Jane answered the bedside phone when it rang at a few minutes beyond eight the next morning. “Hello?” she said after reaching across me to pick up the receiver. “Oh, good morning, Groucho.”
I yawned and sat up.
“Well, there is somebody here sprawled out in the bed beside me,” she was saying. “Hold on a minute and I’ll see if I can identify him.”
I held out my hand for the phone.
She kept it. “Well, it does sort of look like Frank,” she told Groucho. “Okay, I’ll see if he’s in any condition to talk to you.”
I took the receiver. “Hello, Groucho.”
“Let me give you a bit of cautionary advice that may someday save your life, especially if you happen to find yourself lost in the Himalayas,” he said. “Actually, this advice is also good for the Catskills.” He cleared his throat. “That woman you’re cohabiting with is much too flippant. Trade her in for a nice lumbering dimbulb if you want to live a life of serene and—”
“I appreciate your calling me to pass along advice to the lovelorn,” I told him. “Was there any other reason for—”
“Quite obviously her strain of flippancy is of the contagious sort. I’m afraid that I must inform you, young man, that you’ve caught a bad case of it,” observed Groucho. “But, yes, you may rest assured that I have a redeeming social purpose in disturbing you in your little love nest, Rollo.”
“Glad to hear that.”
“I had a late visit from Chico, also known as the fun-loving Rover Boy, last night,” he continued.
“Speaking of visits, Sergeant Branner of the—”
“We’ll get to that in a jiffy,” he said. “Or if all the jiffies are spoken for, we’ll have to travel by huff. Now to the point. I showed Chico the four photos I retained from the batch we got from our photographer chum. I assume, by the way, you haven’t lost the one you took or traded it to the natives for some of those bright colored beads you’re so fond of?”
“I still have it, yes. What does Chico know about Tom Kerry and Babs McLaughlin?”
“Nothing about that swashbuckling hambone,” said Groucho. “But Chico pointed out something that I, being a studious follower of the local yellow press, should have recalled reading. There were stories, albeit small ones stuck in the back pages, about Mrs. McLaughlin in the papers a few weeks back.”
“What sort of stories?”
“She’s missing.”
“Missing?”
“According to the reports that I unearthed out of the bundle of old newspapers I keep in the garage, Babs McLaughlin drove alone down to a small hideaway house she and her husband own down in Baja near Ensenada.”
“Are we talking about the same weekend we know she was with Tom Kerry?”
“Precisely.” I could hear Groucho taking a puff of his cigar. “She was seen in Ensenada on that Friday evening. But after that she seems to have vanished, along with her car. There are no servants at the little place down there and nobody who has any idea where she got to. She simply never came back.”
“Have there been any follow-up stories?”
“Both your alma mater, the Times, and Mr. Hearst’s rag, had small items two days ago to the effect that Babs McLaughlin remains among the missing,” he said. “And the law isn’t even bothering to pretend that they know where she might be.”
“She must’ve left Ensenada that Friday and driven somewhere to meet Kerry.”
“That’s my notion. And those pictures with him surely weren’t taken anywhere near Baja,” he said. “So what we have to find out is where that rendezvous took place and why in the hell Peg was anywhere nearby.”
“I’ve met Benton McLaughlin,” I reminded him. “I can try to contact him and see if he—”
“No, let’s hold off on that,” suggested Groucho. “I’m going to check with the few reliable people I know at MGM, where McLaughlin toils as a writer, and see if I can gather any information obliquely and subtly. I’ll give you another call toward sundown. Now what about your run-in with the minions of the law?”
“One minion,” I corrected and told him about Sergeant Branner’s visit.
“We must be on the right trail,” said Groucho when I’d finished. “Otherwise he wouldn’t be threatening you.”
“I’d be a lot happier if I knew where the trail is leading.”
“Well, just keep in mind that if you have sufficient pluck and luck then you’re bound to win and that if you keep your eye on the bluebird you’ll discover that every cloud has a silver lining, except on Tuesdays when we close early.” He hung up.
* * *
“I know where that is,” said Jane.
We were having breakfast and I had showed her the snapshot Peg McMorrow had taken of Tom Kerry and Babs McLaughlin arguing beside a woodland lake.
“Where?”
She held up the photo, pointing to the tiny images of cabins on the far shore of the lake. “These are part of Shadow Lodge. The cabins are to the left of the lodge itself,” she explained. “The place is on Lake Sombra, which is up in Northern California about twenty miles or so from Lake Tahoe.”
“Never heard of it.”
She placed the photo on the checkered oilcloth. “Well, Shadow Lodge doesn’t advertise, Frank,” she said. “It’s the sort of place you go when you don’t want to be noticed.”
“Exactly what Kerry would pick for spending a weekend with somebody else’s wife.” I retrieved the photo and took another look at it. “Wonder what they were squabbling about?”
“Maybe just a lovers’ quarrel.”
As I slid the snap into my shirt pocket, an unpleasant thought hit me. I kept it to myself, but my face apparently gave me away.
Jane said quietly, “You’re probably also wondering how come I know about the place.”
“No, what you did before we met isn’t—” I stopped talking, took a deep breath. “That sounds pretty damn patronizing, doesn’t it? Actually, yes, I am feeling jealous. Even though you were there, if you were there at all, long before we even knew each other.”
“I was there. Nearly two years ago,” she said. “And, no, it wasn’t with Rod Tommerlin.”
“I didn’t think it was.”
“I went there, and probably stayed in one of those cabins you can see in the picture, with a man who couldn’t risk being seen openly with me,” Jane told me. “My only excuse is that I was much dippier then than I am now. But, since you haven’t much to compare it with, you may think I’m pretty thoroughly dippy right now.”
Grinning, I reached across and took hold of her hand. “Why, missy, you’re hardly dippy at all,” I assured her. “And me and all the wranglers are right fond of you.”
“You and Groucho,” she said. “Making jokes about things that hurt you.”
“Okay, and now I’ll return to being the detached reporter I was trained to be,” I said.
“Knowing where Peg was that weekend ought to help you,” she said.
“Yeah, but it also brings up a lot more questions that have to be answered,” I said.