Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair (13 page)

 
          
“I’m
not sure about anything, Bill. You depend too much on preconceptions. Don’t.
I’ve spent twenty years in this game, and people are always surprising me. Not
only with their deviousness.
With their goodness.
Give
Ella Barker a chance to surprise you, why don’t you?”

 
          
“I
said I’d see her again today. Let’s forget her now. There must be other
potential leads to Larry Gaines. Didn’t he leave any traces in the place he
rented?”

 
          
“Not
a vestige. He’s one of these men from Mars, which probably means he has a
record, and ‘Larry Gaines’ is an alias. He took out a driving license last
fall, under the name of Gaines, and refused to give the Bureau people his
thumbprint.”

 
          
“What
kind of a car does he drive?”

 
          
“Late-model
Plymouth, green
tudor
. I’m giving you a lot of
information. When do I get some back?”

 
          
“Now.
Gaines registered at
Buenavista
College last September. That means they’ll have his high-school transcript.”

 
          
“They
don’t, though. Wills was there this morning. Gaines registered provisionally,
without a transcript. He said it would be along any day, but it never arrived.
So they kicked him out.”

 
          
“What
was he going to study?”

 
          
“Theater
arts,” Reach said. “He’s an actor, all right.”

 
          
“HE
TOLD ME HE ALWAYS wanted to be an actor,” Ella said.
“Something
big, but mainly an actor.
I guess he’d make a good one.”

 
          
Her
tone was sardonic. She was finding her armor, hardening her personality against
life in jail. Her eyes were sharp as the edges of broken dreams.

 
          
“Why
do you say that?”

 
          
“Look
how he took me in.
The great lover.
When he gave me
that diamond
ring, that
watch, I thought he’d bought
them for me. Honest to God.”

 
          
“I
believe you.”

 
          
“Nobody
else around here does. Even the other girls think I’m holding out. They keep
asking me questions about Larry, like I was really close to him, and knew all
about him.
I been asked so many questions, my head spins.
I wake up in the middle of the night, and hear voices asking me questions. I’m
going to go nuts if I don’t get out of here.”

 
          
“If
we can get our hands on Gaines, it’s going to help you.”

 
          
“Where
is he?”

 
          
“That’s
the question. It’s why I’m bothering you again.”

 
          
“You’re
not bothering me. It’s nice to see a friendly face, somebody I can talk to. I
don’t mean to be snippy about the other girls, but they’re not my type at all.
You ought to hear the way they talk about men.”

 
          
“It’ll
all wash out of your mind when you get out of here. You’re a nurse. Think of it
as a sickness you have to go through.”

 
          
“I’ll
try.”

 
          
I
waited a minute, while her face composed itself. Outside the barred window the
courthouse tower was stark white in the morning sun. On the balcony that
encircled it, below the clock,
a pair of tourists were
looking out over the city. They leaned on the iron railing, a young man, and a
young woman in a light blue dress and hat. It was the kind of dress and hat
brides wore on honeymoons.

 
          
Ella
had followed my look.
“Lucky people.”

 
          
“You’ll
be free soon. Your luck is all ahead of you.”

 
          
“Let’s
hope so. You’re nice to me, Mr. Gunnarson. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”
She gave me a dim smile, her first.

 
          
“You
should smile more often. Your smile is your best feature.”

 
          
It
was a broad compliment, but not too broad for the occasion. She really smiled
this time, and dropped five years. “Thank you, sir.”

 
          
“Getting
back to Gaines, if you can bear to—did he talk much about acting?”

 
          
“No, just once or twice.
He mentioned that he did some
acting.”

 
          
“Where?”

 
          
“I
think in high school.”

 
          
“Did
he say where he went to high school? Think hard.”

 
          
Dutifully,
she wrinkled up her forehead. “No,” she said after a pause, “he never mentioned
that. He never told me anything about his past life.”

 
          
“Did
he talk about his friends?”

 
          
“Just Broadman.
He thought Broadman was a slob.”

 
          
“Did
he ever say anything about actors or actresses?”

 
          
“No.
He never even took me to the movies.” She added bitterly: “I guess he was
saving his money for the blonde.”

 
          
“What
blonde do you mean?”

 
          
“The
one I caught him with, out in the canyon. I guess he was going with her all the
time.”

 
          
“All what time?”

 
          
“When
I thought he was my boy-friend, and maybe we’d get married, and everything.
It’s really her he was interested in, probably.”

 
          
“What
makes you think so?”

 
          
“What
she said.”

 
          
“I
didn’t know you ever talked to her. How often did you see her?”

 
          
“Only
the once—the time I told you about.
When she was sitting
there in Larry’s kimono.
I remember exactly what she
said,
it made me feel so small. She laughed at me, and she said: ‘You little
tomcat’—talking to Larry—‘have you been playing games behind my back?’ She
said: ‘I’m not flattered by your choice of a—choice of a substitute,’ something
like that.”

 
          
A
slow blush mounted from Ella’s neck to her cheeks. It softened her mouth, and
then her eyes. She said in an unsteady voice that ranged up and down the
register: “God, I made a fool of myself with that Gaines, didn’t I?”

 
          
“Everybody’s
entitled to one big mistake. You could have come out of it worse.”

 
          
“Yeah, if he really had married me.
I see that now. And you
know, what you were saying about a sickness, it applies to me and him. He was
like a sickness I had—a sickness pretending to be something else.
All my dreams coming true in one handsome package.
I knew it
couldn’t be real, I just wanted it to be, so bad.”

 
          
“Did
he ever give you presents, besides the watch and the ring?”

 
          
“No.
He gave me flowers once.
One flower, a gardenia.
He
said that it would be our flower. That was the night he let me in on the big
robbery plan. Thank God I didn’t go for that, anyway.”

 
          
“Do
you have anything of his? Clothes, for example, that he may have left with
you?”

 
          
“What
do you think I am? He never took off his clothes in my apartment!”

 
          
“Sorry,
I didn’t mean anything wrong, Miss Barker. I thought you might have something
personal of his.
Some keepsake.”

 
          
“No,
all I had was the ring, and I sold that. I forgot about the watch.” She
wrinkled up her brow again. “There’s something else I forgot. It doesn’t have
any value, though. It’s just an old sharkskin wallet.”

 
          
“Larry’s wallet?”

 
          
“Yeah.
I noticed one night when I gave him my picture—one of
those wallet-sized pictures. I noticed that his wallet was all worn out. So I
went downtown next day and bought him a new one, an alligator wallet. It cost
me twenty dollars, with the tax. I gave it to him next time I saw him. He liked
it. He took all his money and stuff out of the old one, and he was going to
throw the old one away. I wouldn’t let him.”

 
          
“Did
he leave anything in the wallet?”

 
          
“I
don’t think so. But wait a minute. There was a piece of paper in the back
compartment—something cut out of a newspaper.”

 
          
“What
newspaper?”

 
          
“It
didn’t say. It was just a piece cut out of the middle of a page.”

 
          
“What
was the piece about?”

 
          
“A show, some kind of a show.
I think it was a school play.”

 
          
“Did
you ever ask Larry about it?”

 
          
“No.
He would have thought I was silly, keeping it.”

 
          
“You
kept the clipping?”

 
          
“Yeah,
I tucked it back inside and kept it. You’d think it was money or something. How
silly can a girl get?”

 
          
“Do
you still have it?”

 
          
She
nodded. “I forgot to throw it out. It’s in my apartment.”

 
          
“Where in your apartment?”

 
          
“In the bureau, the top drawer of the bureau in the bedroom.
I have a little redwood chest I call my treasure chest. I put it in there. Mrs.
Cline will let you in.” She shook her head. “I hate to think what her opinion
of me must be.”

 
          
“I’m
sure it hasn’t changed. Do I need a key to get into this treasure chest?”

 
          
“Yeah,
it’s locked. But I don’t know where the key is. I must have lost it. It doesn’t
matter, though. Break it open. I can get another.”

 
          
She
raised her head and looked at me levelly with soft, bright eyes.

 
          
Mrs.
Cline stood breathing on my shoulder and watched me open the bureau drawer. She
was a short, egg-shaped woman wearing an upside-down nest of gray hair. She had
snappy, suspicious eyes, a generous mouth, and an air of frustrated decency.
Without saying anything about it, she left me in no doubt that my presence in
Ella’s bedchamber was a violation of feminine privacy.

 
          
I
lifted out the little redwood chest. It had brass corners and a brass lock.

 
          
“Do
you have a key for it?” Mrs. Cline said.

 
          
“No.
Ella lost it. She authorized me to break it open.”

 
          
“That
would be a pity. She’s had it ever since high school. Here, let me see.”

 
          
She
clamped the box between her thick arm and her thicker chest, plucked an
old-fashioned steel hairpin from her head, and went to work on the lock. It
came open.

 
          
“You’d
make a good burglar, Mrs. Cline.”

 
          
“That
isn’t funny, young man, under the circumstances. But then I know you lawyers
get very callous. We knew lawyers. Cline was an
accountant,
he worked with lawyers in Portland, Oregon. Portland, Oregon, was our home. But
after his demise, I couldn’t bear to stay on in the old town. Every building,
every street corner, had its memory. So I said to myself, it’s time to start a
new chapter.”

 
          
She
stopped, when I was expecting her to go on. But that was all. She had told me
her life story.

 
          
The
contents of the treasure box told Ella’s life story, in fragments of another
language: a Valentine from a boy named Chris who had written in brackets under
his signature: “Your nice”; a grammar-school report card in which Ella was
praised for obedience and neatness, and gently chided for lack of leadership;
snapshots of girls of high-school age, including Ella, and one or two boys; an
enlarged photograph of three people: a smiling man in a boiler-plate blue suit
and a straw hat, a wistful woman who looked like an older version of Ella, and
a small girl in a starchy dress who was her younger self, with the same hopeful
dark eyes. There was a high-school graduation program in which her name was
listed, a dance program almost full of young men’s names, a black-bordered card
announcing the death of Asa Barker, and a gold-bordered card announcing Ella Barker’s
graduation from nursing school.

 
          
Larry
Gaines was represented by a brown gardenia and a worn sharkskin wallet.