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Seamus subscribed to the early-to-bed-early-to-rise philosophy. After we’d driven around for awhile and I took him home, several hours still remained of the evening. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to settle into a book if I went back to Mrs. Z’s, I stopped at my office to catch up on case notes. When I finished and looked over my latest jottings, one thing niggled at me: the girl who’d been fired today.
She was young. Very young. Lots of women got manipulated by men, but girls her age were particularly vulnerable. I’d dismissed the draftsman’s claim that she hung around with Tremain as spite because the dimpled typist had rejected his overtures. Now I wondered if his claim had more substance.
Could someone have used the girl, Pauline, to wangle information from Tremain? Or could she and Tremain have gotten involved romantically? In either case she knew more than she was letting on. In the first instance, she might even be willing to hide him.
At the start of my investigation, I’d managed to pry a list of C&S employees out of Mrs. Hawes. I looked at it now and copied down Pauline’s address. The street name wasn’t one I recognized. I went to the city map I’d had framed to hang on the wall. It was too late to pay a social call, but that wasn’t what I had in mind anyway.
I swung past Mrs. Z’s and picked up the key, just in case I came in after she locked up.
***
Sometimes you learn things just by taking a good look at a neighborhood. Or a house. Pauline’s neighborhood was on the edge of the city. It was the sort of place where earlier in the century, modest homes had started to fill in around older farmhouses. Some of the places still kept chicken coops in their back yards. Blocks were long. Street lights were sparse. Driving around revealed a neighborhood grocery, a laundry and dry cleaning place, a beer joint — and lots of quiet.
Pauline’s address looked like it might have been one of the original farmhouses. It was two-stories tall plus an attic, built like a box, and looked to be white. I couldn’t make out much more than that. The windows were dark.
After sitting for fifteen minutes without so much as a car coming past, I decided to risk a look in back of the house. Now and again a shed yields something interesting. Missing items. A new coil of rope. A shotgun hidden behind a frail old lady’s flowerpots. Even the yard itself can tell you things if something’s discarded in haste, or more cars are in evidence than you’d expect at such a place.
I got out with a flashlight in my left hand and my Smith & Wesson in my right coat pocket. A long path with faded wheel marks suggesting it hadn’t been used in awhile for other than foot traffic led to the back yard. The main risk in a stunt like the one I was pulling was dogs. They could come bounding out and take a chunk out, or raise such a fuss that every light in the house went on.
I didn’t encounter a dog. The back yard, from what I could see without switching the light on, looked tidy. At the back of the lot I made out the shape of a bin for burning trash, and beyond that a shed whose size suggested it might once have housed a horse and a carriage. That looked like a place to start.
If the shed had ever been painted, it had been a long time ago. Its weathered sides had seen a lot of years. As I got close, I stopped several times to listen, but there were no voices or sounds indicating it might house animals. When I reached the back of it, hidden from the house, I switched on my flashlight.
The shed opened into a dirt path with a thin coat of gravel that would disappear into mud by the end of winter. I turned and played my flashlight beam over the shed. The door on it heightened my belief it had once housed a carriage. The door was taller than it was wide, and swung outward. A heavy board that lifted out of an iron latch held it closed.
Checking to make sure no lights had gone on in houses along the lane, and listening again for noises, I lifted the board. Now came the moment of truth, easing it open, which might cause the hinges to squeak. I held my breath.
One inch, three inches, six inches. The only sound was a faint metallic grunt. The hinges had been oiled. That meant the shed was used, and probably more than occasionally.
As soon as I stepped inside, I saw an automobile. I stopped dead.
It was brown.
With quickening pulse I moved along the side. As soon as I reached the front, I saw the crumpled fender. Moving swiftly around it, I glanced at the open shed door with new caution. Then I lowered the flashlight beam so it hit the license plate.
Its last two digits were twenty-six.