Sleep with Slander Page 4

  Since Mrs. Champlain legally had disappeared rather than died, he pointed out, her property might have been put into trusteeship. The property of missing persons was kept in trusteeship for seven years unless the person returned or was found dead. However, the court would listen to evidence of a presumed death, such as being lost off a boat. He made this sound as curious as though it had never happened before, then admitted to Sader that he was presently at work trying to settle the estate of a client who had fallen overboard into the Catalina Channel.

  “With all the boats we have hereabouts, it must happen all the time,” Sader insisted.

  “Well, yes, unfortunately people don’t seem to keep their minds on what they are doing.”

  “Suppose this woman didn’t leave a will? What about the adopted baby, the other relatives?”

  “Legally the baby should get most of it. The relatives can put in a claim, of course. Or they can contest a will. You’ve got a very involved affair there, Sader. All sorts of complicated possibilities. Did the baby for instance inherit directly any part of that flight insurance?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it would be a hell of a job to find out.”

  “You see? That’s just one angle. Whereas . . .” He was off again. Sader waited for a break and then asked, “How much of a job is it to cancel an adoption?”

  “For what cause?”

  “Death of the adoptive parents.”

  “Death doesn’t cancel the adoption, Sader. The child is considered the heir, he hasn’t been returned to the original parents by the fact of losing the new ones. Do you want me to write you a legal opinion?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “I’d have to do a lot of reading even to venture an opinion. You’ve got a complicated snarl there, legally.”

  “Yes, you said so. Thanks a lot anyway.”

  “Perhaps Mrs. Champlain left the money in trust.”

  It could be, Sader thought. She might have put it in trust right after the husband’s death, too; she didn’t seem to have spent much of it to judge by the neighborhood she’d lived in. Maybe she played the horses or something, though. As his friend had mentioned, there were a lot of possibilities. “If you can find out whether the will has been filed, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Will do.”

  “Don’t crack any windows.”

  “What?”

  “With a wild putt.”

  “Oh. Ha, ha.”

  Sader put the phone in its cradle and picked up his cigarette from the ash tray.

  While he sat thinking, the night quiet was broken by a sudden gust and spatter at the windows. It had begun to rain. He sat watching the panes, faintly illumined by lights in the street below, covered now by a silvery sparkle. When the cigarette was done he got up, put on his coat and hat again, locked the office and went back to the car. He drove north on Pine Avenue, looking for a certain bar. The streets were practically deserted, the evening strollers driven indoors by the shower. When he found the bar, he parked and went in, and saw his friend of the sports desk sitting there with a couple of cronies, other reporters. Sader got him into a booth off to the side, and ordered a couple of drinks.

  “I know you’re acquainted with a lot of L.A. newspaper people,” Sader said, while they waited. “I need an introduction to somebody on a society page. Some woman with sense who won’t be afraid to give out with some frank information.”

  His friend, whose name was Berryman, thought about it. “She’s got to be working at it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know an old gal who retired a couple of years ago. She knows more dirt than anybody, anywhere. I’m taking for granted it’s dirt that you’re after.” The waitress brought their drinks. Berryman took a suspicious look at the tall one she set in front of Sader. “What’s that?”

  “Soda and lemon.”

  “You’re still on the wagon?”

  “I don’t have much choice.”

  “You really can’t stop, once you get started?”

  “So I’ve discovered.” Sader picked up the drink and tasted it. “Can we call this woman now?”

  “You mean, on the phone? Why bother? She lives less than a dozen blocks from here. Crazy about the beach and the Pike. She moved down here, I think to play bingo. She’s good for a drink, too. In fact she’s kind of insistent, so brace yourself.” Berryman picked up the shot, neat, and threw it past his tonsils and chased it with a swallow of water. “Come on.” He got up and walked out, slapping the backs of his friends in passing. “I’ll see you later, buddies.” Outside he stretched his arms and looked at the sky. “My God, it’s raining!”

  “You miss a lot of weather, staying in there,” Sader pointed out. He got in behind the wheel, Berryman getting in at the other door. “Tell me where to go.”

  They drove south toward the beach, down the incline of the bluff, then crept through a wet alley where old apartments showed their backsides, the clotheslines and the stacked boxes of trash. “Yeah, here it is.”

  Sader drew into a parking space and set the brakes. It was an old two-storey court, a double row of apartments facing each other across a paved slot. There were puddles of rain water around some potted geraniums out in the middle. Berryman paused at a door to knock.

  When she opened the door, Sader saw an elephant of a woman in tight red pants, green jersey blouse, ropes of junk jewelry, and Japanese thong sandals. She was chewing gum. She wore a lot of rouge and mascara. She was nothing at all like Sader’s idea of a society reporter. He’d met a few in his day and they’d all been ladylike ladies in trim suits and white gloves, very conscious of their good manners. This one looked as if she must have retired from a circus.

  She looked at Berryman and cried, “Why, you raunchy bastard, what are you doing down here at this hour?”

  “I’ve pleaded and begged,” Berryman said smirking, “and I’ve tried every trick in the book, and now my patience is gone. I’m going to rape you.”

  She opened her mouth to squeal, showing a lot of big white teeth. “Out here on the porch? Where people can see us? You’ll get me kicked out!”

  “The landlord must have passed up a thousand opportunities before now.”

  She was looking at Sader. “Say . . . Quit your horsing around and introduce me to your friend. He’s cute.” She patted her platinum hair.

  “This is Sader, Betty. He’s a private eye and he wants to meet you.”

  “Me? What’ve I done?” She moved back in pretended alarm, and they went in. “Is this on the level? Are you really a private detective?”

  Sader said yes, that’s what he was. He was sizing up the place. She must have been spending a lot of time on the Pike because the place had all kinds of plaster dolls and toys, satin pillows, and other trinkets offered as prizes. He thought it all looked junky but homey. She made him and Berryman sit down, and brought them drinks. Sader put his drink on the table by his elbow; when the right time came he’d exchange it for Berryman’s empty glass. Berryman was explaining that Sader wanted some inside information, probably for blackmail purposes.

  “I don’t know much about the doings in the hinterlands, like Long Beach,” she explained. “I always worked in L.A.”

  “This concerns people in L.A. I wondered what you could tell me about a woman named Kit Gibbings.”

  For a moment her face was blank, and then she looked incredulous. “You don’t mean . . . not the daughter of old Hale Gibbings?”

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  “Katharyn Gibbings?” She frowned at him, and he saw that the frolicsome mood was vanishing. “Nobody ever called her Kit that I knew of. Unless it might have been the old man. What do you want to know about her?”

  “Just whatever you can tell me. The kind of person she is. Where she lives now. How well you knew her, anything.”

  She sat looking at him with what Sader thought was a curious hostility. “You’ve never met her?”

  “No.”

  �
��Met the old man?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s not a bit like him. When I was acting like a lady myself, before I moved down here and went to the dogs, I used to think that Katharyn Gibbings was the most perfect example of a gentlewoman I’d ever known. I haven’t seen her for years . . . six, maybe seven years. The last time I saw her was at the races. Hollywood Park. She was in the clubhouse sitting alone at a table, studying the racing form.”

  “She liked to gamble?”

  “She went to the track on Charity Days. I never saw her there any other times.”

  “How does it happen you haven’t seen her for so long?”

  “She dropped out of things. All at once. Just quit going anywhere. She must have been sick for a while. People asked about her—not a lot of them, she was a quiet woman, she didn’t have any style and there was never any scandal about her. I don’t think she had many friends. She served on a few committees, did volunteer work at the hospitals, that kind of doings.”

  “And this particular day, the day at Hollywood Park? What about that?”

  “I guess I remembered it because something kind of hit me. I’d been drinking a little, and I got to looking around at the people . . . and well, you know how it is when you’re about half-whacked and suddenly you become very philosophical? Or maybe I mean psychological. Anyway, you get a sort of terrific insight. You suddenly see everybody very clearly and you sum up their lives and their personalities to yourself, like a camera shutter going click? And there’s a horrible finality about it?”

  “God, do I know what you mean!” Berryman groaned.

  “So do I,” said Sader.

  “Well, I was sitting there peering about in this unfocused way and I saw Katharyn Gibbings at a table, reading the racing form as if she knew what it was all about. She had a pot of tea, a cup poured for herself, her white kid gloves lying there by the saucer and a nice white handbag. She was wearing a brown linen suit and a brown hat. The hat was utterly nothing. She’d paid fifty dollars for it somewhere and they’d robbed her. The suit was nice but it wasn’t good for her.” Betty was sitting under a lamp, the glow shining in her platinum hair and the myriad strands of beads around her neck. She moved restlessly as if the memory still annoyed her. “And all at once while I looked at her, just like that”—Betty snapped her fingers sharply—“it came over me what kind of life she lived. Stuffy. Cooped up. Being old man Gibbings’ daughter. Shut up in that white mausoleum in Tiffany Square. For that matter, shut up in Tiffany Square and only knowing the other fossils that lived in it. Pushing forty, turning gray. Little lines in her lips. Minding her manners and pretending she didn’t care. And worst of all, having nothing at all in her that would lead her to revolt. She was gentle . . . so godawful and everlastingly gentle. A soft, sweet, pudding pie of a woman. I’ll tell you, Mr. Private Eye Sader, if there’s one woman in L.A. you’ll never dig up any dirt about, it’s Katharyn Gibbings.” She slapped a hand on the thigh of the red pants and nodded emphatically.

  “But you haven’t seen her for years,” Sader pointed out.

  “I know her. She wouldn’t change. My God, I’ve known her for twenty-five years. She was a kid, she was going to Miss What’s-her-name’s school, the one on West Adams that burned down. I was just starting in as a society reporter. They were teaching me not to spill tea on myself and how to keep from insulting that old dragon, the wife of the man who owned the opposition paper and ran all the charity rackets. I remember Katharyn Gibbings from that first year. She was a sort of cute child, and then her eyes went bad on her and she had to wear glasses. She was the kind of girl who looked homely in them. I don’t think she ever had a beau. Hey, you aren’t drinking that drink I made you!”

  “Give me time, I’ll get to it.”

  Betty got up and went to the kitchen, came back with a bottle of whiskey and freshened the drink. “There. Ice has melted, that’ll take up the slack.” She took the whiskey over to her own drink and put in a dollop. “What I was going to add, though—I think that day at the races, and seeing Katharyn Gibbings and thinking what I did about her, was what made me what I am today. I just suddenly wanted to do a lot of crazy things. Kind of in protest, I guess.”

  “Baby, you’re wonderful,” Berryman told her. “I can’t imagine you drinking tea and being nice to a dragon.”

  “I’d go into L.A. and give her a kick in the ass today,” Betty said, “only meanwhile it happens she has died. She was a bitch. She treated us like dogs because we worked for a union paper and her husband was a labor baiter.” Betty downed about half of the drink. “But getting back to Katharyn Gibbings . . . I guess I’ve told you about everything I know. She’s a nice, sweet woman—wherever she is.”

  “What about Katharyn’s mother, Gibbings’ wife?” Sader asked.

  She bared her big white teeth. “Personally I could never quite believe he’d had one, the old tyrant. But I guess he did. There was Katharyn, and other people had known the mother, from all reports an utterly humble and colorless woman who died when Katharyn was a kid. Poor kid!”

  “You don’t like him much?”

  “Gibbings? Since you know him—”

  “I met him briefly.”

  “What was it you really wanted to know about Katharyn Gibbings?”

  Sader saw the suspicion in her eyes. “Just what you’ve told me.”

  “Really? Was that all?” She downed the rest of her drink and looked pointedly at the one by Sader’s elbow. Berryman caught the glance. He held his own empty glass out toward her. “How about a refill, baby?” When she was gone, he grabbed Sader’s glass and took it down by half.

  “My God,” Sader said.

  “I’m doing you a favor, man!”

  “I guess you are, at that.”

  “What’s with the Gibbings woman?” Berryman asked, openly curious.

  “Just an angle concerning a case I’m working on.”

  “She sounds like the original virgin spinster.”

  “She sure does,” Sader agreed.

  “Unless, of course,” Berryman said, taking the drink down again, “she started kicking up her heels after Betty lost track of her.”

  “That doesn’t seem likely.”

  “You let the ice melt and this is weak as hell!”

  Betty came back with Berryman’s fresh drink, noted approvingly the glass now empty by Sader’s side. The conversation turned to newspaper shoptalk. Betty knew a lot of gossip, and her comments on some of her and Berryman’s mutual acquaintances sent Berryman into stitches. Sader smiled over her caustic wit, but inwardly he was thinking about Katharyn Gibbings.

  He had probed here into territory which old man Gibbings had forbidden him, satisfying his own curiosity. The kind of woman Katharyn was could have no relation to where her child was now and what was happening to him, but it seemed to Sader that he had needed to know, needed to fill in that blank part of the picture.

  However clever Betty was, however shrewd her insight in that moment of illumination, she had missed the truth about Katharyn Gibbings. The woman sitting alone at the table in the Hollywood Park clubhouse had been on the verge of explosive rebellion. She had been about to trade her repressed virginity for unlawful motherhood. Sader couldn’t help wondering what Katharyn Gibbings thought of the exchange by now.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SADER DROPPED Berryman at the bar and returned to his office.

  It was late now. The cleaning women had done their job and departed, the building was dark. He turned on lights in the inner office and sat down at the desk, took out some blank sheets and began to write up the day’s work, omitting of course the last hour or so, the visit with Betty. If Gibbings found it in a report he’d blow his stack.

  Sader glanced at the clock, jotting the time at the bottom of the page: 11:29. He slipped the paper into an upper drawer, was closing the desk, when he heard a sound in the outer office. His head lifted and he waited. The sound came again, a step. Then Wanda Nevins came in, blinking
at the light. She wasn’t in scanty garb this time, but her figure was as good as ever. She had on a tan wool dress and a little black fur jacket. There was a frosting of raindrops on her hair. Her lipstick was the color of firecrackers. Behind her moved something big and tawny, a giant of a dog. The dog examined Sader as if Sader might be made of beefsteak.

  “What a trip! Just wet enough to skid on!” She came closer to the desk, but not close enough to touch. She smiled and brushed the Persian lamb jacket off her shoulders.

  “I thought maybe you rode the animal from Laguna. He’s big enough to saddle.”

  A slim hand dropped to touch the tawny ears. “Oh, Bruce is just a baby, a puppy.”

  “I’d hate to meet him when he’s grown.”

  She smiled again, lazily. Sader thought she seemed very sure of herself, covering some inner jubilation, a kind of smugness, and he wondered what she had been up to since he had seen her at home. After Sader offered a chair, and she sat down, she said mockingly, “You tickled my curiosity today. I know that you detectives have to keep secrets—but you were so damned mysterious!”

  “Really? I didn’t mean to be,” Sader said. She had taken cigarettes from her handbag, selected one from the pack. She gave him a swift, measuring glance over the light he held for her. Sader went on, “How did you happen to drop in now? After all, even detectives are supposed to sleep nights.”

  “If you hadn’t been here, I was going to get in somehow and prowl your office.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  She edged back to the subject she’d chosen. “I’ve been thinking about Tina’s little boy. I suppose you know who he really is? I mean, who he belonged to before Tina got him?”

  Sader smiled a little. “That doesn’t carry any weight in this affair.”

  “You just want to be satisfied that he was legally adopted by the Champlains?”