Cold Poison (22 page)

“Get me Miss Hildegarde Withers,” he said to the switchboard operator. “I don’t remember her number or address offhand, but she lives in Santa Monica, California.”

H
ILDEGARDE WITHERS, RETIRED SCHOOLMA’AM
, retired gadfly to the NYPD, but still the active and durable friend of Inspector Oscar Piper, although presently removed from his company by the width of a continent, which the inspector considered in his sour moments as being none too great a distance, was in her yard gathering the basic ingredient of her next salad when the phone inside her house began to ring. She was in no hurry to answer it. Indeed, being convinced in advance that the communication, whatever it was, would prove to be both inconsequential and dull, she was rather indifferent about answering it at all.

The truth was that the spirited and equine-ish spinster was finding life nowadays rather a bore. She had discovered that the sunset years, as described in glowing terms in the free literature of realtors and chambers of commerce out after the social security trade, were inclined to develop, after a while, a surfeit of serenity. Not, of course, that she didn’t find her personal sunset on the whole pleasurable. She had Talley, her standard poodle, for company. She had her neighbors and her African violets for diversion. She could pick her salads in her own yard. When she wished to resign herself to the prospect of being swallowed up in good time by the illimitable universe, which required more humility than she ordinarily had, she could sit on a rock and watch, like stout Cortez with eagle eye upon a peak in Darien, the immeasurable waters of the wide Pacific.

Only it wasn’t, of course, Cortez. It was Balboa. Odd that a genius like Keats should have made such an egregious error. But perhaps it was an error no more egregious than the one she had made in swapping coasts. It would be nice, she thought sometimes, to divide each year equally between both. She had been sorely tempted lately to fly back East for a long visit with her old friend, Inspector Oscar Piper, in time to catch New York in fall and leave it again before winter.

The phone inside continued to ring in long bursts with dogged tenacity. Suddenly she read into the sound a compelling urgency. Surely any casual friend with nothing more on her mind than a luncheon date or a committee meeting would have given up long ago. Leaving Talley in command of the yard, she hurried inside and snatched up the raucous instrument. A strange masculine voice asked her to identify herself, which she did breathlessly after her tardy dash from the yard, and then, immediately afterward, she was momentarily deprived by pleasure and excitement of what short breath she had. For in her ears, more beautifully golden than the remembered tenor of the not-so-late John McCormack, another Irishman, was the irascible bark of Oscar Piper.

“Hildy?”

“Oscar! Oscar Piper!”

“Long time no see, Hildy. How are you and the angels getting along?”

“I’m not quite ready for the angels yet, Oscar. All in good time. Meanwhile, you’ll have to be patient.”

“Well, you were long enough getting to the phone. I was beginning to suspect that you’d already been snatched away. Where were you, anyhow? Out in the yard picking oranges?”

“Not oranges, Oscar. Avocados.”

“Imagine picking avocados in your own yard. Imagine, for that matter, picking avocados anywhere. Surely you don’t eat them?”

“You always were a person of questionable tastes, Oscar. There
is
other food in the world than spaghetti, you know.”

“Spaghetti!” The inspector’s voice was suddenly dreamy and a little sad, and Hildegarde Withers was acutely aware that it originated more than three thousand miles away. “It doesn’t taste the same somehow, Hildy, without you across the table. How would you like to have a big plate with me right now, with a bottle of Chianti to share?”

“Shut up, Oscar! I’m far too old to cry.”

“That’s an invitation.”

“Don’t be rash. You may have me on the next jet.”

“Well, to tell the truth, I wouldn’t want you to come that soon. I’ll need you where you are for a while yet.”

“What do you mean, Oscar? Explain yourself.”

“That’s my Hildy. You sound exactly like you were snapping at some elementary urchin in that school where you used to slave.”

“
As if
, Oscar. Like is a preposition or a verb. You shouldn’t use it as a conjunction.”

“There you go. Correcting my grammar at God knows how much a minute. Anyhow, what’s good enough for Winston is good enough for me.”

“Oscar, you’re being evasive. It’s apparent that this is not just a friendly call, and as much as I would like to think that you were motivated only by a longing to hear my voice, you had better come clean. What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing much. Just a simple little job. It occurred to me that a superior compulsive snoop like you would be just the one to handle it. Besides, you happen to be on the scene.”

“Thank you, Oscar. You have such an ingratiating way of putting things. Precisely what is this simple little job?”

“Finding a runaway, that’s all. A wandering flower child. Her name is Lenore Gregory, aged twenty-one, and she took a powder about two weeks ago. It’s not really a police job, certainly not Homicide’s, but I’d like to lend a hand if I can. Her parents are really in the saucepot. Father says Mother is on the verge of a breakdown.”

“‘What quality of fools is this?’”

“What’s that?”

“Never mind. Some words of Tennyson. A sadly neglected poet these days.”

“Oh. We have reason to believe that this girl may be in Los Angeles, Hildy, or in the immediate area. Naturally, I thought of you right away, stuck out there in exile and probably dying to get back in harness.”

“Oscar, you seem to be afflicted with that strange provincialism that is common in many New Yorkers. You simply cannot rid yourself of the illusion that the nation beyond your city limits is composed entirely of countryside and villages. For your information, Los Angeles is a sizable city. In the matter of square miles, indeed, it is considerably larger than New York. Are you seriously suggesting that I comb the area in search of one small, wayward girl?”

“Use your ingenuity. You’ll manage.”

“It’s flattering of you to think so. Or is it merely artful. Consider, for example, the question of transportation. As you know, I don’t drive. How do you expect me to get from one place to another?”

“That’s no problem. Fly. Use your broomstick.”

“Very funny, Oscar. Very funny, indeed.”

“Seriously, Hildy, I wish you’d take it on. Listen to me. Lenore Gregory is a lovely girl. Her father’s a corporation lawyer, well heeled, and the girl is apparently carrying a bundle with her. Over a grand. She’s driving a Volkswagen with a gaudy paint job of daffodils, so it ought to stick out like a sore thumb even in that loony-bin you live in. Moreover, as I said, she’s one of the flower children. She’s probably gone straight to wherever the hippies are. You must know the places in your neck of the woods. If not, you can find out. That should restrict your search considerably. Will you give it a try?”

“Why should I?” The retired schoolma’am’s sniff was clearly audible on the other side of the continent. “How many times have you referred to me as a gadfly, Oscar Piper? How many times have you told me that the New York Police Department is perfectly capable of getting along without my help?”

“Judas Priest in a jug! Don’t tell me you’re getting paranoid in your old age! All right, Hildy. If it gives you any pleasure to make me squirm, I apologize. Be a good girl and lend a hand. It’ll get the rust out of your pipes, and it’ll get me off the hook with the commissioner. Tell you what I’ll do. If you’ll play ball, I’ll give you a call the next time we have a really juicy murder here, and you can come running.”

“Is that a promise?”

“My oath on the Book.”

“Oscar, you’ve got your fingers crossed.”

“Hildy!”

“Oh, all right. You’ve known perfectly well all along that I wouldn’t be able to resist. If I locate this girl, what am I supposed to do with her?”

“There’s nothing much you
can
do, as a matter of fact. Talk with her. Try to make her come home, or at least get in touch with Mama and Papa. Reassurance is what they need more than anything else right now. Make sure the girl’s all right, not in any trouble or anything, and report to me. I’ll pass the information along.”

“What if she’s
not
all right? What if she
is
in trouble?”

“We’ll hope she’s not. If she is, you stay out of it. Let me have the grim details, and I’ll put Papa on the job.”

“I’ll need a complete description. A photograph would be better.”

“I have one. I’ll shoot it right out to you.”

“Very well, Oscar. I’ll do my best to get you and the New York Police Department off the hook once more.”

“Thanks, old girl. It’s noble of you. Now I’ve got to hang up. This call’s costing the city a fortune. Take care of my favorite schoolma’am, Hildy.”

“Be assured that Hildy will. Good-bye, Oscar.”

Miss Withers hung up and strolled slowly out into her yard again. If she had been less conscious of the proper deportment for spinster ladies, to say nothing of the opinions of neighbors, she might have chortled aloud and kicked up her heels. The gravelly voice of Inspector Oscar Piper had been a potent tonic. It had lifted her spirits, which had been drooping, and had filled her with all sorts of errant and extravagant hopes. No doubt she was being foolish, incited by wishful thinking to absurd expectations, but nevertheless the warm golden air was suddenly more invigorating, and her restricted regimen all at once expanded. There was really, of course, except for the pleasure of communication with an old friend, no justifiable reason for exhilaration. The assignment she had accepted was likely to prove more tedious and dull than otherwise. Surely there was little enough to stimulate one in the prospect of hunting down a silly young girl and trying to convince her of the error of her ways. What Oscar called legwork.

Still, it was a challenge. Finding an elusive fugitive in the vast Los Angeles area, even a fugitive with daffodils painted on her Volkswagen, would be a difficult task, if not impossible. Moreover, if the truth must out, Miss Withers nourished a faint hope of unexpected developments. It was not that she really wished Lenore Gregory any more trouble than she deserved. It was just that she hoped, in an unspecified kind of way, that her assignment would turn out in the end to be more than it seemed to be in the beginning.

She stooped to scratch the ears of Talley, who had approached in all confidence that he would get his ears scratched. She strolled across her manicured lawn and inspected her bright and thriving flower beds. But she was hardly aware of what she was doing, for her mind was already at grips with the preliminary problem of finding, so to speak, a needle in a haystack. There was to begin with, as she had said to Inspector Piper, the quite fundamental one of getting about, the plain and simple necessity to get from one place to another with a minimum of delay and difficulty. In this sprawling city and its environs, geographically giant-esque, this would be no easy matter for a maiden lady with no vehicle of her own and no instruction in driving it, even if she had one. Taxis were not readily available hereabouts, as they were in eastern cities, and the cost of hiring one for prolonged service would be, besides, prohibitive.

In addition to the problem of getting around, there was the question of where to go. Miss Withers tried to keep abreast of the times and reasonably aware of the contemporary scene, but she was not well versed, she had to admit, in the habits of hippies. She saw them here and there, singly and in pairs and small groups, usually identifiable by their long hair and unkempt clothes and the strong impression, even when they were downwind, of unwashed bodies, but she had not made a practice of invading their haunts and locating their colonies. Venice, right next door, had its share, she understood. Laguna Beach, she knew, had its. Surely you could find them on the Sunset Strip. She had read about the love-ins in Griffith Park. But it was all so far removed from the orderly world of a retired schoolma’am whose extracurricular experience had been confined for the most part to such orthodox deviants as murderers and assorted felons. She needed instruction. She needed, in fact, a guide.

Distracted by her problems, she gazed across intervening lawns and flower beds at the familiar sight, three houses down the block, of young Aloysius Fister tinkering with his motorcycle in his driveway. Miss Withers was fond of Aloysius, although she disapproved of him and invariably gave him, when the opportunity arose, sagacious advice which he good-naturedly ignored. Aloysius was a college drop-out. He had been doing quite well at UCLA, Miss Withers understood, and then without warning he had simply withdrawn and come home. The only reason he gave was that he had reached the conclusion, after implied soul-searching, that college might not be the answer to a lot of things, at least for him, and he was deferring any further academic endeavor until he could decide where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do after he got there. Meanwhile, insofar as Miss Withers could see, he did nothing at all, unless you counted going to the beach and forever tinkering, as now, with his motorcycle.

What he needs
, she thought,
is to make himself useful
. And seconds after the thought, her purpose hardly formed in her mind, she found herself approaching him resolutely.

“Good morning, Aloysius,” she said.

The young man flinched and grinned wryly, brushing straw-colored hair out of his eyes with the back of a greasy paw. “Please, Miss Withers! I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you’ll call me Al, I’ll call you Hildegarde.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort, young man. If you prefer to be called Al, I’ll be glad to comply without any concession on your part.”

“Fair enough.”

“However, I deplore your attitude. Aloysius is a fine old Irish name. I’m quite partial to the Irish.”

Al Fister grinned again, and the grin did pleasant things to his homely, sun-tanned face. In spite of certain early fore-warnings of a dissolute character, Miss Withers thought he was really quite a charming boy. His straw-colored thatch, with a kind of obstreperous will of its own, was not amenable to the discipline of comb or brush. His eyes, which crinkled at the corners when he grinned, reflected the amiability of his temper, which was pacific by nature and conviction. He was dressed in a soiled white T-shirt, a pair of faded blue Levis, and filthy sneakers.