Missing Woman

by Michael Z. Lewin

  And there was no danger warning on the door.

  The first person I saw as I walked in was a stocky man of about fifty with thinning gray hair, swept back so it looked as if his head had jumped forward leaving the hair behind. I knew him. Lieutenant Leroy Powder.

  He saw me immediately. He must have been looking at the inside of his door.

  “Oh God!” I said.”

  “But my friends call me Roy,” he said. Then to the others in the room, a non-uniform clerical assistant and a junior officer, he said, “Hey, guys, look! This here is an old-style specimen like you don’t hardly see out of a zoo nowadays. Have a good look before he becomes extinct.”

  “I didn’t know you were up here,” I said. “I thought you were one of those guys that disintegrated when he was hit by sunlight.”

  “I’ve been here more than three years. Just about getting things into shape,” he said with some pride. When we’d met before, he was the long-entrenched supremo of the department’s night cover system, a legend in his own nighttime.

  I hadn’t enjoyed dealing with the legend.

  “So what you want?” he asked, challenging me.

  It was a jump ball as to whether I walked out, but I said, “Nothing you can help me with. Just a missing person.”

  “I didn’t think even you thought this place was the goddamn toilets,” he said. “Of course you got a missing person. Now, who the hell is it?”

  “A former client,” I said.

  He wrung his hands. “A client. A client! My galloping, God, the sleuth wants us to go out and find his client for him.”

  “Only if you’re up to it,” I said.

  “Bit careless to misplace a client, isn’t it, gumshoe? Wouldn’t have thought you had so many as one could get lost in the shuffle of tiny feet in and out of your office.”

  “When the performance is finished, and these two captives do their audience number and stand and cheer and holler ‘bravo’ and stamp their feet, maybe we can do the necessary so I can get out of here.”

  “Oh, my humblest pardons, gumshoe,” he said. “Gumshoe is a busy gumshoe and doesn’t have time to put up with the idiosyncrasies of silly old lieutenant policeman person.”

  “Right first time,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, “I’m in a hurry, so if you got anything to say come through to my desk and make it snappy.”

  I was as concise as I knew how to be.

  “So,” Powder said, “your problem is that when you had your client sitting across the desk from you, you didn’t get her home address.”

  “I plead guilty,” I said.

  “And you came in here to get your friend Miller to help you make amends for this carelessness. What things did you want Miller to do for you?” He picked up a pencil and held it ready above a sheet of paper.

  I was encouraged. I said, “I wanted him to call I.U.P.U.I. to lubricate the wheels for me there. I wanted him to call the University of Bridgeport to get the student records of Elizabeth Staedtler and Priscilla Pynne including home details. And I also wanted him to get onto the Pentagon.”

  “The Pentagon,” he repeated. “Naturally. And why was that?”

  “I would like to know where Billy Boyd went when he ran away in 1960. He became eighteen when he was away, so he would have registered for the draft. They would know where he was living at the time.”

  Powder wrote it down. “I see,” he said. “And would your friend Miller get all this stuff for you?”

  “Probably, yes.”

  “Then he ought to be drummed out of the goddamn force,” Powder said.

  “That’s a narrow and stupid—”

  “Narrow! Stupid! To beef because a cop spends public time getting stuff for a lawyer defending a guy who hasn’t even been charged yet? With no chance of clearing up a crime?”

  “You got a murder down there. Or two. Or even three.”

  “But they’re not our murders, are they?”

  “Narrow and—”

  “Button it!” he said, his voice ringing. “Let’s put you in my leather-soled shoes, hypothetical though that may be since you ain’t even half big enough to fill one of them. Suppose you’re me and you walk in spouting all this guff. What would you do in my place?”

  “I’d call I.U.P.U.I. I’d call the University of Bridgeport. I’d—”

  “On your horse,” he said. “Go on. I’m busy. Your time is up. You got a missing-person case sometime, come and see me.”

  I left quietly. It had been one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Chapter Twenty One

  On my way to the halls of academe, I stopped at the Hotel Penrod, where I’d seen Elizabeth Staedtler enter.

  Five bucks and a quick flash of my investigator’s card got me a look at the hotel register for June, nearly as quickly as the five bucks alone would have. I found Elizabeth Staedtlers entry easily. She’d checked in on the day before she’d come to me and she’d checked out the day after. All as she had said. The only address given was Connecticut.

  I pointed this out to the clerk, an elderly man who moved slowly enough to make me suspect he was really dead. “Shouldn’t you get more home address than this?”

  “What for?”

  “In case they leave something behind that you want to send on to them to keep their good impression of the hotel so they’ll come back when they’re next in town.”

  “Anything gets left we keep for a couple of days and then divide up. You get some funny stuff sometimes. Had a bottle of booze with a worm in it last month once. A worm!”

  “Do you remember this woman?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “How do you know? I haven’t even described her yet.”

  “I don’t remember her.”

  “Would some more cash help your memory?”

  “Not a lot. I only started working here in July.”

  I.U.P.U.I. is an enormous exercise in cooperation between the two oldest rival Indiana state universities, Indiana and Purdue. Neither of, them originated in Indianapolis; now they both have a major base there in a complex but seemingly unplanned campus built in brick and concrete around a series of parking lots.

  I found my sociology secretary, though with some difficulty. She was a lively little woman who remembered talking to me. “You’re the guy said you were a private eye on a murder, right?”

  “Not only said but am.”

  “Christ, what a day!”

  “I know the feeling,” I said.

  “It didn’t stop there, you know.”

  “What? Where?”

  “After you called, I had three lectures to cancel. Three! What a day!”

  I nodded. “About Elizabeth Staedtler?”

  “I talked to the head of department about that after you called, because I thought from your voice, you know, I thought that you’d probably be coming by.” She smiled. “And here you are.”

  “And here I are. What did he say?”

  “She. Our head’s a she. Anyway, I talked to her, and we talked about it and then a little while ago I got this other funny phone call. Now I hardly never get funny calls, but today! And he said he was a policeman. Well, first I thought it was you again, even though the voice was kind of different, I thought it was you and after all you were what you said you weren’t and from a finance company or even an old boyfriend, you know? Only he said to call him back at the Police Department. He gave the number and I did and it was the Police Department and so he was, you know?”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Well, he said that I shouldn’t give you any information. And, of course, in a way, that made me happy I hadn’t done it in the first place, ’cause I was suspicious, or—well, if not exactly suspicious, then at least cautious, because a secretary in a big department has access to some pretty important things sometimes, you know. But then I told him, see.”

  “Told him what?” I asked in edgewise.

  “Well, what happened after
I talked to the head. She asked me to get the file, so we could see what we were dealing with, because she didn’t remember it. And I’m not surprised she couldn’t remember it, because it wasn’t there.”

  “The file?”

  “That’s right. Stetler, Staedtler, it didn’t matter how you spelled it, because it wasn’t there.”

  “You mean it’s been stolen?”

  “I mean it never was there.”

  “Hang on. I don’t understand.”

  “Well, we’ve never heard of her.”

  “What do you mean, you’ve never heard of her?”

  “I mean we weren’t hiring anybody in June. We didn’t interview anybody in June and we’ve never heard of anybody called Doctor Elizabeth Staedtler.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Well, at least you’re not laughing,” she said. “The policeman, he laughed his head off.”

  “Is there any chance of a mistake about this?”

  “No. I mean we can’t keep track of everybody who makes an application for a job, you know. We get so many because jobs are so scarce in this day and age. But we certainly know who we interview. And we know when we interview, and . . . all that. We saw some prospective students that week, some late applications and a man who wanted to transfer from Duquesne. But no hiring. And then when I told him that, the policeman, he said that it was all right to tell you when you came in after all. The kind of day it was, that seemed to mean that you probably wouldn’t come in, you know. But here you are.”

  Chapter Twenty Two

  By the time I’d driven back to my office, I had figured out that Elizabeth Staedtler had been in Indianapolis for some reason other than applying for a job at the sociology department of I.U.P.U.I.

  I’m quick that way.

  But I couldn’t be sure of anything else. Sure, she’d checked in and out of the hotel when she’d said. But who knows where she spent the rest of her life?

  I tried the number she’d given me. It was busy again.

  I called the University of Bridgeport.

  I was in no mood to mess around. “I’m calling from the Indianapolis Police Department,” I said. “I would like the addresses and telephone numbers you have for two former students. Would you put me through to someone with alumni records, please?”

  They put me through. After doing my explanation bit, I demanded the records of Elizabeth Staedtler and of Priscilla Pitman.

  “You want to hang on? Or shall I call you back?”

  “I’ll hang on,” I said.

  They were quick and they were efficient.

  “O.K., Officer,” the records man said. “I have them. You ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Elizabeth Sanderson Staedtler entered in the fall semester of 1971 and graduated in June, 1975. Four point oh oh grade point average. Whew, that’s top grades. You want that kind of thing?”

  “Why not?” I said.

  “Majored in history, double minor in education and psychology.”

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t want me to read the transcript, do you?”

  “No. How about addresses?”

  “I’ve got a home address. It’s 15 Bayview Drive, Stonington, Connecticut 06378.”

  “Good. And a phone?”

  He gave me a phone number.

  “That’s the address she applied to college from?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any others on there?”

  “No, sir.”

  “O.K. What about Priscilla Pitman?”

  “Yes,” he said, slowly. Finding his page. Or whatever. “Priscilla Howell Donohue Pitman. Also entered in fall, 1971. But she didn’t complete the year. She left before finals. Her transcript is all F’s and I’s. I is for incomplete.”

  “And addresses?”

  “I’ve got 781 Croxley Boulevard, Apartment 4A, Springfield, Massachusetts 01107. But no phone number. Information is pretty thin on this file.”

  “Thanks. You’ve been a great help.”

  “Just doing my job,” he said.

  I tried the Indianapolis number I’d been trying. It rang and rang. I didn’t understand.

  But . . .

  I called Stonington, Connecticut. It went to the eight count before it was answered by a woman.

  “May I speak to Elizabeth Staedtler, please?”

  “Liz? Good heavens, she hasn’t lived at home for years!”

  “I’ve just had this number from the University of Bridgeport. Do you know another number where I might be able to get her?”

  “You can get her here tomorrow,” the Woman said. “Herb and she are coming for an extra-long weekend. Do you know Herb?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Of course you don’t. Liz is not a Staedtler anymore. She’s a Weaver.”

  “I’d like to speak to her today, if it’s possible.”

  The woman gave me another Connecticut number, in Hartford.

  I called the Indianapolis number again. It was not a busy-signal try; it was a no-answer try.

  Until the thirteenth ring.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello,” I said. “Who is this, please?”

  “I, um, my name is Carl Kovaleski.”

  “I’m trying to get some information on a woman called Elizabeth Staedtler,” I said. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “I called her at this number in the middle of June. Does that help?”

  “No sir, mister, it doesn’t.”

  “Well, is there anybody else there who might remember or who might know something?”

  “I dunno, mister. This here is a public telephone in the bus station. I’m from Saint Louis, so you better tell me exactly who you want me to ask.”

  It was the hard way to learn how a phone could be either busy or unanswered with nothing in between. And it left me with an image of Elizabeth Staedtler, in her gray coat, camping in the phone booth waiting for my call.

  I was getting upset. My last client on Maryland Street was turning out more complicated every step I took. I felt absurd now just to have accepted her at face value at the time.

  I called Hartford, Connecticut.

  A woman answered. “Hello.”

  “Is that Mrs. Weaver?”

  “It is.”

  “Formerly Miss Staedtler?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Who’s calling, please?”

  “My name is Albert Samson,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Of Indianapolis.”

  “Yes? So?”

  “I’m a private detective. You hired me in June.”

  “Like hell I did,” she said.

  I heard a voice in the background, asking a question.

  Faintly, as the receiver hit the cradle, I heard her saying, “Some new kind of dirty phone call.”

  Chapter Twenty Three

  I was in the Hartford airport by a little after five.

  I didn’t have Herbert Weaver’s home address, but I matched the telephone number to an address in the phone book.

  The wrong side of town, in the rush hour. I arrived by taxi at their comfortable suburb doorstep almost at 6 p.m. exactly.

  I rang the bell and was answered by a woman of about twenty-seven.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Weaver?”

  “Yes?”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  It was another half an hour before two Weaver children were fed and occupied enough to leave me some clear time with their parents. Herbert Weaver was older than his wife, a man with a strikingly expressive face and restricted to a wheelchair. Elizabeth Weaver was on the tall side, and, though tired, she carried an immediately attractive vitality. Her movements were bright. She swung herself, even if it was just to drop into a comfortable armchair, pleading exhaustion.

  She had definitely never hired me to do anything.

  “You say someone’s been using Elizabeth’s name?” Herbert Weaver said.r />
  “Your wife’s maiden name. I was hired in June by a woman who called herself Doctor Elizabeth Staedtler.”

  “A doctor,” Mrs. Weaver said. “Mmm. That would save a lot in medical bills.”

  “A Ph.D. doctor, in sociology,” I said.

  “And what was this person trying to accomplish, Mr. Samson?”

  “She hired me to look for a woman who I believe you once knew, Mrs. Weaver.”

  “Who?”

  “A woman who entered the University of Bridgeport the same time you did. Priscilla Pitman.”

  She appeared not to place the name.

  “The story was that you and Miss Pitman—who has married and is now Mrs. Pynne—corresponded once or twice a year and considered yourselves friends.”

  “I don’t quite . . .”

  “Miss Pitman left U.B. before the end of the first year.”

  “Oh!” she said suddenly. “Her!”

  “What was it, dear?” her husband asked.

  “There was this girl in the dorm who I bet it was. She came to my room once and asked me to be her friend. It was terribly unnerving. She sat on the bed and just kept talking, about how much trouble she was having concentrating on her work even though she knew it was easy, and how she needed someone she could feel she was working for, who would help make her bear down. It was frightening, because she had this intensity. Talking very calmly, but as if she were going to explode. God, I haven’t thought about it for years.”

  “You always did attract the lame ducks,” her husband said.

  I took the picture which my Elizabeth Staedtler had given me and showed it to the world’s Elizabeth Staedtler. “Is this the girl?”

  She looked at it a long time. “It’s the same brooding frown,” she said. “That’s her.” She passed it to her husband.

  “Well, well,” he said. “Not backward about coming forward.” “He passed the picture back to me.

  I said, “I take it that you did not go on to be her mentor-friend.”

  “No,” Elizabeth Weaver said. “I felt sorry for the girl, but she scared me.”

  “What happened to her?” I asked.

  “There were some incidents,” she said, “And then she was found naked in the cafeteria one morning in the spring. She was gone that afternoon, poor child. She was one of those, you know, who go away from home for the first time and can’t handle it.”