The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

by John D. MacDonald

  After endless toothbrushing and a shower that did no good I phoned the Fort Courtney Police Department and left word for Stanger that I had called.

  My breakfast had just been served when he settled into the chair across the table from me and told the waitress to bring him some hot tea.

  “You look poorly, McGee.”

  “Slept poorly, feel poorly.”

  “That’s my story, every morning of my life. You get yourself a swing and a miss with Janice Holton?”

  “They took the trip to Vero Beach together. And you could confirm it by finding out who she left the kids with, an old friend twenty miles from here, in the direction of Vero Beach. And Holton is serious about believing somebody killed Dr. Sherman. The Holton marriage has bombed out. She knew about the nurse. She’s going through the motions for the sake of the kids until she can find some way to land on her feet. And I think she will, sooner or later.”

  He blew on his hot tea and took a sip and stared at me and shook his head slowly. “Now, aren’t you the one! By God, she cozies up pretty good to some damned insurance investigator.”

  “I didn’t have to use it. You gave me a better approach.”

  He aimed his little dusty brown eyes at me. “I did?”

  I put my fork down and smiled across at him. “Yes, indeed you did, you silly half-ass fumbling excuse for a cop.”

  “Now, don’t you get your——”

  “You knew Holton was screwing her, Stanger. You knew that the note you found made it clear to anybody who can read simple words that she and I had something going for us. So what did you think Holton would do after he saw the note or a copy of it? Chuckle and say, Well, well, well, how about that? You probably know even that the ex-assistant state attorney carries a gun. But did you make any effort to tip me so I wouldn’t get shot? Not good old Stanger, the lawman. Thanks, Stanger. Anytime I can do any little thing for you, look me up.”

  “Now, wait a minute, goddamn it! What makes you think he read the note?”

  “Some direct quotes sort of stuck in his mind. He recited them.”

  He drank more of his tea. He found a third of a cigar on his person, thumbnailed the remains of the ash off it, held a match to it.

  “He try to use the gun?”

  “He didn’t get the chance. I was tipped. I found him staked out and waiting, so I sneaked up on him and took it away. I don’t know whether he was going to use it or not. Give him the benefit of the argument and say he wouldn’t. He knew I hadn’t put the shears in her neck. He knew I was cleared of that. Let’s say he resented the rest of it, though. Incidentally, I gave the gun to his wife and she seemed to think it would be a good idea to tuck it away. Maybe there shouldn’t be a gun in that happy household.”

  “So you took the gun away from him and?”

  “I yanked his legs out from under him to get it. Then I had to trip him onto his face, and then I had to block him and somersault him onto his back. The last one took it out of him. He’d been drinking. It made him sick. I drove him home in his car. We became dear old buddies somehow. Drunks are changeable. He was passed out by the time I got him home. I helped get him to bed. She had a neighbor watch the kids while she drove me back. She’s known about the affair since it started. He sleeps in the guest room. I like her.”

  He held up the hand with the cigar in it. He held it up, palm toward me, and said, “I swear on the grave of my dear old mother who loved me so much she didn’t even mind me becoming a cop that I just can’t figure out how the hell Rick Holton got hold of that note. Look, as an ex-prosecutor he’s got a little leverage. Not too much but some. I think he would know where to look, who to bug, if he knew there was a note. But how could he know? Look, now. The Woertz woman knew because she wrote it. I knew because I found it. Jackass Nudenbarger knew because he was with me when I found it. You knew because I read it to you. And down at the store, two men. Tad Unger did the lab work and made photocopies. Bill Samuels acts as a sort of clerk-coordinator. He sets up the file and keeps it neat and tidy and complete to turn over to the state attorney if need be. He protects the chain of evidence, makes the autopsy request, and so on.”

  Had I thought for a moment, I would have realized there had to be an autopsy. They would want to know if a murdered unmarried woman was pregnant, if there was any sign of a blow that had not left any surface bruises, contusions, or abrasions, if she was under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, if she had been raped or had had intercourse recently enough to be able to type the semen. And the painstaking, inch-by-inch examination of the epidermis would disclose any scratches, puncture wounds, minor bruises, bite marks. And there would be a chemical analysis of the contents of the stomach, as death stops the normal digestive processes.

  “You all right?” Stanger asked softly.

  “I’m just perfect. When did they do the autopsy?”

  “They must have been starting on it when I was talking to you in your room Saturday night.”

  “And those two men, Unger and …”

  “Samuels.”

  “They wouldn’t volunteer any information about the note?”

  “Hell no. The days of volunteering any information to anybody about anything are long gone. Order yourself more coffee. Don’t go away. Be right back.”

  It took him ten minutes. He sat down wearily, mopped his forehead on a soiled handkerchief. “Well, Bill Samuels was off yesterday and Holton came in about eleven in the morning. A clerk named Foster was on duty and Holton told him that the state attorney, Ben Gaffner, had asked him to take a look at the note that had been found in the Woertz girl’s apartment. So Foster unlocked the file and let him read the photocopy. It still doesn’t answer the question.”

  “Can I give it a try?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Would Holton know you were on the case?”

  “Sure.”

  “Would he know he wouldn’t be able to get much out of you?”

  “He’d know that.”

  “Would he know who’s working with you?”

  “I guess he’d know … Oh, goddamn that motor-sickel idiot!”

  He told me that as long as I’d had the grief of it, I might as well have the pleasure of seeing the chewing process. I signed the check for my breakfast and his tea and followed him out.

  The car was parked in the shade. Nudenbarger, now in a sport shirt with green and white vertical stripes, was leaning against it smiling and talking to a pair of brown hefty little teenage girls in shorts. He saw us coming and said something. The kids turned and looked at us, then walked slowly away, looking back from time to time.

  “All set?” he asked, opening the car door.

  Stanger kicked it shut. “Maybe on the side you could rent that mouth. People could store stuff in it. Bicycles, broken rocking chairs, footlockers. Nice little income on the side.”

  “Now just a minute, Al, I—”

  “Shut up. Close that big empty stupid cave fastened to the front of your stupid face, Nudenbarger. Stop holding the car up. I just want to know how stupid you are. Every day you become the new world’s champion stupid. How did you get mousetrapped into talking about the note the nurse left?”

  “Mousetrapped? I wasn’t mousetrapped.”

  “But you talked about it, didn’t you?”

  “Well … as a matter of fact—”

  “After I told you you had never heard of any note?”

  “But this was different, Al.”

  “He just walked up and asked you what we found in the apartment?”

  “No. What he said was that he was upset about her being killed. He was out to the place real early yesterday. I’d just got up and I was walking around calling the dog. He said he and his wife were very fond of her and grateful to her. He said he didn’t want to get out of line or step on any toes, but he wondered if maybe outside investigators ought to be brought in, and he thought he might be able to arrange it. Al, I know how you feel about anything like that, so I told him it l
ooked like we could make it. He asked if we had much of anything to go on, and I said we had that note and told him what I could remember of it and said that the fellow she wrote it to, meaning you, McGee, had checked out okay.”

  “What kept you from falling down laughing?”

  “About what, Al?”

  “That line about him and his wife being fond of the little nurse. And grateful to her? Jesus!”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Why in the world would Janice Holton be grateful to Penny Woertz?”

  “Who said anything about Janice Holton?”

  “Didn’t you say Holton told you that—”

  “Holton! It was Mr. Tom Pike that stopped at the place. I haven’t said one damned word to Mr. Holton. Mr. Tom Pike only had a couple of minutes. He was on his way to the airport and he was taking the shortcut, the back road past my place, and saw me and stopped because, like he said, he was upset about the girl getting killed. Now you agree it was different? Do you?”

  The anger sagged out of Stanger. “Okay. It was different. He’s the kind of guy who’d want to help any way he can. And the nurse helped take care of Mrs. Pike. Now, dammit, Lew, did you say one word to anybody else about any note?”

  “Never did. Not once. And I won’t, Al.”

  “You shouldn’t have told Pike either.”

  Stanger turned to me. “Back where we started. Look, I’ll get it out of Holton and if I think you ought to know, I’ll let you know, McGee.”

  I motioned to him and took him out of earshot of Nudenbarger. “Any more little errands on the side, as long as I’m stuck here?”

  He scowled, spat, scuffed his foot. “I’ve got men ringing every doorbell in the whole area around that Ridge Lane place. Somebody had to arrive and kill her and leave in broad daylight. Somebody had to see something on Saturday afternoon. I’ve got men going through the office files of Doc Sherman that went into storage when he died, and the files that were taken over by the doctor who took over Sherman’s practice, Dr. John Wayne. Hell of a name, eh? Little fat fellow. Sherman treated some crazies when he was researching barbiturate addiction. So we don’t want to rule out the chance of an ex-patient going after the office nurse. She’d been working as a special-duty nurse, so I got hold of the list of patients she took care of ever since the doctor died, and we’re going through those. On top of that I’ve got a good man digging into her private life, every damned thing he can find, the ex-husband, previous boyfriends. Nothing was stolen from the apartment. She lived alone. Those are good solid front doors and good locks on the kitchen doors. I think she would have to know somebody to let them in. No sign of forcible entry. From the condition of the bed, she was sleeping and got up and put the robe on and let somebody in. No makeup. A man or woman could have shoved those shears into her throat. We’ve got a blood pattern, a spatter pattern. Whoever did it could have gotten some on them from the knees down. To reconstruct it, she put both hands to her throat, staggered back, fell to her knees, then rolled over onto her back. She hadn’t been sexually molested. There were indications she’d had intercourse within from four to six hours from the time of death. She wasn’t pregnant. She was going to start her period in about three days. She had a slightly sprained ankle, based on some edema and discoloration. There was a small contusion just above the hairline at the center of her forehead and a contusion on her right knee, but these three injuries had occurred a considerable time before death. We’re processing a court order to get into her checking account records and her safety deposit box. Now if you can come up with something I just haven’t happened to think of, McGee …”

  It was a challenge, of course. And I was supposed to be overwhelmed by the diligence and thoroughness of the law.

  “What about delivery and service people? Dry cleaners, laundry, TV repairs, phone, plumber, electrician? What about the apartment superintendent, if any?”

  He sighed heavily. He was upwind of me and even outdoors he had breath like a cannibal bat. “Son of a gun. Would you believe me if I told you that was all in the works, but I just forgot to mention it?”

  “I’d believe you, Stanger. I think you might be pretty good at your job.”

  “I’ll write that in my diary tonight.”

  “What about the nurses’ day room at the hospital? She’d probably have a locker there. There might be some personal stuff in it.”

  He sighed again and took out his blue notebook and wrote it down. “One for you.”

  “Maybe there’s another one too. If there is, can I check it out? I have … a personal interest in this, you know.”

  “If there’s another one, you can check it out.”

  “I don’t think a registered nurse would be doing the billing and the bookkeeping and keeping the appointment book. So there probably had to be another girl working for Sherman, part time or full time.”

  He squinted at the bright sky. He nodded. “And she was on vacation when he killed himself. Just now remembered. Okay, go ahead, dammit. Can’t recall her name. But Dr. Wayne’s office girl would know. Just don’t try to carry the ball if you come up with anything. Report to me first.”

  “And you tell me what you find out from Holton.”

  “Deal.”

  He trudged toward the waiting car. I went back inside and used a pay phone in the lobby to call Dr. Wayne’s office. The answering service told me they opened the office at noon on Mondays.

  I went back to 109. The cart was outside the door, the maid just finishing up. She was a brawny, handsome black woman. Her skin tone was a flawless coppery brown, and across the cheekbones she looked as if she had an admixture of Indian blood.

  “Be through here in a minute,” she said.

  “Take your time.”

  She was making up the bed. I sat on the straight chair by the desk module that was part of the long formica countertop. I found the phone number for D. Wintin Hardahee and as I wrote it down I saw the maid out of the corner of my eye and for a moment thought she was dancing. When I turned and looked at her, I saw that she was swaying, feet planted, chin on her chest, eyes closed. She lifted her head and gave me a distant smile and said, “Feeling kind of … kind of …” Then she closed her eyes and toppled forward. Her head and shoulders landed facedown on the bed and she slipped and bounded loosely off and landed on the floor, rolling onto her back.

  Suddenly I knew what must have happened. I went to the closet alcove and bent and picked the doctored bottle of gin out of the corner where I had put it and, stupidly, forgotten it. There were a couple of fresh drops of colorless liquid on the outside of the bottle, on the shoulder of it. Any moisture would have long since dried up in the dehumidifying effect of the air-conditioning. I licked a drop off with my tongue tip. Plain water. So she had taken a nice little morning pickup out of the bottle and replaced it with tap water.

  I went to her and knelt beside her. Her pulse was strong and good, and she was breathing deeply and regularly. She wore a pale blue uniform trimmed with white. Over the blouse pocket was embroidered, in red, “Cathy.”

  After weighing pros and cons and cursing my idiocy for leaving the gin where somebody might find it, I went looking for another maid. There was a cart on the long balcony overhead, in front of an open door to one of the second-floor units. I went up the iron stairs and rapped on the open door and went in. The maid came out of the bathroom. She was younger than Cathy, small and lean, with matte skin the shade of a cup of coffee, double on the cream. She wore orange lipstick, had two white streaks bleached into her dark hair, and a projection of astonishingly large breasts. Her embroidery said “Lorette.”

  “Sir, I just now started in here. I can come back if—”

  “It isn’t my room. Are you a friend of Cathy’s?”

  “You looking for her, great big strong girl, she’s working the downstairs wing right under here, mister.”

  “I know where she is. I asked you if you’re a friend of hers.”

  “Why you asking m
e, mister?”

  “She might need a friend to do her a favor.”

  “She and me, we get along pretty good.”

  “Would you come down to Room One-O-nine?”

  She looked very skeptical. “What she wants to do and what I want are a couple of different things, mister. I do maid work, period. I don’t hold it against her, but she ought to know by now if she wants a girl for anything else, she can go call that fat Annabelle or that crazy kid they got working in the kitchen.”

  “I got back to my room a couple of minutes ago, Lorette. Your friend Cathy tapped one of my bottles. She thought it was gin. It was sleeping medicine. She’s down there passed out. Now, if you don’t give a damn, say so.”

  Her eyes were round and wide. “Cold stone passed out? You go on down, please, and I’ll come right along quick.”

  Ten seconds after I was back in the room, she pushed the door open and stood on the threshold, staring in at Cathy.

  “It’s like you said?” she asked. “You didn’t mess with her any kind of way, did you?”

  “There’s the bottle over there. Go take a slug and in a little while you can lie down right beside her.”

  She made up her mind and pulled the door almost closed as she came in. She dropped to her knees and laid her ear against Cathy’s chest. Then she shook her and slapped her. Cathy’s sleeping head lolled and Cathy made a little whine of irritation and complaint.

  “Can you cover for her?” I asked.

  She sat back on her heels and nibbled a thumb knuckle. “Best thing is get Jase to bring a laundry cart and he’p load her in and put a couple sheets over her and put her in an empty.” She stared suspiciously up at me. “That’s no kind of poison, is it? She’ll come out of it okay?”

  “In two to three hours, probably.”

  She stood up and stared at me, head tilted. “How come you don’t just call the desk?”