The main branch of the San Angelo Public Library was in an art deco building that had been built by workers in the W.P.A. Its façade made gestures towards grandeur, but inside it wasn’t much more than a warehouse. The coupe parked half a block behind me, but I wasn’t too worried that one of Gilplaine’s men would take a step into a library.
I went to the periodical department and got out the bound volume of the S.A. Times for last December. I scanned all the way through the paper from December 20 onward, including every advertisement and job posting. I found nothing of interest the first three days. Then I started on the issue for December 23. It was at the bottom of page three. They probably hadn’t wanted to spoil anyone’s Christmas; otherwise it would have been a front-page piece. An unidentified woman’s remains had been found on the beach in Harbor City. Her throat had been slit and her thighs had been gashed open. I flipped through the next few days’ papers. The story moved to page six on December 24 and wasn’t mentioned again after that. The woman still hadn’t been identified as of Christmas Eve. Clearly Gilplaine thought that it had been Janice Stoneman.
I placed my hand on the fold in the page and looked around. There were only a few other men in the room, all engrossed in their reading. I coughed and tore the article out. I returned the volume to the periodicals clerk and started for the front door, but stopped just before going out. As long as I was here, I might as well look into everything.
I went to the circulation desk. A plump woman wearing a lily-patterned tea-length skirt over a pink silk blouse smiled as I came up. She had prematurely silver hair streaked with white, which she had braided and wrapped around her head like a coronet, holding the whole thing in place with a box worth of bobby pins. Half-lens reading glasses hung from a cord around her neck, but she hadn’t been using them to consult the volume opened flat on the counter in front of her. It looked like a dictionary.
“May I help you?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “I’d like to find some information about a horse called...” I pulled out the sheet I’d torn from the notepad in the Rosenkrantz home the night before. “Constant Comfort,” I said.
The librarian frowned. “I don’t approve of horseracing. I voted no in that election.”
“I did too. Horseracing is dreadful and only dirty and dangerous people go in for it. This isn’t about racing. A friend of mine just got this horse, but he thinks he might have been cheated. He just wants to see who owned it before him to make sure he got the right one.”
“I’m sure I don’t know about that. Would City Hall keep those kinds of records?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked you.”
“I’m sorry, I have no idea.” She pulled her lips in, causing little wrinkles to erupt around her mouth. Those were premature too.
I knocked on the counter twice. “You know what? Never mind. Thank you for your help.”
So much for Constant Comfort.
I went outside. A bank of phone booths stood against the wall of the building. A broad-shouldered man in a navy blue suit and no hat leaned against the nearest booth. His hair was slicked back and his brown brogues were freshly polished. But he wasn’t there for me. He held a racing form folded into a rigid rectangle about the size of a closed street map, in case anyone might be confused about what he was doing there. He looked up at me as I came down the steps, then looked back at his paper when he saw that I wasn’t a customer. I went into the booth furthest from his, and pulled the door shut. The overhead light turned on and the exhaust fan in the ceiling began whirring. It didn’t help. The booth was still stifling.
I dropped a coin in the slot and dialed. It was answered after one ring. “Chronicle.”
“Pauly Fisher, please.”
The line began to hum, and then there was a click, and then Pauly’s warm voice came on. “Fisher here.”
“It’s Dennis Foster.”
“Foster. What you got for me?”
I cracked the door just enough to get some air. “Maybe something. Maybe nothing. You remember a murder in Harbor City just before Christmas? Jane Doe, slit throat, carved-up legs?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. What about it?”
“You only get the news that’s in the paper or do you get the real stuff?” I wiped the back of my neck with my handkerchief.
“What? You’re thinking of this starlet that got herself cut up yesterday?”
“Sounds like they were cut up in the same ways.”
“Sounds like a coincidence to me.”
“Well, can we find out if it’s been a coincidence any other times?”
“You must be kidding.”
“What?”
“You know what I’d have to go through to find that out? I hope you don’t need it this week.”
I tried to entice him. “I think I’ve got a name for Jane Doe.”
“Nobody came looking for her. It’s not news.”
“Don’t you find that odd? You’d agree that a cut throat and carved-up legs normally is news, right? Especially when it’s a nice-looking young woman on the receiving end.”
“Yeah.”
“Then why was it buried on page three? And a dead story two days later?” I heard the faint electric whistle along the phone line that passed for silence. Now I had caught his interest. I sweetened it. “What if it wasn’t a coincidence? What if there were other women?”
“You been reading about Jack the Ripper again?”
I waited.
He sighed. “Okey. But it’s going to take me a while.”
“Try my office first. If I’m not there, try the apartment. Oh, and Pauly, one more thing, do you know anything about a horse named Constant Comfort?”
“I know about horses as much as I know about Einstein.”
“All right. Thanks.” I hung up. I opened the door and stepped out of the phone booth. There was one man around here who’d know more about horses than about Einstein. He was in the same spot I had left him, still holding his little folded racing form. I walked down the bank of booths.
He saw me coming and he tucked the paper under his arm and held out his hands, palms up. “I’m just waiting on a call from my aunt to tell me my uncle’s out of the hospital.”
“What’s he in for?”
The man readjusted his stance. “Appendicitis.”
“Next time try he was in a car wreck. Sounds better.”
He tilted his head and squinted.
“I’m not a cop,” I said. I held up a five-dollar bill. “What do you know about a horse named Constant Comfort?”
“You’re sure you’re not a cop?”
I crinkled the money. “Private.”
He checked to see if he needed a shave. He did. He probably needed to shave after every meal. “Comfort doesn’t race anymore. He won a couple of pots last year. Out to pasture now.”
“You know who owns him?”
“He was in Daniel Merton’s stable when he was racing. I don’t know about now. Why? You in the market for a horse?”
“Nah, your horse might have appendicitis.”
I held out the bill to him, and he snatched it away as though he expected me to do the same. He pocketed it and made a big production of taking the racing form out from under his arm and finding his place. He leaned back against the booth again, but his eyes weren’t moving across the page. He was waiting for me to leave.
At the curb I got back in my Packard. Daniel Merton was one of the founders and owners, and the current president, of Merton Stein Productions. If he had owned the horse before and Chloë Rose owned it now, he must have given it to her. But he was also the man she worked for, which made him the one the mystery man on the phone had been calling on behalf of. Why would Merton want to buy back a horse he’d given her?
I started the engine. None of this was my business. I had a client, and he probably expected me to work for my money.
I checked the time. Almost five. It was too early for any of the right people to be on Market Street in Harbor City and too late to go sit around the office. I decided to go home, and wait for Pauly Fisher’s phone call. The sand-colored coupe decided to join me.