Sleep with Slander Read online

  The Orange County man followed him in through the outer office to the room with the desks and the couch. He sat down on the couch and put his hat beside him. Sader went to his desk.

  If it had been any other man from the Sheriff’s office, Sader would have fought like a tiger over every scrap of information. But he knew Jackson, he had worked with him. He wasn’t an ordinary cop. Jackson had intelligence and judgment, and what was more rare and more important, a sense of compassion. The years of working with the dregs hadn’t blinded him to the face of humanity.

  Sader began to talk. He outlined the case from its beginning in this room. He told Jackson how he’d found Wanda’s dead body, and why he had cleared out and made an anonymous phone call. He wound up by explaining where he stood now, canned by old man Gibbings and determined to go on, on his own.

  Jackson had lighted his pipe. He took it out of his mouth to say mildly, “I thought you worked for money.”

  “So did I,” Sader admitted.

  “So what’s in it for you if you find the kid?” When Sader shrugged, Jackson went on, “Don’t you see now that you can let us look for the kid without dragging in Miss Gibbings? She wasn’t the mother. It’s just a case of finding a little boy who didn’t belong to anybody.”

  Sader winced.

  “Incidentally,” Jackson added, “there were two anonymous calls. Yours and another. About two minutes apart. I don’t know which one came in first. They both reported the death. One of them said we’d better find out something about Mr. Gibbings and a man he had working for him, a private detective named Sader.”

  “That other call was from Wanda’s murderer,” Sader said slowly.

  “It would seem so,” Jackson agreed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “I CAN’T understand why you didn’t get hold of me right away,” Sader told Jackson.

  “Just because somebody squawks, I don’t have to jump. Not the way he wants me to jump, at least. I did some work on it before I came to you. I know you—something he didn’t know.”

  “I hope you don’t overlook the fact that he also knew of Gibbings’ search for the boy, and my part in it.”

  Jackson nodded. “He could have found it out from Wanda Nevins. We figure they spent some time in the house before the murder.”

  “They left the vodka in the car.”

  “She wasn’t ordinarily a vodka drinker. There was a case of expensive Scotch in one of the kitchen cupboards, a couple of bottles she’d worked on in the refrigerator.” Jackson puffed on the pipe. “You think your business with Gibbings had something to do with her murder?”

  “It’s tied in somewhere,” Sader said with conviction. “She had an angle and she was working on it. At first she thought she could play along with me, use me. And then she found out I was way off the beam. I was struggling along under the impression that the baby I had to find was old man Gibbings’ grandson. That queered it for her, somehow. But then she knew that the kid had disappeared and that somebody was keeping him hidden. It was all she needed.”

  Jackson nodded behind the pipe. He was a big man, and gave the impression of judicial considering. “What about this pair you saw tonight, the Perrines?”

  “So far, the only connection seems to be that Mrs. Champlain was in love with Brent and intended to marry him. And that she drowned off their boat at Catalina. The aunt seemed to think that Mrs. Champlain had loaned Brent some money for his boat business, but she’s the only one who mentioned it. The old man said that if Tina had lived, his son would have gotten help from her, that the drowning had spoiled a lot of plans for them.”

  Jackson said, “You haven’t traced any money?”

  “Not yet. I have an attorney looking into the possibility of a will. The money—if there was any—and the little boy seem to have dropped out of sight together.”

  Jackson rose. “We’ll find them. Meanwhile, if anything comes in from what you’ve done, let us know. You don’t have to worry about any publicity for Miss Gibbings . . . well, you’d know that.”

  “I knew it,” Sader said.

  They understood each other. Sader wondered if Jackson’s superiors had had the inspiration to send him, or whether Jackson had volunteered. In either case, it had been the only way they’d have gotten his co-operation.

  “I’ll run a make on the Perrines,” Jackson said in parting.

  Sader nodded, but he had a hunch neither the old man nor the son had any record, unless the old man had collected a few drunk arrests. Brent Perrine wasn’t just physically fit. He was the kind of man who kept his private affairs in good order, too. Sader wondered in passing how Brent stood the old man’s drunken disorder; and was struck again by his original conviction, that the old man had shot at his son from the house and that Brent had beaten his father thoroughly in retaliation. And again, seeing and sensing a corner of Brent’s real nature, he guessed that keeping the score even would be a part of Brent’s sense of the fitness of things.

  Jackson let himself out of the office and Sader turned to the phone. There was no answer to his ring in the attorney’s office. Sader locked up and went to his temporary home, and to bed.

  In the middle of the night the dog wanted out. As soon as Sader went down and turned on the kitchen light, the parrot stirred and screeched and began to eat. Sader realized he had forgotten to cover the cage. Since the dog and the bird seemed to be wide awake, Sader decided to heat up the coffee and smoke a cigarette. He sat in the kitchen to do it.

  He was out of a job. Old man Gibbings had canned him. The police would find the little boy, find Wanda’s murderer. It was time to turn his attention to other things. Instead he found himself thinking about Tina Champlain.

  The people who had known her had liked her. And yet, Sader hadn’t a clear idea of the kind of woman she had been. Old man Gibbings would be hard to impress, and yet he had turned over to her unquestioningly the child his daughter had borne. She must have given an impression of honesty, decency, and kindness. Sader hadn’t even seen a photograph, but he had formed a mental image. And he realized that it could be all wrong. He had learned long ago to mistrust a likeness secondhand.

  Dropping aside all hearsay, one fact stood out. Mrs. Champlain had been a woman determined to be a mother.

  What else was there?

  She had been born a Canadian, of a very ordinary family. Where then had she met and married the brilliant young husband, the electronics engineer who had died in the crash in Colorado? What had drawn them together? Why hadn’t they had children of their own?

  Sader stubbed out the first cigarette, poured the coffee, sat down, lighted a second smoke and listened to the parrot cracking sunflower seeds.

  Where were Mrs. Champlain’s personal belongings? Surely she’s left something of herself, personal knickknacks, pictures, legal papers. He remembered then the incinerator choked with ash, the box he had retrieved from the bottom of the trash barrel. The baby’s mitten had been treasured for years, along with the locket, the ribbons, and the rest, and then it had been put for destruction. Sader’s eyes narrowed; he was remembering the bitter, frustrated aunt, Mrs. Shawell, and in memory he heard her words: Mr. Sader, he wasn’t really Tina’s child. She had no right to him. But the family had done more than disavow the child. They’d washed their hands of Tina Champlain in death. For all the interest that had been shown toward what she must have left, Tina might have been the orphan instead of her little boy.

  And again, sitting in the midst of the quiet of the night, Sader had the sensation of having missed a great big chunk of the truth.

  He had thought, on learning that the boy wasn’t Gibbings’ grandson, that the missing piece had thereby been supplied. But it hadn’t followed. The part that was missing concerned Tina Champlain, her life and her motives.

  Where had she found the little boy, and what had caused her to take him?

  One had known the answer—Wanda Nevins. And she was dead.

  The Lakeside Chapel of St. John’s sh
owed candlelight against the dull gray morning. There were a few rain spatters on the great glass panes, and when the candles flickered within the reflection moved through the raindrops like a blown breath. Sader waited outside, sizing up what was going on within. There were about a half-dozen people, and the Reverend Twining, and an infant in a long white gown. Sader decided it was a baptism.

  The people came out presently and stood under the mosaic mural, and talked in a softly congratulatory, happy way among themselves, and then the men among them shook hands with Twining, and they all moved away to the cars parked at the curb. Twining nodded to Sader in recognition. “I’ll be with you in a minute.” He went back to the altar to extinguish the candles. Sader remained outside, smoking. He was thinking what a good-looking minister Twining was, healthy and hearty, nothing monkish or brooding about him. He wore a white lawn surplice over his suit. He had unbuttoned it, had it over his arm when he came back. He locked the chapel door and strode over to Sader. “How about a cup of coffee?”

  “I’d like it. I’m doing my own cooking,” Sader offered.

  “Let’s walk, it’ll do us good.”

  The grass was wet. There were a lot of birds chattering in the trees beside the small lagoon. A gust of wind came up, bringing a splash of rain, and Twining glanced speculatively at the sky and said, “Well, we sure need it.”

  “What about praying for rain?” Sader asked. “Do much of it?”

  “I’m afraid the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce would frown on it,” said Twining in dry humor. “Back where I came from—Iowa—it’s not uncommon, though. When a farmer needs rain for his crops he can get pretty blunt about it to the Almighty.”

  They had rounded the knoll, and Twining’s parsonage looked exceptionally white against the dullness of the day. Twining opened the door, let Sader precede him. Mrs. Mimms glanced at them from a door, recognized Sader. “How do you do?” She wore a starched blue dress.

  “We’ll have some coffee in here, please,” Twining told her.

  They seated themselves. Twining had dropped the surplice on a table, had taken out his pipe, filled it and didn’t light it. “How are you coming along with your job?” he asked.

  “I’ve managed to find out a few things—it would have helped to have known them from the beginning. For example, the baby Mrs. Champlain had here wasn’t the one who survived her at her death.”

  Twining patted the tobacco in the pipe, sucked on the stem. “Two different children? How can you be sure?”

  “The first child was a girl. The one she left was a boy. I guess you can’t find a bigger difference than that.”

  “No, I guess not,” Twining agreed.

  “For some reason Mrs. Champlain’s family refused to accept or to help the little boy. Probably Mrs. Champlain hadn’t formally adopted him, or at least that’s my hunch, but this business with her family goes much deeper than that. The aunt I talked to expressed hostility I couldn’t account for.”

  Twining looked puzzled.

  “The way she put it to me, was that Mrs. Champlain had no right to the child.”

  “What did she mean by it?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me. That’s why I’ve come to you. Mrs. Champlain brought her aunt to one of the missionary meetings, so the aunt must not be prejudiced against your church even if she isn’t a member of it.”

  “And you want me to talk to her?”

  Sader moved his arm so that Mrs. Mimms might put down the cup of coffee on the table by him. “I didn’t get anywhere with her. There’s something there she wouldn’t explain. It may have to do with this . . . that when Mrs. Champlain left your congregation she did more than just drop out of a church. She made a complete change, home, friends, child, everything. She became almost a different person.”

  Twining’s expression had become somewhat blank. “What you’re asking me to do is to uncover a scandal, isn’t it?”

  “Quite probably.”

  Twining began to shake his head slowly. “But you must realize, Mr. Sader, that such discovery and the passing of information to a private investigator isn’t—”

  “Wait a minute. Circumstances alter cases. I’ve never explained how this all began. It started when the grandfather of the child Mrs. Champlain first adopted came to me with an anonymous letter. The message in the letter was that the child Mrs. Champlain left was living under conditions of horrible abuse. The grandfather hired me to find him.”

  Twining seemed more puzzled than ever.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Why write to the grandfather of the first baby, the one who had died? Well, the writer seemed to have the two children confused. I suspected the old man’s motives, too, when I found out the truth he hadn’t told me, the change in children. But he says he feels he owes Mrs. Champlain something, and that in payment he wants to locate the little boy and make sure of his safety.”

  “Isn’t this all a matter for the police?”

  “It is, and they’re working on it. But I hate to quit. I’ve got such a start on them,” Sader explained. “Not only that, their primary interest in the case is in a murder. The girl who acted as a go-between for Mrs. Champlain’s adoption of the first baby has been killed.” While Twining listened with an air of fascination, Sader sketched in the facts surrounding Wanda’s murder. “I don’t really know whether Miss Nevins was killed in connection with the search for the boy. I just suspect it. And I want to find him.”

  Now Twining was leaning forward, the pipe forgotten. “Yes, I agree. This is important. If I can help . . .”

  “You can talk to Mrs. Shawell.”

  “I’m free for the rest of the morning. I’ll go at once. Just give me the address.”

  When Sader left a few minutes later he felt that he had made a firm ally in Twining. Perhaps the mystery of what had become of the child had intrigued the minister, or perhaps he recognized an obligation to a former member of his church, to Tina Champlain. Anyway, Sader had a hunch that Twining could get the truth out of the aunt.

  When he reached the office in Long Beach, the phone was ringing. It was his attorney friend.

  “Sader? News for you. There was a whopping settlement for that crash Champlain died in. He was young, a brilliant career ahead—the widow got almost a hundred thousand dollars. Plus insurance . . . there was some, I don’t know just how much but I can run it down. It went to her. I don’t find anything about a settlement for the child.”

  “What’s become of the money?”

  “Damned if I know. There’s a will on file, disposing of about ten thousand. Left in trust for Richard Champlain, a minor.”

  Ricky. Sader swung the chair from the desk and dropped into it. He felt as if a closed door had suddenly opened on a totally unfamiliar room.

  “Now, there is another item. A house near Laguna Beach.”

  “She owned a house?” Sader asked, sensing what was coming before the lawyer said it.

  “She left her equity in the house to a woman named Wanda Nevins.”

  “Did you get the address?” Sader waited, and then the lawyer’s voice scratched in his ear, the street and number, and Sader said, “The Nevins woman was living there. She was murdered there night before last.”

  “Oh, is that the one in the papers?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Do you want me to check on a will—if any—left by Miss Nevins? Maybe they’re bumping people off to get the house.”

  Something in the remark nagged, after the words were gone. “I think Miss Nevins was killed to shut her mouth. I wonder what a search of birth certificates might bring out? This Ricky Champlain. It would be about five years back.”

  “In an adoption, a new birth certificate is issued and all old records are sealed,” the lawyer told him.

  “She didn’t go through the formality the second time,” Sader said, thinking out loud. “I’m positive of it. Perhaps she figured a judge wouldn’t legalize it since she was a widow, the kid wouldn’t have a father. Or maybe
there was some other reason.”

  “She just took the kid in?”

  “I believe it.” In Sader’s thoughts, the sum of changes went on: a new child, a new home, a new man in Tina’s life. And all old friends discarded. “She got him to take the place of a baby who had died. No, wait a minute—” Sader couldn’t have said why his words rang so false. “Maybe she was just determined to be a mother. To remain a mother.”

  The lawyer began to check through what Sader wanted done; Sader knew that he was making notes on a scratch pad. Sader answered a few questions absent-mindedly.

  “This goes on old man Gibbings’ bill?”

  Sader was startled for a moment. “What?”

  “I’m working for Hale Gibbings, you said.”

  “No, send the bill to me.”

  “Okay.”

  Sader hung up, went to the outer room to retrieve the pile of mail which had been dropped in through the slot. He squatted there, sorting letters, but his mind was filled with a new idea.

  Tina Champlain had defied her family to keep the little boy. There was no other logical possibility but that she had changed her way of living for the same reason. In some way it had not been possible to have Ricky and to keep the old home, the friends and church associations, her position as the widow of the young electronics expert. Therefore, it followed that Ricky was not simply a substitute for the baby that had died. He must be a child who was worth, in himself, all of the sacrifices Tina had been called upon to make.

  Sader squatted there, sorting mail, letting his convictions clarify.

  From the evidence it would seem that once the husband and baby girl were dead, Tina had been able to do something she’d wanted to do, all along. She had claimed something she felt was her own.

  He remembered old man Perrine’s remark, that Ricky had looked so much like Tina Champlain that he had found it hard to believe that Ricky wasn’t her child.

  However and wherever she had claimed him, Sader made a bet to himself that the trail was well covered. He had begun to guess why.