“It’s me. Sherlock Holmes,” I said. “How did your claim files go?”
“Oh, fine. Summer is a busy time for accidents with so many people on the road. They should stay home, but then they’d cut off their legs with lawnmowers or something and we’d be paying just the same.”
“Did you refile that draft without any trouble?” I asked.
“Actually not, I couldn’t find the file. I looked up the guy’s account, though: he must have been in a doozy of an accident-We’ve been sending him weekly checks for four years now.” He chuckled a little. “I was going to inspect Yardley’s face today to see if he looked guilty of multiple homicide, but he’s taking the rest of the week off- apparently cut up about Thayer’s death.”
“I see.” I wasn’t going to bother telling him about the link I’d found between Masters and McGraw; I was tired of arguing with him over whether I had a case or not.
“Dinner tomorrow night?” he asked.
“Make it Thursday,” I suggested. “Tomorrow’s going to be pretty open-ended.”
As soon as I put the phone down, it rang. “Dr. Herschel’s residence,” I said. It was my favorite reporter, Murray Ryerson.
“Just got a squeal that Tony Bronsky may have killed John Thayer,” he said.
“Oh, really? Are you going to publish that?”
“Oh, I think we’ll paint a murky picture of gangland involvement. It’s just a whiff, no proof, he wasn’t caught at the scene, and our legal people have decided mentioning his name would be actionable.”
“Thanks for sharing the news,” I said politely.
“I wasn’t calling out of charity,” Murray responded. “But in my lumbering Swedish way it dawned on me that Bronsky works for Smeissen. We agreed yesterday that his name has been cropping up here and there around the place. What’s his angle, Vic-why would he kill a respectable banker and his son?”
“Beats the hell out of me, Murray,” I said, and hung up.
I went back and watched the rest of the movie,
Around midnight, as the movie was ending, the phone rang. Lotty answered it in her bedroom and came back, her face troubled. She gave me a quiet signal to follow her to the kitchen. “A man,” she said in a low voice. “He asked if you were here; when I said yes, he hung up.”
“Oh, hell,” I muttered. “Well, nothing to be done about it now… My apartment will be ready tomorrow night-I’ll go back and remove this powder keg from your home.”
Lotty shook her head and gave her twisted smile. “Not to worry, Vic-I’m counting on you fixing the AMA for me someday.”
Lotty sent Jill unceremoniously off to bed. Paul got out his sleeping bag. I helped him move the heavy walnut dining-room table against the wall, and Lotty brought him a pillow from her bed, then went to sleep herself.
The night was muggy; Lotty’s brick, thick-walled building kept out the worst of the weather, and exhaust fans in the kitchen and dining rooms moved the air enough to make sleep possible. But the air felt close to me anyway. I lay on the daybed in a T-shirt, and sweated, dozed a bit, woke, tossed, and dozed again. At last I sat up angrily. I wanted to do something, but there was nothing for me to do. I turned on the light. It was 3:30.
I pulled on a pair of jeans and tiptoed out to the kitchen to make some coffee. While water dripped through the white porcelain filter, I looked through a bookcase in the living room for something to read. All books look equally boring in the middle of the night. I finally selected
Above the hum of fans I could head the phone ring faintly in Lotty’s room. We’d turned it off next to the spare bed where Jill was sleeping. I told myself it had to be for Lotty-some mother in labor, or some teen-ager-but I sat tensely anyway and was somehow not surprised when Lotty came out of her room, wrapped in a thin, striped cotton robe.
“For you. A Ruth Yonkers.”
I shrugged my shoulders; the name meant nothing to me. “Sorry to get you up,” I said, and went down the short hallway to Lotty’s room. I felt as if all the night’s tension had had its focus in waiting for this unexpected phone call from an unknown woman. The instrument was on a small Indonesian table next to Lotty’s bed. I sat on the bed and spoke into it.
“This is Ruth Yonkers,” a husky voice responded. “I talked to you at the UWU meeting tonight.”
“Oh. yes,” I said calmly. “I remember you.” She’d been the stocky, square young woman who’d asked me all the questions at the end.
“I talked to Anita after the meeting. I didn’t know how seriously to take you, but I thought she ought to know about it.” I held my breath and said nothing. “She called me last week, told me about finding Peter’s-finding Peter. She made me promise not to tell anyone where she was without checking with her first. Not even her father, or the police. It was all rather-bizarre.”
“I see,” I said.
“Do you?” she asked doubtfully.
“You thought she’d killed Peter, didn’t you,” I said in a comfortable tone. “And you felt caught by her choosing you to confide in. You didn’t want to betray her, but you didn’t want to be involved in a murder. So you were relieved to have a promise to fall back on.”
Ruth gave a little sigh, half laugh, that came ghostily over the line. “Yes, that was it exactly. You’re smarter than I thought you were. I hadn’t realized Anita might be in danger herself-that was why she sounded so scared. Anyway, I called her. We’ve been talking for several hours. She’s never heard of you and We’ve been debating whether we can trust you.” She paused and I was quiet. “I think we have to. That’s what it boils down to. If it’s true, if there really are some mob people after her-it all sounds surreal, but she says you’re right.”
“Where is she?” I asked gently.
“Up in Wisconsin. I’ll take you to her.”
“No. Tell me where she is, and I’ll find her. I’m being followed, and it’ll just double the danger to try to meet up with you.”
“Then I won’t tell you where she is,” Ruth said. “ My agreement with her was that I would bring you to her.”
“you’ve been a good friend, Ruth, and you’ve carried a heavy load. But if the people who are after Anita find out you know where she is, and suspect you’re in her confidence, your own life is in danger. Let me run the risk-it’s my job, after all.”
We argued for several more minutes, but Ruth let herself be persuaded. She’d been under a tremendous strain for the five days since Anita had first called her, and she was glad to let someone else take it over. Anita was in Hartford, a little town northwest of Milwaukee. She was working as a waitress in a cafe. She’d cut her red hair short and dyed it black, and she was calling herself Jody Hill. If I left now, I could catch her just as the cafe opened for breakfast in the morning.
It was after four when I hung up. I felt refreshed and alert, as if I’d slept soundly for eight hours instead of tossing miserably for three.
Lotty was sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading. “Lotty, I do apologize. You get little enough sleep as it is. But I think this is the beginning of the end.”
“Ah, good,” she said, putting a marker in her book and shutting it. “The missing girl?”
“Yes. That was a friend who gave me the address. All I have to do now is get away from here without being seen.”
“Where is she?” I hesitated. “My dear, I’ve been questioned by tougher experts than these Smeissen hoodlums. And perhaps someone else should know.”
I grinned. “You’re right.” I told her, then added, “The question is, what about Jill? We were going to go up to Winnetka tomorrow-today, that is-to see if her father had any papers that might explain his connection with Masters and McGraw. Now maybe Anita can make that tie-in for me. But I’d still be happier to get Jill back up there. This whole arrangement-Paul under the dining-room table, Jill and the babies-makes me uncomfortable. If she wants to come back for the rest of the summer, sure-she can stay with me once this mess is cleared up. But for
