“I guess I’ll have to go to Hollywood. It would help me if you’d come along. It would help me more if you’d tell me who your daughter knew. Or rather who she liked, I suppose she knew everybody.”
“I’d love to. Go along to Hollywood, I mean. I take it you haven’t found anything in the room?”
“One thing I’m pretty sure of. Una didn’t intentionally go away for long. Women usually just have one razor, and hers is in her bathroom.”
“You notice things. Also Jack’s picture. She only had the one, because she liked it best.”
“That isn’t so conclusive,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’d know whether there’s a bathing suit missing?”
“I really couldn’t say, she had so many. She was at her best in them.”
“Still was?”
“I guess so, as a working hypothesis. Unless that hundred can buy evidence to the contrary.”
“You didn’t like your daughter much, did you?”
“No. I didn’t like her father. And she was prettier than I.”
“But not so intelligent?”
“Not as bitchy, you mean? She was bitchy enough. But I’m still worried about Jack. He loved her. Even if I didn’t.”
The telephone in the hall took the cue and began to ring. “This is Millicent Dreen,” she said into it. “Yes, you may read it to me.” A pause. “ ‘Kill the fatted calf, ice the champagne, turn down the sheets and break out the black silk nightie. Am coming home tomorrow’. Is that right?”
“Hold it a minute,” she said then. “I wish to send an answer. To Ensign Jack Ross, USS Guam, CVE 173, Naval Air Station, Alameda — is that Ensign Ross’s correct address? The text is: ‘Dear Jack join me at the Hollywood apartment there is no one at the beach house. Millicent.’ Repeat it, please... Right. Thank you.”
She turned from the phone and collapsed in the nearest chair, not forgetting to arrange her legs symmetrically.
“So Jack is coming home tomorrow?” I said. “All I had before was no evidence. Now I have no evidence and until tomorrow.”
She leaned forward to look at me. “How far can I trust you, I’ve been wondering?”
“Not so far. But I’m not a blackmailer. It’s just that it’s sort of hard, so to speak, to play tennis with the invisible man.”
“The invisible man has nothing to do with this. I called him when Una didn’t come home.”
“All right,” I said. “You’re the one that wants to find Una. You’ll get around to telling me. In the meantime, who else did you call?”
“Hilda Karp, Una’s best friend — her only female friend.”
“Where can I get hold of her?”
“She married Gray Karp, the agent, and resides, as they say, in the Karp residence.”
Since Mrs. Dreen had another car in Hollywood, we drove down in my car. It was just over a hundred miles: just over a hundred minutes. Enroute the temperature rose ten degrees, which is one reason I live in Santa Barbara. But Mrs. Dreen’s apartment in the Park-Wilshire was air-conditioned and equipped with a very elaborate bar. In spite of the fact that she was able to offer me Scotch, I tore myself away.
Mr. and Mrs. Karp had made the San Fernando Valley their home. Their ranch, set high on a plateau of rolling lawn, was huge and fashionably grotesque: Spanish Mission and Cubist with a dash of paranoia. The room where I waited for Mrs. Karp was as big as a small barn and full of blue furniture. The bar had a brass rail.
Hilda Karp was a Dresden blonde with an athletic body and brains. By appearing in it, she made the room seem realer. “Mr. Rogers, I believe?” She had my card in her hand, the one with Private Investigator on it.
“Una Sand disappeared yesterday. Her mother said you were her best friend.”
“Millicent — Mrs. Dreen — called me early this morning. But as I said then, I haven’t seen Una for several days.”
“Why would she go away?”
Hilda Karp sat down on the arm of a chair, and looked thoughtful. “I can’t understand why her mother should be worried. She can take care of herself, and she’s gone away before. I don’t know why this time. I know her well enough to know that she’s unpredictable.”
“Why did she go away before?”
“Why do girls leave home, Mr. Rogers?”
“She picked a queer time to leave home. Her husband’s coming home tomorrow.”
“That’s right, she told me he sent her a cable from Pearl. He’s a nice boy.”
“Did Una think so?”
She looked at me frigidly as only a pale blonde can look, and said nothing.
“Look,” I said. “I’m trying to do a job for Mrs. Dreen. My job is laying skeletons to rest, not teaching them the choreography of the Danse Macabre.”
“Nicely put,” she said, as who should say: you win the one-pound box of chocolates and a free ticket to the voluptuous hula fiesta. “Actually there’s no skeleton. Una has played around, in a perfectly innocent way I mean, with two or three men in the last year.”
“Simultaneously, or one at a time?”
“One at a time. She’s monandrous to that extent. The latest is Terry Neville.”
“I thought he was married.”
“In an interlocutory way only. For God’s sake don’t bring my name into it. My husband’s in business in this town.”
“He seems to be prosperous,” I said, looking more at her than at the house. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Karp. Your name will never pass my lips.”
“Hideous, isn’t it? I hope you find her. Jack will be terribly disappointed if you don’t.”
I had begun to turn towards the door, but turned back. “It couldn’t be anything like this, could it? She heard he was coming home, she felt unworthy of him, unable to face him, so she decided to lam out?”
“Millicent said she didn’t leave a letter. Women don’t go in for all such drama and pathos without leaving a letter. Or at least a marked copy of Tolstoi’s Resurrection.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Her blue eyes were very bright in the great dim room. “How about this? She didn’t like Jack at all. She went away for the sole purpose of letting him know that. A little sadism, maybe?”
“But she did like Jack. It’s just that he was away for over a year. Whenever the subject came up in a mixed gathering, she always insisted that he was a wonderful lover.”
“Like that, eh? Did Mrs. Dreen say you were Una’s best friend?”
Her eyes were brighter and her thin pretty mouth twisted in amusement. “Certainly. You should have heard her talk about me.”
“Maybe I will. Thanks. Goodbye.”
A telephone call to a screen writer I knew, the suit for which I had paid a hundred and fifty dollars in a moment of euphoria, and a false air of assurance got me past the studio guards and as far as the door of Terry Neville’s dressing room. He had a bungalow to himself, which meant he was as important as the publicity claims. I didn’t know what I was going to say to him, but I knocked on the door and, when someone said, “Who is it?” showed him.
Only the blind had not seen Terry Neville. He was over six feet, colorful, shapely, and fragrant like a distant garden of flowers. For a minute he went on reading and smoking in his brocaded armchair, carefully refraining from raising his eyes to look at me. He even turned a page of his book.
“Who are you?” he said finally. “I don’t know you.”
“Una Sand—”
“I don’t know her, either.” Grammatical solecisms had been weeded out of his speech, but nothing had been put in their place. His voice lacked pace and life.
“Millicent Dreen’s daughter,” I said, humoring him. “Una Ross.”
“Naturally I know Millicent Dreen. But you haven’t said anything. Good day.”
“Una Sand disappeared yesterday. I thought you might be willing to help me find out why.”