Girl In The Plain Brown Wrapper

by John D. MacDonald

  The day blackened, the sky cracked open, and the rain came down, storm gusts whipping the spray of the rebound and the mist of the hot streets, tearing brown fronds off the cabbage palms, shredding the broadleaf plantings, swinging signs and traffic lights. Same kind of storm wind that had made the Likely Lady rock her weight against the anchor lines, creaking and grunting. It had been cozy below.

  I tried Hardahee. She said he had left for the day, and I could not tell if she was lying. I found Rick Holton's law office. The girl took my name and disappeared. She came back and led me down a paneled corridor. He had a big desk with a window wall behind it that looked out onto a little enclosed court paved with Japanese river stones and with some stunted trees in big white pots. Rain ran down the window wall. He had a lot of framed scrolls on the persimmon paneling of his walls, and framed photographs of politicians, warmly inscribed.

  He tried the big confident junior chamber smile, but it had sagged into nothing before the girl had closed the office door.

  "Sit down, McGee. Told Sally I didn't want to see anybody. Supposed to be getting through all this damned desk work. Jesus! I read things three times and don't know what I've read. Know where they're getting with the investigation? Noplace. I think it was some crazy. Hell, Penny would have opened the door to anybody. They panicked and ran. One of those lousy meaningless things. They'll pick him up for something else someday, and he'll start talking and hand them this one."

  "It might open up. Stanger might come across something."

  "He's good."

  "Better than your friend Dave Broon?"

  He shrugged. "Dave is handy for odd jobs."

  "Can I get your opinion on a few things, Holton? Not legal opinion. Personal."

  "For what it's worth, which isn't much lately. Everything seems to be going sour. You know, the deal with Penny was going sour. We were about ready to close the books. So why do I miss her so damn much?"

  "She was pretty special."

  "So Janice was very special. Past tense. I blew the whole bit. For a roll in the hay with Penny Woertz. Nowhere near as good-looking a girl as Janice. What was I trying to prove? With Janice you don't just make a sincere apology and go on from there. Done is done. Total loyalty, given and expected. I've lost her. Funny thing, driving back from Vero Beach, when I had no idea in the world Penny was already dead, I tried to tell Jan that it was something that had just sort of happened. I said it was over. I wasn't sure it was over, but I had the feeling that if I told Jan it was, then I'd have to make sure I kept on feeling just the way I felt when she wouldn't leave your room Friday night when I did. That was before we picked up the kids at Citrusdale. She let me talk. I thought she was really thinking it over, giving me a chance. I reached over and put my hand on her arm. You know, she actually shuddered? And she said in a polite voice to please not touch her, it made her stomach turn over. That was the end of it, right there."

  "When you were waiting for me Sunday night, did you have any idea of shooting me, Holton?"

  He tilted his chair back and looked up at the soundproofed ceiling, eyes narrowed. "That was pretty dim. Jesus, I don't know. I'd read a stat of that note she wrote you. It made it pretty clear about you two. I was aware of the gun. I had the feeling that my whole life was so messed up nothing mattered too much. And you'd hit me harder than anybody ever hit me in my life. I'm still sore from it. Four days and I still hurt when I take a deep breath. I've got a lousy temper. Maybe, McGee. All things considered, I just might have. Scares me to think of it. Without Janice and without Penny, things aren't all that bad. I've got a lot of friends. I do a good job for my clients. I made a good record as an assistant state attorney and I've got a good chance of becoming county attorney next year, and that's worth a minimum forty thousand, plus other business it brings in. They say money won't buy happiness, but you can sure rent yourself some. I'm grateful to you for suckering me. And thanks for taking me home. Where's the gun anyway?"

  "I turned it over to Stanger and he gave it back to me."

  He was puzzled. "Why'd he do that?"

  "It's just sort of a temporary loan, just a little delay in officially turning it over to him."

  "When you give it back to Mm, tell him to hang on to it. I don't think I ought to have one around. Not for a while. Maybe not ever. But why does Al Stanger think you need a gun?"

  "Just a whim, maybe."

  "You mean you'd rather not say? Okay. Yesterday morning I checked out what you said about yourself. I phoned Tom Pike and he said you were an old friend of Mrs. Trescott and her daughters."

  "If you could check that easily, why didn't you check before you and Penny pulled that stupid deal, that grade C melodrama?"

  He blushed. "So now it seems wild and stupid. We sort of talked each other into it. If it had worked-and you have to admit it came close-then I would have maybe found out from whatever papers you were carrying on your person, the missing piece. We'd narrowed it down to one theory that looked better and better. The tall man could have been in some kind of drug traffic."

  "Oh, come on!"

  "Wait a minute now! I held back a little on you when we talked in your room. Penny followed my lead. The man seen leaving Sherman's office was carrying a case of some kind, light-colored and heavy. No controlled drugs were missing, according to the office records. But there was no control on the stuff he ordered for his experimentations. He did some animal experimentations along with the other stuff. He could have been ordering experimental compounds, couldn't he?"

  "Aren't you reaching?"

  "I talked to Helen Boughmer the day after he died. She was convinced that a lot of stuff might be missing from the room in back, and she was going to check the file of special orders against the inventory of what was left. She believed he'd been killed. And two days later, she'd changed completely. She said she had changed her mind. She said she believed he'd killed himself. She said she had checked the special orders and nothing was missing. I asked her to produce the file. She claimed she couldn't find it. And she never did find it. Now somebody, dammit, had to get to her. If Sherman had killed himself, why would anybody take the tune and trouble to shut her mouth. She was a changed woman. She acted terrified."

  "Then, why would I come back here, if I was the one who killed Doctor Sherman? What would there be here for me?"

  "Now you can say I'm reaching. Why would Tom Pike pay you twenty thousand in cash? It was one of those crazy breaks you get sometimes that one of my partners here saw him giving the money to a man who matches your description. Let's say Sherman stepped out of line when Maureen Pike was so critically ill at the time of her miscarriage, and gave her something not authorized for use on patients. Suppose he did this with Tom's knowledge and consent, and whatever it was, the side effect was some kind of brain damage? Hell, it kind of dwindles off because it doesn't seem as if it would give anybody enough leverage to pry money out of Tom Pike. But you'd seen Tom, and even if we didn't find a thing except a heavy piece of money on you, that would mean some kind of confirmation."

  "Personal opinion again, please. Do you think Doctor Sherman killed his wife?"

  "Ben Gaffney and I-he's the state attorney-went up one side of that and down the other. Going after him with a circumstantial case just didn't add up. We could show motive and opportunity, but there was absolutely no way to prove the cause of death. Do I think he did? Yes. So does Ben. The specialists we talked to said it was highly unlikely there could have been such a sudden deterioration in her condition that she could go into deep coma after the amount of insulin she had apparently taken. But `highly unlikely' isn't enough to go to court with. So we closed out the investigation finally."

  "Who was handling it?"

  "The death occurred in county jurisdiction. Dave Broon was handling it, under joint direction of my office and the sheriff. If Dave could have come up with something that strengthened the case, it would still have been a pretty unpopular indictment."

  "Now, to get back to Sherman's
death, do you have the feeling that Penny had any kind of lead at all that she hadn't told you about yet?"

  He looked startled and then grim. "I see where that one is aimed. I don't really... wait a minute. Let me think." He leaned back and ground at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "I don't know if this is anything. It would have been... a week ago. Last Tuesday. She was working an eleven-to-six-in-the-morning shift, a postoperative case, and that was the last time she was on that one. I pulled out of here early. About quarter to four and went over to see her. She'd just gotten up. She had dreamed about Doctor Sherman. She was telling me about it. I wasn't paying much attention. She stopped all of a sudden and she had a funny expression. I asked her what the trouble was and she said she'd just thought of something, that the dream had reminded her of something. She wouldn't tell me. She said she had to ask somebody a question first, and maybe it was nothing at all, but maybe it meant something. Very mysterious about it."

  "Can you remember anything about the dream?"

  "Not much. Nutty stuff. Something about him opening a door in his forehead and making her look in and count the times a little orange light in there was blinking."

  "But you don't know if she asked anyone that question?"

  "She never brought it up again."

  "While you were... conducting this unofficial investigation of Sherman's death, were you telling Janice about it, about things like the file the Boughmer woman wouldn't produce?"

  "I guess I was telling her more than I usually would. Hell, I was trying to cover for the time I was spending with Penny. But Janice was turning ice cold, and fast. She wasn't buying it. I kept trying, but she wasn't buying it. She found out, I guess."

  "Somebody told her about it practically as soon as it began."

  "No kidding! Some real pal."

  "Do you think she's found some other man?"

  "I keep trying not to think about that. What's it to you?"

  "Let's say it isn't just a case of big-nose, Holton."

  "I get home and that damned Meg is either over at the house with her kids, or the kids are over at Meg's house. No note from Janice. No message, nothing. So she comes home and I say where have you been, and she says out. Looks so damned smug. But I keep telling myself that when she comes home, she doesn't have that look. You know? Something about the mouth and the hair and the way they walk. A woman who's been laid looks laid. Their eyes are different too. If she's got somebody, he's not playing his cards right. If she likes him and she's sore at me, and I know she's known about Penny, all he'd have to do would be lay one hand on her to get her going, and she'd take over from there. A lousy way to talk about the wife, I guess. But I know her. And she's no wife now. Not anymore. Never again, not for me."

  "Does she think Sherman was murdered?"

  "She was fond of him. She's sure of it. Not from anything I dug up or any chain of logic I explained. She operates on instinct. She says he couldn't have and to her that's it."

  "So she wanted to have you find out who did it?"

  "Not because she was hot to have somebody punished, but more because it would clear his name."

  "What do you know about the trouble Tom Pike got into at Kinder, Noyes, and Strauss?"

  "What? You jump around pretty fast. All I know is the shop talk I heard about it. He was a very hot floor man. He had people swearing by him. He went in there and built up one hell of a personal following. High fliers, discretionary accounts, a lot of trading in and out, accounts fully margined. And he's a very persuasive guy. He made a lot of money for a lot of people in this town, in a very short time. But there was one old boy who came down to retire, and he had a portfolio of blue chips. He had Telephone and General Motors and Union Carbide. He signed an agreement to have Tom Pike handle his holdings on a discretionary basis. As I understand it, Tom cashed in all the old boy's blues and started swinging with the proceeds. Fairchild Camera, Texas Instrument, Tele-dyne, Litton. At the end of three months the total value of the old boy's holdings was down by about twelve thousand. And Tom had made about forty trades, and the total commissions came to eight grand. The old boy blew the whistle on Tom, claiming that the agreement was that Tom would commit only twenty percent of his holdings in high-risk investments, that Tom had ignored the understanding and put the whole amount in high fliers, and had churned the account to build up his commissions. He had his lawyer send the complaint directly to the president of the firm in New York. They sent down a couple of lawyers and a senior partner to investigate. Brokerage houses are very sensitive about that kind of thing. Big conference, as I understand it. Complete audit of all trades. Tom Pike claimed that the man had told him that he was after maximum capital gains in high-risk issues and that he had other resources and could afford the risk. The man denied it. It looked as if Tom was in serious trouble. But one of the female employees was able to back up Tom's story. She said the man had phoned her to get verification of the status of his account and his buying power, and that when he had been twenty-five thousand ahead of the game, he had told her over the phone that getting out of the tired old blue chips and letting Mr. Pike handle his account was the smartest move he had ever made. The old man denied ever saying that."

  "What was her name?"

  "Hilda something. Long last name. The cashier."

  "Hulda Wennersehn?"

  "If you know about it, why are you asking me?"

  "I don't know about it. What happened?"

  "They decided that in view of Tom's knowing the man was retired and needed security, he had used bad judgment. They slapped his wrist by giving him a sixty-day suspension. And they busted a couple of the more recent trades and absorbed the loss in order to build the old man's equity back to almost what he started with. That's when Tom said the hell with it and started Development Unlimited."

  "And Miss Wennersehn now works for him."

  "So?"

  "So nothing. Just a comment. How did the business community react to Pike's problem?"

  "The way these things go, at first everybody was ready to believe the worst. People pulled their accounts. They said that while he was looking good with their money, he was piling up commissions. They said he'd been lucky instead of smart. Then it swang right around the other way when he was pretty well cleared. He was out of the brokerage business, and so what he did was move his big customers right out of the market, off-the-record advice, and put them into land syndication deals. Better for him because you can build some very fancy pyramids, using equities from one as security for loans on the next, and he can cut himself in for a piece by putting the deals together. He's moved very fast."

  "Credit good?"

  "He got past that iffy place when Doc Sherman's death fouled up some moves he was going to make. His credit has to be good."

  "What do you mean?"

  "He's got bankers tied into the deals, savings and loan, contractors, accountants, realtors. Hell, if he ever screwed up, the whole city would come tumbling down."

  "Along with the new building?"

  "All four and a half million worth of it. Land lease in one syndicate, construction loans and building leases in another."