"She's been looking after a friend of mine," I said. "At the La Paloma nursing home. I was thinking of giving her a little present."
"If you mean this"-he held the bottle up-"I can deliver it."
"I'd rather do that in person."
"Whatever you say. Mrs. Holman lives near the corner of Nopal and Martinez. Third house up from the corner-there's a big old pepper tree in front of it. That's five blocks south of here and one block over toward the ocean."
I thanked him and paid him for the whisky and drove south. The pepper tree was the only spot of green in a block of one-story frame houses. Under its lacy shadow, several small black children were playing in the wheelless body of a 1946 Chevrolet sedan.
Mrs. Holman was watching them from the porch. She started when she saw me and made an involuntary movement toward the door. Then she stood with her back to it and tried to smile at me, but her eyes were somber.
"Good morning," I said.
"Good morning."
"Are these your children?"
"One of them is." She didn't tell me which one. "What can I do for you, sir?"
"I'm still looking for Miss Siddon. I'm worried about her. I thought maybe you were, too."
"I don't know where you got that idea," she said blankly.
"Didn't you call the newspaper office this morning?"
She looked past me at the children. They were silent and still, as if the feathery shadow of the pepper tree had become oppressive.
"What if I did?" she said.
"If you can do that, you can talk to me. I'm not trying to pin anything on you. I'm trying to find Betty Siddon. I think she may be in danger, and you seem to think so, too."
"I didn't say that."
"You don't have to. Did you see Miss Siddon last night at the La Paloma?" She nodded slowly. "I saw her."
"When was that?"
"It was still the early part of the evening. She came to visit Mrs. Johnson, and the two of them went into a huddle in one of the empty rooms. I don't know what they were talking about, but it ended up with both of them walking out of there together. They drove off in Miss Siddon's car without a word to me."
"So Mrs. Johnson went home twice last night?"
"I guess she did."
"The police were at the La Paloma when Mrs. Johnson came back there. Isn't that right?"
"I guess they were."
"You know very well they were. And they must have told you what they were looking for."
"Maybe they did. I don't remember." Her voice was low. She was still, and very ill at ease.
"You must remember, Mrs. Holman. The cops were looking for Mildred Mead and Betty Siddon. They must have asked you about them."
"Maybe they did. I'm tired. I've got a lot on my mind and I had a rough night."
"You could have a rougher day."
She flared up. "Don't you dare threaten me."
The children in the Chevrolet were still and frightened. One of them, a little girl whom I guessed to be Mrs. Holman's, began to weep quietly into her hands.
I said to the little girl's mother, "Don't you dare lie to me. I've got nothing against you. I don't want to put you in the slammer. But that's where you'll end up if you don't tell the truth."
She looked past me at the weeping child. "Okay," she said, "okay. Mrs. Johnson asked me not to tell the police about either of them being there-Miss Mead _or_ Miss Siddon. I knew then there was trouble coming up. I might have known it would end up on my doorstep."
She brushed past me and climbed into the Chevrolet. I left her there with her daughter in her lap, and the other children silent around her.
XXXIX
I went back to Olive Street. In the full white blast of noon, the Johnson house looked grim and strange, like a long old face appalled by the present.
I parked across the street and tried to imagine what had happened inside the house, and what was happening now. If Betty was there, she might not be easy to find. The house was old and rambling and largely unknown to me.
A small Toyota sedan went by in the street, moving in the direction of the hospital. The man at the wheel looked like Fred Johnson's attorney, Lackner. He stopped up the block, not far from the place where Paul Grimes had been murdered. I heard one of the Toyota's doors open and close quietly, but if anyone got out he was hidden by the trees.
I took the pint of whisky and my gun out of the glove compartment and put them in the pockets of my jacket. Then I crossed the street and knocked on the front door of the Johnson house.
There was a slight noise at the corner of the house. I flattened myself against the wall and made my gun ready to fire. At the end of the porch, the overgrown bushes stirred. Fred Johnson's voice came quietly out of them: "Mr. Archer?"
"Yes."
Fred vaulted over the railing. He moved like a man who had spent his boyhood dodging trouble. His face was pale.
"Where have you been, Fred?"
"At Mr. Lackner's office. He just dropped me off."
"You feel you still need an attorney?"
He ducked his head so that I couldn't read his face. "I suppose I do."
"What for?"
"Mr. Lackner told me not to discuss it with anybody."
"You're going to have to, Fred."
"I know that. Mr. Lackner told me that. But he wants to be present when I do."
"Where did he go?"
"To talk to Captain Mackendrick."
"What about?"
He lowered his voice as if the house might hear him: "I'm not supposed to say."
"You owe me something, Fred. I helped to keep you out of jail. You could be in a cell in Copper City now."
"I owe something to my mother and father, too."
I took hold of him by the shoulders. He was trembling. His mustache drooped across his mouth like an emblem of his limp and injured manhood.
I said as gently as I knew how, "What have your mother and father been doing, Fred?"
"I don't know." He swallowed painfully, and his tongue moved between his lips like a small blind creature searching for a way out.
"Do they have a woman in the house?"
He nodded dismally. "I heard a woman in the attic."
"What was she doing up there?"
"I don't know. My father was up there with her."
"When was this?"
"Early this morning. Before dawn. I guess she's been up there all night."
I shook him. His head bobbed back and forth in meaningless assent. I stopped for fear of breaking-his neck.
"Why didn't you tell me that before?"
"I didn't know what was going on up there. I thought I recognized her voice. I didn't know for sure it was Miss Siddon until I went around to the back just now and found her car."
"Who did you think it was?"
"Just some woman he brought in off the street, maybe a woman from the hospital. He used to con them into the house and get them to take off their clothes for him. That was when my mother started to lock him in."
"How bad a mental case is he?"
"I don't know." Fred's eyes had filled with tears and shifted away from my face. "Mr. Lackner thinks he's really dangerous. He thinks the police should take him and put him in a safe place."
So did I, but I didn't trust them to do it with a minimum of danger to others. I wanted Betty, if she was still alive, to survive her rescue.
"Do you have a key to the house, Fred?"
"Yes. I had one made."
"Let me in."
"I'm not supposed to. I'm supposed to wait for Mr. Lackner and the police."
"Okay, wait for them. Just give me the key."
He took it out of his pocket and handed it over, reluctantly, as though he was surrendering some essential part of himself. When he spoke again his voice had deepened, as if the loss of that essential part had somehow been a gain.
"I'll go in with you. You don't know your way around in there like I do."