True-Life Adventure

upset. She was curled up on her brown velvet sofa, Spot on her chest and a book in her hand, the very picture of serenity. Her rose caftan had crept up, revealing a pair of the prettiest calves in San Francisco. Every time I saw these legs I had trouble breathing right.
    She got up and kissed me lazily and didn’t ask why I was so late, but of course I could hardly wait to tell her. I did it while we put together a late supper of leftovers from Sardis’s opus of the night before.
    In fact, I caught her up on everything, including the burglary and my date with Marilyn. We chewed it all over, but didn’t come up with much. At that point there was only one thing to come up with, really— the whereabouts of Lindsay Hearne.
    “You know her,” I said. “Think. Where would she go? What would be in character?”
    “It’s not in character for her to commit kidnap in the first place. Or for that matter to want to be with Terry, particularly.”
    “Terry’s dying.”
    “Okay, that means she feels guilty and maybe maternal. The Lindsay I know is nothing like that.”
    “Dammit! Okay. Suppose it were you. What would you do?”
    “I don’t know. I guess I’d be thinking about trying to get Terry well. I’d probably try a cancer quack.”
    “But she didn’t. So assume she doesn’t believe Terry can get better. She’s actually accepted the fact that she’s dying.”
    Sardis shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’d want her to have a good time the last few months of her life. I’d try to give her everything she wasn’t going to get later. Just a real good time, that’s all. Like that TV show— Run for Your Life .”
    I stared at her. In awe. “Disneyland,” I said.
    “Sure, why not?”
    “It was there all the time. So obvious.”
    “What?”
    “Lindsay even said it to Marilyn— she said she wanted to spend some time with her, to take her to Disneyland, things like that. That’s probably exactly what she wanted.”
    “Wait a minute. I thought she wanted to get Terry away from Jacob, who was endangering her health.”
    “I think she did. I think that’s why she snatched her. But suppose she hadn’t had to snatch her. Suppose Jacob had just said, ‘Okay, Lindsay, take her for a while. Have a good time.’ Then she would have taken her traveling, right? So just because she snatched her is no reason not to do what she would have done anyway.”
    “It would be safer, even,” said Sardis, getting into the spirit. “Because she’d be constantly moving. No one would know where to look because by the time they looked there, she’d be gone.”
    “Sure. Disneyland, first stop, maybe. Or maybe somewhere else first, since she mentioned Disneyland to Marilyn. Where else would you go?”
    “The Grand Canyon.”
    “Absolutely. Glacier National Park. Yellowstone.”
    “A mule ride on Molokai.”
    “A dude ranch.”
    “Skating at Rockefeller Center.”
    “Lots of things in New York— the Empire State Building, Radio City Music Hall.”
    “Europe, do you think? India? The Taj Mahal?”
    I thought about it. “No. I doubt Terry has a passport, for one thing, and if they applied for one, they might get picked up. For another thing, I don’t think Lindsay would want to go too far from UC Medical Center and Dr. Rumler. Terry’s not going to stay in remission forever, and I suppose she could become very ill very suddenly. Lindsay wouldn’t want to risk being in a strange place.”
    “So all we have to do is comb this country.”
    “Oh, God!” I said despairingly. “They could be traveling under new names; they could have changed their appearance— God knows what they might have done.”
    “So where do we start?”
    I thought about it. “I’m damned if I know. We could ask park rangers if they’ve seen them, I guess.”
    “Oh, come on.”
    “Well, I know there’s a better way. I just haven’t thought of it yet.”
    “Why don’t we sleep on it?”
    “Sleep on it?” Sardis had just thrown another puzzling element into the bubbling brew I already had in my head.
    “Yeah. Sleep on it. You know.” She made a pillow out of her hands and put her head on it.
    “I don’t think so. I’m not tired.”
    Only exhausted. For some reason I just didn’t want to get in bed with Sardis right then.
    “Okay,” she said. “You mull it, Marlowe. Good night.”
    I mulled it for a while, but I couldn’t get anywhere. I followed her to bed and she rolled into my arms: “Want me to rub your