| |
“Cat got you, huh?” Jolene said eyeing my legs as I came into the kitchen on Saturday morning.
“Yeah.” Instead of my usual stockings, I was wearing opaque gray cotton ones. They felt dowdy, but they looked okay with my tweed suit. Mostly they hid the gauze pad covering tooth marks left by our landlady’s tomcat who had ambushed me as I came in the previous evening.
“We ought to keep track of how many times each of us gets bitten,” I said. “Award a prize at the end of the year.”
“Maybe a new pair of stockings.”
I laughed.
Escaping Mrs. Z’s apartment to sink his teeth into passing ankles was the cat’s favorite pastime. It was also his only exercise if girth was any indication.
Jolene closed the newspaper section she’d been reading and traded it for another.
“You must be working today, wearing a suit. You won’t get so busy you forget to buy an ornament for the tree, will you?”
“Nope. Scout’s honor.”
Every year Mrs. Z let us put a Christmas tree up in the downstairs alcove where male visitors could wait. Now and then somebody bought an actual glass ornament to supplement the paper chains and snowflakes we constructed for its trimmings. This year I’d promised I would. We would put up the tree tomorrow when people got back from church.
Saturday morning was the only time of the week when we got to use the kitchen. I cut some bread and lowered the side of the toaster to put it in, enjoying the homey feeling that simple act produced. It was early yet. There were only the two of us. Jolene was up because she was a farm girl and had grown up milking cows or some such. I was up because I had a list of things to do. I thought about the topmost item on that list: Tabby Warren.
If I could find a listing for her in the telephone book, I’d try to get her to talk to me for two minutes. My previous dealings with socialites didn’t make me optimistic. She probably wouldn’t give me the time of day, or more likely her butler or whoever ran her household wouldn’t. Still, it was worth a try.
It was also smart to have a fallback plan.
“Jolene,” I said as mine took shape, “has anyone who works at your club ever worked anywhere around Fifth Street? The west side, I mean?”
Jolene was a cigarette girl. Her bubbly nature probably made her a natural. She’d worked at supper clubs as well as places that featured only dancing and drinks. All had been respectable, and each was nicer than the last.
She wrinkled her nose.
“I don’t think there are any clubs on that end. It’s too near the train station. Well, there’s Lance’s, of course, but I don’t know anyone who’s worked there. Somebody may have mentioned working in a pub down there as a bouncer, but I can’t remember who. There might be places over by Wayne that call themselves clubs, but you know what that part’s like.”
Wayne was a cesspool ranging from bad to worse. Pickpockets. Hookers. Dope and drunks. A storefront mission or two struggled against overwhelming odds.
“You want me to ask around?” Jolene offered.
“I’d appreciate it. I need to find someplace I can show a picture and find out if anyone recognizes it.”
Chances they would were probably slim. Which brought me back to Tabby Warren.
I told myself I wouldn’t resort to using Seamus’ name to wangle a chat with her. I hoped I wasn’t fibbing.
***
Somewhat to my surprise, Tabitha Warren was listed under her own name in the telephone book. Did that mean she hadn’t married? Whatever the answer, she’d be more receptive to talking to me if I waited until ten o’clock. Half past would be even smarter.
I dropped my laundry off since I’d neglected to do it on Thursday. I drove to the hat shop where I’d eluded my pursuer in the brown car. The same car I’d found last night in Pauline’s garage.
What did the dimpled secretary have to do with Tremain’s disappearance? If anything. According to Collingswood, she had insisted she didn’t know how the sheet of engineering jargon came to be in her desk. Maybe she hadn’t believed there was really a risk she’d get caught. Maybe she’d trusted someone she shouldn’t have. Whatever the explanation, there was no doubt the brown car behind her house was the one that had followed me.
I went to Rike’s and picked out a fancy glass Santa Claus for our tree. Even though the clerk wrapped it in layers of tissue and put it on wads of the same stuff inside a box, I decided it might be smart to drop it off at Mrs. Z’s rather than have it rattle around in my car, so I did.
There was a phone message for me. It was from Nan’s friend in Terre Haute saying her guests had arrived. One worry less. I’d said not to use names and she hadn’t.
Since the place where Daisy Brown lived didn’t have a phone, I went over there to make sure she’d made it home safely from her previous night’s work. The muted sound of her singing met me as I knocked on the door.
“Who is it?”
Good. She was taking precautions.
“Maggie Sullivan.”
The door opened. Daisy wore a floral patterned apron with a bib. A smudge of flour decorated one eyebrow.
“I’ll bet you stopped to see if I was dead,” she said cheerfully. “Well, I’m not, and I just finished frosting some orange rolls I turned out, so come on back.”
My stomach gave an unseemly gurgle. I followed half a dozen steps to her kitchen. It was big enough for a two-burner stove and a sink and small Frigidaire. A drop-leaf table too small to accommodate anything but a single chair was shoved into one corner. The leaf was up and the tabletop held two batches of rolls that looked as if they were bound for customers.
“Here. Try one.” She passed me a plate of extras. “Go on, sit in that chair. Just move my grocery list. Would you like some tea?”
I declined the tea and praised the roll. The frosting with flecks of orange peel was enough to make me swoon.
“Did anyone come around while you were working last night?” I asked.
“Nope. Not ones that work there or ones that didn’t belong either. I made good and sure before I came out. But then that business you saw night before last, that was unusual. Now and again some of those girls who type have to come in at night, if the bosses are in a hurry on something. Nobody walks them to the trolley stop, and I’ve never heard a peep about one of them getting bothered.”
Daisy hustled pans into the sink as she talked. My ears went up. The C&S owners had given me the impression no one came in after hours except the two of them and Gil Tremain. And of course Daisy. Now I was more than a little curious.
“Have any of the typists been in lately? I understand Mr. Tremain and some others were working on something special when he disappeared.”
“Oh, yes.” She nodded as she turned the water on and sifted in washing soda. “Two came in last week the same night. I think they came in separate but they left together. Another night one of the others was in. That poor girl nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw me. I guess maybe nobody told her I was around at night.” She chuckled.
“Which girls?”
“I don’t know names, and the first two all I saw was their backs. The one I scared, I kind of think she may be new.” She attacked a muffin tin with her Brillo pad. “Has big, sweet dimples.”