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Fresh air had never smelled so good. I stood outside the warehouse and filled my lungs, then tried to bat away the cobwebs that clung to my face. For several minutes I fought them, pulling them from my hair, my skin, my collar only to have them attach themselves somewhere else. Finally I removed my beret and beat it against my skirt to shake dust out of both. When I’d given my jacket a good shaking, I used the nubby tweed to scrub my face. I’d be imagining sticky threads even after a bath.
The idea The Pompeii somehow held the key to finding Tremain came back to sting like the splinter lodged in my palm as a souvenir of my breaking and entering. I couldn’t get the splinter out without tweezers, and I couldn’t resist the urge to detour past The Pompeii, so I did. When I came within sight of it, my pace accelerated.
A workman bent over buckets and other equipment. He straightened and his arm went up. He was washing windows. I crossed the street.
“Getting the place spruced up for the new business going in, huh?” I said with my breeziest charm.
He halfway glanced at me.
“Yep.”
“How you going to get the ones higher up? Not with that.” I nodded at a small stepladder.
“Take most of a day just on these down here, with all those doors being glass too. Then there’s polishing up the brass. Man who hired me said he uses an outfit with platforms who do the top ones.”
“Who was that? Who hired you, I mean. Thompson, that real estate guy?”
He switched his rag for a squeegee and towel, giving me a good look over.
“You’re mighty nosey. Man might give me more work. Mind your own business.”
He turned his back to scrape and wipe, scrape and wipe. Impressed by my ability to cultivate small talk, I crossed the street again. Yesterday’s shock had altered the way people walked. They moved resolutely, some with eyes on the sidewalk, some with shoulders thrown back. Relaxation wasn’t in vogue today.
Suddenly a sensational emerald green hat caught my eye. Hoping I was right, I abandoned my intent to go a different direction and walked toward its owner. Yes. It was the woman from the music store.
“Excuse me,” I said. “You work at the music store, don’t you?”
She smiled politely.
“I’m afraid I only take care of the owner’s mother. I’m her companion. They’ll open at noon today, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Actually, it’s you I wanted to talk to,” I said as she took a step to continue. “You stay with his mother full time? Get room and board in exchange?” That’s how it usually worked for a companion.
“Yes.”
“And you live upstairs? Facing the lamp shop?”
Curiosity overcame her growing frustration at the delay.
“You were in several days ago, weren’t you? Asking Mr. Miller whether he’d seen someone, he said. Did someone break in at the lamp place? Was there a burglary?”
It caught me off balance.
“What makes you think that?”
Her cheeks grew pink.
“I’m sorry. It was a ridiculous question. I need to get back. Mrs. Miller gets cross if her dinner is late.” She held up a small cloth shopping bag and started to move again.
“And her son will be wanting his Butterfinger.”
My comment won me a wry smile.
“Look, I’m a detective. A man I’m hunting was last seen in front of the lamp shop. He’s got a kid hoping he comes home for Christmas. Just spare me two minutes and tell me why you asked about a burglary.”
“I just supposed...” She glanced around and indicated a pocket of space with a bench and an evergreen shrub between two buildings. If her employer happened past, he’d be less likely to see her. “I supposed you were someone who worked there—”
“You’ve never stopped in?”
“No. Mrs. Miller doesn’t like to be alone. And her son doesn’t get along—” She brushed a hand in dismissal. “Anyway. She wakes up at night and wants hot milk. By the time I’ve made it for her, I’m usually wide awake. Often I sit at the window until I feel drowsy. There’s nothing to see. I just like... looking out.”
Toward freedom, I thought. I felt sorry for her. Probably she was widowed with nothing to live on, or had taken care of parents who died, and therefore had no work experience except taking care of demanding old people.
“Really, I’m embarrassed I brought the whole thing up,” she was saying. “It’s just that the night before you came in, I was sitting there and I thought I saw just a pinprick of light. Bobbling around upstairs. I expect it was just a reflection of some sort, only...”
“Only?”
“Well, a few minutes later, one of the front doors opened. A man came out and jumped in a car that pulled over for him and took off. He had a sack in his hand.”
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“And that was the only time you’ve seen anything?”
“Well, no. Last night ... who could sleep soundly? Except Mrs. Miller, whose only concern was that all the news coming in interfered with her programs. Sometimes I don’t see a single car if it’s one or two in the morning. Last night it seemed like police cars came past every ten minutes.
“Right after one of them, a man came walking along, looking over his shoulder as if he didn’t want to be seen. He went up to the door by the corner, and someone inside let him right in. A few minutes later he came back out — or someone did. But surely it was just someone checking to make sure things were safe, don’t you think? Since it’s sitting there with no one around since the lamp shop closed.”
***
The splinter in my hand stung like the devil. My stockings were in tatters. When I got into my car and caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror, I discovered I’d had a cobweb dangling from one side of my hair the whole time I talked to the woman in the green hat. Time to retreat to my office and regroup.
When I’d washed up, I borrowed a pair of tweezers from a woman I was friendly with at the sock wholesaler down the hall.
“The President’s going to speak after he meets with Congress,” she said when I returned them. “Come listen with us if you like.”
“Thanks. If I’m around I will.”
Her mother-in-law, the other occupant of the office, looked poison at me. She would hold me personally responsible if the country went to war. She’d done her best to keep FDR from getting elected a third time.
With splinter now removed, I washed its entry site a second time. I took the gin bottle from the bottom drawer of my desk and poured half an inch in a glass. Standing over the pot in the corner that held a dead plant, I dribbled a fine stream over where the splinter had been. It wasn’t peroxide. I drank the gin left in the glass so I wouldn’t waste it.
Besides, I deserved a toast. Something was going on at The Pompeii. It had still been going on as late as last night. Circling my desk a time or two, I picked up the phone, and the pencil I used for dialing.
“This is Maggie Sullivan. It’s urgent that I speak to Miss Warren. There’s a problem at her building.”
Seconds later Tabby Warren came on.
“What’s this about? I’m on my way to a Civilian Defense board meeting. Emergency session. What sort of problem?”
“When you asked me if The Pompeii was being used for illegal purposes, I said no. I think otherwise now. You told me an exit had been bricked over. Is there a space attached to it, or anywhere — anywhere else in the building a man could be hidden so well that I, and the real estate man who showed me around, could have walked right past him?”
Silence followed.
“Miss Warren—”
“Possibly. I don’t see how.”
“Where?”
“I’d have to show you.”
“I can’t wait. Just tell—”
“Impossible. And if you believe it’s your missing man, and he’s being held against his will, then trying to reach him in daytime puts his life at risk. Meet me at The Pompeii’s back door at eleven tonight.”
She hung up.
Mine was more of a slam.
I wasn’t going to sit around all day waiting for answers. If Tabby Warren insisted on taking her sweet time about helping me, I’d have to try to force the hand of someone who might shed enough light for me to move on my own.