Mrs. Overell was younger than her husband by perhaps ten years, an attractive dark-blonde woman whose nicely buxom shape was getting a tad matronly. We sat by the pool watching the mid-afternoon sun highlight the shimmering blue surface with gold. We drank iced tea and she hid her feelings behind dark sunglasses and features as expressionless as the Stone Face with which those coeds had tagged her daughter.
“I don’t know what I can tell you, Mr. Heller,” she said, her voice a bland alto, “that my husband hasn’t already.”
“Well, Mrs. Overell, I’m chiefly here for two reasons. First, I can use a photo of your daughter, a recent one.”
“Certainly.” A tiny smile etched itself on the rigid face. “I should have thought of that-Walter carries a photo of Louise when she was still a child. He’d like to keep her that way.”
“You do agree with this effort to break off Louise’s relationship with this Gollum character?”
“Mr. Heller, I’m not naive enough to think that we can succeed at that. But I won’t stand in Walter’s way. Perhaps we can postpone this marriage long enough for Louise to see through this boy.”
“You think he’s a male golddigger, too?”
She shrugged. “He doesn’t come from money.”
“You know where he lives? Have an address?”
“He’s here in Pasadena.”
I couldn’t picture a wrong side of the tracks in this swanky burg.
“No, I don’t have an address,” she was saying, “but he’s in North Fair Oaks…where so many coloreds have moved in.”
I had been met at the door by a Negro butler, who I supposed had to live somewhere.
But I didn’t press the subject. I sipped my tea and offered, gently, “If your daughter is willing to wait to marry this boy till her eighteenth birthday…which I understand is many months from now…perhaps what you ought to do is humor her, and hope this affair cools off.”
The blue and gold of the sun-kissed pool shimmered in the dark lens of her sunglasses. “I would tend to agree with you, Mr. Heller. In time she might come to her senses of her own volition. But Walter is a father who has not adjusted to losing his little girl…she’s our only child, you know…and I do share his concern about the Gollum boy.”
“That’s the other reason I wanted to speak with you, directly,” I said, and-delicately-I filled her in on my notion to catch the two in flagrante delicto. I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t mind putting her daughter through the public embarrassment a statutory rape accusation would bring.
Another tiny smile etched itself. “We’ve gotten quite used to Louise embarrassing us, Mr. Heller.”
Mrs. Overell thought I might have trouble catching them, however, since they so often went hiking and camping in the West San Fernando Valley-like today. That would be tough: I was used to bagging my quarry in backseats and motel rooms.
As it turned out, Mrs. Overell was able to provide a snapshot, filched from her daughter’s room, of both Louise and her beau. They were in swimsuits, at the beach on towels, leaning back on their elbows smiling up at the camera.
Louise had a nice if faintly mocking, superior smile-not exactly pretty, and indeed round-faced, but not bad; and she was, as that ex-gob had so succinctly put it, built like a brick shithouse. This girl had everything Jane Russell did except a movie contract.
As for Bud, he was blond, boyish, rather round faced himself, with wire-rimmed glasses and a grin that somehow lacked the suggestion of cunning his girl friend’s smile possessed. He had the slender yet solid build so often seen in Navy men.
I spent another hour or so in Pasadena, which had a sleepy air of prosperity spawned by the many resort hotels, the formidable buildings, the pretentious homes, the bounteous foliage. The North Fair Oaks section did seem to have more than its share of colored residents, but this was still nicer than anywhere I’d ever lived. With the help of a service station attendant-the private detective’s best friend in a strange city-I located the home of Dr. Joseph Stomel, married to Bud’s mother, Wilhilmina. But I had no intention of talking to anyone there, as yet. This was strictly a point of reference for the eventual tailing of Gollum.
That was Friday, and between the college and the Pasadena run, I’d earned my hundred bucks. I spent all day Saturday with my wife, and friends, enjoying our premature summer vacation.
Then I went back to work Saturday night, though I looked like a tourist in my blue sportshirt and chinos. The camera I had with me was no tourist’s Brownie, however, rather a divorce dick’s Speed Graphic loaded with infrared film and the world’s least conspicuous flash.
It was around ten o’clock when I turned right off State Highway 55, my rental Ford gliding across the low-slung spit over the mouth of an inlet of landlocked Newport Bay, dotted by sails, glistening with moonbeams, dancing with harbor lights. Seaside cottages clustered along the bay shore, but grander dwellings perched on islands in the lagoon-like bay, California-style Riviera-worthy stucco villas, a suitable backdrop for the fleet of yachts and other pleasure crafted moored here.
My behind was moored in a booth in the Beachfront Cafe, a chrome-heavy diner with a row of windows looking out on the dock and the peaceful, soothing view of lights twinkling and pleasure crafts bobbing on the moon-washed water. I ate a cheeseburger and fries and sipped coffee as I kept watch; I had a perfect view of the sleek cruiser, the Mary E. A few lights were on in the boat, and occasional movement could be made out, but just vague shapes. No different than any number of other boats moored here, gently rocking.
Overell had told me that he and his wife would be entertaining their daughter and her beau aboard the cruiser, having dinner, talking out their problems, perhaps even coming to some sort of understanding. What I had in mind was to follow the young lovers when they left this family powwow.
Since Bud lived at home with his mom, I figured the couple would either go to some lover’s lane to park, or maybe hit a motel. Either way, my Speed Graphic would collect the evidence needed to nail Bud for statutory rape. It’s not elegant, but it’s a living.
Around eleven I spotted them, comng down a ladder, stepping onto the swaying dock: Bud and Louise. Hazel-haired, taller than I’d imagined her, she did have an admirable top-heavy figure, which her short-sleeved pale blue sweater and darker blue pedal pushers showed off nicely. Bud wore a yellow sportshirt and brown slacks, and they held hands as they moved rather quickly away from the boat.
I was preparing to leave the cafe and follow them up to the parking lot, and Bud’s car-Mrs. Overell had given me the make and color, and I’d already spotted it, a blue Pontiac convertible, pre-war, battered but serviceable-only, they threw me a curve in addition to Louise’s.
The couple were heading up the ramp toward the cafe!
Absurdly, I wondered if they’d made me-impossible, since they hadn’t seen me yet-and I hunkered over my coffee as the lovebirds took a couple of stools at the counter, just about opposite my window booth.
At first they were laughing, at some private joke; it seemed rather forced-were they trying to attract attention?
Then they both ordered burgers and fries and sat there talking, very quietly. Even a trained eavesdropper like me couldn’t pick up a word. Perhaps they’d had a rough evening with her folks, because periodically one would seem to be comforting the other, stroking an arm, patting a shoulder, reassuringly.
What the hell was going on? Why did they need a burger, when presumably that luxury cruiser had a well-stocked larder? And if they wanted to get away from her parents and that boat, why hang around the dock? Why not climb in Bud’s convertible and seek a burger joint that wasn’t in her parents’ watery backyard?