Sleep with Slander Read online

  “Not until Mr. Twining told me, just before you came.”

  “She hadn’t kept in touch with anyone at the church?”

  “No. Not at all. That happens sometimes. When something terrible happens, when a loved one is lost, sometimes faith goes too.”

  “Yes, I guess that’s true.”

  “I was so terribly surprised that it was Mrs. Champlain who was dead,” Mrs. Bowen went on. “When Mr. Twining first began to speak, when I caught the name Champlain and understood that there had been a death, I was sure he must be speaking of the Champlain baby. During the last months she went to St. John’s, she spoke often of the baby’s illness.”

  Sader must have looked his surprise. “I hadn’t heard of this.”

  “She was . . . it had something to do with a heart defect.”

  “She must have been taking the baby to a doctor,” Sader said, thinking of the avenue thus opened.

  “She may have. I don’t know.”

  “Is there anyone else I could see, anyone of your Women’s Circle, who was a close friend? Who might know where the child is now?”

  “I don’t believe so, Mr. Sader. Mrs. Champlain cut herself off from all of us at St. John’s. Perhaps it was somewhat our fault, too. We were all busy with our own affairs, and we—we just sort of let her go.” Her tone seemed full of a genuine regret.

  From some rear part of the house, Sader heard the squeals and cries of children, suddenly raised. Mrs. Bowen flinched, her mouth puckering; then she shrugged as if in resignation. “It’s hard for me to be patient over the noise, since—” She forced a smile, ruefully. “I’m not a very good invalid, I’m afraid.”

  Judging by her appearance, Sader thought, Mrs. Bowen must have married and borne her children later than most. “At least you can keep them out from underfoot with a house this size.”

  “Yes. And Ada—she let you in—she’s very helpful with them.”

  “How many children have you?” Sader was rising to leave.

  She hesitated for a moment. “It sounds like a dozen, doesn’t it? But there are only three.”

  Among the children, one had started to cry. “Seems as if there might have been a fight,” Sader offered.

  “Mr. Sader, that goes on all day long.”

  The chocolate-colored maid ushered him to the front door and said a polite good-by. Her brown eyes were still watching him as he got behind the wheel of the car, and Sader decided she thought that private detectives weren’t to be trusted and wanted to make sure that he was leaving the premises.

  There were no Shawells listed in any of the five Metropolitan L.A. phone books. Sader drove downtown to the Main Library then and searched the city directories. There were a couple of Shawells, one in Hollywood, and he drove there, thinking it the logical choice because it wasn’t too far from West L.A. The place was in a narrow block below Hollywood Boulevard, where old cottages had been taken over by photographers, arch-support dealers and truss manufacturers, a vanity publisher and a shoe-repair shop. The address he wanted was at the rear, an apartment over garages, and when he had climbed the stairs he found a name typed on a card, RHODA K. SHAWELL, and below the name written in red ink, Metaphysics.

  Again Sader had the ominous, lurching sense of a loss of footing, and the rage-making frustration. Everywhere he turned in this thing, he ended in a blind alley. In that moment Tina Champlain and her child had no more reality for him than a puff of smoke. He was chasing and running after a couple of ghosts.

  He put a finger on the bell and kept it there, because he was mad, and when the door was flung open he stared in at her with such a look that she stepped back, almost flinching.

  She wasn’t the aunt. She had brilliantly dyed red-gold hair and a tangle of bead bracelets, a blue silk blouse tight across the bust and blue capri pants. She could have been forty, or sixty, under the pancake make-up and the rouge, but the accent was pure Brooklyn when she asked, “What can I do for you, mister?”

  “You’re Mrs. Shawell?”

  “Says so on the door, doesn’t it?”

  “Are you related to a woman named Tina Champlain?”

  She blinked, the lashes heavy with mascara. The bead bracelets tinkled as she lifted a hand to fluff the brilliant hair. “I never heard the name before in my life, mister. Is there anything else?”

  “Not a thing, thanks.”

  He ran down the steps and she hollered after him, “You meet all kinds out here in Hollywood, I always say.”

  “Amen,” Sader flung over his shoulder.

  At the curb, reaching for a cigarette before getting into the car, Sader saw that his hands were shaking. Papa, he said to himself, echoing Scarborough’s name for him when he betrayed himself, Papa, you’re getting your personal feelings mixed up in this thing and that isn’t going to be good for anybody. Not even for Tina’s kid. He lighted the cigarette and got into the car and pulled out of the slot and north toward Hollywood Boulevard. He took the freeway into town, cut into the Santa Ana freeway eastward. The second Shawell lived out in Whittier, the village founded by the Friends and now grown into a brash upstart of a young city. The street, when Sader found it, might have been preserved intact out of the past. The homes were old and quiet, magnolias and elms were tall. The overcast had broken a little, there were patches of weak sunshine.

  Sader stood on the sidewalk and looked at the house, having no hope at all that the Shawell here would be Tina Champlain’s relative. He went up the walk which was bordered with begonias, and rang the bell. The door opened in a minute or so, and he saw a teen-ager in jeans and pony tail.

  “Is Mrs. Shawell here?”

  “Mrs. . . ? Oh, you mean Aunt Louise. Come in. I’ll get her.”

  The front door opened into an entry with a hall beyond. The young girl led the way, pony tail swinging, on into the living room. It was large and old-fashioned, rather dark because the windows were heavily draped, and with three big bouquets of roses on a couple of tables and the mantel. The roses must have been fresh-picked that morning since the odor was dewy rather than sweet.

  When the older woman entered, Sader turned to look at her. She was at least fifty, she wore blue gingham with a white cotton apron and there were flour marks above her wrists. She had a strong, square face. Dark eyes and brows. When he saw her he had the first hunch of having hit what he was looking for, since Gibbings had entered his office. “Mrs. Shawell? Are you related to Tina Champlain?”

  “I’m her aunt.”

  A prickle of nervous hope ran through Sader like an electric current. “Could we talk for a minute?”

  “Of course. Have a chair. That one.”

  There was an accent all right, the sort you might have if you’d grown up thinking in one language and having occasionally to speak in another. It was, Sader thought, more of a hesitation than an accent, the sense of choice among half-familiar words. “I’m a private investigator. My name’s Sader. I’d like to ask a few questions about Mrs. Champlain, about what has become of her little boy.”

  She was sitting opposite, a dozen feet away, her hands folded on her lap. Sader wished that the room were brighter. She seemed to be at a loss, and he couldn’t see her eyes under the fringe of lash.

  “Do you know where Mrs. Champlain’s child is now? Who’s keeping him?”

  A half-dozen words from her, Sader told himself, and he’d know and the job would be done. Less than a minute, less than half a minute. She lifted the dark eyes and Sader leaned forward and then she said, “Who sent you here to ask?”

  There was no use giving her the line about money coming through the mother, Sader thought. He said, “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. I would appreciate it if you’d tell me where he is.”

  “Mr. Sader, he wasn’t really Tina’s child. She had no right to him.”

  “We know that the child wasn’t actually hers,” Sader answered. “But we want to find him anyway. Do you know where he is?”

  She was shaking her head, and Sader felt like cur
sing. “He was not the . . . one does not hate a child for it, but—” She added a French phrase in a half-whisper.

  She was thinking of the illegitimacy. “Your niece couldn’t have children of her own,” Sader pointed out reasonably, “and she was perfectly within her rights to adopt a baby. Her husband approved.”

  She made an explosive sound of protest, but Sader went on.

  “She loved the baby, provided for it, cared for it. If you know where the child is now, if you loved your niece and want to do what she would want you to, you’ll tell me where the little boy is.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  He could sense her unwillingness. She—looked at the hall, as if something in the kitchen perhaps required her attention. “A week, ten days maybe, after Tina was drowned. I went to Tina’s house, and there was an old lady with the baby, and nothing to eat and no money to pay her with.”

  Sader couldn’t believe his ears. “You hadn’t gone until then? Knowing that your niece was dead, the baby was alone?”

  “I didn’t know about . . . about her dying, right away. Not as soon as it happened.” She sat stiffened on the chair; the dark eyes defied him. “I went as soon as I could. There was nothing I could do, nothing more.”

  “What about the other relatives? The other aunt, the uncle?”

  She looked briefly puzzled, perhaps at his knowing about them. “My sister and her husband went back to Canada a long time ago.”

  “I don’t understand this situation,” Sader said, trying to control his rising temper. “There was money left to Mrs. Champlain, a lot of insurance money, after her husband died on that plane.”

  “There was some money,” Mrs. Shawell admitted grudgingly, “but then there was the funeral, and she loaned some of it to her friend, the friend who builds boats.”

  News he hadn’t heard from the Perrines, Sader noted. “But that still wouldn’t account for all of it. The baby should have been rich in his own right, rich enough anyway to hire an old lady and to buy something to eat. Who took charge of him?”

  The black eyes glittered, almost with a look of tears, and he thought for a moment she wasn’t going to answer. Then she said almost whispering: “He wasn’t Tina’s child, he didn’t belong to her.”

  “Do you mean,” Sader said, “that you abandoned him? That none of you offered him a home? You left him there in that condemned house with an old woman who hadn’t even been paid for keeping him? With nothing to eat?”

  She was silent, and Sader added, “I just can’t believe it.”

  She must have seen the contemptuous look he gave the room, measuring its spacious comfort, for she said, “I wasn’t living here then. I had a rented room. This is my nephew’s home.”

  Sader bent his gaze on her again. “Mrs. Champlain’s father is alive, I understand. Didn’t he feel called upon to protect her little boy?”

  “Not . . . not . . .” She was agitated, trembling. She threw out her hands as if the situation was past explaining. “No.”

  “You don’t know who has the little boy? No idea at all?”

  She spoke all in a rush. “The old lady said that the father had come to see him. The father was going to take him away.”

  Again Sader felt like shaking his head to get the sand out of his ears. “Mrs. Champlain’s father?”

  “The baby’s father.”

  He felt like an idiot or a parrot, repeating it over again. “The baby’s father had come to get him?”

  “Yes.”

  Sader drew a deep breath. There was still a chance here, she could still say a half-dozen words and end it for him. “And who is he? What is his name?”

  She let him hope for a moment, then she answered. “I don’t know his name. I don’t know anything about him. Just that he came . . . and said he would come back.”

  The air of the room seemed blotted with stuffiness, and the smell of the roses made Sader sick.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  FRIMM, WATLEY and Stone, Architects, had their own building on the Wilshire Boulevard corner, a three-storey monolith of orange glass, blue tile and pebbled aluminum, with opalescent window lights in a hop-skip design, all tautly modernistic. Either it had been occupied before it had been completely built, or Frimm, Watley and Stone couldn’t resist architectural afterthoughts. There was scaffolding around the lower floor and a clutter of glass and steel on the sidewalk, waiting to be used.

  Sader went in through the boarded entry. A small tiled lobby was cleared, and there was a shiny stairway beyond. Past the stairway, the interior looked like an excavated cave. No work seemed to be in progress at the moment. Some planks had been laid across a couple of sawhorses to form a table, and here were blueprints spread out and a pair of men looking them over. Neither of the men were Gibbings, so Sader went on upstairs.

  There was nothing unfinished here. The carpeting was deep and the receptionist’s desk was mahogany. The receptionist had lavender lips, silver fingernails, a size thirty-nine bust, nice dimples, and she was pretty. Her blond hair needed touching up at the roots but on her it looked intriguing. “Mr. Gibbings? Do you have an appointment to see him?”

  “Please just tell him Sader is here.”

  She tapped the big desk with the silver nails and let him see the dimples. “Do you mind telling me your business with Mr. Gibbings?”

  “I don’t mind a bit,” Sader said, “but he’d break our necks.”

  The dimples went away. “Just a moment, please.” She pushed buttons on a matching mahogany box and spoke into it secretively. Then she rose. “This way, please.” She led him down the carpeted hall and opened a door. Gibbings looked up; he was behind a desk with some big sheets of paper spread out before him As Sader got closer he saw that they were architectural drawings.

  “Well, sit down. I didn’t tell you to come here, by the way.”

  “I know you didn’t.” Sader sat down in a leather chair. “I have to know how far you want me to go. That’s why I came.”

  There was, if possible, even less humor visible in Gibbings than Sader had found yesterday. The old eyes were glacial, and Gibbings seemed to have drawn to himself an air of authority from his rich surroundings. “You’ve heard of telephones?”

  “I’ve heard of switchboard girls listening in, too. To get to the point: from what information I’ve gained so far, the baby seems to have been taken by the father. Do you still want me to find him?”

  Sader couldn’t see any change at all in the old man’s manner. The mention of the man who must have wrecked his daughter’s life didn’t even raise a flush. “I’ve hired you to find him. I’ve paid a decent retainer. Are you detectives always so squeamish about getting to the end of the job?”

  “You don’t intend to claim the kid?”

  “I said so.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll decide that when you can tell me where he is.” Gibbings made a few doodling marks with a pencil on the edge of one of the drawings. “Did you see Wanda Nevins?”

  “She seems to think that I don’t know exactly what I’m doing.”

  Gibbings’ smile was sudden, harsh, and wintry. “And do you know, Mr. Sader?”

  “I have the feeling you haven’t been honest with me. No, it’s not really that,” Sader corrected. “It’s more of a feeling that there is something you haven’t told me. A big chunk of the truth. Is there any chance I might get to talk to your daughter?”

  “Not a chance on earth.”

  “Well, then, it’s up to you to supply the name of the man who fathered her child. I have to have that much from you.”

  Gibbings swung his big chair around so that he half-faced a window. The light from the opalescent glass illuminated the planes of his face, etching dark lines in every wrinkle, and Sader thought that he looked at least a hundred. “What did I tell you in our interview yesterday?”

  “You said that your daughter was in love with a young soldier who h
ad died in Japan before they could marry. Mr. Gibbings, I know that yarn can’t be the truth.”

  Gibbings had actually flinched, as if Sader’s bald account had jarred him. He made a few more doodles with an absent air, not looking over at Sader, and then he said, “Would you believe me if I told you that—no matter what anyone else has said—this man doesn’t have the child?”

  “I’d expect you to explain why he doesn’t.”

  Gibbings thought about it. The office was very quiet. Sader wondered why they had torn up the lower floor, and what they were going to do with it. And why Mr. Gibbings didn’t want a grandson—even an illegitimate grandson—to carry on in the firm. The kid could be brought in under another name, educated, given the chance he deserved.

  “He doesn’t have the baby because he never knew it existed,” said Gibbings heavily.

  “He died without knowing?”

  Gibbings’ mouth had the shape of a shark’s. “He lives without knowing.”

  “And your daughter? Does she know what became of her baby?”

  For some unfathomable reason it hit home. Sader was startled. The old man blanched white, and the pouches under his eye sockets had the hue of scorched flesh. He swallowed a couple of times, Sader watching his throat work, and then he stammered, “I’ll explain just this much. My daughter is an invalid. A shut-in—that’s supposed to make it sound nicer. You see, the baby was fine after it was born, but Kit wasn’t. She was past the age for easy childbirth, and then something about the spinal anesthesia went wrong. She lost the use of her legs. Not right away, but gradually. You’ll never meet her, Mr. Sader. You will never ask her a single question. You will just please find this child about whom the letter was written, and bring the address to me. And that’s all.”

  Sader got up and went to the door. He looked at Gibbings back of the big desk. “I feel awfully sorry for your daughter. I think she got a real rotten deal all the way around.” He opened the door and went out and shut it behind him. Gibbings said something in a half-shout just as the door closed but Sader didn’t pause. He passed the receptionist; she had a small mirror and a lavender lipstick in her hands. She glanced at Sader, started to drop them into a drawer, then decided he wasn’t important enough to matter. She began a hasty lip repair job.