Swing Town Mysteries Dorie Lennox Box Set

by Lise McClendon

  “Got a question for you ladies,” Lennox said, pulling out the sketch. “This is a woman who I think used to work here. Same one I mentioned earlier, Joyce. Do you recognize her now?”

  The older woman sported an elaborate permanent wave on her graying hair. She pulled up glasses resting on her bosom in order to look at the picture.

  “In this department? No, I don’t remember her,” the plump one said. Her name tag read CLARA. “Worked here twenty years. I think I’d know her if she worked here.”

  Joyce shook her head. Lennox lost her enthusiasm for stockings.

  Clara looked at her bandage sympathetically. “Why don’t you ask Gloria up at the credit counter? She knows everybody.”

  The credit counter was tucked back into a corner of the third floor, behind men’s socks. Gloria Mulder, head cashier, according to the nameplate, was busy stacking receipts and punching an adding machine. A pale, thin-faced woman with straight brown hair tucked behind her ears and a lace handkerchief pinned to her chest, she had a large rubber thimble stuck on her thumb.

  “Help you, miss?” she asked without looking up.

  “I hope so. Clara in Lingerie sent me over.” Lennox pushed the sketch across the counter, into Gloria’s line of sight. “She thought you might remember this woman, if she worked here in the past.”

  “In the past? That’s a big country.” Gloria peered up over her half glasses. “How long ago?”

  “I’m not sure. Within the last ten years?” Still pretty big country.

  “Hmmph,” the cashier said, rotating her bony shoulders and laying a knuckle on the sketch. “Looks like a girl worked here. I remember her, pretty in a cheap sort of way. In Men’s Furnishings, sold shirts and garters and ties.” Gloria raised her eyebrows. “Men liked her.”

  “You don’t say. You remember her name?”

  “Rose Schmidt, easy enough. Won some dance contest years back, at the Muehlebach. One of those dance-till-you-drop things. That’s where somebody got the idea to hire her.”

  “Rose Schmidt. You’re sure, are you?”

  “Oh, yes. The artist caught that slant of her eyes perfect, didn’t he? Her hair was longer then, but with the bangs across.”

  Lennox pulled the sketch back. “Remember where she was from?”

  “A little town around here. Lots of girls came in looking for work back then. They still do, but back then, it was a flood. She was one of the lucky ones.”

  Lennox waited for more memories. Then said, “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  She was walking away, repeating the name in her head, as if she would ever forget it, pressing through black socks, silk socks, tennis socks, working her way to men’s shoes, oxfords and patents and tap shoes, when Gloria hailed her.

  “Miss! It was ‘Raytown Rosie’—that’s what they called her, the fellas over in Men’s Furnishings. Raytown, that’s the place.”

  On the street, still in ordinary anklets, Lennox twisted her wristwatch around her arm with the good fingers of her right hand. She’d stopped long enough on the first floor to buy a cheap blue-and-white scarf to drape over the splint. She had just enough time to visit Amos. She’d been neglecting him.

  Catching a bratwurst at the sidewalk vendor, she gulped it down in her car, managing to keep mustard off dress and bandages, then drove to police headquarters. The matron let her into the cell. Amos was up, pacing like a caged animal.

  He ran a hand through his greasy flop of hair. “What’s going on? Where have you been?” He sat heavily on the cot and held his head in his hands.

  “Sorry. It must be awful,” she said.

  He looked up at her, the lines across his forehead etched deep. At least he wasn’t coughing. “Where you think you’re going?”

  She ignored that. “Did the doctor see you?” She sat next to him on the cot. “The last time I was here, you were in pretty bad shape.”

  “He’s been here. Herb got him on the horn. The lump’s gone down.” He rubbed the back of his head gingerly. “Still got the most bloody thumping headache.” He glanced at her dress, the scarf on her hand. “What’s this, then?”

  “A date.”

  His eyebrows danced. “With a person of the male persuasion?”

  She felt her face heat up. At least his eyes looked clear now. “I have to tell you what’s going on.” She stood up and faced him, good hand on her hip.

  “What happened to that?” He pointed at the hand.

  She pulled off the scarf. “You ever hear of a midget who likes to break fingers?”

  Amos blinked a few times. “Were you offering them as love objects?”

  Down the hallway the matron read an issue of Weird Tales and pretended not to hear. Lennox ignored Amos’s remark. “Iris Jackson isn’t dead. Do you remember me telling you that?”

  “Yes, dear, I remember.”

  His voice mocked her, and she felt like smacking him.

  “I found out her real name. It’s Rose Schmidt. She worked at E-B-T, the big department store, back some years, and moved here from Ray town.”

  Amos was quiet. She turned finally, to see his fingertips digging into his patrician forehead. He looked up, eyes bright now, and said, “She shot the bartender, this Davy fellow. Her name’s Rose Schmidt.”

  “And she threw Sylvia Anken off the Hannibal Bridge.”

  “She killed Davy because he saw her with Sylvia. But why Sylvia? Oh, right, she looked like Iris. Or Rose.” He smiled, twisting his fingers in the air. “Nice touch, the flower names.”

  “Did they—have they told you about the bullet they took out of Davy?”

  Amos frowned. “Splintered. A million pieces.”

  “So they can’t tell if it’s from your gun.”

  He stood up and began pacing again. “Doesn’t matter to them. I’m as good as hung.” He stopped and stared at her. “Why did Iris have to disappear?”

  Lennox shook her head. “Wish I knew. The midget said something strange. He wanted information on some suitcase of cash. Something called ‘the Truman money.’ “

  “What the blazes is that?”

  “That’s what I told the midget, but he wasn’t listening.”

  Amos stopped pacing. “I knew a midget once. Nasty kid. Only he wasn’t a kid. Brought up mean with circus folk.”

  “Where’d you meet him?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “Can’t remember. Oh, yes. Working for Vanvleet, years ago. One of his clients wanted his cousin out of the business. I wouldn’t do what Vanvleet wanted, so he brought in this midget. I had to brief him on the layout.”

  “Was it Georgie? He ran his cousin out of the meatpacking business.”

  “I can’t remember. Years ago.” He took her damaged hand. “Does it hurt horribly?” She shook her head. He touched her chin. “Knocked you around some, did he?”

  “At least I don’t have a concussion.”

  He let her hand go. “The least of my worries. My head is too hard to break that easily.” He gave the ceiling a strange look and sat down.

  Lennox rubbed her cheek, feeling again the sting of that little hand. “Do you think Georgie is after this money? That this midget works for him?”

  “Last I checked, we worked for Georgie. You haven’t ticked him off, too?”

  She thought about Marilyn, and wondered what Georgie knew about that. She hadn’t actually seen the Italian since Saturday, except from afar at the racetrack.

  “I think Georgie’s fixing races out at that track.”

  “You got evidence?”

  She shrugged.

  “We got enough trouble.”

  Lennox said, “What about Palmer Eustace? Who is he? I talked to Floyd Wilson, and he’s never met him.”

  “Vanvleet never gave me his number. Never met him.” Amos looked up sharply. “Don’t let Vanvleet know you’re sniffing around Eustace. He told me to quit on it.”

  “What did the old man tell you about him?”

  “That he was the silent partner, the on
e with the money. My guess is that he made his money booting hooch in from Canada. Now he owns a bottling plant, Dutch says, down in Tulsa.”

  “Tulsa. I’ll try to check that out. Why were you working on that track thing?”

  “Vanvleet said Eustace thought he was getting gypped out of the profits, that his money had lined somebody’s pocket. Which was probably true. How else do things get done in this town?” He cocked his head. “And there was something else. He also wanted me to look up this old chippie nobody’d heard of for years. Curious those two requests came in at the same time.”

  “You think the chippie is related to Eustace somehow?”

  “Didn’t think of it till now. The woman disappeared, changed her name, died, who knows what.”

  “What was her name?”

  He rubbed his forehead again, kneading the thoughts. “Edna. Damn. My notebooks were stolen. Both of them.” He concentrated. “Edna Klundt, that’s it. Piss-poor name for a chippie, I remember that. Klundt.”

  “Edna?”

  “Does it mean something to you? I couldn’t find fur nor feather of ‘er.”

  “The woman who tossed my room—I told you about that, didn’t I?”

  “I might remember something like that, lass.”

  “It was Saturday, after I came home from the hospital. You were in a fever the next time I saw you. She said to tell you to stay away from Edna. That had to be Iris. I’d been following her all that week, only on Saturday, I thought she was dead.”

  “Did she hurt you?”

  It was injuries ago. “Mostly held me down on the floor to give me this message.”

  “That I should clear off Edna.”

  “What does that mean? Should I try to find her?”

  “I looked everywhere. She’s gone. But I suppose Iris giving you a warning for me means I might have been close.” Amos shook his head. “Sure never felt like it. But what about that racetrack? Where would Eustace’s money have disappeared to?”

  “I’m not sure his money went anywhere.”

  “Obviously, they built the track with it. But his partner, that Floyd Wilson, seemed on the up-and-up. Opened the books, showed me everything.”

  “They built the track with county bond money. Wilson told me he has a loan for his share through his own bank. Where Georgie banks, too, by the way. Nobody put up any real money.” Lennox leaned against the cool bars. “Georgie’s fixing races, I’m sure of it.”

  “Can’t say I care. From where I sit, more power to him, I say.” Amos lay down on the cot, wearing the same white shirt, now smudged and stained, the same braces and trousers. He linked his fingers over his concave chest. “My, my, my. Georgie’s been a busy boy.”

  Lennox felt a sting from his words. She hadn’t been busy enough, finding Iris, clearing Amos.

  “I’m working on it, Amos. I’ll get you out of here.”

  He looked up at her from the cot, his eyes dull and resigned.

  “I promise,” she whispered.

  When she’d left, her blue dress swinging across her athletic calves, making his heart ache a little, Amos stared at the ceiling. No, his head wouldn’t break, but his heart felt beyond repair. He’d spent all last night, awake and alert at last, scribbling out chapter and verse about Miss Eugenia McAughey. It had come into his mind, after feverish hours of writing, that he was mourning his own youth, health, homeland, things that would never be again. He could no longer grasp even the tiniest clear image of the girl. Sweet Eugenia. She was nothing but a vapor, a dream. As if she had never existed at all. And that filled him with a deeper sorrow than he’d never known.

  Caged, inert, he felt as if he were evaporating. Like Eugenia, he would simply disappear, and only a few people—certainly not someone like himself, a clinging vine to memory—would occasionally speak his name, smile at some witty remark ascribed to him, recall one charitable moment. That would be all.

  It was the war. Almost every man in his first platoon died, in the trenches, in airplanes, from disease. He should have been one of them. There was no reason he should have survived the plane crash, or all that followed behind the lines. Yet for no good reason, he had.

  He sighed on the cot, closed his eyes. Where was that girl going tonight, dressed in her best clothes? In spite of himself, he began to picture her dancing with a tall stranger, twirling to the sounds from the bandstand, the man’s hand on her waist, her feet light. Her life would go on. There would be happiness for her, and laughter, and children. A smile crept onto his mouth.

  By God, his heart might mend after all.

  Lennox didn’t hurry to the club. She found a parking spot a couple blocks away, put on lipstick in the car by streetlight, and rearranged the scarf around her hand several times before giving up on a disguise. She got out of the car with the blue-and-white flag tied to her handbag.

  Rose Schmidt, Rose Schmidt. Lennox wanted to go straight to Raytown, shake her out. Could Iris be hiding out there with her relatives? The sidewalk cracks told her nothing. And who was this Edna Klundt? Was she a friend of Iris? Somebody she wanted protected, yes, but who? Someone who would know where Iris was?

  She rounded the corner of Twelfth and turned onto Baltimore. The sky was a slate color, with stars popping out in the east. Across the street, the Muehlebach Hotel glittered, the fancy restaurant on the corner all silver and crystal. She’d been so close to Iris in the ladies’ lounge there, so close, she could

  smell the woman’s skin, see the fine pores of her face. If only she had taken her arm, made her talk.

  The Orpheum next door was playing Pirates of the Skies, along with a Peter Lorre picture, Mysterious Mr. Moto. Above the titles, the marquee read LADIES! CUTLERY OR LUNCHEON-WARE WITH 20 c ADMISSION! CARTOON REVUE! Couples lined up at the ticket window for the second show, arms around each other. She put her head down and walked to the corner to wait for the light.

  Across the street, the Kansas City Club stood venerable and proper, an odd place for “race music,” as some people still called jazz. There was Talbot, leaning against the doorway, slapping the tickets against his palm. He looked up and saw her. His eyes moved to her legs, her face, then to the bandage.

  She stopped in front of him. He took her arm and led her inside, past the elegant gentlemen’s lounges, the library, the dining room, to the stairs. As they climbed, he said, “I was beginning to wonder if you’d changed your mind.”

  Her knee hurt on the stairs. All the pains of the week rushed back, the knee, the back, the ribs, the knot on the forehead, the hand: a conspiracy of hurt. She said crossly, “You’re not the only one who works.”

  At the top of the stairs, Talbot handed the tickets to a young man dressed to the nines in baggy trousers, patent-leather shoes, fancy satin vest and shirt. They found a table in the ballroom with two reporters and a man from a music store. Lennox sat down as Talbot got them cocktails.

  “She hasn’t started yet?” Lennox asked Landon, who was sitting next to her, soft and round and wearing glasses. He worked at the music store.

  “Not unusual. Creative types.”

  Bob, one of the reporters, leaned forward. “I hear there’s a special guest tonight. Somebody big.”

  “You say that every time.”

  “This time, it’s true.” Full of energy, Bob bounced his fingers against the edge of the bare tabletop like a drummer. “Cripes, I hope there’s some good-looking ladies here tonight.”

  “All the good dancers are over at the Jitterbug Jamboree,” Landon said. “That’s where you should be, Spence.”

  The other reporter, Spence, sipped a whiskey sour. He slouched in a blue jacket. His brown hair was slicked back. “I’m not that good, Lan. I went over there last week. They are swing cats. “

  The three described their best moves—an over-the-shoulder throw, through-the-legs twirl, roundhouse—as Lennox listened. She didn’t know most of the moves, and it worried her. Harvey set a gin and tonic in front of her. He went to work on his own drink, a martini
in a tall-stemmed glass.

  The ballroom had a domed ceiling over the wood dance floor, with a raised bandstand at one end. A grand piano sat in the center, several music stands, an upright bass, and a drum set. The curtains behind the bandstand were a faded violet and the walls were lit with uplights, making splashy V’s at intervals. The ring of tables was bare-bones—no tablecloths, no candles, just round wooden tables and chairs.

  The crowd was fancy, but she’d expected that at the KC Club. Three tables over, a group of well-dressed men and women in satin and sequins huddled together, laughing. The men wore respectable suits, the women stylish, fancy dresses. Lennox checked their stockings and high heels and tucked her feet under the table. In the society group, a man rose to clap another on the back. It was Reggie Vanvleet. He was smoking a cigarette with a holder and wearing a tuxedo, overdressed again. She watched him for several minutes, the way he touched the girls’ shoulders, the way he tipped his head back and drained his glass. Which one was his wife? His voice was loud. He asked a woman about her diamond, told someone about a deal he’d made that would make him millions.

  Lennox turned her glass around a few times on the table. She’d never called him after he gave her his card at the country club.

  “Don’t you want your drink?” Harvey asked. His martini was almost gone.

  She picked up her glass and sipped. She should ask him about work, what story he’d been so busy on tonight that he couldn’t pick her up. But she didn’t. Talbot slouched in his chair, long legs splayed. She took another drink and the crowd began to cheer and clap as Julia Lee, small and elegant in a long black dress, stepped up to the microphone and welcomed the crowd. Behind her, the drummer and bass player took up their positions.

  The first song was one made famous the year before by Ella Fitzgerald, “A Tisket, a Tasket.” Harvey drained his martini glass.

  “Want another?” She shook her head. He stepped away to the bar.

  The audience was all white, even though the performers were colored. Private clubs like the Kansas City Club would be the last to let in Negroes. Colored folks could spend their money on clothes or books or farm equipment, but they couldn’t even buy a Coke in the tea room at Emery-Bird-Thayer. On the dance floor, a few couples were swaying to a slow tune.