Aragon spent the rest of the day at the public library and in the microfilm department of the local newspaper. Hilton Wilmington Jasper was listed as an oil executive and a bank director, born in Los Angeles to Elliot and Lavinia Jasper, a graduate of Cal Tech in Pasadena, married to Frieda Grant, one son, Edward.
The same reference volume listed Peter Norman Whitfield, philanthropist, graduate of Princeton, married five times, one son, Donald Norman Whitfield, and a daughter, deceased.
Ted Jasper was found among the seniors of an old Santa Felicia high school yearbook. The picture showed a smiling blond youth whose sports were listed as tennis and soccer, hobby as girls, and ambition, to attend Cal Poly and become a veterinarian. A current Cal Poly student directory gave his address as 207 Almond Street. When Aragon called the number listed he was told Ted had gone home on the semester break.
An educational journal rated Holbrook Hall as a superior facility for exceptional students. Both boarding and day arrangements. Fees high. Well endowed, established 1951.
No information was available on Roger Lennard.
After a T. V. dinner and a bottle of beer Aragon phoned his wife. She was a doctor specializing in pediatrics and completing her residency requirements at a hospital in San Francisco. It wasn’t an ideal arrangement for a marriage, but it was working and it wouldn’t last forever. They planned on living together in Santa Felicia within a year.
Laurie sounded tired but cheerful. “I’m so glad you called, Tom. I get sick of kids. I want to talk to a nice sensible adult.”
“What’s this, my dedicated wife sick of kids?”
“I’m entitled to a moment of undedication now and then. How about you?”
“Smedler is working in mysterious ways again. I’m expected to track down a runaway retarded girl who maybe isn’t so retarded and maybe didn’t run away. I have a hunch she might have been coaxed, possibly promised something. She’s not a girl, either. She’s twenty-two.”
“That’s a bit old for a runaway.”
“She doesn’t look her age.”
“You know her?”
“I met her once.”
“Pretty?”
“Very.”
“That complicates matters.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“A lot of runaways are picked up while trying to hitchhike. We get quite a few in here. They don’t always come out. How are her parents taking it?”
“Coolly. They’re both dead. She was raised by a brother at least twenty years older. He’s the one who commissioned me to look for her.”
“Commissioned? That sounds lucrative.”
“Two weeks’ pay in advance. More later, perhaps. Very perhaps.”
“You don’t have a contract?”
“No.”
“Really, Tom, who’s the lawyer in this family? You should have a contract.”
“I don’t think Mr. Jasper expects much from me. And he’s not the type to pay for what he doesn’t get. No little sister, no big bucks.”
“How come you bought a deal like that?”
“I didn’t buy it. I was sold . . . Laurie, why do we have to spend all our time talking about other people when we have so much to say about just the two of us?”
“You started it.”
“I had all these great things I was going to say to you—”
“Well, it’s too late now. Someone wants me in the operating room.”
“I want you in the operating room,” Aragon said. “Or any other room.”
“I love you, too. Bye.”
“Laurie—”
But she’d hung up, and he swallowed all the great things he had to say to her with the aid of another bottle of beer. Then he called Charity Nelson at her apartment on the West Side. When she answered the phone there were loud staccato noises in the background.
“Hello. I’m too busy to talk. Call back.”
“What’s all the hubbub?”
“I’m watching an educational program.”
“It sounds more like a shoot-em-up western.”
“All right.” She turned down the sound. “What do you want?”
“Is there any connection between Smedler and Mr. Jasper?”
“How would I know?”
“I have a notion you might have looked it up.”
“Of course I looked it up. They’re not friends really but they both belong to the Forum Club and serve on a couple of the same boards of directors, the Music Academy and Holbrook Hall. And they have this bond between them that rich men develop—you put your money in my bank and I’ll buy stock in your copper mine. It’s a great system if you own a bank or a copper mine. The best way to get rich is to start rich.”
“Don’t let it depress you,” Aragon said. “Go back to your shoot-em-up.”
“If I had a million dollars—”
“You’d blow it.”
“By God, I believe you’re right,” she said thoughtfully. “But what a blow, junior, what a blow.”
“Am I invited?”
“I’ll consider it. First, I’d buy me a racehorse. Not one of your ordinary nags but a real thoroughbred with class and guts and stamina. Boy, he’d leap out of that starting gate like a bullet.”
“There goes your million.”
“You’re a wet blanket, junior, a killjoy, a—”
“Okay, okay, with my million I’ll buy a house in the country where you can keep the horse between races.”
“Do you know anything about feeding horses?”
“I thought they fed themselves.”
“You’re not taking me seriously, junior. Go to bed and have a nightmare.”
He went to bed. If he had a nightmare he couldn’t remember it when he woke the next morning to the ringing of the phone. A woman identifying herself as Frieda Jasper spoke in a sharp, brittle voice. Making no apology for the earliness of the hour and giving no reason, she asked him to come immediately to 1200 Via Vista.