A Match Made for Murder

by Iona Whishaw

  Terrell nodded. “I see your point, but what if he says, ‘I’ll buy you lovely new frocks, you don’t have to worry about a thing’?”

  “Yes. They are brand new. So first we have to see if they are Ada’s . . . something new she bought for her big escape and handed off to him so she could just go to school as usual with her books and nothing else so as not to raise suspicion. Then if they aren’t, we’ll have to look into where he got them.” Ames looked at his watch. “We can interview her this afternoon. Her parents will never let us interview her without them, so I imagine her dad will leave work to be there. And, do we believe that Mrs. Watts knew nothing, didn’t see any change in him? I thought she was a bit all over the map with her response when we told her it was murder.”

  As much as he was disinclined to talk to Galloway, Darling knew he would have to share that Chela might have seen Meg Holden with a man who might have been James Griffin. Consequently, an hour after breakfast, he was at the police station with Martinez, sitting in Galloway’s office.

  Martinez was taking notes, but Galloway, Darling thought, seemed distracted, resistant even.

  “So this maid, Chela, is certain about it being Griffin?” Martinez asked.

  “I don’t see how we can take the word of a Mexican maid, no offence, Martinez. Did you talk to her yourself?” Galloway said.

  “No, my wife did.” Darling avoided glancing at Martinez to see if he’d taken any offence at Galloway’s remark and instead looked steadily at his old mentor

  Galloway threw his hand up in a dismissive gesture. “Well, there you are then! A couple of women chattering. Nothing in it.”

  With infinite effort, Darling suppressed his fury at Galloway’s dismissal of women in general and Lane in particular. With the studied calmness he used with recalcitrant witnesses, he asked, “Can you show me a picture of Griffin or describe him? I’m wondering if the man we saw her with in town the other day might be the same man.”

  “Suit yourself. Martinez, go get the mug shot.” This order was delivered in so peremptory a manner that Darling glanced at Martinez, but the sergeant’s face was expressionless as he got up to do his boss’s bidding.

  “Listen, Darling, I’m pretty sure you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. We’ve got our man on this one. Martinez has worked hard, God bless him, and he needs a win. Let’s not upset the apple cart.”

  Darling was attempting to formulate a response to this when Galloway spoke again. “When we’re finished here, can you stay back? Something’s come up with—” but at that moment Martinez was back with a small photo of the classic mug shot: profile and full face.

  Darling took the photo and looked at the grainy representation of James A. “Jimmy” Griffin. Could this be the man he and Lane had seen on the street? He’d asked if she wanted to come with him this morning, but for some reason she had resisted. She had claimed the call of poolside and Lord Peter.

  “What sort of shape is he?”

  “He’s five seven, 195 pounds, quite portly.”

  That would certainly match the shape of the man he’d seen. “Does he have an ill-fitting brown suit, by any chance?”

  Martinez smiled. “I’m not sure about a brown one, sir, but every suit I’ve seen him in seems a little too small.”

  “I wonder if you can let me have this? I’ll show it to my wife and Miss Ruiz. She thought he was the same man she’d seen in the newspaper some weeks ago, but this would confirm it.” He addressed this to Martinez, ignoring the sound of Galloway shifting impatiently in his seat.

  Martinez got up. “Sure thing. Can you give me a ring?”

  “You’re just muddying the waters, Darling,” Galloway said irritably when Martinez had gone. “Shut the door.”

  Obligingly, Darling got up and closed the door and then sat down again, trying to look benignly interested.

  “Listen, something’s happened. Maybe you can help.” He paused, as if he might change his mind. “My wife’s disappeared. That’s a bit strong, perhaps. But she’s checked herself out of hospital and gone off and hasn’t told me where.”

  Darling, who wasn’t supposed to know anything about Priscilla, feigned surprise as best he might. “Oh. I see. I’m sorry to hear she was in hospital.”

  “I’m hoping you do see. She had a fall down the stairs. That’s why she was in hospital. But you’d seen her before that, when she drove you out to the mission. Did she seem all right? Did she say anything at all to you?”

  Darling was becoming aware of a maelstrom of emotions, not all of which were easily identifiable or pleasant. He tried to tackle the foremost: Galloway seemed to think that his wife might have confided in them. All right? Had Priscilla been all right? Looking back, he realized he hadn’t thought so for a second. She had seemed both reclusive and fragile somehow with those dark glasses and the scarf and gloves and at the same time overly bright. But she’d been a bit like that the first time he’d met her, when they’d gone to the Galloways for dinner, so he’d assumed that was normal. Had she confided anything? Certainly not to him. And it was at this moment the other anxiety began to take shape. Had she confided in Lane? And in a gawd-help-us moment, he could see the real enormity of Lane spiriting Priscilla away to Phoenix. What if Galloway were to find out?

  “She certainly didn’t say anything to me, to us. We had a lovely drive to the mission, explored it a bit, and came back for a nice lunch.”

  Galloway leaned back in his chair and sighed. “I see. Well, I expect she’s gone to her friend, Dahlia. She was pretty beat up, and you know what the ladies are like, eh, Darling? A little vain.” He laughed unconvincingly. “She just wants to be back to normal before I see her again.”

  Darling, whose lady was the furthest thing from vain, noted Galloway’s use of the phrase “pretty beat up” and then stood up.

  “I’m sure that will be the explanation,” he said. “I’d best be off. Only a few more days of the holiday, and then it’s back to winter! I expect my wife would like to see me.” I know I’d jolly well like to see her, he thought. Had she even thought about the danger before she acted?

  Chapter Nineteen

  On Saturday afternoon, Ames, Terrell, and the stony-faced Craig Finch sat at the kitchen table of the small house. Ada was there too. They were looking at what seemed, in this severe context, the highly inappropriate and garish pile of ladies’ frocks and underwear.

  “Well?” asked her father coldly.

  Ada shook her head dumbly, glancing miserably at the pile of clothes and then looking down at the table.

  “Miss Finch, did Barney Watts say he would buy any clothes for you?” Ames asked.

  Ada looked desperately at her father and then down again.

  “Answer the bloody question!” her father thundered.

  Looking frantically toward the door, Ada managed, “He said . . .”

  “Don’t look for your mother to come and save you. She’s with your gran at the hospital. Now, what did that bastard say?”

  Ames wished Finch wouldn’t browbeat his daughter, but he did not interfere, thinking perhaps he’d have no better luck himself with some gentler tactic. “Miss Finch?”

  “He’d take care of everything, but—”

  Finch jumped up, took up what clothes he could gather in his fist, and shook them in his daughter’s face. “So he was proposing to dress you up like a tart in this garbage? I don’t suppose you have any bloody idea what would have happened next, do you?”

  Ames half stood. “Mr. Finch.” His voice was soothing, causing Finch to drop the clothes and sit down angrily. “Miss Finch, but what?”

  “I already gave him some of my clothes. He told me to so I wouldn’t have to take anything but my schoolbooks so it wouldn’t look, uh, suspicious.” She stopped and looked miserably at her father.

  “There will be plenty of suspicion to go around from now on,” h
er father said. “Have you finished, officers? Ada has her homework, which she’ll have lots of time to do because she won’t be leaving this house after school for the rest of her natural life!”

  “Mr. Finch, can we have a word with you on your own?”

  “Now what? Get up to your room,” Finch said to his daughter. He waited till she was out of the room and part- way up the steps and then turned back to the policemen. “What?”

  “We understand you had a violent disagreement with Watts at your workplace. Is that true?” Ames asked.

  “What of it?” Finch said truculently. “People get into arguments all the time.”

  “Yes, but you were overheard to say something along the lines of ‘stay away from her’. It suggests that you knew he had designs on your daughter. So it shouldn’t have been such a big surprise that he might have been going to run away with her. Can you tell us where you were Tuesday afternoon?”

  “I was home, sick.”

  “Can anyone verify that?” Ames tried to keep his voice mild.

  “My bloody wife can verify it. What the hell are you driving at? I didn’t do anything to him. Believe me, though, if he’d managed to get her away, I wouldn’t answer for my actions! I’m not surprised he’s dead!”

  “Whew!” Terrell said, navigating down the narrow street after this stormy interview. “That poor kid. I used to think it would be fun to have a daughter, but I’m not so sure now. There’s just too much awful stuff that can happen to them. I’m inclined to believe him, by the way. Of course, his wife will just confirm he was sick at home.”

  “And would a man with a short fuse like that go to all this trouble with poisoned handkerchiefs? He’d much more likely shoot him in a fit of rage. Still, he’s on our list. The question of the clothes is puzzling me. What do we have? According to her, the clothes weren’t for her, but maybe they were. Maybe her father was right: Finch intended to dress Ada up, try to make her look older so as not to arouse suspicion if they were planning to run away somewhere.”

  “If Ada gave Watts her own clothes, where are they now?”

  “Keep driving. Let’s stop at the train station and see if he kept another locker or something. I can’t imagine that he’d risk bringing a bunch of teenager’s clothes to his place of work, but they weren’t in the car or at his house. At least, Mrs. Watts didn’t mention them,” Ames said.

  The foreman at the station shook his head. “Just the empty one you saw.”

  Back at the police station, Terrell handed Sergeant O’Brien, the deskman, the keys to the car and said to Ames, “Look, sir, why don’t I pop out to the dress shops with this stuff and see if I can find out who bought it. I think it’s pretty obvious, but at least we could dot that i, as it were.”

  Ames nodded, but he didn’t tell Terrell what he was going to spend the next hour doing because, he realized later in the file room, he was slightly embarrassed about it.

  “Hello, darling,” Lane said, when her husband’s shadow loomed across her deck chair. There were two children splashing about in the pool while their mother sat on the edge with her feet in the water, calling out to them not to go to the deep end.

  Darling took off his hat, pulled a nearby deck chair closer, and sat down. “I’ve heard a most extraordinary story,” he said.

  “Do tell,” she said, smiling. The shade from her sun hat fell becomingly across her face, but he firmly ignored that.

  “I went down to the Tucson police station, as you know, to tell Martinez and Galloway about Chela seeing Meg’s older male friend’s mug shot in the paper. Martinez took it seriously and Galloway pooh-poohed it. Then Galloway asked me to stay back for a word. Can you guess what that word was?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” she said.

  “He told me his wife had checked out of the hospital on her own and disappeared. He wondered, don’t you know, if she’d seemed all right to us on our little trip to the mission. I confess, I was stymied. For one thing I had to pretend I didn’t know she’d been in the hospital, and for another I wasn’t sure what confidences she could have shared that would be in any way connected to her later hospitalization and disappearance. Did she confide in you, perhaps while you two were sitting in the shade of the mission garden?”

  “That’s interesting, because you know, there was a moment when I thought she might confide in me. In fact, I tried to encourage it, but she gave an artificial little laugh and brushed me off. I wasn’t very convinced. And when it comes down to it, I don’t think I was that surprised to learn he’d put her in the hospital.”

  “I can’t tell you how little I enjoyed pretending I knew nothing about her disappearance from that hospital.”

  Terrell trudged through a barrage of sleety rain to the three main dress shops in town and was relieved to have some luck at the third.

  “Yes, those are from our shop. The dresses, I mean, not the underwear. It happens I do remember because I myself really liked that blue dress. I asked the lady who bought it if she was going on vacation and she said she was. She said they were driving down to California.”

  “Do you remember her name or anything about her? Or the day they were purchased?”

  “Oh.” The saleswoman stopped and frowned. “I’d have to go through my sales slips to find the exact date, but I would say within the last month? I didn’t get her name, but I do remember her. A pretty blonde with very curly hair. In her early thirties or late twenties perhaps, but quite young looking for all that. Yea high.” She held her hand up at Terrell’s chin level. “These are size 16 R. They were meant for quite a slender woman, which she was.”

  “Eye colour?”

  “Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. Dark green, brown. Not notably blue or anything.”

  “Thank you. If you could give your sales slips a quick look and give me a call at the station, that would be helpful, thank you. Ask for Constable Terrell.”

  “By the way, Constable, I can save you some trouble on that other purchase. It came from Grace’s down the end of the street, near the gas station, and it was bought the same day because the lady had a bag from there.”

  Terrell smiled and tipped his hat as he left the shop, looking with a sigh at the two cold, wet blocks he’d have to traverse to get to the store.

  “What are you looking for, Sergeant? I thought there were rats in here,” Sergeant O’Brien said, looking into the file room.

  Ames was seated in front of a three-drawer filing cabinet. The records room was windowless and dusty. Sneezing explosively, Ames said, “I’m looking for what I’m pretty sure isn’t here: a file containing information about a young woman, a girl really, who might have come here to report an assault in probably late June of ’35.”

  “Why shouldn’t it be there? We’ve always kept pretty good records.”

  “Because it’s likely the girl was sent away with some harsh words from the officer she talked to. You know, blaming her for it, refusing to take it seriously.”

  O’Brien, not one for standing, settled his bulk with a “humph” into a chair in front of the small table, which was the only other furniture in the room. “I can’t see that, can you? How young was she?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Well, there you are then. A sixteen-year-old would have come in with a parent, and no parent would put up with the daughter being dismissed like that.”

  Ames pulled another file folder out, opened it, scanned the pages, and tossed it back in, then turned to O’Brien. “That’s the thing, she didn’t come in with a parent. She didn’t want her parents to know. Were you here in ’35?”

  “I was. The inspector wasn’t here yet. He came in ’36. Was it an old guy, do you know? Higgs retired that year. If it was him, I can see it. He was a tad old-fashioned, and didn’t much like keeping records, especially toward the end. And Sergeant Galloway was here then, but he left in ’37. Moved down south
somewhere stateside because he didn’t like the cold. He was okay. A little full of himself but well liked. He used to play poker with a group of guys every week. Said that’s how he kept his ear to the ground. Took Darling under his wing.” He chuckled and pushed himself upright. “He did pretty well at cards, as I recall. Got a round at the bar out of him more than once. Anyway, I’ll give it a think, see if something comes to mind. Gotta get back to the desk. I suggest you come up for air soon. The dust in here will kill you. And I couldn’t swear to there being no rats here, either.”

  O’Brien had just reached his desk when Terrell pushed the door open and removed his sodden hat, shaking it onto the doormat.

  “Don’t you look like a drowned muskrat,” O’Brien commented, watching him peel off his rubber overshoes and gingerly hang his soaking raincoat on the coat rack.

  “I feel like one. Is Sergeant Ames in?”

  “He’s gone upstairs after spending a couple of happy hours in the file room getting dust up his nose. Police work, eh?”

  Terrell smiled wanly and went up in search of Ames. He already knew that Ames wasn’t going to like hearing what he’d learned from the dress-shop expedition.

  “Oh, my God,” Darling said, pushing his hand through his hair. “Can I not leave you alone for a minute?” He was again prey to very mixed feelings. On the one hand, he felt unabashed admiration for his wife’s unwavering sense of justice, and on the other, anxiety about what it would all mean.

  “Darling, if you had seen her, you would not have hesitated. And after all, she asked for my help. And Chela helped me get hold of her brother. He used his own car so that the taxi couldn’t be traced, and he had a day off coming anyway. He was magnificent and wouldn’t take a cent.”

  “Of course, you were right. Of course, you were. I just wish you’d told me ahead of time. I can just see my whole married life unfolding before me, with you bashing off to rescue the halt and the lame, leaving me in the dark.”