“John, huh? Can you tell us what he was like? Describe him?”
“He was a young fellow, late twenties. About six feet tall, slender build, dark hair. I suppose you’d call him nice-looking.”
“Any others?”
Busso’s manner had lost a little of its geniality. His brows were darker and his eyes were thoughtful. He said abruptly, “I don’t know of any others.”
“This might help,” Fellows said, rising. “Where would I find personnel?”
“Third door on your right, down the hall.” Busso got up too. “I’d look into Lawrence. He might have carried on with her after he left here. He’s the type.”
Wilks grinned at Fellows as they got into the hall. “Somebody was beating his time, I guess.”
Fellows said, “There wasn’t any love lost there, that’s for sure.” The personnel manager, a Mr. Blake, was available, and they sat down with him in his office to tell him their story. He listened and looked sympathetic at news of Joan’s death, but grinned at the mention of Lawrence.
“I remember the whole thing,” he said. “I ought to. Joan was one of Busso’s girls. He buys a new edition about every four years. They’re always bright, shiny, and eye-catching, but everyone around here knows you don’t touch the merchandise. This fellow Lawrence, though, he was working here when Busso brought in Joan Simpson. Lawrence was in sales, that’s right across the hall, so I knew him quite well. He was a character, that boy. No woman between six and sixty was safe around him.
“He hadn’t been in here long, though, and Joan was brought in a short time after to replace one of Busso’s older models. Old John knew he shouldn’t touch, of course, he was savvy enough to know the score, but she was right up his alley, real Lawrence bait, and then there was the challenge. That was partly it too, I guess. Anyway, he went after Joan himself, hot and heavy and, of course, alongside of Busso, this guy was prince charming. Joan knew the score too and she was playing both ends against the middle,, holding hands with Busso, so to speak, on top of the table and playing footsie with Lawrence underneath.
“But that Busso, say what you like, he was still no dummy and this kind of thing couldn’t go on long without him catching wise. When he did, out went Lawrence. The rest of us around here thought he’d can them both, but as I say, Busso isn’t a real dummy. Joan he liked, Lawrence he didn’t, so it was Lawrence who got the gate and that broke up the affair nice and clean. After that, Busso had no more trouble.”
Fellows said, “This lad Lawrence sounds like a guy who can’t stay away from the women no matter what the risk.”
Mr. Blake, who wasn’t too old a man himself, laughed. “I’d say he not only wouldn’t stay away no matter what the risk, he’d go looking no matter what the risk. You think he had anything to do with it?”
“The attitude fits. Know what happened to him? Know if he kept on seeing Joan?”
“I don’t think he did. He might have tried, but I think Busso would make it clear to Joan what her position was and she’d play safe. I don’t know about that. I did run into him on the street a couple of years later and we didn’t talk about Joan. He was the kind of guy who could forget a girl pretty fast. My guess is that trying to keep on with her when he wasn’t working there would be complicated. I think he’d look around where he was^ rather than waste effort on hard-to-get girls.”
“You don’t know where he is now?”
“That time I saw him on the street he said he was selling cars. Of course that was six years ago or longer. I don’t know where he’d be now.”
“Anything in your files on him?”
Blake had his secretary check through the records. She came back with nothing. “You’d probably find him in the phone book)” the personnel manager said.
Fellows said, “If we do, he’s probably not the man.” He and Wilks thanked him and went out.
CHAPTER XXII
Thursday, March 5
John Lawrence was not in the Bridgeport phone book nor was he listed in Townsend, Stockford, or any of the other neighboring towns that Fellows had included in his “area.” This fact awakened the chief’s interest, but didn’t have the same effect on the detective sergeant. “He could be anywhere,” Wilks said. “He lost his job and sold cars for a while and then got another job up in Maine or out in Podunk, Iowa. Just because—”
“I know all that,” Fellows told him. “I just want to find out.”
It was Thursday morning and the reports on the chief’s desk were mostly negative. A check of pawn shops had failed to produce the wrist watch Burchard claimed Joan was wearing; a check of motel registers had failed to turn up the name John Campbell; and Watly’s second trip to Hartford had been as fruitless as the first. In addition, there were reports from the State Police lab saying that while fingerprints had been found on some of the silver taken from the murder house, they were unidentified and presumably belonged to the dead girl. Dust from the house had been analyzed and found clueless. The only positive development in the case was a report from Dr. MacFarlane saying that Mr. and Mrs. Simpson had identified the body as being their daughter and had taken it home for burial.
Wilks gestured at the cluttered desk and said, “You’re getting desperate, Fred. You’re desperate so you’re going after an eight-year-old affair that has nothing to show it’s held over at all.”
“I’m going after everything everywhere,” Fellows admitted, “but it’s not because I’m desperate. I’m trying to be thorough.”
Fellows’s thoroughness in this matter consisted of sending a team of three men to Bridgeport to make
