Don't Dare a Dame (10 page)

   
“Thanks, but it’s too fine a day for stretching my legs. They’ll forget what they’re for. If you do come across anyone, tell them Thursday at seven, back room at Finn’s.”

   
He strode away on legs formed walking miles, not blocks. I knew he missed country lanes. Missed Ireland, though he never said as much. I watched until he turned a corner, and I heard him burst into his trilling whistle. Connelly had the gift of joy.

Eleven

   
I was wondering whether I’d learn anything by attending Alf’s funeral that afternoon when I unlocked the door to my office on Monday.

   
A gun in my ribs couldn’t have stopped me any faster.

   
“Couldn’t call and make an appointment since you weren’t here,” said a razor thin man lounging to one side of my window. He always stood where he could watch the street as well as the room. I had a hunch it stemmed from his line of work. Not that anyone ever had put a name to that work. “You need a better lock,” he said.

   
“The super and I aren’t exactly pals. He said if I changed it, he’d have me evicted.”

   
“Thought it might disturb your neighbors less if I waited inside.” Pearlie bared the snowy teeth responsible for his name. It passed for a smile. It was also the look a dog wore when it might either lick your hand or bite it. He was edging toward attractive, and his suits cost enough that they fit to perfection, but he had the same air as a closed switchblade.

   
“Rachel okay?” I asked.

   
“Rachel’s fine. She don’t know I’m here.”

   
I nodded. Rachel employed him. His last comment made me curious why he’d come, and more than a little uneasy. He opened the window beside him a couple of inches, then lighted a cigarette.

   
“Oats Ripley’s looking for you,” he said.

   
I gritted my teeth. If one more person told me that, I was going to scream.

   
“So I’ve heard.”

   
“I could make sure he didn’t bother you.”

   
Some people might think Pearlie was hitting me up for a bribe. I was pretty sure he wasn’t. I was also pretty sure his solution would be the permanent kind.

   
“Thanks, Pearlie. I appreciate it. I’d just as soon take care of Oats by myself, though. So people don’t get the idea I can’t.”

   
Pearlie frowned. It wasn’t an expression I’d ever seen him wear.

   
“Guy’s a sneak. Doesn’t have backbone enough to face somebody fair and square. He’s the sort shoots somebody in the back.”

   
“Yeah, but his aim’s lousy. And anyone who wasn’t deaf would hear him breathing through his mouth before he got close enough to try.”

   
Pearlie regarded me somberly. He took a drag on his cigarette, tossed the rest out the window and lowered the sash.

   
“I figured you might not be receptive,” he said, and walked out.

   
I sat down, amused by the final word, which suggested Pearlie continued his efforts to improve his vocabulary. I took off my hat and tossed it onto my desk. Before I had time to speculate on the meaning of Pearlie’s visit, or his offer, my telephone rang.

   
It was Freeze.

   
“Sorry I didn’t return your call on Friday,” he said. “I was ... called away.”

   
His almost indiscernible hesitation snagged my interest. Indecision wasn’t Freeze’s style. I hadn’t seen anything in that morning’s paper to suggest Alf Maguire’s death or anyone else’s was under investigation. If a new case had popped up Friday afternoon, Freeze wouldn’t be sitting in his office now talking to me. I waited a minute in hopes he’d volunteer more, but he didn’t.

   
“Chief Wurstner suggested I call you,” I said when I’d waited as long as I could without annoying him. “Remember at the Maguire place I told you I was there because his stepdaughters had hired me?”

   
“The stepdaughters who only recently had gone round with him in court over an inheritance,” he said coldly.

   
“Just one small part of that inheritance, and the suit was settled in their favor. That had nothing to do with why they hired me.”

   
Did I need to cross my fingers? Probably not, since I wasn’t sure their dad’s disappearance was even remotely related to Alf’s death or the slop poured over me since. Before Freeze could turn too ill-disposed, I ran through the case I was working, omitting the women’s suspicion Alf Maguire had played some role in the disappearance.

   
“The chief said he didn’t care if I poked around in something from that far back, but he said I should clear it with you first,” I finished.

   
“If you want to follow a trail that cold, go right ahead. Just don’t put your foot in anything we’re looking at now.”

   
“Does that include Alf Maguire’s death?” I asked innocently. “Hard to put my foot in the right place if I don’t know where the messes are.”

   
“Don’t play dumb. If you turn up anything you think might remotely be of interest to me, let me know, or you’ll have more black marks against you than you can count.”

***

   
My failure to learn if they were classifying Alf Maguire’s death as a suicide miffed me. I took it out on routine chores: Paying bills that came in and sending some out to regular clients whose small retainers kept me going in lean times; cleaning out some old files. It didn’t use up nearly enough of the time that stood between me and noon when I could return to Percy Street and talk to the clerk named Theda.

   
I eyed the dessicated plant decorating one corner of my office. Going upstairs to the ladies restroom for a glass of water to pour on it would take at least five minutes if I stretched it. Then again, the plant had been brown and lifeless for a couple of years. It would be cruel to get its hopes up.

   
Having nothing else to occupy me, I rose and paced the margins of my office. I opened the same window Pearlie had a couple of inches. I could hear the sounds of carts bumping over bricks at the produce market. Today the wind was right so I even caught the fragrance of apples.

   
I wasn’t as cavalier about Oats Ripley as I’d let on to Pearlie. Oats wasn’t a good enough shot or fast enough on his feet to be a first-rate thug, but he was mean as a snake. The kind who’d shoot you in the back, as Pearlie said. The kind who’d have no qualms about using a baseball bat or tying you up somewhere to starve or setting your house on fire. Needing to deal with him on my own was a matter of honor.

   
Even the slipperiest lawyer wouldn’t have gotten him sprung if it had been a man who’d caught Oats standing over a woman he’d beaten to death with the bloody crowbar still in his hands. But it had been me. A judge had been persuaded that my failure to mention a missing button made my entire testimony unreliable. No doubt there’d been an innuendo or two — how a woman coming into a half-lighted warehouse on her own might have been understandably a little rattled. It didn’t help that the other witness, elderly and nearsighted, was no longer quite so certain what he’d seen.

   
I drew a breath and let it out slowly, thrusting the thoughts away. It irked me that the need to keep an eye out for Oats Ripley blurred my focus on the Vanhorn case.

***

   
 Since I’d been parked on Percy for the better part of Friday afternoon, I wanted to avoid notice this time around. I’d borrowed a neighbor’s car which I sometimes used when my own might be too recognizable. By a quarter of twelve I was parked where I could keep an eye on the alley behind the dime store where I’d purchased my snazzy new lipstick.

   
 I’d swung through the alley when I left the area on Friday, and again before settling in today. Both times a brown Desoto the same year as mine with white sidewall tires and a decal of some sort in the back window had been parked behind the dime store. Shortly before noon Marsh, the dime store owner, came out the back entrance, got into the car and drove away.

   
I waited ten minutes more in case he forgot something. When it appeared he was safely gone, I locked my borrowed car and headed across the street.

   
A couple of customers were browsing their way between counters. Emily’s blonde head bobbed up and down behind the candy counter, maybe restocking it or maybe cleaning the cases; I couldn’t tell which. A woman with silky white hair stood at the cash register. She had on a pretty mauve colored dress and her shape underneath it made me think of pillows. She greeted me with a cheery smile.

   
“Good afternoon.”

   
I smiled back. “You must be Theda.”

   
“Why, yes,” she brightened even more. “And I’ll bet you’re the girl Emily told me about who wanted to know about the flood. How odd Mr. Marsh wouldn’t talk to you. People are funny, aren’t they? Then he
was
just a boy.”

   
Glancing down to make sure her foot found the rung, she settled herself on a high wooden stool, preparing to chat. Her eyes made a businesslike sweep of the store first, making sure everything was under control.

   
“Oh, honey, I remember that awful flood like it was yesterday. My husband had a little butcher shop just around the corner from Brigham’s grocery. Loveliest chops and roasts you ever saw! You just don’t get meat like that these days. I helped out waiting on customers most afternoons, so I was in the thick of things, before and after. You ask away.”

   
“It’s the drugstore that was across the street I’d like to find out about.”

   
“Dillon’s Drugs.”

   
“Yes. Do you know the name of the man who owned it and whether he’s still around?”

   
Her eyes widened.

   
“His name was Tom Dillon — lovely old gentleman. Partial to lamb shanks. But honey, there was a terrible fire. Right during the flood. The whole place burned down, and him inside it, poor man. They said it looked like one of the big iron display units had fallen on him — pinned him under it.”

   
She paused in her story to ring up a customer. It was just as well, since my brain was floundering under the implications of what she’d just told me. A vanished man who’d likely gone to the drugstore. A fire. A body. But surely Dillon himself would have turned up if the body in the store had been anyone else.

   
Emily had left the candy counter to help a customer with cosmetics. I hoped she made a sale. The drawer of the cash register slid closed and Theda climbed back on her stool.

   
“I guess they were sure the remains they found were Tom Dillon’s,” I said, keeping the question as casual as a question like that could be.

   
“Oh, yes. By a leg bone. One of his legs had been broken, you see, and healed a bit crooked. He limped.” A frown at odds with her pleasant face marred her forehead. “Why are you wanting to know about Mr. Dillon? I’m sure he told me once that he didn’t have any relatives.”

   
“Two little girls who knew him then wanted to find out about him. He knew their father.”

   
“Oh? What was the father’s name?”

   
Here was an avenue I hadn’t considered.

   
“Vanhorn,” I said. “John Vanhorn.”

   
She thought a minute, then shook her head.

   
“I can’t recall hearing the name. You might.... Oh. Oh, my. Isn’t that bad luck?”

   
“What?” I turned to see if she was looking at something behind me. She wasn’t. “Isn’t what bad luck?”

   
Theda’s white head was shaking again.

   
“If only you’d come in this time a week ago! I was just about to say you could talk to Mr. Dillon’s partner, only you can’t now. He died just a few days ago. Friday, was it?”

   
An unsettling feeling started to crawl up my spine.
                                

   
“What was his partner’s name?”

   
“Maguire,” she said. “Alf Maguire.”