“You ought to get those fingers looked at by a doctor, dear,” the widow said.
“She’s right,” Harvey added.
The fingers had streaks of purple over the knuckles. The swelling was ugly. “I guess I should. Haven’t had the time.”
“What do you do, Dorie?”
Lennox frowned. She always hated this part.
Harvey turned to his mother. “She’s a mortician. Odd profession for a girl, I know. But Dorie has a strange fascination with the dead.”
Mrs. Talbot eyed her, curious, but one lip slightly curled. “Is that so? An undertaker?”
Verna and Tillie flashed through her head. A strange fascination for the dead. Had she talked in her sleep? Or was it just a joke? Was being a snoop the lowest of professions—even worse than embalming?
She squinted her eyes at him as he drowned a laugh in his coffee.
TWENTY-TWO
IN HER ROOM in the boardinghouse, Lennox peeled off the stiff, filthy trousers. They would never be the same. Mrs. Talbot had washed her blouse by hand and ironed it this morning. Still, she stripped it off, took another bath, and rewrapped the bad hand. She found a pair of trousers with only one bad stain, and a beige sweater.
Downstairs in the hall, Betty, Ilo, and Mrs. Ferazzi huddled over the newspaper. Betty saw Lennox and cried, “Dorie, look. Luther was a piano player in St. Louis.”
Mrs. F. held the paper in her fist. Her eyes were wide. “I can’t believe it.”
“Now I know who to thank for keeping me awake with that piano music,” Lennox said. She edged around the group. She wanted to look for Iris. She had to find her.
“Wonder why he changed his name,” Ilo said. She smiled and rolled his name on her tongue. “Augustus McElheaney. I like that.”
“It’s a mouthful, that’s why,” Betty said. “Imagine having to write that out. It’s like your name is John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith.”
“Changing your name is a way of hiding,” Mrs. F. said. “You’re ashamed of who you are, or what your family was. I knew a family who changed their name after the war. Didn’t want to sound German anymore.”
Lennox stood at the door. The hazy bit about Iris was back in her mind. The compact. Some letter, then R. H. She turned back. “What did you say?”
The three women looked at her, a tableau of frowns. “Who, me?” Betty said.
Mrs. Ferazzi turned to Lennox, smoothing her apron. “I said this family I knew changed their name after the war. My friend’s name was Franz Koberstein. Then he was Frank Kober.”
“That’s silly,” Betty said.
“Not if boys who lost a brother are beating you up every afternoon,” Mrs. F. said.
Lennox walked over to her landlady, took her shoulders, and, before Mrs. F. could get out a word of exclamation, kissed her on both cheeks.
The librarian in Raytown didn’t look happy to see her. She frowned over her glasses. Lennox asked for the telephone directories again, and she ignored the librarian’s stare. Her new theory, that Rose Schmidt’s real name was Xxx Rose H (xxx)schmidt, was ready for testing. She had written herself a note in the Packard before she came in. With her bad hand, it looked like chicken scratchings. She smoothed the note on the library table and sucked in her breath.
She worked through the most recent edition three times before giving up. There were no (xxx)schmidts at all. She scoured the H’s, but to no avail.
The 1935 edition, the same. Nothing even resembling a Blankenschmidt.
The skies over Raytown were brighter than her mood. Back at the Starlite Fountain, Lennox had a hot beef sandwich and a glass of milk. The soda jerk remembered her, but she didn’t feel like talking about her broken fingers anymore. But he did remind her she had one more lead.
Ed Grady was working in his yard, raking out a flower bed that had gone the way of all green things. He stared at her as she walked up the flagstones, until he saw her hand.
“Fingers! You find him?”
“No, sorry.” She smiled at him. “Mr. Grady, I got a favor to ask. I need to talk to your daughter.”
The house on Blue Ridge Avenue was white clapboard, a bungalow with a handkerchief porch crammed with pots of summer flowers. In the open garage was parked an old black coupe. Lennox rang the doorbell and eyed it. There were so many old black sedans and coupes.
The woman who answered the door peeked through the curtains first. She opened the door two inches. “Yes?”
“Excuse me. Are you Ed Grady’s daughter?”
The blue eyes looked her up and down, staring at last at the bandage and the purple-hued hand.
“My name is Doric Lennox. I’m looking for a woman who may have been a friend of your daughter Edna’s. Can we talk for a minute?”
The door opened wide enough so that Lennox could see the woman’s white knuckles against the door frame, her washed-out calico dress, apron, wary eyes. She looked behind Lennox, up and down the street.
“He told me about you, and your fingers. Same as him,” Louise said.
“He’s a good man. I’m looking for a girl who might have been friends with Edna. I think they knew each other in Kansas City.”
“I don’t know who was her friends there. She never come home.”
“This woman was from here, I think. She calls herself Iris Jackson now, but her name in Kansas City back then was Rose Schmidt. Now I think that’s short for something—”
“Gladys Rose Hammerschmidt.”
Lennox blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Gladys. Her mother’s name. She hated it. She was a couple years older than Edna. A wild one. Not surprised they took up in the city. She came by here last week, talked to my husband for a minute while I was out.”
“Hammerschmidt,” Lennox muttered. Of course. “She was here?”
“Wanted to find Edna, same as you. My husband told her we hadn’t heard from her in years. She got riled up and Dan had to shoo her off.”
“Does she have any family left here?”
“Her mother, she’s remarried. Or maybe just lives with the man.” Louise made a sour face. “Some bum fell off the Rock Island.”
“Do you know his name?”
“It’s a small town, honey. Jimmie Nagel. Out on Davenport Road in a little hardscrabble place, chickens and pigs. Can’t miss it—it stinks to high heaven.”
Lennox found the Nagel place down a dry, rutted road. She rolled up the windows of the Packard to keep the smell out and parked in the ditch. Red chickens scattered and squawked as she opened the picket gate.
“Anybody home?”
A rumble and sudden lightening of the air foretold rain. She’d asked Louise for a picture of her daughter. She hoped for a more recent photograph of Edna than Mr. Grady’s. Taken when she was sixteen, Louise said. A full-cheeked young woman whose auburn hair had darkened. With her lips well painted and her eye makeup thick, the connection finally clicked. Edna Klundt, cleaned up past and present, was now married to one of Kansas City’s finest jugglers, whose balls were now crashing to the ground. Her name was now Marilyn Terraciano. Lennox hadn’t had the heart to tell Louise.
The old cottonwood tree in the Nagel yard rattled in the wind. A ramshackle barn, once painted white, sat to the north of the one-story farmhouse. It, too, could have used paint. Sadly plain, without shutters or porch; all the curtains were closed. Lennox called hello again. Pigs made their pig noises in the shade of the big tree.
A woman in farm pants, rubber boots, and plaid shirttails tied at the waist came out of the barn carrying a shallow bowl. She picked up a handful of grain and began scattering it for the chickens as she made low clucking noises. Lennox walked toward her slowly, trying in vain to avoid several varieties of animal droppings along the way. Ten paces away, she cleared her throat and said good morning.
The woman looked up, stock-still. Her dark hair was pulled off her face into a bun. Her arms and face were tanned from outdoor work, but she had Iris’s beautiful face, older, sadder, but the same f
ace.
“Mrs. Nagel?” The woman stared, silent. “My name is Doria Lennox. I’m here from Kansas City and I hoped we might talk about your daughter Gladys Rose.”
For a moment, the older woman just stared. Then she snapped, “What’s she done?”
“I just want to talk. That’s all.”
“You don’t look like police.”
“I’m not. But I’ve been looking for your daughter, ma’am.”
The woman dumped out the shallow pan, set it by the barn. “I can’t pay you nothing.”
“I don’t want money. I just want to talk.”
Mrs. Nagel looked her over again. “Better do it now, before Jimmie gets back.”
Lennox sat at the kitchen table, which looked a lot like Mrs. Talbot’s, only this one was in a real farmhouse and had names, dates, and sayings scratched into its sticky surface. The kitchen was cluttered with pots and pans and dirty dishes, and feathers from a plucked chicken that lay in the sink. Mrs. Nagel ran water in small jelly jars and set one on the table.
“So what’s she done? I know it’s something to bring you out here.”
“Have you seen your daughter recently, Mrs. Nagel?”
“Not in five or six years. I think she took off for Chicago.”
“When was that?”
“She had some boyfriend problem, couldn’t stay around. In a panic, she was.”
“Did she say who this boyfriend was?”
“For all I know, she had dozens. All the boys was after her. She and Jimmie didn’t get along; he said things—that’s why she took off for Kansas City. No jobs here anyway.”
Lennox drank the rest of her water. “Did she leave anything behind when she went?”
“I never saw her; Phylly did. That’s my other daughter. She’d meet Gladys Rose in Kansas City once in awhile. She never would come home.” Mrs. Nagel blinked, looked away from the window, remembering the question. “Some old clothes, that’s it. I left them in the attic, no need for fancy duds. Edna brung ‘em over. You know Edna?”
“I talked to her mother. That’s how I found you.”
“Louise All High-and-Mighty. Hmmph.” She slammed down her glass and frowned. “Married to my cousin until she run him off.”
“What did Edna bring over exactly?”
“A case, I told ya, with clothes in it.”
“You still have this case?”
“Somewhere, I guess. What business is it of yours? You looking for Gladys Rose—why? What’s she done?”
“I’m afraid,” Lennox said, “she may have done many things.”
Mrs. Nagel sat down at the table, head in hands.
“But if we can find her, we can help her.” Lennox laid out her bad hand for sympathy, but the woman didn’t notice. “Could I take a look at that case?”
It took half an hour and considerable grumbling for Mrs. Nagel to rummage through the debris in her attic and come up with the suitcase. If it hadn’t been for the imminent return of infamous Jimmie, it might never have happened at all. The case was wedged under a pile of old drapes and a baby carriage. It was small, with frayed leather straps, and heavy. Sweating in the attic heat, they laid it on the bare wood floor at the top of the stairs.
The case was locked. A small but sturdy padlock held the clasp secure. Mrs. Nagel and Lennox stared at it.
“Edna never said anything about a key,” the older woman said.
“We could break this with a hammer and a screwdriver.” Lennox rose to go back downstairs. “Come on, show me.”
Mrs. Nagel frowned. “All right.”
Lennox looked back at the case, irritated and eager. She’d found the Truman money, she was sure of it. Now for the final step, using it to find Iris. How was she going to do that?
Three steps down to the back hall, Lennox stopped on the rough-hewn stair. She looked back again. Beside the case sat her handbag. She grabbed it and snapped it open. With her left hand, she pushed aside her keys, a comb, her notes, pencils, bobby pins. There. Iris’s keys.
She pulled them out and showed them to Mrs. Nagel. “These were in her car.” After a few minutes of struggling, she groaned and gave up. “They don’t work. She wouldn’t leave behind such important keys.”
Mrs. Nagel looked at her crossly and held out her hand. “Let me.”
The woman had delicate hands like Iris’s, with long fingers. No manicure, plenty of calluses and scars. This is what Iris escaped, a farm life of feeding chickens and pigs. Hard, dirty work that went on, day after day, week after week, the only change the seasons.
Mrs. Nagel looked at the smallest key. “These always come in twos, you know.” She pushed it into the padlock, squeezed the lock with her other hand. It clicked and sprang open. The woman smiled at Lennox. Then she sat back on her heels, a terrified look on her face.
“Open it,” Mrs. Nagel said.
Lennox sprung the latch. She opened the lid. A jumble of clothes there: dresses, blouses, nightgowns, old stockings. Lennox pushed them aside. A panel divided the case. She turned the brass knobs and lifted the thin petition.
The money lay in bundles secured with paper straps. Bundles of bills. Hundreds. One of the straps was torn, bills missing. Three packets were missing from one row. The rest were intact, five deep, six across, fifty bills to a bundle. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, less a few. Mrs. Nagel stared at the money, hands tucked around her as if she might touch it and it would vanish. She glanced nervously down the stairs.
“Is Jimmie coming?” Lennox moved her hand over the money, feeling the quality of the paper. She took a bill out, held it up to the light from the dusty attic window, smelled it. “Mrs. Nagel?”
“He pulls in from the southern run today. But he stops in town for a while before coming home, usually.”
“Does Jimmie know about this?”
Mrs. Nagel chuckled unhappily. “I wouldn’t think so.”
“Do you want him to know?”
The woman looked up, nerves twitching her mouth. She looked pretty in this dim light, the woman she was before Jimmie Nagel, before all of it. She wore a defeated look, as if this, too, would be taken away.
They drove to Independence and put the money in a safety-deposit box in the name of Gladys Hammerschmidt. In her city dress and heels, her hair combed into a twist, wearing lipstick, she looked different, but still afraid. They stopped at a roadhouse on Highway 71 and had a chicken salad sandwich. Lennox sat in the dark, cool cafe and examined the face of the woman.
“You look like her. Your daughter.”
“Everyone always said so,” Gladys Nagel said. “You look like your mother?”
Lennox blinked and shook her head.
“You don’t get along? No shame in that. I should know. Gladys Rose and I, we fought all the time.”
Thoughts of Verna were the last thing she needed. The dreams were enough. The tangle was deep, unresolved even by death. That much she’d learned.
“She was the sweetest thing, Gladys Rose.”
“Until she turned thirteen?”
“Twelve. She had that figure then—and learned what it did overnight. “
“A quick study.”
“Sharp as a tack. I always told her to stay in school, be a nurse or something.”
Lennox pushed back her plate. “But she didn’t?”
“Run off when she was sixteen. About a year after Jimmie moved in. They fought like cats and dogs. Of course, he wasn’t her daddy, but he’d been gone five years and … well, sure was quieter after she left.” Gladys sipped her tea. “I hated her gone. She was too young.”
“Did she find work?”
“Nightclubs for a while. She’d send a few dollars back to Phylly. Then she had a bad patch, until she got on at a big store. How she sweet-talked that one, I’ll never know. But that’s my girl.” She smiled. “Always lands on her feet. She’s special, that one.”
Gladys Nagel never asked where her special daughter scared up 150 large. Some questions were bet
ter unasked.
They rode back to Raytown in silence. Lennox was thinking about Jimmie coming home, and how she hated leaving Gladys there alone. She knew men like Jimmie Nagel, who thought nothing of knocking around the wife at the end of a long shift and a tear in the gin mill. But another sight changed her thoughts as they rounded the last corner onto Davenport Road. “That Jimmie’s car?” A late-model yellow coupe was parked in front of the farmhouse.
“No. Never seen it.”
“Okay, listen, I’m going to drive by, but slouch down a little and don’t look at the yard. Then I’m going to drop you off down at the crossroads. You stay there. All right?”
“In the bushes?”
“In the bushes.”
“There’s been a car come by real slow. An old Nash. It bothered me, but I never wanted to say nothing to Jimmie about it.”
Lennox didn’t look at the yellow coupe, kept going to the crossroad. “Blue?” She made a U-turn and stopped.
“You know who it is?”
“Get out here.” Lennox waited while the woman climbed out, shut the door. Then she waved her behind the bushes. The car and farm weren’t visible from here, and Lennox drove around the intersection onto Davenport Road and pulled in behind the yellow coupe.
There was nobody in it. She stepped out into the dirt and dry weeds. Her oxfords, so carefully cleaned by Mrs. Talbot the night before, were dusty now. She strained, looking into the afternoon sun, trying to make out a figure in the dense cottonwood shadows. She had an idea who would drive a fancy coupe like this. She inched forward to the coupe’s door, looked on the seats. Nothing. She reached in the open window and pulled down the visor on the driver’s side. Nothing.
She had qualms then, thoughts of Jimmie Nagel’s bookie stopped in to get his due, or the extension agent coming by to check for pig diseases. But a prickling on her neck told her no. This was not a business call.
Lennox could see Gladys Nagel peeking through the weedy shrubs at the crossroads. Whoever was here must be in the house. She hesitated, though she had her switchblade handy in her pocket. This was a man’s car. A desperate man.
She made herself go through the picket gate, shooing chickens with her foot. She walked to the barn, peeked inside the hay-strewn depths, shadowy and thick with the smell of whelping sows and Rhode Island Reds. At the large door of the barn, she turned to face the house. Better not to surprise him, to let him come out, even though it was a coward’s way. She didn’t have a gun. He was a man. He would.
Swing Town Mysteries Dorie Lennox Box Set Page 25
