“You can give up lying yourself.”
“He’s my only son, I was only trying to protect him. Anyway, you’ve got no proof that Bobby had anything to do with her death. You can’t have. He wouldn’t hurt her. He was fond of her, over-fond.”
Her voice ran down. She sat hunched in her robe with the pinched face of a little old woman. Her gaze flickered here and there about the room.
“Where is Bobby tonight, Mrs. Doncaster?”
“I don’t know. If I did know I wouldn’t tell you.”
“That’s a queer line for you to take. You’re supposed to be a respectable woman.”
She looked down at her shapeless body. “He’s all I’ve got.”
Perhaps that was the trouble.
She lifted her head slowly. “It’s been such an effort, I’ve racked my brain, trying to serve as mother and father to him. I know he resents me, he always has. A woman can’t bring up a man. But I thought our life together was working out.” Tears glittered in the corners of her eyes. She drew her fingers across them. “What am I to do?”
“Tell me the truth. Where is your son now?”
“I don’t know. I swear.” She shook her head, and the tears ran down like mercury into the folds of her cheeks.
“If I can get to him and talk to him, we may be able to make some sense out of this business.”
She snatched at the forlorn hope: “You don’t believe he did it either, do you?”
“I don’t want to believe it. His going on the run doesn’t help me much.”
“Bobby isn’t on the run. He’s only been gone since supper-time. He said he had important business to attend to.”
“Where?”
“He refused to tell me. It isn’t like Bobby. He’s never had secrets from his mother. But when I tried to question him this evening he walked out of the flat and drove away without a backward look.”
“What kind of a car is he driving?”
“His same old jalopy. I believe it’s an A-model Ford.”
“Did he seem frightened?”
“He was more excited than frightened. It worried me.”
“Why, Mrs. Doncaster?”
“I suppose I’ve got into the habit of worrying – the way he’s been moping around these last months. Then all of a sudden he received this telephone call, and he started acting like a cat on a hot stove. He could hardly contain himself, it didn’t seem healthy. He wouldn’t even stay to eat his supper.”
“You didn’t mention a telephone call.”
“Didn’t I? I meant to. That was what set him off.”
“Who called him?”
“He wouldn’t say. He wouldn’t tell me anything about it.”
“Was it a local call, or long distance?”
“I have no way of knowing. Whoever it was made a mistake, you see. Or more likely they were trying to get to him behind my back. They called him on Dolly Lang’s telephone.”
“Dolly Lang took the call?”
“That’s right. Afterwards I tried to get it out of her who it was on the phone. The little minx claims she doesn’t know.” Her eyes were bright and hostile. The tears in them had evaporated. After her moment of vulnerability, her nature was closing and hardening up like scar-tissue over wounds. “Maybe she’ll be willing to talk to you. You’re a man.”
I climbed the outside stairs, feeling as grey and vague as my late moon-shadow climbing the wall beside me. Dolly’s light was still on. She must have heard me coming. Before I could knock, she opened the door and looked out eagerly, her head thrust forward birdlike on her neck.
The eagerness wilted when she recognized me. “Oh. It’s you.”
“Who were you expecting?”
She answered with forced airiness. “Nobody. I don’t make a habit of entertaining at this hour of the night.”
She was still wearing the sweater and jeans in which I had last seen her. Her face had a grey and greasy pallor. She looked as though she hadn’t washed in the interval, or combed her hair.
“I didn’t pick the hour,” I said. “It picked me. You’re up late, Dolly.”
“I gave up sleeping for Lent. I know it isn’t Lent yet, but I’m anticipating.”
It was nervous chatter. Her eyes were flat as dimes. In the room behind her a sleepy girl’s voice said something loud and inarticulate, like “Grahh!”
Dolly stepped outside and closed the door quietly. “My roommate’s sleeping. She hasn’t broken the habit. What’s on your mind?” Her tone was brittle. She seemed older and more aggressive, at the same time less assured, than she had the day before.
“What’s on your mind, Dolly?”
“Nothing much. We could talk about the weather.”
She glanced around her pertly, like a slightly mechanical bird. The fog streamed up the slanting street from the ocean. The substance of the night itself seemed to be moving and dissolving below and above and around us.
“Foggy, isn’t it?” she said.
“Let’s dispel a little fog.”
“That would be nice. I hate fog. It always reminds me of clammy shrouds and things.” A spasm of shivering took hold of her, and let go. “Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m on a coffee jag. For Lent.”
“Could we go somewhere and talk?”
“I don’t want to go somewhere and talk,” she said with a little-girl’s whine in her voice. “We can talk right here if we have to.”
“We have to, all right. You took a telephone call for Bobby this evening.”
“Did I?”
“We won’t play word games. That telephone call may be a matter of life or death. For him.”
Her grey little anxious face tilted up beside my shoulder. “That’s what he said. I promised him not to tell anyone about it.”
“I’m going to ask you to tell me.”
“Why is it so important? Is it about Phoebe?”
“What gave you that idea?”
“The way he reacted. I mean, his face lit up when he–” She drew in her breath sharply. “I promised not to tell anyone. I wouldn’t even tell his mother, and she got really nasty.”
“I’m not his mother.”
“I didn’t think you were. But you are a detective, and all. I wouldn’t want to get Bobby into trouble.”
“You can’t get him in any deeper than he is. I simply want to reach him before the police do.”
“The police? Are they after him?”
“They will be by tomorrow.”
“What did he do?”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that. You wouldn’t like the answer, anyway. If you really want to help him, and help me, you can do it by giving me all the details of that call.”
“I don’t know any details. He asked me to leave the room when he was talking.”
“Who was he talking to?”
“I tell you I don’t know.”
“I thought you answered the phone.”
“I did, but it was just the operator. She said she had a person-to-person call for Mr. Robert Doncaster, so I went down and got him.”
“What time was this?”
She hesitated. “About a quarter to six.”
“Did the operator say where the call was from?”
“Palo Alto. That’s where Stanford is, where Phoebe used to go, and I got the wild idea that it was Phoebe calling. I guess I’m not over it yet – I couldn’t sleep tonight for thinking about her. You know, like maybe she lost her memory and all she remembered was Bobby’s name and her own telephone number–”
I cut in harshly, speaking to myself as well as her: “Lay it to rest, Dolly. It wasn’t Phoebe.”
“I know that, really. Bobby said it wasn’t, and he wouldn’t lie to me, not about that.”
“Did he give you any hint as to who it was?”
“No. He said it was his private business.”