For some reason I thought of Chuck Begley's bearded head, with eyes opaque as a statue's. 'When you were talking with Dolly, did she say anything about a man named Begley?'
'Begley?' They looked at each other and then at me. 'Who,' she asked, 'is Begley?'
'It's possible he's her father. At any rate he had something to do with her leaving her husband. Incidentally I wouldn't put too much stock in her husband's Asiatic perversions or whatever it was she accused him of. He's a clean boy, and he respects her.'
'You're entitled to your opinion,' Laura Sutherland said, as though I wasn't. 'But please don't act on it precipitately. Dolly is a sensitive young woman, and something has happened to shake her very deeply. You'll be doing them both a service by keeping them apart.'
'I agree,' Bradshaw said solemnly.
'The trouble is, I'm being paid to bring them together. But I'll think about it, and talk it over with Alex.'
chapter 6
In the parking lot behind the building Professor Helen Haggerty was sitting at the wheel of the new black Thunderbird convertible. She had put the top down and parked it beside my car, as if for contrast. The late afternoon sunlight slanting across the foothills glinted on her hair and eyes and teeth.
'Hello again.'
'Hello again,' I said. 'Are you waiting for me?'
'Only if you're left-handed.'
'I'm ambidextrous.'
'You would be. You threw me a bit of a curve just now.'
'I did?'
'I know who you are.' She patted a folded newspaper on the leather seat beside her. The visible headline said: 'Mrs. Perrine Acquitted.' Helen Haggerty said: 'I think it's very exciting. The paper credits you with getting her off. But it's not quite clear how you did it.'
'I simply told the truth, and evidently the jury believed me. At the time the alleged larceny was committed here in Pacffic Point, I had Mrs. Perrine under close surveillance in Oakland.'
'What for? Another larceny?'
'It wouldn't be fair to say.'
She made a mock-sorrowful mouth, which fitted the lines of her face too well. 'All the interesting facts are confidential. But I happen to be checked out for security. In fact my father is a policeman. So get in and tell me all about Mrs. Perrine.'
'I can't do that.'
'Or I have a better idea,' she said with her bright unnatural smile. 'Why don't you come over to my house for a drink?'
'I'm sorry, I have work to do.'
'Detective work?'
'Call it that.'
'Come _on_.' With a subtle movement, her body joined in the invitation. 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. You don't want to be a dull boy and make me feel rejected. Besides, we have things to talk about.'
'The Perrine case is over. Nothing could interest me less.'
'It was the Dorothy Smith case I had in mind. Isn't that why you're on campus?'
'Who told you that?'
'The grapevine. Colleges have the most marvelously efficient grapevines, second only to penitentiaries.'
'Are you familiar with penitentiaries?'
'Not intimately. But I wasn't lying when I told you my father was a policeman.' A gray pinched expression touched her face. She covered it over with another smile. 'We do have things in common. Why don't you come along?'
'All right. I'll follow you. It will save you driving me back.'
'Wonderful.'
She drove as rapidly as she operated, with a jerky nervousness and a total disregard for the rules of the road. Fortunately the campus was almost empty of cars and people. Diminished by the foothills and by their own long shadows, the buildings resembled a movie lot which had shut down for the night.
She lived back of Foothill Drive in a hillside house made out of aluminum and glass and black enameled steel. The nearest rooftop floated among the scrub oaks a quarter of a mile down the slope. You could stand in the living room by the central fireplace and see the blue mountains rising up on one side, the gray ocean falling away on the other. The offshore fog was pushing in to the land.
'Do you like my little eyrie?'
'Very much,'
'It isn't really mine, alas. I'm only renting at present, though I have hopes. Sit down. What will you drink? I'm going to have a tonic.'
'That will do nicely.'
The polished tile floor was almost bare of furniture. I strolled around the large room, pausing by one of the glass walls to look out. A wild pigeon lay on the patio with its iridescent neck broken. Its faint spreadeagled image outlined in dust showed where it had flown against the glass.
I sat on a rope chair which probably belonged on the patio. Helen Haggerty brought our drinks and disposed herself on a canvas chaise, where the sunlight would catch her hair again, and shine on her polished brown legs.
'I'm really just camping for now,' she said. 'I haven't sent for my furniture, because I don't know if I want it around me any more. I may just leave it in storage and start all over, and to hell with the history. Do you think that's a good idea, Curveball Lefty Lew?'
'Call me anything, I don't mind. I'd have to know the history.'
'Ha. You never will.' She looked at me sternly for a minute, and sipped her drink. 'You might as well call me Helen.'
'All right, Helen.'
'You make it sound so formal. I'm not a formal person, and neither are you. Why should we be formal with each other?'
'You live in a glass house, for one thing,' I said smiling. 'I take it you haven't been in it long.'
'A month. Less than a month. It seems longer. You're the first really interesting man I've met since I arrived here.'
I dodged the compliment. 'Where did you live before?'
'Here and there. There and here. We academic people are such nomads. It doesn't suit me. I'd like to settle down permanently. I'm getting old.'
'It doesn't show.'
'You're being gallant. Old for a woman, I mean. Men never grow old.'
Now that she had me where she apparently wanted me, she wasn't crowding so hard, but she was working. I wished that she would stop, because I liked her. I downed my drink. She brought me a second tonic with all the speed and efficiency of a cocktail waitress. I couldn't get rid of the dismal feeling that each of us was there to use the other.
With the second tonic she let me look down her dress. She was smooth and brown as far as I could see. She arranged herself on the chaise with one hip up, so that I could admire the curve. The sun, in its final yellow fiareup before setting, took possession of the room.
'Shall I pull the drapes?' she said.
'Don't bother for me. It'll be down soon. You were going to tell me about Dolly Kincaid alias Dorothy Smith.'
