Sleep with Slander Page 9

  He didn’t stop. He drove north, turned in at the smart shopping center which served this part of West L.A. Betty’s Baby Shop had a sign shaped like a big white Teddy bear, and a slim woman in a white smock and imitation nurse’s cap was taking down the CLOSED sign on the door.

  He followed her in. She was in her fifties, gray-haired, very motherly in appearance. She smiled gently at him and Sader decided her teeth were her own, and that she was exactly the kind of woman who ought to sell baby stuff to young inexperienced mothers. He had the box under his arm. He laid it on the counter and took off the lid. She came to see, not disapproving or even surprised, and said, “Well, what have we here?”

  “I was hoping that you could tell me.”

  She gave him a quick look, then picked up the lid to read the embossed lettering. She frowned over the cracked, spotted paper. “It’s old. We don’t use this box any more.”

  “What about the stuff inside?”

  Again she gave him the quick, sizing-up look, trying to figure out what he was and what kind of crazy act he was pulling, perhaps. She put down the lid and carefully tilted the lower part of the box, using her left hand to urge the litter out upon the showcase. She found the tarnished locket and chain, laid it aside. The collection of ribbons she put far off, as if they amounted to little. She picked at the lace with a nail and said, “Irish.” The stray buttons, the loose lavender, she left in the box. She picked up the baby’s mitten, holding it in the fingers of both hands, and looked across it at Sader and nodded. “Is this what you wanted me to notice?”

  “I really didn’t have a plan. I’m just hoping for information. The woman this belonged to is dead, and her child has disappeared, perhaps been taken away by relatives—we don’t know.”

  Her eyes were thoughtful. “I remember her.”

  It caught him unprepared. “What?”

  She put the mitten down where he could see it. “This is handmade. It was made by a lady, a very old lady, who used to knit and crochet for us. She was slow and her eyes were poor and she didn’t make many of these sets. I might explain, this mitten was part of a pair, and it came with a matching bonnet and jacket. Probably you don’t realize it, being a man—” The tone was patronizing but Sader didn’t take time to resent it. “—but the work is exquisite.”

  “But you said you remembered the mother.”

  “I’m explaining why I remember her. This mitten isn’t something you’d find in some dime store, it was made by hand and it was the only one of its pattern, it and its mate.”

  Sader felt sweat come out on his face, he was in such a hurry to have her start in on Tina Champlain. “Well . . . and so—”

  He couldn’t hurry her, she was sweetly thoughtful, and she was trying to treat him as she did the nervous, unsure, pregnant young women.

  “I saw this knitted. You see, the lady who worked for us when she could, when she felt well enough, was my own mother.”

  Sader made some kind of sympathetic cluck; he knew now without her telling him that the old lady must be dead and that his bringing in the mitten had roused a host of memories.

  “The baby was darling. See the pink touch here? She was the most beautiful little girl, tiny, not more than a couple of months at the most, and already she had golden hair, all curls, just like a doll’s.”

  She was still standing there, a calm and friendly and motherly woman, and the little shop was the same one he had entered a few minutes before, there were baby clothes and all sorts of rattles and toys, strollers and rocking horses, the light was still distinct, but Sader had an enormous hollow soaring sensation, as if he’d just been elevated into the center of a thunderclap. He heard himself saying weakly, “You’ve made a mistake.” And when she shook her head, he whispered, “Haven’t you?”

  “No.”

  Hell, Tina had bought the mitten for a gift, then, she’d brought in someone else’s kid.

  “I remember how proud she was, a new mother. Mrs.— wait a minute, I’ll think of it. I keep thinking lake. Lake something.”

  “Champlain.” He had never thought of the name in this connection.

  “Yes, that’s it. And you say she’s dead now? I’m so sorry. Let’s see, the baby would be about—” She paused to think. “—about five, now.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “She is.”

  Sader was leaning on the counter, concentrating on the little mitten, trying to fight off the sensation of having lost all bearings in this affair.

  “I surprised you, didn’t I?” she asked.

  “You sure did.”

  At the same time, other items were hammering to be remembered, among them the remark by Mrs. Cecil, something about being puzzled because of the baby things she’d seen in Tina’s house, a remark he’d brushed over because he had such interest in the man who had come for the kid. Mrs. Cecil, being a woman, had realized that all of the baby things Tina had treasured were girl-baby things, and there Ricky was, a boy. No wonder she’d suspected an adoption or some such. There were other details, too—Mrs. Bowen, in her wheel chair, beginning an explanation of the baby’s illness with “She was . . . it had something to do with a heart defect.” And most of all, Wanda Nevins streaking for the door with “Believe me, Mr. Sader, you’re working in the dark.”

  He groaned, and the woman across the showcase patted his hand as if he might be beginning labor.

  Hell, everybody in the whole damned business had been wise, but him. Sader wiped the sweat off his face and thought about old man Gibbings, and how Gibbings had been so careful to say he mustn’t be identified as the baby’s grandpa. Sader’s hands knotted on the case as if he might have them around Gibbings’ neck.

  “Have I upset you?” She wondered in her soft comforting tone, as if people came in every day and got worked up over a baby’s change in sex. “I wish I could give you some more information,” she went on, “but Mrs. Champlain only came back a time or two, and she didn’t bring the baby. In spite of its being such a cute little thing, a really beautiful little girl, it wasn’t a strong child, there was something wrong with its heart.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard so.”

  Some of it was gradually growing clearer, and he was fighting off the sensation of having lost his way. He knew why Tina Champlain had made such an abrupt, mysterious change, moving from her home to a new neighborhood, giving up her church and its associations, discarding all old friends. The move must have coincided with the change in children.

  Gibbings had tricked him, holding back a part of the truth. Gibbings had tricked himself more than anybody, Sader thought grimly, hamstringing the man who was working for him. You had to be damned stupid to pull it. Or you had to have a motive so stinking you couldn’t risk even a private detective getting wind of it.

  He thanked the woman behind the showcase, picked up the stuff and put it back in the box and headed for the door.

  “When you’re all through with that mitten—” she called after him.

  “I’ll mail it back to you,” Sader promised.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE RECEPTIONIST had been briefed; she jumped up as soon as she saw Sader and wriggled her way around the desk and said breathlessly, “Mr. Gibbings left word that you’re to phone him at home tonight. He asked that you not come here again.”

  Sader put her firmly aside, noting during the slight tussle that certain parts of her were foam rubber and somewhat detachable. He opened the door to Gibbings’ office and went in, shutting the door behind him. Gibbings sat over behind the desk, leaning forward, his face in shadow. He glanced up briefly.

  Sader went to the desk and said, “Mr. Gibbings, this is the third day I’ve been working for you. I don’t work cheap but I work hard, and the net result of your dough and my running around is that I know you’re a goddam liar.”

  If he had thought Gibbings might show surprise, or guilt, some defensive reaction, he was wrong. Gibbings seemed embarrassed. He straightened a couple of papers on the desk and hooke
d a pen into its holder. “Sit down, please.”

  “You give me a line of bull now and I’ll give you a swipe in the chops,” Sader said, “even if you are as old as hell.”

  “Just sit down.”

  Sader went to a chair and dropped into it. His face and hands felt hot, and he was sweating. “You’ve played with my time and maybe with a kid’s life. You’re either some kind of a crook or you’re crazy.”

  Still Gibbings didn’t look worried or astonished; tired, more than anything. “I had hoped the job would be so simple that you’d find the child without running into any complications.”

  “What the hell motive do you have, hunting for this kid?” Sader almost shouted. “He isn’t your grandchild!” When Gibbings did nothing except shrink back a little into his chair, Sader went on more calmly: “I’ll tell you the only way it figures, the only way it makes sense. Your daughter is demanding the child she bore five years ago. And so in desperation you’re trying to find Tina Champlain’s orphan. But it isn’t the same kid, and your daughter’s going to know it. Even illegitimate mothers are told the sex of their babies. And your daughter gave birth to a girl.”

  Gibbings spread his hands on the desk. They were old and knotted, the veins big under the shriveled skin. The white mustache sagged like a bunch of wet feathers. “My daughter knows that she bore a girl and that the baby died when it was three years old. Can’t you get it through your head at last, Sader, that all of this affair has nothing to do with her?”

  Sader had taken out his wallet, had started to yank bills from it. But Gibbings said, “Don’t throw my money at me until I tell you something more.”

  “I don’t feel very patient.”

  “I can see that. But let’s forget that I didn’t outline the situation completely, and the reasons for it—I’ll get to them later. Let’s go back to the heart of the matter. The letter. The abominable thing that is happening to this child.”

  “It’s a lie like the rest of it,” Sader said with conviction.

  “No. No, it isn’t. The letter came by ordinary mail. I didn’t concoct it. I believe in it. I think that the child Mrs. Champlain left after her death is being horribly abused. I want you to find him. You’re for hire and that’s the job I still want done.”

  Sader said, “You’d better get back to those reasons you just mentioned.”

  “Yes,” Gibbings agreed in a voice like a croak. “To get back. I have a bad conscience. To put it simply, I revenged myself on someone and for quite a while I felt fine about it.”

  “You got back at the man your daughter loved,” Sader said.

  “I thought so. When I looked at the baby in the hospital I told myself that here was a tool for vengeance. He would have wanted that child if he had known it existed. Pusher and climber that he is. Not because he loved Kit . . . don’t let your imagination build anything like a dream of love. He thought he would use Kit to get into this firm, and then he meant to use this firm to go higher. Much higher. But he would have liked to know that he had had a child by Kit Gibbings.”

  “You won that round.”

  “Yes, and after all, considering all the circumstances, there wasn’t much else I could do.”

  “You could have let her keep her baby.”

  “Not in our circle, Mr. Sader.”

  “Does she have a circle now?”

  The old man’s bitter eyes lit up, and Sader knew he had probed a spot that hurt. “At the time I had no way of knowing that she was to become an invalid.”

  “You ran her life,” Sader said. “She was the good, respectable spinster daughter you couldn’t get along without. The faithful companion. The one to keep your name active in charities. The hostess for your circumspect hospitality. She was indispensable, and when you found out she was going to become an unmarried mother, I’ll bet you tore the roof off. And as far as I’m concerned, if you got misery out of it you got just what you damned well deserved.”

  “As you say,” Gibbings said stiffly, “I got what I deserved. But we are wandering far afield.”

  “Not much. And I’ve got plenty of time.”

  “This child may not have.”

  “Now you listen to me,” Sader said. “I’m goddam tired of your lies. You’re going to tell me what you really want with Tina’s orphan or I don’t play any more.”

  Gibbings actually looked puzzled and dismayed, and Sader thought what a good actor he was. “I can’t really explain further. I feel that I owe Mrs. Champlain something, in some vague way. She loved my daughter’s baby, she kept it during its short life. I want to help the child she took in after the baby died.”

  “Don’t tell me that a horned toad of your age and disposition is taking up philanthropy.”

  Gibbings shook his head. “I shouldn’t have come to you. There must be people more co-operative. Less belligerent.”

  “Do you mean to tell me that you’re really on the level?”

  Gibbings cleared his throat. “I am really, as you say, on the level.”

  They looked at each other in silence, the stony old man with the white mustache, the time-bitten face and the eyes like two steel balls, and the detective who was half-convinced and didn’t want to be. Sader rubbed his hand across his head, where the short-cropped hair, once red and now thick with silver, sprang erect once his hand had passed. He regarded old man Gibbings with dislike. “I believe you mean it. What do you know about the little boy?”

  “Nothing at all. I had a note from Mrs. Champlain when the baby died. She thought I might want to attend the funeral.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. I sent a wreath.”

  “With Love from Grandpa?”

  “That’s not funny, Mr. Sader.”

  “It doesn’t sound funny even to me,” Sader said.

  “The baby’s death came a few months after Mr. Champlain had died in the plane crash. I imagine that Mrs. Champlain must have felt quite alone. I thought about offering her help, perhaps asking if she’d want a job here with us, or something like that, and then I decided against it. There was always the chance of some stray slip, some gossip getting a foothold.”

  “Oh, yes, you’d see it that way.”

  “Then I ran into this Wanda Nevins and she told me Mrs. Champlain had another child, a little boy about the age of the baby who had died.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this?” Sader demanded, his anger rising again.

  “I thought you’d find the child without any trouble.”

  “Whoever took him away after Mrs. Champlain’s death made a good job of covering his tracks. This is a description.” Sader told Gibbings what Mrs. Cecil had related concerning the boy’s so-called father, the youth and the virile appearance, and the sun-streaked hair and the tan. “He drove a red convertible. Does it sound like anyone you know?”

  “It sounds like hundreds of young men I see driving the streets of Los Angeles every day,” Gibbings muttered. “But no one I know.”

  “Probably he was a friend, a volunteer for the job. Or hired for it. I don’t want to waste time trying to run him down on such a general description. We’re going to have to find out where Mrs. Champlain got the boy. I suspect, through Wanda Nevins . . . in the same way she got your daughter’s baby.”

  “I had thought so. That’s why I sounded Wanda out before I called on you.”

  “And what did you really get from her?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t even dare ask directly about the child. She knew I had no reason to be interested in him I made up a yarn about wanting to recover the papers having to do with the original adoption, asking where Mrs. Champlain’s things had been stored. She asked me if I had read of the drowning in the papers—this was the first I’d heard of it, and I was wary. I kept expecting a trick of some sort. Finally she more or less told me that any information she had was for sale, and that’s when I blew up, and hung up the phone.”

  No wonder, Sader thought, that Wanda had been astonished to find out from him that o
ld man Gibbings was really looking for the child.

  Sader said, “You’ve got a point, there—the house is totally empty. She must have had furnishings and personal belongings. I’ll try to find out from Mrs. Cecil who has them now. I want to put an attorney on the job of running down a will, if it exists.”

  Gibbings moved impatiently in his chair. “I don’t understand why you can’t simply find the little boy and see what’s happening to him.”

  “I can’t find him because someone doesn’t want him found.”

  Gibbings gave him a sharp glance. “You’re supposed to be somewhat of an expert in finding missing persons.”

  Sader wondered who had given him such a good reputation. “There are a dozen good ways to trace an adult. They don’t apply where a child is concerned.”

  Gibbings seemed to think about it. “Very well, put a lawyer on it.”

  “First of all, I’ll go back to Wanda Nevins.”

  “You won’t get anything out of her.”

  “This time, I think I might.”

  Sader took a long last look at Gibbings. Somewhere inside that hard-bitten tyrannical shell was a soft spot, a core of decency. Hard to believe, but he really had been touched by the plight of an unknown child. It was a revelation as startling as though Gibbings had suddenly sprouted wings.

  Sader went to his car, got in, paused with his hand on the switch. It occurred to him then that in this case he was at a new beginning. He had been searching for Gibbings’ grandchild, and it no longer existed. The child he wanted to find had a background and a history completely hidden.

  There were people involved now of whom he knew nothing—the real parents of the little boy. The abuse of which the letter spoke could have its motive with these other people.

  He remembered that the letter had been worded as if the writer believed Ricky to be the child adopted in infancy. This he couldn’t understand at all.

  Tina Champlain had made such a complete break in her life that no one had remained, except Wanda Nevins, of those who had known her while she had had the baby girl. So who was there to know the history of the original adoption? Gibbings was sure that Wanda had not written the letter. It was possible that Brent Perrine knew the truth about Ricky. Sader remembered the incident of the letter that Brent hadn’t produced, the hint that he actually didn’t wish to help Sader in the search. But Brent or his father wouldn’t have written that letter to Gibbings. It had been a woman’s letter—on this point Sader was positive—with a woman’s sentimental and indignant attitude over the wrongs practiced on the boy. The woman believed—or for some reason was pretending to believe—that Ricky and the baby adopted at birth were one and the same.