“That kept on all through the summer and we asked her if it was anything serious, but all she’d do was say, ‘Who knows?’ She never would tell us anything. She always wanted us to talk, but she wouldn’t. We tried to get her to bring him up sometime, so we could meet him, but she never would and she wouldn’t tell us a whisper about him, what he did, or how she met him, or anything. She wouldn’t even tell us what he looked like. She’d always laugh and change the subject.
“Then, it was two or three months ago, she didn’t go out any more. You could tell something had happened, because her face got longer and longer. We suspected they’d broken up, but we didn’t dare ask her about it.
“Then, in January, like a bolt out of the blue, she suddenly said she was going to move out. It was only about ten days before the end of the month. At first she wouldn’t say why. All she’d admit was she was quitting her job and leaving town, but we couldn’t let her alone on that, so she finally broke down and said she was getting married. Well, we were utterly astonished. We asked if it was Johnny and she said it was and we couldn’t get over it. We told her we thought that had broken up and she said it had for a while, but then he’d come back and proposed and they were going to get married right away.
“We were eager to help her get ready for the wedding, but she wouldn’t have it. She said it was going to be a quiet affair and she didn’t know where. She said Johnny had been transferred out West somewhere and she was going out there to marry him. She couldn’t even tell us where she was going to live, she said, because she didn’t know, and she wouldn’t even tell us what her married name would be. All she’d say was that as soon as they were settled, she’d write and tell us all about it.”
The girl brushed a hand over her forehead. “On that Friday night, the last Friday in January, she packed all her things and Saturday morning Bob came over in his truck and took the trunk to the station for her and she shipped it out. She left here on Sunday. She took a taxi to the station with those suitcases and that’s the last we ever saw or heard of her.”
Fellows stroked his chin when the girl’s story was finished. He had expected that when he learned the victim’s identity, he’d automatically discover the man’s, but it hadn’t come so easily. The man, whoever he was, had operated completely under cover, had apparently sold Joan Simpson a fast line and convinced her he should never be revealed.
When Ruth’s roommate, Helen Burnam, came in with Bob Herald, Fellows and Wilks questioned them with the same effect. Helen, no more than Ruth, knew anything about the dead girl’s background, only that she worked for the Fizz-Rite Bottling Company, and she too knew nothing more than “Johnny’s” first name. Bob Herald had little additional information. “I took her trunk to the station,” he said. “She rode with me and I kept asking her where she was going, but she wouldn’t say. She wouldn’t even let me see when she filled out a tag for the trunk. She kept saying I’d find out all about it in good time. I thought it was a funny way for a girl about to get married to behave and I guess I was half thinking she wasn’t going to get married at all. I sort of suspected she was running away with some guy.” When the two policemen left, Wilks went down the stairs a frustrated man. “What was the matter with that girl?” he growled. “Couldn’t she see she was playing right into the hands of a murderer?”
Fellows said, “Are you figuring he meant to kill her from the first moment, Sid?”
Wilks banged the suitcase he carried against the rail of the concrete steps outside in anger. “What do you figure?”
Fellows shook his head. “I guess I figure the ceiling needs a few more BB’s before it falls,” he said, and Wilks gave him a puzzled look.
CHAPTER XIX
Wednesday, March 4
Wednesday morning Sergeant Wilks made a trip to the Fizz-Rite Bottling Company south of Townsend and talked to everyone there who could give him information about the late Joan Simpson. At the same time, Ed Lewis was put in charge of a new project, that of checking every motel in the prescribed area for guests by the name of John Campbell. That morning, too, Raymond Watly made another trip to Hartford and his was the dreariest job of all. Since Andy Palekowski had seen Burchard and not Campbell, all the rogue’s gallery pictures he had checked had to be gone over again. Frank Restlin complained and Watly was unhappy, but it was work that had to be done.
Wilks was back from his job before lunch and reported to the chief that Fizz-Rite company records showed Joan Simpson had been in their employ since September 1954, that she had worked in the Bridgeport production plant until September 1957, when she was among those moved to the new bottling plant just opened outside of Townsend. Before that, Joan had worked for the Masters Toy Company in Bridgeport and her family had their home in that city. As for the question of men in her life, no one there admitted knowing a thing. No one there had ever tried to date her.
“That girl was too quiet for her own good,” Wilks complained.
“Somewhere in her life there’s a man, but it’s a better secret than the atom bomb.”
Fellows said, “Sure nobody was lying, Sid?”
“I can’t swear to it. Who can? But there are only twelve men in the plant and nine
