Part 33 (2/2)
”Tell me about it.”
”He'll have to tell you himself. I'm not a junior C-man, Mr. Archer. I'm a doctor.”
”What about the woman he recently divorced, Tish or Let.i.tia? Do you know her?”
He looked at me without speaking. There was sad knowledge in his eyes. ”You'll have to ask Roy about her,” he said finally.
chapter 29.
On his way to the courthouse to question McGee, Jerry dropped me at the harbor, where my car had been left sitting. The moon was higher now, and had regained its proper shape and color. Its light converted the yachts in the slips into a ghostly fleet of Flying Dutchmen.
I went back to my motel to talk to Madge Gerhardi. She had evaporated, along with the rest of the whisky in my pint bottle. I sat on the edge of the bed and tried her number and got no answer.
I called the Bradshaw house. Old Mrs. Bradshaw seemed to have taken up a permanent position beside the telephone. She picked up the receiver on the first ring and quavered into it: ”Who is that, please?”
”It's only Archer. Roy hasn't come home, has he?”
”No, and I'm worried about him, deeply worried. I haven't seen him or heard from him since early Sat.u.r.day morning. I've been calling his friends--”
”I wouldn't do that, Mrs. Bradshaw.”
”I have to do something.”
”There are times when it's better to do nothing. Keep still and wait.”
”I can't. You're telling me there's something terribly wrong, aren't you?”
”I think you know it.”
”Does it have to do with that dreadful woman--that Macready woman?”
”Yes. We have to find out where she is. I'm pretty sure your son could tell me, but he's made himself unavailable. Are you sure you haven't seen the woman since Boston?”
”I'm quite certain. I saw her only once, when she came to me for money.”
”Can you describe her for me?”
”I thought I had.”
”In more detail, please. It's very important.”
She paused to think. I could hear her breathing over the line, a faint rhythmic huskiness. ”Well, she was quite a large woman, taller than I, red-haired. She wore her hair bobbed. She had quite a good figure, rather lush, and quite good features, too--a kind of bra.s.sy good looks. And she had green eyes, murky green eyes which I didn't like at all. She wore very heavy makeup, more appropriate for the stage than the street, and she was hideously overdressed.”
”What was she wearing?”
”It hardly seems relevant, after twenty years. But she had on a leopardskin--an imitation leopardskin coat, as I recall, and under it something striped. Sheer hose, with runs in them. Ridiculously high heels. A good deal of costume jewelry.”
”How did she talk?”
”Like a woman of the streets. A greedy, pus.h.i.+ng, l.u.s.tful woman.” The moral indignation in her voice hardly surprised me. She had almost lost Roy to the woman, and might yet.
”Would you know her if you saw her again, in different clothes, with her hair perhaps a different color?”
”I think so, if I had a chance to study her.”
”You'll have that chance when we find her.”
I was thinking that the color of a woman's eyes was harder to change than her hair. The only green-eyed woman connected with the case was Laura Sutherland. She had a conspicuously good figure and good features, but nothing else that seemed to jibe with the description of the Macready woman. Still, she might have changed. I'd seen other women change unrecognizably in half the time.
”You know Laura Sutherland, Mrs. Bradshaw?”
”I know her slightly.”
”Does she resemble the Macready woman?”
”Why do you ask that?” she said on a rising note. ”Do you suspect Laura?”
”I wouldn't go that far. But you haven't answered my question.”
”She couldn't possibly be the same woman. She's a wholly different type.”
”What about her basic physical characteristics?”
”I suppose there is some resemblance,” she said dubiously. ”Roy has always been attracted to women who are obviously mammals.”
And obviously mother figures, I thought. ”I have to ask you one other question, a more personal question.”
”Yes?” She seemed to be bracing herself for a blow.
”I suppose you're aware that Roy was Dr. G.o.dwin's patient.”
”Dr. G.o.dwin's patient? I don't believe it. He wouldn't go behind my back.” For all her half-cynical insight into his na ture, she seemed to know very little about him.
”Dr. G.o.dwin says he did, apparently for scme years.”
”There must be a mistake. Roy has nothing the matter with his mind.” There was a vibrating silence. ”Has he?”
”I was going to ask you, but I'm sorry I brought it up. Take it easy, Mrs. Bradshaw.”
”How can I, with my boy in jeopardy?”
She wanted to hold me on the line, siphoning comfort into her frightened old ears, but I said good night and hung up. One suspect had been eliminated: Madge Gerhardi: the description didn't fit her and never could have. Laura was still in the running.
It wouldn't make sense, of course, for Bradshaw to divorce her and remarry her immediately. But I had only Bradshaw's word for his recent marriage to Laura. I was gradually realizing that his word stretched like an elastic band, and was as easily broken. I looked up Laura's address--she lived in College Heights--and was copying it into my notebook when the phone rang.
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