The Man Who Cried All the Way Home

by Dolores Hitchens

  No matter what lay ahead, no matter what accusations were brought forth, or what motives were assigned her, she felt that she had a champion. Uncle Chuck would not let her down.

  If this turned out to be the last and the ghastliest part of what Sargent had been trying to do to her, she would cheat him. She would twist victory out of his grasp, even though he were dead.

  The morgue was down two flights of gray cement steps, down in the basement of the new City Building. It was a cold antiseptic-smelling room. Out in the middle of the floor, under a light and above the round grill of a drain set into the tiled floor, was a wheeled stretcher-table of the type used in hospitals. On it lay a sheeted form.

  Lieutenant Martin had Doris’s elbow in a firm masculine grip. He led her to the stretcher, and a little man in a white uniform seemed to pop up out of nowhere to twitch aside the top of the sheet.

  “Do you identify this body as being the body of Sargent Chenoweth?” said Martin in a rather formal, droning voice.

  She screamed, a high-pitched terrified, torn sound, and jerked around to try to run. But Martin held her ruthlessly. “Just a minute, please. Do you identify this—”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she shrieked, covering her eyes. “I won’t look. I won’t look again. Don’t make me—”

  “All right, Mrs. Chenoweth. All right.”

  Chapter 3

  There was a light in the ceiling, a big light inside a frosted-glass bowl-shaped cover. From the cot on which she lay the light appeared to swim in circles, distorted by her dizzy senses. She felt inert, exhausted, her mouth and throat as dry as cotton.

  A woman’s head and body, distorted like the light, came to lean above her. The woman wore a pale-tan official uniform, with some sort of badge pinned to the front. “Mrs. Chenoweth, are you feeling better? Would you like to sit up?”

  Doris closed her eyes, shutting out the wavering head and the tower-like body. “I feel sick.”

  A hand patted her shoulder, not unkindly. “Well, you had such a shock. No warning at all, is that right?”

  Doris shook her head on the flat pillow. This wasn’t a jail cell, she had begun to understand, though it looked plain and bare enough to be one. It seemed to be a kind of matrons’ room. Besides the cot there were lockers against the other wall, a basin and mirror in a corner, a big calendar above a small desk, and a set of pigeonholes for messages and mail.

  She tried to remember what had happened before she had come here. She’d been somewhere else for a while, a room with a big desk in it, and she had sat on one side of the desk and the detective named Martin had been on the other. Strange memory—she could recall Martin clearly; he’d been leaning toward her, his lips had moved, she had a vivid mental image of his face and his moving lips, but nothing more, no sound, no words, no train of thought. She had no idea of how long she had sat facing Martin across the desk or whether she’d made any reply to what he had said.

  The matron had gone to the basin in the corner, had run water there, and had come back to the cot. “Will you try to sit up and drink this water? It might make you feel better.”

  Doris opened her eyes to see a paper cup being held over her. She drew a deep breath and with the matron’s help managed to lift herself to a sitting position, to put her feet on the floor, and to sip at the water. It was lukewarm and tasted of metal pipes.

  “Your uncle is waiting,” the matron told her. “He wants to take you home.”

  “Yes, I … I’ll be all right in a minute.”

  “Take your time.”

  Over the rim of the paper cup Doris studied the tan uniform and the badge. “Are you a policewoman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is this the jail?”

  “Oh no. This is only the reception area. You aren’t in the jail proper at all. That’s upstairs. You were brought in here because you were feeling ill.”

  “Who brought me?”

  “Um … Lieutenant Martin and I.” The matron’s tone was determinedly light and cheerful, as if she and Doris were talking about having tea, or going to a matinee together, or on a shopping spree.

  “My purse …”

  “It’s right here, Mrs. Chenoweth.”

  When finally they went out to the hall, Uncle Chuck was seated there with the big knobby cane propped against the bench beside him. He stood up at once, bracing himself quickly and expertly with the cane, and held out his free hand. “Hello, Dorrie dear.”

  Doris thought, with a sense of shock, that he looked much older, much more frail, than when she had last seen him; flesh seemed to have melted, leaving him shrunken and bent inside his neat brown suit. And yet his eyes were the same, warm with the old affection and concern, and Doris felt her own eyes fill with weak, bitter tears.

  She kissed his dry, fresh-shaven cheek. “It was good of you to come, Uncle Chuck.”

  “That’s what Uncle Chuck is for.” Then he thanked the matron for having looked after Doris, and he and Doris headed for the outside door. The car was at the curb nearby, Uncle Chuck’s faithful Chevrolet, still gleaming and tidy after ten years. He opened the door for her, making the gallant gesture she remembered, the little bow and the smile that brought back so many memories. Once behind the wheel, he reached over to pat her hand. “We won’t try to talk until we get to your house. Then we’ll see what we can make of all this.”

  “Did you talk to the detective, Lieutenant Martin?”

  “He wouldn’t see me; he put me off. I don’t like that part of it. Now put your head back and rest.”

  Uncle Chuck looked around the living room as if refreshing his memory of it. “I hadn’t been here for so long, I’d forgotten how pretty your new house is. It’s a beauty, Dorrie.”

  “I don’t think of it as a new house any more. We’ve been here for three years—three years next month.”

  “It cost a lot of money.”

  “Yes, it did. Sit over here, Uncle Chuck. Do you want a drink? Coffee? Something to eat?”

  “I just want to talk to you, Dorrie, and find out a few necessary things. I mentioned how much the house cost because I was leading up to something—how well Sargent had been doing financially. He wasn’t in any bind over the mortgage or expenses, was he?”

  “Oh no.”

  “I read in the paper, must be almost a year ago, he’d taken in a partner. A woman. Or rather, she had had an accounting business like his, a one-man operation—I guess you’d say one-woman—and Sargent and she just merged their businesses.”

  “That’s right.”

  He gave her a close look. “Do you want a drink, Dorrie?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Sit still, let me bring you one. I can find what I want.” He went out toward the kitchen, walking fairly briskly in spite of his need to depend on the cane. He was gone for several minutes, then returned with a single glass on a tray. He put the tray down on the small table near the couch, where Doris sat. She sipped at it gratefully.

  “Getting back to this partnership—did it seem satisfactory?”

  She hesitated, then shook her head. “No. Sargent found fault with Sharon all the time. Oh, the first few weeks were all right, I guess. But then there seemed to be more and more friction.”

  “Over what?”

  Doris sat silent, looking into the glass as if trying to pin down vague impressions. “A lot of his dissatisfaction seemed—oh, sort of general. She wasn’t efficient, she did things that annoyed him, she didn’t keep her own accounts—records of what clients owed—in a way that Sarge approved of. But mostly, and this is my own idea, I think Sarge expected Sharon to bring a lot of new accounts to the office. And she didn’t. I think she even lost some she’d previously had.”

  “Before we go on along this line, Dorrie, I’d better ask this—do you know who might have killed Sarge?” When she shook her head, he added, “Not even a suspicion?”

  “No. None at all.” By looking directly into Uncle Chuck’s eyes, facing him, she tried to make him understand
that she was being completely frank and honest.

  “The detective, Martin, must have asked you the same thing.”

  “I … I guess he did. It scares me … I don’t remember what was said there in Martin’s office. It’s just … a blur.”

  Now it was Uncle Chuck’s turn to sit silent and thoughtful. Finally he said, “I have to ask this. How was your marriage? How were you and Sargent getting along as a married couple?”

  She drew in a deep breath, seemed to brace herself. “These last two years of being married to Sarge turned me gray. You must see the silver in my hair that wasn’t there the last time we met. You can’t miss it.”

  “I’m never going to say I told you so,” Uncle Chuck said in a tone of regret. “I never did think Sargent was right for you, though.”

  “I know.”

  “I figured, Dorrie, when you quit wanting to see me, quit ever calling me on the phone, things were going wrong for you. And I respected that attitude on your part. You were trying to work things out your own way, just between you and Sargent.”

  “The more fool me,” Doris said bitterly. “Sarge had found another woman. Nothing I could have done would have made any difference.”

  “Who, Dorrie? Who was she?”

  “I don’t know.” She put the empty glass on the table. “Forgive me if you can for the way I acted, the way I ignored you.”

  “I always knew you’d call me someday. Like today. When things were either completely all right or else utterly gone to hell.” He sat looking at her; Doris had put her head back against the couch cushions and had closed her eyes. “Let me fix us a bite of breakfast,” he said. “You remember, I was always a pretty good cook. Famous for my coffee and pancakes. Omelets that melt in your mouth.”

  She opened her eyes and tried to smile back at him.

  “While you’re waiting—stretch out on the couch, Dorrie—I’ll bring you another drink.”

  While she sipped the fresh drink and listened to Uncle Chuck in the kitchen, Doris thought again of the scene in Martin’s office. It seemed like it had been before, though. She could picture Martin leaning toward her, his lips moving; she sensed that she must have made some reply. But no memory of what had been said returned to her.

  Over the third cup of coffee for both of them Uncle Chuck said, “Dorrie, my first job as your attorney is to protect your interests, and that includes money matters. What about insurance, as a starter? Did Sargent carry any?”

  “Oh yes. We both carry large policies,” Doris told him.

  “And this house?”

  “It’s covered by mortgage insurance. It will belong to me, free and clear, now that Sarge is dead. Uncle Chuck, it seems queer to be talking about things like this so soon after—”

  “I know, Dorrie, but the worst mistake you could make would be to let it go, try to ignore it all. Where are the papers, insurance policies, things like that? Here in the house?”

  “Yes. There’s a fireproof steel case in Sarge’s closet.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  They went to Sargent’s room. Doris opened the closet and indicated the gray steel case on an upper shelf. Uncle Chuck asked if it were locked, and Doris said yes. She brought a chair to stand on, got down the case, set it on Sargent’s dresser, then searched for a key in a leather cufflink box. But Uncle Chuck, testing the catch, had found it unlocked and had already lifted the lid.

  The gray steel case was completely empty.

  For a few moments there was complete silence, as Doris stared into the steel case and Uncle Chuck stood frowning, puzzled.

  “I don’t understand this,” Doris said.

  “When did you last have a look inside?”

  “I don’t know. As long ago as a month perhaps. I checked something about the insurance. We had had a break-in; I wanted to check what the burglary part of the policy covered.”

  “What sort of break-in?”

  “Someone got into the stored stuff in the garage. We never did know just when it happened. We just gradually began to miss things, and then it finally dawned, there had been a burglary. Sarge had some expensive woodworking tools, and we missed them first. He had given up the hobby, but the tools were worth money. And then there were some business files, things he thought best to keep here at home, clippings … I don’t know exactly what was taken, besides the tools. But Sarge did say that the files had been rummaged, and he seemed disturbed over it at the time.”

  Uncle Chuck closed the steel case. “At any rate, your insurance papers were in this case about a month ago. Any reason Sargent would have wanted them at the office since then?”

  “I can’t see why. These were just … personal papers. Our marriage license, the sales agreement for the house, papers on the two cars …” She turned a worried, haggard look on Uncle Chuck. “Sarge’s car is at Borrego Reservoir. What shall I do about it?”

  “Dorrie, the police have taken it away long since. They’ll be testing it for fingerprints and a lot of other things. Don’t worry about it. I think you had better lie down for a while, and I’ll do some running around and try to locate these missing papers. I think the first place to go is Sargent’s office and the first person to talk to is his partner. Then, too, it might be a good idea for you to give me the names of those three old pals he was supposed to be with last night—just in case the office doesn’t yield what I want.”

  She stood with her hand on the lid of the leather cufflink box, her expression undecided as well as afraid and baffled.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” Uncle Chuck asked.

  After a further moment of hesitation she said, “No. No, I guess not. I had better he down. I’m just exhausted.”

  “Fine, Dorrie. Try to rest. Sleep if you can. I’ll be away for several hours. But first I want the names of Sargent’s old friends.” He went back to the breakfast nook, where he had left his coat hanging over the back of a chair. He fished out a card with a blank side, and a pencil, and gave them to Doris, who had stopped beside the sink counter.

  She bent to write on the back of the card. At that moment there came a whining, scratching noise from the closed entry, the service area, beyond the kitchen. She put down the pencil. “I have to let Pete out.”

  “I’ll do it before I leave for town.”

  “He hurt his ear.”

  Uncle Chuck shook his head. “I looked in on Pete while the bacon was frying, just to see if he remembered me. He didn’t hurt his ear. That was no accident. Somebody took a shot at him. Pete’s lucky he isn’t dead.”

  Chapter 4

  Uncle Chuck parked the car, got out, steadied himself against the open door while he reached for his cane. “Damned old wreck,” he chided himself. “No more sense of balance than a hoot owl.” Leaning on the cane, he crossed the curb and sidewalk—getting up and down over obstacles was his worst problem—and headed for Sargent’s office.

  The building of office suites was laid out like three sides of a square around an open courtyard full of carefully arranged plantings. The walls were beige-colored adobe brick, topped by a red tile roof, with white openwork cement baffles in front of the entries. The place was only a few years old, Uncle Chuck remembered, and Sargent had moved into it when it was new. Until Sargent had been around thirty-five he had worked for a big accounting firm in San Bernardino; then he had gone into business for himself.

  The door had gold lettering:

  ACME ASSOCIATES

  ACCOUNTING

  Sargent Chenoweth

  Sharon Baxter

  Uncle Chuck was about to touch the button beside the door when he saw that the door was slightly ajar—not enough to see into the office, but enough to show the inner frame and the lock fittings. He gently pushed the door in further. He had been here once with Doris. Sargent’s desk sat where he remembered it, facing the door about halfway along the inner wall, with banks of steel filing cabinets beyond it. The carpeting seemed new, a bright coppery yellow that lit up the rather smal
l room, and then there across in the far corner was an added desk, smaller than Sargent’s—and someone was sitting at it, a woman. All Uncle Chuck could see was the top of her head and her arms. She was lying forward on the desk, her face buried in her arms, and for a moment Uncle Chuck felt a bolt of fear. But then she moved.

  Apparently she felt the air from the open door, or he had made some slight noise, for she lifted her head and sat wiping her eyes with the back of a hand, and he realized that she was crying. Then she saw him. “Oh! … I’m sorry, the office isn’t open today, sir.”

  “I’m Mrs. Chenoweth’s uncle. Attorney, too, incidentally. May I come in?”

  She was trying desperately to compose and organize herself, he saw. She brushed away further tears, tried to smile, started to get up. “Mrs. Chenoweth’s uncle? You must be Uncle Chuck—”

  “Yes, and sit still.” He wondered how she might have heard about him. Any remarks about him from Sargent probably hadn’t been complimentary. He went to the client’s chair by Sargent’s desk, turned it to face her, propped the cane on the chair arm, and sat down. “You must be Mrs. Baxter.”

  She was a small woman, fine-boned, perhaps forty-five or a little over. Her hair, a blued-gray, was done expertly and becomingly. Her features were pretty; Uncle Chuck decided that as a girl she’d probably been quite beautiful. “I’m sorry to be crying,” she said. “This thing that happened to Mr. Chenoweth has really been an awful shock.”

  “How did you find out about it?”

  “The police called me at home. They told me that Mr. Chenoweth was dead. Then they asked if I knew anything about his activities last night. I told them I had said goodbye to Mr. Chenoweth around four-thirty yesterday. He left the office at that time. I stayed a little longer. You know, as he was leaving, he paused there at the door—it’s queer how distinct my memory of it is—and I had the feeling he was about to say something. Something important. Do you have any idea of what I mean? An impression like that?”

  “Oh yes.”