Dames Fight Harder

by M. Ruth Myers

  “Life’s hard, lady. Your little pal can take his knocks like anyone else. I’m here now.”

  “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. When Heebs shows up, you relocate.”

  “Or what?”

  I held up the small leather folder that displayed my badge and folded up license.

  “Or I make your life extremely unpleasant.”

  Two newsboys who worked farther along the block had edged closer to listen. Mr. Tough Guy was torn between falling back a couple steps more and playing to them. He compromised by leaning away from me some.

  “You can’t do anything to me. I’m not breaking the law.”

  I leaned in and pretended to flick a crumb from his front.

  “The police don’t have time to waste time on would-be punks like you. I do. I will. I know people in Governor Cox’s merry little news emporium too, and if I put a word in the right ears, you won’t get papers to sell anywhere in this city. Understand?”

  “Yeah, I got it.” His eyes swung left and right. He was worried the other newsies would see him backing down from a woman, and even more worried I’d prove as tough as I sounded if he got smart.

  “When Heebs shows up, you won’t even make him ask. You’ll tell him you’re glad he’s better. Then you’ll turn and walk away.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  ***

  The swath of lush green embankment where I was to meet Phil Clark stretched for a couple of blocks between Monument Avenue and the Great Miami. When I got there, I saw two shapely young women cooing over a man with a dog. More accurately, it was the pooch who was getting attention as they bent, petting his ears. I wouldn’t have bet much on whether man or dog was the real object of their interest, though. When they straightened, one twisted back and forth like a schoolgirl and light, giggling laughter reached my ears.

  Catching sight of me, Clark waved a hand in greeting. The girls looked in my direction, exchanged a few more words with Clark, and with backward glances took their leave. Clark came to meet me. No doubt about it, he was a good-looking man.

  “Do you always attract a crowd?” I asked in greeting.

  He laughed.

  “Cupid does have that effect on people.”

  “Cupid because he attracts women?” I nodded toward the departing duo.

  “He’s a she, and the somewhat embarrassing name is because the first time she looked at me, it put an arrow right through my heart. Say hello to Miss Sullivan, girl.”

  The dog obediently put up a paw, which I bent to shake. She was knee-high with a white and butterscotch coat that curled where it covered her long ears.

  “She looks like a tall cocker spaniel.”

  “English cocker.” With murmured praise and pats of affection, he unsnapped her leash. She took off running, flopping happily along. “If you don’t mind, let’s walk closer to the water so I can call her back if she gets too excited. I usually take her out across the way, at Deeds Point there, or in a park by my house. When I bring her here she goes nuts because of the novelty.”

  “But she’ll come back if you call?”

  “Oh, yes. She’s very well trained.”

  We’d fallen into step. He gave me a sideways glance.

  “I admit I’m curious at what you’ve turned up that you didn’t want to ask about over the phone.”

  The dog circled left and raced back toward us, displaying prowess or maybe just joy, then veered to race off again.

  “I was wondering if you knew of any financial connection between Foster and Winfred Lamont.”

  “Connection? What kind of connection?”

  “Any sort.”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “No loan? No venture they went into together?”

  “None I’ve ever heard about, though a loan would be something they kept close to their vests, wouldn’t it? Why?”

  “There’s indication Lamont gave Foster a significant amount of money.”

  The dog began to make its way down to the water. Clark whistled it back. Rewarded with an ear scratch, it took off for more loops.

  “How do you define ‘significant amount’?”

  My head shake told him not to expect an answer. “Lamont talks as if he’s hard-pressed. I wondered if he’d borrowed money from Foster and then paid it back.”

  “Oh, that’s just Lamont, the eternal worrier. I’ve never heard any hint of his having trouble. Monday’s the latest installment of those builders’ luncheons like the one where Rachel had words with Foster. I could sound out a few people, quietly, see if anyone heard anything about some sort of deal, if you like.”

  “I’d appreciate it.” If Lamont got wind of questions being asked and it made him nervous, all the better. Nervous people made mistakes.

  The dog came bounding up, and this time seemed content to slow her pace and amble just a few steps ahead, intent on sniffing now.

  “How’s Rachel holding up?

  “Feeling a lot of strain. You’re the first to ask.”

  “She doesn’t deserve this. She’s an exceptional woman.”

  “Did that story Foster told about her have anything to do with things ending between you?”

  “I always supposed it was sour grapes on his part, that he’d made some kind of pass and she’d turned him down. It was long before we started dating. The reason we broke up...” He looked thoughtful. “A man wants a woman who supports him.

  “I grew up dirt poor, Miss Sullivan. Lots of days I didn’t have even a chunk of bread to eat because my father was the neighborhood drunk. When my mother did manage to get a nickel or two and sent me to the store, I risked other kids beating me up for it if my cousin a few years older, with considerably more muscles than I had, didn’t tag along.

  “He earned pocket change now and then pulling nails out of boards at a construction site so they could be reused, but he smarted off and got fired. I begged the man in charge to let me have the job. I kept it and got big enough to swing a hammer and climb scaffolding with the best of them. Eventually I got to where I am today.

  “Rachel understood that. Not the being poor part, but the fighting tooth and nail to make something of yourself, because she’d done it too.”

  “Yet you didn’t want her to compete with you? Or was it just her winning that you didn’t like?”

  He whistled the dog back and bent to fasten the leash to her collar.

  “Both, perhaps. I thought she should have stepped aside instead of bidding against me. A man needs success. It’s how he measures himself.”

  As much as it hurt, I managed to bite my tongue.

  THIRTY

  “Hey, sis, you just missed a call from Lulu Sollers.” Heebs’ unswollen eye looked ready to pop from his head as I walked in the office. “She said she may have found something for you — a bus driver you ought to talk to. Something to do with a candy wrapper.”

  He shoved a piece of paper into my hand.

  “There’s his name, and the route, and his bus number.”

  I was already dialing. But Lulu was known for keeping a brisk pace. She was gone. The girl who had answered her phone said I might be able to catch her at the end of the day.

  Heebs was still goggle-eyed when I hung up.

  “She’s that policewoman, ain’t— isn’t she? The real tough old bird.”

  “You get points for knowing she’s a cop, not a matron. If she’s tough, it’s because she has to be to face off with some man who’s beating his wife or a dance hall girl swinging a knife.”

  And to put up with guff from half the male cops when she’s proved herself a hundred times over.

  I waved the slip of paper.

  “You did a first-rate job taking down information, Heebs.”

  On my way in that morning, I’d stopped by a second-hand shop I knew and bought him a vest. With that on over his shirt, he looked older if anyone stopped in, and more businesslike. He could pass for a young clerk from the mailroom in a modest sized business. A clerk with
one eye still swollen half closed, and some of his bruises turning from purple to yellow now.

  “You came in before I finished writing the last part,” he said. “Miz Sollers said the driver’s shift starts at eight p.m. I asked her if I’d heard that right, and she said yes, at night.”

  I copied the information to a folded sheet of paper I kept in my purse. Heebs moved to his own chair and I sat down to make notes on my meeting with Clark. Then I suspended a pencil between my index fingers and thought.

  Since three of Lamont’s competitors knew nothing about any possible link between him and Foster, or weren’t willing to admit it if they did, I wondered what might come out of the horse’s mouth itself. After twice catching him in a lie, I saw no reason to be optimistic I’d get the truth from him about the check. Guilty or innocent, he’d realize its discovery raised suspicions. Better to let him stew for a few days while I nosed around some more.

  For the first time, I wondered whether that check, buried deep in Foster’s financial records, could be what someone was hunting at Rachel’s office and Gloria’s apartment. But no. It might be what they were after at Gloria’s place, but why look for it at Rachel’s?

  I sent Heebs out for sandwiches for us. While he was gone, I continued to mull over Win Lamont and what he was guilty of, and whether that guilt had led to murder. What if he was guilty of something, but not of murder?

  I sat up, blinking at a new idea.

  “What if I’ve been approaching this from the wrong end?” I said aloud.

  Heebs opened the door as I said it.

  “What was that, sis?”

  I got up and paced.

  “A man wrote an unexplained check to a man who was killed.”

  “Who? Killed... you mean murdered?”

  “I’ve been assuming the check writer wanted something from the dead man. That it was a bribe, or he wanted in on a deal. But what if it was the dead man — yeah, he was murdered — what if he was after something from the one who wrote the check? What if he had demanded money?”

  “You mean blackmail?”

  “That’s usually more than once,” I said absently.

  But not always.

  Maybe Lamont had believed a one-time payment would buy Foster’s silence on something. Maybe it hadn’t. Foster’s steadily more robust bank account from the time of the check onward could be the result of blackmail rather than a business investment. One check wasn’t enough to prove something like that, or even to build a fire under Freeze.

  It would, however, be a dandy motive for murder.

  ***

  Heebs peppered me with questions while we ate our sandwiches. Without giving names, I answered some of them. Talking through things that were puzzling me while he tried to follow made me wish I could do the same thing with Connelly. He was a good sounding board when I was stuck on a case.

  My thoughts began to drift to the last time we’d been together ... the interlude at his door. I jerked them back.

  “I need you to hold the fort for a couple of hours,” I said jumping up and grabbing my hat. “I’m going back to Market House.”

  Somewhere along the way while talking with Heebs, I’d had the merest germ of an idea. It might not lead anywhere, but it was better than sitting, so I trotted over to Main and climbed the stairs to Freeze’s office.

  He was out. So was Boike. The cartons containing Foster’s financial records still sat on the vacant desk where I’d looked at them yesterday.

  “Mind if I have another look at these?” I asked a detective at a nearby desk.

  Covering the mouthpiece of the phone cradled on his shoulder, he shrugged.

  “Freeze was okay with it yesterday. I don’t see why not.”

  My eyes began to cross at the mere prospect of being forced back to the mountain of documents. I looked around in hopes of spotting an adding machine. I didn’t. Since I didn’t know how to use one, it was no more disappointing than not seeing a magic wand.

  I set up the equipment I’d brought, a tablet and a freshly sharpened pencil. Then I dug into the box with the check from Lamont and as quickly as possible put things in neat stacks.

  This time around, I was only interested in the total of Foster’s bank deposits each month, one for his business account and one for the personal one. That made things easier. I drew a vertical line down my tablet and entered the monthly totals for both accounts, starting six months before the check from Lamont. Then I added the totals for each account separately and divided by the number of months to get a monthly average.

  It was dull work, maybe the dullest I’d ever done. When I’d finished, I did the same thing only working forward from Lamont’s check. After staring at the results, I expanded my efforts to twelve months to make sure the pattern I thought I saw was really emerging.

  “Find anything?”

  Freeze’s voice, directly over my shoulder, startled me so that I almost dropped my pencil. I’d been resting my chin on my hand, scarcely six inches off the desk, as I looked back and forth from my own sheets of figures. I straightened, kneading a kink in my shoulder.

  “Yeah, I think maybe I have.”

  I shoved my work sheets to one side. The two detectives came around to look. I pointed with my pencil.

  “These are the monthly figures for what Foster put in his personal account in the six month period before that check from Lamont. These are the ones for the first twelve months after.

  “Here’s the monthly average before.” I pointed. “And after. Notice anything?”

  “There’s more every month from around then,” Freeze said. “We already knew that.”

  “More by an average of fifty-one dollars and forty-three cents, to be precise. And the check Lamont wrote was for fifty dollars.”

  Freeze gave me a sharp look.

  “Are you thinking Foster was putting the bite on Lamont? Blackmailing him?”

  “I’m saying when you look at it month by month, his deposits were always up by about fifty dollars. Sometimes forty-eight or forty-nine, sometimes a buck or two the other direction. Every month except one, when he put in forty dollars, which was probably a fluke. And...” This time I patted with my finger. “...after that one check, the deposits for the extra amount were always in cash, sometimes for the full amount, sometimes in two or three chunks.”

  Boike gave a low whistle. Freeze picked up my pages of calculations and scanned them.

  “Lamont must have wised up. Checks every month for the same amount would have left too much of a trail.”

  “It’s a smart amount, too,” I said. “Enough to make a difference in Foster’s finances, but not so large it attracted attention.”

  “There’s no proof the cash payments came from Lamont.”

  “You’re a pain sometimes, Boike.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  With lights from businesses muted or off altogether these days, standing at a bus stop at eight in the evening felt like waiting at midnight. Two trolleys came and went before the one displaying the number Lulu Sollers had given me swung to the curb.

  At this time of night, it was only half full. I slid into the seat behind the driver.

  “Are you Pat?” I asked when we reached a stretch where stops thinned out.

  The codger at the wheel cocked a shaggy eyebrow at me in his mirror.

  “Now what’s a pretty young thing like you asking about a worthless fellow like Pat Collins for?” he kidded.

  I smiled.

  “A friend told me to say hello to him.”

  “Ah. Well, I’m not Pat.” He pulled over as the bell rang to tell him a passenger wanted to get off. “The man didn’t even set foot on this bus before he went home sick as could be. One look and you knew he wasn’t fit to drive. Dragging himself along, eyes all feverish. That’s why some of us retirees take turns coming in. If one of the regular drivers gets sick or calls in late, we can step right to it.”

  The bus nosed back into traffic.

  “When do you think
he’ll be back?”

  “Oh, hard to say. Two or three days of sleep and coddling by the missus and he might be back on his feet.”

  It had started to drizzle. He turned on his windshield wipers. I went home feeling pretty drizzly myself at the setback where I’d hoped for progress.

  ***

  One problem kept winking at me from the otherwise tidy theory that Foster had been blackmailing Lamont. Namely, I found it hard to imagine the less-than-flamboyant Lamont indulging in anything worthy of blackmail. Still, ordinary seeming people sometimes had private lives that would curl hair.

  I let the problem have center stage in my thoughts once I’d finished reading the morning papers. Maybe Lamont had been paying hush money to cover up something unrelated to carnal misdeeds or vices. People got blackmailed for having their hand in the till. But Lamont owned his company. He was the till. It could be over something else related to business, though.

  In that case, my chance of determining what was just about nil. Rachel and I might figure it out if we sat working elbow to elbow for however long it took, but that wasn’t feasible, given the tight rein being kept on her. I spent the rest of the morning visiting other bidders for the project where Rachel’s crew was working, and returned to the office without so much as a scrap of new information.

  “Some policeman stopped by to see you,” Heebs reported. “He needed a shave real bad. First he said he’d wait, but then he started to yawn, so he left this for you. He your boyfriend, sis?”

  The note was from Connelly, of course, sealed in one of my envelopes.

  See you at Finn’s when you’re done for the day?

  You’re not going to throw me over because of what I said when you dropped me off the other night, are you?

  Mick

  “You never answered the question about whether he was your boyfriend.”

  I pointed a finger at him.

  “That’s because it’s none of your business.” But I knew I was smiling.

  On the off chance some of Gloria’s former co-workers might have heard from her, I went to the place where she’d worked and walked along with the same bunch I’d talked to before when they got out for lunch.