They took me back to Ronald’s, where my car was, and left me with many protestations of good fellowship. I said good night to them, rubbing the back of my neck with an exaggerated gesture. Certain other gestures occurred to me.

  When I got back to Santa Barbara the coroner was working over Una. He said that there were no marks of violence on her body, and very little water in her lungs and stomach, but this condition was characteristic of about one drowning in ten.

  I hadn’t known that before, so I asked him to put it into sixty-four-dollar words. He was glad to.

  “Sudden inhalation of water may result in a severe reflex spasm of the larynx, followed swiftly by asphyxia. Such a laryngeal spasm is more likely to occur if the victim’s face is upward, allowing water to rush into the nostrils, and would be likely to be facilitated by emotional or nervous shock. It may have happened like that or it may not.”

  “Hell,” I said, “she may not even be dead.”

  He gave me a sour look. “Thirty-six hours ago she wasn’t.”

  I figured it out as I got in my car. Una couldn’t have drowned much later than four o’clock in the afternoon on September the seventh.

  It was three in the morning when I checked in at the Barbara Hotel. I got up at seven, had breakfast in a restaurant, and went to the beach house to talk to Jack Rossiter. It was only about eight o’clock when I got there, but Rossiter was sitting on the beach in a canvas chair watching the sea.

  “You again?” he said when he saw me.

  “I’d think you’d have had enough of the sea for a while. How long were you out?”

  “A year.” He seemed unwilling to talk.

  “I hate bothering people,” I said, “but my business is always making a nuisance out of me.”

  “Evidently. What exactly is your business?”

  “I’m currently working for your mother-in-law. I’m still trying to find out what happened to her daughter.”

  “Are you trying to needle me?” He put his hands on the arms of the chair as if to get up. For a moment his knuckles were white. Then he relaxed. “You saw what happened, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But do you mind my asking what time your ship got into San Francisco on September the seventh?”

  “No. Four o’clock. Four o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “I suppose that could be checked?”

  He didn’t answer. There was a newspaper on the sand beside his chair and he leaned over and handed it to me. It was the Late Night Final of a San Francisco newspaper for the seventh.

  “Turn to page four,” he said.

  I turned to page four and found an article describing the arrival of the USS Guam at the Golden Gate, at four o’clock in the afternoon. A contingent of Waves had greeted the returning heroes, and a band had played “California, Here I Come.”

  “If you want to see Mrs. Dreen, she’s in the house,” Jack Rossiter said. “But it looks to me as if your job is finished.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “And if I don’t see you again, good-bye.”

  “Are you leaving?”

  “A friend is coming out from Santa Barbara to pick me up in a few minutes. I’m flying up to Alameda with him to see about getting leave. I just had a forty-eight, and I’ve got to be here for the inquest tomorrow. And the funeral.” His voice was hard. His whole personality had hardened overnight. The evening before his nature had been wide open. Now it was closed and invulnerable.

  “Good-bye,” I said, and plodded through the soft sand to the house. On the way I thought of something, and walked faster.

  When I knocked, Mrs. Dreen came to the door holding a cup of coffee, not very steadily. She was wearing a heavy wool dressing robe with a silk rope around the waist, and a silk cap on her head. Her eyes were bleary.

  “Hello,” she said. “I came back last night after all. I couldn’t work today anyway. And I didn’t think Jack should be by himself.”

  “He seems to be doing all right.”

  “I’m glad you think so. Will you come in?”

  I stepped inside. “You said last night that you wanted to know who killed Una no matter who it was.”

  “Well?”

  “Does that still go?”

  “Yes. Why? Did you find out something?”

  “Not exactly. I thought of something, that’s all.”

  “The coroner believes it was an accident. I talked to him on the phone this morning.” She sipped her black coffee. Her hand vibrated steadily, like a leaf in the wind.

  “He may be right,” I said. “He may be wrong.”

  There was the sound of a car outside, and I moved to the window and looked out. A station wagon stopped on the beach, and a Navy officer got out and walked towards Jack Rossiter. Rossiter got up and they shook hands.

  “Will you call Jack, Mrs. Dreen, and tell him to come into the house for a minute?”

  “If you wish.” She went to the door and called him.

  Rossiter came to the door and said a little impatiently: “What is it?”

  “Come in,” I said. “And tell me what time you left the ship the day before yesterday.”

  “Let’s see. We got in at four—”

  “No, you didn’t. The ship did, but not you. Am I right?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s so simple that it couldn’t fool anybody for a minute, not if he knew anything about carriers. You flew your plane off the ship a couple of hours before she got into port. My guess is that you gave that telegram to a buddy to send for you before you left the ship. You flew down here, caught your wife being made love to by another man, landed on the beach—and drowned her.”

  “You’re insane!” After a moment he said less violently: “I admit I flew off the ship. You could easily find that out anyway. I flew around for a couple of hours, getting in some flying time—”

  “Where did you fly?”

  “Along the coast. I don’t get down this far. I landed at Alameda at five-thirty, and I can prove it.”

  “Who’s your friend?” I pointed through the open door to the other officer, who was standing on the beach looking out to sea.

  “Lieutenant Harris. I’m going to fly up to Alameda with him. I warn you, don’t make any ridiculous accusations in his presence, or you’ll suffer for it.”

  “I want to ask him a question,” I said. “What sort of plane were you flying?”

  “FM-3.”

  I went out of the house and down the slope to Lieutenant Harris. He turned towards me and I saw the wings on his blouse.

  “Good morning, Lieutenant,” I said. “You’ve done a good deal of flying, I suppose?”

  “Thirty-two months, Why?”

  “I want to settle a bet. Could a plane land on this beach and take off again?”

  “I think maybe a Piper Cub could. I’d try it anyway. Does that settle the bet?”

  “It was a fighter I had in mind. An FM-3.”

  “Not an FM-3,” he said. “Not possibly. It might just conceivably be able to land but it’d never get off again. Not enough room, and very poor surface. Ask Jack, he’ll tell you the same.”

  I went back to the house and said to Jack: “I was wrong. I’m sorry. As you said, I guess I’m all washed up with this case.”

  “Good-bye, Millicent,” Jack said, and kissed her cheek. “If I’m not back tonight I’ll be back first thing in the morning. Keep a stiff upper lip.”

  “You do, too, Jack.”

  He went away without looking at me again. So the case was ending as it had begun, with me and Mrs. Dreen alone in a room wondering what had happened to her daughter.

  “You shouldn’t have said what you did to him,” she said. “He’s had enough to bear.”

  My mind was working very fast. I wondered whether it was producing anything. “I suppose Lieutenant Harris knows what he’s talking about. He says a fighter couldn’t land and take off from this beach. There’s no other place around here he could have landed without being seen. So he didn’t land.

  “But I still don’t believe that he wasn’t here. No young husband flying along the coast within range of the house where his wife was—well, he’d fly low and dip his wings to her, wouldn’t he? Terry Neville saw the plane come down.”

  “Terry Neville?”

  “I talked to him last night. He was with Una before she died. The two of them were out on the raft together when Jack’s plane came down. Jack saw them, and saw what they were doing. They saw him. Terry Neville went away. Then what?”

  “You’re making this up,” Mrs. Dreen said, but her green eyes were intent on my face.

  “I’m making it up, of course. I wasn’t here. After Terry Neville ran away, there was no one here but Una, and Jack in a plane circling over her head. I’m trying to figure out why Una died. I have to make it up. But I think she died of fright. I think Jack dived at her and forced her into the water. I think he kept on diving at her until she was gone. Then he flew back to Alameda and chalked up his flying time.”

  “Fantasy,” she said. “And very ugly. I don’t believe it.”

  “You should. You’ve got that cable, haven’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Jack sent Una a cable from Pearl, telling her what day he was arriving. Una mentioned it to Hilda Karp. Hilda Karp mentioned it to me. It’s funny you didn’t say anything about it.”

  “I didn’t know about it,” Millicent Dreen said. Her eyes were blank.

  I went on, paying no attention to her denial: “My guess is that the cable said not only that Jack’s ship was coming in on the seventh, but that he’d fly over the beach house that afternoon. Fortunately, I don’t have to depend on guesswork. The cable will be on file at Western Union, and the police will be able to look at it. I’m going into town now.”

  “Wait,” she said. “Don’t go to the police about it. You’ll only get Jack in trouble. I destroyed the cable to protect him, but I’ll tell you what was in it. Your guess was right. He said he’d fly over on the seventh.”

  “When did you destroy it?”

  “Yesterday, before I came to you. I was afraid it would implicate Jack.”

  “Why did you come to me at all, if you wanted to protect Jack? It seems that you knew what happened.”

  “I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know what had happened to her, and until I found out I didn’t know what to do.”

  “You’re still not sure,” I said. “But I’m beginning to be. For one thing, it’s certain that Una never got her cable, at least not as it was sent. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been doing what she was doing on the afternoon that her husband was going to fly over and say hello. You changed the date on it, perhaps? So that Una expected Jack a day later? Then you arranged to be in Hollywood on the seventh, so that Una could spend a final afternoon with Terry Neville.”

  “Perhaps.” Her face was completely alive, controlled but full of dangerous energy, like a cobra listening to music.

  “Perhaps you wanted Jack for yourself,” I said. “Perhaps you had another reason, I don’t know. I think even a psychoanalyst would have a hard time working through your motivations, Mrs. Dreen, and I’m not one. All I know is that you precipitated a murder. Your plan worked even better than you expected.”

  “It was accidental death,” she said hoarsely. “If you go to the police you’ll only make a fool of yourself, and cause trouble for Jack.”

  “You care about Jack, don’t you?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” she said. “He was mine before he ever saw Una. She took him away from me.”

  “And now you think you’ve got him back.” I got up to go. “I hope tor your sake he doesn’t figure out for himself what I’ve just figured out.”

  “Do you think he will?” Sudden terror had jerked her face apart.

  I didn’t answer her.

  Gone Girl

  IT WAS A Friday night. I was tooling home from the Mexican border in a light blue convertible and a dark blue mood. I had followed a man from Fresno to San Diego and lost him in the maze of streets in Old Town. When I picked up his trail again, it was cold. He had crossed the border, and my instructions went no further than the United States.

  Halfway home, just above Emerald Bay, I overtook the worst driver in the world. He was driving a black fishtail Cadillac as if he were tacking a sailboat. The heavy car wove back and forth across the freeway, using two of its four lanes, and sometimes three. It was late, and I was in a hurry to get some sleep. I started to pass it on the right, at a time when it was riding the double line. The Cadillac drifted towards me like an unguided missile, and forced me off the road in a screeching skid.

  I speeded up to pass on the left. Simultaneously, the driver of the Cadillac accelerated. My acceleration couldn’t match his. We raced neck and neck down the middle of the road. I wondered if he was drunk or crazy or afraid of me. Then the freeway ended. I was doing eighty on the wrong side of a two-lane highway, and a truck came over a rise ahead like a blazing double comet. I floorboarded the gas pedal and cut over sharply to the right, threatening the Cadillac’s fenders and its driver’s life. In the approaching headlights, his face was as blank and white as a piece of paper, with charred black holes for eyes. His shoulders were naked.

  At the last possible second he slowed enough to let me get by. The truck went off onto the shoulder, honking angrily. I braked gradually, hoping to force the Cadillac to stop. It looped past me in an insane arc, tires skittering, and was sucked away into darkness.

  When I finally came to a full stop, I had to pry my fingers off the wheel. My knees were remote and watery. After smoking part of a cigarette, I U-turned and drove very cautiously back to Emerald Bay. I was long past the hot-rod age, and I needed rest.

  The first motel I came to, the Siesta, was decorated with a vacancy sign and a neon Mexican sleeping luminously under a sombrero. Envying him, I parked on the gravel apron in front of the motel office. There was a light inside. The glass-paned door was standing open, and I went in. The little room was pleasantly furnished with rattan and chintz. I jangled the bell on the desk a few times. No one appeared, so I sat down to wait and lit a cigarette. An electric clock on the wall said a quarter to one.

  I must have dozed for a few minutes. A dream rushed by the threshold of my consciousness, making a gentle noise. Death was in the dream. He drove a black Cadillac loaded with flowers. When I woke up, the cigarette was starting to burn my fingers. A thin man in a gray flannel shirt was standing over me with a doubtful look on his face.

  He was big-nosed and small-chinned, and he wasn’t as young as he gave the impression of being. His teeth were bad, the sandy hair was thinning and receding. He was the typical old youth who scrounged and wheedled his living around motor courts and restaurants and hotels, and hung on desperately to the frayed edge of other people’s lives.

  “What do you want?” he said. “Who are you? What do you want?” His voice was reedy and changeable like an adolescent’s.

  “A room.”

  “Is that all you want?”

  From where I sat, it sounded like an accusation. I let it pass. “What else is there? Circassian dancing girls? Free popcorn?”

  He tried to smile without showing his bad teeth. The smile was a dismal failure, like my joke. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “You woke me up. I never make much sense right after I just wake up.”

  “Have a nightmare?”

  His vague eyes expanded like blue bubblegum bubbles. “Why did you ask me that?”

  “Because I just had one. But skip it. Do you have a vacancy or don’t you?”

  “Yessir. Sorry, sir.” He swallowed whatever bitter taste he had in his mouth, and assumed an impersonal obsequious manner. “You got any luggage, sir?”

  “No luggage.”

  Moving silently in tennis sneakers like a frail ghost of the boy he once had been, he went behind the counter, and took my name, address, license number, and five dollars. In return, he gave me a key numbered fourteen and told me where to use it. Apparently he despaired of a tip.

  Room fourteen was like any other middle-class motel room touched with the California-Spanish mania. Artificially roughened plaster painted adobe color, poinsettia-red curtains, imitation parchment lampshade on a twisted black iron stand. A Rivera reproduction of a sleeping Mexican hung on the wall over the bed. I succumbed to its suggestion right away, and dreamed about Circassian dancing girls.

  Along towards morning one of them got frightened, through no fault of mine, and began to scream her little Circassian lungs out. I sat up in bed, making soothing noises, and woke up. It was nearly nine by my wristwatch. The screaming ceased and began again, spoiling the morning like a fire siren outside the window. I pulled on my trousers over the underwear I’d been sleeping in, and went outside.

  A young woman was standing on the walk outside the next room. She had a key in one hand and a handful of blood in the other. She wore a wide multi-colored skirt and a low-cut gypsy sort of blouse. The blouse was distended and her mouth was open, and she was yelling her head off. It was a fine dark head, but I hated her for spoiling my morning sleep.

  I took her by the shoulders and said, “Stop it.”

  The screaming stopped. She looked down sleepily at the blood on her hand. It was as thick as axle grease, and almost as dark in color.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “I slipped and fell in it, I didn’t see it.”

  Dropping the key on the walk, she pulled her skirt to one side with her clean hand,, Her legs were bare and brown. Her skirt was stained at the back with the same thick fluid.

  “Where? In this room?”

  She faltered, “Yes.”

  Doors were opening up and down the drive. Half a dozen people began to converge on us. A dark-faced man about four and a half feet high came scampering from the direction of the office, his little pointed shoes dancing in the gravel.

 

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