“Silly. Yes, I guess I am.” She stared at him, blankly, all her wistfulness gone and nothing in its place. “Willett.”
“I won’t listen to any more of this nonsense.”
“I was just thinking, Willett,” she said very softly. “It just occurred to me, maybe they’ll teach you a trade in prison.”
Willett’s plump face seemed to come apart like an overdone chicken at the touch of a fork. “They can’t send me to prison. They can’t send me to prison. Not unless—”
“Not unless they send me, too? Oh, they will. I’m sure of that. Only I won’t mind it quite as much as you. I’ve been in prison for years, with a cantankerous old woman as warden and a nasty little doll factory as a whip.”
“The doors were never locked. You could have walked out.”
“Oh sure, I could have. But I didn’t. I always had hopes that you and I would be free, that she would—”
“Would what?”
“Die.”
Willett stared at her. “You wanted that for a long time. You willed it.”
“Maybe.”
“Sometimes I think you’re a bad woman.”
“Sometimes I think so, too,” Ethel said, quite mildly. “Maybe prison’s just the place for me.”
“Stop this talk about prison, do you hear me? We may be ruined financially, morally, but they can’t send us to prison. We still have the letter. Haven’t we?”
“I guess so.”
“You guess so! I told you to put it away in a safe place.”
“Well, I did. Behind that fruit picture in my room.”
“Go and get it.”
“Why? It’s safe there. No one would think of looking behind a picture.”
“That’s the first place they’ll look.”
“Who will?”
“The F.B.I.,” Willett said.
“Why should they search my room? I haven’t—”
“Go and get that letter.”
“Well, all right.” She went to the door, hesitated, and swung around again with a swish of silk. “Willett?”
“Yes.”
“If they’re really going to search my room, I think I’ll tidy up my drawers a bit. I wouldn’t want them to think I’m a creature of messy habits.”
“You haven’t time.”
“Oh. Well, then, I’ll just explain to them that my mother-in-law has been ill and my maid disappeared, so naturally my drawers aren’t quite—”
“Ethel.”
“Well, all right,” Ethel said with dignity. “I was just leaving.”
The letter was where she had put it two weeks ago, behind an oil painting of a bunch of grapes and two dusty-looking tangerines. Across the front of the unsealed envelope were the words, To Whom it May Concern, in Mrs. Goodfield’s handwriting. Ethel knew it was Mrs. Goodfield’s handwriting because she had been there, in the old lady’s bedroom, when the letter was written:
“Sit down, Ethel. And stop fidgeting.”
“Sorry.”
“This blasted pen. Haven’t we a decent pen in the house?”
“It works if you use it sideways.”
“If you use it sideways. That’s typical. That’s absolutely typical of what happens when I’m not up and around to manage things. Nothing works unless you use it sideways.”
“Sorry.”
“To whom it may concern,” the old lady wrote, sideways. “In the event that my son, Willett Peter Goodfield, is implicated in any way with my death, I wish to make the following statement to clarify the facts.”
Downstairs the front door chime sounded with raucous shrillness, not like a bell announcing the arrival of guests, but like a burglar alarm arousing the household against intruders.
Ethel folded the envelope and tucked it in the front of her dress. It was the one place in the house where she was reasonably sure that the F.B.I. wouldn’t search.
19
News of the kidnapping spread quickly across the town and by noon it had reached the corner of Fifth and Anacapa and an obscure druggist by the name of Lopat. Leaving his wife, brother-in-law and two cousins in charge of the drugstore, Lopat set out on foot for the police station four blocks south. He had visited the station several times before, usually to explain certain lapses in his narcotics records, but this time his conscience was clear and his step blithe.
Lopat was nobody’s fool and he knew perfectly well that most people didn’t use ether for dry-cleaning anymore, especially people with class like Mrs. Willett Goodfield.
He greeted Greer with a broad and virtuous smile. “Afternoon, Captain.”
“Hello, Lopat. What’s on your mind except larceny?”
“My, my, you’re quite a kidder, Captain. Ha, ha.”
“Ha, ha. Let’s have it. Got your license back yet, Lopat?”
“Naturally.”
“Better watch that brother-in-law of yours if you want to keep it.”
“Manny? Oh, Manny’s changed, he’s off the stuff, never touches it.”
“That isn’t how I heard it.”
“You guys are prejudiced. Manny’s a good boy, maybe a little loose in his ways, but a good boy.”
“If he gets any looser he’ll fall apart.”
“Now, now, Captain. Here I come to do you a favor and right away you start making wise. I’m hurt.”
“What’s the favor?”
Lopat leaned across the desk, confidentially. “I heard an old lady was snatched.”
“You did, eh?”
“You don’t have to admit anything, Captain. Let me do the talking.”
“Go ahead.”
“Last night around suppertime a lady comes into the shop and asks for some ether. For dry-cleaning a couple of dresses, she said. Well, that was legitimate. In this state you can’t buy ether to do away with a sick cat or anything, but you can buy it for dry-cleaning. You don’t even have to sign for it like in some states. So I sold it to her.”
“How much?”
“What she asked for, six ounces.”
“What was she, a midget or something?”
“That’s what I asked myself. She was small, all right, but she wasn’t a midget. And she wasn’t the type who’d do her own dry-cleaning either. She had class, real class.”
“What’s your idea of class, Lopat?”
“I don’t like how you say that, implying I’ve got no taste in women. You can’t judge my taste in women by my wife. I’ve got very good taste in women — the best — I’ve just never had a chance to indulge it, is all.”
“So?”
“So I’m telling you this girl had class. Classy name and address, too.”
“If she didn’t have to sign for the stuff, how come you know her name and address?”
“She told me, right off the bat. You know how some of these society dames are — they walk into a store and even if they’re just going to buy two noodles they’ve got to announce themselves. Well, that’s what she did. I am Mrs. Willett Goodfield, she says, of 2201 Ventura Boulevard.”
Greer attempted to conceal his surprise, but he wasn’t quick enough to fool Lopat.
Lopat grinned slyly. “A friend of yours, Captain?”
“I’ve heard the name.”
“Has she got class, like I said, or hasn’t she?”
“She’s loaded.”
“There, you see? Maybe my taste in women isn’t so bad after all, eh?”
“Change the record, will you, Lopat?”
“I didn’t put it on. You did. You implied that my taste in—”
“Forget about women and go on with your story,” Greer said, “or next year you might not even get a dog license.”
“You don’t have to talk so tough. After all, I came here of my own free will to do my duty as a citizen. Just because my brother-in-law, Manny, gets in a little scrape now and then is no reflection on me. Is it okay if I smoke in here, Captain?”