“Only thing too long is the time between visits. Come earlier so we can play cards. The girls love rummy.”
“Sure, that’d be swell.” Gin rummy with Maureen and her mother, Winifred—she needed that and a hole in the head. Herb kissed her and said good night. At the door, Lennox turned back.
“Does the name Eugenia mean anything to you?”
“Why?”
“Amos mentioned it.”
Her uncle took her arm and walked out the screen door and onto the porch. “Before the war, someone he knew. In England.”
“But she’s—”
“Dead. Some accident before the war ended.”
“Long time to carry a torch.”
In the thick elms, the cicadas whined like violins in a horror picture.
“Some things,” her uncle said softly, “you just never get over.”
Forty-first Street was quiet. The big Warren house had been built by Winifred’s husband, a banker, at the turn of the century. The trees, elms and maples, made overgrown canopies, shading the elegant streetlamps. Down the steep stairs, Lennox tripped quietly, walking to the Packard.
There was no movement on the street. She shook off her jitters and climbed into the car, thinking of Amos’s lost Eugenia. To be haunted by a lost love for twenty years, that seemed cruel. Yet she knew ghosts clung to you, heavy, warm memories, as you tried, night after night, to remember and honor them. And to shuck off the guilt of living when they were cold and gone.
As she pulled out and drove to the corner, Lennox heard a car behind her. Its headlights shone in her eyes. She turned left quickly, trying to see the car from the side. Parked cars and overhanging branches blocked her view.
Myrtle Street was narrow, clogged with parked cars. The headlights came up close behind her. She turned again, bald tires squealing. Thirty-eighth Street wasn’t any better. The car stuck. At Benton Boulevard, she turned north. The street was wider but about as well lit as the Hannibal Bridge after midnight. She cursed the city fathers and watched the car come around the corner behind her. It was black, a sedan. Chevy, Buick, maybe a LaSalle.
Lennox floored the old 120 down the Boulevard to Linwood, turned left with a green light. Behind her, the car squealed through on a yellow. Forty-five, fifty, fifty-five miles per hour. The traffic was light on Linwood. The buses had stopped for the night, apartment buildings were dark.
At Paseo, she turned again. In her own neighborhood, she could duck into an alley, get into her building in a flash. She looked at her watch. Almost eleven. Damn, the house will be locked.
The wide boulevard with its grassy median and war memorials was busy. She slowed behind a taxi and a creeping coupe driven by white-haired gent. The black sedan pulled behind her. She edged the Packard forward, hoping the taxi hack would get the message. She honked her horn. He ignored her.
The sedan bumped her, hard. She lurched forward, almost hitting her head on the steering wheel. Son of a bitch! She gripped the wheel. The sedan rammed her again, harder. She jerked the wheel left, but they followed. Then right. The sedan caught her on angle this time, crunching the corner of the bumper, throwing the car sideways.
Wildly, she steered it back into line, throttling hard. She bumped up over the right curb, through a patch of flowers, onto the sidewalk, and off again onto a side street. The black sedan followed, avoiding the flowerbed.
She raced down the street, turning left on Brooklyn and stomping hard on the gas. The sedan never faltered. Who were they? And what the hell did they mean by playing bumper cars? If they were trying to intimidate her, they were barking up the wrong tree. She felt a surge of anger. Damn wops. Why did she assume they were Italians? Shirley’s and Herb’s words echoed in her mind, their warnings. But what had she done to Georgie? She was working for the sawed-off greaser!
A red stoplight loomed ahead at Independence Boulevard. She looked in her rearview mirror. The sedan was half a block back, coming fast. Lennox plunged out into the intersection. Horns blared; a gray coupe brushed past her. She wove around a maroon sedan, cut the corner, and headed left across the traffic. But before she could look behind her, she realized she’d made a mistake. She was in Terrace Park, on the bluffs above the Missouri. To her right, the lights of the railroad bridge, to the left the ASB and Hannibal bridges. Straight ahead, inky dark. Below, the river.
The curvy park lanes of the Terrace weren’t made for eluding black sedans. Her only hope was to zip around and take the first exit. She crouched over the wheel.
The sedan burst into the park and aimed for her. The road ahead curved left. She was going too fast. Blood thumped in her ears. She hit the brakes and the sedan hit her, knocking her off the pavement and onto the parched grass. She clutched the wheel. There—another strip of blacktop. Bumping down the curb onto the other lane, she pulled right, skidding and heading away from the cliffs.
She suddenly began to laugh. If this wasn’t some evening excitement! Like bumper cars at Electric Park. Talbot would have loved this: MYSTERY SEDAN SETS SIGHTS ON BULLET-RIDDEN PACKARD. Had she pointed out the bullet holes? Not unusual in cars auctioned at the sheriff’s sale. Not in wild and woolly Kaw-town.
The sedan screeched into place behind her. She sucked in her breath. Where had it come from? The car whacked her hard, on the right-rear fender. Glass crunched under rubber. The Packard felt funny, wobbly, and the laugh in her throat melted into a groan.
She hung on to the steering wheel, twisting it left as the car skidded off the pavement again, heading for a clump of lilac bushes. Piloting around them, she got a wild hair, came back up on the street behind the black sedan. Stomping down on the pedal, she grit her teeth and roared up behind them. Two men in the front seat, dark-haired. The driver jerked the wheel and they turned off the roadway onto the grass. She sped past them. Winding around a corner, she slammed on the brakes: There, on her right, was the exit.
Home wasn’t far away now. She took Lexington for a few blocks, but it was too open, too bright, so she jammed into the side streets where ragpicker’s horses grazed on lawns. Slowing the Packard and her pulse, she turned off her headlights, drove as fast as she dared, crossed Paseo, jogged up to Pacific, and was on Charlotte before her breathing relaxed.
In the alley behind Mrs. Ferazzi’s, she pulled the battered Packard to a stop. She got out and stood in the shadows, listening. In the garden behind Poppy’s boardinghouse, night-blooming flowers smelled sweet and lush. The scrape of a window opening broke the silence; then the piano player began, melancholy and light. The music lulled her, made her cling to the wire fence too long. Another old song, one from her father’s records. Duke Ellington, “Solitude.”
The sedan rolled past the end of the alley. Lennox ducked behind the Packard. She waited for the car to stop. When it didn’t, she dived across the alley, vaulted Mrs. Ferazzi’s picket fence, and ducked around the side of the house. The space between the houses was narrow and dark, the dirt soft and mossy.
Headlights shone across the sidewalk. Lennox squeezed against the side of the house. The lights went out. Inching forward, she peered into the shadows and almost stepped on a body at her feet. Old Jenny, asleep, with her quilts piled around her, her gray head on the wooden sign.
At the front of the house, Lennox flattened herself again. Someone was talking. Two men. She strained to hear what they were saying. They must be in their car, waiting for her. The talking stopped, footsteps on the pavement.
Quiet. The piano player was silent. What about the back door? But she knew Mrs. F. bolted it at night. Was Frankie in there reading? No, the lights were out.
Voices from the alley. Lennox inched to the back. They were getting into the Packard! She drew out her switchblade and opened it at her side. She still held her keys in her other hand, gripping them tightly to keep them quiet. If only she could get inside. Suddenly, Mrs. F.‘s rambling wreck was a sanctuary.
The voices were getting closer. Should she go to the street? What if another man was waiting there,
by the door? Were there more than two of them? She brought up the blade. She didn’t want to cut anyone, but what choice had they given her?
Trying to run her off the road, that was sure provocation. There was a short stretch of tall fence at the back corner of the house. She tiptoed back to it.
The footsteps got closer, went away, came back. A hoarse whisper: “Dark back here.”
Brilliant, Sherlock. She readied herself, put her keys carefully in her pocket. She stepped up on the low crossbar of the fence.
A man stepped out from behind the fence. She jumped him from the back, landing like a monkey, wrapping her legs around his waist. He squawked, lurched back into the second man, who grunted and fell to the ground. Lennox tightened her grip on the man’s neck and brought the knife around to his throat.
“Hey! Hey!” the man garbled.
“Hey yourself, bruno!” Her arms ached. “Ready for some barbering?”
“M-m-miss Lennox? That you?”
She twisted her head. Luther stood in the yard, dusting off his pants. He was smiling. “There she is, man. She’s not lost or n-n-nothing.”
Her arms weakened.
“This a game, Dorie?” said the man on whose back she rode.
She wanted to curse. Instead, she pushed off his back and jumped to the ground. She stared at them, panting.
Harvey Talbot was rubbing his neck. “You cook that one up special for us?”
She twisted her neck, looked down the alley. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” he said. “We put the paper to bed, so I came by, but you weren’t here. Then these goons roll by, giving us looks like something rotten’s about to fry.”
“They tried to run me off the road,” she said. She flipped her knife shut and slipped it back in her trouser pocket. “When did you see them?”
“Just a few minutes ago. I was talking to this guy who owns the garage.”
” Sizz-m-m—m— “
“Czmanski?”
Harvey said, “He’s pretty well lit. But he told me I could find Luther round the block.”
She looked at Luther, standing awkwardly, barefoot, in the dirty black pants and undershirt. He looked like his old broken self.
“You’re all right, then? I’ll g-g-go.”
Harvey clapped the bum on the back. “Thanks, old boy.”
They watched him lope off through Mrs. F.‘s dry weeds, out the gate, down the alley. He probably had some cubbyhole like Jenny, a place safe to sleep. She hoped he did.
“I thought you were those goons,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be able to sing in a week or two.”
He sat down on the weathered wood steps of the back stoop. He slid to one side and made room for her. She sat down next to him.
The charge of the moment leached away and she felt limp. She lowered her head to her knees. “Jesus H. Christ.”
“Who were those guys? In the car, I mean.”
“I don’t know.” She looked up at Harvey. His pale skin glowed in the dim light, a purple shadow against his cheek. “Did you recognize them?”
He shook his head. “What have you been up to?”
“Just the usual.”
“Probing and prying where you don’t belong, I s’pose.”
“The usual.”
“I guess I should have been more worried about the goons.”
She looked up at the dark clouds. “You would have enjoyed the chase around Terrace Park.” She smiled. “Writing headlines on the fly.”
“So you missed me?”
She turned to look at him. “Sorry about your neck.” Her fingertips grazed his neck; then she kissed him. Her lips felt hot against his, but then Louie came back, ugly and rich. She stood up.
“Dorie,” he said, standing behind her. “I’d give anything to erase last night, to pretend it never happened.”
She turned back to him. “I wouldn’t.”
He blinked, confused, an enchanted state in any man.
“Did you hear what happened at the Chatterbox?”
He nodded. “Does it have something to do with Iris Jackson?”
“Oh, I would bet on it.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“I thought you might want some good headline material,” she said. “That’s all.”
Harvey took her shoulders. “I came over to see if you wanted to go dancing tomorrow night. It’s my night off, and I got some tickets from my editor.”
“Dancing?”
“At the Kansas City Club. It’s Julia Lee. Not as good as big-band maybe—”
“I love her piano. I haven’t heard her since she left her brother’s band.”
“Then you’ll go?”
She took his arm and guided them back down the dark side yard, steering around the doomsday lady. At the sidewalk, she said, “That depends.”
“On what?”
“On if you can dance,” she said.
He pulled her close. “What about that headline?”
“First things first, eh, ace?” She looked up at his chin, then pushed back. “The bartender who was plugged was working the night Iris Jackson supposedly took her brodie off the bridge.”
“What’s the connection?” He frowned. “What do you mean, ‘supposedly took her brodie’? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten her lovely smell.”
“Oh, no. But that’s not our Iris.”
She gave him the short version on the manicure, the hair, the switch. He folded his arms, nodding, then paced on the sidewalk as he worked it out to his own satisfaction.
“She set the whole thing up? Why?”
“She wanted to disappear, to keep on doing whatever she’s doing without being interfered with.”
“And what, pray tell, is that?”
Lennox leaned against the lamppost. “Hey, I’m only a private snoop, not a mind reader.”
“So she does admit to imperfection.”
“Don’t tell.” She pulled him close. “We still don’t know if you can dance, ace.”
SIXTEEN
FIRST MISSOURI SAVINGS BANK was a venerable pile of bricks on Grand, wedged between a men’s custom tailor and a bookstore. Through the narrow street entrance, the lobby widened and was brightened by a third-story domed skylight. The effect inspired immediate purse emptying, Dorie decided.
She presented her letter to three clerks and a vice president before being whisked into the president’s office by a red-nailed polka-dot lover named Patsy. No sign of the man himself. Lennox lowered herself into an upholstered chair in front of a large desk. A fine oil painting—Thomas Hart Benton, if she wasn’t mistaken—hung over the sofa. Farmers toiling in tall corn, a good old Kansas-Missouri theme.
The sofa was a lush green velvet, as was her chair. She thought she might never get up: more bank psychology. Before she could fall asleep, the bank president stepped out of a washroom, wiping his hands on a towel.
She stood up and introduced herself. “I have a letter of authorization from Mrs. George Terraciano to look at her accounts.”
Mr. President, whose name was Sidney Pitt, took the letter, laid it on his desk, and continued drying his hands. Finally, he disappeared with the towel, returned, shut the door.
“Miss Lennox. After I call Mr. Terraciano, I’ll be glad to let you examine the accounts.” He folded his short arms. He had a bushy head of gray hair, gold-rimmed glasses, and a somber suit.
“The letter’s not adequate, then?”
“In a word, no.”
“And why is that?”
He smiled smugly. “You should know if Mrs. Terraciano is really your client. She was here a few days ago and told us to keep the accounts in strictest confidence, that somebody might come around. Mr. Terraciano is an extremely valuable customer to the bank.”
“And what if I told you that the woman you thought was Marilyn Terraciano was an imposter. That Mrs. Terraciano has never set foot in this bank.”
G
ray eyebrows up. “I spoke to her myself.”
“Did you check her identification?”
“Naturally.” But he blinked and looked away. “Are we quite finished here? I have work to do.”
“I do, too. I’ll leave as soon as I see the accounts.”
“I’m afraid we’ll need Mr. Terraciano’s okay on that.”
Lennox clenched her jaw. “Then at least I can see her own account. That one doesn’t need his okay; she writes the checks on it. Go ahead and call her if you want. And I’d be glad to have the real Mrs. Terraciano come down here and present herself.”
Mr. Pitt’s eyes narrowed. He stared at her for a moment, then stalked out the door. The clock on the wall ticked. Half an hour passed. Lennox hadn’t been kicked out of the president’s office, and his chairs were cozy. She waited. Another fifteen minutes went by. Then Polka-Dot Patsy came in, led her to a conference room with a cup of burnt coffee and a file folder. When Lennox left a short time later, the plan to keep her pennies in a coffee can behind the radiator had become one of her better ideas.
Lennox walked around the corner to use the pay phone at Woolworth’s. Inside the store, the counter was busy with coffee-and-eggers. She edged past the toilet tissue, summer sandals on sale for nineteen cents, and into the booth. But Marilyn wasn’t home. Had Pitt called her for an okay? Lennox didn’t leave her name. She hung up and called the Chatterbox. Marian Esterly answered. Death or not, back to work. Lennox told her to give a message to Sylvia’s mother, should she stop in again. “Tell her to check out the city morgue’” It might not have been the best way to break the news, but one grieving mother could surely comfort another.
On the street again, Lennox walked past the bright windows of Emery-Bird-Thayer. The department store was atwinkle in plaids and tweeds and sequins and organza. She stopped and stared at a gray chiffon dress. Would the old blue dress do for tonight? The skirt was full enough for dancing. She wore it when she was trying to impress clients, and probably would have done better had she been wearing it this morning at the bank, instead of the tan trousers and green blouse.
Swing Town Mysteries Dorie Lennox Box Set Page 16