I turned to the nurse. “Does he confide in you?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“He showed you some orchids he bought.”
“Yes, he did. They were luscious.”
“Who were they for?”
“I wouldn’t know. Not me.”
“I understand he said he was getting married?”
“In a kidding way. I still think he was kidding.”
“Uh-huh. You must know something about the woman.”
“I suppose she has two eyes, and the other accessories.” The color had left the lower part of her face and centered over the cheekbones.
“You seem to have everything under control, Alice.”
“Thank you, sir, I try.” She placed the knuckles of one hand under her chin and did a mock curtsy.
“You don’t run the house by yourself, though?”
“Right now I do. The Japanese couple are on vacation this month. Not that I do much for the house. I do look after George.”
“Who looks after Ronnie?”
“Ronnie looks after himself.” The spots of color over her cheekbones were vivid. She veiled her eyes, and was silent for a moment, nibbling her lower lip. “If I told you something, would you keep it under your hat? Not let on to George about it, I mean?”
“That’s a promise.”
“Well. I told you a little white lie a minute ago. I do know who she is, at least I’m pretty certain. I introduced her to Ronnie. I had no way of knowing she’d go all out for him.”
“A million dollars is quite an attraction. Who is she?”
“Claire Devon, her name is. She’s Dr. Freestone’s office nurse. Claire and me – Claire and I trained together at Los Angeles General.”
“Nice girl?”
“I always thought so. She never showed much interest in men, but she’s got a good personality. Sort of the reserved type, only with a sense of humor. She’s good for a lot of laughs.”
“How old?”
“About my age. Twenty-three or four – too old for Ronnie. I wouldn’t have brought them together if I’d thought it was going to turn into a thing.” One side of her mouth turned up. “Maybe Claire wants to be a mother to him.”
“How long has it been going on?”
“Just this last month. She came out here to play tennis with me one day – I’m the only one that uses the court – and Ronnie was hanging around and he got interested. Claire’s got gorgeous red hair, and she’s a pretty stunning girl if you like the bony type.” She rotated her body, which belonged to a different type, in the light from the window. “They’ve been seeing each other since.”
“And now you think they’ve eloped?”
“Maybe. It’s hard to believe. I tried to call Claire at her office yesterday, and Dr. Freestone said she didn’t come to work. I called her apartment. No answer.”
“Freestone is Mr. Coulson’s doctor, right?”
“One of them. That’s the trouble. I couldn’t tell him what it was all about. You see, I wouldn’t hurt Claire for anything in the world. She got me this job.”
“And you don’t want to lose the job, you mean?”
“It’s the chance of a lifetime,” she said. “Remember, you promised not to quote me to anybody.”
Dr. Freestone had a cottage in a professional court on the other side of Santa Monica Boulevard. His waiting room was furnished in white leatherette and black masonite, with a sheaf of this week’s magazines on a table. A small aquarium kaleidoscopic with tropical fish divided the public space from the receptionist’s alcove.
A pale woman rose behind the counter, looking at me down her high-bridged nose. He eyes were large and dark, accentuated by eye shadow. She had black hair, clipped very short and curled like karakul. Her jersey dress was black as a widow’s weeds. Under it, her breasts were small and sharp. Her total effect was ugly but interesting.
“What can I do for you, sir?” Her voice was low, with unusual overtones, suggesting that the things she was capable of doing for me were many and varied.
“I’d like to see Dr. Freestone.”
“Sorry, the doctor is busy at the moment. You don’t have an appointment, do you?”
“No, I’m not a patient.”
“What is it you wish to see him about?”
“A private matter.”
The temperature sank, glazing her eyes with a film of ice. “I’m afraid the doctor has a full schedule this afternoon.”
Little Woman
Published in The Archer Files (Crippen & Landru, 2007).
It was one of those dusty Valley cities through which big money flowed year after year and, like an underground river, left only a trace of green. The men who controlled the land and the water rights spent their money in other places, in San Francisco and Las Vegas and Los Angeles. I saw their private airfields as I drove up to the city from the south, their Palominos and Black Angus herds, and their vast cotton acreage. I also saw the paintless huts and barracks and trailer camps where the migrant workers lived, in worse conditions than the animals. Animals cost money.
The address I’d been given was an old two-story frame with a mansard roof. Beyond it a housing tract, a hundred stucco cottages which differed only in color from each other, stretched to the western limits of the city. Beyond these, irregular formations of oil derricks struggled across the valley towards the mountains. The mountains surrounded everything like the ruins of an ancient adobe wall which merged with the dust-colored distance.
The lawn in front of the house was unmowed and unwatered. There was alkali dust like dingy frost on the grass, and on the leaves of the trumpet vine which writhed among the wires of the front fence. I pushed open the gate and said hello to a blasé cocker spaniel and knocked on the screen door. Somewhere behind it someone was playing a piano, and playing it well. Tinkling notes rained on the parched air. When I knocked a second time, it stopped.
A short thin blonde woman opened the inner door, and peered at me through the screen. She had once been pretty. Her movements showed that she had not forgotten it. Her hand went to her fading straw-colored hair, which was drawn back almost cruelly from her forehead. Then it went to her mouth and plucked at her dry lower lip. Her head was big for her body, which gave everything she did a childish air.
“Mrs. Wrightson?”
She gave me a queer look, as if I had reminded her of her identity. Her eyes were blue and strained and slightly bulging. There were blue pockets of grief under them and sun-cracks at the corners. “Yes, I’m Mrs. Wrightson.”
“My name is Archer. You wrote me a letter.”
“Oh. Yes. You got here sooner than I expected.” She looked down at her frilly gingham apron, started to take it off, then changed her mind. “I’m afraid I – the house is a mess. But won’t you come in?”
She unhooked the screen, and led me under a deer head into the living room. Old-fashioned sliding double doors cut it off from the rest of the house. Though the windows were heavily blinded against the sun, I could see that the room and everything in it was very neat and clean. The dark red broadloom carpet was immaculate. Even the stones of the fireplace looked as if they had been scrubbed. But the woman ran from one side to the other, picking up a magazine from the davenport, a newspaper from the floor beside it, and placing them precisely on a library table. She came back towards me smoothing down her apron and muttering something inarticulate about living in a pigsty.
“Sit down if you can find a clear space,” she said unsmilingly.
I sat on the bare davenport. She sat beside me hugging her knees and cocked her head at me, birdlike. She seemed hardly bigger than a bird, so light she barely depressed the cushions, and she had the girlish mannerisms which small women never outgrow. Though there was a foot or more of air between us, she gave the impression of leaning on me. I was younger than she was, and had never seen her before, but I had become her daddy and confessor.