LA17 - Sleeping Beauty by Ross Macdonald

Author:Ross Macdonald
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

chapter 25

When I passed Sandhill Lake on my way north, it was swarming with uniforms. It looked like the scene of the annual picnic of the Sheriff’s Officers’ Benevolent Association. I didn’t stop. I would have had to tell them about Harold Sherry.

I drove directly to Seahorse Lane and found Elizabeth alone in what appeared to be an empty house. She greeted me without warmth and led me in silence into the big front room. Its front windows were now heavily smeared with oil. Through them I could see that the receding tide had left the beach dark and glistening, as if it had been covered with black oilcloth.

“Where have you been?” Her tone was faintly accusatory.

“El Rancho.”

“You chose a strange time to go there.”

“It paid off, though not in the way I expected. Is your mother here?”

“She’s in her room. Mother is quite upset.”

“About Jack?”

“It’s naturally hit her very hard. And now Tony Lashman is missing. It makes me wonder if he isn’t involved in what’s happened to Laurel. Mother must be having the same idea.”

“How did he leave?”

“Apparently he just walked away down the beach. He has no car.”

“Where are the others?”

“My husband took Marian to the hospital, to be with Jack.”

“How is your brother?”

“He’s surviving, that’s all I know.” She gave me a long cold look. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you were doing when Jack was shot.”

The angry feeling in her voice was more pronounced. It seemed to be directed against the world and against me as its representative. The change I sensed in her probably reflected a change in her entire family. One of them had been taken, and one wounded, and they felt under siege.

“I saw what happened at Sandhill Lake from a distance.” I explained to Elizabeth how that was. “I didn’t actually witness the shooting of your brother but I’m reasonably sure who did it.” I got the photo of Harold out of my inside pocket. “Do you recognize him?”

She held the picture close to one of the smeared windows. “It’s Harold Sherry, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I knew he was up to something. He came out to my house in Bel-Air and did some pretty wild talking.”

“When was that?”

“Just last week.”

“And what did he say, exactly?”

“I prefer not to tell you.”

“I would prefer not to be here at all.”

I realized as I said it that I was angry with her now, furiously angry in a quiet way. We had been intimate the night before, not only in the physical sense. But the morning and the afternoon had carried us far apart, and we seemed to blame each other for the distance.

“You’re perfectly free to leave,” she said.

“I didn’t mean that.”

“But I did.”

I sat down facing her. “We’re both under strain. We both want to get Laurel back. That’s the main thing, isn’t it?”

She took a deep breath. “I suppose you’re right. But where is she?”

“I’m reasonably sure that Harold knows.”

“Then where is Harold?”

“That’s the question. The things he said to you might bear on it.

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