Don't Dare a Dame

by M. Ruth Myers

  Her cheeks were flaming.

  “Do you think we’re crackpots?” asked Corrine with a trace of her old assertiveness.

  “Not that. But beyond that, I’m not sure what to think,” I said slowly. “Your stepfather’s death seems awfully convenient, right after you’d told me what you suspected. Who else knew about that? Besides Neal. And who knew you’d hired me?”

  “Just - just Neal,” said Isobel. “But he never believed ... you saw how angry he was that we’d hired you. He idolized Alf. Thought he could do no wrong. He - he ended up acting more like Alf than he did our own father.”

  Fishing a handkerchief from her pocket, she dabbed at her welling eyes. She’d taken the day off to be with Corrine so her sister wouldn’t feel the loss of her dog quite so keenly. Good thing, considering how the morning had gone.

  “Neal could have mentioned it to someone,” I said as she composed herself. “They could have told someone else.”

  That might reassure her until I had time to pick my way through the briar patch of what at first glance had appeared a family squabble. Except I wasn’t very good at the hand-holding stuff. It made me feel awkward. Nevertheless, Isobel’s face brightened.

  “If you still want me to learn what I can about your father, I need you to tell me everything you know, or were told, about his disappearance,” I said.

  The sisters looked at each other.

  “But we don’t know anything else,” said Corrine at last. “It was the second day. The day the flood was at its worst. I remember Mama saying that.”

  “And after the fires started,” Isobel said with excitement.

  “That’s right!”

  “Neal had gone out to catch a glimpse of the fires. Mama didn’t like it, but she was frantic.”

  I’d taken my steno pad out and was scribbling furiously. In my teens I’d refused to learn shorthand; I had no interest in being a secretary. Now, in light of how often I needed to make notes while people were talking, I regretted that stubbornness.

  “She told him not to go past Bonner, but I doubt he obeyed. Neal knew she had too much on her mind to keep track of him.”

  “Jem — our little brother was sick,” her sister explained. “He had a raging fever. That’s why Papa went out. To try to get to the drugstore and bring back something to help break the fever. We knew things were bad. We’d already heard talk of whole buildings swept away, turned over with people flung out to drown. We prayed we were high enough up to be safe here, and that he could get through.”

  “Where was the drugstore?”

  With Alf dead, it was the best place I could think of to start. At least I’d know the direction their father had gone. But both women shook their heads.

  “We usually went to one over on Apple, but Papa didn’t get far at all before he realized he’d never reach it,” Corrine said. “He zig-zagged and ran into Neal and sent him straight home to tell Mama he was going to try the other way, on Percy. Only....”

  “He never came home,” I said softly. I waited a minute. “Any idea why he picked Percy instead of some other street? Was there a store there you used sometimes?”

  Corrine frowned. “No. We always went to the one on Apple.” The silence of defeat engulfed her. Then she straightened. “Unless .... Where was that place with the horehound drops?”

  Her question to her sister mystified me. Every drugstore I’d ever been in sold horehound drops for sore throats.

  “Oh ... I remember,” said Isobel vaguely. “The man always gave us a couple. I didn’t like them much, but they were better than no candy at all. But heavens, Corrie, we were children. I have no idea what street it was on, or even the direction.”

  Corrine scarcely seemed to hear, she was so intent on her thoughts.

  “I think Papa knew the man who owned it. We were always with Papa when we stopped there. And - and Alf was there sometimes, I think. Papa knew the place. Oh, what was the name? Dolan’s? Dobbins’? Something like that.”

  “That’s good,” I encouraged. “If you happen to think of the name, you can give me a call.”

  I needed to think through what I’d already learned before I determined what questions I should ask next. A wad of certainty that their father’s disappearance merited at least a little more sniffing around was sticking to me.

  “Just two more things right now,” I said closing my notebook. “What did the police tell you about Alf’s death? About how he died?”

  In spite of everything they’d said about their stepfather, Isobel’s eyes grew watery. She cleared her throat in order to speak.

  “They said — they said he’d turned on the gas. They said he’d left a note.”

  My ears pricked up. “Did they tell you what it said?”

  “Not ... verbatim. Just that it indicated he was despondent. That he missed his wife.”

  I wondered if it had mentioned their legal dispute. Or hostility from his stepdaughters. If it had made any reference to me, I doubted Chief Wurstner would have let me off the hook.

  “Your brother Neal, does he have any juice at City Hall?”

  “Influence? Neal?”

  Isobel started to laugh.

  Seven

  My clients might have stepped in something nastier than they expected. It made more sense than ascribing happenstance to the events that had taken place since they hired me.

  Was a man’s disappearance twenty-six years ago enough to worry somebody now? Or was my involvement stirring concerns over something more recent? Maybe Alf had been mixed up in something bad enough that word of his stepdaughters hiring a private eye had caused him to kill himself. Or for someone else involved to make murder look like suicide.

  I chewed on all the possibilities along with a thick ham sandwich while I sat on a bench and watched the activity inside the downtown Arcade. The sandwich was fresh ham, which I liked because it had more flavor than the salty cured kind. Above me a glass dome spread like the hoopskirt of a Southern belle, covering a full city block. At ground level, housewives doing their marketing and downtown workers after a fast lunch swirled past small vendors selling everything from cheeses to pickles to cooked meats and dozens of bakery specialties.

  I did some of my best thinking in the Arcade. As I watched two women debate the merits of one merchant’s sauerkraut over that of a rival, I did my own debating: Murder or suicide? Linked to the long-ago flood or not? Crime or coincidence?

  One thing made me increasingly sure it wasn’t coincidence. Namely the complaint that had almost cost me my license.

  Wurstner had intimated that the complaint — or at least the pressure to act on it — had come from somewhere above him. That could only mean City Hall. The complaint must have come from the mayor’s office or one of the councilmen. That meant either they had a stake in this, or someone who was thick with them did.

  “Nothing like stepping on big toes,” I muttered under my breath.

  A man passing with a cone of fresh French fries shot me a look.

  My pal Jenkins had picked a lousy time to be off enjoying a three-week vacation. His work snapping photographs for the Daily News took him in and out of offices all over town, including City Hall. He might have been able to sniff something out, and we traded favors. Popping the last bit of ham in my mouth, I dusted my hands.

  The threat of losing my license had frightened me plenty. If I had any sense at all, I’d back off. Instead, the anonymous complaint had produced the same effect as waving a red flag in front of a bull. I was going to pin my hopes on Chief Wurstner while I started digging.

  ***

  Back in my office I kicked off my shoes and propped my feet on my desk to try a trick that probably wasn’t prudent. If it paid off, though, it might provide something useful. Anyway, both curiosity and resentment were egging me on.

  I found the number I wanted. I picked up the unsharpened pencil that protected my manicure. Fitting it in the various holes of the telephone dial, I made my call.

  “Geor
ge Maguire?” I asked when a male voice answered. Alf Maguire had two sons, but Corrine and Isobel had assured me it would have been George I met that morning, since he and Neal shared an apartment.

  “Yeah?” he said curtly.

  “This is the citizen complaints department at City Hall,” I gushed. “Someone failed to log the time when you made your complaint. Could you please tell me what time you called? Approximately? We try to be very strict—”

  “Complaint? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, maybe it wasn’t a formal complaint. Did you talk to someone in one of the councilmen’s offices?”

  “Look, lady, I didn’t call about anything. I’m trying to set up a funeral.” George banged down the phone.

  He’d sounded genuinely vexed. As if he had no idea what I was talking about. Pleased with what I’d learned so far, I swivelled my chair. Why not see if my tactic could jar loose one more bit of information? I checked my notes from the Vanhorn sisters, looked in the telephone book and dialed the small factory where Neal Vanhorn worked.

  “This is Dr. Pennington’s office,” I said. “We don’t seem to have noted the time when we saw Neal Vanhorn after that little bump he got yesterday. Could you possibly tell me what time he got back to work? It will help us narrow it.”

  “Oh, yes. The one who’d injured his nose. Had blood on his shirt. Vanhorn, did you say? Let me check with the girl who does time cards and call you—”

  “Oops. Doctor needs me. I’ll call you back,” I cut in.

  As I hung up with one hand I grabbed the phone book with the other. In the event there really was a doctor named Pennington, I’d have to tie his line up with some creative dithering. That part would bother my conscience a little. But there wasn’t. Chastened by the lesson that I sometimes ought to plan better before launching into a tall tale, I waited five minutes and tried the woman at the factory again.

  “Three-fifteen,” she said. “How lucky for him that he’d taken time off to go to the doctor anyway.”

  “Uh, yes,” I said. “Thank you so much.” We hung up.

  So Neal had lied about his reason for taking off work. As I saw it, that more than cancelled out my playing fast and loose with the truth. It confirmed my sense that Neal was untrustworthy. Unfortunately, the time he’d returned to work meant he couldn’t have been the one eavesdropping in the kitchen, and made him a less likely candidate for killing the dog.

  When he got off work, I’d be waiting to ask if he’d filed the complaint against me. Right now I was going to attempt to track down a drugstore which twenty-six years ago might have vanished into the Ohio River, then the Mississippi, on through the Gulf of Mexico to dispense its horehound drops to Davy Jones.

  Eight

  Dayton’s main library had taken a beating during the flood. A librarian, a custodian and a couple of others had holed up there for three days and nights, enduring freezing temperatures without heat or food. They’d moved what books they could to ever higher floors as the water rose. Among items saved, or located since, were both the 1912 and 1913 editions of the City Directory. Ten minutes after sitting down with them, I hit pay dirt.

  The Vanhorns had vaguely remembered a drugstore named Dolan’s or Dobbins’. Going through those long-ago addresses on Percy, I found Dillon’s Drugs. According to the listings it had stood between a menswear store and a sewing shop. I jotted down the names and addresses along with those of a few other nearby establishments.

  When I switched to the latest directory, I discovered that not one of those places still existed. At least not in the original location. After more than a quarter-century some might have moved, but a trip through the phone book brought me to a dead end. I was fairly certain I knew where John Vanhorn had been headed the day he vanished, but the businesses that had been there then appeared to have vanished too.

  Swept away in the flood?

  The best way to find out was to go have a look. Most of the afternoon still remained. There’d be plenty of time to get to Neal Vanderhorn’s place of employment and have a friendly chat with him when he came out.

  ***

  As I left the reading room, a man who’d had his face buried in a newspaper got up too. He didn’t bother to hang the wooden stick holding the newspaper back on the rack. Did I recall seeing him come in shortly after me? I thought so. He’d definitely been in the same spot reading his paper the whole time I’d been there. I picked out some novels to keep me entertained over the weekend. When I finished getting them stamped, the man was staring avidly at a display.

  It reminded me about Otis Ripley, the ex-con threatening to even scores. With all that had happened since yesterday, he’d slipped my mind. There wasn’t a suit in the world that could disguise Oats from ten feet away, though. Still, he might have friends. Or more accurately, people who owed him a favor. I found it hard to believe any of them would know the way to the library.

  Outside on the steps, I pretended to reach down and flick some lint off my skirt. It gave me a quick peek back. The man was sauntering along, too far behind me for me to make out features and too nondescript of both build and attire to be much help. The light was red when I reached the corner, so I did a girlie spin, hugging my books and doing a quarter turn as if bubbling over with happiness I couldn’t contain.

  The man’s steps hesitated. He decided to jaywalk, cutting across in mid-block. By the time I crossed with the light, he was going in a different direction than the one I was headed, leaving me to wonder if I’d only imagined something suspicious. I made a face at my vigilance and stretched my legs for a couple of blocks till I reached the gravel parking lot where I kept my car.

  ***

  Percy was a pleasant little street southeast of downtown. It was only three blocks long, and consisted mostly of neighborhood shops, except for a couple of small office buildings. The area had a tidy look. Although it didn’t trumpet prosperity, it didn’t show the vacant storefronts and peeling paint that scarred too many neighborhoods since the Depression. Wayne Avenue, a much larger thoroughfare, split the street in two.

  The address once occupied by Dillon’s drug was on the western arm of the street. That lot and the one to its right which had housed the menswear store now held a single two-story brick building. Its lack of ornamentation suggested even to my untrained eye that it had been constructed sometime since the flood. The ground floor housed a bank branch. A separate doorway that opened into a small entry where stairs led up to what a directory indicated were medical offices, a dance studio and a lawyer.

  Before my spirits could sag as much as they wanted, I turned toward the place on the left. It was smack on the corner where the sewing shop had been located. From the outside I couldn’t begin to guess the age of the building. It was painted robin-egg blue with white trim around arched windows. It housed an upholstery place now. I opened the door, causing bells above the door to jingle softly.

  “Gee, what a nice place,” I said to a middle-aged woman seated behind an attractive desk that apparently took the place of a counter. “How long has it been here?”

  “Oh, my, eighteen years now,” she said with a laugh. “How time flies.”

  She stood up and came forward to greet me. Eighteen years wasn’t long enough to help me. Through a door to a back room came sounds of rhythmic tapping.

  “I’m trying to get in touch with the man who used to own the place next door back when it was a drugstore,” I said. “Dillon’s Drugs. Was it still here when you moved in?”

  “Goodness no. Next door was already pretty much like it is now.”

  “What about this place? Was the sewing shop still here before you?”

  “No.... Well, actually I’m not sure.” She was starting to frown. “Wally’s parents were the ones who started the business. My in-laws. They’d had a shop before that, over on Richard. Wally worked with them, of course, and I helped out some, but I was mostly busy with babies.” Her fingers trailed nervously over a bolt of brown plush with
a pattern cut into it. “Is it important about the place that was next door?”

  “It is to the two girls trying to find him. He knew their father.” Maybe that would tug at her heartstrings. It seemed to.

  “Oh. Maybe.... Wally?” she called over her shoulder.

  The tapping in back stopped. A man emerged with tacks lined up between his lips.

  “She’s trying to find out about the place that used to be next door,” his wife said. “A drugstore.”

  Wally plucked the tacks from his mouth one by one, thinking.

  “Back when?”

  “Twenty-five, twenty-six years ago.”

  He shook his head. “We haven’t been here that long. But I do know this whole block burned down around then.”

  “Burned—” It wasn’t what I’d been expecting.

  He chuckled awkwardly.

  “During the big flood. Hard to picture, isn’t it? Fire you can’t put out with all that water around. But I guess the gas line broke....”

  “Yeah. I’ve heard about that. I thought it was downtown, though.”

  The night before, I’d talked to my landlady some about the flood. She’d told me a big patch of several blocks right where my office now stood had burned to the ground when the gas lines exploded. It made sense there might have been smaller fires elsewhere, yet I felt a tickle along my spine. The kind of tickle that told me something wasn’t right.

  My feeling had nothing to do with the couple in the upholstery shop. They were more than a little helpful. What bothered me was hearing there’d been a fire in the area where I was increasingly certain John Vanhorn had disappeared.

  “Your wife said your parents were the ones who opened the shop here. Any chance they’d know?”

  Wally’s face told me the answer before he spoke.

  “They’re both gone now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Old Mr. Brigham at the grocery store down on the corner might have been able to help. He was here then, and he rebuilt. I guess some of the shop owners didn’t. But he died about a year ago. I can’t think of anyone else who might know. You could try his son Sterling. He runs things now. Maybe he remembers his father talking about the old days.”