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“Now you know I can’t give you the name of the party who put money down to rent the place,” Thompson chided. “Our customers expect their business to stay private, just like yours do.”
Riding back to the real estate office, I’d found it hard to think about anything but the strand of blue yarn. It had to be from the muffler Eve Tremain had knitted her father. He might not be tucked away in the former lamp shop as I’d half hoped, but that strand of blue was strong evidence that he’d been there. If I could worm out the identity of the person who had rented the place with such alacrity, I could start to look for a connection.
“Oh, well.” I laughed. “I thought I’d give it the old college try.” Maybe the problem was I’d never been to college.
“What about Monday?” pressed Thompson. We were standing outside his real estate office and he could probably tell I didn’t intend to come in. “Why don’t you pick a time to look at those other two places? There’s one in particular I think you’d like.”
“I’ll have to check my schedule. Oh, hey, I almost forgot.” Diving into my purse, I brought out the envelope with Gil Tremain’s photograph. “The reason I noticed your building — saw the FOR RENT sign — was that I was down there hunting this guy. Any chance you’ve seen him around?”
He leaned in and looked at the picture long enough to make me think he was really considering.
“No, I don’t think so. Uh, why are you hunting him?”
“Now you know I can’t tell you,” I said playfully. “But on top of everything else, we’re kind of concerned he might have a communicable disease.”
Thompson bent for a closer look.
“Communicable disease, huh? So... I guess if I do see anybody who looks like him, I better call you.”
***
The strand of blue yarn renewed my optimism that the sudden closing of the lamp shop connected some way to the disappearance of Gil Tremain. I hadn’t been able to get the name of the building’s new renter, but along with an Arizona post office box, Thompson had coughed up the local address for the previous occupant.
“I’m afraid Mr. Benning moved out the end of last week,” said the landlady when I inquired.
“Oh no! I finally, finally found some information he wanted about a relative! Do you know where I could write him?”
She studied me cautiously. The house where Benning had lived was in a good neighborhood, with two apartments that must be good-sized upstairs and her apparently occupying the entire downstairs.
“You say you’re a friend?”
“Well, actually I just knew him from his shop. We got to talking names one day and he said he had a cousin with the craziest name you ever heard. When he said what it was I said, ‘I have a girlfriend who knew somebody named that up in Cleveland!’ He got all excited and said it had to be the same person, and they’d lost touch in the twenties and was there any chance my girlfriend knew how to reach him. And now that I finally have it, he’s gone.”
She nodded acceptance.
“You’d better step in while I get it. It’s just that two men came here day before yesterday claiming to be his friends and asking about him, and I didn’t like their looks. Not that they weren’t dressed very nicely. I just couldn’t help feeling they were up to something. One kept looking around while the other one talked to me.”
She excused herself and returned with the same address I’d gotten from Thompson. No, she didn’t have a phone number for him. No, she didn’t know of any friends who might. She couldn’t recall Mr. Benning ever mentioning friends, or having visitors except for those two men.
“He always seemed a little too refined for his own good, if you know what I mean. Like he came from money, or thought he should, and the rest of us didn’t quite measure up. Until he decided to go west. That certainly made him unbend. The day he left, he practically skipped down those stairs with his suitcases.”
My nostrils caught a tiny, tiny whiff of something worth following. I looked at the stairs.
“He carried his suitcases down himself? They told me down at his place of business that he’d been awfully ill before he left.”
Her lips blew a dismissive sound.
“He had a touch of asthma, and winter before last he caught pneumonia. But aside from that, he seemed healthy as a horse.”
***
Two people now had made comments which led me to wonder if Nicholas Benning’s sudden illness had been one of convenience. I found a spot to park at St. Elizabeth’s and hurried in to the hospital.
“Excuse me,” I said brightly as the woman at the front desk looked up. “A friend of my dad’s was admitted last week. Dad asked me to stop in and say hi if he was still here. His name’s Benning, Nicholas Benning.”
She looked dutifully through the open pages of the register in front of her.
“I don’t see anyone by that name. When did you say he came in?”
“Last week. Monday, maybe? Dad was here Friday.”
Flipping through several back pages, she shook her head.
“Are you sure it was last week? I’ve checked admissions and discharges both.”
“Oh, gee. I wonder if Dad got mixed up. He does sometimes. Well, thanks. I’m sorry to bother you.”
I drove to the community hospital, Miami Valley. Repeating the same routine got the same results. The hospital had a pay phone in the lobby. Frank Scott still didn’t answer at his place. I thought a minute. Since I couldn’t get his account of his nighttime meeting in the parking lot last week, it might be interesting to see how his partner reacted.
***
“Miss Collingswood’s upstairs. I’ll tell her you’re here,” the housekeeper said as she let me in.
I started to correct her, but decency stopped me long enough to realize it might be wise to talk to Lucille first. Although Nicholas Benning’s attack of ill health might be fabrication, I’d seen first-hand how recent worries were whittling away at the heart condition of the man who had hired me. The information I’d come to share with him might prove disastrous.
As the housekeeper’s ankles vanished at the top of the stairs, a spurt of angry voices from the sitting room down the hall reached my ears. One voice, I thought, belonged to Frank Scott. I wandered closer to the partially open door to make sure.
“What do you mean you haven’t cancelled the meeting?”
“We can wait until Monday. Gil may have turned up by then.”
“How? That detective you hired hasn’t come up with one thing!”
“It takes time, Frank.”
“We don’t have time!”
Hearing myself mentioned seemed like permission to join them. As I slipped through the door, I saw Lucille was there too. Just the top of her head showed over the back of a wing chair. Collingswood sat with his fists on his knees. Scott was pacing. None of them noticed me.
“Stop being a fool, Loren. The last thing you need is more stress from playing this down to the wire in some crazy belief Gil’s going to turn up. You’ve been popping those heart pills like they’re peppermints. It’s time to step away from this and save what’s left of your health.
“I’ll call California on Monday and cancel the meeting. I’ll tell them — I don’t know what. Something that spares the company egg on its face. Then, Loren, we need to talk about my buying you out. You need to start taking things easy. Enjoying life.”
“I started that company!”
“We started that company.”
The housekeeper’s timorous knock interrupted.
“Oh, Miss Lucille! I didn’t know where you’d gotten to. I didn’t mean for her—”
Those present had noticed me now.
“It’s... all right. We were expecting Miss Sullivan,” Collingswood managed. Spots of color tinted his otherwise pale cheeks, but he didn’t look shaky now. He just looked angry. Not at me though.
All three were too intent on their own set-to to ask what I wanted. Standing seemed a good option. Scott lighted a cigarette.
“Lucille’s worried about you,” he resumed as the housekeeper left. “She said you’re already thinking of selling.”
“Lucille!” The censure in Collingswood’s voice was unmistakable.
“You’ve been talking about it, Father.”
“Yes, but how dare you! How dare you presume to speak for me?”
“How dare you tell a man I could have been happy with that he couldn’t marry me?” Lucille sprang to her feet. “Go ahead and kill yourself, then! See if I care. I’m twenty-nine years old and I’ve spent my whole life doing what you wanted — being your little hostess, nursing you and worrying every time you landed in the hospital. And you? All you’ve ever cared about or felt the least scrap of affection for is that damned business!”
“Lucille—”
“Well, no more! I’ve had it. First thing Monday, as soon as the station opens, I’m buying a ticket and catching the train to New York!” She burst into tears.
Her father was too stricken to speak. Scott, too, seemed caught off guard.
“I hate to intrude on this little discussion,” I said, “but I’ve got a date. Contrary to what Mr. Scott thinks, I’ve managed to learn a few things. I could move faster if I found out a few more, starting with the name of the man you had the late-night chat with outside your office last week and what you were chatting about.”
Surprise swept Scott’s face as I looked at him, awaiting an answer. He snorted derisively.
“Ike Wiggins.”
“Wiggins!” his partner exclaimed. “He came to see you again?”
“Apparently he thought me worth another pass.”
“The nerve of him!”
“Who’s Ike Wiggins?” I asked.
Lucille was regaining control of herself. She looked as puzzled as I was.
“He owns a rival engineering company,” Scott said. “Here in town. It’s about the size of ours.”
“Several weeks ago, he approached us each individually. He... he offered each of us money,” added Collingswood.
“Money.”
“For... for letting him see a copy of our calculations.”
“Giving it to him, you mean.”
Collingswood nodded.
“I told Frank about it, and he said the unprincipled scoundrel had been to see him as well.”
“And neither of you saw fit to mention this to me?” I dug my nails into my palms to control my temper.
“We... I...”
“Were afraid he might have made Gil Tremain the same offer?”
“Gil would have turned him down just like we did!”
“You can’t know that,” Scott said through his teeth.
“If you want me to keep on working for you,” I said, “I strongly suggest you give me an address for Wiggins.”