“Nicely put,” she said. “Actually there’s no skeleton. Una has played around, in a perfectly casual 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? The name, I mean. But I couldn’t help falling in love with the guy. 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 Tolstoy’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 screenwriter I knew, the suit for which I had paid a hundred and fifty dollars of separation money 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 that he was as important as the publicity claimed. 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 was impersonal and lifeless.
“Millicent Dreen’s daughter,” I said, humoring him. “Una Rossiter.”
“Naturally I know Millicent Dreen. But you haven’t said anything. Good day.”
“Una disappeared yesterday. I thought you might be willing to help me find out why.”
“You still haven’t said anything.” He got up and took a step towards me, very tall and wide. “What I said was good day.”
But not tall and wide enough. I’ve always had an idea, probably incorrect, that I could handle any man who wears a scarlet silk bath-robe. He saw that idea on my face and changed his tune: “If you don’t get out of here, my man, I’ll call a guard.”
“In the meantime I’d straighten out that marcel of yours. I might even be able to make a little trouble for you.” I said that on the assumption that any man with his face and sexual opportunities would be on the brink of trouble most of the time.
It worked. “What do you mean by saying that?” he said. A sudden pallor made his carefully plucked black eyebrows stand out starkly. “You could get into a very great deal of hot water by standing there talking like that.”
“What happened to Una?”
“I don’t know. Get out of here.”
“You’re a liar.”
Like one of the clean-cut young men in one of his own movies, he threw a punch at me. I let it go over my shoulder and while he was off balance placed the heel of my hand against his very flat solar plexus and pushed him down into his chair. Then I shut the door and walked fast to the front gate. I’d just as soon have gone on playing tennis with the invisible man.
“No luck, I take it?” Mrs. Dreen said when she opened the door of her apartment to me.
“I’ve got nothing to go on. If you really want to find your daughter you’d better go to Missing Persons. They’ve got the organization and the connections.”
“I suppose Jack will be going to them. He’s home already.”
“I thought he was coming tomorrow.”
“That telegram was sent yesterday. It was delayed somehow. His ship got in yesterday afternoon.”
“Where is he now?”
“At the beach house by now, I guess. He flew down from Alameda in a Navy plane and called me from Santa Barbara.”
“What did you tell him?”
“What could I tell him? That Una was gone. He’s frantic. He thinks she may have drowned.” It was late afternoon, and in spite of the whiskey which she was absorbing steadily, like an alcohol lamp, Mrs. Dreen’s fires were burning low. Her hands and eyes were limp, and her voice was weary.
“Well,” I said, “I might as well go back to Santa Barbara. I talked to Hilda Karp but she couldn’t help me. Are you coming along?”
“Not again. I have to go to the studio tomorrow. Anyway, I don’t want to see Jack just now. I’ll stay here.”
The sun was low over the sea, gold-leafing the water and bloodying the sky, when I got through Santa Barbara and back onto the coast highway. Not thinking it would do any good but by way of doing something or other to earn my keep, I stopped at the filling station where the road turned off to Mrs. Dreen’s beach house.
“Fill her up,” I said to the woman attendant. I needed gas anyway.
“I’ve got some friends who live around here,” I said when she held out her hand for her money. “Do you know where Mrs. Dreen lives?”
She looked at me from behind disapproving spectacles. “You should know. You were down there with her today, weren’t you?”
I covered my confusion by handing her a five and telling her: “Keep the change.”
“No, thank you.”
“Don’t misunderstand me. All I want you to do is tell me who was there yesterday. You see all. Tell a little.”
“Who are you?”
I showed her my card.
“Oh.” Her lips moved unconsciously, computing the size of the tip. “There was a guy in a green convert, I think it was a Chrysler. He went down around noon and drove out again around four, I guess it was, like a bat out of hell.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear. You’re wonderful. What did he look like?”
“Sort of dark and pretty good-looking. It’s kind of hard to describe. Like the guy that took the part of the pilot in that picture last week – you know – only not so good-looking.”
“Terry Neville.”
“That’s right, only not so good-looking. I’ve seen him go down there plenty of times.”
“I don’t know who that would be,” I said, “but thanks anyway. There wasn’t anybody with him, was there?”
“Not that I could see.”
I went down the road to the beach house like a bat into hell. The sun, huge and angry red, was horizontal now, half-eclipsed by the sea and almost perceptibly sinking. It spread a red glow over the shore like a soft and creeping fire. After a long time, I thought, the cliffs would crumble, the sea would dry up, the whole earth would burn out. There’d be nothing left but bone-white cratered ashes like the moon.