It wouldn’t hurt to look around at E-B-T for a minute. It was only 9:30. She still wanted to find out where Georgie parked his company cars, try to find a black one with dents. And there was something going on at the Blue Valley Racetrack. But the stables probably didn’t get busy till noon.
Inside the big department store, the effects of the Depression and the desertion of shoppers in favor of the Country Club Plaza were obvious. The high ceiling had a gray cast, light bulbs were out, and spider webs hung in remote ironwork. Lennox remembered coming here once at Christmas with her mother and father—she must have been only four or five; Tillie hadn’t been born yet—when the decorations glittered and the smell of hot cider and cinnamon and pine boughs filled the aisles. Today, the old ship of dreams was barely afloat.
She bucked up her spirits for a trip through Ladies Dresses. A few minutes of pawing brought her to the conclusion she couldn’t afford a thing. She wandered down to the basement, where the bargains lurked. But disappointment hung like sackcloth down there, and she left in a hurry. The blue dress would do.
On the steps, she looked at the hazy sky. Those maker tags, the Emery-Bird-Thayer ones. The dresses were full of them. So were Iris Jackson’s girdles and garter belts and brassieres. How did a girl get that much fancy lingerie? Sugar daddy? Or—? Lennox walked back inside and found lingerie on the second floor. Camisoles, girdles, full slips, half-slips, bras, garter belts—many with the house label. She was fingering a satiny garter belt with embroidered pink roses when the saleswoman popped up.
“Isn’t that the sweetest thing?” she said. She had a toothy smile. “If, for instance, you’re out doing the shag, the Lindy, or what all, and your dress should fly up … well, it’s nice to think you’ve got something pretty on.”
Lennox stared at the garter belt. She hadn’t thought about undergarments. She wondered if Harvey did the Lindy. “Isn’t there some sort of, um, bloomer?”
The saleswoman, a well-endowed redhead named Joyce, waxed lyrical about the delicate nature of short bloomers for dancing, and at seventy-five cents, Lennox felt she had to have a pair in pearl gray. As the woman wrapped them up, Lennox asked her about the house label.
“All the big stores do it, Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s. We buy them and put our labels in them.”
“So if you work here, you can buy them at discount?”
“Oh, you better believe it.” Joyce leaned closer and winked. “I have the most hotcha lingerie in Kansas City, I swear on my mother’s grave.”
“So you buy them yourself, or do you have yourself a sugar daddy?”
“For shame!” Joyce laughed. “I’m a married woman. Though to tell the truth, the sugar man business is pretty good in here. My husband gets them for me. He gives me the money and I put them on my discount. But he loves to come in and pick ‘em out. That’s my Ernie.”
“This is kinda strange,” Lennox said as she took the bloomers, “but do you remember a girl who might have worked here, tall and pretty, nice manicure, maybe a rich fella on the side?”
“Tall and pretty—that’s all of us, isn’t it?” Joyce winked again. She was a champion winker. “What color hair?”
“Good question. Blond, or black.” Or almost any color.
“There was Hildy; she got married last year and quit. She’s blond.”
“That doesn’t sound like her.”
“Sorry.”
Lennox thanked her. Downstairs, she squirted Chanel No. 5 on her neck and walked past the counters of makeup, jewelry, and gloves. Asking Joyce seemed a little dumb. Iris might have worked anywhere in the store, or not at all. The tags just seemed like a clue. But maybe not.
The store was filling with society women, clerks, secretaries, salesgirls. At the ring counter, a tall dark-haired woman was trying something big and gawdy on her finger. Her figure made Lennox pause.
Her hair was cut just below the ears. Her shoulders were narrow, like Iris’s. Her nails were red, immaculate. Her suit had a little peplum that accentuated her waist, and a tight skirt. Lennox stepped up beside her.
The woman turned. She wore heavy eye makeup, her brows arched. Her lined cheeks were dusted with rouge. She parted deep red lips, revealing gray teeth.
Lennox excused herself, then ran out of the store, her bloomers under her arm. On the steps, she scolded herself. It wasn’t going to be that easy to find Iris.
The Blue Valley Racetrack parking lot was a sea of scorched gravel. She’d gone back to the office to find Palmer Eustace’s telephone number. Then remembered Amos said he’d never had it. Shirley tried to find it but couldn’t. She tracked down Floyd Wilson’s number instead, in case Lennox wanted to talk to him. At Georgie Terraciano’s meatpacking plant, near the stockyards, in a sweet-smelling part of town, cruising the parking lot hadn’t turned up any black sedans with dents. Her Packard, rattling and crunched, developed a scraping noise on the drive out from the city. Lennox parked next to fifteen or twenty other cars in the shade of the tall bleachers and walked through the STAFF ONLY gate in the whitewashed fence. She found the horse Smitty’s Dream being curried in an open stall. A short conversation with a sullen teenage groom named Darryl was going exactly nowhere.
“You ever bet on Smitty here?”
“Nope.”
“He looks like a nice horse. You ride him?”
“Nope.”
Lennox pushed back her hair and felt the heat from the moist hay and manure permeate the air.
“Is Smitty running tonight?”
“Nope.”
“Another one of Georgie’s ponies, then?”
“Dollface.”
Lennox blinked, then realized that was the name of the horse. “Where’s Dollface?”
He nodded his head south. She wandered down the stalls, checking names beside the gates. When she found Dollface— Fairacre’s Tawny Dollface—the stall was empty. Another groom, a teenage girl in riding clothes, led a horse by. Lennox asked her about Dollface and was told she was being exercised.
“Is Georgie Terraciano around?”
The girl squinted. “Who knows? He’s around here a lot. Sticking his nose into everybody’s business.”
“He is a busybody, isn’t he?” Lennox fell into stride beside the girl and the chestnut horse.
The groom had a blond braid down her back. She tossed back her head. “Just because he’s had a couple winning horses lately, the man thinks he hung the moon. He’s over here telling me and Darryl how to exercise our mounts, as if we were his employees.”
“You aren’t?”
“Heck no. I work on Brick Rogert’s horses, not his.”
“So you don’t work for the track?”
“Oh, we do. But we’re also paid by the horse owners. The trainers choose the grooms, just like jockeys.”
“Do you see the track owners very often?”
“Mr. Wilson comes to the races. He’s a nice man, but he doesn’t know squat about horses. And the other bird, no one’s seen him at all. Never comes out. Somebody said he was here opening day. Up in the owners’ box.”
“You know Mr. Terraciano’s jockeys?”
“Not the new ones.”
“New ones? He just hired them?”
The groom glanced at her, then away. “Uh-huh.”
“Because he fired the old ones?”
She shrugged, petting the nose of the chestnut.
“Why were they fired?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m just a groom.” Her voice was harsh.
Lennox patted the horse’s neck. “But was there a problem?”
The girl led the horse on. “Listen, I have to get to work.”
Head down, trying out theories, Lennox went off in search of a pay phone. Georgie was up to something out here, and it stunk. Had Amos gotten too close? Although Shirley had done it already, Lennox dialed the operator and asked for a listing for Palmer Eustace. Still no go. She couldn’t very well ask Vanvleet, could she? He ordered Amos off the case. But she had Floyd
Wilson’s number. She dug out more nickels and rung him. A butler or somebody said for her to wait. No problem. Waiting was her middle name.
Five minutes later, Wilson answered the telephone. His voice wavered like an old man’s.
“If I could have a few minutes of your time, Mr. Wilson,” she said. “I’m a colleague of… Dutch Vanvleet.” She had almost said Amos Haddam. She wasn’t sure old Vanvleet’s name would get her any further.
“What about?”
“The racetrack. But nothing like the auditor and all that. That’s been resolved.”
“Resolved? What the hell you mean?”
“Dropped. Over. Finis.”
“The lawsuit’s been dropped? That what you’re telling me?”
Lawsuit? Lennox swallowed hard. “I can’t tell you that. But I do have some other information for you. About your partner.”
The old man sniffed. “My partner. Who you kiddin’?”
“You do have a partner named Palmer Eustace?”
There was a pause. When the voice came back, it was subdued, wary. “Yes.”
“Then can I come talk to you? Say about four o’clock today?”
Floyd Wilson agreed, in his new odd tone. Lennox wondered who he thought she really was. G-man, cop, revenuer? She smiled. She could be anybody he wanted as long as he answered her questions.
She found her way out of the stables and back to the parking lot. Georgie Terraciano was winning big bets, long shots, with those new jockeys. Had anyone else’s jockeys been fired? Were they fixing races? Did Floyd Wilson and Palmer Eustace know about it? And what did the track have to do with Iris Jackson?
Lennox wove around bumpers gleaming in the sun. Was Palmer Eustace colored, like the Star reporter’d said? What was this lawsuit?
She didn’t see the man who jumped her. He pinned her arms behind her. Shock gave way quickly to rage and she kicked him hard with her stiff oxfords. He grunted but kept hold. Another man jumped up to clinch her ankles tightly under his arm. With his other hand, he searched her pockets, dumped everything on the gravel. Lennox screamed for the grooms, but before anyone could come, she was thrown in the back of a black sedan. Of all things.
A very small man sat on the backseat next to her, a thin smile on his lips. His short legs dangled off the floor like a child’s. He wore a tiny black suit, black shirt, and white tie, like a midget movie gangster, or a miniature Georgie Terraciano. On his very small hands, he wore very small black leather gloves.
The two big boys got in front. She straightened her blouse and glared at the midget. “What the hell is this?”
“Behave yourself, Miss Lennox, and this ride will be over soon.” His voice was nasal and rough, but childlike. “Misbehave and … well, there’s no promises then.”
“You in the promise business?”
He smoothed his slacks and gave her another enigmatic smile.
“Who are you? What’s going on?”
The sedan moved out of the parking lot as Lennox wrestled with the door handle. Locked again. This black sedan kidnapping routine was getting old. No more was said until the sedan pulled off the highway in a grove of willows along the creek and stopped.
“Now we’ll talk, Miss Lennox.” The midget crossed one tiny foot over his knee. His lilac-water scent was nauseating. “What do you know about the financial dealings of one Georgie Terraciano?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, come. You work for the man.”
“That doesn’t mean he tells me anything.” She tried the door again. “You work for him, too?”
“If we did, Miss Lennox, would we be here?” The midget scooted closer. The driver got out of the car.
“If I knew who you were, I could better answer that.”
“You were at his bank today, looking at his accounts.”
“They wouldn’t show them to me.”
The driver opened Lennox’s car door and pushed her to the middle as he hopped in. She was wedged now between the heavily muscled thug and the flower-sweet, pint-size Pretty Boy Floyd.
“Listen, fellas, if I knew anything, I’d tell you. I don’t like Georgie any more than you do.” She hoped they really didn’t work for him. “Look, what do you want know, specifically? Ask me. I’ll tell you what I know.”
The midget took her right hand as the thug twisted her left behind her. She stiffened, arching her back.
“Such nice hands. Precious little fingers.” She tried to pull her hand away, but the thug held her elbow, too. She could feel his hot breath on her neck.
The midget broke her little finger so quickly, the pain came after the audible snap. Her body hardened and she let out a groan.
“Now, my dear, tell us everything.”
Lennox heaved for breath. Pain shot up her arm to her shoulder. The finger lay at an odd angle in the midget’s palm. “Okay, okay. He’s got racehorses; you know that.”
“Yes, dearie,” the midget squeaked.
“And I think he’s got money troubles, taxes. So maybe he’s fixing races, betting on them and winning big.”
“Very interesting. Do go on.”
“I don’t know anything else, honest.” She watched with horror as he picked up her next finger. “Aw, come on. I don’t.”
“What about the suitcase money?” He lifted her finger.
“What? I don’t know anything about suitcase money.”
The midget snapped her fourth finger between the knuckles. He did it so quickly, she was grateful. Except for almost passing out.
“Enough fooling, girlie. The Truman money. Where is it?”
She tried to clear her vision. Smarting tears ran down her cheeks. “Truman money? You know more about this than I do, short stuff.”
The midget bared his baby teeth and slapped her, the leather glove stinging her face. He kept at it, back and forth, the tiny hand connecting with one cheek, then the other. It hurt but it
took her mind off the racking pain in her hand.
Finally, the thug spoke up: “She don’t know nothing, boss.” The little man sat back but kept his hand up and ready.
The tiny paw packed a pretty good wallop for its size. His nasty little face was red with fury. “Dump her,” he said.
SEVENTEEN
AT 3:45, Dorie Lennox let out the clutch and let the Packard lurch to a stop in the middle of the street. Charlotte Street lay rancid in the afternoon heat. Luther approached from the shadows, his head tipped in question.
“Sumpin’ wrong, M-m-miss Dorie?”
She pulled herself out of the car. The drive back from the track had been slow in second gear. She couldn’t get the Packard to shift to third without passing out from the pain. She held the maimed fingers against her stomach.
“Watch the heap, Luther.”
She ran up the boardinghouse steps. She had to go talk to Floyd Wilson. A few choice words about midgets slipped out on the way up the stairs.
At her door, she fumbled in her pockets. Thank God she still had her blade, that they’d only dumped her stuff in the gravel. But she’d left her keys in the car. She was locked out of her room. Back downstairs, she poked her head in the kitchen. Frankie was bent over the kitchen table, rolling out piecrust.
“Got any cloth down here, gauze strips?” Lennox asked.
Frankie stared at her red sausage fingers. “Lordy, girl.”
“Fast, Frankie, I gotta be somewhere.”
The girl looked frantically around the kitchen, rolling pin in hand. Then her face lit up. “Come on, back to the house.”
Frankie led her across the yard, out the gate, into the neat, well-tended vegetable garden with its rows of tasseled corn, pole beans, okra and beets, up the wooden steps. They entered a dim kitchen, scrubbed clean and smelling of simmering collard greens. Frankie took Lennox’s good hand and pulled her through a hallway. From another room, a clunk, then an awkward plunking of piano keys. They went into a bathroom and shut the door. The room was a recent improvement, with white
tile on the floor and a big porcelain bathtub.
From the cabinet over the sink, Frankie took out a tongue depressor and a roll of gauze. She turned on the cold water and filled the basin.
“Stick ‘em in there for a sec, get the swelling down.”
“I don’t have time, Frankie.”
“How’d it happen? You fall down?”
“Just wrap ‘em. Please.”
The girl gave her head a shake and sat Lennox down on the edge of the tub. She splinted the fingers and bit off the end of the gauze, tucking it under the bandage. She made Lennox wait while she wet a washcloth and cleaned her face of road grime. The walk back to the racetrack had been dry and long. Lennox thanked her.
On the way out of the house, she paused at the sound of the scales. “Who’s playing?”
“My nephew, Sonny.”
“Is he ready to join a band?”
Frankie smiled. “Soon. He’s already five years old.”
Floyd Wilson lived on Stateline, on the Missouri side, but in sniffing distance of Kansas. Lennox snarled to herself. Back in golf course country. She might have known by that sneer in the old man’s voice. He would probably be missing his afternoon game.
A thick belt of trees hid the brick house from the road. Lennox steered the Packard up the circle drive. She’d never seen this house before. Nor so much grass in one place. The man could have a golf course in his own yard.
He answered the door himself. Thin, with a shock of white hair, Wilson had once been tall, but now was stooped. Close to seventy-five, she guessed, following his tilted gait into a parlor stuffed with modern furniture. The sleek shapes of the sofa and chairs, the steel and glass of the tables—all looked incongruous in this old house. She eyed the old man. Who else lived here?
Wilson pointed to a strange laminated-wood chair for her. It was surprisingly comfortable. He lowered himself onto the edge of the deep red sofa. His navy duck pants looked more suited to yachting than to golf.
“What’s with the hand?” he demanded.
“Accident.”
He frowned, then, after some discussion within, agreed with himself. At least his eyesight was still in order.
“Who did you say you were again?”
Swing Town Mysteries Dorie Lennox Box Set Page 17