Tom suggested if my concern was such that I felt immediate action warranted, I might contact you. Which I have.”
She was doing an admirable job of maintaining her composure; but there was a quaver in her voice and her eyes were moist.
“If you have any reason to suspect a kidnapping or foul play,” I said, keeping my voice calm and soft, to lessen the impact of such menacing words, “I think you’re doing the right thing. Trails can go cold in twenty-four hours.”
She nodded, found a brave smile.
“My husband, Silber, is a doctor, a pediatrician. We live in the Edgewater Beach Apartments.”
That meant money; no wonder she hadn’t questioned me about my rates.
“Last evening Betty Lou, our eight year-old, and I returned home from visiting my parents in Bowen. Silber met us at Union Station and we dined at little restaurant on the North Side-the name escapes me, but I could probably come up with it if it proves vital-and then came home. Silber went to bed; I was sitting up reading. The phone rang. The voice was male. I asked for a name, an address, the nature of the business, doing my best to screen the call. But the caller insisted on talking to the doctor. I was reluctant, but I called Silber to the phone, and I heard him say, ‘What is it?…. Oh, a child is ill? Give me the address and I’ll be there straight away.’”
“Did your husband write the address down?”
She nodded. “Yes, and I have the sheet right here.” She dug in her purse and handed it to me.
In the standard barely readable prescription-pad scrawl of any doctor, the note said: “G. Smale. 6438 North Whipple Street.”
“Didn’t the police want this?”
She shook her head no. “Not until it’s officially a missing persons case they don’t.”
“No phone number?”
“My husband asked for one and was told that the caller had no phone.”
“Presumably he was calling on one.”
She shrugged, with sad frustration. “I didn’t hear the other end of the conversation. All I can say for certain is that my husband hung up, sighed, smiled and said, ‘No rest for the wicked,’ and dressed. I jotted the information from the pad onto the top of the little Chicago street guide he carries, when he’s doing house calls.”
“So he never took the original note with him?”
“No. What you have there is what he wrote. Then Silber kissed me, picked up his black instrument bag and left. I remember glancing at the clock in the hall. It was 10:05 p.m.”
“Did you hear from him after that?”
“No I did not. I slept, but fitfully, and woke around one thirty a.m. Silber wasn’t home yet. I remember being irritated with him for taking a call from someone who wasn’t a regular patient; he has an excellent practice, now- there’s no need for it. I called the building manager and asked if Silber’s car had returned to the garage. It hadn’t. I didn’t sleep a wink after that. When dawn broke, so, I’m afraid, did I. I called Tom Courtney; he came around at once, phoned the police for me, then advised me to see you, should I feel the need for immediate action.”
“I’m going to need some further information,” I said.
“Certainly.”
Questioning her, I came up with a working description and other pertinent data: Peacock was forty years old, a member of the staff of Children’s Memorial. He’d been driving a 1931 black Cadillac sedan, 1936 license 25 -682. Wearing a gray suit, gray topcoat, gray felt hat. Five foot seven, 150 pounds, wire frame glasses.
I walked her down to the street and helped her hail a cab. I told her I’d get right on the case, and that in future she needn’t call on me; I’d come to her at her Edgewater Beach apartment. She smiled, rather bravely I thought, as she slipped into the backseat of the cab; squeezed my arm and looked at me like I was something noble.
Well, I didn’t feel very noble. Because as her cab turned down Plymouth Court I was thinking that her husband the good doctor had probably simply had himself a big evening. He’d show up when his head stopped throbbing, or when something below the belt stopped throbbing, anyway. In future he’d need to warn his babe to stop calling him at home, even if she did have a brother or a knack for doing a convincing vocal imitation of a male.
Back in my office I got out the private detective’s most valuable weapon-the telephone book-and looked up G. W. Smale. There was a listing with the same street number-6438-but the street was wrong, South Washtenaw. The names and house numbers tallied, yes, but the streets in question were on opposite sides of the city. The reverse directory listing street numbers followed by names and numbers told me that no “G. Smale” was listed at 6438 North Whipple.
What the hell; I called the Smale on South Washtenaw.
“I don’t know any Dr. Peacock,” he said. “I never saw the man in my life.”
“Who do you take your kids to when they’re sick?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody?”
“I don’t have any kids. I’m not a father.”
I talked to him for fifteen minutes, and he seemed forthright enough; my instincts, and I do a lot of phone work, told me to leave him to the cops, or at least till later that afternoon. I wanted to check out the doctor’s working quarters.
So I tooled my sporty ’32 Auburn over to 4753 Broadway, where Dr. Peacock shared sumptuous digs with three other doctors, highly reputable medical specialists all. His secretary was a stunning brunette in her late twenties, a Miss Kathryn Mulrooney. I like a good-looking woman in white; the illusion of virginity does something for me.
“I know what you’re going to ask,” she said, quickly, before I’d asked anything. All I’d done was show her my investigator’s i.d. and say I was in Mrs. Peacock’s employ. “Dr. Peacock had no patient named Smale; I’ve been digging through our files ever since Mrs. Peacock called this morning, just in case my memory is faulty.”
She didn’t look like she had a faulty anything.
“What’s even stranger,” she said, with a tragic expression, “he almost never answered night calls. Oh, he once upon a time did-he hated to turn away any sick child. His regular patients seldom asked him to do so, however, and this practice has become so large that he wasn’t accepting any new cases. It’s unbelievable that…”
She paused; I’d been doing my job, asking questions, listening, but a certain part of me had been undressing the attractive nurse in my mind’s eye-everybody needs a hobby-and she misread my good-natured lechery toward her for something else.
“Please!” she said. “You mustn’t leap to horrid conclusions. Dr. Peacock was a man of
“I see,” I said.
“I hope you do,” she said curtly. “That he might have been involved in an affair with a woman other than his wife is unthinkable. Please believe me.”
“Perhaps I do. But could you answer one question?”
“What’s that?”
“Why are you referring to the doctor in the past tense?”
She began to cry; she’d been standing behind a counter-now she leaned against it.
“I…I wish I believed him capable of running around on Ruth, his wife. Then I wouldn’t be so convinced that something…something
I felt bad; I’d been suspicious of her, been looking to find her between the doctor’s sheets, and had made her cry. She was a sincere young woman, that was obvious.
“I’m very sorry,” I said, meaning itde her cry turned to go.
But before I went out, another question occurred to me, and I asked it: “Miss Mulrooney-had the parents of any patient ever blamed Dr. Peacock for some unfortunate results of some medical treatment he administered? Any threats of reprisal?”
“Absolutely not,” she said, chin trembling.
