Sleep Long, My Love

by Hillary Waugh

  At noon Daniels and Hogarth, checking out the report book, called in to say that one of the sixteen addresses in the Burch aid book had a woman with the initials J.S. living there, but she was the one who answered the door. “None or the others are even close. Chief. One of them was an address he had a star beside, and she gave me a runny lock when I mentioned his name. Is that supposed to mean something?”

  “No: a thing. I'm no: hunting for looks.”

  “What next, Chief? Do we come back?”

  “Stay there. See Ramsey and find out where our other men are, then you two go help them.”

  At half past twelve, Clyde Burchard was given his lunch and then brought to the chiefs office. “We’re going to let you go,” Fellows said. “Looks like there’s a good chance you’re telling the truth.”

  Burchard didn't castigate the chief for inconveniencing him. for wrecking half a day’s selling, or threaten suit against the town of Stockford. Thirteen hours in a cell with a murder charge hanging over his head had changed his outlook. All he could feel was a relief so great he could hardly stand. “Thanks,” he said weakly. And then, because he felt he had to say something else, “I told you I was innocent.”

  “Right now it locks that way. But I wouldn’t leave town. Burchard. We’d take a efferent view of things if you left town.”

  “No. I won’t.”

  “Sit down. Take a chair.”

  Burchard sat gratefully and Fellows swiveled around. “Here’s your report book, Burchard. As for your other activities, I’d lay off if I were you. I’m not going to tell you what I think of a man who seduces other men’s wives. I am going to tell you you’ve got one conviction on a morals charge and if you get another, you’re in real trouble. A copy of your statement is going to the Stamford police, and they’re going to keep an eye on you. When you make a call, you’d better sell vacuum cleaners and nothing else.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Fellows took out his chewing tobacco and changed the tone of the conversation. “Now there are a few more questions I want to ask you about that girl who called herself Joan Campbell. She wear any rings or other jewelry?”

  “She had a wrist watch.”

  “What kind?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I’ve never bought that kind of a present for a girl in my life.”

  “Describe it.”

  “It was small, round, and gold, with a black sort of string strap.” Fellows noted that down. “Earrings?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What were her teeth like? Any missing?”

  “If there were, it wasn’t where they showed at all.”

  “What kind of a personality did she have? In short, what was she like?”

  “I didn’t know her very long.”

  “I realize you spent most of the time in bed with her, but she did talk, she did have a character to go with the body. You must have noticed something about her. Was she easygoing, or neurotic, was she a nymphomaniac, was she frustrated, was she eager or merely permissive? When she did talk, what was it about?”

  Burchard licked his lips. “She was interested, but she didn’t attack me. She wasn’t a nympho. I’d guess she was maybe frustrated. As for what we talked about, I don’t remember. We didn’t talk much.”

  That was all Fellows could get from him, and he let him go, feeling as much relief at Burchard’s departure as Burchard himself. “I’m no prude,” he told Wilks when the detective sergeant came in half an hour later, “but a guy like him makes me wan. to take a bath.”

  Wilks said, “It was just a little vacation from the main business. I guess we’re up a tree until we get a break. Harris called in. The beauty parlor brainstorm just fell through.”

  “Well, I’ve got another brainstorm. I want all pawnshops in the district we’ve marked out checked for watches brought in after February twentieth. Here’s the description of it.”

  Wilks took that out with him and started the wheels rolling. Through the afternoon other reports came in, but they were all negative and by the end of that working day, the watch was the only lead still being investigated. Everything else had ended in failure. Druggists and shopkeepers in Townsend had all been questioned, but could give no aid, and the search for the girl had come up against a blank wall.

  “I keep thinking more and more that the girl doesn’t live there,” Wilks said as he sat in Fellows’s office looking over the completely fruitless results of five men’s work. “We’ve hit every office and every shop in that town. Where else would she work? About all that’s left are the doctors and dentists, but somehow I don’t picture her as a nurse or receptionist.”

  “But if you’re going to send a trunk, Sid, you’re going to send it from the nearest station, aren’t you?”

  “Unless there’s some reason we don’t know about why she can’t.”

  “Name one.”

  Wilks was stymied. He said, “All right. She lives there. Why don’t we turn her up?”

  “We aren’t asking the right people.”

  “Name some right people we haven’t been asking.”

  Fellows smiled. He thought for a moment and suddenly snapped his fingers. “I really am stupid.”

  “What?”

  “Dentists. You just mentioned dentists. There’s a possible clue right there.” He looked at his watch and picked up the phone.

  “If you’re going to try to identify her through her teeth, Fred, you’re forgetting she doesn’t have any head.”

  “But she’d go to a dentist, wouldn’t she?” Fellows started dialing. “That’s one place a person would almost certainly go where she’d be known.” He said into the phone, “Chief Ramsey, please. Fellows calling.” To Wilks be added, “It’s not quite five yet. We might catch a dentist or two before they go home. Hello? Ramsey? Say, what’s the name of your dentist?” He grinned at the response and said, “I want to know the dentists in Townsend. How many are there? … Well, give me the name and phone number of yours, will you?”

  He wrote the data on a loose paper amid the thickly messed desk in front of him. “Norman Sinclair,” he told Wilks, and dialed the number. He caught Dr. Sinclair about to leave the office and told him the nature of his business. He wanted the names and phone numbers of every other dentist in town and the names and addresses of every woman patient under forty with the initials J.S.

  The doctor was reluctant both to part with such information and to go through the files to hunt for it. “How can I be sure you’re who you say you are? This is confidential information.”

  “You call me back when you’ve got it and reverse charges. Tell the operator you want Stockford Police Headquarters, Doctor. Is that satisfactory?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Doctor, this is important. This is a murder case and the information may break it for us. We need your help.”

  The doctor felt impressed, important, and more willing. He agreed to help and even volunteered to notify the other two dentists in town himself since they had offices in the same building. He said they’d call back with the complete list as soon as they had it ready.

  It took them half an hour to assemble the information and Fellows spent it going through his own reports, listing the names of all the J.S.’s in Townsend who had been cleared. When the call came in, Fellows pulled over a fresh sheet of paper.

  “We count eight such people between us,” Dr. Sinclair said. “Do you want just their names and addresses?”

  “That and any pertinent information you may have such as if they’re married, have children, and the like.”

  “As follows, then. Mrs. Josephine Stevens, two children—”

  “She’s not the one. This woman never had a child.”

  “Judy Sorenson. Eighteen, 113 Edgehill Road.”

  Fellows didn’t bother with that name. “All right, next.”

  “Joan Simpson, 535 Market Street. That’s all I know about her. She’s not my patient.”

  “You said Joan?”

 
; “That’s right. Jane Smathers, 169 Eastwood Street. Nothing more on her. Joan Steckle, 74 Williams Street. Mrs. Jessica Smith, 88 Eastwood Street, Mrs. Jennifer Sand—no. She’s got children. So has this one.” He paused. “I guess that’s the list.”

  “Do you have phone numbers for these people?”

  “Yes, you want that?”

  Fellows did, and Sinclair read them off. Fellows, thanked him and hung up. “Joan Simpson, Jane Smathers, Joan Steckle, and Jessica Smith,” he said, and Wilks sat down with him to check off names and addresses against the list of cleared names. A Joan Simpson was found, but her address was different from the one Sinclair had given. “Keep her,” Fellows said. “There may be two Joan Simpsons in town.” They kept Jane Smathers too, but the other two names belonged to women on the other list who were known to be very much alive.

  “Joan and Jane,” said Fellows. “Two J.S.’s all our other research failed to turn up.” He turned to the phone again. “Let’s try Joan first.”

  The call was answered by a girl’s voice, and the chief said, “May I speak to Joan Simpson please?”

  There was a moment’s silence and then the girl said, “Joan doesn’t five here any more.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “She moved out the end of January. Who is this?”

  Fellows introduced himself. He said, “May I have your name?”

  “Ruth Cary.”

  “Could you tell me why she left and where she went?”

  “She got married. I don’t know where they’re living. I haven’t heard yet.”

  Fellows said, “This is very important. Will you arrange to be home at eight o’clock this evening? I want to talk to you.”

  When he hung up, his eyes glowed with a steely light. “Sid,” he said, “the ceiling’s getting ready to fall in.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Tuesday, 8:00-9:00 P.M.

  The Market Street address was a brick apartment house three stories high, two wings enclosing a small court. At a few minutes after eight that night, Wilks and Fellows crossed the court along a cement walk that branched to the different entries and entered the main lobby straight ahead. There, the chief set down the suitcases he carried and ran his finger down the list of names and said, “Ruth Cary, 6E.” They went out again to entry six and climbed to the top story to ring the bell.

  Ruth Cary was a pretty redhead in her middle twenties with a pert manner and an interesting way of tilting her head. She looked at the two men and at the two suitcases and nodded at the introductions. She closed the door soberly behind them and said of the suitcases, “Are those Joan’s? What’s happened?” Fellows said, “That’s what we’d like to find out.” He sat down with Wilks on the couch as Miss Cary took a chair between the door and a table. She bit her lip and said, “What did Joan do?”

  “You read about the dead woman found in Stockford?”

  “I read something about it. I don’t know anything really.” She leaned forward a little. “You don’t mean it was Joan, do you?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. These suitcases and a green trunk were found in the house. Do you recognize the suitcases?”

  Ruth Cary was uncertain. “Joan had a couple of suitcases like those, but I can’t remember whether hers had initials. Her trunk was kept in the cellar. She only brought it up when she moved. I don’t see how she could be the girl you found. SKe left town. She got married and moved out West.”

  “You don’t want to identify the suitcases?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t be sure they’re hers.”

  Fellows lifted the smaller to the cushion beside him and got up to open it. “Maybe you can identify some of her things. Would you care to take a look?”

  The girl came over reluctantly, and Fellows lifted the lid. The belongings inside were not neatly folded. They hadn’t been when the locksmith had opened the luggage, and the police, when they inventoried the items, were careless in replacing them. Fellows took out some underthings on the top which were store bought and meant nothing. Then came a blouse, a dress, and a sweater. Ruth Cary said tensely, “Those are hers.” Then she drew out an item herself. She said, “That’s my blouse,” and burst into tears.

  Fellows helped her back to her chair and she said she was sorry and blew her nose. He repacked the suitcases and met Wilks’s eye. Death was a sorry fact at all times, but at last a break had come. At last they knew who was dead. He put the suitcase back on the floor and said solicitously to the girl, “Can I get you a glass of water or something?”

  If the blouse made her weep, Fellows’s remark brought about an opposite effect. She laughed through her tears and got herself under control. “Why,” she asked, “does a man always say something like that—as though water was a miracle cure?” She wiped her eyes and said, “I’ll be all right now. It’s just—it’s such a shock. She lived with us and now she’s been murdered.”

  “Maybe you can help us find out who did it.”

  She put her handkerchief away. “I want to.”

  “You said she got married, or she told you she got married. We’d like to know who the man was.”

  Ruth leaned on her knees and shook her head. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t. I don’t have the faintest idea.”

  “We think he may have been the man who took her trunk to the station in a pick-up truck. That ring any bells?”

  She smiled a little at that. “That was Bob Herald. He’s Helen’s beau—my other roommate. He has a chicken farm and that was his truck.”

  “We’ll want to talk to him.”

  Ruth said, “He’ll be here. Helen’s having dinner with him, but when I said you’d called, she said they’d come right back.”

  Fellows nodded. Then he asked the girl to tell him everything she could about the dead girl. Joan, Ruth related, worked as a secretary for the Fizz-Rite Cola Company. Originally she was in their main office in Bridgeport, but when a branch bottling plant was opened between Townsend and Stamford, she was transferred. This had happened two years before in the fall. Through one of the new girls who’d been hired, she learned of the apartment Ruth and Helen had and that they would not be averse to having an additional roommate to help defray the rent. The two girls, who worked together in the greeting card company, met and talked to Joan and took her on, Joan moving in at the beginning of the previous February. Since Ruth and Helen worked together and had grown up together, and since they were five or six years younger than Joan, they weren’t too close to her. “We date a lot, for instance,” Ruth said, “and Joan never had any dates at all. At least not at first. But we got along very well. She sort of played mother to us. She wasn’t a wallflower, you understand. She was very attractive and I think she had lots of dates in her time, but she was thirty at least and, you know, that’s practically death.

  “I think her problem was she really wanted to get married. I don’t mean she talked about it, but you can tell. Helen and I sometimes tried to get her a date at our place, but we never had any luck. There weren’t many people to ask. Most of the men we know are younger than thirty, and the older men are already married. She didn’t ask us to, but she was interested in our dates and we knew she wished she had some too.

  “And then one day, it was last April or May sometime, she went out herself. She said she was going to the movies, but Helen and I suspected she had a beau. At least she had a kind of glow when she came home like she’d had a date instead of going to the show alone, if you know what I mean. After that, she started going out now and then. It wasn’t every night or even every other night, but maybe every week or two, she’d be going to another show. We got after her for keeping it such a secret. She always was that way, never saying much about herself, but we finally got her to break down and admit she had a boy friend. She wouldn’t tell us his name, though, only that it was ‘Johnny.’

  “That kept on all through the summer and we asked her if it was any
thing serious, but all she’d do was say, ‘Who knows?’ She never would tell us anything. She always wanted us to talk, but she wouldn’t. We tried to get her to bring him up sometime, so we could meet him, but she never would and she wouldn’t tell us a whisper about him, what he did, or how she met him, or anything. She wouldn’t even tell us what he looked like. She’d always laugh and change the subject.

  “Then, it was two or three months ago, she didn’t go out any more. You could tell something had happened, because her face got longer and longer. We suspected they’d broken up, but we didn’t dare ask her about it.

  “Then, in January, like a bolt out of the blue, she suddenly said she was going to move out. It was only about ten days before the end of the month. At first she wouldn’t say why. All she’d admit was she was quitting her job and leaving town, but we couldn’t let her alone on that, so she finally broke down and said she was getting married. Well, we were utterly astonished. We asked if it was Johnny and she said it was and we couldn’t get over it. We told her we thought that had broken up and she said it had for a while, but then he’d come back and proposed and they were going to get married right away.

  “We were eager to help her get ready for the wedding, but she wouldn’t have it. She said it was going to be a quiet affair and she didn’t know where. She said Johnny had been transferred out West somewhere and she was going out there to marry him. She couldn’t even tell us where she was going to live, she said, because she didn’t know, and she wouldn’t even tell us what her married name would be. All she’d say was that as soon as they were settled, she’d write and tell us all about it.”

  The girl brushed a hand over her forehead. “On that Friday night, the last Friday in January, she packed all her things and Saturday morning Bob came over in his truck and took the trunk to the station for her and she shipped it out. She left here on Sunday. She took a taxi to the station with those suitcases and that’s the last we ever saw or heard of her.”