Don't Dare a Dame (31 page)

   
Depositing her trowel in a basket on the porch, she wiped her shoes like crazy on the doormat before going in. I did too. While she disappeared upstairs, I sat down in a front parlor furnished in heavy oak pieces. The loud tick-tock of a mantle clock filled the space around me.

   
Sooner than I expected, my hostess returned. Her smile was triumphant. In her hand was a leather-bound address book, its corners worn.

   
“I thought I might have tucked it in the back of this, and I was right.”

   
She held out a scrap torn from nice stationery. The ink had faded with time but the information on it was clear:

Lorraine and Simon Amos
.

   
Followed by the name of a street and a number.

Thirty-seven

   
Heebs had sold nearly all of his morning edition when I approached his corner for the second time in an hour on Tuesday.

   
“Thought I already sold you one of these,” he grinned. “You back to flirt?”

   
“Back to see if you might be interested in making some money. Do you think you can go into maybe a dozen bars and ask a few questions without getting tossed out? They’re pretty rough places.”

   
He crossed his arms.

   
“Do I look wet behind the ears? My ma sent me into plenty of dives hunting my old man before he took off.”

   
His mother had taken off too, when Heebs was, what, nine or ten? How he’d managed not to get picked up and tossed into an orphans home was anyone’s guess. Maybe because hard times had left so many like him out on their own that the orphanages were full. I waited as a customer approached and handed him three cents for a paper.

   
“Okay, then,” I said. “I’ll pay you two bucks.”

   
His eyes widened.

   
“Two bucks and a date with you, Sis? I must be dreaming.”

***

   
Once I’d arranged a time and place to pick up Heebs, I returned to a trail that was growing more visible. The phone book didn’t list anyone named Amos at the address left with their former neighbor, and it didn’t list Simon Amos at all. I looked under Lorraine, although most women, even if widowed, kept the listing under their husband’s name. No luck there, either.

   
The thought of repeating yesterday’s round of knocking on doors didn’t thrill me, but I’d known tedium went with this job when I hung out my shingle. I got gas for the DeSoto and drove to the address I was hunting. The street reminded me of the one I’d been on yesterday, except it was farther from downtown and some of the houses looked newer. I rang the bell on a door with an oval of frosted glass centered in polished wood. Through it I could see a woman and little girl come downstairs to answer.

   
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “but I’m trying to locate the Amos family who used to live in this house. It’s about an inheritance.”

   
For some reason people are more apt to help when they think money’s at stake, even though they’re not the ones who stand to profit.

   
“Amos,” the woman mused. She had a hairbrush in her hand. One side of the little girl’s hair was neatly braided; the other a mass of tangles. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them. We’ve only been in the neighborhood a few years.”

   
I tried a second house, where a woman was vacuuming to beat the band, then a third where a tired looking young woman greeted me two kids whining behind her, and another so close to arriving she needed a basket.

   
“You might try Mrs. Little, in that brick house over there.” She pointed. “She’s lived there a long time.”

   
With a sigh of overdue hope I thanked her and crossed the street.

   
The woman who answered the door wore a hat and a suit like she was about to go out, and violet-pink lipstick which didn’t make her look any younger.

   
“Oh, my yes. Of course I knew the Amoses.
Lovely
people. Lorraine and I used the same dressmaker, so we’d chat up a storm when we met there. Her older daughter, Jane, was in the same class as my girl. The younger one was an odd little thing — not feeble minded or anything, just sort of moony. She certainly married well, though, so there you go.”

   
Foreknowledge was climbing my spine.

   
“Would you happen to know how to locate any of them?” I asked, although I had a feeling I already did.

   
“Lorraine passed away. I think someone told me her husband was poorly and living with Jane. Oh, if only I could remember what Jane’s married name is.” Her violet-pink lips pursed. “Well, no matter. You’ll have no trouble finding Tessa. She married a man named Cyrus Warren. They say he’s going to run for the Statehouse.”

   
She started to close the door.

   
“I couldn’t help noticing how perfectly that suit of yours fits,” I said quickly. “I don’t suppose you’d give me the name of that dressmaker you were mentioning. I’ve been looking for one.”

   
Sometimes flattery buys as much information as money. It halted the closing door.

   
“Wanda Meecham, but she’s not taking new trade.” She preened at her privileged status and started to close the door again.

   
“Oh, gee. I’ll bet she has an assistant, though. Maybe she’d take customers. Is that the Mrs. Meecham with a shop on Main?”

***

   
By the time I finished lunch I’d sorted through the pros and cons of the next step I wanted to take. Then I shrugged them all off and went with instinct.

   
I waited till mid-afternoon before driving up Salem to the half-timbered Tudor Cy Warren owned on Harvard Avenue. The area wasn’t as swanky as Oakwood, but it was a neighborhood favored by doctors and other well-to-do types. The street curved around, showing off nice-sized yards and houses.

   
A couple of driveways had cars in them. Cy Warren’s didn’t. If he was the sort who occasionally came home for lunch, he wasn’t here now, which was part of my plan. I parked on the street. Except for one other car, mine was the only one relegated to public space. Two concrete steps led up to a sidewalk set in a long front lawn. I followed it and went up another set of steps where I turned the polished brass doorbell.

   
After several minutes a sad-eyed colored woman who looked as if her knees hurt opened the door.

   
“I’d like to speak to Mrs. Warren, please. It has to do with her husband’s campaign.”

Thirty-eight

   
For one fleeting instant the maid’s eyes noted my fading injuries.

   
“Yes, ma’am. Please step in and I’ll tell her you’re here.”

   
She made her way laboriously down the hall to a room on the left. I’d been in entry halls larger than the one where I waited, but this one was beautifully furnished. The pale blue carpet looked as if it had been put down yesterday. An impressionist painting of couples strolling past a lake adorned one wall. Tessa Warren had a fine eye for decorating.

   
Several minutes passed before the woman I’d seen in newspaper photos appeared. She seemed to float instead of walk. The dreamy semi-smile she wore looked permanent. Her head cocked prettily.

   
“How lovely of you to want to help with my husband’s campaign.” The softness of her words was almost hypnotic. The handshake she offered had just enough energy to convey sincerity. “I’m afraid you need to go down to his headquarters if you want to sign up. Do you need the address?”

   
“Actually I’ve already been there. This is about Mr. Warren’s early days. On Percy Street. He’s told me a few things, but I’m hoping you can fill in some details.”

   
“Percy Street?” Confusion drew her brows together. “I was only a child...” A note of petulance crept through her serenity. “Cy should have told ... Dear me. We’d better sit down, I suppose.” Her hand flicked vaguely toward a parlor on the right. “I just need to ... take care of something first.”

   
As she turned to go, something caught her attention.

   
“Olivia, get that nasty doll out of here. I’ve told her a dozen times to keep it where it belongs. If I see it down here again, it goes in the rubbish.”

   
“Yes, ma’am.”

   
I hadn’t noticed the battered rag doll at the foot of the stairs until the maid whisked it under her apron and began to climb ponderously. Tessa Warren glided away as if she’d forgotten my presence — which maybe she had. Her viciousness over a kid’s toy startled me. The fact her serenity didn’t so much as waver as she issued orders was downright unsettling. She behaved like a fairy tale princess inhabiting some world apart from the rest of us. Was it an act? Had she overdosed on something stronger than Miles Nervene? Or was there something else about her I was missing?

   
With the maid upstairs and my hostess vanished, I gathered an offer of tea wasn’t on the agenda for me. I went into the parlor to wait. The carpet was the same soft blue as the hall, but the silk upholstery on the Queen Anne sofa and chairs featured a darker hue. In front of the sofa a low table held a vase half-filled with water. A handful of assorted flowers lay scattered as though forgotten on top of the florist’s paper which had held them. Just as I was wondering if Tessa planned to leave me sitting there, she returned.

   
“Oh, how silly. I forgot to put the flowers in water.” She pressed both hands to her mouth and giggled girlishly.

   
“Mrs. Warren, I didn’t introduce myself.” I gave her my card.

   
“Maggie Sullivan.” She tried to appear attentive and failed. Plenty of men had probably fallen for it, though. “What a pretty card.”

   
It was several miles off the reactions most people had when they read
Private Investigator
. Taking a seat across from me, she arranged her head in its decorous tilt.

   
“What was it you said you came about?”

   
“You lived in a house just behind Warren’s menswear shop before the big flood.”

   
As briefly as a firefly’s blink her focus sharpened.

   
“Somewhere over there, yes.”

   
“You told a policeman you saw men put a mannequin out in the alley the day the buildings caught fire there.”

   
“I...”

   
“Actually, you called it a store dolly. Your mother explained to him that you meant a clothing dummy.”

   
Her hands, which had lain decorously in her lap, moved toward each other. She didn’t know the policeman in question was dead. Nor could she be certain that Cy hadn’t already given me some song and dance about the mannequin story. Suddenly she giggled again.

   
“I was such a silly little thing. Always imagining. Mama said I just dreamed it, because I’d lost all my own dollies. Cy says so too.... What does this have to do with his campaign?”

   
I knew mad people bobbled around sometimes, rational one minute and not the next. Tessa’s question about the campaign confirmed my suspicion she kept track of things just fine. She wore her ethereal aura like other women wore perfume, but she wasn’t mad. She knew exactly what she’d seen that day.

   
“In your, ah,
dream,
was your husband one of the men who carried the clothes dummy?”

   
The tip of a small pink tongue darted into view as she moistened her lips. Once more, she couldn’t be certain what — if anything — Cy had told me.

   
“I - I don’t remember—”

   
“When you got older, you realized they were carrying out a body, didn’t you?”

   
She stood up, pressing a hand to her temple. “Oh, dear. I’m getting a headache. You need to leave.”