“Now. Gaines registered at Buenavista College last September. That means they’ll have his high-school transcript.”
“They don’t, though. Wills was there this morning. Gaines registered provisionally, without a transcript. He said it would be along any day, but it never arrived. So they kicked him out.”
“What was he going to study?”
“Theater arts,” Reach said. “He’s an actor, all right.”
chapter 12
“HE TOLD ME HE ALWAYS wanted to be an actor,” Ella said. “Something big, but mainly an actor. I guess he’d make a good one.”
Her tone was sardonic. She was finding her armor, hardening her personality against life in jail. Her eyes were sharp as the edges of broken dreams.
“Why do you say that?”
“Look how he took me in. The great lover. When he gave me that diamond ring, that watch, I thought he’d bought them for me. Honest to God.”
“I believe you.”
“Nobody else around here does. Even the other girls think I’m holding out. They keep asking me questions about Larry, like I was really close to him, and knew all about him. I been asked so many questions, my head spins. I wake up in the middle of the night, and hear voices asking me questions. I’m going to go nuts if I don’t get out of here.”
“If we can get our hands on Gaines, it’s going to help you.”
“Where is he?”
“That’s the question. It’s why I’m bothering you again.”
“You’re not bothering me. It’s nice to see a friendly face, somebody I can talk to. I don’t mean to be snippy about the other girls, but they’re not my type at all. You ought to hear the way they talk about
“It’ll all wash out of your mind when you get out of here. You’re a nurse. Think of it as a sickness you have to go through.”
“I’ll try.”
I waited a minute, while her face composed itself. Outside the barred window the courthouse tower was stark white in the morning sun. On the balcony that encircled it, below the clock, a pair of tourists were looking out over the city. They leaned on the iron railing, a young man, and a young woman in a light blue dress and hat. It was the kind of dress and hat brides wore on honeymoons.
Ella had followed my look. “Lucky people.”
“You’ll be free soon. Your luck is all ahead of you.”
“Let’s hope so. You’re nice to me, Mr. Gunnarson. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.” She gave me a dim smile, her first.
“You should smile more often. Your smile is your best feature.”
It was a broad compliment, but not too broad for the occasion. She really smiled this time, and dropped five years. “Thank you, sir.”
“Getting back to Gaines, if you can bear to-did he talk much about acting?”
“No, just once or twice. He mentioned that he did some acting.”
“Where?”
“I think in high school.”
“Did he say where he went to high school? Think hard.”
Dutifully, she wrinkled up her forehead. “No,” she said after a pause, “he never mentioned that. He never told me anything about his past life.”
“Did he talk about his friends?”
“Just Broadman. He thought Broadman was a slob.”
“Did he ever say anything about actors or actresses?”
“No. He never even took me to the movies.” She added bitterly: “I guess he was saving his money for the blonde.”
“What blonde do you mean?”
“The one I caught him with, out in the canyon. I guess he was going with her all the time.”
“All what time?”
“When I thought he was my boy-friend, and maybe we’d get married, and everything. It’s really her he was interested in, probably.”
“What makes you think so?”
“What she said.”
“I didn’t know you ever talked to her. How often did you see her?”
“Only the once-the time I told you about. When she was sitting there in Larry’s kimono. I remember exactly what she said, it made me feel so small. She laughed at me, and she said: ‘You little tomcat’-talking to Larry-‘have you been playing games behind my back?’ She said: ‘I’m not flattered by your choice of a-choice of a substitute,’ something like that.”
A slow blush mounted from Ella’s neck to her cheeks. It softened her mouth, and then her eyes. She said in an unsteady voice that ranged up and down the register: “God, I made a fool of myself with that Gaines, didn’t I?”
“Everybody’s entitled to one big mistake. You could have come out of it worse.”
“Yeah, if he really had married me. I see that now. And you know, what you were saying about a sickness, it applies to me and him. He was like a sickness I had-a sickness pretending to be something else. All my dreams coming true in one handsome package. I knew it couldn’t be real, I just wanted it to be, so bad.”
“Did he ever give you presents, besides the watch and the ring?”
“No. He gave me flowers once. One flower, a gardenia. He said that it would be our flower. That was the night he let me in on the big robbery plan. Thank God I didn’t go for that, anyway.”
“Do you have anything of his? Clothes, for example, that he may have left with you?”
“What do you think I am? He never took off his clothes in
“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything wrong, Miss Barker. I thought you might have something personal of his. Some keepsake.”
“No, all I had was the ring, and I sold that. I forgot about the watch.” She wrinkled up her brow again. “There’s something else I forgot. It doesn’t have any value, though. It’s just an old sharkskin wallet.”
“Larry’s wallet?”
“Yeah. I noticed one night when I gave him my picture-one of those wallet-sized pictures. I noticed that his wallet was all worn out. So I went downtown next day and bought him a new one, an alligator wallet. It cost me twenty dollars, with the tax. I gave it to him next time I saw him. He liked it. He took all his money and stuff out of the old one, and he was going to throw the old one away. I wouldn’t let him.”
“Did he leave anything in the wallet?”
“I don’t think so. But wait a minute. There was a piece of paper in the back compartment-something cut out of a newspaper.”
“What newspaper?”
“It didn’t say. It was just a piece cut out of the middle of a page.”
“What was the piece about?”
“A show, some kind of a show. I think it was a school play.”
“Did you ever ask Larry about it?”
“No. He would have thought I was silly, keeping it.”
“You kept the clipping?”
“Yeah, I tucked it back inside and kept it. You’d think it was money or something. How silly can a girl
