I saw your name on it. With what you told me, it means that she’s been here, doesn’t it?”

“I think so. I hope so. Who uses this room?”

“Just me, and sometimes the man who helps with the gardening.”

“Does he live in?”

“No, sir. He’s Mexican. He comes over here from the barrio.”

“When did you last come in here—I mean before you found the vial?”

He thought about the question, chewing at his lips with gold-glinting teeth. “Sometime this morning, early.”

“Did you happen to look in the wastebasket then?”

“No, sir. I can’t say I did. But I might have noticed if that tube had been in it.”

“And you don’t think it was?”

“I couldn’t swear to it one way or the other.”

“When was the last time you can swear the wastebasket was empty?”

“I emptied it yesterday,” he said. “The garbage was collected yesterday.”

“So Laurel could have been here any time since?”

“I wouldn’t say any time. I’ve been around here part of today, between the two trips I made to the Point, this morning and this evening.” He gave me an anxious sidewise look. “I hope you don’t think I did anything wrong.”

“There’s no suggestion of that.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” But he sounded incredulous, and far from glad.

Trailed by Smith, I went back to the front door of the house. He unlocked it for me and let me in. The interior was dark and silent, and it made me feel like a burglar.

Elizabeth appeared at the end of the hall. She was still fully dressed and wide awake.

“Archer? I thought you’d gone long ago.”

“I was on my way, but Smith found something interesting.” I showed her the empty vial and explained its importance. “I don’t want to raise your hopes too much, but this probably means that Laurel’s been here in the last twenty-four hours, possibly even tonight.”

“But it’s empty. What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. It worries me.”

Elizabeth’s eyes turned blue-black. “You think she swallowed the capsules?”

“It’s possible.”

“She could be on the property now somewhere. She may be dying.”

I got the flashlight out of the trunk of my car. Smith turned on all the outside lights. The three of us made a search behind the trees, under the wet hedges, and through Laurel’s old hiding places.

The bloody rat was still on the floor of the pool house. The Captain’s picture looked down through cracked glass from the storage-shed wall. It seemed strangely like the memento of a dead man, a man who had died long ago on the far side of the ocean.

Smith came into the shed and found me standing in front of the picture. He stood beside me, and said with some feeling:

“He was the best captain I ever had in the Navy. I don’t know what happened to his career.”

“What caused the gasoline spill on the
Canaan Sound?
You were there, weren’t you?”

He glanced down at his withered hand. “I was there. But don’t ask me what caused it. Things go wrong for some men. First the gas tank went bad on him, and now it’s happening again with this underwater oil. The Captain does everything by the book, but gas tanks and underwater oil wells don’t know
about the book. You have to be lucky dealing with them, and the Captain doesn’t have that kind of luck. He’d be better off doing what he always wanted to do—teaching at Annapolis.”

As we moved back toward the house, empty-handed and anxious, Marian came out of the open front door. Her gray-streaked hair was rumpled and her dress was twisted on her hips, as if she had dressed in the dark and in a hurry. She looked around rather wildly under the lights.

“What’s going on out here?”

“Apparently Laurel paid us a visit today,” Elizabeth said. “But she didn’t stay.”

I told Laurel’s mother what Smith had found, and what I thought it meant. She grasped me by the shoulders. She was surprisingly strong, like a hurt cat, and she shook me:

“You’ve got to find her.”

“It’s all I’m trying to do, Mrs. Lennox.”

“Where do you think she is now?”

“I have no way of knowing. It’s possible she went home.”

“Which home?”

“You’d know better than I would. You’re her mother.”

She rushed into the house. I followed her and found her telephoning in the Captain’s study.

“You’ve got to help us look for her, Mr. Russo,” she was saying. She sounded close to hysteria. I lifted the receiver from her hand and spoke to Tom:

“Have you seen her or heard from her?”

“No, sir, I haven’t. You think I should go out looking?”

“It’s a big city, Tom. You might as well stay home. She may try to contact you.”

“Okay, I’ll stay home.”

“Have you seen Gloria, by the way?”

“Not since I dropped her off in Redondo Beach. That makes two of them missing.”

“At least there’s some hope that Laurel is alive.” I hung up.

Marian was at my elbow. “You told him he should stay home,
that she might try to contact him. She might try to do the same to me. After all, I’m her mother.”

“That’s true.”

“But our house is standing empty. What if she goes home and there’s nobody there? I’ve got to go home.”

“You’re tired, dear,” Elizabeth said.

“Not really. I couldn’t possibly sleep, anyway. I seem to have given up sleeping. Will you lend me a car?”

“You shouldn’t drive yourself,” Elizabeth said.

I would have liked to volunteer, but I was so tired I didn’t trust my driving. Smith said he would take her back to Pacific Point.

She promised to let me know if she heard from Laurel.

Turning down the hill toward home, I noticed that the view of the city had changed. It seemed larger, more luminous, and less abstract. It stretched between the mountains and the sea like a living substance with the power to be hurt and to hurt.

I switched off the thinking and feeling part, and drove home on automatic pilot.