Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair (36 page)

 
          
“It’s
a deal. Give me Gaines and the woman, and I’ll forget you.
With
pleasure.”

 
          
“I
can’t guarantee Gaines for sure. Hilda says he ran out on her. But she should
be able to lead you to him.”

 
          
“Have
you talked to her?”

 
          
“Oh
yes. I’ve talked to her. You think I blackmailed her! She’s been blackmailing
me!”

 
          
“What
for, or need I ask?”

 
          
He
hung his head. His bald spot shone like a wet egg. He covered it with a hand
that was pocked with droplets of sweat. “She threatened to wreck my reputation
unless I gave her money. I guess she’s afraid to spend the ransom money. Or
else Gaines really did run out on her. I’ve been putting her off with peanuts
for the last two days, and incidentally slowly going crazy. She’s sitting there
like a ticking bomb. Last night she threatened to shoot me—”

 
          
“Sitting
where? Where is she?”

 
          
“I’ll
tell you. Is it a deal?”

 
          
“I
said it was.”

 
          
He
raised his eyes to my face and studied it. “I guess I can trust you. I got to
trust somebody.
Anything to get her off my back.
She’s
holed up in a beach shack between the Palisades and Malibu, on 101 Highway.” He
gave me the address. “It’s a brown shingle shack on the right-hand side of the
highway, just a few hundred yards past a drive-in named Jack’s. I was supposed
to meet her there tonight, with five thousand dollars.”

 
          
“What
time tonight?”

 
          
“Now.
I’m supposed to be there now.”

 
          
“I’ll
go with you.”

 
          
“All right.
Whatever you say.
Now
that we’ve got this business settled, how about a short one to celebrate?”

 
          
“I
don’t keep liquor here.”

 
          
“Do
you mind if I run out for a quick one? I need a drink but badly.”

 
          
“Go
ahead.”

 
          
He
scuttled out. I telephoned Ferguson.

 
          
Speare
never did come back. His silver racing car was still parked in front of my
office, helmet and goggles on the seat, when Ferguson and I left. Ferguson
drove, and I talked, from
Buenavista
to Malibu.

 
          
Beyond
the deserted beach, the ocean was the color of iron. The moon had shrunk to a
sliver of itself. At
Zuma
we could hear the surf
thundering in like doom.

 
          
“It’s
a beastly situation,” Ferguson said.

 
          
“They
get that way sometimes when you let them lie for a quarter of a century.”

 
          
“Please
don’t moralize. I’ve had the whole thing out with myself. There’s nothing you
can say that I haven’t already thought.”

 
          
“Have
you had it out with your wife?”

 
          
“Yes.
She’s going to stay with me whatever comes. This thing has brought us closer
somehow—closer than we were. I know now that she loves me.”

 
          
“You’re
lucky to have such a woman.”

 
          
“I
realize that, Gunnarson. Both Holly and I have realized a number of things. I
thought I could start a brand-new life at the age of fifty-six, as if I hadn’t
already had a life. Holly was doing the same thing in her way. She tried to
turn her back on everything, her family, the whole past. But the past has its
revenges.

 
          
“It
has its compensations, too,” he added. “We went to see Holly’s mother
yesterday, in Mountain Grove. I imagined that she’d spent her life hating me.
She hasn’t. She forgave me years ago. It’s good to be forgiven.”

 
          
“Has
she had any word from Hilda?”

 
          
“Not
recently. Hilda showed up there several weeks ago. She managed to convince her
mother that she was the one who had become an actress and married—a wealthy
man.” He was embarrassed by this reference to himself.

 
          
“Tell
me, Ferguson, does Hilda know that you’re her father?”

 
          
“I’m
not certain. Kate Dotery said she told her my name when Hilda was a young girl.
The chances are that Hilda doesn’t remember.”

 
          
“If
she does remember, it may explain the crime—I mean the crime she attempted
against her sister. There’s no question she left her to burn.”

 
          
“I
know, and it wasn’t her first attempt. She attacked Holly several times before,
once with a butcher knife, once with a pan of hot grease. I think that’s the
basic reason why Holly severed connections with her family. The butcher-knife
episode occurred just a day or two before she ran away. She took off with a
stocking salesman named
Sperovich
when she was
sixteen. Holly’s had a hard life, too.”

 
          
There
was nothing in his voice but sympathy, and an undertone of sadness. The
jealousy and the rage, the desperate hopefulness, had burned out. He drove at a
steady sixty toward whatever final revenge the past was going to take.

 
          
“Did
you bring your gun, Ferguson?”

 
          
“I
did. I don’t intend to use it, unless Gaines is there. I have no compunction
for him.”

 
          
The
highway climbed away from the sea among coastal hills. The hills were dark and
barren. There was very little traffic. Ferguson let the long grade slow the
car. He was driving mechanically.

 
          
“Do
you believe this Speare is telling the truth? She’s actually there?”

 
          
“She’s
there, all right. Speare had nothing to gain by inventing the story.”

 
          
“What
am I going to say to her, Gunnarson?”

 
          
“Nothing
that you can say will change the situation very much. Tell her you’re her
father, you want to help her.”

 
          
“But
what good can I do her?”

 
          
“We’ll
be helping her simply by bringing her in.”

 
          
“And after that?”

 
          
“She’ll
need the best criminal lawyer and the best psychiatrists your money can
procure. They won’t be able to get her off, of course, but they can save her
from the extreme penalty. No one with strong financial backing is ever
executed.”

 
          
“Money again, eh?”

 
          
“Be
glad you have it, for your daughter’s sake.”

 
          
“I
don’t know. If it hadn’t been for my money, me and my money, Hilda would never
have been born—never conceived. Or else she’d have had a father, a decent
bringing-up.”

 
          
“How
do you know? You can’t second-guess the past. All you can do is
learn
to live with it.”

 
          
“You
have a good deal of understanding, Gunnarson.”

 
          
“More
than I had a week ago, anyway. We all have.”

 
          
We
were near the top of the grade. Ferguson had slowed to thirty-five or forty. A
pair of headlights came up behind us rapidly. A low-slung car went by like a
silver bullet. I caught a glimpse of a goggled, helmeted head.

 
          
“I
think that’s Speare,” I said. “He may be planning to double-cross us. Can you
drive faster?”

 
          
Ferguson
pressed the accelerator to the floor. The heavy car gathered speed and soared
over the crest of the hill. Below, the road curved back toward the sea. At the
end of the curve a red sign flashed: JACK’S DRIVE-IN.

 
          
Speare’s
silver car swung wide on the curve and almost went
off onto the left-hand shoulder. I saw it pause, incredibly, like a bird in
flight, and heard the screech of its brakes. A tiny skirted figure, black in
the headlights, was running across the highway. She stopped in the middle,
facing the weaving car with something in her hand. The something spurted fire.
The car flung her off the road before I heard the shot, and slewed on for
another hundred feet.

 
          
We
got to her before Speare did. I knew her by the shape of her body. Ferguson
went to his knees beside her. He touched her ruined head.

 
          
Speare
came trotting, throwing off his goggles as he ran.

 
          
“I
didn’t mean to do it. You saw her run out in the road. She tried to shoot me. I
did my best to avoid her, but I couldn’t. You’re a witness, Bill.”

 
          
His
eyes were headline black. He clutched my arm, babbling and shaking. People
began to gather, like Martians dropped from the pierced sky.

 
          
Ferguson
had the dead woman in his arms.

 
          
“Who
is she? Do you know her?” somebody said.

 
          
He
looked up at the Martians and their sky. A shudder went through him, violent
and unwilled as the spasm that had engendered her. “She’s my daughter,” he said
in a clear voice.
“My daughter Hilda.”

 
          
The
Highway Patrol found the gun in the ditch. It turned out to be Gaines’s
revolver, and it held three empty shells and three loaded shells. A dentist
from San Antonio, Texas, identified the charred jawbone Wills had dug out of
the ashes. It was the jawbone of a man he had done some fillings for the
previous May. The name on the charts and
X
rays was
Larry Grimes.

 
          
Hilda’s
second shot had not been aimed at me.

 
          
In
due course the bones of her son were released to Adelaide Haines for burial.
Wills attended the funeral, he told me later. He was interested in the fact
that Mrs. Haines had paid thirty-five hundred dollars for a bronze casket with
silver embellishments.

 
          
Wills
followed her home after the service to ask her a few questions. She tried to
buy him off with ten thousand dollars in cash. He found the rest of the money
her son had left with her inside the case of her upright grand piano. He found
also a first-class airline ticket to Rio de Janeiro, made out in the name of
the Reverend Cary Caine.

 
          
As
for the diamond brooch, the nurse who undressed Mrs. Haines in the psychiatric
ward of the Mountain Grove Hospital discovered that she was wearing it pinned
to her slip under her black mourning.

 
About
the Author

           
Ross Macdonald’s real name was
Kenneth Millar. Born near San Francisco in 1915 and raised in Ontario, Millar
returned to the United States as a young man and published his first novel in
1944. He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and was
awarded their Grand Master Award as well as the Mystery Writers of Great
Britain’s Gold Dagger Award. He died in 1983.

 
          
The
End