The Goodbye Look (2 page)

“He said that one was missing.”

She nodded. “Assuming you find it, and find out who took it, is that as far as it goes? I mean, you won’t march off to the authorities and tell them all about it?”

“No. Unless they’re already involved?”

“They aren’t, and they’re not going to be,” she said. “I want this whole thing kept quiet. I wasn’t even going to tell John Truttwell about the box, but he wormed it out of me. However, him I trust. I think.”

“And me you think you don’t?”

I smiled, and she decided to respond. She tapped me on the cheek with her red rose, then dropped it on the tile floor as if it had served its purpose. “Come into the study. We can talk privately there.”

She led me up a short flight of steps to a richly carved oak door. Before she closed it behind us I could see the servant in the reception hall picking up after her, first the clippers, then the rose.

The study was an austere room with dark beams supporting the slanting white ceiling. The single small window, barred on the outside, made it resemble a prison cell. As if the prisoner had been looking for a way out, there were shelves of old law books against one wall.

On the facing wall hung a large picture which appeared to be an oil painting of Pacific Point in the old days, done in
primitive perspective. A seventeenth-century sailing vessel lay in the harbor inside the curve of the point; beside it naked brown Indians lounged on the beach; over their heads Spanish soldiers marched like an army in the sky.

Mrs. Chalmers seated me in an old calf-covered swivel chair in front of a closed roll-top desk.

“These pieces don’t go with the rest of the furniture,” she said as if it mattered. “But this was my father-in-law’s desk, and that chair you’re sitting in was the one he used in court. He was a judge.”

“So Mr. Truttwell told me.”

“Yes, John Truttwell knew him. I never did. He died a long time ago, when Lawrence was just a small boy. But my husband still worships the ground his father walked on.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting your husband. Is he at home?”

“I’m afraid not. He went to see the doctor. This burglary business has him all upset.” She added: “I wouldn’t want you to talk to him, anyway.”

“Does he know I’m here?”

She moved away from me, leaning over a black oak refectory table. She fumbled a cigarette from a silver box and lit it with a matching table lighter. The cigarette, which she puffed on furiously, laid down a blue smokescreen between us.

“Lawrence didn’t think it was a good idea to use a private detective. I decided to go ahead with you anyway.”

“Why did he object?”

“My husband likes his privacy. And this box that was stolen—well, it was a gift to his mother from an admirer of hers. I’m not supposed to know that, but I do.” Her smile was crooked. “In addition to which, his mother used it to keep his letters in.”

“The admirer’s letters?”

“My husband’s letters. Larry wrote her a lot of letters during the war, and she kept them in the box. The letters are missing, too—not that they’re of any great value, except maybe to Larry.”

“Is the box valuable?”

“I think it is. It’s covered with gold, and very carefully made. It was made in Florence during the Renaissance.” She stumbled on the word, but got it out. “It has a picture on the lid, of two lovers.”

“Insured?”

She shook her head, and crossed her legs. “It hardly seemed necessary. We never took it out of the safe. It never occurred to us that the safe could be broken into.”

I asked to be allowed to see the safe. Mrs. Chalmers took down the primitive painting of the Indians and the Spanish soldiers. Where it had hung a large cylindrical safe was set deep in the wall. She turned the dial several times and opened it. Looking over her shoulder, I could see that the safe was about the diameter of a sixteen-inch gun and just as empty.

“Where’s your jewelry, Mrs. Chalmers?”

“I don’t have much, it never has interested me. What I do have, I keep in a case in my room. I took the case along with me to Palm Springs. We were there when the gold box was taken.”

“How long has it been missing?”

“Let me see now, this is Tuesday. I put it in the safe Thursday night. Next morning we went to the desert. It must have been stolen after we left, so that makes four days, or less. I looked in the safe last night when we got home, and it was gone.”

“What made you look in the safe last night?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t,” she added, making it sound like a lie.

“Did you have some idea that it might be stolen?”

“No. Certainly not

What about the servant?”

“Emilio didn’t take it. I can vouch for him, absolutely.”

“Was anything taken besides the box?” She considered the question. “I don’t think so. Except the letters, of course, the famous letters.”

“Were they important?”

“They were important to my husband, as I said. And of course to his mother. But she’s been dead a long time, since the end of the war. I never met her myself.” She sounded a little worried, as if she’d been denied a maternal blessing, and still felt defrauded.

“Why would a burglar take them?”

“Don’t ask me. Probably because they were in the box.” She made a face. “If you do find them, don’t bother to bring them back. I’ve already heard them, or most of them.”

“Heard them?”

“My husband used to read them aloud to Nick.”

“Where is your son?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to talk to him.”

“You can’t.” She was frowning again. Behind her beautiful mask there was a spoiled girl, I thought, like a faker huddled in the statue of a god. “I wish John Truttwell had sent me someone else. Anyone else.”

“What did I do wrong?”

“You ask too many questions. You’re prying into our family affairs, and I’ve already told you more than I should.”

“You can trust me.” Immediately I regretted saying it.

“Can I really?”

“Other people have.” I could hear an unfortunate selling note in my voice. I wanted to stay with the woman and her peculiar little case: she had the kind of beauty that made you want to explore its history. “And I’m sure Mr. Truttwell
would advise you not to hold back with me. When a lawyer hires me I have the same privilege of silence as he does.”

“Exactly what does that mean?”

“It means I can’t be forced to talk about what I find out. Not even a Grand Jury with contempt powers can make me.”

“I see.” She had caught me off base, trying to sell myself, and now in a certain sense she could buy me; not with money, necessarily. “If you promise to be absolutely close-mouthed, even with John Truttwell, I’ll tell you something. This may not be an ordinary burglary.”

“Do you suspect it was an inside job? There’s no sign that the safe was forced.”

“Lawrence pointed that out. It’s why he didn’t want you brought into the case. He didn’t even want me to tell John Truttwell.”

“Who does he think stole the box?”

“He hasn’t said. I’m afraid he suspects Nick, though.”

“Has Nick been in trouble before?”

“Not this kind of trouble.” The woman’s voice had dropped almost out of hearing. Her whole body had slumped, as if the thought of her son was a palpable weight inside of her.

“What kind of trouble has he had?”

“Emotional problems so called. He turned against Lawrence and me for no good reason. He ran away when he was nineteen. It took the Pinkertons months to find him. It cost us thousands of dollars.”

“Where was he?”

“Working his way around the country. Actually, his psychiatrist said it did him some good. He’s settled down to his studies since. He’s even got himself a girl.” She spoke with some pride, or hope, but her eyes were somber.

“And you don’t think he stole your box?”

“No, I don’t.” She tilted up her chin. “You wouldn’t be here if I thought so.”

“Can he open the safe?”

“I doubt it. We’ve never given him the combination.”

“I noticed you’ve got it memorized. Do you have it written down anywhere?”

“Yes.”

She opened the bottom right-hand drawer of the desk, pulled it all the way out and turned it over, dumping the yellow bank statements it contained. Taped to the bottom of the drawer was a slip of paper bearing a series of typewritten numbers. The tape was yellow and cracked with age, and the paper was so worn that the figures on it were barely decipherable.

“That’s easy enough to find,” I said. “Is your son in need of money?”

“I can’t imagine what for. We give him six or seven hundred a month, more if he needs it.”

“You mentioned a girl.”

“He’s engaged to Betty Truttwell, who is not exactly a gold digger.”

“No other girls or women in his life?”

“No.” But her answer was slow and dubious.

“How does he feel about the box?”

“Nick?” Her clear forehead wrinkled, as if my question had taken her by surprise. “As a matter of fact, he used to be interested in it when he was little. I used to let him and Betty play with it. We used—they used to pretend that it was Pandora’s box. Magic, you know?”

She laughed a little. Her whole body was dreaming of the past. Then her eyes changed again. Her mind came up to their surface, hard and scared. She said in a thinner voice:

“Maybe I shouldn’t have built it up so much. But I still can’t believe he took it. Nick has usually been honest with us.”

“Have you asked him if he took it?”

“No. We haven’t seen him since we got back from the
desert. He has his own apartment near the university, and he’s taking his final exams.”

“I’d like to talk to him, at least get a yes or no. Since he is under suspicion—”

“Just don’t tell him his father suspects him. They’ve been getting along so well these last couple of years, I’d hate to see it spoiled.”

I promised her to be tactful. Without any further persuasion she gave me Nick Chalmers’s phone number and his address in the university community. She wrote them on a slip of paper in a childish unformed hand. Then she glanced at her watch.

“This has taken longer than I thought. My husband will be coming home for lunch.”

She was flushed and brilliant-eyed, as if she was terminating an assignation. She hurried me out to the reception hall, where the dark-suited servant was standing with a blank respectful face. He opened the front door, and Mrs. Chalmers practically pushed me out.

A middle-aged man in a fine tweed suit got out of a black Rolls Royce in front of the house. He crossed the courtyard with a kind of military precision, as if each step he took, each movement of his arms, was separately controlled by orders sent down from on high. The eyes in his lean brown face had a kind of bright blue innocence. The lower part of his face was conventionalized by a square-cut, clipped brown mustache.

His pale gaze drifted past me. “What’s going on here, Irene?”

“Nothing. I mean—” She drew in her breath. “This is the insurance man. He came about the burglary.”

“You sent for him?”

“Yes.” She gave me a shame-faced look. She was lying openly and asking me to go along with it.

“That was rather a silly thing to do,” her husband said. “The Florentine box wasn’t insured, at least not to my knowledge.” He looked at me in polite inquiry.

“No,” I said in a wooden voice.

I was angry with the woman. She had wrecked my rapport with her, and any possible rapport with her husband.

“Then we won’t keep you further,” he said to me. “I apologize for Mrs. Chalmers’s blunder. I’m sorry your time has been wasted.”

Chalmers moved toward me smiling patiently under his mustache. I stepped to one side. He edged past me in the deep doorway, taking care not to brush against me. I was a commoner, and it might be catching.

I stopped at a gas station on the way to the university, and called Nick’s apartment from an outdoor pay phone. A girl’s voice answered:

“Nicholas Chalmers’s residence.”

“Is Mr. Chalmers there?”

“No he is not.” She spoke with a professional lilt. “This is his answering service.”

“How can I get in touch with him? It’s important.”

“I don’t know
where
he is.” An unprofessional note of anxiety had entered her voice. “Is this connected with his missing his exams?”

“It may very well be,” I said in an open-ended way. “Are you a friend of Nick’s?”

“Yes I am. Actually I’m not his answering service. I’m his fiancée.”

“Miss Truttwell?”

“Do I know you?”

“Not yet. Are you in Nick’s apartment?”

“Yes. Are you a counselor?”

“Roughly speaking, yes. My name is Archer. Will you wait there in the apartment for me, Miss Truttwell? And if Nick turns up, will you ask him to wait for me, too?”

She said she would. “I’ll do anything that will help Nick.” The implication seemed to be that he needed all the help he could get.

The university stood on a mesa a few miles out of town, beyond the airport. From a distance its incomplete oval of new buildings looked ancient and mysterious as Stonehenge. It was the third week in January, and I gathered that the midyear exams were in progress. The students I saw as I circled the campus had a driven preoccupied air.

I’d been there before, but not for several years. The student body had multiplied in the meantime, and the community attached to the campus had turned into a city of apartment buildings. It was strange, after Los Angeles, to drive through a city where everyone was young.

Nick lived in a five-storied building which called itself the Cambridge Arms. I rode the self-service elevator to the fifth floor and found the door of his apartment, which was number 51.

The girl opened the door before I knocked. Her eyes flickered when she saw it was only me. She had clean straight yellow hair that brushed the shoulders of her dark slacks suit. She looked about twenty.

“No Nick?” I said.

“I’m afraid not. You’re Mr. Archer?”

“Yes.”

She gave me a quick probing look, and I realized she was older than I’d thought. “Are you really a counselor, Mr. Archer?”