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I asked Scott a few more questions, but he didn’t have any answers. Unlike his partner, he didn’t change his opinion that the charwoman’s report was unreliable.
Mrs. Hawes, who had thawed about a degree toward me in spite of my unauthorized trip around her, wrote out Daisy’s address when I asked. I didn’t broach the question of whether Daisy drank. If she didn’t, I didn’t want to start rumors.
To my frustration, Daisy Brown wasn’t home when I got there. She lived on Robert Drive, a street that was almost at river’s edge. What once had been elegant homes to prosperous families now mostly were rooming or boarding houses or, like hers, small apartments. When I knocked on her door, a head of gray curls popped out from a neighboring one.
“Are you here for the cinnamon rolls?”
“I’m here to see Daisy.”
“She’s not home.” The woman frowned. She had on a red apron that went all the way to her neck. It gave her a robin like look. “You’re not here for the rolls? She did say she’d told the woman coming for them that they’d be at my place.”
“Gee, I didn’t even know she baked,” I said, recognizing a source of information when it bit my nose.
“Oh my, yes. You wouldn’t believe what she makes in a wee little oven no bigger than mine. She takes orders from people, you see, to make a little money on the side.”
By now I’d been in the hall long enough that the fragrance of butter and cinnamon permeated my senses. My salivary glands were at high tide.
“A woman she knows sent me to ask her something,” I said. “Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“Dear me, I’m afraid not. She was going to deliver a cake and stop at the store. After that she looks after some children when they get out of school. Poor tykes lost their dad, so their mother has to work and pays Daisy to stay with them.
“She might be home around six, only sometimes the mother’s boss makes her work late. And sometimes Daisy just stops for a sandwich somewhere and goes straight to her regular job.”
If Daisy drank, I wondered when she found time.
“Do you happen to know the name of the family? Or where they live?”
She shook her curls.
***
“I’m Mr. Scott’s secretary. Mr. Frank Scott, that is.” I gave the man behind the pharmacy counter a big smile. “He asked me to check and see if he has a refill left on this prescription.”
I slid him the slip of paper with the number I’d copied from the bottle in Scott’s desk drawer and held my breath.
“Sure, let me check.”
He stepped to one end where he was half-hidden by an enormous glass jar of blue liquid. I was pretty sure it didn’t contain anything medicinal, but everyplace I’d ever been to that mixed up potions and powders seemed to keep one out as decoration.
The counter was shoulder height on me, but by standing on tiptoe I could watch the pharmacist walk his fingers through a long box of cards. I wasn’t sure what I expected to learn from Scott’s bottle of pills. There wasn’t any reason to suspect he’d been the one who’d torn up Tremain’s apartment and killed a woman on the way out. Still, he hadn’t been to the office that day, and his alibi was a bad headache. It would help if I could confirm that’s what he’d swallowed pills for this morning.
“Yes, he can refill it,” said the pharmacist, returning. “Was there anything else?”
“No, thank you.” I peeked over my shoulder, then leaned somberly toward the counter. “Between you and me, though, I don’t think those tablets do much good. He’s had the most awful headaches this week.”
He nodded with professional sympathy.
“Some just have a harder time of it than others. Tell him not to take more of these than he’s supposed to, though. They’ll knock him cold.”
***
For the time being I’d hit a dead end. I’d begun to believe that Daisy the cleaning woman actually might have caught a glimpse of Gil Tremain, but until I talked to her, I was stuck. Fifth Street was long. If Daisy had been on a Main Street bus and crossed it, that would give at least a departure point in trying to pick up his trail. Buses also ran up and down Fifth itself, however. If she’d been riding that line, I’d face endless possibilities.
The sight of Christmas decorations in shop windows did nothing to improve my spirits as I drove back to my office. They reminded me that in addition to making zero progress on my case, I’d made a similar amount on my Christmas shopping. What was I going to get for the two white-haired cops who had been my late father’s best friends and part of my life for as long as I could remember? I wanted to find a little something for my landlady, Mrs. Z, too. And for one of the girls in the rooming house who was a pal.
And maybe Mick Connelly?
He’d really gotten my goat this morning, but yeah. Probably Connelly. He always got something for me.
The thought of picking out something for him tied me in knots, though. It had to be something that didn’t raise his hopes we had a future together. I’d told him more than once that I wasn’t the marrying type. Either his hearing was bad or he wasn’t as smart as I thought. The trouble was, he cast some kind of spell when he was around me.
Connelly was too good a man to wind up as hurt and confused as my dad had been by my mother. She cooked, she cleaned, but when my dad paid her a compliment or said something tender, she stared through him. When he asked her a question, her answer was monosyllabic. Her interaction with my brother and me consisted of stony silence or lashing out. How could Connelly possibly think I was a candidate for marriage when the chance of turning into her was in my blood?
Annoyed to find my brain wandering to things besides work, I slowed and waved an old woman with a scarf tied under her chin and shopping bags too heavy for her into a crosswalk. Behind me there was a screech of brakes.
I braced for an impact. It didn’t come. Instead, a battered brown sedan swerved around me. Missing the old woman in her fringed kerchief by no more than a couple of feet, it sped into the nearest alley before I gathered my wits enough to catch anything but the final number on the license plate, a six.
The old woman plodded ahead without a glance. On the sidewalk, several people had stopped to crane their necks. Letting the clutch out, I shifted and drove on.
The sedan had been following too closely, surely. Not that it mattered. But since it hadn’t hit me, why had it taken off like a frightened rabbit? Was it stolen?
Another possibility crawled into my head. Clem Stark. It stunk of fish the way he’d shown up that morning with his job offer. Or was it just that every time I encountered the man, I found myself wanting to wash myself immediately with lye soap? Maybe he really wanted me to join his firm. Maybe he’d sent one on his boys to follow me, or done it himself so he could come around again and brag how he’d tailed me and I hadn’t noticed.
“You’ll have to do better than that, Clem,” I muttered.
On the off chance I was right, and in penance for my lapse in alertness, I zig-zagged, then looped around a block here and there to make sure no brown sedan turned up behind me sporting a six at the end of its license plate. Finally satisfied, I set course for the address I had for Tremain’s ex-wife, doing one more zig-zag halfway there for good measure.