Don't Dare a Dame (21 page)

   
I pulled to the curb and let him out. Another fellow about the same age who was waiting in front of the school started forward to meet him.

   
“Look, is there anything I can do to help them?” asked Franklin, leaning down and preparing to close the car door. “Besides talking to you, I mean.”

   
“Yeah,” I said. “Your sisters seem to enjoy it a lot when you visit.”

***

   
My meeting with Franklin Maguire hadn’t yielded much more than my visit to Chief Wurstner the previous evening. It now seemed likely that Alf was the one who had killed the dog, but that didn’t tell me why someone wanted to halt further digging into John Vanhorn’s disappearance.

   
Genevieve and I went for supper together. Then I washed out a blouse and some stockings. I had a fast bath and was entertaining sour thoughts as I wound my hair into pin curls when someone knocked rapidly on my door.

   
“Phone call,” said Esther. “He wouldn’t say who it was.”

   
It was just shy of Mrs. Z’s cutoff time for using the phone in the hall downstairs. I tugged my bathrobe tight around my waist and hurried down.

   
“This is Maggie Sullivan,” I said warily. Only a handful of people knew my number at Mrs. Z’s: Billy and Seamus, Connelly, Wheeler’s Garage, Jenkins.

   
“I’ve been thinking about the man assigned to Percy Street at the time of the flood,” said Chief Wurstner’s voice without introduction. “I believe I mentioned to you that we were friends.”

   
“Yes.”

   
I was gripping the handset tightly, hoping this call meant he’d found something useful.

   
“I’ve remembered something he told me. At the time it seemed unimportant, just a child’s chatter. Something to smile over when we needed it. After what you told me last night, I wonder if.... Anyway. There was a little girl. Six or seven, I think he said.”

   
“And she saw something?” I couldn’t restrain my impatience.

   
“Her family had come back afterwards to salvage whatever they could of their things. The officer — my friend — saw them and asked how they were. Made small talk. There was so little else you could do. He asked the little girl had she been scared when the water got high. She told him no, just sad when the men put the store dolly out by the barrel, because the dolly was going to be lonesome out there in the rain by himself.”

   
A chill crept into me. A chill from the freezing waters of twenty-six years ago.

   
“A store dolly?” I repeated.

   
“He said her mother laughed and explained it was what she called clothing dummies.”

   
“Mannequins.”

   
“Yes.”

   
I drew a long breath.

   
“Who would bother putting a mannequin out in the middle of pandemonium?” I asked.

   
“Exactly.”

Twenty-six

   
Friday morning I found myself pulled in three directions. Most tantalizing was the possibility of locating a little girl who might or might not have seen something on the day John Vanhorn disappeared. I also wanted to know the extent of the holdings of Swallowtail Properties.

   
The trail of the little girl would be stone cold by now. Without specific addresses, uncovering more on Swallowtail would require time, and most likely contacts I didn’t have. That left number three, the easiest of the lot, talking to Neal again. The way he’d dissolved into panic when I asked whether he believed Alf had committed suicide had seemed excessive. At the time, I’d accepted it as grief and his inability to absorb the reality of his loss yet, let alone imagine it resulting from something sinister.

   
Now, after the attack on his sister and the car that had followed me yesterday, I wasn’t so sure. Giving him a shake or two might jar loose information he’d kept to himself. If I started with Neal, I should still have most of the day left for heavier digging.

   
The sky was a brilliant autumn blue. Just beyond where my car was parked, the produce market gave off a cider-y scent of ripe apples and buzzed with voices. Grocers and restaurant cooks as well as housewives shopped at its stalls. Two women with overflowing shopping bags passed me, chattering about the jelly they were going to make and the wonderful grapes available today. It gave me an idea for upping the odds on an outing I planned later.

   
Temporarily ignoring the market’s temptations, I drove to the factory where Neal worked. As I’d dressed that morning, I’d contemplated skipping breakfast in order to catch him on his way in. I’d decided against it. Making him worry he’d clock in late wasn’t likely to improve his receptiveness to me and my questions.

   
As I’d guessed when I’d come here before, the inside of the factory was cleaner and less of a barn than most. Its small front office was well lighted. A brick wall at the back muffled thumps from machinery.

   
“Could I speak to Neal Vanhorn’s supervisor?” I asked the woman who came to the counter to help me. I gave her a card. “Neal’s family hired me to tidy up some loose ends on their late mother’s estate. His sisters thought if I could speak to Neal for a a few minutes he might recall a couple of names that we need.”

   
The woman pressed her lips together and looked toward a door in the back

   
“Um, just a moment, please. Let me check.”

   
Hugging her sweater around her, she went to speak to a woman at another desk. They both looked in my direction, then conferred in low tones. The woman at the desk picked up a telephone. I waited. Several minutes passed before a man with heavy brows knotted together and a sour expression strode through the door. He made a beeline toward me.

   
“You looking to talk to Neal Vanhorn?”

   
“Just for five minutes. If they get some sort of break I can come back then.”

   
I tried a smile on him. The effort was wasted.

   
“You can’t talk to him then or any other time,” the man glowered, folding his arms. “Didn’t come back from lunch on Tuesday. Hasn’t called to say he’s sick. Not a peep. Plenty of others want work. I replaced him yesterday.”

   
An alarm began to go off in my brain.

   
“Did anyone try to reach him? Call where he lives?”

   
The man regarded me with disdain.

   
“Like I said, there’s plenty of men want a job if he don’t.”

   
He turned and left.

***

   
I sat in my car recovering my wits. What I’d just learned worried me. Maybe Neal had found a better job somewhere else. It was easy enough to imagine him walking out on his current employer without notice or explanation if he got a better offer. Except....

   
Except a neighbor out walking her dog had noticed two strange cars near Alf’s place the night of his murder. Neal’s insistence that he knew nothing about Alf’s death had been almost hysterical. I didn’t think he’d been involved, but what if he’d been there? What if he’d seen something?

   
Starting the DeSoto, I drove slowly away. With Neal unavailable, I might as well have a go at the two birds left in the cage: Swallowtail and the little girl from twenty-six years ago.

   
First I stopped at the office to call Corrine. She assured me she was doing fine on her own.

   
“Have you heard anything from Neal this week?” I asked.

   
I heard a dog wuff softly. Corrine murmured reassurance.

   
“Neal? No, why?”

   
“I just wondered if he’d gotten over being sore.”

   
“He’ll come around,” she said cheerfully. “He just likes his sulks.”

   
The dog wuffed again and she chuckled at something. I couldn’t recall ever hearing her chuckle before.

   
“Okay, thanks,” I said.

   
I swivelled back and forth in my chair for a while. The evening before, when Genevieve and I got back from supper, I’d called Neal’s number. I was pretty sure it was George who had answered. He told me Neal was out and he didn’t know when he’d be back. The last couple words had been fainter, like he’d been in a hurry and started to hang up while he was still speaking.

   
Talking to one of Neal’s pals at the factory — maybe the one who’d offered to buy me a sandwich — began to feel vital. So did talking to George again, unless Neal was there the next time I called.

   
Still thinking about it, I adjusted the holster under my jacket so it rubbed a bit less and headed down to the produce market.

***

   
“A little girl?” The owner of the grocery store on Percy puffed out his cheeks as he thought. “There were a couple of girls, sisters I think, who used to come in with their mother. But I wasn’t old enough that I paid much attention to girls back then.” He gave a sheepish grin. “I guess the reason I remember them is that my dad always kidded me that the younger one was flirting with me. She’d stand and look at me and twist her skirt back and forth the way girls do.”

   
“Was she around after the flood?”

   
He considered a minute.

   
“I don’t think so.”

   
“Do you happen to remember their name?”

   
“No. Sorry. There was another girl who lived around here who was in my class at school. But she would have been older than the girl you asked about, and in any case, her family was all in Columbus during the flood. Her grandpa was dying. What a nightmare. Losing a relative and then coming home to find everything ruined. They moved, but I don’t know where.”

   
I groaned silently.

   
“As to hearing anything about a clothing dummy....” The grocery store owner shook his head. Today he’d offered me a seat on an overturned orange crate and was in a chattier mood.

   
“Try Ray Marsh, at the dime store,” he suggested. “He was a few years older than me and might have paid more attention to things. And there’s a woman who helps over there — oh, even better, talk to Cy Warren. His dad owned a clothing store up where the bank is. They had dummies. Cy’s still in town. Owns a real estate firm and was on City Council.”

   
“And owns a lot of the buildings around here.”

   
He nodded.

   
“But not yours.”

   
“No.”

   
I thanked him and crossed the street. From my first visit, I knew the woman who ran the corner café hadn’t been here at the time of the flood. The grouchy old cobbler had, and Swallowtail owned his building, but I had something special planned for him. Before that, I was going to have some fun with Marsh at the dime store.

   
“Hi, remember me?” I sang as I marched up to him at the cash register.

   
He looked up from entering numbers on what appeared to be an order or inventory sheet. After a second his helpful expression gave way to a hard look. Before he could speak, I continued merrily.

   
“I was here last week asking about the flood in 1913, the one you weren’t here for and don’t know anything about.”

   
“I never—”

   
“You must have been, what ... eighteen? Twenty? Funny you can’t remember. Cy Warren can’t be much older, and he remembers plenty.”

   
Marsh’s mouth opened and closed so many times he looked like a fish.

   
“You’ve talked—”

   
“Now I’m hoping that the shoes you’re wearing today don’t pinch quite as much as the ones you had on last time, and you’ll remember better.” I propped my elbow on the counter so we were cozy as sweethearts. “What can you tell me about the day of the fire? Or about the little girl who talked about the clothing dummy?”