“Thanks, Donnie. You were swell to do it.”
“Sure. And any time you change your mind about that cop, call me.”
I laughed.
On to today’s agenda, then.
Item 1: Look for Neal.
Item 2: Hunt a will-o’-the-wisp who’d told a cop about a mannequin.
Today was Theda’s day to work at the dime store. If anyone recalled a little girl who claimed to have seen a clothes dummy carried out in the flood, she’d be the one. But I couldn’t talk to Theda until her boss was safely out of the way at his weekly business luncheon.
Frustrated, I went and stood in front of a large city map I’d hung on one wall. I crossed my arms and stood staring at it, waiting for inspiration to strike about where to hunt for Neal. Inspiration was still putting its shoes on when the telephone rang again.
“I’ve got to talk fast, before Mr. Marsh gets back from the bank,” said a voice I realized belonged to Emily at the dime store. “I heard you asking him something about a little girl when you were here Friday. I thought you might come back today to talk to Theda, and he’s not going to his meeting — he didn’t say why. And Theda’s not here. She quit.”
“What?”
“She’s gone to live with her son.”
A chill seeped into my blood. Neal’s disappearance concerned me only because he might have scraps of information to add to my patchwork, and because his sisters cared. But if anything had happened to cheerful little Theda, who’d been so willing to talk about the past, it would be my fault.
“Oh! Here he comes!” said Emily in a rush.
“Wait — do you take the trolley home? What number?”
I wasn’t sure I caught what she said before she hung up.
For several minutes afterward, I stood with arms braced on my desk. Not a full week had passed since I’d talked to Theda. She’d mentioned her sons, yet she’d given no hint that she was thinking of leaving. Something in Emily’s call reinforced my sense the older clerk’s departure had been abrupt. It was one more thing that was too convenient. Too coincidental.
I sat down and swivelled my chair back and forth. Increasingly, I was starting to think this case had nothing to do with Swallowtail Properties or real estate shenanigans that made somebody rich. I’d made it a point to drive past Cy Warren’s house, and I’d seen plenty fancier. His suits were well-made, but not upper crust. I got out my notes from the library and went through them again. Nothing I’d found in the newspapers connected him with the kind of large-scale developments that turned men into moguls.
Money hunger was the disease that most often led men to lie and commit acts of violence or murder. Greed, the great leveler. It made corporate chairmen who swindled their shareholders exactly the same as down-at-heels hustlers and muggers.
Yet my work had taught me other reasons could make men equally ruthless. Revenge. Ambition. Jealousy. Even pride.
What did Cy Warren want enough to commit murder? Or to arrange one? What was so precious that he’d use any means necessary to block a close look at his youth?
I picked up the phone and called Rachel.
“You pay any attention to politics?” I asked when she came on. “Not FDR. Local and state.”
“Some. It can come in handy in business, just like rubbing shoulders with the competition can,” she said cautiously.
“What would keep you from getting elected?”
Rachel’s laugh was something to hear. Rich and throaty, it gave a rare glimpse into a woman who was a sphinx.
“Apart from being a woman and Jew?” she said.
“I was speaking in generalities.”
“Getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar might make it awkward. Bribes that could be traced from or to you, maybe; not sure on that one. Skeleton in the closet.” She thought for about five seconds, which at her speed counted as an eternity. “That should about do it.”
“What about being a lush? Keeping a mistress?”
“Boys will be boys.”
“How big would the skeleton need to be? Murder? Manslaughter?”
Another eternity.
“Something close to that scale, I imagine. An accident, maybe,” she mused. “Membership in a group that blew something up or burned something down. Greek love. I’m only guessing with any of this. You’d need to talk to someone in politics up to their dingus to get a reliable answer. Or better still, someone with money to spend who finds picking candidates more fun than picking horses.”
“You’re at least as smart as someone in politics up to their dingus,” I said.
***
Before I owned a car, I’d depended on trolleys or walking to get me wherever I needed to be. Once I hung out my shingle, a finely honed knowledge of how long it took for a bus to get from one stop to another sometimes became crucial. The fact four different companies ran trolleys in Dayton added to the challenge.
When the dime store on Percy closed for the day, I was on a trolley four stops before the one that was closest for Emily. If I’d understood her last words on the phone, and if Marsh hadn’t let her off early or kept her late, she’d get on there. That added up to a lot of ‘ifs’, but it was the best I’d been able to think of before she hung up on me.
“Hey. Mind moving that?” asked a chubby guy, his forehead shiny with the effort of climbing aboard. His finger stabbed petulantly at the shopping bag on the seat beside me.
Aware seats would be at a premium this time of day, I’d brought the bag to discourage company until Emily boarded. Another bag sat on my lap.
“Oh, gee, sure, long as you don’t mind holding it,” I replied. “I been sick at my stomach all day, so I brought it along to keep handy in case ... you know.”
He moved past with amazing alacrity.
As we approached the stop where I expected Emily to get on, I turned my back to the window. Being seen with me might not be a good idea this close to Percy Street. A moment later I spotted her fair hair bobbling amid new passengers headed down the aisle. She looked around with a small frown, which could easily indicate a girl merely hunting a seat.
“Here, let me move this,” I offered when she got almost abreast. As I leaned toward the shopping bag at my side, I also lifted the horn-rimmed glasses I’d donned.
Her eyes widened.
“Thank you.” She sat down. When the trolley began to pull out, she whispered, “I wouldn’t have recognized you.”
Amazing what cheaters, along with a messy French twist and a dowdy hat, can do for a girl. I folded the all-but-empty bag I’d moved and shoved it into the one on my lap.
“Tell me about Theda.”
“There’s not lots to tell. She came in late Friday to pick up her pay for the week and didn’t say a thing. Then this morning, Mr. Marsh called me over and said in that fussy way of his, ‘Emily, if you know anyone dependable who’s interested in working two afternoons a week, I need a replacement for Theda. She quit. I’ll skip my meeting today so you’re not alone.’” She’d crossed her arms while she mimicked his supercilious tone. Now pink tinged her cheeks. “If I’d thought faster I could have told him that I’d manage. Then if you’d come in—”
“It’s okay. Where did you hear the part about her going to live with her son?”
“Oh, from him. Right then. It startled me so I said something like, ‘What do you mean, she quit? Why?’ and that’s what he told me. He said she’d called him at home.”
“What else did he say?”
“That’s all.” The girl considered a minute, then nodded her certainty. “That was everything.”
“Theda didn’t come in?”
“Not since Friday.”
“Had Mr. Marsh seen her?”
“After she called him? I don’t think so. He seemed kind of huffy.” She chewed her lower lip a couple of times. “All the people you’ve been talking to along the street ... the way Mr. Marsh clammed up when you mentioned that flood ... is Theda in some kind of trouble?”
“She hasn’t done anything herself, if that’s what you mean. But yes, she could be,” I said honestly.
Emily swallowed. She peeped out the window, possibly eager to see her own familiar stop after what I’d just told her.
“I liked Theda,” she said. Her voice broke. “She was nice to me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And I don’t want anything to happen to you. No reason it should. You’re not old enough to know anything about the mess I’ve been asking about. Still, stay on your toes for a while. Don’t go walking around on your own if you don’t have to. If anyone comes in the store when Mr. Marsh isn’t around and you think they might mean you harm, get over to the cosmetics counter and squirt perfume in their eyes. It’ll blind them long enough for you to run.”
She nodded.
“Do you happen to know where Theda lived? Could you find out?”
“That street we just passed,” she said turning and pointing.
Before I looked back, I made sure to identify the street just ahead, and a couple of nearby businesses.
“This side, about a block and a half. The right hand side of the street — a green house.” The trolley began to pull over, but it wasn’t Emily’s stop yet. “I got off and helped her a few times last winter when she had groceries,” she said as passengers shuffled off and on. “I was scared she’d slip.”
Not long after, she pulled the cord for her own stop. The only others who got out with her were a mother and child. It reassured me as I watched her blonde head bob away in the gathering dusk.
I rode half a dozen blocks more before I got off. Then I walked some, ditching my horn-rims in my purse. I shrugged into the jacket that was folded in my shopping bag and made my way back to the green house. All of it had been somebody’s home once. Now it was carved into four apartments. A businesslike FOR RENT sign occupied part of one downstairs window.
“Hi,” I said to the woman who answered the front hall door beside the window. “Which one is Theda’s place? My sister’s kids were screaming so when she called, I did well even to get the address.”
The woman was wiping her hands on a tea towel. The specs on her nose weren’t for decoration.
“Oh, dear. I’m afraid Theda’s moved. Gone off to Indiana.”
“No kidding? I talked to her Thursday and she didn’t even mention it.”
She dropped her voice the way some do to convey sympathy for the person discussed.
“She’d had a terrible fright, poor thing. A pair of young hoodlums came out of an alley and grabbed for her purse. She yanked it away and started to yell. They ran, which is a mercy, or I hate to think what might have happened. She took an awful tumble, though. All scraped up. I was out here using the carpet sweeper when she came in. Shaking like a leaf, she was. Too upset to even tell me what happened until the next day.”
My mouth felt dry.
“Sounds like punks who knew she got paid on Fridays,” I said, fishing.
She nodded and sighed.
“I expect she’ll be fine, once she settles in. Her son was awfully good to her. Came and got her for Christmas and a couple of weeks every summer. He’d been trying to coax her to come live with them.”
“You’d met him, then? I never had a chance.”
“Oh yes. Lovely man. Tiny stutter, but it didn’t bother him.” She paused to look at me with sharpening interest. “You wouldn’t be interested in a nice apartment, would you?”
Unexpectedly, I felt the tug to have a place of my own. A real place, not just a room.
“I couldn’t afford it,” I said. “How much?”
Thirty-one
As I’d expected, the rent for the small apartment Theda had occupied was beyond my means. Even though it was no surprise, it deepened the glumness infecting me as I sipped my stout at Finn’s.
Theda had left an address for forwarding mail. I could take a train to Indiana, but even if I managed to talk to her, I doubted I’d come away with anything except more expenses for the Vanhorns. The abruptness of her departure showed how scared she was. Her story about someone wanting her purse might be a lie to hide getting roughed up while somebody warned her to keep her mouth shut. It was equally possible someone who knew old women were easy to frighten had sent a couple of punks to do just what she’d described.
In any event, it sounded as if she really was with her son, which meant she’d be safe. Unfortunately she hadn’t left a phone number when she left the address.
I wasn’t bursting with confidence I’d have any more luck locating Neal, but at least I’d concocted a plan. What I needed now was to run it by someone I trusted to see if my reasoning held up. If Billy and Seamus, or maybe Connelly came in, they might have some suggestions as well. My Guinness was half gone when Seamus and Connelly came through the door.
“Buy you gents a pint?” I offered, waving.
They ambled over. Connelly was grinning.
“When she’s buying, she wants information,” he said, giving Seamus a nudge.
“Yep, I need help from men with vast knowledge of this city’s seedier drinking establishments.”
“Can’t turn down a lady in distress, can we, Seamus? I’ll fetch the pints.”
Seamus lowered himself to the chair on my left. I heard his knee pop.
“How’s Billy’s shiner?” I asked. “How come he’s not with you?”
“The eye’s faded so you wouldn’t notice it, except Billy likes you to.” Seamus had the sweetest smile. Not a mean bone in his body. “He went right home ’cause he’d promised Kate he’d take her to buy a second-hand rug she’s had her eye on.”
Connelly returned with their Guinness. He hooked a chair out with his foot and set the glasses on the table. For a while we traded the lazy, inconsequential chat that makes sitting with friends at the end of the day a renewal.
“Now then, what’s this about seedy bars?” asked Connelly, leaning back in his chair.
“First, I need to ask Seamus, is anybody named Vanhorn in lockup?”
His mouth pursed a few times, leaving his gaunt face still more sharply chiseled as he thought.
“Nope,” he said. Because of his knee, Seamus did mostly desk work now. He saw the jail booking register, and his mind stored it up like a camera.
“Vanhorn,” said Connelly. “Those women who hired you?”
“Yeah. Their brother’s gone missing.”
“When?”
“Tuesday, near as I can tell. A stranger talked to him when he came out for his lunch break. The men he eats with say he was jumpy afterward. He didn’t go back to work, and nobody’s seen him since. He took his valise and some of his clothes, though.”
“So you think he’s hiding.”
“Yes.”
Seamus, less given to words than Connelly, grunted and dipped his silvery head in agreement.
“That’s why you want to know about unsavory spots,” continued Connelly.
“I might have razzed you a little with the unsavory part. There are plenty worse. These are just a mite on the rough side.”
I took three lists from my purse and spread them on the table before them.
“These are places Neal went with his buddies from work.” I touched one list with the point of my pencil. “No one’s seen him there.” I touched the second list. “These are where he went with his stepbrother George. George called this afternoon to say he’d checked and Neal hadn’t shown up at any of them.”
“And you trust George?”
“Yeah, I do. Ask that about Neal and I might sing a different tune.
“Now. From what I know about Neal, after work he didn’t do much except sit and shoot the breeze while he had a few beers. I don’t think he’ll know what to do with himself except that. He’s not especially smart, but he’s not especially dumb either, so I’m guessing he’d have sense enough to avoid his usual places. But he’ll hunt places like them — places he feels comfortable. Not too fancy or he’ll feel awkward. Not up with the Poles and the Czechs wher
e not speaking the language would make him stick out.”
Connelly thumbed his chin.
“Makes sense,” he said at last. He glanced at Seamus.
Seamus nodded. He already was eyeing my third list. I tapped it.
“So these are places I think he might go. I’m hoping you two might add a few more.”
They conferred. They added a couple of pubs. They came up with a little area I hadn’t considered.
“But why stick around?” Connelly argued. “Why not put more distance between himself and whoever he’s in Dutch with?”
“Probably doesn’t have money enough, and hopes the whole thing will blow over or get sorted out. Neal hasn’t had to deal with much so far in life.”
***
Late next morning, as I was standing in front of my map contemplating which of the areas the three of us had come up with was the likeliest place to start looking for Neal, the phone rang. When I answered, I heard a female voice, high and muffled.
“You the one who’s been looking for a little girl who lived near the drugstore during the flood?”
“Yes. Who—”
“Know where Stainton is?”
“Yes.”
“North end. Three down on the east side. There’s apartments upstairs. Try the front one. Come between four-fifteen and four-thirty. Women are home fixing dinner; men aren’t coming home yet. Nobody’s on the street. Got it?”
“Yes—”
“Four-fifteen to four-thirty. Any later and nobody’ll be home. Come by yourself.”
The sound of a dead line buzzed in my ear. I sat with pulse accelerating. Had I just heard the voice of the little girl herself? At least I knew she was real now, and somebody knew who she was or knew something about her.
Unless the whole thing was a setup.
Tapping my teeth with my fingernail, I tried to think. Whoever she was, the woman I’d spoken to had sounded nervous. You could fake that, of course. I’d probably done it myself when I was wangling information.
I got up and tucked the Smith & Wesson under my jacket. There was too much to gain if the call had been genuine. It might well represent my only chance to find the kid who’d talked about a clothes dummy. What I could do, though, was look the place over, check the layout, see if anything triggered a warning of something amiss.
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