The Ivory Grin (19 page)

Five miles farther on, a thousand feet higher, we came to a semicircular gravel turnout on the left side of the highway. Several cars, a tow-truck and a red pump-truck were parked in the turnout. A group of men stood at its outer edge, looking down. Brake pulled up behind a new Ford with Highway Patrol markings. An officer in olive-drab whipcord detached himself from the group and came toward us:

“Hello, Brake. I told the boys to leave everything the way it was down there after they put out the fire. We even took pictures for you.”

“You people are learning. I’d paste a gold star on your forehead if I had one. Like you to meet Lew Archer here, the thinker. Captain Hallman.”

The captain gave me a puzzled look and a hard hand. We moved to the low log fence that rimmed the edge of the turnout. Below it the canyon-side slanted down to a gravel creek-bed overgrown with live oaks. From our height the September creek looked like a winding pebble-path dotted with occasional mud-puddles. A toy automobile lying on its bank sent up tendrils of steam to vanish in the sun. It was a Buick, painted two shades of green.

A trail of broken bushes, some of them charred, showed where the Buick had left the road and rolled down into the gorge. Brake said to Hallman:

“Find anything on the road?”

“The tireprints on the shoulder. It wasn’t rolling fast, and that’s what made me suspicious in the first place. No skid marks. Somebody set fire to it and just took off the emergency and let her roll.” Hallman added in dead earnest: “Whoever poured that gasoline and ignited it out here has got more than murder against him. It was just good luck it didn’t start a forest fire. No wind.”

“When did it happen?”

“Must have been before light this morning. The headlights were turned on. I didn’t get a report until after eight o’clock. Then when I figured it for murder, I left the guy for you the way we found him.”

“You still don’t know who he is?”

“Wait until you see him. Like looking for a brand on a cooked hamburger. We should get a fast answer on the engine number, though.”

“It’s Singleton’s car,” I said to Brake.

“You might be right at that.” He sighed. “Well, if I got to go down there, I got to go down.”

“Feeling your age?” Hallman said. “You’ve packed a buck out of deeper holes than this. I’d go with you, but I been down twice already. I left a couple of the boys on guard.”

I could see them sitting on a boulder behind the smashed car. In the telescopic air it was almost possible to read the conversation off their moving lips.

Brake stepped over the log barrier and started down. I followed him, using the zigzag trail he improvised and braking my descent by holding on to the branches of stunted trees. We were both breathing hard when we reached the bottom. The two highway patrolmen led us along the creekbed to the wreck.

It rested on its right side. The hood and top and radiator grille looked as if a sledgehammer crew had been working on them. All four tires had blown out. The left door was sprung.

“I’m afraid it isn’t salvageable,” one of the patrolmen said. “Even if there was any way of getting it out.”

Brake turned on him savagely: “That’s too bad. I was planning to take it for a spin.”

He climbed onto the upper side of the car and wrenched the sprung door open as wide as it would go. I looked past him into the fire-gutted, water-soaked interior. Against the right front door, which rested on the ground, a human shape lay curled with its face hidden.

Brake lowered himself through the opening. Supporting himself with one hand on the steering column, he reached for the black shape with his other hand. Most of the clothes had burned away, but there was still a belt around the middle. When Brake took hold of the belt and heaved, it snapped in his hand. He passed it up to me. The blackened silver buckle bore the initials C A S.

CHAPTER
22
:
    
I rang three times at long intervals
. Sunday bells tolled antiphonally in the silences. Mrs. Benning finally came to the door. A bathrobe of rough brown wool was pulled high around her throat. Her face was marked by sleep, as if she had been battling dreams all morning.

“You again.”

“Me again. Is the doctor in?”

“He’s at church.” She tried to shut the door.

My foot prevented her. “That’s fine. I want to talk to you.

“I’m not even dressed.”

“You can dress later. There’s been another killing. Another friend of yours.”

“Another?” Her hand covered her mouth, as if I had slapped her.

I pushed into the hallway with her and closed the door. Sealed off from the noon glare and the slow Sunday noises, we stood close and looked into each other’s faces. It seemed to me that we shared a twilight understanding. She turned away, her long back swaying from the waist. I kept my hands from reaching out to hold her still.

She spoke to the mirror: “Who was killed?”

“I think you know.”

“My husband?” In the mirror, her face was masklike.

“That depends on who you’re married to.”

“Sam?” She whirled, in a dancer’s movement, ending plumb. “I don’t believe it.”

“It occurred to me as a possibility that you were married to Charles Singleton.”

She laughed unexpectedly. It wasn’t pleasant laughter, and I was glad when it broke off.

“I’ve never even heard of Singleton. Is that the name—Singleton? I’ve been married to Sam Benning for over eight years.”

“That wouldn’t prevent you from knowing Singleton, knowing him intimately. I have evidence that you did. He was murdered this morning.”

She recoiled from me, breathing hard. Between breaths, she said: “How was he killed?”

“Somebody hit him with a hammer or some other heavy weapon. It made an inch-deep dent in his skull, but it didn’t kill him. Then he was driven up into the mountains in his own car, soaked with gasoline, and set fire to. The car was pushed over a three-hundred-foot bank and left to burn, with Singleton inside it.”

“How do you know it was his car?”

“It’s a 1948 Buick two-door with a dark green body and a light green top.”

“You’re sure it was him inside?”

“He’s been identified. Most of his clothes were burned off him, but his belt-buckle has his initials engraved on it. Why don’t you come down to the morgue and make a formal identification?”

“I told you I don’t even know him.”

“You’re showing a lot of interest in a stranger.”

“Naturally, when you come here and practically accuse me of murdering him. When did all this happen, anyway?”

“Before dawn this morning.”

“I’ve been in bed all night and all morning. I took a couple of nembutals, and I’m still groggy. Why come to me?”

“Lucy Champion and Charles Singleton were both friends of yours. Weren’t they, Bess?”

“They were not.” She caught herself. “Why did you call me Bess? My name is Elizabeth.”

“Horace Wilding calls you Bess.”

“I never heard of him, either.”

“He lives on the Sky Route near Singleton’s studio. He says Singleton introduced him to you in 1943.”

“Wilding is a liar, he always has been a liar.” She caught her lower lip in white teeth and bit it hard.

“You said you didn’t know him.”

“You’re doing the talking. Talk yourself to death.”

“Is that what Lucy did?”

“I don’t know what Lucy did.”

“She was a friend of yours. She came here to this office to see you.”

“Lucy Champion was my husband’s patient,” she said flatly. “I told you that last night.”

“You were lying. This morning your husband lied to cover you. He went into an explanation of why he had no records on her, and then he had to explain what he was treating her for. Any real disease would show up in an autopsy, and he knew that. So he had to make her a hypochondriac, a patient whose sickness was caused by fear. There’s no post-mortem test for a phobia.”

“She was a hypochondriac. Sam told me she was.”

“I never knew a hypochondriac who didn’t take his temperature once a day at least. Lucy hadn’t touched her thermometer in two weeks.”

“Wouldn’t that sound good in court, though, against the word of a professional man and his wife?”

“It’s good enough for me. And this is as close to court as you want to get.”

“I see. You’re judge and jury and everything else. Those are a lot of things for one little man to be.”

“Don’t stretch my patience. If I get tired of this, what happens to you? See what kind of a judge you draw downtown. I’m giving you a chance to talk before I hand my evidence to the cops.”

“Why?” Deliberately, she made me conscious of her body. She turned slightly and raised one hand to her head so that one of her breasts was lifted asymmetrically under the wool. The wide sleeve fell away from her round white forearm, and her white face dreamed upward. “Why go to all that
trouble for poor little me? Poor little old incendiary me?”

“Its no trouble at all,” I said.

She laid a cool hand on my cheek and let it trail onto my shoulder before she withdrew it. “Come out to the kitchen. I was making coffee. We can talk there.”

I followed her, not certain which of us was doing what the other wanted him to do. The kitchen was large and poorly lit by a window over the sink. The sink was piled with dishes. I sat down at a chipped enamel table and watched her pour two cups of coffee from an automatic glass maker. When she had finished pouring, I pushed my full cup across the table to her and took hers.

“You don’t trust me as far as you can see me, Mr. Man. What did you say your name was?”

“Archer. I’m the last of my branch of the Archer family. I’d hate to see it die out suddenly by poison.”

“No children? Wife?”

“None of those things. Are you interested?”

“I could be.” She pushed out her lips, which were fleshy and well-molded. “It happens I’m already fixed up with a very satisfactory—husband.”

“You find him satisfactory?”

Her eyes, which had not gone soft with the rest of her face, narrowed to cool blue slits. “Leave him out of it.”

“Because you’ve been playing him for a sucker?”

“I said leave him out of it. Unless you want hot coffee in the face.” She reached for her cup.

“What about hot gasoline?”

Her cup rattled on the table, slopping some of its contents over the rim. “Do I look like a murderer to you?”

“I’ve seen some fine-looking ones. You can’t deny that you’re a hard girl.”

“I came out of a hard school,” she said. “Do you know the mill section of Gary, Indiana?”

“I’ve passed through.”

“I graduated from it with honors.” A queer pride glinted in her smile. “That doesn’t make me a criminal, though. I might have turned into one if Sam hadn’t taken me out of it. I was on probation when he married me.”

“What for?”

“Nothing much. I guess I was what you call a juvenile delinquent. I didn’t feel like one. My old man was a hunkie, see, a real old-country hunkie. He had the grand old hunkie idea of tying one on and beating the womenfolk every Saturday night. I got tired of hiding under the bed, so I went out on my own. Out into the great world, ha. I waited table for a while and then I made a connection. My connection gave me a hat-check concession in one of the east side clubs. It wasn’t much of a joint but by the time I was sixteen I was making more in tips than my old man ever made sweating it out in the mills. Only my luck went sour. There was gambling in the place I worked, somebody fluffed the protection, and I got picked up in a raid. I copped a plea and they put me on probation. The sourpuss judge set it up so I couldn’t work in the clubs any more. That wasn’t the worst of it. I had to go home and live with the family.”

The dreams she had been battling in her sleep were taking over her waking mind. I didn’t say a word.

“Naturally I took the first chance I had to get out of that stinking flat with the arguments. The social workers were snooping on me, making me stay in nights where the old man could get at me. Sam saved my life. He picked me up in a movie one day. I thought he was a wolf at first, but he
was innocent. It was really funny to see a doctor so innocent. Sam was a Navy medico then, stationed at Great Lakes. He was the first man that wanted to marry me, and I took him up on it. He had his orders to California and he was leaving the next week. We came out here together.”

“Did he know what he was getting?”

“He could see me,” she said levelly. “I admit I didn’t tell him I was jumping probation. But let’s get one thing straight about Sam and me, before we drop the subject. I was the one that was doing him the favor. I always have been.”

Looking at her and thinking of her husband, I believed her. “It’s a pretty colorful background for a small-town doctor’s wife. And I don’t imagine you’ve told me the half of it.”

“I don’t imagine I have. More coffee?”

“More information. When did you and Benning come out here?”

“The spring of 1943. They gave him duty at Port Hueneme because it was near his home here. We rented a cottage in Arroyo Beach for six months. Then he was shipped out. The next two years he was at sea, medical officer on a big transport. I saw him a few times when it came into San Francisco.”

“Who else were you seeing?”

“That’s a hell of a question.”

“A hell of an answer. Why did you leave Benning two years ago?”

“You’ve really been snooping, eh? I had my private reasons.”

“You ran away with Singleton, didn’t you?”

She had started to rise from the table, and froze for an
instant, leaning on it, with her face averted. “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

“Singleton was incinerated this morning. I’ve made it my business to find out who struck the match. It’s a queer thing you’re not interested.”

“Is it?”

She poured herself another cup of coffee, with steady hands. Somewhere in the Chicago wilderness, or beating around the country in wartime and peacetime, she had gathered strength and learned balance. I looked at her firm white legs. She caught my look and returned it in a slow curve. To a window-peeper it would have seemed like a pleasant domestic scene on a Sunday morning. I almost wished it was.