Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair (34 page)

 
          
“For more reasons than one.
Has somebody been masquerading
as you?”

 
          
“It
certainly looks like it.”

 
          
“And
you say it’s happened before?”

 
          
“At least once, maybe other times.
That would explain a lot
of things.”

 
          
“Do
you have any notion
who’s
been doing it to you?”

 
          
“I
know darn well who did it that time in Palm Springs. Mike Speare hired a
detective to find out.”

 
          
“Who
was it?
Your mother?”

 
          
“Don’t
be
ridic
. Momma’s no great moral figure, but she
wouldn’t do a thing like that to me.”

 
          
“One of your sisters?”

 
          
“You’re
sharp.” She said to Ferguson: “This boy is sharp.”

 
          
“Which one?
Renee or June?”

 
          
She
emitted a burst of laughter. It was a queer, high, bitter, rowdy laugh,
hyphenating the tragic and the comic.

 
          
“My
God,” she said, “I’m beginning to get the picture. Who do you think I am?”

 
          
“I
know who you are, Hilda.”

 
          
“You
may think you do, but you don’t. I happen to be June. Hilda was the one who
used my professional name to run up bills in Palm Springs. I guess I should
have done something about her then.
But you sort of hate to
sick the law on your own sister.
I certainly wasn’t going to sick that
hoodlum on her.

 
          
“I
can’t blame her too much,” she added in a softer voice. “She always wanted to
be a big name, an actress. If the truth be known, I caught the bug from Hilda.
It must have driven her crazy when she saw me on the screen, and realized I was
her little sister June.”

 
          
“You’re
a generous woman to feel that way about her.”

 
          
“I
can afford to be generous. I was the one that made it. And when I made it, I
found out I didn’t want it. I wanted
Fergie
here.
Thank the Lord I’ve got him.”

 
          
Her
smile resembled her mother’s. It lit up her face like a ray which had traveled
through light-years of darkness to this moment. She turned it on Ferguson, and
he tried to respond. His mouth only grimaced. He was sweating out his own
darkness.

 
          
“Hilda’s
your oldest sister?”

 
          
“That’s
right, she’s the oldest one, and I’m the second oldest. Hilda’s only our
half-sister, though.”

 
          
“Do
you know that for a fact?”

 
          
“I
ought to.” Her smile faded. “It was no secret in our family. There were never
any secrets in the Dotery family—the old man saw to that. When we were kids, he
brought it up about three times a day, at mealtimes, that Hilda wasn’t his, or
anybody’s. It was very nice for all of us, especially for Hilda.”

 
          
“She
must have been somebody’s.”

 
          
“She
was Momma’s. The father was some guy that Momma knew in Boston before the old
man married her. The jerk ran out on her. He sent her a thousand bucks, which
Dotery used to buy a car to come to California. That’s all I know about it.”

 
          
It
was enough. Ferguson’s teeth were set like a wounded man’s biting on a rag.

 
          
His
wife told her story to Wills when he arrived. I sat and monitored the
interview, ready to suppress hearsay evidence and irrelevancies. I was
Ferguson’s lawyer, after all, and Hilda was his daughter.

 
          
Wills
sat slumped in a chair and listened without arguing. He looked very tired. There
was a black smear of char on his right cheekbone. He shook his head at her when
she had finished. Ashes fell from his hair, filling a shaft of sunlight with
their particles.

 
          
“I
wish you’d spoken up this morning, Mrs. Ferguson. Time is of the essence in
these matters, and your sister could have traveled a long way since early this
morning. In addition to which, we put out the word that Gaines is traveling
alone.”

 
          
“But
I didn’t know that Hilda was in it this morning.”

 
          
He
looked at her unresponsively. “How could that be, Mrs. Ferguson? It was her
phone call that decoyed you out of the Foothill Club and set you up for the
sna
—for the abduction.”

 
          
“I
know that now,” she said. “I didn’t then. When Hilda phoned me the other night
she said that she was Renee, my youngest sister. She just got in from San
Francisco, she said, and she was down at the bus station. She said she was in
trouble, and needed help. I believed her.”

 
          
“The
girl’s in trouble, all right,” Wills muttered.

 
          
“You
won’t be too hard on her, will you? Hilda isn’t too responsible, and Gaines has
always led her around by the nose.”

 
          
He
disregarded her question. “That’s another thing I don’t understand, Mrs.
Ferguson. You knew what kind of a character Gaines was, going back to early
days of childhood. You knew that he was using a false name. Yet you’ve been
fraternizing with him these last months. No offense intended, but you must have
been aware you were putting yourself in danger.”

 
          
She
looked at her husband, rather guiltily. He looked guiltily back at her.

 
          
She
said: “I was a damned fool, frankly. He told me he was reformed, that he was
trying to live down his past and earn an honest living. I felt so lucky
myself,
I gave him the benefit of the doubt.” She changed
the subject quickly. “What are you going to do to him and Hilda?”

 
          
“Find
them.” Wills hunched his body forward, heavily, and held out his hands as if he
was getting ready to receive a weight. There were lines of grime across his
palms, and his fingernails were dirty. “Then it’s out of my hands.” He let his
arms drop to his sides.

 
          
“Will
Hilda go to jail for a long time?”

 
          
“She’ll
be lucky if that’s all that happens to her. There’s no use beating around the
bush, Mrs. Ferguson. This is a case of multiple
murder
.
You know the penalty for premeditated murder.”

 
          
“But
Hilda didn’t kill anyone herself.”

 
          
“She
didn’t have to, to be guilty of murder. Ronald Spice says she was the one that
phoned them and told them to knock off Secundina Donato. Even if Spice is
lying, she’s tied to another murder, one we didn’t know about. We’ve been doing
some digging at the scene of the fire, and we found human remains. There isn’t
much left of whoever it was—”

 
          
Holly
cried out, and turned her head away. She had reached her limit. Dr. Trench
stepped in and ended the interview. As Wills and I left the room, she began to
wail.

 
          
I
couldn’t keep up with Wills, but he was waiting for me in his car. I got in
beside him. “Whose body is it, Lieutenant?”

 
          
“You
can’t call it a body—a piece of skull and some teeth and a few charred bones. I
was hoping you could tell me who they belonged to. Who else was up there,
besides you and Gaines and the sister?”

 
          
“Nobody else that I saw.
Are the remains male or female?”

 
          
“I
can’t tell for sure. Simeon probably can, but he hasn’t seen them yet. They
look like a man’s teeth to me. Do you have any suggestions on the subject?”

 
          
“Not
unless it’s Gaines himself.”

 
          
“That
doesn’t seem too likely. As I see it, he and the woman made a clean getaway in
your car. The Mountain Grove P.D. picked up your car about a block from his
mother’s house. Apparently he had his own car stashed in her garage.
There’s fresh oil spots
on the floor, and she has no car of
her own.”

 
          
“Did
Mrs. Haines go with them?”

 
          
“Not
her. The Grove police brought her in for questioning, but she claims to know
nothing about them. She says she had a headache and took some sleeping pills,
slept right through until the police woke her up. The chief there says she’s
been off her rocker for years, in a harmless way.
Ever since
her boy got into trouble the first time.”
Wills sighed. “Why can’t
people stay out of trouble and lead a natural life?”

 
          
“You’d
be out of a job.”

 
          
“Gladly.
Dr. Root tells me, by the way, that he gave you the
slug extracted from your shoulder. He shouldn’t have done that. It’s evidence.”

 
          
“Take
it up with him.”

 
          
“I
already did. Do you have it with you, Bill?” He was calling me Bill again.

 
          
“It’s
in my room at the hospital. Do you want to drive me back there? I was intending
to ask you for a lift.”

 
          
“Sure thing.
You look as though you could use more hospital.
As a matter of fact, you look like the wrath of God.”

 
          
I
caught a glimpse of my face in the rear-view mirror, and concurred. I’d been
going on nerve ever since Ferguson’s Boston adventure shocked me out of bed. I
leaned my head against the back of the seat and dozed all the way to the
hospital.

 
          
The
nurse in charge at the third-floor station opened her mouth to upbraid me. She
closed it again when Wills stepped out of the elevator behind me. I was
probably being arrested. I certainly deserved it, her look said.

 
          
I
opened the drawer of the bedside table and handed him the pillbox. He dumped
its contents into his hand, growling over them.
“Fragmented.
We probably can’t do anything with it.”

 
          
“What
do you want to do with it?”

 
          
“Just
hold it in readiness,” he said, “until we get our hands on the gun. Who shot
you, Bill, Gaines or the woman?”

 
          
“She
did.”

 
          
“And
then she dragged her unconscious sister out and changed clothes with her?”

 
          
“Apparently.”

 
          
“That’s
what I guessed. You thought you were covering up for Mrs. Ferguson. The girl
you were actually covering for may turn out to be the most vicious killer of
them all. There’s a hole in that piece of skull we found, looks like a bullet
hole,
spang
in the middle of the forehead. She left
three people to burn up in that fire, you and the sister and a third party who
was probably dead already. Who was the third party, Bill? You must have some
idea.”

 
          
I
remembered the second shot Hilda had fired, just before I knocked myself out on
the door frame. I’d assumed it was aimed at me.

 
          
“There
was no third party, unless he or she was out of sight with the unconscious
sister. You may have turned up the victim of an old killing.”