Swing Town Mysteries Dorie Lennox Box Set

by Lise McClendon

  It wasn’t Eveline’s fault. She was dying. Make some concessions for the dying, she reminded herself.

  If this got out, Thalia would be disinherited. Julian would no doubt see to that. So why couldn’t Mrs. Hines have died with the secret? Why did she have to tell? What could possibly be the point of telling someone such a secret, one you didn’t want anyone to know, on your deathbed?

  She bit down again on her molars. She couldn’t figure it out. Did someone suspect? Julian maybe? Was the Commander worried that someone besides herself had seen the resemblance today?

  When she looked up again at Mrs. Hines, her eyes were closed. Her head had dropped to one side on the pillow. Her mouth hung open a little, revealing strong white teeth and a sad string of saliva.

  “Mrs. Hines? I’d like to look through Tommy’s things, if that’s all right.” The Commander didn’t answer, or move. “Mrs. Hines?”

  Dorie took the woman’s hand. It was cool and skeletal, almost weightless.

  Mother Ruth came through the door, carrying a tray. Dorie stood, trying to control the sense of alarm that ran through her like an electric shock. “She’s— she’s—”

  “Fallen asleep? Good. Well, you and I can have some tea, then,” Ruth said.

  “She dropped off so quickly.”

  “She’s very tired. Lemon or sugar?”

  “Can you check her, please, Ruth?”

  “No one asked you to come in and bother her with your questions.” The nurse set down the teacup, annoyed, and picked up Mrs. Hines other hand, checking her pulse. She frowned a little, set her palm on the patient’s forehead. “I’ll not be waking her up now when she needs her sleep.”

  Dorie backed away. The Commander was only sleeping. The locket remained in her hand, secure. “I’m going out to the chauffeur’s quarters. To look at Tommy Briggs’s things.”

  Ruth had her eye on the patient. “I believe Mildred’s got them in her office. You know where that is?”

  Mildred Miller’s office was empty, the door open. Dorie considered a search for the secretary around the mansion. She was probably back in the kitchen, directing the staff on the leftover hors d’oeuvres, or sitting somewhere with her feet up. Where were her rooms?

  Too much time. Besides, Dorie could see the canvas bag, an old brown army duffel, standing in the corner. She slipped into the office and shut the door. A key sat in a lock above the knob, and she turned it. With luck, Miss Miller wouldn’t be back for a while.

  She worked quickly, pulling out uniforms, clothes, boots. A bundle of letters. A hairbrush and shaving kit. A few books. One was a tattered old novel, the binding broken and pages loose, entitled The Greater Glory. The next was a small Bible inscribed to Thomas Edward Briggs at his confirmation in 1927. Inside it was tucked a small pamphlet advertising a college in Asheville, North Carolina. They had correspondence courses. Someone had circled a course: Economics for a New America.

  She was about to put down the pamphlet, when she noticed a name on the back. The president of the college, William D. Pelley. She turned back to the front. The name of the place was Galahad College. There was no biography of Pelley on the brochure; none was required. He was infamous as the founder of the Silver Shirts, his own special brand of brownshirts. He was running for president but had been kept off most state ballots. He was a fascist. He was a national socialist.

  A Nazi.

  Her blood ran cold. She looked back at the piles of clothes, pawing through the neatly folded shirts. One had been folded inside another. She pulled them apart, and there it was: the silver shirt, more a rich gray, with military cording looped over one sleeve, an L embroidered on the breast pocket.

  If Briggs was a Nazi sympathizer, and Wake was too— what did it mean? Were they working together? Had Briggs planned to turn in Wake? He must have known Wake. Had he tried to blackmail him? It must have been him driving that night Wake found Thalia at the nightclub.

  She didn’t have time to think. She bundled everything up into the duffel bag the way it had been, keeping the pamphlet to show Amos. She tucked it into her pocket and stood the duffel bag in the corner. Unlocking the door, she looked up and down the empty hallway, then back at the duffel.

  “Oh hell,” she muttered to herself. She fished out the silver shirt.

  Tommy Briggs wouldn’t be needing it anymore.

  Rolled up, tucked under her arm on the streetcar, the shirt seemed to stink and become heavier at the same time. What if the police found her with it? Dorie began to sweat. If she’d had her beater, she could have stuffed it under a seat. But here she was, in public, swaying with the rest of the patriots on the way to the Willkie rally. Cold sweat trickled down her backbone.

  The crowd at Union Station had doubled in the last hour. Despite Kansas City being a Democratic stronghold under Pendergast, plenty of its voters were interested enough in Wendell Willkie to give him the eyeball test. Was he as short as they said? Did his hair always fly around in the wind? Was his wife pretty? Would anyone hit him with an egg? Or a tomato, a chair? Critical matters of state would be determined here today.

  She told herself she was here to keep an eye on Thalia. But she’d wanted to come, to see the man who might be president. She would vote for FDR; there was no question of that. But Willkie was breathing hard on the old man’s heels. He just might win. And he wasn’t a bad sort. He knew better than to openly attack Roosevelt when the world was at war. What did Willkie think about war, really? She didn’t think anyone knew. He probably didn’t know himself. After all, he was just a Wall Street man. He only knew how to make money.

  She made her way through the crowd to the station, pushing through a group of students blocking the door. Inside, she found the checkroom and paid the attendant an extra fifty cents to keep the shirt for two days in a basket in the back. He gave her a key on a pin, which she stuck in the lining of her handbag.

  The north waiting hall was packed with people waiting for Willkie. She hoped people weren’t trying to get on trains. Moving was difficult, but she inched her way around the edge of the room. When she got to the pay phones, she stood in line. After ten minutes, she got into the booth and shut the door.

  With a sigh, she sat down. It was quiet in the phone booth, comforting, with the smell of oak. She found a nickel in her purse and dialed the operator.

  “Lawrence, Kansas. Lonnie Masterson.”

  She waited. The operator came back and told her there was no such listing. She asked then for the University of Kansas Housing Office. When the operator gave her that number, she dialed it and waited. Finally, an operator came on. The office was closed; it was Saturday. She sighed and hung up.

  A man was banging on the glass. “Come on, I got to make a call!”

  “Buzz off.” Dorie picked up the receiver, slugged in another nickel, and dialed the Hines residence. She asked for Julian Hines. It was some time before he came on the line.

  “Lonnie Masterson? That college playboy? What do you want with him?” Julian said. His attitude didn’t quite match his words. He seemed distracted and breathless.

  “I guess I want to talk to him.”

  “About what?”

  “About the night Tommy Briggs got shot. Do you have it?”

  Another long pause. She smiled at the impatient man outside the booth, who informed her the train would be arriving in five minutes.

  At length, she got Lonnie’s number and dialed it. A sleepy male voice answered.

  “This is Masterson. Who’s this?”

  “Dorie Lennox. I was in the car following you the night of the shooting on the bridge?”

  “Yeah.” It sounded like he’d sat up and gotten the blood flowing to his head. “I remember you. Lady dick.”

  “Listen, Lonnie. Can you tell me any more about what happened that night? Like how you happened to be going across to the north? Whose idea was that?”

  There was a long silence. She could hear him breathing, moving around. “Lonnie?”

  “I�
��m here.” He sighed. “I don’t want to get into anything. I better not talk to you.”

  “Wait. The chauffeur who was killed? He was a Silver Shirt. I need to find out if he was involved in something that got him killed that night.”

  “I thought it was a kidnap thing.”

  “Tommy Briggs might have been up to something.”

  “Oh.” Another pause. “I guess it doesn’t matter now. I got a call. They said I would get a hundred bucks if I got Thalia out on a date and went to North KC afterward. That was all. Just go dancing and get some dessert.”

  “Who called you?”

  “No name. A man. He said an envelope would be given to me by the chauffeur at the end of the night if I did what they said. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant, going dancing with Thalia Hines. I figured, easy money.”

  “Did you get your envelope?”

  “No, ma’am, I did not.”

  “Did anyone contact you again?”

  “Never heard another word except from the cops.”

  “Did you tell them this story?”

  A breathy sigh. “No.”

  Back in the throng, Dorie felt bombarded with sensations: chanting from one side, echoed from the other, signs everywhere, touting Willkie and declaiming against FDR and the third term. One man had an entire coat and hat covered with Willkie buttons: WE WANT WILLKIE. NO FOURTH TERM EITHER. ELEANOR— NO SOAP! THANKSGIVING DAY NOV. 5. WILLKIE OR BUST. MY FRIENDS— GOODBYE! NO ROYAL FAMILY. The crowd kept the man from toppling over from the weight of them.

  Farther on, one of the Willkie Girls plied buttons on the crowd, WE WOMEN WANT WILLKIE was pushed into her hand. She passed it off to a little girl. A man shoved a handbill at her. It read A VOTE FOR WILLKIE IS A VOTE FOR HITLER. She scowled at it and let it fall to the floor, joining the thousands already littering the station. Elbows jabbed. Someone stepped on her foot.

  Then she saw him. Talbot was taller than most in the crowd, his dark hair falling across his eye. He stood close to the platform doors. Hundreds of people between them. When he looked her way, she waved and shouted his name, jumping, but he didn’t see her.

  The train was coming! A cheer went up in the crowd, nearly drowning out the hoot of the steam whistle. She realized at the exact moment as hundreds of others that it would have been better to stay outside. Soon a voice was heard on the public-address system outside. Another cheer went up. Everyone pressed toward the doors. She was carried along, her feet off the ground.

  People cursed and hollered, shoving one another, telling one another to stop.

  As the crowd around her pushed closer to the door, she had to gasp for air. The woman in front of her wore a large hat; the feather stuck Dorie in the eye. She put her hands against the woman’s wool coat and pushed, trying to get some air. A surge of panic went through her. She thought of Gwendolyn, underground in the dark, the pressing down of bombs, war, starvation, destruction. She felt close to that narrow ledge of panic.

  These thoughts flitted through her mind as if she were somewhere else, analyzing crowd hysteria. Then she was thrown to the right, up against the wall. The man behind her fell into her neck, pressing in unpleasantly with his bristly mustache and belching. She pushed him off with a muttered curse, only to have him apologize with garlicky breath inches from her face.

  Forty-five minutes later, she was outside. The sky was still blue. She’d missed Willkie’s speech. She’d missed the singing of the Hallelujah Chorus on bleachers she’d failed to notice. She’d missed seeing Mrs. Willkie and admiring her hat. She’d missed the hecklers and smearers. She’d been squeezed and bruised and cursed and poked, and missed it all.

  Dorie walked north toward the Market. All the streetcars were packed to overflowing, passengers dangling from the steps. The mayhem at Union Station had taken the starch out of her. She wanted to see Barnaby Wake and Thalia again, too, and had botched it. Maybe the best thing to do would be go back to the boardinghouse and take a nap. She was useless for anything today.

  “Give a lass a ride?”

  Haddam stuck his head out the passenger side of his Buick, grinning like a monkey. She stopped on the sidewalk, trying to stand up straight, but failing. She climbed in the backseat. Gwendolyn was driving again, but slower and more carefully, as if she finally had command of the big car.

  “Hey. Thanks.” Dorie put her head back on the seat and closed her eyes.

  “Some speech, huh?” Amos was saying. “Old WW is finally getting the drift of oration. It’s about time. Lennox? You asleep?”

  “Almost.”

  “What did you think of the speech?”

  “Didn’t hear it. Busy trying to keep from being trampled to death. “

  “Squat little blighter, isn’t he?” Gwendolyn said. “What’d you call him?”

  “Wee Willie Willkie. Shorter than his missus.” Amos snorted.

  “Did you hear the chorus?” Gwendolyn asked, turning a corner, throwing Dorie across the seat. “They sang ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ and that ‘terrible swift sword’ song. ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory.’ Ooh, they were lovely. Don’t you think, Amos?”

  “Bloody lovely.” He paused. “So the lawyer showed up this morning?”

  Dorie opened her eyes and sat up. “Weston.”

  Amos frowned. “Weston came down?”

  “And ever so friendly.”

  “He got it kicked out?”

  “Not quite. No bail bond— good, since I have no money.”

  “I would have paid it; you know that.” Amos put an elbow over the seat. “Where’s the Packard? We can drop you off.”

  Charlotte Street was deserted. Unusually so for a Saturday afternoon, but not unwelcome. Dorie parked the retrieved Packard and began the climb up to the third floor of the boarding house. Her bed began to take on epic proportions in her mind: soft, warm, safe. Large as a floating dock in a choppy sea. It had taken close to an hour to spring her auto at police headquarters.

  She reached the second-floor landing as the pay phone began to ring. She stared at it, willing it to stop. It didn’t.

  “Charlotte Hookshop,” she said. “You itchum, we scrat-chum.”

  Breathing for a second, then: “Dorie Lennox, if you please.”

  She put the receiver to her stomach. Who was this? “She’s out.” She used her low voice.

  “Can you please have her call Miss Miller at the Hines residence.” Mildred rattled off a number.

  Dorie did a fast mental review of her packing of the duffel. Miss Miller didn’t sound angry. “Oh. Wait. There’s the broad now.” Phony foot scuffling. “Hello?”

  “Mildred Miller here. I remembered we had talked about Wendy’s schedule on that last day. I went up to her room and looked around. I felt a little … well, foolish, but I thought it was important.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Another calendar. She kept her own. She had written in several things I didn’t have.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as on Friday, the twentieth, she had lunch with Mrs. Hines. Not unusual, but rather so to put it in the appointments.”

  “Do you know what they talked about?”

  “No. But then on Saturday night, she had written this: ‘Eight-thirty. Tommy. Two forty-five East Fifteenth.’ “

  “Tommy Briggs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing else for Saturday. We didn’t see her again.”

  Done hung up and climbed the stairs. The only person who might know what Wendy had been doing that last night was dead. Coincidence? What had happened that night? What sort of a place was 245 East Fifteenth? Could it have been a Silver Shirt meeting? Or was Wendy having a fling with the hired help, like her sister-in-law? What had Wendy and Mrs. Hines discussed at that lunch that it was so important to pencil it into the book?

  In her room, she lay down on the bed. Rubbing her face hard, she thought of the song the Hallelujah Ch
orus had sung, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” She’d lied to Gwendolyn; she had been able to hear the chorus from inside the station. And that song, Tillie’s song, had caused a physical pain in its simple beauty.

  She closed her eyes. Where was Tillie today? Dorie felt so tired, so low, she wanted that sweet little voice to soothe her into a peaceful sleep. Listening hard, she heard a faraway tinkle of a piano. Luther perhaps. No Tillie.

  She rolled over on her stomach and punched up her pillow. Sinking her face deep into it, she smelled a man. Though he’d never been in her room, she could smell him on her pillow, as if the smell of him— cinnamon and hair oil— had rubbed off on her hair.

  She rolled onto her back again and hugged the pillow to her chest, drawing in the scent. That look he’d given her in the diner, so lonely, so sad. She’d wanted to hold him, to make it right. To tell him she didn’t mean it, to promise him the moon.

  In the theater, Amos Haddam put his arm around Gwendolyn’s shoulder and pulled her close. “The March of Time” was showing last week’s bombings in the Battle of Britain, complete with daytime raids of London. Saint Paul’s Cathedral had been hit, and the statue of Richard the Lion-Hearted outside the Parliament buildings. The sound of the planes made him shake, so real it was. How was old Cassandra bearing up? Was she still down with the rats in the Underground? Would she catch some awful crud down there, just when she was needed? When would he hear from her?

  Gwendolyn shrank in her seat. She had been eager for the cartoon with the mouse, then a pleasant feature with Joan Fontaine and some handsome bloke.