Vanishing Ladies

by Ed McBain

  I was at Sullivan’s Point in a state which was not my home state, in a cabin where I’d left a girl a little while ago.

  The cabin was empty.

  Ann was not in the bed.

  The bed looked as if it had never been slept in.

  There was no baggage in the open closet.

  There was no purse on the dresser.

  The white dress I’d hung in the closet was gone.

  Ann’s shoes were not at the foot of the bed where I’d dropped them.

  The cabin was empty and silent, and it screamed with its silence and its emptiness. I panicked. I stood there, and I panicked because I could only think of the over-coffee talk I’d had with Mr. Grafton the morning before, and the assurance I’d given him that I would take care of his daughter. I could only think of that and the bloodstain on the floor of my own cabin, and so I panicked and I don’t know how many minutes rushed by before I got control of myself. I remember staring down at the .38 in my fist and then I remember running out of the cabin and shouting “Blanche!” and getting no answer.

  And then the car lights hit me in the face.

  The car was a very old one, and it rattled into the court, swinging in a wide curve toward the office, its headlights knocking long tunnels into the darkness. I shielded my eyes from the glare, and then the car ground to a stop some ten feet from me, and Mike Barter climbed out. Whoever was driving the car did not move from behind the wheel.

  “What’s the matter?” Barter asked, seeing the gun in my hand. “Something wrong?”

  “Where were you?” I asked.

  “Why, over to Hez’s place. What’s the matter?”

  “Where’s the key to eleven?”

  “Why? Who wants to know?”

  “I do.”

  There must have been more menace in my voice than I thought. Barter looked at me cautiously and then barely turned his head and said, “Hez? Hezekiah!”

  There was movement on the front seat. I saw the fellow named Hezekiah slide from behind the wheel and then leap from the car. He was a big man, at least six-four and weighing all of two hundred and ten. He moved with an animal grace, though, first springing out of the car and then effortlessly striding over to where we stood.

  “Trouble, Mr. Barter?” he asked, and his voice rumbled up from somewhere deep inside a chest like a wine cellar.

  “No trouble, Hez,” I said. “Stay right where you are. This gun has no friends.”

  Hez stopped and looked at the gun. He had blue eyes, and they darted to Barter and then back to the .38 in my hand. His eyes were set in an angular face—sloping cheeks and flat surface planes and square tight lips—which looked like an exercise in geometry.

  “Get the key, Barter,” I said.

  “I’ll get no such damn thing,” he answered. “Happens there’s a guest in eleven.”

  “It’s the guest who interests me,” I said.

  “Why don’t you mind your own business and go back to your cabin?”

  “Because the guest may be my business. It so happens I’m missing the girl I came in with.”

  Barter looked at me, and then he looked at Hez, and then he looked at me again. Very quietly, he said, “What girl?”

  “The girl I—”

  I stopped short. It was my turn to look at all the faces. Hez’s face was blank. Barter’s face was a cold mask. “Cut the comedy,” I said tightly.

  “Your name’s Colby, ain’t it?” Barter said. “You’re in twelve.”

  “You know damn well where I am, and you know the girl was in—”

  “You checked in alone,” Barter said flatly.

  It was quiet for a few seconds. I could hear the sound of the crickets, and the sound of the water lapping against the shore of the lake. Very calmly, very quietly, I said, “What’s the bit?”

  “You checked in alone,” Barter repeated. “What you trying to pull here, anyway?”

  “Look, you son of a bitch,” I said, “don’t give me any of that crap! I know I checked in with a girl, and you know I did, and if you don’t produce the key to eleven in about three seconds, I’m going to forget I’m a cop and start squeezing this trigger for all it’s worth.”

  “A cop?” Barter asked. He glanced rapidly at Hez. “You’re a cop?”

  “Damn right, I am. One, Barter.”

  “How was I supposed to know you’re a cop?”

  “Two, Barter.”

  “I’ve got the key in my pocket,” he said. “I’ll take you up to eleven, but you won’t find nothing there. You especially won’t find no girl, because you didn’t come with no girl. I don’t know what the hell you’re trying to pull.”

  “Make him show his badge, Mr. Barter,” Hez said.

  “Yeah, how ’bout that?” Barter said.

  I took out my wallet and flipped it open to the shield.

  “That ain’t worth nothing in this state,” Barter said.

  “This gun is worth a lot in any state,” I told him.

  Barter looked at the .38. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you that cabin.”

  I let Barter and Hez walk ahead of me to the cabin. Barter took out a big ring of keys and inserted one into the lock. He threw open the door then, flicked on the light, and stood aside.

  “Inside,” I said. “You, too, Hez.”

  They went into eleven, and I went in behind them. I was afraid of what I might find, and relieved when I didn’t find it. There was no body on the floor. There was nobody in the cabin. But nobody.

  “Satisfied?” Barter asked.

  “Not yet,” I said. “Get over on the bed, both of you. Hurry up. Face down, hands up on the pillows.”

  “You’re not gonna get away with this, feller,” Barter said. “I don’t know who or what you think you are, but we’ve got cops in this state, too, you know.”

  “On the bed,” I said.

  Barter climbed up onto the bed, and then Hez climbed up beside him. They made a nice couple. Together, they rolled over onto their stomachs and put their hands up onto the pillows.

  “Don’t get off the bed,” I said. “I’ll shoot whoever tries it first.”

  “Tough bastard,” Barter muttered.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m a tough bastard.”

  I went over to the wall separating 11 from my cabin. I covered every inch of the baseboard and found no sign of blood at all. Then I came to the closet. The closet was toward the front of the cabin, and it suddenly occurred to me that the blood seeping through the wall had been near the front of my cabin, too.

  I didn’t want to open that closet door.

  I opened it.

  There was a lot of blood on the floor. The floor sloped toward the wall gently, so that it took the blood a long time to run toward the wall and then to seep through the crack in the wallboards into my cabin. A long time—so that whatever had made that blood puddle could have been taken away long before any blood had shown in the adjoining cabin.

  “Come here, Barter,” I said.

  Barter scrambled off the bed and waddled over to where I was standing just outside the open closet door. He looked in at the blood. He didn’t say anything.

  “How about it?”

  “What is it?” he said.

  “Blood.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “I rented this cabin about six o’clock last night. Fellow from Vermont. What he done here, I don’t know nothing about.”

  “What was the fellow’s name?”

  “Don’t remember. It’s in the book.”

  “Now tell me, what happened to the girl I brought here?”

  “You didn’t bring no girl here,” Barter said.

  “That’s your story, huh?”

  “That’s the truth,” Barter said emphatically.

  I kept myself calm. I kept myself very calm, considering. “Barter,” I said, “you’re lying. I don’t know why, but you’re lying. There was a girl with me, and I have a witness who saw us check in together.”


  “Who’s your witness?” Barter said.

  “A girl named Blanche.”

  “Blanche?” Barter said. “I don’t know nobody named Blanche.”

  “She rented cabin number three from you. She was in there all night. She saw us check in.”

  “You got girls on the brain, ain’t you?” Barter said. “Ain’t nobody in number three but a guy who checked in after supper.”

  “Somebody took the girl, and her luggage, and her clothes out of the cabin while—”

  “Which girl you talking about now?”

  “I’m talking about the girl I brought here, damnit!”

  “I see,” Barter said, smiling at Hez who had craned his neck around from the bed. “And what cabin was she supposed to have checked into!”

  “Number thirteen.”

  “Why don’t we just take a little stroll up to thirteen right now?” Barter said. “’Course, that’s if you’re finished with your detective work in here.”

  “I’m finished,” I said. “I want to give thirteen a closer look, anyway.”

  “All right if Hez gets up off the bed?” Barter asked, smiling. This was all very comical to him. This was all simply side-splitting to him.

  “Come on, Hez,” I said, and I waved the .38 at him.

  We went out of the cabin and then over to 13. The motel was alive with light now, amber spilling from 11, 12 and 13, all in a row like nuns carrying votive candles. The door to 13 was closed. Barter climbed the steps and knocked.

  “There’s no one in there,” I said. “Just open—” and just then the door opened.

  A tall thin man stood in the doorframe.

  His chest and his feet were bare. He was wearing the trousers to a brown worsted suit. He was as wiry as a Con Edison cable, and a patch of black hair clung to his breast bone, and two halos of the same hair ringed the nipples of his pectorals. His eyes were blue, and his hair was a mussed brown, and he looked at us in mild surprise and said, “Yes?”

  “Sorry to trouble you, sir,” Barter said. “Is everything all right?”

  “Why, yes,” the man said. He looked at my .38. “Say, what is this?” he asked.

  “How long have you been in this cabin?” I asked.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “My name’s Phil Colby,” I said. “How long have you been in this cabin?”

  The man nodded, as if the name had meant something to him. “I checked in at about eight,” he said. “Why?”

  “You checked in shit!” I said. “Move aside!”

  The man moved into the doorframe, blocking my path. “Just hold it a minute, sonny,” he said. “My wife happens to be in bed.”

  “Your what!”

  “My wife. What the hell’s so strange about that? Listen, are you nuts or something?”

  “Get out of my way,” I said. “I want to see your wife!”

  “Listen, what kind of a place is this?” the man said to Barter. “For Pete’s sake, I never—”

  I shoved him aside and moved into the cabin. Two green plaid suitcases rested on the floor near the dresser. There was a woman in the bed, and she sat erect when I barged into the room, pulling the sheet to her throat. She had long blond hair and green eyes, and the eyes opened wide, and I thought she would scream, but she only opened her mouth and stared at me. She wore no make-up, and her face looked as if she might have been sleeping, except for the fact that her eyes weren’t tired.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Who wants to know?” she answered.

  I turned to her husband who had come into the cabin after me. “What’s your name?”

  “Joe,” he said.

  “Joe what?”

  “Joe Carlisle. This is my wife.”

  “What’s her name?”

  Carlisle paused, and then he turned to the blonde. The blonde gave a slight smile.

  “Stephanie,” she said. “Stephanie Carlisle.”

  “How long have you been in this cabin, Stephanie?”

  “Since about eight o’clock. Why?”

  I nodded, turned away from the bed, and went to the closet. I opened the door and looked inside. The closet was full of clothes. A woman’s coat, two dresses, a nightgown, some skirts, and some blouses.

  “Where are your clothes, Joe?” I asked.

  “I travel light,” he said.

  “Let’s see your identification.”

  “What for?”

  “Let me see it!”

  “I haven’t got any.”

  “You drove here, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “Let me see your driver’s license.”

  Carlisle shrugged. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. He went to the dresser and took his wallet from where it lay alongside a watch and a key case. He opened the wallet and handed me his license.

  “You a cop?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “This a purity drive or something? We’re married, you know.”

  The name on the license was Joseph Carlisle. The address was in Davistown. I handed the license back to him, and then I went to the dresser. I opened the top drawer. It was full of Stephanie’s lingerie. The other two drawers were empty.

  “Those bags open, Joe?” I said.

  “I guess so. Why do …”

  I walked to the suitcases and unsnapped the first one. It was empty. The second one was empty too. I closed the bags and walked into the bathroom. A comb rested on the sink. I opened the medicine cabinet. It was empty. I left the bathroom and went into the big room again. Carlisle’s shirt, tie, and jacket were thrown over the wooden chair. His shoes were on the floor under the chair, and his socks were balled inside the shoes. Stephanie’s dress and underwear were heaped on the seat of the chair. She caught my eye.

  “The nylon stuff is mine,” she said, smiling.

  “Thanks,” I told her. “And where do you keep your purse?”

  The smile dropped from her face. I could feel the gears clicking inside her head for just about two seconds, and then the smile came back and she said, “I must have left it in the car.”

  I turned to Carlisle. “And where’s the car?”

  “I parked it up near the office.”

  “The Caddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you didn’t pull in more than a half-hour ago.”

  “You’re mistaken,” he said. “We checked in at eight.”

  “Do you plan on staying long?”

  “Just … a few days.”

  “We came for the fishing,” Stephanie put in.

  “Is that why the two dresses in the closet are cocktail gowns?”

  “Well …” she started, and I turned to Carlisle again.

  “You going to fish in your brown worsted suit, Joe?”

  “I told you,” he said, “I travel light. I usually travel with only what I’m wearing.”

  “No dungarees? No old flannel shirt? You mean you’re going to fish in a good suit? You’re going to …?”

  His face turned hard. “I’ll fish in whatever I like,” he said.

  “Except troubled waters.”

  Barter smiled. “Think we can let these people get back to sleep now?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “And you can take me around to your other cabins, Barter.”

  “I run a business, you know,” he said. “It don’t help business to go around waking up people in the middle of the night.”

  “I don’t imagine it does,” I said dryly. “Come on.”

  Carlisle remembered to be indignant again as we were leaving. “You’ve got a lot of nerve barging in here like this,” he said.

  “Go to hell,” I told him.

  Barter and Hez were waiting for me at the foot of the steps. “Where do you want to start?” Barter asked.

  “With number one. And then right down the line.”

  “Suit yourself. Most of the cabins is empty anyhow.”

  “Then why were you so
worried about waking up guests?”

  “Well, some of them’s got guests,” he mumbled, and then he led me in a semi-circle around number 13 and to the string of cabins thrown onto the hillside. The first two cabins were empty.

  Number 3, the cabin Blanche said she’d occupied, was dark when we approached it.

  Barter knocked.

  “Who is it?” a man’s voice answered.

  “Me,” Barter said. “Mike Barter.”

  “Oh. Just a second.” A light went on, and someone cursed, and then we waited a few minutes, and then footsteps approached the door. The door opened. The man standing in the doorframe was in his undershorts. They were gaily patterned shorts, a wolf’s head making up the main motif. The wolves all over the shorts were baying. They were baying at shapely female legs which formed the secondary theme of the pattern. The man wearing the shorts may or may not have been a wolf. He looked more like a den mother.

  He was at least sixty, and his head was bald, and his eyes were red-rimmed, and the paunch he carried hung over some of the wolves which is probably why they were baying.

  The first thing he said was, “Where’s …” and then he saw me and shut up.

  “Where’s who?” I said.

  The red-rimmed eyes flicked with intelligence. The old man grinned. “Not who,” he said, “but what! I was asking Mr. Barter where the towels he promised me were.”

  “Shucks, clean slipped my mind,” Barter said, snapping his fingers. “Mind if we come in, sir?”

  “If you don’t mind my greeting you in my underwear,” he said.

  He stepped aside, and we all trotted into the cabin. My eyes went to the bed. There were two pillows on it, and both had been slept on. I went into the bathroom and looked at the towels. One of them had a lipstick smear.

  “Let’s check the other cabins,” I said.

  On the way out, Barter turned to the old man. “I’ll get you those clean towels,” he promised.

  Cabins 4, 5 and 6 were empty. A dark-haired girl opened the door to number 7. She wore a blue bathrobe, and she seemed surprised to see Barter. She also seemed about to say something until she saw me. She kept her silence instead, looking to Barter questioningly.

  “Sorry to disturb you and your husband, ma’am,” Barter said. “I wonder if we might come in?”

  The girl studied Barter, and then her eyes darted to me. She didn’t ask, “What for?” or “What the hell do you mean?” or anything else you’d expect from a surprised housewife at a motel being awakened in the middle of the night. She simply stepped aside and let us pass.