This course of inquiry was rapidly proving fruitless. Sanderson was clearly too clever not to cover his tracks. He could be long gone by now—could be in Boston, or Miami, or Chicago, or anywhere else in the country or the world.
I needed to get in touch with someone who actually knew Sanderson, and knew something about his operation. And the person at the moment who fitted that bill, aside from Vance himself, was William Grabhorn.
I called Vance at his uncle’s apartment.
“Tell me something about Grabhorn. How did he come into the picture?”
I could hear Vance choking or sputtering. I had already gotten the feeling, from his earlier account, that he didn’t care much from Grabhorn—that he perhaps held him directly or indirectly responsible for what happened to his wife. I wasn’t far wrong.
“That two-bit Freud! If I could only get my hands around his neck....” More sputtering.
“Settle down, Vance. This is not helping. Tell me anything you know about him. How long had Katharine been seeing him?”
“God, it must have been about two years before her...you know.... It started just after her father...died. I never met the fellow more than once or twice, but I never liked him.”
“Why?”
He seemed to have difficulty with that question. “I just don’t know—you’ll probably think it’s my imagination, or because of what happened later.... But he—he just seemed—” Vance could say no more.
“A quack?” I supplied.
“No, not exactly that.” Vance was calming down a bit. “I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t like Katharine seeing him. I didn’t think she really needed it. Or maybe”—his voice suddenly got eager, as if he had come up with an inspiration—“maybe it’s because she actually seemed dependent on him. I remember now once suggesting—just suggesting, mind you!—that she stop seeing him, and she went into such a tantrum.... It was awful....”
“How did she come upon him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess he was pretty well-known as an analyst who specialized in cases of depression. And of course he wasn’t cheap. His clientele was pretty rarefied. He wasn’t going hungry, I can tell you that.” Vance’s tone was getting rather snide.
“Did he seem to be helping Katharine at all?”
“Oh, I guess so”—grudgingly. “It was up and down. I’ll have to confess that he did seem to help her at the beginning—I think she was more suicidal then than she ever had been before...until the end.” A hard swallow. “But after a few months I really couldn’t see much improvement—not consistently, anyway. I think going to him just became kind of a habit for her—almost like a drug.”
“But she liked him—she wanted to keep on seeing him?”
“Yes”—very grudgingly. “Yes, she did.”
After a pause: “Can you take me to him?”
Vance seemed confused for a moment. “What do you mean? Now? You want to see him now?”
Patiently: “Yes, I think it would be a good idea to go to Los Angeles and talk with him. And, if you don’t mind, can we take a plane? It will be a bit faster than the train.”
Vance replied bitterly: “Mr. Scintilla, I don’t think I ever want to ride a Pullman again as long as I live.”
* * * *
The ride on American Airlines from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn was a three-legged journey, the plane having to refuel in Chicago and Omaha. Landing late in the afternoon at Los Angeles International Airport, we were promptly picked up by the Vances’ chauffeur—a lean young man whom Vance didn’t bother to introduce to me, but whom he addressed as Jackson—and were on our way to the family home in San Marino.
I had never been in L.A., and hadn’t been in California since I’d tagged along with Henry Mencken on his 1920 visit to San Francisco to cover the Democratic National Convention, and to booze it up with that old reprobate George Sterling. As an Easterner, I found the landscape bemusing. Palm trees in the heart of a city are nice if you like that sort of thing; but what struck me most about Los Angeles—aside from the subtropical weather and the architecture it engendered—was, first, its newness compared with the centuries-old East, and, second, its fundamental lack of focus. Maybe I was too used to New York, where development was upward rather than outward; but this grotesque sprawl didn’t seem unified. It didn’t hang together. It was just a sprinkle of juxtaposed communities, each aggressively preserving its own character.
Things changed a bit when we crossed an open patch of ground next to Griffith Park and entered the small, tightly knit community of San Marino. I laughed to myself at the choice of this place for the Vances’ residence. No doubt they chose it because of its exclusivity—only the very rich allowed—but I knew that the town had been established only a few decades ago by Henry E. Huntington, Collis’s nephew, and there was a rich irony in the fact that Henry Vance, who had bamboozled the Huntington heirs over the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, decided to plant his roots right in their back yard. We drove by the stately museum, library, and botanical gardens on Oxford Street that Henry Huntington had endowed, and not long afterward turned into an immense driveway whose curving, tree-lined path nearly concealed the towering mansion resting importantly at the end of it.
More servants greeted us, quietly and efficiently attending to our bags. Arthur Vance walked right in; only a quick turn of the head indicated that I was to follow. Inside was all elegance—a little overdone, perhaps, and a hodgepodge of architecture, furniture, and ornament, but not quite as tasteless as some of the (very few) New York millionaires’ homes I’d been granted the privilege to enter.
I met Mrs. Vance, a very proper, colorless woman who regarded me with a kind of mingled apprehension and distaste, as if it were somehow disreputable for a family of their stature to hire a private detective. Arthur had, of course, notified her of my arrival, and his story was not far from the truth: he claimed that he had found some leads on Katharine’s whereabouts and had called in a professional to help on the job. I couldn’t tell whether Mrs. Vance really wanted her daughter-in-law found or not; perhaps it was also disreputable for a member of her family, even one only connected by marriage, to have disappeared.
Mrs. Hawley, Katharine’s mother, was not present, and somewhat to my surprise I never saw her during my entire stay with the Vances. Arthur explained that her disappointment at not hearing from her daughter had so embittered her that she had lapsed into a kind of depression herself, and was unlikely to be of much help. He had not told her of his suspicions that Katharine might still be alive, lest he get her hopes up only to have them dashed if nothing was found.
Dinner was a quiet, somber affair. Service was only for three: Henry Vance was, inevitably, away on a business trip. Arthur himself seemed to want to get the meal over quickly, and excused us as soon as tact allowed.
“What now, Scintilla?” he asked when we had settled into an upstairs study.
“We should get to work right away. Of course, there’s nothing to be done to-night. But I presume you have a phone number and address for Dr. Grabhorn’s office?”
“Yes, of course.” He had come prepared, and handed me Grabhorn’s business card: 1633 Wilshire Boulevard, EXposition 2171. Vance told me the place was near Beverly Hills. I wasn’t surprised, given what he had told me about the economic status of Grabhorn’s clientele.
“When was the last time you tried to reach him?” I said.
“By