Don't Dare a Dame (6 page)

   
“If you still want me to learn what I can about your father, I need you to tell me everything you know, or were told, about his disappearance,” I said.

   
The sisters looked at each other.

   
“But we don’t know anything else,” said Corrine at last. “It was the second day. The day the flood was at its worst. I remember Mama saying that.”

   
“And after the fires started,” Isobel said with excitement.

   
“That’s right!”

   
“Neal had gone out to catch a glimpse of the fires. Mama didn’t like it, but she was frantic.”

   
I’d taken my steno pad out and was scribbling furiously. In my teens I’d refused to learn shorthand; I had no interest in being a secretary. Now, in light of how often I needed to make notes while people were talking, I regretted that stubbornness.

   
“She told him not to go past Bonner, but I doubt he obeyed. Neal knew she had too much on her mind to keep track of him.”

   
“Jem — our little brother was sick,” her sister explained. “He had a raging fever. That’s why Papa went out. To try to get to the drugstore and bring back something to help break the fever. We knew things were bad. We’d already heard talk of whole buildings swept away, turned over with people flung out to drown. We prayed we were high enough up to be safe here, and that he could get through.”

   
“Where was the drugstore?”

   
With Alf dead, it was the best place I could think of to start. At least I’d know the direction their father had gone. But both women shook their heads.

   
“We usually went to one over on Apple, but Papa didn’t get far at all before he realized he’d never reach it,” Corrine said. “He zig-zagged and ran into Neal and sent him straight home to tell Mama he was going to try the other way, on Percy. Only....”

   
“He never came home,” I said softly. I waited a minute. “Any idea why he picked Percy instead of some other street? Was there a store there you used sometimes?”

   
Corrine frowned. “No. We always went to the one on Apple.” The silence of defeat engulfed her. Then she straightened. “Unless .... Where was that place with the horehound drops?”

   
Her question to her sister mystified me. Every drugstore I’d ever been in sold horehound drops for sore throats.

   
“Oh ... I remember,” said Isobel vaguely. “The man always gave us a couple. I didn’t like them much, but they were better than no candy at all. But heavens, Corrie, we were children. I have no idea what street it was on, or even the direction.”

   
Corrine scarcely seemed to hear, she was so intent on her thoughts.

   
“I think Papa knew the man who owned it. We were always with Papa when we stopped there. And - and Alf was there sometimes, I think. Papa
knew
the place. Oh, what was the name? Dolan’s? Dobbins’? Something like that.”

   
“That’s good,” I encouraged. “If you happen to think of the name, you can give me a call.”

   
I needed to think through what I’d already learned before I determined what questions I should ask next. A wad of certainty that their father’s disappearance merited at least a little more sniffing around was sticking to me.

   
“Just two more things right now,” I said closing my notebook. “What did the police tell you about Alf’s death? About how he died?”

   
In spite of everything they’d said about their stepfather, Isobel’s eyes grew watery. She cleared her throat in order to speak.

   
“They said — they said he’d turned on the gas. They said he’d left a note.”

   
My ears pricked up. “Did they tell you what it said?”

   
“Not ... verbatim. Just that it indicated he was despondent. That he missed his wife.”

   
I wondered if it had mentioned their legal dispute. Or hostility from his stepdaughters. If it had made any reference to me, I doubted Chief Wurstner would have let me off the hook.

   
“Your brother Neal, does he have any juice at City Hall?”

   
“Influence? Neal?”

   
Isobel started to laugh.

Seven

   
My clients might have stepped in something nastier than they expected. It made more sense than ascribing happenstance to the events that had taken place since they hired me.

   
Was a man’s disappearance twenty-six years ago enough to worry somebody now? Or was my involvement stirring concerns over something more recent? Maybe Alf had been mixed up in something bad enough that word of his stepdaughters hiring a private eye had caused him to kill himself. Or for someone else involved to make murder look like suicide.

   
I chewed on all the possibilities along with a thick ham sandwich while I sat on a bench and watched the activity inside the downtown Arcade. The sandwich was fresh ham, which I liked because it had more flavor than the salty cured kind. Above me a glass dome spread like the hoopskirt of a Southern belle, covering a full city block. At ground level, housewives doing their marketing and downtown workers after a fast lunch swirled past small vendors selling everything from cheeses to pickles to cooked meats and dozens of bakery specialties.

   
I did some of my best thinking in the Arcade. As I watched two women debate the merits of one merchant’s sauerkraut over that of a rival, I did my own debating: Murder or suicide? Linked to the long-ago flood or not? Crime or coincidence?

   
One thing made me increasingly sure it wasn’t coincidence. Namely the complaint that had almost cost me my license.

   
Wurstner had intimated that the complaint — or at least the pressure to act on it — had come from somewhere above him. That could only mean City Hall. The complaint must have come from the mayor’s office or one of the councilmen. That meant either they had a stake in this, or someone who was thick with them did.

   
“Nothing like stepping on big toes,” I muttered under my breath.

   
A man passing with a cone of fresh French fries shot me a look.

   
My pal Jenkins had picked a lousy time to be off enjoying a three-week vacation. His work snapping photographs for the
Daily News
took him in and out of offices all over town, including City Hall. He might have been able to sniff something out, and we traded favors. Popping the last bit of ham in my mouth, I dusted my hands.

   
The threat of losing my license had frightened me plenty. If I had any sense at all, I’d back off. Instead, the anonymous complaint had produced the same effect as waving a red flag in front of a bull. I was going to pin my hopes on Chief Wurstner while I started digging.

***

   
Back in my office I kicked off my shoes and propped my feet on my desk to try a trick that probably wasn’t prudent. If it paid off, though, it might provide something useful. Anyway, both curiosity and resentment were egging me on.

   
I found the number I wanted. I picked up the unsharpened pencil that protected my manicure. Fitting it in the various holes of the telephone dial, I made my call.

   
“George Maguire?” I asked when a male voice answered. Alf Maguire had two sons, but Corrine and Isobel had assured me it would have been George I met that morning, since he and Neal shared an apartment.

   
“Yeah?” he said curtly.

   
“This is the citizen complaints department at City Hall,” I gushed. “Someone failed to log the time when you made your complaint. Could you please tell me what time you called? Approximately? We try to be very strict—”

   
“Complaint? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

   
“Oh, maybe it wasn’t a formal complaint. Did you talk to someone in one of the councilmen’s offices?”

   
“Look, lady, I didn’t call about anything. I’m trying to set up a funeral.” George banged down the phone.

   
He’d sounded genuinely vexed. As if he had no idea what I was talking about. Pleased with what I’d learned so far, I swivelled my chair. Why not see if my tactic could jar loose one more bit of information? I checked my notes from the Vanhorn sisters, looked in the telephone book and dialed the small factory where Neal Vanhorn worked.

   
“This is Dr. Pennington’s office,” I said. “We don’t seem to have noted the time when we saw Neal Vanhorn after that little bump he got yesterday. Could you possibly tell me what time he got back to work? It will help us narrow it.”

   
“Oh, yes. The one who’d injured his nose. Had blood on his shirt. Vanhorn, did you say? Let me check with the girl who does time cards and call you—”

   
“Oops. Doctor needs me. I’ll call you back,” I cut in.

   
As I hung up with one hand I grabbed the phone book with the other. In the event there really was a doctor named Pennington, I’d have to tie his line up with some creative dithering. That part would bother my conscience a little. But there wasn’t. Chastened by the lesson that I sometimes ought to plan better before launching into a tall tale, I waited five minutes and tried the woman at the factory again.

   
“Three-fifteen,” she said. “How lucky for him that he’d taken time off to go to the doctor anyway.”

   
“Uh, yes,” I said. “Thank you so much.” We hung up.

   
So Neal had lied about his reason for taking off work. As I saw it, that more than cancelled out my playing fast and loose with the truth. It confirmed my sense that Neal was untrustworthy. Unfortunately, the time he’d returned to work meant he couldn’t have been the one eavesdropping in the kitchen, and made him a less likely candidate for killing the dog.

   
When he got off work, I’d be waiting to ask if he’d filed the complaint against me. Right now I was going to attempt to track down a drugstore which twenty-six years ago might have vanished into the Ohio River, then the Mississippi, on through the Gulf of Mexico to dispense its horehound drops to Davy Jones.

Eight

   
Dayton’s main library had taken a beating during the flood. A librarian, a custodian and a couple of others had holed up there for three days and nights, enduring freezing temperatures without heat or food. They’d moved what books they could to ever higher floors as the water rose. Among items saved, or located since, were both the 1912 and 1913 editions of the City Directory. Ten minutes after sitting down with them, I hit pay dirt.

   
The Vanhorns had vaguely remembered a drugstore named Dolan’s or Dobbins’. Going through those long-ago addresses on Percy, I found Dillon’s Drugs. According to the listings it had stood between a menswear store and a sewing shop. I jotted down the names and addresses along with those of a few other nearby establishments.

   
When I switched to the latest directory, I discovered that not one of those places still existed. At least not in the original location. After more than a quarter-century some might have moved, but a trip through the phone book brought me to a dead end. I was fairly certain I knew where John Vanhorn had been headed the day he vanished, but the businesses that had been there then appeared to have vanished too.

   
Swept away in the flood?

   
The best way to find out was to go have a look. Most of the afternoon still remained. There’d be plenty of time to get to Neal Vanderhorn’s place of employment and have a friendly chat with him when he came out.

***

   
As I left the reading room, a man who’d had his face buried in a newspaper got up too. He didn’t bother to hang the wooden stick holding the newspaper back on the rack. Did I recall seeing him come in shortly after me? I thought so. He’d definitely been in the same spot reading his paper the whole time I’d been there. I picked out some novels to keep me entertained over the weekend. When I finished getting them stamped, the man was staring avidly at a display.