Missing Woman

by Michael Z. Lewin

  “If I were a butcher,” I said, “I’d be at your mercy.”

  Chapter Six

  When I pulled up to the edge of the highway, I turned left, toward Bloomington, and in about fifteen miles I came to the Indiana University campus. The place was huge, big enough to rate a bypass all of its own. But I followed signs into the heart of things and hoped for the best.

  Best turned out to be the Indiana Memorial Union. Mrs. Pynne’s car had been found in the parking lot there and it seemed as good a place as any to base an attempt to get directions to Frank Pynne.

  For fifteen cents I bought an hour’s parking. It was five past three when I walked into the Union entrance. But before I started trying to locate Pynne, I went to a telephone and called the Indianapolis Police Department.

  I caught my friend there in.

  “Lieutenant Miller,” he said, conveying more fatigue with his tone than a Greek chorus chanting “I’m tired” would.

  I identified myself and said, “Jerry, you sound awful.”

  “I know,” he said. “I am awful.”

  I knew things were bad. He never just talks to me. He carries on, he complains about my abuses of his position. It made me feel bad. I was calling to ask him to abuse his position.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, “Are you sick?”

  “I wish it was that simple,” he said colorlessly, “Look, Al, I’m up to my neck. You want something, right? What is it?”

  “I’m trying to trace a woman who’s wanted for theft in Brown County. She ran off two months ago with a guy with a few business interests in Nashville. I’d like you to get one of your people onto the banks in Nashville to see if you can find his account. I’d like to know what money has gone out since April thirteenth and where it’s been sent. Guy’s name is Boyd. Billy, presumably William.”

  Miller just said, “All right.” He didn’t fight it. He didn’t ask questions. “Is that all?”

  “That’s all. I’ll call you back. How late will you be there?”

  “How long is it till midnight?” he asked. He hung up.

  I felt guilty about benefiting from his misery. But one learns to live with guilt.

  I went next to a desk offering University Information. A sweetness-and-light coed offered help and before she could say “We’re number one!” I had her on the phone to the university employment office tracking down Frank Pynne.

  It took several minutes. I.U. employs a lot of people, but not enough at the employment office. Pynne was finally fixed in a building called Administrative Services and the same telephone put me through to the secretary who coordinated his department.

  “I’m sorry. Mr. Pynne isn’t in the office,” she told me.

  “Is he expected back soon?”

  “No, I’m afraid he isn’t. He’s been in Indianapolis all day. He had a meeting this morning and this afternoon he is due to see several firms there about an absorbent-paper tender. He’s not expected back in the office until Monday.”

  “Oh dear,” I said.

  “Can I take a message?”

  “No. But you can tell me something, if you will. Is Mr. Pynne’s car a red Ford Fiesta?”

  Uncertain at first, but she said, “Why, I believe it is.”

  “Troubles?” my coed asked after I hung up.

  “The story of my life, darling,” I said. “The guy I’ve come from Indianapolis to see is away for the day in Indianapolis.”

  “Gee whiz,” she said. “That’s a real shame.”

  “Yup,” I said. Wondering how Frank Pynne managed to be in both Indianapolis and his own driveway at the same time.

  “Anything else we can do for you?”

  “Not unless you were around this place during the dark hours of the morning on April thirteenth.”

  “No, sir. The building is closed up after midnight. Even the snack service.”

  “What sort of security patrols are there?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know. But the director is around the building today. You could ask him.”

  The director’s office was, conveniently, just across the lounge from the information desk.

  The director was, inconveniently, not in his office.

  I returned to my coed. “He’s never gone for long,” she said.

  So I killed some time. I strolled through the Memorial Union to evaluate the quality of the backup services which modem educational establishments provide for our current college young people. Cafeteria, delicatessen, Sweet Shoppe (“for bulk candies and popcorn”), billiards, craft shop, bowling. There was even a bookstore.

  I also passed a Ride Board, with “Need Ride” and “Want Ride” cards neatly organized among ten zones in Indiana and seventeen zones through the rest of the country. There seemed to be a lot of action among kids wanting to leave the campus. I would have been happy to come and take somebody’s place for a few weeks. Or years. I would even be willing to learn something, if I had to.

  After a few minutes I came back to earth. Also back to the director’s office. The door was now open. Someone was inside. Always trust a coed.

  He was a bulky little man. Too many stops at the Sweet Shoppe, He had a sweeping shiny forehead and eyes that glowed bloodshot, I had a momentary feeling that he no more belonged there than I did, but I knocked on the door, “Excuse me,” I said,

  “Yes?”

  “I was hoping for a few words with the director.”

  He studied me, “You’re not a student, are you?”

  “No.”

  “A civilian. I’ve always got time for a civilian. Come in.”

  I went in.

  “What’s your problem?”

  “I was steered to you in hopes of getting some information about a car that was left here in the early morning of April thirteenth.”

  “Here? You mean in the parking lot?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We have them towed away. We notify the campus police and then after forty-eight hours, pffft, they’re gone. So you better ask them if the car’s missing.”

  “It’s not that, I’m looking for the woman who left the car in the first place. I’m wondering if there is any chance of finding anybody who saw her leave it.”

  “Hell,” he said. “No one’s going to pay attention to anybody parking a car in a parking lot.”

  “Not even at two or three or four a.m.? I was thinking, maybe, a security patrol.”

  “This is a college, mister. It’s chock full of college kids and everybody knows that college kids are crazy. We could have the whole goddamn parking lot full up at three in the morning. They’re loonies, kids, every single one.”

  I went back to the parking lot and stood by my van. I had a look at the loonies, the traffic, the buildings. I noticed a bus stop, a bicycle path. I felt uneasy about it all. I decided not to spend a few years here after all. Besides, at fifteen cents an hour, it was outside my reach.

  And I couldn’t think why Priscilla Pynne should take the trouble to leave her car here.

  On the way back to Nashville, I stopped at the Pynnes’ house again, but there was still nobody home. I felt I ought to talk to Frank Pynne, but it seemed that I would have to wait until he got back. From wherever.

  I had a couple of other visits I could make, but after I parked in town, I went to the sheriff’s office first.

  An elderly man was reporting a grass fire to a muscular young deputy as I walked in. He had passed it as he was driving into town and he had seen a couple of children nearby.

  “You reckon them kids are in danger?” the deputy asked.

  “Naw,” the man said. “Them kids was laughin’ it up.”

  “So maybe they started it, huh?”

  The deputy decided to have a look and he told my soft-voiced girl at the communications console that he was going out to Clay Lick Road.

  “O.K., Peg?” the deputy said.

  “I got it,” she said.

  As the deputy left, I stepped up to the counter. The gi
rl remembered me. “Howdy, stranger,” she said.

  “Hello.”

  “You looking for Jeanna again?”

  “Yes and no,” I said. “I want to talk to her before I go back to Indianapolis, but there are some other people I want to see too. I stopped in to get an idea of her comings and goings so I wouldn’t be interrupting her meals again.”

  “She’s out now, but she’s bound to be back here about five.”

  I looked at my watch. It was a little after four. “O.K., I’ll try then.”

  “But I wouldn’t worry none about her eating time. Jeanna’s got a real strong stomach. She don’t hardly never get indigestion.”

  Neither did I, lately. It takes food to get indigestion.

  “Meanwhile, could you give me directions to a couple of people?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “An Andy Kubiak. Is he a doctor?”

  “Sure is.”

  “And the person in charge of your theater here.”

  “George?”

  “I don’t know the name.”

  “George Keneally. He’ll likely be down there.”

  “O.K., directions to down there.”

  I transcribed them and went on my way.

  I walked out to the doctor’s first. His house was on Greasy Creek Road, a few blocks east of the town center. From his shingle—well, a sign on the front—I learned that he was the county coroner as well as being a general practitioner. It also said that Friday office hours didn’t start till six, but I rang the bell anyway, and the door was answered by a stocky white-haired woman carrying some needlework.

  “I would appreciate a few words with Doctor Kubiak,” I told her.

  “It says plain as day on the sign that he don’t see people until six o’clock. Can’t you read, boy?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I assured her. “But I’m not here as a patient. I’m trying to find a missing woman who was one of his patients and it’s possible that he could help me.”

  “Now, you look kind of sensible,” she said charitably. “You ought to know that a doctor can’t just up and tell someone knocking on the door things about his patients.”

  “I wouldn’t ask him to breach confidentiality, but he still might be able to help, if he would.”

  “Well, he won’t.”

  “Could you ask him?”

  “Nope,” she said, “ ’cause he ain’t here.”

  “Oh. When will he be back?”

  She had an obvious answer available for this, but instead she squinted at me. “This a local woman that’s missing?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Priscilla Pynne, I’ll wager.”

  “You’ll win.”

  She shook her head. “I just never could fathom that girl. I didn’t have no time for her. Got herself a good man there, one that pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made something of himself. Got themselves a nice little place too—damn sight nicer than most young people can afford—and so what if it’s a little bit lonely. This whole town is isolated, it’s no big city and there just ain’t no point folks moving here and then bellyaching because it ain’t Chicago. She should have just settled herself in and made the best of it. Had some kids. She came to Andy for the ‘depression’ when she first arrived in town and he gave her some pills, but I reckon she just wasn’t making the effort. A woman’s got to pull her weight and that’s all there is to it. If she don’t knuckle to it, what’s the point in getting married in the first place? And it looks like she’s asked herself the same question. Upped and run off with a banty cock like Billy Boyd. Well, it’s her husband I feel sorry for, and that’s the truth. You get someone like her comes to my Andy complaining how hard life is, nine times out of ten, ninety-nine out of a hundred, it’s not them that needs the pitying, but the people that depend on them. Well, that’s, my opinion, and you can do with it what you like.”

  What I did was thank her for it.

  The Brown County Theater was on the south side of town and from the front I couldn’t see any obvious signs of life. On the off chance, I pushed at one of the front doors. It was open.

  I wandered in.

  The theater foyer itself was empty, animated only by a barrage of good-time posters. This was not Hamlet country. There were sounds of music coming from the auditorium. I followed them into the darkness.

  I found myself faced by a stageful of singing children, being led by an enormous woman peering up at them from the orchestra pit.

  As my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I was able to make out some people scattered through the seats. I picked the closest one and just as I drew her attention, the singers’ leader stopped proceedings.

  “No! No! No!” she shouted at them. “We do not pick the nose and sing at the same time. You, boy. When you’ve finished your business, we will begin again.”

  “And they say show biz is glamorous,” I said to my shadowed neighbor. She looked at me as if I’d just been flicked down beside her by the offending finger.

  “Can you tell me if George Keneally is around?”

  Unsmiling she pointed to another shadow, at the back.

  “Many thanks,” I said, and made my way through the empty rows to the designated figure. I asked him for a few words.

  “With pleasure,” he said.

  I believed him.

  We went to the foyer. He was about fifty-five and wore a comfortable brown jacket with fourragère, an olive-green shirt and blue jeans. Also a captain’s hat.

  “Press?” he asked.

  “Are you hoping I am,” I asked, “or hoping I’m not?”

  I gave him my name and occupation and explained that I wanted to get a little background information on Priscilla Pynne.

  He had trouble placing the name.

  “I think she helped backstage with some amateur productions,” I said.

  He cocked his head. “Is this the one who ran away with Billy Boyd?”

  “That’s her.”

  “Someone told me she’d been around here,” he said, “but I couldn’t for the life of me place her. They said she came with Sharon. Is that right?”

  “Sharon Doans. Yes.”

  “And Sharon went off with the husband at that party too. You know the party?”

  “Boyd’s birthday, yes.”

  “And what a whale of a festivity that was. With all the undercurrents about his giving it so soon after his mother’s death and then picking a fight with that Trust fellow.”

  “A fight? You mean fists?”

  “Oh no. Talk, all talk, about some land or other.”

  “Which Trust fellow? Not Frank Pynne?”

  “No, that lawyer. Hogue.”

  “David Hogue”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Life seems pretty complicated around this town,” I said.

  “I can tell you what makes a small town tick,” Keneally said. “Gossip. If it’s not who’s been seen with who, then it’s who said what about who. It takes some getting used to if you come into it from the outside, as I did. But I’ve always liked a touch of drama. And there’s no shortage around here, believe me.”

  On the town square I stopped at a public telephone and called Lieutenant Miller at the Police Department in Indianapolis again. He sounded as if he had just been released too early from the hospital.

  “Christ,” I said, “you need a vacation, Jerry.”

  “I need more than a vacation,” he said. “Oh. You want that stuff. Hang on.”

  I hung. He was away for nearly all my change.

  “O.K. We found your bank. The Southern State. At first the guy there said he wouldn’t go very far without a court order. But then he had a look at the records, and there wasn’t much to say anyway.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Basically, the account has had no action the last couple of months.”

  “None?”

  “There’s a regular monthly payment, but nothing else at all since April thirteenth. Though there was
a six hundred withdrawal on the eleventh. You interested in that?”

  “I suppose so. Who is the monthly payment to?”

  “He wouldn’t say who. But it’s for a thou, has been drawn on the account only since the first of April, and it’s not to a business concern.”

  “That it?”

  “That’s it. You got enough to go back with a court order?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll stop in a day or two with a care package for you and maybe we’ll talk about it.”

  “I think I’m past CARE,” he said.

  It was almost on the stroke of five that I returned to the sheriff’s office. I arrived just in time to see the unmistakable form of Jeanna Dunlap disappearing through the front door, and as I entered I heard her being told that I would be stopping by to see her again soon.

  “There’s my stranger now,” Peg, the switchboard girl, said.

  “Hail, Indianapolisite,” Sheriff Dunlap said. “How have you been faring?”

  “Well enough to have another question or two for you.”

  “Come into my parlor, then,” she said, and she led me to a door with an opaque-glass upper half which had her name painted on it in big gold letters. She opened it for me, and I went in and sat on a wooden chair in front of her desk.

  She unhitched her gun belt, and put it in a desk drawer as she sat down. “You found Cilia Pynne yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “My my.” She looked at her watch. “You been here hours and hours too.”

  “Sheriff, you’re teasing me.”

  “I sure am.”

  “Do I understand correctly that you don’t take Mrs. Pynne’s and Mr. Boyd’s absence very seriously?”

  “Not terribly seriously, no,” she said. “Do you?”

  “I find myself feeling uneasy about it,” I said.

  “You’ll accept my apologies if that, by itself, doesn’t spur me to great agitation,” she said.

  “I will,” I said.

  “So what are your questions?”

  “What has happened to Boyd’s business since he left?”

  “Seems all right.”

  “It’s still open, this art gallery? It still runs?”