Missing Woman

by Michael Z. Lewin

  “His eye found some talent in a lot of places,” she said.

  I said, “I’ve been told what Mrs. Pynne was doing the evening before she left, but nobody has said anything about Mr. Boyd’s activities that night. From what I hear about him, it doesn’t seem likely that he was sitting home. Would you have an educated guess as to who he might have spent a little time with that evening?”

  “I do recollect that he was speaking of buying a few pieces of work from Celene Deckard about that time. Celene is a specialist in the ceramical line, and she has her some ceramical landscape work that is unique. She’s also a fine-looking young woman.”

  “Where should I go to express some interest in ceramical landscape?”

  “She has a house up Lake Lemon way,” Ms. Tolley said, and she gave me directions. “Although,” she continued, “on any particular night Bill could have been any of half a dozen places where they was always glad to see him.”

  “These all artistical ladies?”

  “I suppose they are. You know, I was that tiny way surprised when folks told me Bill had run off with that Mrs. Pynne.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Just because she was too kind of thought out, you know? And while Bill would have him a casual shot at most anything in a skirt, I never saw him try, you know, make much of an effort with a female who wasn’t sort of kooky, the way a lot of them are.”

  “I see.”

  “Not that I’ve got anything against artists. Once you get to know them, they’re just like folks.”

  “You know Boyd a long time?”

  “Oh yes. My daddy, he run this place as a drugstore for Bill’s daddy, long before Bill made it what it is now.”

  “I see.”

  “When he was a young un. Bill used to hang out here. He and my daddy got along. My daddy always treated him like a man, Bill, from the time he started coming round when he was maybe eleven. Bill was always tiny little, but Daddy treated him big. Bill always liked my daddy for that, and when he come back and changed this place over he helped set my daddy up in something different and he took me on here.”

  “Was Boyd always interested in art?”

  “No no. Only after he come back. You knowed he run away?”

  “Yes.”

  “That woman—Tee-Dee Askew was her name, with the Tee-Dee from her initials—she was a sculptor and I’m sure that the art side was her influence.”

  “Am I to assume that he went away with her in the first place because she treated him like a man too?”

  “I think you’re getting the understanding of Bill just fine. On the surface of it, lots of folks just couldn’t understand that, her running off with Bill, and Bill running off with her and her little girl.”

  “Little girl?”

  “Tee-Dee had her a girl of about nine or ten. Lovely little thing she was.” Mary Tolley looked at her watch. “I have to go in a minute now. But you know, you sure should have a little look around the gallery while you’re here. We got some fine things, some fine fine things. Look good and keep their value good too.”

  “The nails you hang your pictures from are outside my price range,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “Well, we do credit terms.”

  It seemed a good time for me to be running along.

  Celene Deckard’s studio was ten miles from Nashville, on the North Shore Road around Lake Lemon. Near where it intersects with Possum Trot Road, my instructions said. And there I found a small frame house, accompanied by what looked like a large garage.

  I also found Celene Deckard. Nor was she alone. She had a friend there, and they wore matching muslin dresses. Deckard was a dark-haired woman and her cheeks were pink. Her friend was lanky and nearly six feet tall, bald with a bushy brown beard.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said as I came in, following an invitation at the door.

  “No bother,” Deckard said.

  “If you were in the middle of something—?”

  “Nope. In the middle of nothing.”

  “A whole lot of nothing,” the friend said.

  “I mean,” I said, “sewing, turning up hems or whatever.”

  Deckard nodded. “I think he’s talking about your dress, Eddie. Though I don’t know if he thinks something that would fit around your waist would be likely to fit around mine.”

  “It’s my dress,” Eddie said.

  “Of course,” I said. “Whose else would it be?”

  “Women wear pants,” he said. His voice was guttural, and not quite clear. “Why shouldn’t I wear a dress?”

  “No reason at all,” I said. I tried to sound earnest. It wasn’t what I had come to talk about.

  “You got guys with earrings these days and girls with crew cuts. Dresses have some advantages sometimes, so why should that be taboo and none of that other stuff?”

  “I’m convinced,” I said. “I was caught by surprise, that’s all. Trend-setters have to be prepared for stereotyped reactions from people who walk into their homes on other business.”

  “Trend-setters,” Eddie said slowly. “I think he’s making fun of me now. Is he making fun of me, Celene?”

  How could I be making fun of him just because he was wearing a dress that matched his girl friend’s? What kind of narrow-minded oaf did he take me for?

  The kind I am, I suppose.

  “Even if he is, don’t worry about it, Eddie,” Deckard said. “He’s here on business, he says.”

  “I’m feeling aggressive, Celene,” Eddie said.

  I was getting tired. I came close to telling him that the dress didn’t go with his eyes, but it seemed a childish tack.

  Deckard said, “Go on to the bedroom. I’ll be along in a couple minutes.”

  Eddie scowled, but he left.

  “It’s not buying of ceramic work, I’m a private detective.”

  She looked at me. Then she laughed.

  It went on too long. I began to feel aggressive. “What’s the problem? Jokes coming across a TelePrompTer behind me, or what?”

  “I don’t know which of you is farther into daydreamsville.”

  “Me or your bit of rough? You’ll only have half a chance to decide. I’ve got a couple of questions which I’d like to ask you. You don’t have to answer me, and even if you do it probably won’t keep other people from asking the same things soon.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Primarily about the night of April twelfth.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Billy.”

  “That’s right. The first question is whether you saw him that evening. That was the Saturday which seems to be the last day he was seen.”

  “Yeah, I know which day it was. Because I was supposed to see him on the Sunday night and he never showed.”

  “Did you see him the Saturday?”

  “For a while, yeah. We were out here in the late afternoon, but Eddie came back when he’d said he wouldn’t.”

  “Eddie? This Eddie?”

  “Of course this Eddie. What other Eddie?”

  “How long could you have had him around?”

  “He’s my inspiration,” she said. “I’ve known him for a long time.”

  “But you were friendly with Boyd?”

  “I was balling him because he was going to buy some of my stuff, if that’s what you were asking. He was supposed to pick some things out that Saturday. Only, Eddie got in some trouble in Bloomington and got scared. He came home early and that scared the pants off Billy.”

  “Eddie scared the pants off Billy?” There seemed a shortage of pants altogether.

  “So Billy left early. About nine. I never saw him again. When he didn’t show up or call on Sunday, I went around to his place but nobody answered the door. I didn’t hear till later that he’d probably left town.”

  “When he left you on the Saturday, do you know where he intended to go?”

  “Nope. Didn’t seem right to ask. And I was tending to Eddie. He got into a fight, and was cut prett
y badly.”

  “Eddie? In a fight?”

  “Look, fella,” she said, waving a finger at me. “You don’t know Eddie. You got no reason to crap on him. I’ve known him a long time. I’ve known him from before he went funny. If I spend time with him, it’s my business, not yours.”

  “You are absolutely right,” I said, chastened. “I’m sorry. I had no reason to make rude remarks just because he rubbed me the wrong way.”

  She didn’t know whether I was being sarcastic or straight.

  I said, “I’ve had a long day in a business I don’t understand. It’s made me less open to the variability of humanity than I am accustomed to being. And more prickly. I’ve not meant to be offensive.”

  She decided she knew I was being sarcastic now. “Go on. Get out,” she said.

  I couldn’t think of any way to retrieve the situation.

  I got out.

  I felt genuine regret as I drove back to Nashville. I wasn’t very nice to Deckard and friend. Usually I am interested in people who are different. I positively like bearded men who wear dresses.

  But not that day.

  Maybe I was getting old-fashioned in more profound ways than I admitted to myself. Maybe I was heavily into daydreamsville, as the lady said.

  Only I couldn’t find Daydreamsville on the map. Needmore, Fruitdale and Bean Blossom, I found. Also Trevlac, which they say was named by spelling Calvert backward. I passed through’ Helmsburg and by six railroad cabooses which had been converted once to be motel rooms.

  Maybe I fit into the real world after all.

  I drove to Dave Hogue’s office. I parked in front of it and tried the door. It was locked. I didn’t know whether he lived on the premises or elsewhere. It looked a large place. He might live there. I rang the bell and waited and rang again.

  No one answered. Out of curiosity I walked to the side of the house where there was a driveway and I followed it around back. There was a yard with a few trees, and a double garage.

  I looked through a small window in a door on the side of the garage and saw an empty space in one bay and a great pile of odds and ends filling the other. No one answered a knock on the back door either.

  All things being considered, I decided to leave the man in peace. I would report what I’d been up to by phone from Indianapolis in the morning.

  I also decided to eat. I went to the Nashville House half expecting to see Sheriff Dunlap tucking into today’s special. But she wasn’t there,

  I had myself a big meal, including their fried biscuits.

  I took a long time over the food, and by the end I felt a lot better. I was, after all, employed. To be irritable just because I didn’t understand some things was to be a sore winner in a race like mine.

  After dessert I walked across the street to the sheriff’s office. I soon had a clue why she’d not been eating. There were three state police cars in the reserved space in front of her office. That wasn’t the clue. The clue was the raised voices that came through the door as I approached it. I even thought I saw somebody inside waving his arms.

  I decided it wasn’t the time for me to wander in. They scared my pants off. I walked back to my van.

  The state police were with Jeanna Dunlap. Maybe giving her a hell’s hard time for not bringing them into the Boyd case earlier. That would mean she had not found her second body and had begun to suspect she wasn’t going to find it. It meant her particular theory was now out. Some new theory was in. The thing was up for grabs.

  I mused about language for a moment, the susceptibility of common phrases to double meaning. Up for grabs. Rubbed me the wrong way.

  I decided I shouldn’t use so many common phrases. Then I decided that was stupid, I was common, I am common. He is, she is, I are common,

  I got in the van and drove back to Indianapolis, Once there, I did no more work except to sort out the telephone number Elizabeth Staedtler had given me, I tried it twice. The first time it was busy; the second, nobody answered.

  I called it a day. I went to visit my woman. There I went to sleep. It’s common knowledge that a rest is as good as a change.

  Chapter Twenty

  After breakfast I called Dave Hogue’s number. But he wasn’t at his office. “He’s over trying to get Frank Pynne out again,” Betty Weddle told me, “The state police took Frank in for questioning last night. In fact the town is swarming with state police now.”

  “And there’s no way you can tell when Mr. Hogue will be back, then?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “All right. Could you tell him that I’ll be in Indianapolis this morning trying to track down Elizabeth Staedtler? I’ll try to call him later on.”

  “I’ll tell him, Mr. Samson.”

  “And could you ask him to do one other thing for me?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I would like to know who inherits from Billy Boyd.”

  She hesitated. “Why is that?” she asked.

  “There is no point in being completely bemused by all the gossip and small-town politics,” I said. “When people are murdered, it’s for reasons, and so it may be helpful to know who benefited materially from Boyd’s death.”

  “Mr. Samson,” she said, “isn’t your interest exceeding what you’ve been hired to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You are not in this case as a law enforcement officer; you have no responsibility to assign likely guilt. You are involved in the legal defense of a client against possible charges or conviction.”

  “I don’t need to tell you that if we find who did do it, that’s the best defense available.”

  “And I shouldn’t need to tell you that Frank Pynne may well not care to pay for anything beyond the minimum necessary to get himself off. That is our object. Nothing more.”

  I thought that I had clear enough in my mind what was in bounds and what wasn’t, but I said, “Well, when I come down I’ll have a word with Mr. Hogue just to make sure we all understand what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  Perceptively she said, “I’m not meaning to undermine any understanding you have with David. But once Frank is cleared, that’s going to be that.”

  “And at the moment, helping the forces of law and order to find a hypothesis which doesn’t involve Frank Pynne is as good a step toward that goal as any.”

  “I see. Yes. When will you be back in Nashville?”

  “I would think this afternoon.”

  “All right. I’ll tell David.”

  I went through my notes on Elizabeth Staedtler, and returned to the phone. I tried the telephone number she had given me again, but it was busy.

  So I tried I.U.P.U.I. From their own information number I got the number for the sociology offices. There I got a harassed secretary.

  I explained that I was trying to locate a woman who had been interviewed for a job in her department in June.

  “Trying to locate.” she repeated back to me as if in utter disbelief. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Madam,” I said, “I am working on a murder case and this person may know how to get in touch with a vital witness.”

  “Murder,” she repeated. “I can’t believe it. First the darn car won’t start and now someone’s calling about murder cases. What are you? A cop?”

  “I’m a private detective working for the lawyer who is defending a man being accused of murder.”

  “And what is it you want?”

  “I want the home address and telephone number of Doctor Elizabeth Staedtler. She was interviewed for some kind of job on June twelfth this year.”

  There was a silence at the other end of the line. In an optimistic moment I thought she’d gone to get the file.

  “I don’t know,” the secretary said, at last. “Just over the phone, somebody’s address and telephone number? I don’t think I can do that. I mean I’m sure you are who you say you are, but how do I know you’re not someone else? Not necessarily criminal or something, but like a
finance company? I don’t see how I can do that. Not over the phone. Not unofficial. Maybe if you came over and talked to our head of department, the head could authorize it, but otherwise I have to treat job applications as confidential. No, I can’t do it. Sorry.”

  I had to accept it. So I did.

  I tried the number which Staedtler had given me again. This time nobody answered after twenty rings.

  It was going to be one of those days.

  Come to think of it, mine was one of those lives.

  I called information for Bridgeport, Connecticut. I could have told the operator what she told me. “I have no listing for an Elizabeth Staedtler. In fact I have no listing for any Staedtlers of that spelling at all in Bridgeport.”

  “Thank you,” I said. But I didn’t mean it.

  All my client had told me was that she had come to Indianapolis from Bridgeport. She never said she lived there. And when she called to sign me off she said she was going back to the East.

  The East is a big place.

  I had several ways to go. I decided to cast a net at the Police Department. Miller had been so helpful before, I knew he was just dying to pursue a few little things for me so I would be free to amble down south again.

  Miller wasn’t there.

  “Well, where is he?” I asked Sergeant Mable, the reception officer at Homicides and Robberies with Violence. “On a case or downstairs being reprimanded or what?”

  “In Nebraska,” Sergeant Mable said.

  Shocked, I asked, “Has he retired?”

  “Naw. He’s on vacation.”

  “Vacation? In Nebraska?” Nobody goes on vacation in Nebraska.

  Except maybe Miller.

  “How long’s he away?”

  “Another two weeks.”

  “Oh terrific.”

  “What did you want to see him about?” Mable asked.

  “I’m trying to find somebody,” I said, unguardedly.

  Mable shrugged. “Try Missing Persons?”

  It would never have occurred to me, but there were worse notions. “Where do I go?”

  Missing Persons was down the hall from Communications and a stairwell away from the friendly computers of I. & I.—Identification and Information. The office was a clearinghouse for search activities elsewhere, not big in itself.