The Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 15 Classic Crime & Mystery Stories
- Автор: Деминг Ричард
- Год: 2015
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- ISBN: 9781479406159
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 15 Classic Crime & Mystery Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
“Seems unlikely,” the sergeant agreed. “I wouldn’t rule out the Coast Highway, though. Be a lot of holiday traffic tonight, and she may have figured it would be faster in the long run than the freeway. It would be if the freeway gets really jammed.”
“Well, can you check both routes?”
“We’ll check all three, just in case she took the Hollywood Freeway for some reason. Give me your phone number and I’ll call you back as soon as there’s news.”
I gave him the number.
After I hung up, I started pacing the room. Mother and Dad sat silently watching me for a time, then Mother went to make more coffee. Dad relit his pipe.
At five of eight I stopped pacing to stare at the phone. At eight I gave a little shudder and went over to the bar to pour myself another shot of brandy. I had a third brandy at eight-fifteen and a fourth at eight-thirty.
The phone rang at a quarter to nine. I caught it in the middle of the first ring.
“Sergeant Johnson here,” the pleasant voice said. “This the doctor or the son?”
“Francis,” I said. “The son. “Well, we found her, and you can stop worrying. Just in the nick of time, though.”
I let out a relieved sigh. Cupping my hand over the phone, I said, “She’s all right.” Then into the phone I said, “Where was she?”
“On the Coast Highway, just pulling into Oxnard. There’s no road divider there, so she could have crashed head-on into somebody if she had fallen asleep driving. It’s blind luck we caught her at the exact moment we did, because it was almost eight when a patrol car pulled her over. The officer was just asking her if she was Ellen Whittier when she fell sound asleep.”
I felt my stomach constrict at the closeness of it. “Where is she?” I asked.
“At St. John’s Hospital in Oxnard.”
“In the hospital!” I said sharply. “I thought you said she was all right.”
“She’s just asleep. Nobody knew whether or not it would be dangerous to wake her, because hypnotism can be pretty tricky stuff. So they just put her in the hospital and let her sleep. Her car is at the Oxnard Police Station.”
“Oh,” I said. “Have her parents been informed?”
“We don’t know who her parents are.”
They wouldn’t, I realized, because all their information about Ellen had come from Dad and me. I said, “I’ll take care of it, then. Thanks a lot, Sergeant.”
“Just a minute,” he said. “I want to talk to your father.”
It developed that what he wanted from Dad was an explanation of just how Ellen’s predicament had come about. Dad gave a detailed account of what had happened. When he hung up, he said with a grin that apparently Sergeant Johnson wanted to make sure it hadn’t been some kind of exotic murder attempt.
I phoned Ellen’s parents to let them know she wouldn’t be there that night. They knew who I was, because Ellen had written about me, even though they were not yet aware that we planned to marry. It took a considerable amount of explaining to convince Ellen’s father that she was unhurt, even though she was in a hospital, but I finally got across to him what had happened. Then I let him talk to Dad, who elaborated on my explanation.
Apparently in answer to a question by Congressman Whittier as to whether Dad thought he and his wife should drive to the hospital, Dad said, “It would be pretty pointless. She’ll wake up as soon as her body has had its normal requirement of sleep. If that is eight hours, she’ll be rising about four in the morning. She has her own car, so she can just drive on. If I were you, I would just sit tight until she arrives, instead of making a useless twenty or thirty-mile trip.”
When he hung up, I said, “Useless or not, I’m driving up to Oxnard.”
Dad regarded me curiously. “Why?”
“So that I can explain to her what happened as soon as she wakes up. I feel responsible for letting Mother hypnotize her.”
A trifle dryly Dad said, “Why don’t you just phone St. John’s Hospital and leave a message asking Ellen to call back as soon as she awakens?”
I felt myself redden slightly. That easy alternative hadn’t even occurred to me. I took the suggestion.
When I hung up after leaving the message, Mother said, “You shouldn’t feel responsibility for what happened, Francis. It was my error. The factor of circadian rhythm should have occurred to me.”
“Yes, I think it should have,” Dad agreed. “We covered it when I taught you hypnotism.”
“That was over twenty years ago,” she protested with a frown. Then she passed a hand over her eyes. “The excitement has me exhausted. Please go home, Philip, because I want to go to bed.”
As soon as Dad left, we both went to bed. Although it was only about ten p.m. in Beverly Hills, according to my circadian rhythm it was one in the morning.
Ellen’s call came at four a.m. local time. As I put the phone to my ear, I heard a click and knew that Mother had lifted her bedside extension phone too.
“Hello?” I said.
“Hi,” Ellen’s voice said in my ear. “You must still be up, you answered so fast.”
“It’s a bedside phone. Are you all right?”
“Just fine. Pretty weird, wasn’t it? The nurses here told me what happened, but I don’t quite understand why it happened.”
“Your body is still on East Coast time. Eleven o’clock there is only eight here.”
“Oh,” she said. “I would never have thought of that.”
“We didn’t either. Mother and I, I mean. Dad did, though, the moment we mentioned it to him. That’s why we set the cops on you. I nearly had heart failure waiting for news. We didn’t even know which route you had taken.”
Ellen said in a surprised voice, “Your mother knew. I told her while we were scraping dishes and putting them in the dishwasher.
I let several seconds tick by in silence before I said, “She must have forgotten. I think she’s listening in. Did you, Mother?”
Several more seconds passed before Mother said apologetically, “I don’t remember it, Ellen. I have an unfortunate habit of sometimes not listening because I’m thinking of something else. Probably I was plotting how to get Francis to take me to church in the morning.”
I am sure Ellen noticed nothing unusual about Mother’s voice, but I could detect the slightest change of inflection in it, and I knew that beneath her forced naturalness she was quaking with terror. She could detect the slightest change of inflection in my voice too, you see.
When Ellen rang off a few moments later, I got up, put on my robe and went down the hall to Mother’s room. When I knocked, she called for me to come in.
She had expected me, because she was seated on the edge of her bed with a robe over her nightgown. Halting in the doorway, I gazed at her steadily. She turned a brittle smile in my direction, but her gaze went past me to the door pushed back against the wall.
I said quietly, “I would hate to lose either my mother or the woman I love. But if I had lost the one, I would have lost both.” Her smile became even more brittle as she concentrated on the door with increased intensity.
“I love you, Mother,” I said. “But in a different way I love Ellen just as much. A man shouldn’t be forced to choose between the two types of love.”
The fixed smile faded and her eyes misted. “Yes, a man,” she said, nearly inaudibly. “No longer a boy.” Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to look at me. “May I have another chance?”
“I told you I love you.”
She nodded. “Thank you, dear. You are very understanding.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Good night.” Actually I was more understanding than she imagined. I could easily have killed her simply by telling her she had lost my love. I am quite sure I would have found her dead in the morning.