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When the waitress brought our coffee, what had started as a pleasant evening began to deteriorate.
“Maggie, as delicate as your skin is, you’re daft to be using peroxide on a cut,” Connelly commenced.
“It’s better than water. It foams a cut clean.”
“And who told you that? Your Da, I suppose. Well, he might have been wrong about one or two things. It’s way too strong. I’ll bet your skin turns red as anything where you pour it.”
I squirmed.
“It irritates, Maggie, and that’s just begging for infection.”
“You can be pretty irritating yourself, so quit harping. I’m not going to try dandelion fluff gathered during a waning moon and mixed with spit from a black cat.” I had a hunch that when he could, Connelly used some of the old home remedies he’d grown up with.
“Who said anything about dandelions? Use water and mild soap. Then dab on salve or Unguentine. A puncture wound from an animal bite especially wants tender handling.”
“Did I ask for advice? You’re sounding like somebody’s granny.”
“You’d be better off having a granny. She might be able to talk some sense through your thick skull.” Reaching across the table, he walked two fingertips up the back of my hand. “She might even be able to teach you how to get along with cats.”
My mouth had gone dry. The magnetic tug where our bodies connected held me motionless. Reclaiming my hand, I reached for my coffee cup.
“I get along fine with cats that are normal. So drop it. That goes for the flirting too.”
“My, my,” he said mildly. “Apart from me, what’s ruffling your feathers? Was it tangling with Freeze? Or is it because some private dick’s trying to hire you? I understand bets have been made over whether you slug him or not.”
My mouth dropped open. Too furious to speak, I snatched my napkin from my lap and threw it onto the table.
“Do you coppers sit around all day swapping gossip about me? Or does somebody pin a daily announcement about Maggie Sullivan on the bulletin board for everyone to snicker at going off shift?”
I started to rise. Connelly caught the same hand he’d teased a moment earlier, this time urging me down and restraining me. At a nearby table a young fellow with sideburns halfway to his chin was watching us with interest. Rather than entertain the entire restaurant, I sat.
“Maggie, calm down. The fellows like you. They get a kick out of how you hold your own with people. You say things to Freeze and the other brass that none of us would dare. And the talk’s not entirely focused on you, for your information. There’s a rumor Freeze may be looking at having to work with you if we go to war. Some think it would be fine entertainment watching him squirm. Me, I might feel sorrier for him than for you.”
If I’d been speechless before, I was doubly so now.
“What are you talking about?” I managed at last.
“There’s talk the department would be losing men to the draft. Detectives too. A door was ajar that shouldn’t have been a week or two back. Someone heard your name mentioned in a meeting the chief was having with Freeze and somebody else, probably the division commander.”
I shook my head.
“First I’ve heard about it.”
“And why should you unless and until something’s decided?”
I struggled to process what I’d just heard. The Selective Service sign-ups that had gone into effect a year ago didn’t include women. But surely if Freeze was forced to have a woman under his wing, it would be one who was already a cop. One working under Lulu Sollers in the Women’s Department.
“Any idea whether it’s Freeze or Chief Wurstner behind this?”
“No idea. And it could all be rumor. It’s pretty clear there’s some kind of planning going on, though. These last six months, maybe more, there’s been meeting after meeting among the command staff. So, yeah, there’s been a bit of joshing about whether you’d be more likely to say okay to Freeze or this private fellow, who appears to be about as popular as a carbuncle.”
If he was right about the scuttlebutt, it showed the same sort of looking ahead that Clem Stark was doing. Somehow that thought was odious.
A waitress had stopped and was offering to warm our coffee.
“If it cheers you any, Freeze thinks he comes away with the short straw as often as you do when you two butt heads,” Connelly said when we were alone again. “Boike says Freeze thinks you’re holding back something that could help with that woman who got shot to death a few days ago. I gather that’s connected with a case of yours?”
“Boike, huh? I didn’t realize the two of you were friends.”
“We get on. He’s not the one told me about the meetings and that, by the way.”
I sighed. “Freeze gives me too much credit for knowing things. Never to my face, I might add. As to my supposed wealth of knowledge...”
I ticked it off on my fingers.
“Either or both of the men who own the company that hired me could be responsible for the disappearance of the man they hired me to find. Thus possibly behind the shooting in question.
“One of them might likewise be the target of efforts to give him a heart attack — possibly fatal — as part of the mix. Then there’s his daughter, who nurses more than a couple of grievances and stands to inherit if anything happens to him. Nor can I overlook a young secretary who asked the missing man about equations and terms in papers she typed. A page from a missing project turned up in her desk yesterday and she got fired. I don’t believe she’s involved, but a car that followed me a couple of times is parked in back of her house.”
“All of which Freeze knows about?”
“If he’s at all competent, which to give the devil his due, Freeze is.”
It occurred to me he might not know about Pauline’s firing. The image of him spewing smoke while he browbeat the already miserable girl made me less than eager to remedy that.
“Look, Freeze turned his nose up at half a dozen leads I offered. Given what you’ve told me about all the meetings, and knowing the department’s understaffed as it is, I guess I should cut him some slack on that. But what in the name of sense does the man think I’m holding back?”
“That I can’t answer.” Connelly searched his memory for a minute. “Apparently accusations were traded between him and the men investigating an abduction attempt yesterday. That’s probably making him sore. And apparently he’s peeved at not finding even a hint what your man who vanished meant to do with the thousand dollars he took from his bank account right beforehand.”
By sheer force of will, I kept my breathing even.
“Well, I assure you I know absolutely nothing about that thousand dollars.”
Including the fact the ‘large withdrawal’ Freeze had mentioned amounted to that much.
I frowned at my coffee cup with the intensity of a gypsy attempting to expand her reading skills beyond tea leaves. I didn’t want Connelly to see the information had startled me. Freeze had told me Gil Tremain had made a “good-sized” withdrawal last Saturday, but it had never crossed my mind he was talking about that much money. He’d also said Tremain’s bank account still contained a healthy balance. At the time, all I’d been interested in was whether Tremain had cleaned it out like someone about to skip town, or it showed a trail of regular payments that might suggest blackmail.
“There is something new I’ve come across, though,” I said slowly. “Just this afternoon, in fact. Whether it’s worth mentioning to Freeze, I don’t know.”
While Connelly listened intently, I outlined how Walt Benning had abruptly closed his long-time business and left town after two men known to encourage people to cough up money they owed came calling. I told about the same two men turning up later at the place he’d been living.
“And you think Tremain might have taken money out for something to do with this fellow? Because the building was the last place he was seen, and the bit of yarn proving he’d been there?”
“I don’t know. He’d also talked about buying his daughter a flute.”
“Not for that kind of money, unless it was gold plated.”
“He’d proposed to his girlfriend, or was close to it. Maybe it was for a ring.”
Connelly whistled skepticism at such a large outlay.
“The two men, though. They’re likely candidates for the same ones who tried to snatch Tremain’s daughter.”
I shook my head.
“The ones who tied up Eve were street thugs. Not bottom of the barrel, but not fancy, either. The witness who told me about the ones who came to see Walt Benning intimated they work for a man somewhere near the top of the local crime ladder. I’m wondering if it’s a man named Nico.”
Connelly leaned back, staring.
“Jaysus, Maggie. Do you mean Nico Caras?” He picked up the check and rose in a single motion. “Let’s talk outside.”