The Chill (2 page)

“How does Dolly feel about sex?”

“Fine. We talked about it very frankly. If you think she left me because she’s afraid of it, you’re way off the beam. She’s a warm person.”

“Why did she leave you, Alex?”

His eyes clouded with pain, which had scarcely left them. “I haven’t been able to figure it out. It wasn’t anything between me and Dolly, I’m sure of that. The man with the beard must have had something to do with it.”

“How does he get into the picture?”

“He came to the hotel that afternoon—the day she left. I was down on the beach having a swim, and afterward I went to sleep in the sun. I must have been away from the room for a couple of hours. She was gone, bag and baggage, when I got back. The desk clerk told me she had this visitor before she
left, a man with a short gray beard who stayed in the room about an hour.”

“No name?”

“He didn’t mention his name.”

“Did he and your wife leave together?”

“The desk clerk said they didn’t. The man left first. Then Dolly took a taxi to the bus station, but so far as I could find out she didn’t buy a ticket. She didn’t buy a railroad ticket or an airline ticket, either. She had no car. So I’ve been going on the assumption that she’s still here in Pacific Point. She couldn’t walk down the freeway.”

“She could hitchhike.”

“Not Dolly.”

“Where did she live before you were married?”

“In Westwood, in a furnished apartment. She gave it up and we moved her typewriter and things into my apartment on Saturday morning just before the ceremony. All the stuff is still there, and it’s one of the things that worry me. I’ve been over it with a fine-toothed comb for clues, but she didn’t leave any behind—nothing really personal at all.”

“Do you think she planned to marry you and leave you?”

“No, I don’t. What would be the point?”

“I can think of several possibilities. Do you carry much insurance, for example?”

“A fair amount. Dad insured me when I was born. But he’s still the beneficiary.”

“Does your family have money?”

“Not that much. Dad makes a good living, but he works for it. Anyway, what you’re hinting at is out of the question. Dolly’s completely honest, and she doesn’t even care about money.”

“What does she care about?”

“I thought she cared about me,” he said with his head down. “I still believe she does. Something must have happened to her. She may have gone out of her mind.”

“Is she mentally unstable?”

He considered the question, and his answer to it. “I don’t think so. She had her black spells. I guess most people do. I was talking loosely.”

“Keep on talking loosely. You can’t tell what may be important. You’ve been making a search for her, of course?”

“As much of a search as I could. But I can’t do it all by myself, without any cooperation from the police. They write down what I say on little pieces of paper and put them away in a drawer and give me pitying looks. They seem to think Dolly found out something shameful about me on our wedding night.”

“Could there be any truth in that?”

“No! We’re crazy about each other. I tried to tell that to the Sheriff this morning. He gave me one of those knowing leers and said he couldn’t act unless there was some indication of a breach of the peace. I asked him if a missing woman wasn’t some indication, and he said no. She was free and twenty-one and she left under her own power and I had no legal right to force her to come back. He advised me to get an annulment. I told him what he could do with his advice, and he ordered two of his men to throw me out of his office. I found out where the deputy D.A. was, in court, and I was waiting to put in a complaint when I saw you on the stand.”

“Nobody sent you to me, then?”

“No, but I can give you references. My father—”

“You told me about your father. He thinks you should get an annulment, too.”

Alex nodded dolefully. “Dad thinks I’m wasting my time, on a girl who isn’t worth it.”

“He could be right.”

“He couldn’t be more wrong. Dolly is the only one I’ve ever loved and the only one I ever will love. If you won’t help me, I’ll find somebody who will!”

I liked his insistence. “My rates are high. A hundred a day and expenses.”

“I’ve got enough to pay you for at least a week.” He reached for his billfold and slammed it down on the bar, so hard that the bartender looked at him suspiciously. “Do you want a cash advance?”

“There’s no hurry,” I said. “Do you have a picture of Dolly?”

He removed a folded piece of newspaper from the billfold and handed it to me with a certain reluctance, as if it was more valuable than money. It was a reproduction of a photograph which had been unfolded and refolded many times.

“Among happy honeymooners at the Surf House,” the caption said, “are Mr. and Mrs. Alex Kincaid of Long Beach.” Alex and his bride smiled up at me through the murky light. Her face was oval and lovely in a way of its own, with a kind of hooded intelligence in the eyes and humor like a bittersweet taste on the mouth.

“When was this taken?”

“Three weeks ago Saturday, when we arrived at the Surf House. They do it for everybody. They printed it in the Sunday morning paper, and I clipped it. I’m glad I did. It’s the only picture I have of her.”

“You could get copies.”

“Where?”

“From whoever took it.”

“I never thought of that. I’ll see the photographer at the hotel about it. How many copies do you think I should ask him for?”

“Two or three dozen, anyway. It’s better to have too many than too few.”

“That will run into money.”

“I know, and so will I.”

“Are you trying to talk yourself out of a job?”

“I don’t need the work, and I could use a rest.”

“To hell with you then.”

He snatched at the flimsy picture between my fingers. It
tore across the middle. We faced each other like enemies, each of us holding a piece of the happy honeymooners.

Alex burst into tears.

I
AGREED
over lunch to help him find his wife. That and the chicken pot pie calmed him down. He couldn’t remember when he had eaten last, and he ate ravenously.

We drove out to the Surf House in separate cars. It was on the sea at the good end of town: a pueblo hotel whose Spanish gardens were dotted with hundred-dollar-a-day cottages. The terraces in front of the main building descended in wide green steps to its own marina. Yachts and launches were bobbing at the slips. Further out on the water, beyond the curving promontory that gave Pacific Point its name, white sails leaned against a low gray wall of fog.

The desk clerk in the Ivy League suit was very polite, but he wasn’t the one who had been on duty on the Sunday I was interested in. That one had been a summer replacement, a college boy who had gone back to school in the East. He himself, he regretted to say, knew nothing about Mrs. Kincaid’s bearded visitor or her departure.

“I’d like to talk to the hotel photographer. Is he around today?”

“Yes, sir. I believe he’s out by the swimming pool.”

We found him, a thin spry man wearing a heavy camera like an albatross around his neck. Among the colored beach clothes and bathing costumes, his dark business suit made him look like an undertaker. He was taking some very candid pictures
of a middle-aged woman in a Bikini who didn’t belong in one. Her umbilicus glared at the camera like an eyeless socket.

When he had done his dreadful work, the photographer turned to Alex with a smile. “Hi. How’s the wife?”

“I haven’t seen her recently,” Alex said glumly.

“Weren’t you on your honeymoon a couple of weeks ago? Didn’t I take your picture?”

Alex didn’t answer him. He was peering around at the pool-side loungers like a ghost trying to remember how it felt to be human. I said:

“We’d like to get some copies made of that picture you took. Mrs. Kincaid is on the missing list, and I’m a private detective. My name is Archer.”

“Fargo. Simmy Fargo.” He gave me a quick handshake, and the kind of glance a camera gives you when it records you for posterity. “In what sense on the missing list?”

“We don’t know. She left here in a taxi on the afternoon of September the second. Kincaid has been looking for her ever since.”

“That’s tough,” Fargo said. “I suppose you want the prints for circularization. How many do you think you’ll be needing?”

“Three dozen?”

He whistled, and slapped himself on his narrow wrinkled forehead. “I’ve got a busy weekend coming up, and it’s already started. This is Friday. I could let you have them by Monday. But I suppose you want them yesterday?”

“Today will do.”

“Sorry.” He shrugged loosely, making his camera bob against his chest.

“It could be important, Fargo. What do you say we settle for a dozen, in two hours?”

“I’d like to help you. But I’ve got a job.” Slowly, almost against his will, he turned and looked at Alex. “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll call the wife in, and you can have your pictures. Only don’t stand me up, the way the other one did.”

“What other one?” I said.

“Big guy with a beard. He ordered a print of the same picture and never came back for it. I can let you have that print now if you like.”

Alex came out of his dark trance. He took hold of Fargo’s arm with both hands and shook it. “You saw him then. Who is he?”

“I thought maybe you knew him” Fargo disengaged himself and stepped back. “As a matter of fact, I thought I knew him, too. I could have sworn I took his picture once. But I couldn’t quite place the face. I see too many faces.”

“Did he give you his name?”

“He must have. I don’t take orders without a name. I’ll see if I can find it for you, eh?”

We followed him into the hotel and through a maze of corridors to his small cluttered windowless office. He phoned his wife, then burrowed into the pile of papers on his desk and came up with a photographer’s envelope. Inside, between two sheets of corrugated paper, was a glossy print of the newly-weds. On the front of the envelope Fargo had written in pencil: “Chuck Begley, Wine Cellar.”

“I remember now,” he said. “He told me he was working at the Wine Cellar. That’s a liquor store not too far from here. When Begley didn’t claim his picture I called them. They said Begley wasn’t working for them any more.” Fargo looked from me to Alex. “Does the name Begley mean anything to you?”

We both said that it didn’t. “Can you describe him, Mr. Fargo?”

“I can describe the part of him that wasn’t covered with seaweed, I mean the beard. His hair is gray, like the beard, and very thick and wavy. Gray eyebrows and gray eyes, an ordinary kind of straight nose, I noticed it was peeling from the sun. He’s not bad-looking for an older man, apart from his teeth, which aren’t good. And he looks as though he’s taken a beating or two in his time. Personally I wouldn’t want to go
up against him. He’s a big man, and he looks pretty rough.”

“How big?”

“Three or four inches taller than I am. That would make him six feet one or two. He was wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt, and I noticed the muscles in his arms.”

“How did he talk?”

“Nothing special. He didn’t have a Harvard accent, and he didn’t say ain’t.”

“Did he give you any reason for wanting the picture?”

“He said he had a sentimental interest. He saw it in the paper, and it reminded him of somebody. I remember thinking he must have dashed right over. The paper with the picture in it came out Sunday morning, and he came in around Sunday noon.”

“He must have gone to see your wife immediately afterward,” I said to Alex. And to Fargo: “How did this particular picture happen to be used by the newspaper?”

“They picked it out of a batch I sent over. The
Press
often uses my pictures, as a matter of fact I used to work for them. Why they used this one instead of some of the others I couldn’t say.” He held up the print in the fluorescent light, then handed it to me. “It did turn out well, and Mr. Kincaid and his wife make an attractive couple.”

“Thanks very much,” Alex said sardonically.

“I was paying you a compliment, fellow.”

“Sure you were.”

I took the print from Fargo and shunted Alex out of the place before it got too small for him. Black grief kept flooding up in him, changing to anger when it reached the air. It wasn’t just grief for a one-day wife, it was also grief for himself. He didn’t seem to know if he was a man or not.

I couldn’t blame him for his feelings, but they made him no asset to the kind of work I was trying to do. When I found the Wine Cellar, on a motel strip a few blocks inland, I left him outside in his little red sports car.

The interior of the liquor store was pleasantly cool. I was the only potential customer, and the man behind the counter came out from behind it to greet me.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

He wore a plaid waistcoat, and he had the slightly muzzy voice and liquid eyes and dense complexion of a man who drank all day and into the night.

“I’d like to see Chuck Begley.”

He looked vaguely pained, and his voice took on a note of mild complaint. “I had to fire Chuck. I’d send him out with a delivery, and sometimes it’d arrive when it was supposed to, and sometimes it wouldn’t.”

“How long ago did you fire him?”

“Couple of weeks. He only worked for me a couple of weeks. He isn’t cut out for that kind of work. I told him more than once it was beneath his capacity. Chuck Begley is a fairly bright man if he’d straighten up, you know.”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought perhaps you were an acquaintance of his.”

I showed him my photostat.

He blew the smell of peppermint in my face. “Is Begley on the run?”

“He may be. Why?”

“I wondered when he first came in why a man like him would take a part-time delivery job. What’s he wanted for?”

“I wouldn’t know. Can you give me his home address?”

“I think I can at that.” He stroked his veined nose, watching me over his fingers. “Don’t tell Begley I gave you the word. I don’t want him bouncing back on me.”