Sleep with Slander Page 15

  “Sorry. I should have thought to leave it with you.”

  “Yes. Well, I wondered if you could come up for a talk tonight. I have something I want to discuss. Not good news, I’m afraid, and not anything I can discuss over the phone.”

  “Do you know where the boy is?”

  “No. This concerns Mrs. Champlain’s motive for taking him.”

  The parrot made a rustling commotion in his cage, and Sader jumped. “I’ll be up as soon as I can get there. It’ll take a little time to drive it.”

  “Well, I rarely get to bed before midnight anyway,” said Twining. “I’ll have the coffee hot.”

  “Thanks. I’ll see you.”

  Twining had done him a favor, had done part of the job for him, and had had to run him down to tell him about it. Sader felt grim. He went up and dressed again. The dog followed him to the door, disappointed, and the parrot squawked in his cage, the tone implying that Sader was a sad failure as a zookeeper.

  Driving up the freeway, Sader occupied himself with thoughts of Brent Perrine. Brent hadn’t reacted to the offer of money as Sader had been convinced he would. He hadn’t gone home and checked to make sure the old man was staying put, and then taken off to wherever the kid was hidden. He had gone to get his dad and to clear out.

  He had wanted the money. That fact had gleamed in his eyes. But something had blocked him.

  Was he Wanda’s murderer? Was there something about revealing where the kid was that would reveal him as the killer, too?

  Wanda had died brutally, and Brent was a big strong man, well able to beat a woman to death as Wanda had been beaten. It was true that he seemed to have brief spells of compassion, such as he’d shown his father; but these could simply be the split half of a schizophrenic personality.

  Twining met him at the door. The place looked quiet and peaceful. Sader had driven past the little chapel, and through the glass walls had seen an altar light gleaming. He thought that the young minister looked tired, sort of worried, too. Twining took him into the parlor and offered a chair, brought a hot cup of coffee from another room and put it on the table by Sader.

  “I went to see Mrs. Champlain’s aunt. I had to wait—she was out on an errand—and then when I got back here other things kept me busy. I’m sorry it’s been this long before I got hold of you.”

  “My fault, too, I should have checked earlier than I did. I called in once, during the afternoon.” Sader waited, wanting Twining to get down to whatever he had to tell.

  Twining was in his chair, the unlighted pipe in his fingers. “Mrs. Shawell was at first very secretive. I had quite a time convincing her I wasn’t a private detective in minister’s garb. Apparently you gave her a fright. You see, the thing she’s guarding is her dead niece’s reputation. Did she insist to you—as she did to me—that the child couldn’t actually belong to Mrs. Champlain?”

  “Well, she insisted that Tina Champlain had no right to him.”

  “I kept talking on that point to her, since it seemed moot. I said that the only reason Mrs. Champlain would have taken the little boy was because she loved him and must have thought he needed her. And then Mrs. Shawell began to cry, and said no, that wasn’t it at all. She told me that Mrs. Champlain’s motive had been something else entirely.” Suddenly Twining leaned back in the chair, looked dejectedly into the pipe bowl, and shook his head. “I don’t want to be a party to any feast of gossip.”

  “I know how to keep my mouth shut. And I’ve got to find the kid,” Sader said doggedly.

  “Yes. Well, perhaps this will throw some light. You know that Mr. Champlain was an electronics engineer, a very good man in his field. He was constantly traveling, most of the time by air. He went all over the world.”

  “I had surmised as much.”

  “Naturally while he was traveling Mrs Champlain was left alone. They had a mountain cabin at one time, up in the Tehachapi district, and sometimes she’d go there by herself, though her aunt worried about it when she did. Then once, just after she’d spent some time in the mountains and just as her husband returned from a month or so abroad, Mrs. Champlain had an hysterical breakdown and had to be sent to the hospital.”

  “The aunt thinks that something happened in the mountains?”

  “She told me that Tina Champlain underwent a change from which she never recovered. There were long months during which Mrs. Champlain didn’t come around. Letters went unanswered. Once someone called from Tina’s church, asked how she was . . . it seemed she was supposed to be in some sanitarium.”

  “I can guess what’s in Mrs. Shawell’s mind,” Sader said. “She thinks that Tina Champlain may have been attacked, raped in that lonely cabin, and later bore a child—the little boy she took in after her husband and the first child were dead.”

  Twining nodded.

  “I can’t understand Mrs. Shawell turning against the kid the way she did—not even checking up after Tina’s death to make sure he had proper care or even enough to eat. Not offering him a home.”

  “They’re a Canadian family of old French descent and have lived for generations in a little town in eastern Canada. I’m not offering this as an excuse. But I can understand Mrs. Shawell’s rejection, particularly when she added that her niece had been a rather wild young girl and had been expected to come a cropper by disapproving neighbors.”

  Sader was frowning. “What did she say about the adoption of the little girl?”

  Twining shrugged. “Very little. She said Mrs. Champlain loved the little girl and did everything possible to keep her alive. You know, since Champlain died in a plane crash there may have been a lot of insurance, even a settlement with the company.”

  “There was.”

  “The medical care of the baby girl may have accounted for quite a bit of it.”

  “I agree, and I’m surprised I hadn’t thought of it.” Sader was actually sore at himself for the oversight. Chunks of Tina’s inheritance seemed to have vanished down a rathole—he had suspected Wanda Nevins and the Perrines of accounting for most of it—and all the time it could have been paid out in hospital and doctor’s bills, in an effort to save the baby who had been born with a defective heart.

  Wryly, he thought, in passing, of Gibbings and Gibbings’ money. The old man had saved himself some hefty expense, getting rid of the baby as quickly as he had.

  Twining went on, “The aunt told me all of this . . . hinted at most of it, actually, after I had convinced her that I was a real minister and that she could trust me. I feel that I am betraying a confidence, and yet . . .” He suddenly took out matches and lighted the tobacco and puffed with an air of anger. “. . . I want the child found, too, Mr. Sader. There’s a spot in the New Testament—maybe you’re not much of a Bible reader—”

  “I guess I know that one,” Sader said. “Something about as you do to the least of these, isn’t it?”

  “It occurred to me, then, that if Mrs. Champlain knew where her real child was, knew how to go about reclaiming him, she had kept contact with people we know nothing about.”

  “Well, that’s pretty obvious.”

  “So—how do you find them?”

  Sader thought about it; not for the first time. “The only way I can work is through the people I’ve already met, the ones I’ve talked to who knew Tina Champlain while she was alive. There must be a lead there. I just haven’t seen it. Somewhere the two parts of her life coincided. Somewhere the life she led here, while she went to your church and knew the people in it, and lived as Champlain’s loving wife, overlaps that other existence down in Santa Monica. I just haven’t dug deep enough.”

  Twining regarded him thoughtfully. “This girl who was murdered—wasn’t she a sort of carry-over into Mrs. Champlain’s new life?”

  “Yes. And so was a man I can’t locate, a husky cousin of hers. They seem to have known Mrs. Champlain right up to the end. In fact, I have an idea that Wanda Nevins knew more about Mrs. Champlain’s affairs than anyone else, that she not only arr
anged the adoption of the baby girl, but found the boy for Mrs. Champlain when she wanted him.”

  “Have you talked to the police, on the chance Miss Nevins left some clue?”

  “They haven’t found the little boy. If they had, I’d know it.” Sader got up restlessly and walked around, matching his steps to the pattern of the rug. “There’s another person I want to talk to. I’ll need your help. I want to contact Dr. Bell, the minister who was here while Mrs. Champlain was a member of your church.”

  “He’s teaching now.”

  “Yes, I know that. And probably he wouldn’t answer questions over the phone unless I had you to vouch for me.”

  Twining glanced at the mantel clock. “It’s late now. I’d hate to disturb him. Suppose we put through a call in the morning?”

  “I guess that will do.”

  Twining seemed curious. “Do you expect him to know the truth about what happened in the mountain cabin?”

  “If anything did happen. While she lived out here, Mrs. Champlain seems to have tried to be a good church member. Probably she began to break away at about the time the aunt said she began to avoid her—but still, she may have talked to Dr. Bell, may have asked his help. He would have done what he could. If we can just convince him that he won’t be violating a confidence, he can help us.”

  “We’ll give it a try. I’m going to keep working with you until that little boy is found,” Twining said firmly.

  “Thanks for what you’ve done already.”

  Twining got to his feet and held out his hand, shook Sader’s. “Well, we have an inkling as to her motive for wanting the little boy. He must have been her own, after all. But we haven’t an inkling who kept him during the years she had the other baby—or who has him now.”

  “Maybe it’s right under our noses,” Sader said, “and we just can’t see it.”

  Driving past the chapel a few minutes later, Sader studied it in the glow of altar light. It wasn’t a big place; Twining’s congregation couldn’t be over a couple of hundred or so. It looked like a sparkling phantom, sugar-frosted, there among the trees. All at once Sader remembered that he had not been in or even near a church for years, and he felt a sudden curiosity about Twining, what the young minister would say in the pulpit, and he made a halfhearted promise to come up some Sunday and listen.

  He drove to the freeway, went straight through the heart of L.A. and on down to the beach. He turned south there. It was late, there wasn’t a lot of traffic. He hit Huntington Beach at midnight, on the dot, and a few minutes later he’d left Newport behind. When he reached the outskirts of Laguna Beach he turned in at the road that led up to Wanda’s house. The place was dark, locked, and there was a Sheriff’s seal on the door. Sader got back into the car, drove on into town, turned left up the canyon road. He had made up his mind that the middle of the night might be a good time to see who or what was in the sculptor’s studio.

  There were no cars parked at the gate. He went up the hill through the trees, and the red barn seemed to sit there in a listening stillness. The panes of its north light gleamed under the glow from the sky. On the, knoll the great stone heads had a look of peaceful and mysterious dignity. They looked seaward through the night. They were at the same time, more remote and yet more real than by day.

  He passed them with the familiar sense that their gaze followed, his steps echoing, and then below in the other house he saw a light. He walked more slowly, trying to be silent.

  Through the uncurtained window the room seemed much as he had seen it earlier. There were still signs of Brent’s searching, but the broken stuff had been cleared away. But what sat in the middle of the floor was nothing Sader could have hoped to find here.

  A small boy.

  And a dog.

  The boy wore faded pajamas and he sat hunched as he had in the snapshot with Brent, his eyes fixed on the door, hugging his knees. The likeness was unmistakable.

  The dog was a copy of the brute Wanda had brought to his office. The dog had been asleep beside the boy, but now having heard Sader’s approach, had lifted his head and tuned his ears.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  WITHOUT LEAVING the window, Sader stretched and touched the doorknob, rattled it gently. In a moment the dog was on his feet, neck elongated, lips drawn back to bare the big teeth. He was a ripping-machine, something created to destroy the enemy. Well, I know what he’s here for, Sader thought; he’s here to keep everyone away from the kid. With his nails, Sader tapped on the wall beside the door, showing his face through the pane. He called, “Hey, Ricky, come let me in!”

  There was a chance someone else was in there, of course, but something about the setup, the kid alone in the middle of the floor as if he’d been put there, the dog guarding, said not, and Sader took the chance.

  The boy moved his gaze slowly and unwillingly from the door over to stare at Sader, and then he suddenly bent his head and covered his eyes with his hands. Sader thought he looked awfully little, awfully alone too, hunched like that. The lamp behind him cast his shadow, and it wasn’t very big either. The dog’s shadow looked like a horse’s.

  “I’m a friend. I just want to talk to you, I just want to make sure you’re all right.”

  Without removing his hands from his eyes, Ricky shook his head. This, too, followed some previous command, Sader sensed. “Aw, you can walk over to the window here and let me look at you. He won’t care about that,” Sader wheedled, wondering himself whether by he he meant the brute or the man who had left his instructions.

  The boy peeped at him through his fingers. Then he took his hands away from his eyes, got to his feet, and tried to get to the window. The dog was no fool; he kept getting in the way. He showed his teeth at Ricky but Ricky wasn’t dismayed, he pulled and tugged at the big ears, turning the head, so that the dog moved on behind him. Ricky got about five feet from the window and stopped, regarding Sader with suspicion, and suddenly Sader was struck with a new uncertainty: What the hell he was doing here? He’d been so sure the kid had to be rescued, but here he was, no obvious bruises or contusions, no broken arms or legs, no eagerness for help, no tears.

  Then Sader took a second look and saw the hollow eyes, the fragile line of the skull showing through the flesh, betraying starvation. Something rose in his throat and he almost vomited.

  “Turn around.”

  “Who are you?” Ricky asked through the pane.

  “Just turn around, Ricky.”

  Turn around and lift the tops of your pajamas, and then pull down the seat, so I can look for marks of beating. . . .

  Otherwise, they can say you’ve just been sick—

  “Turn around, won’t you?”

  “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t?” The sudden breeze touched the sweat on Sader’s face; he hadn’t known it was there.

  “Because I’m supposed to stay in the middle of the rug. And I’m not supposed to talk to anybody.”

  “Who brought you here?”

  “My m . . . The lady.”

  “Isn’t there a man living here?”

  Ricky nodded. “Yes, there’s Jeffry. He’s big.”

  “He and the lady are partners?”

  “I thought he was my father. I mean, once I did.” Ricky’s hollow eyes blinked, then filled with tears; blinked again and the tears were gone.

  “When he took you away from Mrs. Cecil?”

  Ricky shivered inside the baggy pajamas. “Yes.”

  “What does Jeffry call this lady? The one who keeps you now?”

  “He calls her Mrs. Lasriss.”

  Sader wanted to shake his head, as if something were clinging to it, something that scuttled and nibbled at the edge of memory, something . . . yes, dammit, something to do with Twining! A sheer sticky thread across the edge of his mind like a thread of spider’s web across the face, something you had to pluck off in horror!

  “Do you like her?”

  “She whips me.” He said it simply, lookin
g at Sader through the pane, and Sader knew then that all the reasons for whipping, for starving, had been explained to Ricky and that once he got Ricky outside that door he would know them too.

  “How about coming away with me?” Sader blurted, though he should have known better. Ricky stepped back two feet and looked for a place to sit, and Sader knew—with a pang—that the child had learned this response: to sit and fold arms and endure while hell went on. “Goddamit—” Then Sader got control and remembered a few things, and said, “Hey, do you like ice cream, Ricky?”

  Ricky was sitting down now. He was ready to fold his arms and hide his eyes, because there were things you couldn’t endure otherwise and this might turn out to be one of them. “Yes,” he said, muffled.

  “Well, I’ll buy ice cream if you can get out without the dog getting out too.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Will you come to the door and try to help me?”

  Ricky was still suspicious. “Doing what?”

  “Holding the dog.”

  “You can’t hold him,” Ricky explained in a sober, adult manner. “He bites after a while. You can touch him a little, you can even pull and guide him where you want him to go. But if he sees something bad and you try to hold him back from it, you’ll be torn to pieces.”

  Someone had explained the mechanics of Bruce—if it was Bruce—to Ricky, so there wouldn’t be any mistakes. And Sader knew why one of the dogs had been kept alive.

  “Well, could you get him over to the door where I can reach him?”

  A little touch of interest seemed to flicker in Ricky’s hollow eyes. He nodded slowly.

  “Stay there then till I get back.”

  Sader ran back up the path to the top of the knoll. He remembered what he had seen as he had rested behind one of the great stone heads. Under the night sky he bent and searched the earth, and found what he had expected, rubble tossed out of sight, half-buried in the dead grass, chunks of cement embedded with chicken wire and lathe. He hefted several, finally taking three back with him. They were heavy; his arms ached by the time he reached the house.