Lady Afraid (17 page)

Most put a period to all this by saying wryly, “And we could be doing wishful thinking, too.”

I hope Ivan did not kill Brill, Sarah thought, and she walked along beset by silence. Hard, arrogant, self-grasping Ivan clearly was, yet he was also her son’s grandfather, and it would not be a good thing to have the old man a murderer. She wished she had time to weigh and consider all this. She had been hard-pressed by events throughout the night, and particularly during the last hour; there had been little leisure, certainly no calm, for clear thinking, for careful selecting of the sound and discarding of dross. Sarah felt pressed into making snap decisions, a mental hopscotch that should be distrusted.

Their walking had carried them two long city blocks, but they were still inside the park. Close to the right there was a sidewalk with benches scattered along it. Close beyond was a stone sea wall, and small yachts lay with fenders nuzzling the sea wall, their spring lines slack. Mostly the craft were cabin cruisers, with an occasional motor-sailer. Sarah had always considered, partisan-like, motor-sailers an unforgivable hybrid—not packing enough canvas to sail a decent reach, and with too much underbody to get powerboat efficiency out of an engine.

Abruptly Most’s hand touched Sarah’s arm and stopped her; his other hand was pointing. “Between the two big palms… Alice Mildred.” Then he added, “On the path.”

Sarah looked intently. On the path there was dull platinum moonlight and some haze from radiation fog. Presently she discerned a figure. “It may be Alice Mildred. I’m not sure,” she told Most.

“I rather got the idea from the first that she had in mind somewhere to go,” Most said thoughtfully.

Lampposts stood topped by fuzzy balls of white light at intervals along the sea wall, and the figure of the woman moved past these, traveling without zest, as if the only purpose was locomotion. Sarah said, “It
is
Alice Mildred.”

“Well follow her.” At Sarah’s look of surprise, Most moved his shoulders wearily and added, “Why not? She had some reason for leaving the house the way she did.”

Sarah shook her head hopelessly. “The poor thing is ill.”

Most frowned. “You’ve said that before. Would you be more specific about it?”

“Ivan told me she has the illusion that my son… that Jonnie is her own child.”

Most shook his head and said, “Ivan’s saying it makes it so, you think?… Oh, it could be true. Grant, for argument, that it is. That sort of illness isn’t necessarily all-inclusive. They off-track on one subject, usually, when they’re getting haywire because they’re too inward. You’ve described Alice Mildred as that sort—inward, a person who finds some sort of ecstasy, probably, in intensification of consciousness. In other words, a woman who finds it easier to stay within herself than to stay out in the rough world. The way I understand it, such ones find a pleasant path they can follow in their own minds, and they follow it so blindly that they fall over a precipice. But all this doesn’t mean that they’re haywire on everything, or even haywire all of the time.”

It was a long speech for him, and Sarah glanced at him wonderingly. “That’s quite a lot of psychiatry from a sailor,” she said.

“I read a book now and then.” Most bent his head toward the distant figure of the woman. “She may be walking in the night to ease her nerves—or she may not. In the latter case, she might lead us to something. What have we to lose?”

“All right,” Sarah said. “But I feel like a vulture.” Actually she was grateful that he had come up with any kind of an idea. Her confusion needed an anchor to tie to, and Most, it went without saying, represented the sort of mooring to which she could safely swing. The analogy of Most as an anchor was a good one; she could visualize him as set firmly in good holding ground, with plenty of cable scope, able to swing safely as gales pounced from unexpected directions.

“She’s stopped.”

Alice Mildred had paused near a houseboat, her thin forlorn figure not nearly so far ahead of them as she had been. And now, as they watched, Alice Mildred turned slowly away from the houseboat and went to one of the benches and sank down there.

“It looked as if she went directly to that houseboat.” Most indicated an enormous palm tree and they stepped behind it to wait. They were fairly well concealed from Alice Mildred. “She lost her nerve, was afraid to go aboard. That’s typical of oversensitives.” He got out his pipe and frowned and put it away again. He pocketed his hands and settled down to patient waiting.

His forward-moving air, his ability to select a path when choosing one was very difficult, and to follow it patiently, was reassuring to Sarah. She liked it. And presently she noticed mud on her hands, the result of stumbling when she had supposed she was being chased by a marauder; it struck her, woman-like, that she must look a fright. Mud on her hands, half soaked, hair probably as wild as seaweed. She wanted her compact, but her hands were empty, and she looked at them blankly.

“Lose something?” Most asked.

“My purse,” she said stupidly. “I’ve lost it.”

His expression grew amiably ridiculing, and she resented the look when he stated, “You left it in your apartment, didn’t you, when Yellow-shoes marched you off?”

She said bitterly, “There, you see! I’m losing my mind.”

He was not bothered. “Good. I was beginning to think I was the only one of us whose sails were slatting.” He returned to watching Alice Mildred. The thin figure of Ivan’s wife still crouched on the bench. When Most spoke again, he did so reflectively. He summarized: “Ivan Lineyack did not know your son had been taken from you. When he learned it, he was shocked—as if something had gone wrong. Maybe something had gone wrong. Maybe Brill was killed because he was the cause of what had gone wrong. Why was Brill’s body dumped in my car? Because I was helping you, the killer wanted me in jail, out of his way. You too. You were picked for goat from the beginning. How does that sound to you?”

Sarah, who had been picking at the same thoughts, shook her head dubiously. “You say the killer wants us in jail so we won’t interfere. But how do you reconcile that theory with the telephone call?”

“What telephone call?”

“The one I got in Mr. Arbogast’s apartment, by the voice that imitated Mr. Arbogast’s.”

“What about it?”

“I was told to remain away from the police…. Meet Brill at Fourth and Flagler at seven o’clock, the voice said. Does that sound as if I was supposed to get myself arrested?”

Most watched Alice Mildred with the dour absorption of a disbeliever gazing into a crystal ball. “Who do you think made that phone call?” he asked suddenly.

“Why,” said Sarah, “the same person who imitated Mr. Arbogast’s voice at his office yesterday.”

“And do you think the Fourth and Flagler seven o’clock appointment was on the level?”

“I don’t know,” said Sarah miserably, “any more than I know what is the cause of all this. But of this I’m sure: I’m going to be there at seven o’clock. I’m going to do anything that might conceivably find my child.”

Of the houseboat a sailor would say: That hooker should never have been built. Sixty-eight or seventy feet on the water line, the houseboat had nearly thirty feet beam and lifted up from the water two skyscraper decks. It was quite unlikely that the owner would ever dare take her outside a harbor, canal, or river. These were Sarah’s opinions of the vessel; Most’s too, she could tell from his face when he glanced at the houseboat. And presently he muttered, calling the vessel a misfit, remarking that it was criminal to waste all that fine mahogany, teak, cabinetwork, luxurious appointments on a bloater that wouldn’t go outside and take a breeze that was even three barbs on the Beaufort scale. But the owner would no doubt brag about her comfort. They always did. He wondered, Most added, what manner of oaf owned such a tub.

And at this point Alice Mildred boarded the houseboat. She arose from her bench, crossed quickly to the craft, and went on board.

“This is it,” Most said with the crisp way of a man who had been wishing for action. “Come on. We’ll slide aboard quietly. We may overhear something. We’ll try, anyway.”

The gangplank was beautiful with varnish, rubber mats, chromium, white cotton hand lines. Its very weight made silence easy; the gangplank did not so much as creak. The deck was wide, like a promenade on a liner almost; also it was carpeted. Carpet on a weather deck, Sarah thought. How fantastic!

Now she heard voices. She touched Most’s arm. He nodded; he had heard them too. Alice Mildred and a man were speaking, the man with a solid, resonant voice that seemed to contain astonishment of a drowsy, recently awakened sort. But the voices were inside, the words not understandable. Most moved toward a door. It was not a respectable ship’s door, but one that belonged on a house. Most had laid a hand on the knob when a man who had come silently on deck turned on a flashlight beam.

“Did you wish something?” asked the man, plastering them with the flashlight.

S
ARAH PLACED THE MAN
as a servant. A steward. She would bet he was called a steward on board here, because the term was nautical, and the sort of mariners who inhabited houseboats of this type were usually as nautical as anything. He was about fifty, round with good living, had hastily put on dark trousers, white servitor’s jacket, and nautical cap, but not shoes. He wore also a butlerish look of alarm.

“Take that light out of our faces!” Most ordered, in a tone that surprise had made a bit violent.

“Yes, sir.” The steward dropped the flash beam to their feet, where it lay pooled whitely. “I’m sorry. But whom did you wish to see?”

Most pointed at the cabin. “The owner in there?”

“Mr. Driscoll, you mean?”

Most threw the man an astonished look and said, “Louis Driscoll?”

“Yes, sir.” The steward, uneasy, glanced at the cabin. “I think I heard Mr. Driscoll’s voice a moment ago, sir.”

“We’d like to talk to him.”

“I’ll see about that, sir,” the steward replied, and approached the door.

Most, drifting words quietly from the corner of his mouth, told Sarah, “You remember Arbogast mentioning Louis Driscoll, don’t you?”

Sarah nodded. “The truck-line tycoon.” Louis Driscoll had been the other dinner guest present in the Lineyack home when she had taken her son. Of Driscoll, Mr. Arbogast had said: A friend of Ivan’s; owned a large truck line; lived on a yacht tied up near the Lineyack home. If by yacht Mr. Arbogast had meant this harbor-bound floating apartment, he had impugned the word yacht. The steward, presenting himself to the door that he had caught Most about to open, tapped politely on the panel.

“Yes?” demanded the male voice they had heard.

“A gentleman and lady to see you, sir,” the steward said.

The door was promptly yanked open by a thick-bodied, rather nice-looking man who wore a red pajama coat stuffed into tan herringbone slacks. “Hello!” he said, peering at them. “You want to see me?”

“Driscoll?”

“That’s me.”

Most said, “We want to talk. We came here because Alice Mildred Lineyack did.”

With an open mouth, and what seemed surprise, Driscoll ran his eyes over Most, then gave Sarah an inspection.

“I don’t get it,” Driscoll said abruptly. “But come on in.” And he stepped back with the door.

Entering the cabin, Sarah again had the feeling that the boat should never have been built. Her love for the sea and seagoing craft was outraged; this was nothing but a richly done modernistic apartment with a waterproof bottom. Not that it was cheap. It wasn’t. Possibly it had cost as much as
Vameric.
But where
Vameric
was a functional dream that embodied the lore that going to sea in sail had taught men during centuries, this ark belonged on a concrete foundation on some zoned residential avenue. Sarah wondered, dubiously, as had Most, how much the owner was going to be like his boat.

Alice Mildred was sitting tight-armed and tight-faced on a straight chair. If Alice Mildred was surprised to see them, the emotion lacked the fire to get past the strain on her pale face. Alice Mildred looked like a person apart from this place, and she did not speak, did not, after a first glance, again look at either Sarah or Most.

Most said to Driscoll, “You don’t get what, friend?” Driscoll eyed him sharply, then crossed the room and dropped into a chair, also a straight-backed chair but one that had armrests. “I don’t get nothing about nothing.”

“What did Alice Mildred come to see you about?” Most asked.

This was blunt stuff, and Sarah’s attention whipped to Driscoll, who dropped one eyebrow.

Driscoll said, “That might be private business, brother. And again it might be no business at all, including no business of yours.”

Sarah didn’t like Most’s beginning. She had a woman’s dislike for hard ways. But what she didn’t realize until later was that she also had a woman’s lack of understanding of the rough ways that men, particularly men who feel they have quickly understood each other, use to feel out and test.

Most told Driscoll, “You were a guest at the Lineyack house last night.”

“Was I?”

“You were there when the Lineyack grandson was taken.”

Driscoll watched him a full minute, settled a little in the chair, and turned his head a trifle to the side.

“Policeman?”

“No,” said Most shortly.

“You’ve got the ways of one. Then who are you, brother?” Driscoll’s hands planted themselves on his chair armrests. They were wide hands that hard work had made capable when the owner was younger. The forefinger of the right one suddenly pointed at Sarah. “And who is the lady?”

Alice Mildred, hardly stirring, hardly breaking the trancelike manner of showing no awareness, now made a perfectly flat-voiced introduction. “This is Sarah, my daughter-in-law,” Alice Mildred said. “I do not know the young man’s name.”

Driscoll stared at Alice Mildred, his jaw slightly down. He is, Sarah reflected, uneasy about Alice Mildred’s dullness, disturbed by it. As who wouldn’t be, for Alice Mildred was again looking at nothing with listless concentration.