Sleep with Slander Page 2

  “It was normal?”

  “Quite normal and . . . a very good-looking baby.”

  “How old was your daughter?”

  Gibbings squinted into the bowl of the pipe. “That, Mr. Sader, has nothing to do with any of this.”

  Sader felt a sudden suspicion, of which he said nothing. Gibbings must be at least sixty. It was quite possible that this daughter didn’t fit into the rash-young-teenager-in-love pattern, at all. In fact, come to think of it, most probably not. “I’ll need addresses, now.”

  The Champlains had lived in West L.A. until the father’s death in the plane crash. Then Mrs. Champlain and the baby moved to Santa Monica. Why, Gibbings didn’t know. He had been able to trace them through a friend in the Motor Vehicle Department, who had looked up Mrs. Champlain’s changes of address through her driver’s license. The Santa Monica address was the last listed.

  “Mrs. Champlain is dead? You’re sure of this?”

  “I haven’t been able to verify it. The father’s death was mentioned in the papers at the time. I didn’t see it, or at least the story didn’t register if I did. A reporter friend looked it up in the newspaper morgue.”

  Sader was reading back through the notes he had made. “You said, that they brought you letters of recommendation from a banker and a minister.”

  “Don’t remember the banker. The minister was in a West L.A. church and I called them yesterday. The church says that he took a sabbatical leave more than three years ago and went back to some theological college in the South, and has stayed there since to teach.” Gibbings frowned. “Anyway, he wasn’t a personal friend. It’s through others, the people close to them—”

  Sader interrupted. “We may need that minister before we’re through. What’s the church?”

  “A little outfit. The Lakeside Chapel of St. John’s. Sort of interfaith bunch, don’t believe they stick to many of the fundamentals.”

  “Perhaps they have their own,” Sader suggested dryly.

  “You’ll be telling me next—” Gibbings tried to smile, and the effect was grim. “—telling me I’m not a Christian.”

  “Are you?”

  “If you knew it all . . .” He shrugged the rest of it away. “Your best bet, take it from me, is to go to see Wanda Nevins. Don’t let her know I sent you. You’ll need every trick you ever learned. She lives down the coast, this side of Laguna Beach. She’s got a house overlooking the sea, a Cadillac convertible, and two boxer dogs.” Gibbings rose from the couch. “Don’t let any of them get you.” He slapped a small stack of money on the desk in front of Sader. “This ought to get you going.”

  He turned, buttoning the coat. He looked, Sader thought, like an old soldier who has seen too much of war.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE MOMENT that Sader saw the place in Santa Monica, the last known address of Mrs. Champlain, he knew that this was a dead end . . . and why. Gibbings should have told him.

  A new freeway was going through. An area of a dozen blocks or so had been condemned, the houses and shops were in the process of being moved or demolished. They sat with vacant windows under the darkly clouded sky. Some had been pried from their foundation and sat intact on timbers, ready for the rollers. On others the wreckers had been at work, steps were askew and doors and windows and all exterior fittings were gone. Here and there a tattered FOR SALE sign fluttered in the beach wind. Sader parked across the street and got out of the car. Three blocks east the end of the freeway from L.A. was a muddy mountainous nose thrust sniffing seaward.

  He went to the address Gibbings had given him. It was one of those being wrecked, a small stucco bungalow with a Spanish tile roof. The low picket fence around the front yard had been flattened, lay in splinters on the dead lawn. A couple of hibiscus were trying to live without water, and even showed a few starved buds. Sader went into the shaky porch and looked in through the doorless entry. Someone had taken the hardwood, leaving the rough planked floor. The plastered walls were cracked. He went inside.

  It didn’t smell like a house. The windows were gone, and the beach wind lent it a salty fragrance. Under the salt was the faint odor of broken wood. No one had slept here, cooked here, washed and ironed here, or kept a baby here for a long long time.

  It was as bare as a house could get. In the kitchen the sink had been ripped off the wall and taken away. The water heater lay on its side in the service porch, a trickle of rust like dried blood testifying to its uselessness. Who needed rusty water heaters? Sader looked for personal debris, for something left by the living tenants; and it seemed he would find nothing. The house had been scoured by human gleaners, and by time.

  He went into the front bedroom. The hibiscus crowded the vacant window. He looked into the closet. Everywhere in the house the flooring was gone, the subfloor exposed, and through the cracks between the planks he could see the dark underneath. The closet had lost its smell of clothing. If anything, there was a faint odor of earth. He went past a gutted bathroom to the back bedroom. This should have been the baby’s room, he thought. It was much smaller, a little box of a room. He looked into its closet, a veritable mousehole. Empty, too, to the cracked walls.

  He went past the fallen water heater to the rear porch.

  A broken screen door lay in the back yard, grass growing up through the wire mesh. There was nothing out there except a barrel, sitting crookedly beside an old incinerator. Sader picked his way through the yard, gathering foxtails in the cuffs of his pants, and looked into the incinerator, which proved to be clogged with ashes, and then into the barrel. In the bottom of the barrel, old newspapers had matted to the wood and on these sat a cardboard box. Sader picked it out.

  It had been wet, rained on maybe. The white paper covering was cracked and spotted. He pried up the lid. Because it was so light to hold, he thought it must be empty; but no, inside was a crushed mass of satiny color and the smell of lavender. He stirred what was in the box. A lot of ribbon, yellow and pink and orchid and blue, and some scraps of lace. A baby’s mitten, white, with a touch of pink at the wrist. A small locket on a chain, badly tarnished. Three pearl buttons. Some loose bits of lavender, from which the fragrance came.

  He put the lid on again, saw that there had been a firm’s name printed on it, almost blotted away by the water. He held it to the light and the last of the gilt print said Betty’s Baby Shop.

  He took the box with him to the house. He made a last inspection, peering into what was left of the kitchen cupboards. Then he returned to his car. He tossed the box in upon the seat, then paused on the curb to light a cigarette.

  There was no proof whatever that the box had belonged to Mrs. Champlain. Gibbings claimed not to have been able to find out if she had lived here until her supposed death, or even when the death had occurred; and even if he had settled these items, in the present state of the neighborhood the box could have come from almost anywhere. Still, Sader glanced in at it with a look of satisfaction.

  He looked at his wrist watch. It was almost noon.

  He drove back to Long Beach, checked the office. There was a wire from his partner. The wire said THEY STILL KNOW HOW TO LIVE IT UP IN SAN FRANCISCO. PLEASE CHECK SUPPLY OF ALKA-SELTZER AND BUY ME A NEW ICE BAG. BE HOME WEDNESDAY. DON’T TAKE ANY WOODEN BLONDS. Sader dropped the telegram into the waste basket, phoned his answering service, found out he hadn’t missed anything important, and went back down to his car.

  He drove south, down the coast. The gray sea was the color of the sky, with flecks of foam, and Catalina was a sleeping armadillo on the horizon. He thought about this job Gibbings had sent him on, and all the territory Gibbings hadn’t let him explore, everything that had to do with the daughter. The daughter didn’t know about the letter, had no inkling that her child wasn’t still with the Champlains—if she’d ever been allowed to know that. There was much under the surface and the old man wasn’t going to let him touch it. In spite of the erosion done his natural curiosity by time and by being in the detective business, Sader f
elt an interest in the daughter. He wondered what she looked like. Was she beautiful and dumb? Was she a plain Jane whose one misstep had had such unfortunate consequences? Did she resemble her father—God forbid? He wondered what had really happened to her. That story of being in love with the soldier, for instance, and the soldier having been killed before the marriage could take place . . . Sader shook his head over it. It was as old as hell. He thought that a man with Gibbings’ intelligence should have done better.

  The old man should have been scarred and hurt by the experience, the scandal, but Sader thought not. Gibbings was a cold fish with an eye for his own interest.

  There had been no mention of the girl’s mother, Gibbings’ wife, an omission Sader figured was deliberate. Probably with the way Gibbings had run things, she didn’t even know there had been a baby.

  When he got into the outskirts of Laguna, Sader began to watch for the street Gibbings had given him. He found it. It climbed the steep hill to a terrace where houses sat looking out across the sea. They were pretty big places. Under the gray light their big glass windows were milky, secretive. He found Wanda Nevins’ number and parked beside the curb.

  At street level was a paved courtyard, in its center like a hole in a doughnut a raised area of earth from which sprouted some banana palms and papyrus. Sader went in, looked around for the door. Between the house and the garage was an open passage through which, far below, he could see the water. The air was fresh and salty.

  The door was set into the redwood wall. Sader put a thumb on the bell and waited. He heard radio music dimly, and then the noise of some movement inside. The door opened a little. “Miss Nevins?”

  She was surprisingly little, her black curly head barely topping the level of his shoulder. She had fair clear skin, the kind of skin the old-fashioned songs always compared to rose petals, and her tawny and insolent eyes looked directly into Sader’s face. She was barefooted, dressed in some brief kind of sun suit, a burnt-toast shade that pointed up the color of her eyes. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “My name’s Sader. I’d like to talk to you, if I might.”

  She studied him. Her expression made Sader feel worn and dusty, and conscious of being gray. “What’s it all about?”

  “A confidential matter. I can’t very well explain standing out here. I promise not to take much of your time.”

  She glanced past him to the car, which apparently didn’t impress her. “I don’t entertain people I don’t know. I don’t know you, and I have no intention of letting you in my house.”

  While he took out his I.D., Sader thought to himself, This kid’s been spoiled but good. For years and years people have stared at her because she’s beautiful, and kowtowed to her and run themselves ragged trying to please her—men especially—and now she has the manners of a bitch. He flashed the private detective’s badge and saw her eyes widen. Not in surprise. He would have bet on it. She seemed to pick up a lot of satisfied animation all at once.

  “You’re a cop?”

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  “That’s an official-looking badge.”

  “I can be pretty official when it’s necessary,” Sader said. “May I come inside?”

  She didn’t move, but the insolent eyes had taken on a new curiosity. “Who sent you here?”

  “I’m employed by a group of attorneys who look up heirs, Miss Nevins.” It was the truth, and Sader often found it convenient as a cover. “Right now we’re hunting for a Mrs. Champlain, or a son of hers.”

  In the lovely face the brown eyes seemed unnaturally fixed and steady. “On account of an inheritance? You mean there’s money coming to them?”

  “If we can find them,” Sader agreed.

  The door promptly opened and she stepped back. Sader took in the room beyond. It looked bigger than it really was—and it was big enough—because of the Oriental sparseness of furniture. The gray light from the windows overlooking the sea shone in on teakwood benches, fiber mats, transparent paper screens and squat-sized tables holding bonsai pine trees in copper bowls. Over by the windows with his back to the view was the biggest household Buddha that Sader had ever encountered face to face. He had his own teakwood perch and a look of brooding peace.

  Sader sat down on a bench covered by a foam rubber cushion done in red velvet. He knew little of decorating but one glance told him that this was a professional job, and done expertly. “Your name was given us by Mrs. Champlain’s former landlord. He thought you might know where she is now.”

  “She’s dead.” Wanda Nevins was sitting on another bench, not very near; she was lighting a cigarette from a copper-colored table lighter. “She’s been dead for over six months.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “She went to Catalina with a pair of idiots. They owned a little outboard cruiser. They were swimming in one of the coves over there and she got cramps and went down and they let her drown. Her body was never recovered.”

  “Who were these people?”

  She tapped the cigarette into the edge of the bowl where the little dwarf pine spread its green needles. “Do you mind answering a question or two, Mr. Sader? Just where is your office and who are these attorneys you represent?”

  “My office is in Long Beach. You can find the address in the phone book. I can’t give you the names of my clients, Miss Nevins. They have to guard against being approached by false heirs. I guess you might understand that.”

  “How much money is involved?” She studied his expression and shrugged. “Of course you wouldn’t tell me that either. These people who let Tina drown at Catalina were friends of hers, a father and son. She was sort of interested in the son—of course you know that she was a widow.”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “She had gone with Brent for about a year. He and the old man had built the boat. They were supposed to be pretty good sailors, knew their way on the channel. Of course that didn’t have anything to do with her getting drowned.”

  “Who took her little boy? Who has him now?”

  Sader’s every instinct told him it wouldn’t be this easy, and he was right. She smoked, looking at him across the glowing end of the cigarette. He thought that a little smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I have a hunch about you,” she told him finally.

  “And what is that?”

  “It’s the little boy you’re after, really, isn’t it?”

  Sader wondered where he’d slipped. “Well, since the mother is dead, yes. We’d naturally want to find the child.”

  “He wasn’t really Tina Champlain’s child. He had been adopted. Now, you’re, going to have to tell me this much or this interview is closed. Is the money coming to the boy through Tina, or has it something to do with his real people?”

  For some reason, Sader felt that the question was a trap. There was a way here in which he could ruin himself, though he didn’t see it. On the other hand, she might really believe the yarn about the inheritance. Probably she’d automatically be interested where money was concerned. He made a bet with himself: she intended to deal herself in on this imaginary loot. “We had presumed that the boy was Mrs. Champlain’s own baby,” he said, feeling his way, “but I guess if there was nothing out of line about the way she got him—”

  She had turned so that she no longer quite faced him, but faced the big Buddha on his pedestal. “You must mean that the money is coming through Tina Champlain. I didn’t know that the family had any.”

  “You know them?”

  “I’ve met some of her relatives.”

  “Just how well did you know Mrs. Champlain?”

  “Pretty well. I don’t mind confessing how I came to be as close to her as I was. You see, when I was a kid I had a rough time. My mother drank and my dad was gone all the time, and I ran away, and the cops got interested and then I was all tangled up with Juvenile Hall. They were getting ready to shove me into reform school, only Mrs. Champlain belonged to this Big Sister thing—
that wasn’t its name but it’s the idea—and she stood good for my parole and got me straightened around. This was a long time before she found the . . . the baby she adopted.”

  “This little boy . . .” Again Sader had the feeling that a false step would trap him in an error. “How did she find him? Through a recognized agency?”

  “Oh, I helped her find him.” Suddenly she got up off the teakwood bench and went over to stand beside the Buddha, looking out through the window at the sea. At this moment Sader heard a whining from outside, a scratching at the door, and remembered Gibbings saying that she owned a couple of boxer dogs. “Go away, Bruce.” The scratching and whining died. “I’m talking too much, Mr. Sader. You have a way with you, a way of prying things out of people.”

  Not out of you I don’t, Sader told himself. This was an act. She wanted time to think, or she figured he was on the hook and she wanted to play him a little.

  “All of these things I’ve told you are confidential and personal. They might be used to hurt me, or others. I shouldn’t have mentioned the fact that the boy was adopted.” She paused here as if she expected him to say something. What? She went on, “That really is none of your business, since for all practical purposes an adoption is the same as a natural birth.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Unless the person who has left this money to Tina’s child has fixed it so that an adopted baby would be left out.”

  She was searching for a wedge, a way in; for something to trade. Sader decided to give her a little room. “I’d have to check that angle. It’s possible, I suppose.”

  “If he were . . . illegitimate, for instance.”

  Sader said, “There are a lot of narrow-minded people in the world.”

  “But you wouldn’t have to reveal it, would you? Aren’t detectives allowed some choice about what is passed on to a client?”