Murder on the Run

by Medora Sale

  “Did you make any attempt to get her back after she left?”

  “Are you kidding? That was such a load off my mind. I felt so guilty about her, as if all her bitching and whining and misery was my responsibility, that when I read her letter I dashed back down to the lab and collected everyone I could find and dragged them off for a drink. Including Karen, whom I dragged off for the weekend on Friday. That’s the girl I was talking about.” He leaned back again. “And that’s about it.”

  “Have you seen her much since the separation?”

  Conway shook his head. “Hardly at all. I called her a couple of times about her stuff, and I gave her a hand packing it up and taking it over to her new apartment, that’s all. I was going to get in touch with her this month about divorce proceedings, but I hadn’t got around to it yet.”

  “Did you think she’d give you a hard time?” Sanders cocked his head to one side.

  “Nope. With no kids, no assets, and her walking out on me, there’s absolutely no way she could hold things up.”

  “Her apartment is in a fairly expensive area of the city, I notice. Were you contributing to her maintenance?”

  “Me?” Conway stared at him in amazement. “I’m living on a grant in low-cost housing. She was healthy and able to work and walked out on me. Even Jane didn’t have the nerve to ask me for money.”

  “Was she getting money from her family, then? To help her along?” Sanders asked.

  “I doubt that. She didn’t have much family. Her parents are both dead, and her nearest relation is her Uncle Matt; he owns a small farm. I don’t imagine he could spare much cash for anyone. No. Jane was always poor as a kid, I gathered.” Conway’s eyes were bright with curiosity.

  “Did your wife ever think of staying at home and having a family? Since she didn’t seem to like working?”

  Conway laughed. “Jane was absolutely horrified at the idea of children. She wanted to have her tubes tied, except that it involved an operation, and she was even more terrified of doctors and knives than of ruining her lovely body with a baby.” For the first time, a tinge of bitterness flavoured his speech.

  Sanders gave him another measured glance. Dubinsky, pen in hand, interposed. “Could you give us the name and address of this Uncle Matt? If he’s Mrs. Conway’s next of kin?”

  “Well, his name is Jameson, Matt Jameson, and I don’t know his address—just ‘Cobourg’ might reach him. Anyway, his address should be in Jane’s book.”

  “Her book?” asked Dubinsky,

  “That little green three-ring binder in her purse. She carried it with her always. The front half is a diary/appointment book, and the back half is addresses and phone numbers. You must have found it.” Sanders nodded noncommittally. “He’ll be in it, and all her friends, and, I suspect, all the guys she was going out with.”

  “Do you know who she was seeing recently?”

  “The last ones I knew about were Grant Keswick—he’s an actor of some kind—and a Mike somebody from Cobourg who she knew in high school.” He shrugged his shoulders to plead ignorance. “If you want more information about her, you could always try Marny. When Jane took a year off after university and went to Europe, she worked with Marny after she got back, and they were great pals. I couldn’t stand her—not my type.”

  “Does Marny have another name?”

  “No doubt, but if I ever knew, I forgot it as fast as I could.” He tossed this off cheerfully. “She might still work for Pronto Secretarial Services, though. She was office manager last I heard of her. They should know where she is.”

  As Sanders and Dubinsky rose to leave, Conway looked at them curiously. “If you don’t mind my asking, why did you want all that information about Jane? I mean, except for her uncle’s name—I can see you needing that. The papers seemed pretty clear that she had been killed by some rapist—the guy who did in those other girls.”

  “Oh well,” said Sanders vaguely, “we still have to look round a bit, just in case someone took it into his head to try to get rid of her and push the blame off on someone else.” He stood up to leave. “By the way, what’s your blood type?”

  “O positive,” said Conway. “And the estranged husband is the first person you look at, isn’t he? Well, I can’t exactly mourn her, but I never would have killed her, or even wished this end on her. And you can believe that or not, as you like. Do you want my alibi?”

  “It may come to that some day, Mr. Conway. Let’s not worry about it for now.”

  Sanders and Dubinsky emerged into sunshine and Sanders looked around him at the slowly greening campus. “Pretty cool type, isn’t he?” he asked. “A true scientist—you know, the detached observer, and all that crap.”

  “He stinks,” said Dubinsky. “Where are we going?”

  “To Pronto Secretarial Services. We’ll see if the mysterious Marny likes him as much as he likes her.”

  Sanders stopped and scanned the list of occupants in the smallish red-brick building on St. Clair Avenue East. There it was: Pronto Secretarial Services. Room 201. He looked quickly at his watch and headed in the door. It had taken Dubinsky at least five minutes to find even an illegal parking space this close to five o’clock on a Friday afternoon. That woman had better not have left yet. Streams of people were already pouring out of the doors and elevators; there was no time to wait around. He dashed up the stairs, two at a time, followed by a heavily perspiring Dubinsky. Room 201 contained a pleasant reception room and a severely elegant blonde who was engaged at the moment in putting on her coat. She gave them a distinctly chilly smile and an almost inaudible, “May I help you?”

  “I’m looking for your office manager—uh, Marny—” he paused, hoping for some help.

  It was obviously the sort of remark the receptionist would have expected from someone crude enough to arrive at 4:59 on a Friday. “I’ll ask Miss Huber if she can see you. Your name?” He handed her his card. It did not impress her. She handed it back and muttered swiftly into the phone. “If you would care to sit down, miss”—the stress on the “Miss” was exquisitely calculated—“Huber will be out in a moment.” She finished putting on her coat, reached under her desk for a small, tasteful red purse, and flashed by them, in small, tasteful red shoes that were carefully contrived to set off the otherwise purely black and white perfection of her clothing.

  Miss Huber emerged almost as soon as the blonde vision had cleared the door. If Sanders had been subconsciously expecting a further manifestation of blonde ice, he was pleasantly surprised. She was on the tall side of average and robust-looking, with olive skin and a thick cap of black hair that swung down around her ears. She had a slightly Slavic cast to her features, and at that moment her mouth was set in a rather ferocious expression. Cop-hater, thought Sanders. Nothing you can do about it.

  “Yes?” she asked, in a flat, neutral voice.

  “You were a friend of Mrs. Jane Conway, I believe,” said Sanders.

  “Were?” She looked puzzled.

  “Is there somewhere less public we can talk?” A group of three women were emerging from a door behind the receptionist’s desk, all yelling “’Bye, Marny” as they hurried out.

  “Come into my office, then. It’s through here.” She pointed to a door at right angles to the first. It opened onto a corridor with several doors leading to glass-partitioned offices on the left, and, on the right, a low wooden partition which separated off a large room filled with desks and activity. He looked at his watch again. She remarked stiffly that on Fridays they worked late, so that the girls could come back and pick up their pay, and then ushered them into a spartan office. “Now what is this about Jane?” She glowered at him.

  “Mrs. Conway was killed while out jogging on Wednesday,” he said bluntly. “Her name hasn’t been released to the press because we haven’t been able to contact her next of kin.” He kept his eyes carefully on her as he let the flow of
inconsequential information cushion his words.

  She stared at him, her face gray and her body still and stiff with shock. “Are you sure? Are you sure that it’s Jane?” She continued to stare. “I can’t believe it. Jane wouldn’t let herself be caught by someone like that.” She stood up suddenly. “Would you excuse me a minute?” Without a pause she picked up her purse and raced out of the office.

  “Well,” said Dubinsky, “it’s nice that someone is upset because she got it. I was beginning to think that the whole world couldn’t have cared less if she lived or died.” He stretched his feet out in front of him and wriggled his toes in relief. They had done a fair amount of running around so far.

  A minute or two later, she came back in the room, looking calm and self-possessed. “And in what way can I help you?”

  “Mrs. Conway’s husband suggested—”

  “That bastard!” she interjected in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “—that you might have seen her more recently than he had, and that you could tell us something about her present friends and associates.”

  “What do you mean by that?” The hostility in her voice was palpable by now.

  “Only what I said, Miss Huber. Nothing else.” She leaned back in her chair. “For example, when did you see her last?”

  “When did I see her last?” She seemed to consider for a moment the wisdom of answering this question. “I suppose it was Tuesday night.”

  “This past Tuesday? The day before she was killed?”

  “Yeah.” Her tone dared him to make something of it. “I had a little sort of party at my place and she came.”

  “Who did she come with? Anyone in particular?”

  Marny shook her head. “Not that I know of. I think she came by herself.”

  “Were there many people there? Wouldn’t you have noticed who she came with?”

  “Not necessarily. There were about fifty or sixty people there, I guess. But I do know that she left early. She had to work the next day, she said, and couldn’t stay late.”

  The door to her office opened with a crash and a small head with yards of brown hair hanging from it poked in. “Oh, sorry! I thought you were alone.” She smiled winningly at the two men. “I just wanted to ask if you were coming to my opening tonight, Marny. Because if you were, there’s a party at Bill’s afterwards, and we’d be expecting you. Do come—to both, that is.” She grinned in a disembodied way and disappeared again, shutting the door behind her.

  “A lot of our girls are actresses who work for us when things are a bit tight. She’s playing the second lead—the ingénue—in something opening tonight.” Marny’s voice reverberated with the pleasure she got from the reflected glamour of it all. “Now, what did you want to know?”

  “We’d like to know about the men in her life—in her recent life, that is. Did she go home from the party with anyone, for example?”

  “I don’t think so. You mean, did some guy take her home that night?” Then she shook her head definitively. “No.”

  “Do you know of anyone she had been involved with in the past two or three months, then?” Sanders was getting exasperated at this waste of a Friday evening.

  “Nope.” She leaned back and crossed her arms—the attitude said that she would be unforthcoming. Then she relented and moved forward a bit. “She used to go out with Grant Keswick, but that was washed up long before Christmas. And there was that funny guy from Cobourg, Mike Somebody-or-other. He was always hanging around her. He was creepy. I could never figure out why she let him stick around. But she said it was nice having someone around who’d do anything you wanted. There were always lots of guys crazy about her all the time, but she was really choosy. She didn’t go out with a lot of people.” She stood up. “I’m sorry, but I have to get out there and make sure that everything is winding up all right. I really can’t tell you anything else about her anyway.” She ushered them out of the office, pointed their way to the exit, and hustled into the large room.

  Sanders picked his raincoat up off the chair and began to struggle into it. One of the crowd of girls from the back office emerged through the door and smiled at them. “Is anything wrong?” she asked hesitantly. “I mean, the girls said you were from the police. We were wondering if there had been an accident or something.” Her eyes sparkled with fascination and malice. “Miss Huber looked so upset when she came out of the office.”

  “We’re investigating the murder of a friend of hers. She seemed to take it hard,” said Sanders, with deliberate and callous indiscretion. “Maybe someone here should keep an eye on her and make sure she’s all right,” he added casually as he did up his coat. “The friend who was looking after her before—when she left the office the first time, a few minutes ago?”

  “Oh no. That wasn’t what she left for,” said their little informant. “She dashed over to telephone someone. Probably someone else who knew her friend.” She looked expectantly for another tidbit. Sanders smiled and left her standing there.

  “Well,” he said, as they sauntered casually down the stairs. “I wonder who she called? I’m not sure that it was simple grief that made her react so poignantly to her friend’s death.” He caught sight of a telephone booth in the lobby. “You take the car on downtown. I’ll grab the subway later. We should get onto Cobourg tonight, and Mr. Keswick.”

  There was no answer at Eleanor’s apartment. He deliberated briefly and then looked up her cousin Susan’s number. Susan owned the house the scattered crew of them lived in and was generally to be found lounging comfortably in her study on the second floor. He identified himself rather hesitantly and was surprised to be greeted with sleepy enthusiasm. “Sorry,” said Susan, yawning. “I’m studying for exams, and I fell asleep over some particularly obscure and turgid philosophy. Thanks for waking me up—otherwise I probably would have slept all night. Aunt Jane believes that if you’re sleeping, you must need the sleep. Which is kind, but awkward at exam time. What can I do for you? Looking for Eleanor?”

  He admitted that he was. “She doesn’t seem to be upstairs. I thought perhaps she might be down with the rest of the family.”

  “So you called me to avoid getting stuck in a long conversation with Aunt Jane. And got stuck in a long conversation with me instead. Well, she’s not home; she is over at Kate Abbott’s. Do you want me to yell for her out the window?” Susan’s study overlooked the side garden of the large house, and when the trees weren’t in leaf, she could see right into the Abbotts’ windows.

  “You don’t have to do that—but maybe you could give me Kate Abbott’s number. Unless you think she’d be upset if I called there.”

  “Kate wouldn’t be upset,” said Susan. “And you probably know better than I do right now if El would be.” Susan gave him the number and finished up with a cheerful “See you.”

  Eleanor had just set down her empty cup and yawned when the phone interrupted the desultory conversation in Kate’s living room. “It’s for you, Eleanor,” Kate said and dangled the phone in her direction. “A customer?”

  Eleanor reached lazily for the receiver, totally unprepared to hear John’s voice. “Look,” he said urgently. “I’m tied up here tonight with stuff that has to be followed up on—but could I see you tomorrow night? I really will be off for the weekend by then. Perhaps we could—”

  “Oh no!” said Eleanor, before he could explain what it was that they could have done. “I’m going out tomorrow night.” At this, Kate tactfully picked up the tea things and hustled herself and her niece out of the room. “One of Susan’s friends—one of those theatrical types she inherited—wants me to go to a party and I said I would. At the time,” she said pointedly, “ I hadn’t anything better to do.”

  “I see,” said John. “An old friend, is he?”

  “Not an old friend of mine certainly—probably an old friend of hers. Anyway, from Grant’s description of the party, it
sounded deadly, so if you had something particularly interesting in mind, I might be able to wriggle out of it.”

  “Grant?” That name was on his current checklist.

  “Yes. Grant Keswick. An actor. You’ve probably seen him in TV commercials. I think he’s the one with the beer bottle in one hand and a blonde in the other as he shoots the rapids above Niagara Falls, or something like that. All done in the studio, of course. Anyway, he’s an egotistical bore—in fact, a lecherous, egotistical bore, so I’d just as soon get out of it, come to think of it.”

  “No, don’t do that. I’m terribly interested in Mr. Keswick. It seems he’s an old friend of your weight-lifting associate. I’d certainly like to know more about him. Why don’t you go to that party and listen and be sweet, and remember everything he says, especially about Jane Conway? Or anything anyone else says about her.”

  “You mean I’m supposed to be an informant?” she asked. “You going to pay me fabulous amounts of money to betray my friends and acquaintances?”

  “That’s just on television. We’re much too cheap to pay people when we don’t have to. I’ll call you on Sunday and see what you found out.”

  “Wait,” she said. “Did you know where Jane Conway spent Tuesday night? Because I just heard.”

  “So did I,” he said. “At a party.”

  “That’s not what I heard. According to Kate’s niece, she spent Tuesday evening (or part of it, anyway) at the After Hours, which is, I gather, a rather steamy sort of joint downtown.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “According to Amanda, one of the girls in her class saw her there. The kid was downtown with a parent or something—not actually in the bar. And she asked Conway about it in class. Anyway, Jane Conway got very upset and annoyed, which the kids took to mean that she actually was there. And that’s all I know. See you later.”

  “Thanks,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s a very interesting place for her to spend her evenings in. I’ll call you.”