She answered it at the end of the first ring. “Is that Mr. Samson?”
I confessed.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t call,” she said.
“I make it a point of professional pride to do what I say I’ll do,” I said. For as long as the profession lasts.
“So,” she said, “have you found out anything?”
“One way and another,” I said, “quite a bit. Shall I come to wherever you are and tell you about it, or do you want to wait for a report until tomorrow?”
“I’m not busy, “ she said. “But I’ll come to your office. Are you at your office?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
I made my private-life phone call and spent the rest of the time dusting my desk and emptying the office wastebasket.
Elizabeth Staedtler was two minutes early. She wore the same subdued clothing as before.
“Come in. Sit down,” I said.
She sat in my client’s chair. She seemed extremely tense.
“Would you like some coffee?”
“No, thank you. Have you located Priscilla?”
I took my place behind the desk and opened my notebook. “No,” I said, “I haven’t located her.”
She sighed. “I see. Well, what then?”
“I’ve confirmed that she has left her husband. She left Nashville early morning on April thirteenth. As far as I was able to find out, nobody knows where she is. I didn’t find anybody who had heard from her, or who even had an educated guess to make.”
“Is her husband looking for her?”
“Not actively. He keeps in contact with the sheriff to see whether there have been any developments, but the sheriff isn’t making any effort either.”
She seemed to think hard before saying, “What does it have to do with the sheriff?”
“There’s an arrest warrant out on your friend.”
She was shocked. “Arrest? What for? Leaving her husband?”
“No, no. But she took some money when she went and her husband is pressing charges.”
She inhaled heavily and took this in.
“The charge seems to be a bit artificial. The husband is angry, and thought it would make the law work harder. Only it hasn’t.”
She considered this too. Then asked, “So what are the prospects of Priscilla being found?”
“I think people down there generally expect to have some information about her before too long.”
“Really? How?” she asked quickly.
“They all seem to think that sooner or later the man she ran off with will come back, and that then they’ll get the whole story.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Man? What man?”
“The facts of the case seem to be that Mrs. Pynne left town in the middle of the night with a local businessman and stud-about-town, named Boyd.”
She was speechless. She raised a hand to the side of her head and seemed to be steadying herself.
“Do you know the name. Doctor Staedtler?”
“What?”
“Boyd? Billy Boyd? I thought, perhaps, she might have mentioned him in a letter. But I guess not.”
“No.”
“He does not seem to be the world’s most sensitive human being. His mother died in March just before she was about to tie up some land she owned in such a way that he would never be able to exploit it commercially. Her death, from a bathroom accident, could hardly have happened at a better time for Boyd’s financial prospects and there is widespread suspicion that the timing was more than just macabre luck. There doesn’t seem to be any proof. The coroner could only say that Mrs. Boyd’s skull was unusually brittle. But the general level of suspicion wasn’t reduced when Boyd went ahead with plans for a big party a few weeks after his mother died. They say his only acknowledgment of her was to invite some people who had been her friends rather than his. Even then, he apparently baited one of them about his plans for this land.”
“I don’t quite understand what it’s all about,” she said.
“There is some suggestion that he wanted to get away from town for a while to let suspicion die down. A chance to run away with Mrs. Pynne materialized and he jumped at it. I don’t know how they got together, or any of the details. She seems to have been unhappy at home for some time. And at this same party Boyd steered her into finding her husband in a compromising situation. On Boyd’s side, your friend was pretty and aloof, and her husband is active in a conservation group battling with him. It’s possible there was an element of convenience in their departure.”
She shook her head, but as if to clear it rather than to dispute anything. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just find this hard to take in.”
I gave her a moment, then said, “I have to say, I find it a little hard to accept myself”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I’m uneasy about what is supposed to have happened.”
Her eyes narrowed. “In what way?”
“I worked out what I distrust most as I was driving back to Indianapolis,” I said. “It’s the fact that neither of them seems to have made contact with anyone in Nashville for two months.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Not so much for your friend, who appears to have had little in the way of ties there. But Boyd has not drawn money from his bank account, and he’s not been in touch with the manager of his business. He’s had a lot of women but he’s not run off with one for years, and he seems to be the type for whom reporting that he had scored with the Ice Queen would be half the pleasure, or more.”
“The Ice Queen?”
“I’m sorry. That’s what somebody called your friend.”
“How bitchy,” she said.
“Yes, I guess so,” I said.
“Sorry. Go on.”
“O.K. Now, maybe Boyd and your friend are off somewhere having a hell of a time. If so, fine. She’s away from her husband; he’s away from accusing fingers and at least they have each other. But I wander how it all reads if what seems to be the story isn’t.”
She was interested. “What would that mean?”
“We come back to what facts we know, and whether we can interpret them differently. First, they left town the same night.”
“That could be coincidence, couldn’t it?” she asked.
“Anything can be coincidence, but not very many things are. I have to think their departures are related.”
She said nothing.
“Now the thing I’m trying to explain is why he should leave and not communicate with people in Nashville.”
“And how do you explain that?”
“If he’s not been in contact,” I said, “I assume that he has a good reason for not being in contact. In effect, he is telling us that contact of any kind—even having his bank forward money—might hurt him.”
She said nothing.
“If that’s so, then he must have something to hide, something serious enough maybe to threaten the kind of life he’s able to lead in Nashville.”
I felt I was losing her attention slightly.
“I know it sounds a little extraordinary, but suppose we add a missing link. Suppose your friend Mrs. Pynne knew something positive to connect Boyd with his mother’s death.”
I paused. Eventually she said, “Yes?”
“It’s just possible that he’s done her some harm and he isn’t coming back to Nashville because he would not be able to explain what happened to her satisfactorily.”
“Harm?” she asked. “What are you saying, that she might be dead?”
That sounded bald. “Yes,” I said.
She squinted and rubbed her eyes.
“I shouldn’t speculate wildly,” I said. “I’m sorry about that. I’m really saying that the situation doesn’t feel fully explained to me. But the fundamental question for you is where you want to go from here.”
“Go?” she asked. I had the feeling she was about to rise from
her chair.
“I mean, whether you want to continue trying to find Mrs. Pynne.”
“Oh yes,” she said. She suddenly seemed terribly tired. I remembered that she had been interviewed and evaluated all day.
I had little more to say. “If you want to continue, I can get in touch with Mrs. Pynne’s family and other friends, if you can help me locate them. Or I can do a little more to try to trace this man Boyd in the hopes of being able to get some news about her that way.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know.” She put her hands, over her eyes.
I suddenly realized that it had all been too much for her. I got up from my chair and sat on the front edge of my desk before her. I wanted to apologize for heaping information on her. I wanted to make some sort of impression on a human level. I nearly took her hands. Touching is part of my vocabulary, but I didn’t know whether it was in hers.
I chickened out. I said, “Let me get you coffee or a drink or something, will you?”
She didn’t say anything.
I felt stupid, unable to find sensible words. I said, “You must have had a hard day. Did you get your job?”
After a moment, she looked up at me. “Job?”
“At I.U.P.U.I.?”
“What? Oh yes. No.”
“You got it, but you’ve decided not to take it?”
“I haven’t decided what to do.” It sounded pitiful.
“May I make a decision for you?”
“What’s that?”
“Go to wherever you are staying. Get a little boozed, and then go to bed.”
“With you, I suppose,” she said.
I was shocked. “Certainly not. I’ll happily walk you to your car, but that’s as far as my professional services go.”
“I . . . I’m sorry,” she said.
“Go on, off with you,” I said, trying to be avuncular. “Call me in the morning.”
She got up, and she walked to the door. I followed her. We were both on the stairs when she turned and said, “What are you doing?”
“I’m walking you to your car.”
“There’s no need.”
“It’s quite all right.”
“No. Please.”
I shrugged. “O.K. Hear from you tomorrow.”
“Yes.” She continued down the stairs.
I stayed where I was until I saw my street door close. Then I went on down.
It was not late at night, but my neighborhood, my soon to be ex-neighborhood, is typically rough. It did not seem prudent to let my only current client walk to her car alone.
So I tagged along, at a distance.
The only problem with the plan was that she didn’t walk to a car. She didn’t even hail a cab. She just walked.
She kept a straight line, walking west on Maryland. We went past the Convention Center complex and straight to White River.
There’s no bridge over White River on Maryland.
I didn’t know whether she was going to look up in time to notice.
She stopped, however, when the roadway stopped. And she stood for several minutes. She seemed to look north, past the Washington Street Bridge. That’s where I.U.P.U.I. is. Then she looked south for a moment, to a railroad bridge, and turned. I saw that she saw I was there. That is, that someone was there. I turned and walked around the corner of Blackford. I waited in the first deep doorway.
She crossed Blackford without a sideward glance. I fell in behind her again. She took a right, and then a left, and she went into a gray hotel, the Penrod, near the corner of Georgia and West. It’s the Union Station area. There are still quite a few hotels around there, gray from the marginal existence which comes with being railroad hotels in what is now a car town.
Once home, I turned on my neon sign. A present from my daughter, it symbolizes the energy of youth for me. It was ready to blaze my wares all night long. I was only ready for bed.
It was hardly past nine-thirty, but I am an impulsive creature. When I feel tired, I sleep.
I had boring dreams.
Then I had no dreams at all, because the telephone rang and woke me up.
“What?” I said as I answered it.
“Mr. Samson, this is Elizabeth Staedtler.” Her voice was strong and firm and much much much too loud.
I opted for cliché. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Yes. Quarter past midnight,” she said, as if it were a non sequitur and she was pausing in her purpose to help me set my clock.
‘Jesus,” I said.
“I don’t want you to tie up your morning on my account. I’ve decided that I’m on my way back East, early. I want to formalize that my period of employing you is at an end.”
“Oh.”
“Frankly, some of your suggestions were incredible. I can’t help thinking you produced them because they were the only way you could spin the job out. I’ve decided I’ve got better ways to flush away my money.”
“All right,” I said.
“That’s that, then,” she said. “Good. Goodbye.”
She hung up.
“O.K.,” I said to the dead receiver.
Chapter Nine
Saturday morning I lay in bed for a long time after I woke up. The Brown County hiatus from my life-problems was over. Thinking about it made me low. I much preferred going back to find out more about Boyd to packing my belongings.
But so it goes.
When the telephone rang at ten past ten, I had just resolved to roll out and make the best of life. Honest.
I rolled out and answered it.
“Mr. Samson?”
“At your service,” I said.
“This is Dave Hogue. From Nashville. You came to my office yesterday.”
“That’s right. Hello, Mr. Hogue. How’s things in Nashville today?”
“Fine, thanks.”
“What can I do for you?” I asked, trying not to pant too hopefully.
“I was just calling out of curiosity,” he said.
“About what?”
“You said you would be talking to this woman who hired you to find Priscilla Pynne. I wondered how that went.”
“It went all right,” I said. “What exactly were you interested in?”
“Well, I talked a little to Frank about you after you left us last night.”
“Oh yes?”
“And it seemed that if you were continuing to look for Mrs. Pynne there might be a way for you to look on Frank’s behalf as well as for your original client.”
“I think I would be in considerable danger of his interests conflicting with my client’s.”
“I told him that, but it depended on what your client’s interest’s were. If it were simply a matter of her wanting Mrs. Pynne’s address, it seemed possible that she might not object to Frank’s having the address as well.”
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I have the feeling that my client’s interests were a little more active than that. She mentioned the conceivability of sharing an apartment with Mrs. Pynne, if she’d left home for good. She had a photograph of Mrs. Pynne and also seemed to find it very surprising to hear that Mrs. Pynne had run off with a man.” Not that cliental proclivities are my concern.
“Did she?” Hogue asked sharply.
“On the other hand,” I said, “I regret to say she is no longer a client. She decided last night that further expenditure was unlikely to be cost-effective.”
“Mmm.”
“So, unless Mr. Pynne would be interested in picking the file up . . .”
“Oh,” Hogue said, “I don’t think that’s very likely.”
“In which case, that’s that,” I said.
“Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “Oh well. Bad luck, Mr. Samson.”
“Since you’ve called,” I said, “I wondered if I could ask you a small favor.”
“Yes? What?”
“If you do find out any more about Mrs. Pynne or Billy Boyd, I’d be grateful to hear about it.”
“I like to know about things,” I said. “I like to know how they come out. That’s all.”
He hesitated again, but said, “All right. If there’s some development, I’ll give you a call.”
“Great,” I said. “Thanks.”
* * * * *
That’s the problem with being a private detective. The client defines you. Without client, you have no reason for asking your questions, for being curious. You have no justifiable identity.
I had suffered a lot of that kind of identity loss lately. I felt gray and marginal, like a railroad hotel.
And I didn’t feel like facing the realities of preparing to move.
So I didn’t. I made a gesture of independence and went to police headquarters in the time before I was due to see whether I could refuse an offer from Albert Connah. For half an hour I was my own client. It was one of the low points in my life.
Miller, in his office, looked tired, fed up, overworked. Much as usual. But, as on the telephone the previous day, he didn’t posture with complaint and aggravation when I collared his attention. That was not as usual.
Instead, he looked up and said, “I’m going to quit. That’s it. I’ve got enough years for some pension. I’m finished.”
With some people that kind of thing pours forth with Old Faithful regularity. I’d never heard it from Miller before. He was a career cop, dedicated in the old-fashioned way. Some of the pieces in my puzzle are old-fashioned too. I can appreciate old-fashioned.
“You just tell your Uncle Albert all about it,” I said.
“I’m getting out,” he said, as if to convince me. “I’m tired of being passed over and ignored. My opinions don’t count for anything. If I get in a difficult spot, my so-called superiors don’t back me up the way they should. All I get is crap for all the work I put in. Nobody works harder than me. Nobody gets less for it. I’m getting out.”
“It sounds serious,” I said. Because it did.
“It is. I am. I’ll stick it through my vacation in the fall. Then I’ll find something else.”
He waggled his head, as if agreeing with himself
A man came into the office and dropped two folders on the desk.
Miller said, “I’m up to my eyeballs, Al. What do you want?”
Missing Woman Page 6