Confidentially Yours (7 page)

I dialed the long distance operator and put in a person-to-person call to Ernie Sewell. I didn’t know his number, but he lived on Springer Street, on the edge of town, in a small ranch-style house he and his wife were paying off. She worked for the county, in the Tax Assessor’s office. He was a serious-minded and hard-working young man of about 24 who’d been a track and basketball star in high school, and had been in charge of the sporting-goods department at Jennings Hardware before he went to work for Roberts.

“Hello?” he said sleepily. “Oh. Mr. Warren? I thought the operator said New Orleans.”

“She did,” I said. “I came down last night. I’m sorry to get you out of bed this early.”

“It’s all right. Matter of fact, I was going to call you today. But I won’t bother you about it now, over long distance.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “What is it?”

“Well,” he replied hesitantly, “it’s about the store. I don’t want to sound like a ghoul, with Roberts not even buried yet, but somebody’s going to buy the stock and fixtures, probably one of those bankruptcy outfits. My idea is that since you own the building you’d rather have the store there than the vacant space. All I’ve got is a few hundred dollars saved up, but I thought maybe if you’d put in a word for me at the bank I might be able to swing it. Run right, that place could make money.”

“You mean it didn’t? I thought Roberts was doing all right.”

“Well, that’s the funny part of it; it seemed to make money, and maybe the books’ll show a big profit, but I wouldn’t want to try to get the loan under false pretenses. The truth is we didn’t move enough merchandise to make anything after he paid the rent and my salary. The potential’s there, all right, or I wouldn’t want it, but he just didn’t seem to have any interest in the place, and he wouldn’t give me any authority to speak of. For one thing, he’d never keep his stock up; he wouldn’t order anything until somebody asked for it, and then it’s too late—they’d just go to Jennings. And I couldn’t get him to advertise.”

“I see,” I said, thinking of that Browning shotgun, and the Porsche, and a thousand-dollar membership in the Duck Club. “How’d he keep going?”

“I don’t know, so help me, Mr. Warren. He never seemed to have any trouble meeting his bills, and he always had a good-sized balance at the bank. But I do know that if somebody took hold of that place who knew how to run a sporting-goods store and would stay home and run it, he could have Jennings looking at his hole card inside of three months. He hasn’t got anybody over there that knows anything about guns and fishing tackle.”

“I know,” I said. “Then you think Roberts was doctoring his books, or had some other source of income?”

“Well, I don’t know whether he was faking the books or not, but he sure seemed to be banking more money than we took in. I realize it’d be easier to get the loan if I didn’t say anything about this, but I don’t like to do business that way.”

“I’ll see you get the loan,” I said. “But what about Roberts’ family? Have they located anybody yet?”

“Yes. Mr. Scanlon and I went down to the store yesterday evening after supper and found a couple of letters with his brother’s address on them. He lives in Houston, Texas. Scanlon sent off a wire, and got one back in a couple of hours. The brother’s making arrangements to have the body shipped to Houston for the funeral. It’ll be a week or ten days, though, before he can get down here to pick up Roberts’ personal stuff and see about disposing of the store.”

“Do you remember the brother’s address?”

“No, I’m sorry. I do remember his name was Clinton, though. Clinton L. Roberts.”

“You won’t open the store today, I suppose?”

“No. Scanlon said we’d better close it until the brother gets here. All his stuff is there in the apartment in back. I turned the key over to him—Mr. Scanlon, I mean.”

“I see. Well, here’s what I wanted to ask you, Ernie. Do you happen to know what girls Roberts ran around with mostly?”

By now he was probably exploding with curiosity, but he was too polite to express it. “Well, there were a lot of ’em, I guess, though he never talked about ’em much. He was more interested in girls than he was in the store, that’s for sure. At different times I’ve seen him with Carol Holliday, and Mrs. Ryan that works for you, and Midge Carson. And let’s see—Doris Bentley, and Sue Prentiss. And probably some more I can’t think of at the moment.”

Doris Bentley, I thought. She’d worked for Frances when she had the dress shop. It’d been a year and a half since I’d heard her voice on the telephone, but in those days she’d answer quite often when I’d call there for Frances. It could be—

“Thanks a lot, Ernie,” I said. “And don’t worry about the loan.”

I carried the bag out front, mingled with a crowd of incoming passengers reclaiming their luggage, and took the airport bus downtown. At the first stop, I got off, took a taxi to a cheap hotel off the lower end of Canal Street, and registered as James D. Weaver, of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was twenty after seven, still two hours before the banks opened. The room was on the second floor, overlooking a dreary alley filled with utility poles and trash barrels. I left a call for nine-thirty, and lay down. The bed rocked as if I were still driving, and the instant I closed my eyes the pulpy and battered mass of her face was burned into the backs of the fids down to the last projecting shard of bone, and I sat up shaking and sick, my mouth locked against the outcry welling up inside me.

Sleep was out of the question. I shaved and took a shower, and sat on the side of the bed, chain-smoking cigarettes until almost nine, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle into some recognizable pattern. It was hopeless. I didn’t have enough of them. Taking the folder from the suitcase, I walked uptown through chill sunlight and the early morning traffic to a bank where one of the officers knew me, and turned in the bonds. It was a routine procedure until they asked whether I wanted a cashier’s check or a draft and I explained I wanted it in cash. It was obvious they disapproved and thought I had a screw loose somewhere, but they had to give it to me. I made some lame excuse about a business deal, stowed the 180 one hundred-dollar bills and some change in my wallet and the inside pockets of my jacket, and went out. It was ten-ten
A.M.
now, and I had to work fast.

I always ate breakfast at Fuller’s, even when Frances was home, because she never got up before ten. I was usually in the office by eight-fifteen. At least six mornings of the week Mulholland was there having his breakfast at the same time, and even if he missed today he’d probably ask if anybody had seen me. At any rate, by this time Scanlon would have learned that I hadn’t shown up so in town. He’d call the office, and the house, while the air around the courthouse became incandescent with profanity, and within a few minutes somebody was going to be checking the garage at home to see if my car was gone. When they found it missing, but the Mercedes there, and still could get no answer, they’d break in a door, and within an hour the police all the way from Texas to South Carolina were going to have the description and license number of that Chevrolet. Ernie might call and tell him I was in New Orleans, as soon as the story got around town, but whether he did or not, by sometime this afternoon he’d have found out where I cashed the bonds and they’d have located the car abandoned at the airport. I had four or five hours at the most.

I headed for a phone booth, and began flipping through the yellow pages of the directory.
Dentists
…
Derricks
…
Desks
…

Louis Norman of the Norman Detective Agency had a lean and thoughtful face, the attentive gaze of a born listener, and some quality of ageless disillusion about the eyes which seemed to promise that if you hoped to tell him anything that would surprise him you were out of luck. He leaned back in his chair with a ruler balanced between his fingertips and surveyed me across the top of it. “What can I do for you, Mr.—?”

“Warren.” I passed over one of my business cards. “John D. Warren, Carthage, Alabama. First, have you got enough men to handle a rush job that’ll probably take a lot of legwork?”

He nodded. “Three, beside myself, and I can get a couple more if necessary. That kind of crash job can run into money, though, if it takes very long.”

“I know.” I slid six one hundred-dollar bills from the overstuffed wallet and dropped them on the desk in front of him. “Use your own judgment as to how many men you need. If it runs more, bill me. I want some information, and I want it fast.”

“That’s the business we’re in. What is it you need?”

While I had the wallet out, I removed the photograph of Frances and dropped it beside the money. “That’s my wife. She was m New Orleans from December 30th until yesterday. I want to know the places she went, whom she was seeing, and what she was doing.”

“You say until yesterday. Then she’s not here now?”

“No. She’s at home.”

He pursed his lips. “It won’t be easy. Tailing is one thing; backtrailing—”

“If it were easy, I wouldn’t need professionals,” I said. “Can you do it?”

“Probably. How old is the picture?”

“Eighteen months. It’s a good likeness.”

“That’ll help. But a lot would still depend on what kind of starting point you can give us.” He reached for a pad and undipped his pen.

“Full name, Frances Warren,” I said. “Maiden name, Frances Kinnan. Twenty-seven years old, five-feet-seven, about 120 pounds, black hair, blue-green eyes. Always expensively dressed, in good taste, and in daytime she favors dark tailored suits. When she came down here she had a light-colored mink coat, but sometime in the seven days it apparently disappeared—along with about seven thousand dollars in cash. She was driving a dark blue Mercedes-Benz 220 sedan with blue upholstery and Alabama license plates, but the chances are she didn’t use it getting around the city because she doesn’t like driving in heavy traffic and trying to outguess these oneway streets. So she would have been using taxis, because she never walks anywhere if she can help it and wouldn’t be found dead on a bus or streetcar. Any taxi driver would remember her, because of the legs if nothing else, and the fact she’s a lousy tipper and arrogant enough to take back the dime if he got unhappy about it. She was registered at the Devore Hotel, and checked out yesterday around seven
P.M.

“She came down originally to go to the Sugar Bowl game with some New Orleans friends, the Harold L. Dickinsons of 2770 Stilwell Drive. She and Mrs. Dickinson were supposed to have gone to a series of concerts during the past week, and some cocktail parties, but as to how much she actually saw of the Dickinsons I don’t know. You might be able to find out something there, without mentioning me. I do know she was at the hotel at least part of the time, because I talked to her there on the nights of January 2nd and 3rd—”

He interrupted. “Did you call her, or she call you?”

“I called her,” I said. “She was at the hotel, all right.”

“Just what makes you suspect her?”

I explained about the call from the pay station when she said she was at the hotel. “And there’s the money, of course. Nobody could run through $7000 in a week going to a football game and a couple of concerts. Or even buying clothes—unless she was in Paris. And, also, what happened to the coat?”

“Was it insured?”

“Yes.”

“Even so, it might have been lost or stolen and she was afraid to tell you. But with all the other money she seems to have got rid of, it seems more likely she sold it or hocked it. I’ll have a man hit the pawn shops and check back through the classified ads. But how did she get hold of $7000? You don’t carry that much in a checking account, do you?”

I explained about the stocks she’d sold, and gave him the name of the broker.

He nodded. “Then if it was hers, it’s not the money you’re interested in?”

“No,” I said. “Only what she was doing with it.”

“You believe it’s another man?”

“Sure. I can’t think of any other reason she’d lie about where she was. And she must have given that money to somebody.”

“This is professional,” he said, “so don’t take offense. Strictly off that photograph, she’d never have to buy any men, so there must be another answer. Has she ever, to your knowledge, been in any kind of trouble? Anything she could be blackmailed for?”

“No,” I said. “She was no gangster or gun moll. Before we were married, she owned a dress shop in Carthage. And before that, she ran one in Miami.”

“Does she have family connections of any kind in Carthage?”

“No,” I said.

“Friends? I mean, before she came there?”

“No.”

“Hmmm. Did she ever say why she gave up a business in a city the size of Miami to open one in a small town where she didn’t even know anybody?”

“Sure. It was a divorce. She and her husband owned the place jointly, and when they split up they sold it and divided the proceeds.” I explained how she was on her way to the Coast when she stopped overnight in Carthage and became interested in its possibilities.

“I see,” he said, though it was obvious he wasn’t completely satisfied, any more than I was now. “Where can I get in touch with you here?”

“You can’t. I’m just in town for the day, and haven’t got a hotel room. But I’ll call you this afternoon, and after that you can reach me at my office in Carthage. The number’s on the card. If I’m not in, you can give the information to my secretary, Mrs. Barbara Ryan.”

He gave a shake of the head. “We don’t like to pass confidential information to a third person.”

“It’s all right in this case,” I said. “I authorize it.”

“You’ll have to put that in writing. And there’s another thing—she’ll have to identify herself. Any woman on the phone could say her name was Barbara Ryan.”

“Yes, I know. But you can give me a file number.”

“All right,” he agreed reluctantly. He scribbled something on the pad. “The number is W-511.”

“Right.” I made a note of it, scribbled the authorization on another sheet of his pad, and signed it. When I went out, he was already giving orders on the intercom.

I stopped at a bank, got twenty dollars worth of quarters and dimes, and took a taxi to the telephone company office. In the battery of out-of-town directories, I looked up detective agencies in Houston and Miami. One of the big nationwide outfits could have handled all three jobs, but I had to keep them separate.