Don't Dare a Dame (29 page)

   
Why hadn’t the black Dodge that had followed me several times shown up on the list from Cy Warren’s headquarters?

   
Could the latter anomaly have anything to do with the fact Alf’s neighbor claimed she’d seen two cars the night he was murdered? If there had been two cars....

   
That was as far as I got before falling asleep.

***

   
“There ... and there.” As Pearlie drove slowly down Percy, I indicated the spots where Dillon’s Drugs and the menswear store owned by Cy’s father once had stood. “It would have been put out somewhere behind those two buildings.”

   
That wasn’t necessarily the only place a kid might have seen what she thought was a clothing dummy carried out. Still, the stinging of my stitches told me it was the right place. Pearlie continued to the end of the block where he stopped to let a mailman cross with his bag. I thought of Wee Willie making his rounds somewhere, and wondered if he cut up any on his route. At the end of the next block, which was shorter and the last block on Percy, we turned into the alley and started back to get a view from the rear.

   
“Kids have good eyes. Need a feel for how far away the girl could have been,” Pearlie observed.

   
I nodded. He’d brought Rachel’s big Buick this afternoon. It was comfortable as an easy chair. I was sitting across from him instead of in back the way Rachel did when he drove.

   
“Alley angles some. Can’t see the back of those places.”

   
“Until you get about here,” I said a moment later.

   
It was his turn to nod.

   
“And she would have been on the second or third floor, maybe the attic.”

   
Even as I thought aloud, Pearlie was already squinting up at the houses that backed on the alley. I tried to dismiss the unsettling thought that his measure of how far you could see might be how far you could see to draw a bead on someone.

   
“What about the other side of Wayne?” I asked. “Could someone see from there, do you think?”

   
“Never smart to think when you can check.”

   
We spent more than an hour surveying the area and debating lines of sight. After our first few passes, our attention focused on a single block of houses on the street north of Percy. They all backed on the alley, and though Pearlie expressed doubts about those farthest from the old drugstore, we agreed all the houses there were a possibility. I thought the house kitty-corner to the drugstore but on the other side of Wayne was a possibility too, and maybe a house or two on either side as well.

   
“Not unless there was a hotel there. Something high like that,” Pearlie said.

   
The houses on the corner were well maintained, but they looked old enough to have predated the flood. So did the ones in the block that was my primary interest. Most of them were two story; a couple were three. We drove down the street in front of them again. The one behind where the drugstore had stood was painted white. The one next to it was pale green.

   
“What next?” asked Pearlie.

   
He meant driving directions.

   
“Next I find someone who knew the families who lived in these houses back then,” I said.

   
Somewhere in the course of this ride-around I’d hatched an idea where to start.

Thirty-five

   
Pearlie dropped me off at Mrs. Z’s around four. It was early enough the other girls wouldn’t be home yet to pester me with questions when they saw my puss. The day had used up most of my energy. I hadn’t realized how much breath stairs required until halfway up when I felt myself getting lightheaded. I gripped the bannister and lowered my head to get blood going.

   
“Maggie?”

   
I’d forgotten that Jolene left around this time to get to the club where she worked as a cigarette girl. She bounced down the stairs toward me.

   
“Oh jeez, Maggie, you got beat up. Here, sit down.” She took my arm and sat down beside me..

   
“It didn’t just happen,” I said. “I’m okay — just get a little short of breath sometimes because I’ve got some ribs taped.”

   
Her blonde curls bobbed wisely.

   
“It squishes your lungs so you can’t breathe. Then you faint. Happened to me too. When I was a kid I got kicked by one of the cows. Good thing it wasn’t my head, huh, although my brother used to claim that it was when he thought I was acting dumb. Anyway, my folks were scared it might have busted something inside me, so they bundled me into the truck and drove me in to the doctor...”

   
It always intrigued me wondering how long Jolene would be able to go on without pausing for breath. She should have been an opera singer, but they didn’t pack as many words in.

   
“... and all the jouncing around coming home didn’t seem to hurt quite as bad as I remembered, although since I’d blacked out going I didn’t remember much. But then after a few days, when I started running around, I kept fainting. Head out to the henhouse and boom — I fainted. Run down to the barn to help feed the pigs and boom — I fainted. Well, Dad said no daughter of his was going to faint, not when any fool could see that everything else about me was working just fine. He told Mom to get out her sewing shears and cut those bandages off my ribs, and she did, and they didn’t hurt any worse and healed just fine, and I never fainted again.” She cocked her head as an idea struck her. “Want me to run get my scissors and cut yours?”

   
I managed not to laugh, mostly because I knew it would hurt like sin.

   
“I don’t want to hold you up right now, Jolene, but thanks. I just might take you up on it in the morning.”

   
She got up to leave.

   
“And hey, when people ask how you got that cut lip and bruises, tell them you got in a car wreck. They’ll believe that quicker than saying you fell down some stairs.”

   
It was a sad day when Jolene concocted a better fib than I did.

***

   
 Jolene’s coaching came in handy the next day when I called Billy.

   
“One of the girls told me you’d called about me a couple of times, but the cough syrup I was taking made me so woozy I was afraid to try and make it down the stairs.” I coughed for effect. “Thought I’d better call and let you know I was on the mend so you didn’t think I’d died or something.”

   
“Well, I don’t mind telling you, you had us worried. Mick said you had a bad cough, but it wasn’t like you to be laid up for a week if it was no more than that.”

   
“Trouble is, the friend who gave me a lift down to get the cough syrup got in a wreck, so I got banged up, too. Nothing serious. Didn’t go through the windshield or anything.”

   
He made concerned noises and I reassured him. I hung up in fine spirits. Genevieve had been home the previous evening, and she’d cut my bandages off. As Jolene had predicted, my ribs didn’t feel any worse without bandages. It felt glorious breathing again. On top of that, no bandages meant I’d been able to take a bath. This morning I’d walked to the trolley and ridden it to the beauty shop I used sometimes, and got a shampoo while my stitched lip stayed nice and dry.

   
By afternoon I should be up to driving. I had an idea how to locate the little girl who’d lived somewhere around Percy Street. The sooner I did, the sooner I could warn her she might be in danger.

***

   
Wee Willie Ryan lived in the same white frame house his parents had lived in when we were kids. I swallowed the river of memories that wanted to come as I walked from my car to the door. It was late afternoon and the air had the sort of bite that makes kids tuck their cold fingers under their armpits and ignore its sting on their cheeks so they can keep playing.

   
“Maggie!” Willie’s wife Maire burst into a smile the instant she saw me. Then she got a look at my face and her own face fell. “Jaysus, Maggie, are you still scrapping with people?”

   
We shared a chuckle. Maire had chestnut hair, with cheeks and lips as pink as rosebuds. She’d been a year behind Willie and me in school, and got into more trouble than she deserved for being an avid onlooker at most of our hijinks.

   
“How’ve you been keeping, Maire?”

   
“Better than you, by the looks of it.”

   
“Car accident. Nothing serious. Look, I apologize for barging in when you’re probably busy fixing dinner—”

   
“It’s in the oven, and you’d better stay for some. Go on. Have a seat.”

   
A cute little girl of four or thereabouts had been peeking round the kitchen door. Three boys, two older, one just a toddler, thundered in past her.

   
“Ma, where’s our ball?” asked the tallest.

   
“Same place it always is. Say hello to Miss Sullivan.”

   
The little girl had joined the bunch. They chorused as instructed, then ran to retrieve a softball from a pretty dish that looked like it had been meant for a more genteel purpose.

   
“I want to throw,” the little girl begged as they started out.

   
“Girls don’t play ball,” said one of the older ones.

   
A tiny foot snaked out and sent him sprawling.

   
“Ma, Kathy tripped me!” he howled.

   
“And why’d you torment her with nonsense about what girls do and don’t do? Let your sister play too or put the ball back. And if it comes near any windows, you won’t see it again until spring.”

   
They clattered out.

   
“That girl shows promise,” I said.

   
Maire’s eyes rolled heavenward. “Out of the four of them wouldn’t you just know she’s the one most like her father?”

   
“If I can just have a word with Willie, I’ll be on my way.”

   
“You won’t escape that easy, but I’ll tell him you’re here.” She stepped into a small hall and raised her voice slightly. “Will, Maggie-the-devil’s here.”

   
Irish girls named Maggie are a penny a dozen. There’d been three of us in my class, and at least that many in all the others. To keep us straight, the nuns added last names. Our peers preferred nicknames. I wasn’t sure who’d given me mine.

   
Willie appeared, wiping his hands on a bandana which he stuffed in a back pocket. With his small stature and in ordinary garb instead of his postman’s uniform, he looked like a kid again. He was opening his mouth to speak when he halted with a startled look. He came a step closer, pretending to squint.

   
“Are those stitches, or are you already sprouting hair on your face like my mam?”

   
Maire nudged him.

   
“Shush, now. She was in a wreck. Thank St. Christopher it wasn’t worse.”

   
After the fussing from everyone else, Wee Willie’s cheerful assumption that I was resilient assured me I was.

   
“How about a taste of whiskey?” he offered. “It’s not often Maire and I get to sit and visit without that crew of ours under foot.”

   
“Just a dab,” I said. “Plenty of water.”

   
He left to get it while Maire and I talked. I wondered how she managed to keep her living room neat as a pin with kids running around. When all of us had glasses, we toasted the old times.

   
“Now,” said Willie. “What brings you around?”

   
“Thought you might be able to run down some information for me.”

   
“Something for one of your cases?” Maire’s eyes sparkled. “I can step into the kitchen if you want it private.”

   
I shook my head.

   
“It’s for something I’m working on, yeah, but nothing hush-hush. I was wondering if maybe you could find out who was delivering mail in the Percy Street area back in 1913 Maybe a few years before that.”