The way it looked to Mitch, Peter Delafield was due for an uncontested promotion. It was too bad, too, because he’d have liked to do something to encourage Frank Wales’s wife instead of just standing there on the sidewalk and watching Ernie escort her to a room at the El Rey Hotel where she could start getting used to the hell called “waiting.” And then he began to wonder why Frank Wales should come so far to kill a woman he’d been divorced from all these years when he had a wife like that to take her place. Maybe Norma Wales wasn’t as striking as Virginia had been. Maybe she wasn’t so long on personality, but she had a face a man could look at over a breakfast table for a long time without getting restless—which was a very strange thought for Mitch Gorman on a hot afternoon that didn’t seem to be getting any place.
And then Mitch remembered that this wasn’t his baby. It was the stock answer he’d been giving himself for years. If the taxpayers’ money had a way of turning up in strange places, if the news that didn’t get into the paper was a lot more interesting than the news that did, if the world went to hell in a little red wagon—what of it? It wasn’t his baby. The attitude might not solve anything, but at least it kept him out of the ulcer society, and Mitch liked his steaks thick and rare. All of which was a way of reminding himself that he hadn’t broken fast since the last tidbit disappeared from Papa Parsons’s buffet, and that stopping off at a certain Main Street eatery had a more practical aspect than satisfying curiosity.
All you could say for Pinky’s Quick Lunch was that it was handy. The booths that banked one wall of the narrow building hadn’t been painted since hamburger sold for forty cents a pound, and the counter stools seemed to be melting with the heat. But the counter was good enough for Mitch, and, except for some kids having Cokes in the rear booth, he was the only customer in the place.
Behind the counter a lanky lad with a shock of reddish hair jutting up from his head like a stubble field was giving a fair imitation of a man working up to a nervous breakdown. “Shakers, sugar bowls, mustard—everything goes empty at once!” he muttered. “I’m going crazy! I only got two hands!”
Pinky, whose food license read Oscar Kramer, completed this observation with a baleful glare that suggested he hated customers worse than anybody. “Well,” he snapped, “what do you want?”
This approach was never going to get Pinky elected president of the local Jaycee’s, but Mitch shrugged it off. “The next time you pass the grill you might slap on a steak for me,” he said.
“Is that all?”
“No. I could use a cup of coffee—black.”
Pinky looked a little suspicious, but he reached for a cup and saucer. This time yesterday it would have been Virginia drawing that coffee from the urn. Virginia with her flashing smile and gay line of chatter that could make you forget all about the worn paint and lurching stools—sometimes even the cooking. She was beginning to come back to Mitch now. She was beginning to seem real. Then the kids from the back booth began feeding coins into the juke box and everything seemed natural. He couldn’t recall ever coming to Pinky’s but what the music was wailing and Virginia was humming along with it, or maybe stepping out a few beats behind the counter. That was Virginia Wales. A girl who wasn’t as young as she tried to be, but still a plenty good looking female with no visible grief. Her grief had been plenty visible this morning.
“It’s kind of sad when you think about it,” Mitch mused as Pinky slid the cup of coffee across the counter. “Virginia, I mean.”
“Sure, Virginia,” Pinky said. “I knew that’s why you came in here. All day it’s been like this. People I don’t see in a month come piling in to talk about Virginia. French fries or hash-brown?”
“Skip the potatoes. What about Virginia?”
Now Pinky was unhappy again. “How should I know what about her?” He shrugged. “She worked here, that’s all.”
“Did she work yesterday?”
“Five to eight. It don’t pay me to keep open Sundays more than a couple hours in the evening. And if you’re fixing to ask if she had a date afterward save your breath. Virginia didn’t tell me about her love life. I didn’t even know she’d been married until I picked it up on the grapevine this noon.”
There wasn’t anything actually wrong with what Pinky was saying, but it did seem there should be a little remorse for the dead Virginia. A little more regret than the annoyance of having been left shorthanded. Pinky started back to the refrigerator, and then he hesitated and did a fast translation of the expression in Mitch’s eyes.
“It’s not that I don’t feel bad about what happened to her,” he added quickly. “She was a nice kid. I hope they find the guy and boil him in oil. But what can I do about it? I’ve got a business to run!”
There wasn’t anything wrong with Pinky’s logic—only his insistence. But just then the street door swung open and another customer came in to annoy the boss. Sight unseen Mitch felt sorry for him, and swung around to get a look at the next victim of Pinky’s frazzled nerves. That’s when all the trouble began.
Dave Singer was one of Valley City’s most prominent citizens—you could ask Kefauver. He was a dapper young man in a baggy sport coat and pale-blue slacks, and the sight of his too-perfect profile gave Mitch a start. Dave seemed a little out of place in a downtown hash house, but there was nothing self-conscious in the way he threw a leg over one of the lopsided stools and reached for a menu.
“Where is everybody?” he demanded. “How about a little service?”
Pinky was going to love this boy. “Been out of town?” he asked.
“What’s that to you?” Dave scowled. “I didn’t come in here to shoot the breeze with you. Where’s Sunshine?”
“That’s what I mean. It seems you ought to know about Virginia being murdered last night. Everybody else does.”
What Mitch would remember for a long time was the way Dave Singer took Pinky’s news. A wet towel across the face might have had the same result. He might have turned the same sickly color and made the same gasping sound before he choked, “Murdered! Why that dirty sonova—”
And then Dave stopped. Behind the counter was a gleaming chrome coffee urn that reflected a couple of faces, one of which belonged to a suddenly alerted Mitch Gorman. Dave whirled about and stared at him, and then rushed off without even saying good-by.
4
A TRUCKER, a salesman—any merchant on the block could have made that unfinished accusation and Mitch would be interested; but when it came from Dave Singer, whose associates were not averse to murder if it served their purposes, interest was too mild a word. He started for the doorway, but it was too late. The underslung, imported speedster Dave had parked at the curb was already buzzing off like an infuriated hornet, and Dave’s sudden shyness was understandable. The discussion of murder was frowned upon in his profession.
Behind the counter Pinky’s face was beginning to match his hair. “What was the meaning of all that?” Mitch wanted to know, but he wasn’t going to get an answer. Just a shrug.
“What did Singer want with Virginia?”
“Lots of customers ask for Virginia,” Pinky muttered.
“That’s why she had this job.”
“Isn’t Dave a little fancy to be taking his meals here?”
“I get all kinds.”
That could be, but Mitch was still unsatisfied. When Dave Singer was in the money—and that speedster hadn’t come out of relief checks—he liked his eateries on the plush side. It wasn’t likely he’d be patronizing the hamburger circuit without reason.
“Was Dave a friend of Virginia’s?” Mitch tried again, but this time Pinky had enough. He slapped the steak on a plate and shoved it under Mitch’s nose. “I told you,” he snapped, “I don’t know anything about Virginia’s friends. I paid her wages; I didn’t hear her confession!” After that Pinky turned deaf and dumb.
Imagination could be a dangerous thing, that’s why Mitch kept his on so short a leash. If he didn’t he could dream up all kinds of siniste
r implications from that scene at Pinky’s. Boys like Dave knew better than to display emotions. Either he was hit hard by Virginia’s death or was trying to give that impression, and either possibility was more interesting than the forlorn face on the front of the Independent. Mitch had a very vivid recollection of Virginia’s body. Sheer savagery had killed her, and Frank Wales didn’t look dangerous enough to butcher a lamb chop.
But pictures can lie, and nosy people could get hurt asking too many questions in Dave Singer’s circle. It was much wiser to go back to the office and pretend to be useful. It was much easier to go home at night and plan on nothing more exciting than a cool bath and a long session with the mattress.
But what about Norma Wales? Was she relaxing in that room at the El Rey? Was she all stretched out on the bed waiting for sleep to put out the lights? Neither was Mitch. An overdressed dandy who had to worry about how to file his income tax return had sounded off, and because of that Mitch couldn’t stay put. Maybe Dave had been leaping to conclusions, but what he’d almost said gave the distinct impression that he could tab the murderer if properly persuaded.
There were two ways to proceed with such a problem. There was the direct approach, or “who needs two eyes anyway” method, and there was the more cautious means of learning more about Frank Wales. He might have been the man Dave had in mind, although that made the fast exit a bit ridiculous, and his wife might know a lot more about that mysterious letter than she claimed to know. Of course this was no time to be bothering Norma Wales. She had a rough night and day behind her, and God only knew how many more to come, and certainly wouldn’t welcome the press even if it was rooting for her side. But by the time Mitch got through telling himself all these things, he was all dressed up in his best tropical worsted and last year’s two-tone Oxfords and heading the coupé toward the El Rey. She couldn’t do any worse than slam the door in his face.
A knock on the door means just one thing to a woman waiting for the police to capture her husband. “Oh, it’s you—” Norma said. It wasn’t anger in her voice; it was relief.
“I know I don’t have an invitation,” Mitch began, “but may I come in for a few minutes?”
“I—I was just going to bed.”
Norma Wales was too nice a girl to lie convincingly. Over her shoulder Mitch could see the empty coffee cup and full ash tray on the radio table, and that little still life told a more poignant tale than the one a newscaster was telling.
“What did you have for dinner?” Mitch demanded.
“Dinner?” she echoed.
“That’s right. That meal people eat every evening unless they’re tired of living.”
This wasn’t the way Mitch had intended to open the conversation, but the walls were crowding together in that room and there wasn’t much left of the brave front Norma Wales had paraded in Ernie’s office. Mitch marched in and silenced the newscaster with a twist of the wrist. “This can wait,” he said. “If you put on a new mouth and combed your hair you might have a date.”
“Really, Mr. Gorman!”
“Yes, really, Mrs. Wales. And I know how you feel about newspapermen, but I’ll take you to dinner anyway.”
Mitch turned around to find Norma glaring at him, and that was good. Anything to bring the color back to her pale face and light up the fires in her dark eyes. Her husband might be as guilty as sin, but this was no time to play Camille.
“Look at it this way,” he argued. “You think your husband is being accused of somebody else’s crime, but isn’t that what you’re doing to me?”
“It’s your newspaper!” she blazed.
“Not quite. I only work for wages like the rest of the peasants. You’d be amazed at how unimportant I am. But even if it were my newspaper, wouldn’t it be a good idea to let me hear your side of the story? I’m neutral you know. I only want to print the truth.”
She was weakening. He could tell by the way she’d started picking at one of the buttons on her pin-checked suit.
“Maybe there’s a good reason why your husband made that trip to see Virginia. Maybe she asked him—”
Just a word of encouragement and Norma Wales forgot all about how much she didn’t like Mitch Gorman. “Did you know her?” she asked eagerly.
“Well, I’ve seen her around,” he admitted.
“She was beautiful, wasn’t she? And young?”
The last question sounded a bit strange coming from a woman who must have been playing jacks and getting acquainted with long division when Virginia became the first Mrs. Frank Wales. Norma almost smiled. “She seemed young, I mean,” she added. “Younger than she was. That’s what Frank always said. She was just a kid who never grew up, and he couldn’t get over feeling responsible for her.”
“Even after the divorce?” Mitch asked.
“They were married for twelve years. It’s hard to forget something that lasted that long.” Norma’s eyes were grave again until she saw how they were being watched. “If she’d been in trouble and asked him to come, he would have come. That must be what happened. Can’t you see?”
Mitch could see. He couldn’t help feeling that he could see even more than he was supposed to; but he still had a sale to complete.
“After dinner,” he reminded. “My vision always improves after dinner.”
What Norma Wales wanted was a quiet, semidark restaurant where no curious eyes could peek at her from behind the menu cards—or maybe even a drive-in at the edge of town where the highway touched Main Street and then went on its way. But Mitch had his own idea of therapy for a worried wife of a hunted husband. He didn’t stop at the highway. He took it on out to a corner where a string of neons put the starlight out of business and an attendant in a white jacket welcomed all comers to the parking-lot of the Club Serape. A blast of trumpets met them at the doorway, along with a headwaiter in a tight tuxedo. Valley City wasn’t without its touch of night life even if you did have to leave the city limits to find it. The Club Serape had a dining-room, a dance floor, a cellar-dark bar, and other attractions not advertised along with the floor show. But Mitch wasn’t on an inspection tour for the vice-and-gambling detail; he was just a guy buying dinner for a girl. When she shied at the entrance to the dining-room he veered off and tagged a booth in the bar. Quiet and intimate, and crowded enough for everybody to be alone.
“Name your vice,” he said, after a soft-footed waiter had taken their order. “We can dance, get drunk, or try our luck at the tables in the back room. All the conveniences of the big city, Mrs. Wales. Nothing provincial about us.”
This was just so much conversation to get her talking but it almost backfired. Norma appraised the scene with a disapproving stare.
“You sound almost proud,” she said. “It seems to me you might serve your community better by exposing places like this than trying to make a murderer out of my husband.”
“Exposing?” Mitch grinned. “If Vince Costro wants publicity for his club he can pay for it at regular rates. The Independent has ethics, Mrs. Wales. We take a firm stand against communism and sin, providing the sin isn’t too popular. But a lot of important people have a finger in this pie.”
“And Frank Wales isn’t important, is that it?”
“Ernie Talbot seems to think he’s important.”
Maybe it wasn’t a tactful way to change the subject, but Mitch always got restless when anybody started making sounds like a reformer. “That reminds me,” he added quickly, before she could remember to dislike him again, “you were going to explain why your husband left home. Does it happen often?”
The waiter returning with a pair of Martinis tempered her answer to that one. “Are you being deliberately insulting, or does it just come natural?” she asked.
“Neither one,” Mitch parried. “I’m being realistic. If you want to help your husband, Mrs. Wales, you’ll have to get used to leading questions. There’ll be plenty of them if he turns up without a good excuse for being absent from school for so long. Now let’s just supp
ose I’m a prosecuting attorney and you’re trying to give testimony in the defense of Frank Wales. First of all, why did you take it for granted that he’d gone to Valley City when he turned up missing?”
“Because of the letter—”
“But you didn’t read the letter. How could you know it would have such a result?”
Norma didn’t look happy. She twisted the stemmed glass around and around on the smooth table top and then sighed in submission. “It happened once before,” she said. “I haven’t told Captain Talbot because I was afraid it would only make things worse. Last fall Virginia wrote to Frank saying she needed help. He came to see her and found her very ill. We, I mean, Frank, sent her money until she was able to work again. After all, she had been his wife.”
For twelve years. Mitch remembered and tried to understand. “And you thought she was putting the bite on him again,” he suggested.
“Something like that. I wouldn’t mind if we had plenty, but Frank has a responsibility to himself, too.”
“And to his wife,” Mitch said.
Norma didn’t comment on that. Maybe she didn’t trust herself that far. “I know what everybody thinks after reading that insinuating story your Mr. Delafield wrote,” she said bitterly, “but it just isn’t true. Except for that one time, Frank hadn’t seen Virginia since the divorce; in fact, they hadn’t lived together since before the war. I didn’t know Frank then, of course, but he told me all about it before we were married last year.” She paused and smiled in remembrance. “I practically had to do the proposing myself. Frank was afraid of marriage after what had happened the first time.”
Obit Delayed Page 3