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If Scott had anything he wanted to hide in his office, he wouldn’t have invited me to stay and make use of it. I took out my compact and lipstick as he departed. The pretext would allow me to linger just long enough to have a look at the one thing I wondered about.
As soon as voices across the hall assured me Scott was with his partner and unlikely to duck back in the next thirty seconds, I went to his desk and opened the drawer that held the prescription bottle he’d taken out earlier. I didn’t recognize the name of the capsules it held. I assumed they were for his headaches. I jotted the name of the medicine in my notebook and took out one of the pills. The doctor’s name and pharmacy I could trust to my memory.
On my previous visit, when I’d questioned all the employees, a draftsman had been out attending a funeral and one of the typists had gone to take something they needed copies of to a Photostat place. A chat with her didn’t yield anything interesting, but the one with the draftsman, a young fellow named Roger Lewis, did.
“He’s the very devil for having everything perfect,” he said when I asked him what Tremain had been like at work. “Not as bad as the old— as Mr. Collingswood, but more of a stickler than Mr. Scott and the others. Hope you find him though.”
The last sounded tepid. His curly black hair and good looks probably meant he got enough attention from the ladies to convince him he was something special. Such men often nursed resentment over rebukes others took in stride. Still, it was the first deviation I’d had from the worked-hard-quiet-kept-to-himself recitation.
“Any idea what Mr. Tremain did in his spare time? Did he ever mention anything he enjoyed?”
“Not to me.” His mouth gave a smug lift. “Pauline might know. She was always hanging around him.”
Flipping back through my notes I tried to place her.
“Pauline. She’s the one with the dimples?”
I remembered her now, young and fresh-faced with deep mid-cheek dimples that put Shirley Temple’s to shame. When I’d finished with Roger Lewis, I went out to the hive of desks in the open area and asked for a word with her. Eyes widening nervously, she exchanged a look with the women around her. This was the first time I’d asked to talk to someone again.
“Yesterday you told me Mr. Tremain was nice.” I’d jotted the word in my notes. No one else had used it. “Nice how?”
“He’s-he’s patient. When I first started here, I was so scared I’d make a typing mistake and get fired that I made dozens. Well, not dozens really, but I made them. Mr. Collingswood scolds.” She winced at the memory. “So much as one letter wrong in five or six pages and he shakes it under your nose and tells you in a really stern voice. In front of everybody.
“Mr. Tremain if he wants something done over just hands it to you and says so quietly. And if it’s just one or two letters, he’ll say, ‘We’ll let it go this time.’ He even asks for me specifically to type things now, if it’s something that has equations. He says I have a better feel for how much space to leave. They have to write those in by hand, you see.”
My eyebrows rose a little. I’d just gotten a clearer picture of how things worked at C&S Signals than I had by talking to everyone else.
“Roger Lewis seemed to think Mr. Tremain was too demanding.”
“That’s because Roger does sloppy work,” Pauline said in disgust. “Then he grouses if he has to do something over.”
“Were you and Mr. Tremain seeing each other outside of work?”
“Seeing each— No! And if Roger told you that, he’s a filthy liar!” Her cheeks flamed with anger. She wasn’t as shy as she first appeared.
“What makes you think he did?”
“Because he asked me out. Roger did. I turned him down, and I was nice about it, too, but ever since then he’s been nasty.”
I grinned. “I kind of thought it might be something like that.”
Frank Scott was discussing something with one of the junior engineers. He nodded assent when I asked if I could use his office for a few more minutes, so I brought Roger Lewis back for another chat.
“Lying to me is one step short of lying to the police,” I said severely. “Authorization to work as a private detective comes from Chief Wurstner himself.”
The draftsman squirmed. “I don’t know—”
“You tried to make me think Pauline was going out with Gil Tremain because you were mad she wouldn’t go out with you.”
His manner turned sulky.
“I never lied. Miss Stuck-up wants a bigger fish than me. She was always hanging around him. Ask anyone.”
***
“Miss Collingswood asked you to give her a call as soon as you finished.” The razor eyed receptionist, whose name I’d learned was Mrs. Hawes, thrust a piece of paper at me as I passed her desk on my way out. “There’s her number.”
It seemed to me that if Lucille had wanted me to go somewhere more private before I called, she would have left an envelope instead of a message. I asked if I could use the desk phone. Although it produced a small sniff of disapproval, Mrs. Hawes didn’t snatch it back. I dialed.
“Just a moment, please. I’ll get her,” a woman’s voice said when I gave my name. A violin was playing in the background. It stopped, and a moment later Lucille came on.
“Miss Sullivan. Thank you so much. I’d - I’d like to talk to you. About Gil. I don’t know if I can tell you anything useful, but please. Please, will you stop by? It’s almost lunchtime and you’ll have to eat somewhere.”
Lucille, I thought, might be the most productive source of leads I had at the moment. She’d been dating the missing man. Her father hadn’t approved. And she’d jilted her father’s partner when she started seeing Gil Tremain.
***
Writing at my own desk was a lot more comfortable than trying to do it on a clipboard wedged against the steering wheel of my DeSoto. I went back to the office to make quick notes on what little I’d learned that morning.
Today the radiator was stone cold. I kept my coat draped over my shoulders as I worked. When I finished, I gave my muscles a pep talk and tilted the heavy Remington typewriter on a stand beside my desk back an inch. I slid the folded sheet of notes beneath the black rubber pad that cushioned the typewriter. Although I didn’t expect anyone to search my office because I’d been hired by C&S Signals, the woman killed downstairs at Gil Tremain’s apartment building probably hadn’t expected that either. Better safe than sorry.
After making a quick call to a man I hoped could tell me about names on the list of C&S competitors, I went upstairs to the ladies room and resettled the tortoiseshell combs holding my hair back. Neat and proper, I went outside and set course for my car which I’d parked half a block up.
“Say, how’s the girl with the best set of legs in Dayton doing today?” asked a voice behind me. A fellow in a cheap navy suit and gray fedora trotted up to keep pace with me.
“Better before I saw you.” I bit the words off with considerably less antagonism than I felt. His name was Clem Stark and he was an unremarkable waste of skin — medium build, medium height, and enough Brylcreem on his thinning brown hair to smell a mile away.
“Hey, now, doll. Is that any way to talk to a colleague who’s come to take you to lunch?”
“Not interested.” I picked up my pace.
Clem ran a detective agency with a couple of guys working for him. When I’d first opened my own office, he’d deliberately spoiled an investigation I was halfway through, then poached my client. I’d needed the income, as well as another satisfied customer I could use as a reference. Since then Clem and I had crossed paths often enough for me to know he was lazy, cut corners and was sleazy through and through.
“Not interested?” he said trotting backward now, heedless of a woman and kid who had to duck around him. “You will be when I offer you a job.”
“I’ve got a job, thanks. Right now you’re keeping me from doing it.”
“I’m talking a nice office, regular paycheck. Nice lunch, too. Work for me and you won’t have to settle for a sandwich at the Arcade like ya do now.”
I fought an impulse to hit him. We were on a public street. There were witnesses. An assault and battery charge would jeopardize my detective license. We’d reached my DeSoto. I smacked my purse on top of it and came to a stop.
“What is it, Clem? One of the boys who works for you quit?”
A cagey expression flitted across his eyes. He was up to something. Curiosity wasn’t enough to make me spend more time in his company, though.
“Let’s talk about it,” he coaxed.
“Not now, not ever, not if I were starving.” Retrieving my purse, I went around to the driver’s side and opened the door. “Stand back, Clem. You know how women drivers are. I might get flustered and back over you.”