“Who’s the man?” I said.
“Dewar. Who else?” said the teeth behind the gun. “They got married in Vegas last month. I got this picture from the Chaparral Chapel. It goes with the twenty-five-dollar wedding.” He snatched it out of Clare’s hands and put it back in his pocket. “It took me a couple of weeks to run her down. She used her maiden name, see.”
“Where did you catch up with her? San Diego?”
“I didn’t catch up with her. Would I be here if I did?”
“What do you want her for?”
“I don’t want her. I got nothing against the broad, except that she tied up with Dewar. He’s the boy I want.”
“What for?”
“You wouldn’t be inarested. He worked for me at one time.” The gun swiveled brightly towards Clare. “You know where your sister is?”
“No, I don’t. I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”
“That’s no way to talk now, lady. My motto’s cooperation. From other people.”
I said: “Her sister’s been missing for a week. The HP found her car in San Diego. It had bloodstains on the front seat. Are you sure you didn’t catch up with her?”
“I’m asking you the questions, punk.” But there was a trace of uncertainty in his voice. “What happened to Dewar if the blonde is missing?”
“I think he ran out with her money.”
Clare turned to me. “You didn’t tell me all this.”
“I’m telling you now.”
The teeth said: “She had money?”
“Plenty.”
“The bastard. The bastard took us both, eh?”
“Dewar took you for money?”
“You ask too many questions, punk. You’ll talk yourself to death one of these days. Now stay where you are for ten minutes, both of you. Don’t move, don’t yell, don’t telephone. I might decide to drive around the block and come back and make sure.”
He backed down the brilliant alley of the searchlight beam. The door of his car slammed. All of its lights went off together. It rolled away into darkness, and didn’t come back.
It was past midnight when we got to San Diego, but there was still a light in the Falks’ house. It was a stucco cottage on a street of identical cottages in Pacific Beach.
“We lived here once,” Clare said. “When I was going to high school. That house, second from the corner.” Her voice was nostalgic, and she looked around the jerry-built tract as if it represented something precious to her. The pre-Illman era in her young life.
I knocked on the front door. A big henna-head in a housecoat opened it on a chain. But when she saw Clare beside me, she flung the door wide.
“Clare honey, where you been? I’ve been trying to phone you in Berkeley, and here you are. How are you, honey?’
She opened her arms and the younger woman walked into them.
“Oh, Gretchen,” she said with her face on the redhead’s breast. “Something’s happened to Ethel, something terrible.”
“I know it, honey, but it could be worse.”
“Worse than murder?”
“She isn’t murdered. Put that out of your mind. She’s pretty badly hurt, but she isn’t murdered.”
Clare stood back to look at her face. “You’ve seen her? Is she here?”
The redhead put a finger to her mouth, which was big and generous-looking, like the rest of her. “Hush, Clare. Jake’s asleep, he has to get up early, go to work. Yeah, I’ve seen her, but she isn’t here. She’s in a nursing home over on the other side of town.”
“You said she’s badly hurt?”
“Pretty badly beaten, yeah, poor dear. But the doctor told me she’s pulling out of it fine. A little plastic surgery, and she’ll be as good as new.”
“Plastic surgery?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid she’ll need it. I got a look at her face tonight, when they changed the bandages. Now take it easy, honey. It could be worse.”
“Who did it to her?”
“That lousy husband of hers.”
“Edward?”
“Heck, no. The other one. The one that calls himself Dewar, Owen Dewar.”
I said: “Have you seen Dewar?”
“I saw him a week ago, the night he beat her up, the dirty rotten bully.” Her deep contralto growled in her throat. “I’d like to get my hands on him just for five minutes.”
“So would a lot of people, Mrs. Falk.”
She glanced inquiringly at Clare. “Who’s your friend? You haven’t introduced us.”
“I’m sorry. Mr. Archer, Mrs. Falk. Mr. Archer is a detective, Gretchen.”
“I was wondering. Ethel didn’t want me to call the police. I told her she ought to, but she said no. The poor darling’s so ashamed of herself, getting mixed up with that kind of a louse. She didn’t even get in touch with me until tonight. Then she saw in the paper about her car being picked up, and she thought maybe I could get it back for her without any publicity. Publicity is what she doesn’t want most. I guess it’s a tragic thing for a beautiful girl like Ethel to lose her looks.”
I said: “There won’t be any publicity if I can help it. Did you go to see the police about her car?”
“Jake advised me not to. He said it would blow the whole thing wide open. And the doctor told me he was kind of breaking the law by not reporting the beating she took. So I dropped it.”
“How did this thing happen?”
“I’ll tell you all I know about it. Come on into the living room, kids, let me fix you something to drink.”
Clare said: “You’re awfully kind, Gretchen, but I must go to Ethel. Where is she?”
“The Mission Rest Home. Only don’t you think you better wait till morning? It’s a private hospital, but it’s awful late for visitors.”
“I’ve got to see her,” Clare said. “I couldn’t sleep a wink if I didn’t. I’ve been so worried about her.”
Gretchen heaved a sigh. “Whatever you say, honey. We can try, anyway. Give me a second to put on a dress and I’ll show you where the place is.”
She led us into the darkened living room, turned the television set off and the lights on. A quart of beer, nearly full, stood on a coffee table beside the scuffed davenport. She offered me a glass, which I accepted gratefully. Clare refused. She was so tense she couldn’t even sit down.
We stood and looked at each other for a minute. Then Gretchen came back, struggling with a zipper on one massive hip.
“All set, kids. You better drive, Mr. Archer. I had a couple of quarts to settle my nerves. You wouldn’t believe it, but I’ve gained five pounds since Ethel came down here. I always gain weight when I’m anxious.”
We went out to my car, and turned towards the banked lights of San Diego. The women rode in the front seat. Gretchen’s opulent flesh was warm against me.
“Was Ethel here before it happened?” I said.
“Sure she was, for a day. Ethel turned up here eight or nine days ago, Tuesday of last week it was. I hadn’t heard from her for several months, since she wrote me that she was going to Nevada for a divorce. It was early in the morning when she drove up; in fact, she got me out of bed. The minute I saw her, I knew that something was wrong. The poor kid was scared, really scared. She was as cold as a corpse, and her teeth were chattering. So I fed her some coffee and put her in a hot tub, and after that she told me what it was that’d got her down.”
“Dewar?”
“You said it, mister. Ethel never was much of a picker. When she was hostessing at the Grant coffee shop back in the old days, she was always falling for the world’s worst phonies. Speaking of phonies, this Dewar takes the cake. She met him in Las Vegas when she was waiting for her divorce from Illman. He was a big promoter, to hear him tell it. She fell for the story, and she fell for him. A few days after she got her final decree, she married him. Big romance. Big deal. They were going to be business partners, too. He said he had some money to invest, twenty-five thousand or so, and he knew of a swell little hotel in Acapulco that they could buy at a steal for fifty thousand. The idea was that they should each put up half, and go and live in Mexico in the lap of luxury for the rest of their lives. He didn’t show her any of his money, but she believed him. She drew her settlement money out of the bank and came to L. A. with him to close up her house and get set for the Mexican deal.”