That didn’t sound all wrong—but it didn’t sound all right. I wished Tarr had taken it easier and let us get a better line on these people, before having them thrown in the coop.
“The coincidence of the Coonses stumbling into my uncle’s house is, I fancy, too much for your detecting instincts,” she went on. “Am I to consider myself under arrest?”
I’m beginning to like this girl; she’s a nice, cool piece of work.
“Not yet,” I told her. “But I’m afraid it’s going to happen pretty soon.”
She smiled a little mocking smile at that, and another when the doorbell rang.
It was O’Hara from police headquarters. We turned the apartment upside down and inside out, but didn’t find anything of importance except the will she had told me about, dated July eighth, and her uncle’s life-insurance policies. They were all dated between May fifteenth and June tenth, and added up to a little more than $200,000.
I spent an hour grilling the maid after O’Hara had taken Evelyn Trowbridge away, but she didn’t know any more than I did. However, between her, the janitor, the manager of the apartments, and the names Mrs. Trowbridge had given me, I learned that she had really been entertaining friends on the night of the fire—until after eleven o’clock, anyway—and that was late enough.
Half an hour later I was riding the Short Line back to Sacramento. I was getting to be one of the line’s best customers, and my anatomy was on bouncing terms with every bump in the road.
Between bumps I tried to fit the pieces of this Thornburgh puzzle together. The niece and the Coonses fit in somewhere, but not just where we had them. We had been working on the job sort of lopsided, but it was the best we could do with it. In the beginning we had turned to the Coonses and Evelyn Trowbridge because there was no other direction to go; and now we had something on them—but a good lawyer could make hash out of it.
The Coonses were in the county jail when I got to Sacramento. After some questioning they had admitted their connection with the niece, and had come through with stories that matched hers.
Tarr, McClump and I sat around the sheriff’s desk and argued.
“Those yarns are pipe dreams,” the sheriff said. “We got all three of ’em cold, and they’re as good as convicted.”
McClump grinned derisively at his superior, and then turned to me.
“Go on, you tell him about the holes in his little case. He ain’t your boss, and can’t take it out on you later for being smarter than he is!”
Tarr glared from one of us to the other.
“Spill it, you wise guys!” he ordered.
“Our dope is,” I told him, figuring that McClump’s view of it was the same as mine, “that there’s nothing to show that even Thornburgh knew he was going to buy that house before the tenth of June, and that the Coonses were in town looking for work on the second. And besides, it was only by luck that they got the jobs. The employment office sent two couples out there ahead of them.”
“We’ll take a chance on letting the jury figure that out.”
“Yes? You’ll also take a chance on them figuring out that Thornburgh, who seems to have been a nut, might have touched off the place himself! We’ve got something on these people, Jim, but not enough to go into court with them. How are you going to prove that when the Coonses were planted in Thornburgh’s house—if you can even prove that they were planted—they and the Trowbridge woman knew he was going to load up with insurance policies?”
The sheriff spat disgustedly.
“You guys are the limit! You run around in circles, digging up the dope on these people until you get enough to hang ’em, and then you run around hunting for outs! What’s the matter with you now?”
I answered him from halfway to the door—the pieces were beginning to fit together under my skull.
“Going to run some more circles—come on, Mac!”
McClump and I held a conference on the fly, and then I got a car from the nearest garage and headed for Tavender. We made time going out, and got there before the general store had closed for the night. The stuttering Philo separated himself from the two men with whom he had been talking, and followed me to the rear of the store.
“Do you keep an itemized list of the laundry you handle?”
“N-n-no; just the amounts.”
“Let’s look at Thornburgh’s.”
He produced a begrimed and rumpled account book, and we picked out the weekly items I wanted: $2.60, $3.10, $2.25, and so on.
“Got the last batch of laundry here?”
“Y-yes,” he said. “It j-just c-c-came out from the city t-today.”
I tore open the bundle—some sheets, pillowcases, tablecloths, towels, napkins; some feminine clothing; some shirts, collars, underwear, and socks that were unmistakably Coons’s. I thanked Philo while running back to the car.
Back in Sacramento again, McClump was waiting for me at the garage where I had hired the car.
“Registered at the hotel on June fifteenth; rented the office on the sixteenth. I think he’s in the hotel now,” he greeted me.
We hurried around the block to the Garden Hotel.
“Mr. Henderson went out a minute or two ago,” the night clerk told us. “He seemed to be in a hurry.”
“Know where he keeps his car?”
“In the hotel garage around the corner.”
We were within ten feet of the garage, when Henderson’s automobile shot out and turned up the street.
“Oh, Mr. Henderson!” I cried, trying to keep my voice level.
He stepped on the gas and streaked away from us.
“Want him?” McClump asked; and at my nod he stopped a passing roadster by the simple expedient of stepping in front of it.
We climbed in, McClump flashed his star at the bewildered driver, and pointed out Henderson’s dwindling tail-light. After he had persuaded himself that he wasn’t being boarded by a couple of bandits, the commandeered driver did his best, and we picked up Henderson’s tail-light after two or three turnings, and closed in on him—though his car was going at a good clip.
By the time we reached the outskirts of the city, we had crawled up to within safe shooting distance, and I sent a bullet over the fleeing man’s head. Thus encouraged, he managed to get a little more speed out of his car; but we were overhauling him now.
Just at the wrong minute Henderson decided to look over his shoulder at us—an unevenness in the road twisted his wheels—his machine swayed—skidded—went over on its side. Almost immediately, from the heart of the tangle, came a flash and a bullet moaned past my ear. Another. And then, while I was still hunting for something to shoot at in the pile of junk we were drawing down upon, McClump’s ancient and battered revolver roared in my other ear.
Henderson was dead when we got to him—McClump’s bullet had taken him over one eye.
McClump spoke to me over the body.
“I ain’t an inquisitive sort of fellow, but I hope you don’t mind telling me why I shot this lad.”
“Because he was—Thornburgh.”
He didn’t say anything for about five minutes. Then: “I reckon that’s right. How’d you know it?”
We were sitting beside the wreckage now, waiting for the police that we had sent our commandeered chauffeur to phone for.
“He had to be,” I said, “when you think it all over. Funny we didn’t hit on it before! All that stuff we were told about Thornburgh had a fishy sound. Whiskers and an unknown profession, immaculate and working on a mysterious invention, very secretive and born in San Francisco—where the fire wiped out all the old records—just the sort of fake that could be cooked up easily.
“Now, consider Henderson. You had told me he came to Sacramento sometime early this summer—and the dates you got tonight show that he didn’t come until after Thornburgh had bought his house. All right! Now compare Henderson with the descriptions we got of Thornburgh.
“Both are about the same size and age, and with the same color h
air. The differences are all things that can be manufactured—clothes, a little sunburn, and a month’s growth of beard, along with a little acting, would do the trick. Tonight I went out to Tavender and took a look at the last batch of laundry—and there wasn’t any that didn’t fit the Coonses! And none of the bills all the way back were large enough for Thornburgh to have been as careful about his clothes as we were told he was.”
“It must be great to be a detective!” McClump grinned as the police ambulance came up and began disgorging policemen. “I reckon somebody must have tipped Henderson off that I was asking about him this evening.” And then, regretfully: “So we ain’t going to hang them folks for murder after all.”
“No, but we oughtn’t have any trouble convicting them of arson plus conspiracy to defraud, and anything else that the Prosecuting Attorney can think up.”
IT TORE THE LAUGH FROM MY THROAT, by Meriah L Crawford
I was supposed to be on vacation. I was supposed to be relaxing, putting my feet up, reading. I was supposed to be eating locally-caught seafood—like drum, soft-shell crab, and oysters dug fresh. I was supposed to be sitting on the porch of my little rental cabin on Chincoteague, enjoying the break I’d earned after nearly four solid months of long hours, seven-day weeks, and living out of my car while working on a huge class-action lawsuit. The phone was not supposed to ring, and if it did, I was not supposed to answer. But it did, and I did, and this is what happened.
* * * *
“Is this Lauren? Lauren Lindsay?”
I could tell from the voice that something was very wrong. “Yes?” I said.
“My name is Harriet Reynolds. I was Jess Walter’s college roommate.” Jess is a lawyer friend of mine who I work for as a private investigator. She sometimes referred clients to me, but she also knew how much I needed this time off.
“It’s my husband,” she said, her voice breaking. “He’s—he’s missing.” Harriet began sobbing.
I could almost feel her body shaking over the phone. I’d had people start crying before—usually while telling me they suspected their husband or wife was cheating on them—but not like this. I waited for a couple of minutes until the storm began to ease, then said, as gently as I could, “I’m so sorry about your husband. Tell me what I can do to help.”
“I want you to find him. Please.”
Though I was exhausted and reluctant to take any new work on, for Jess’ sake I decided to at least hear her out. I pulled out a notebook and pen, and sat at the small dining table to take notes.
Her husband Tom, a retired bank manager, went to visit his mother one afternoon, just over a week ago. Harriet stayed behind because of a migraine, and went to bed early. When she woke up at almost eight the next morning, Tom still hadn’t come home. Harriet called his mom, who told her that Tom left just after eleven the night before, saying he was going straight home. Harriet then began a frenzy of phone calling: hospitals, the police, friends and family in the area. Nothing. After another call to Tom’s mother, who was starting to get frightened, Harriet drove the route to her house, and then back by a slightly different path. There was no sign of him. Nothing at all.
Later that same day, she told me, the police found Tom’s car parked at the edge of a field. It was a couple miles off his expected path, which was explained by the fact that the fuel tank was empty. The working theory was that he’d noticed he was low on fuel sometime after he started home, and turned toward the main highway where he knew he could buy gas at that hour. He’d obviously run out before he got that far.
It seemed reasonable to think he’d simply started walking, since it was only about a mile to the nearest gas station. But, what happened next was anybody’s guess. Finally, after a week’s work with no solid leads, the police had admitted that there wasn’t much more they could do. And that’s when Harriet called Jess, who sent her to me.
I’d worked missing persons cases before, but they were all fairly basic: finding old friends, former employees, or catching up with a rebellious son who’d left home at sixteen and not been heard from since. It was usually a matter of doing a bunch of online searching followed by, at most, a few phone calls. There was one young woman I hadn’t been able to find for seven months, but it turned out she’d moved to a different state and lived with friends for half a year while saving up to rent an apartment. That kept her name out of the databases for much longer than usual.
But, this? Harriet’s story just didn’t make much sense to me. It all came back to a simple question: If he wasn’t dead, why hadn’t he called? There was a time before cell phones, when some rural areas didn’t have phone service available for every home, that he might just be sick or hurt and not able to let her know. But the man had a cell phone, as do most people nowadays, and service was fairly good on the peninsula. It seemed clear to me that he was gone either because he wanted to be, or because he was beyond wanting. Beyond anything. Either way, it wasn’t going to end well for Harriet.
After briefly flirting with the idea of declining the case, I suggested we meet to talk in person. Why didn’t I just tell her I couldn’t do it? Two reasons. First, I owed Jess. She’d helped me deal with the murder of a dear friend the year before, and then put me to work when I needed it. I knew I’d earned my keep working for her, but she’d risked a lot on a rookie. If a friend of hers was in trouble, there was no way I could turn her down. The second reason was that it was an interesting case. I’d like to say I did it because I care, because Harriet’s pain touched me—and it did. But, as much as anything, I just wanted to dig in and find the answer for myself.
Harriet gave me directions, and I headed out. I hadn’t seen much of the Eastern Shore on my drive to Chincoteague, because I’d gotten a late start. It had been well after sunset when I rolled off the bridge onto the southern tip of the peninsula. What I found in daylight was a single north-south highway lined mostly with tiny strip malls and fields of corn, soybeans, and tomatoes. A foul stench announced the presence of the area’s other major industry: a chicken processing plant. I slid the window up and put the air on recirculate, trying not to think about the smell and the flocks of seagulls rioting over the back lot.
Away from the commercial areas, on narrow, winding country roads, I saw a mix of farmhouses, mobile homes, and small housing developments sprinkled among fields and a few tracts of wooded land. A nice place to visit and drive through, but rural areas like that always make me feel sorry for the local kids, imagining the boredom they must suffer growing up. And there were so many bleak houses that bore signs of neglect and deep poverty.
It made the small housing development that Harriet had directed me to all the more striking. They owned a recently-built single-story brick house with a view of the Chesapeake Bay between two houses across the road. It was lovely, but utterly silent. There wasn’t even the sound of birds. When the houses were built, they must’ve scraped the land clean, because the only landscaping I could see consisted of saplings and clumps of ornamental grass that wasn’t dense enough to sustain much in the way of wildlife.
When Harriet ushered me into the dimly-lit living room, it felt like a house already in mourning. For her sake, I wished there was a small crowd of family and neighbors there, but during the nearly two hours I was with her, no one knocked, the phone didn’t ring, and no cars even drove past. It made some sense when she told me they’d just moved to the area to help take care of his mom, but it was still so grim.
I sat quietly and listened to Harriet tell me the story again, encouraging her to add more details or explain when it seemed relevant. She had an easy manner about her, and a gentle, quiet humor that, even in the midst of this nightmare, peeked out now and then. But she was clearly both physically and mentally exhausted, and when she finished, she sat and stared silently out the window, as though she lacked the energy to even think of what to say or do next.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but there’s something I have to ask.”
“You want to know if he migh
t have left me,” she said tonelessly.
I waited for her to continue.
After a moment, she shook her head and turned to look at me. “No.” She straightened and gave me the most confident look I’d seen from her so far. “I understand why you’re asking, but I would bet the whole commonwealth of Virginia that he’d never cheat on me. Not ever. And lord knows, he’s had opportunity to. Conventions, business trips, late nights at work.”
“Then, how…” I paused, knowing she could guess what I meant, and we’d both like it better if I didn’t need to spell it out.
Still firmly, she said, “Because he tells me everything. He told me the time he got drunk during a conference and called his boss a jackass. He told me when he dented his rental car and reported that he had no idea how it happened. He even told me when his assistant at the bank told him she was in love with him—and he let me decide what to do about it.” She nodded to herself at the memory.
If nothing else, she was sure of her man’s devotion, and for that, at least, I envied her. I don’t know whether it’s me, or the men I choose, or simply a reflection of the times, but three of my last four boyfriends had found monogamy too great a burden to bear. Good riddance to them.
Of course, it was also possible that she was just in denial. Clients are often wrong, whether willfully or not.
“OK,” I said. “Is there any other reason he might take off without telling you?”
She tilted her head to the side, giving me questioning look.
“Maybe rescuing a friend in distress?” I said. “Helping a family member he knows you don’t like?” I frowned, thinking, grasping for something even remotely plausible, and she stared at me eagerly, hoping for more.
She seemed to realize I had nothing else to suggest, and sat back, looking momentarily numb again. “No,” she said. “Nothing like that. I did wonder at first if he ran into someone. Decided to go for a beer and managed to get drunk, then slept on their couch. But of course, as that first day wore on, that got less and less likely. And by now…”
The Detective Megapack Page 3
