The Thanksgiving Day Murder (6 page)

“I was just married last summer.”

“Don't wait too long. The clock is ticking.”

“What clock?”

“Your biological clock. Let that body of yours do what it was born to do.”

I promised her I would. “You've been very helpful, Sue, and it's been a great lunch.”

“Anything,” she said with feeling. “I want her found. I want to know what happened to her.”

“I'll do my best. Do you happen to know where she lived before this address?” I showed her the one Sandy had given me.

She shook her head. “That's where she lived when I met her. I think she said she'd moved there around the time she started working at Hopkins.”

“Do you know if she ever had a roommate?”

“No idea. She didn't when I met her.”

“Old boyfriends?” I asked.

“She went out, but if there was anyone important, I don't think I knew about him. She would mention names sometimes, but mostly first names. I'm sorry I can't help you.”

“You've helped me a lot.” I opened my bag and took out the ring of keys. “Do you recognize these?”

She shook her head. “Can't say I do, can't say I don't. Should I?”

“I don't know.” I wrote my name, address, and phone
number on a piece of paper and gave it to her. “In case you think of anything. Did you tell the detective substantially what you told me?”

“Substantially. I didn't tell him she thought she was pregnant.”

“Why not?”

“He didn't ask and I didn't think it was his business.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“Thank you for talking about her in the present tense.”

I had noticed she had done the same. I shook her hand, wished her well, and got my coat. Outside it was still bitter cold. As I walked to the car, for the first time I thought I heard my biological clock ticking.

It was two o'clock when I started the car and ten after when I spotted a pay phone. I didn't know if Friday afternoon was a good time to call for an appointment, but I wanted to get one at Hopkins and Jewell as soon as possible. A very self-possessed sounding woman answered and I told her I was looking into the disappearance of Natalie Miller Gordon and wanted to talk to someone who had known her.

“Is this concerned with her disappearance?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Who do you represent?”

I told her I was working for Sandy Gordon.

“I'll have to check it out, ma'am, before I can make an appointment.”

I told her that would be fine and she put me on hold. I took some more quarters out of my bag and waited. I always carry quarters with me because they're good for parking meters as well as pay phones. I haven't yet come to terms with credit cards, although if I ever do, it's my shoulder that will benefit.

“He says it's OK,” she said, coming back sooner than I expected. “When would you like to come in?”

“I can probably be there in an hour.”

“I'll squeeze you in when you get here.”

I had surprised myself by saying I would drive into the city, but where I was calling from was closer to New York than where I lived, so it made sense to go from here instead of waiting for Monday and going from Oakwood. Besides, the sooner is always the better.

There was little traffic until I got below Forty-second Street, and it picked up again when I got on Eighteenth Street and drove east. When I was more or less in the area of Hopkins and Jewell, I started looking around for a meter. I realized pretty quickly this was silly on two counts. One was, there weren't any free, and the other was that Sandy had given me money for just this purpose. But I admit to having pangs of conscience when I drove into a parking garage.

An attractive young woman sat inside the door of the office and gave me a radiant smile. My name rang a bell and she made a call after asking me to take a seat.

“I have Christine Bennett here,” I heard her say. Then, “We'll be right there.” She stood and invited me to join her. She was wearing a very short suede skirt and a matching vest over a black blouse. At a door at the end of the hall, she knocked, waited, then opened it “Go right in,” she said.

To my surprise, the person who rose from behind the desk was a handsome woman in her thirties, dressed to kill in a pin-striped suit with a silk blouse showing at the neck, fingernails longer than mine have ever grown and lacquered with a startling shade of red, and blond hair that defied description. It was crinkled and seemed to be everywhere from high above her head to almost as far as each shoulder. “I'm Arlene Hopkins,” the woman said, extending her hand.

“Chris Bennett. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

“We were all devastated by Natalie's disappearance. Anything we can do to help, we will.”

“Can you tell me how you came to hire Natalie?”

“We were just starting up and we needed a core staff. We ran an ad in the
Times
and she answered it. We didn't have a personnel department or recruiters or anything very professional at the time. We just let our guts tell us what to do. She was interviewed and she was hired.”

“I wonder if you could show me the letter she wrote, her resume, letters of recommendation she sent, anything at all that you have.”

Arlene Hopkins stared at me as though I had made some terrible faux pas. I looked at her with confusion, wondering if I had inadvertently offended her.

“I'm afraid that's impossible,” she said finally.

“I really need—”

“I understand it might be useful to you. It's just that we don't have that material anymore.”

“You've disposed of it?”

“When we opened the shop we didn't have two nickels to rub together. We had pencils and paper and an old file cabinet from my mother's basement. All those original records were on paper and very space-consuming. When we moved here last year, we threw out everything that hadn't been put on computer, especially for employees that were long gone. Payroll data is on computer, of course, but I don't know how helpful that would be for you.”

Not very helpful at all. “Do you have any recollection of where she worked before she came here?”

She smiled, her lipsticked mouth a perfect replica of the nail polish shade. “I can hardly remember where I worked before I came here.”

“Is there anything at all you can tell me?” I asked, feeling that I had really reached the end of the line rather soon with little to show for my day's work.

“She was an excellent secretary, more like everyone's assistant at the beginning, and we were sorry to lose her. I believe we sent her a very nice wedding present.”

“Did she have any friends in the office?”

“She's been gone for two years. Most of our staff has been hired since then. But feel free to ask around. And if you hear anything about Natalie, I'd like to know.”

I stood and offered her my hand. “Thank you. I will.”

Halfway down the hall I ran into the receptionist, who had obviously been called to get me. She took me to a room where several people sat at computers or word processors, and told them to talk to me.

It wasn't very fruitful. Most of them had been hired after Natalie left; one had known her briefly and knew only that she was leaving to get married. But the last one, a man about my age who worked in very casual clothes, said he had known Natalie for a year or more.

“Did you ever talk?”

“Sure. It's a friendly office.”

“She tell you anything about herself? Where she was from? Boyfriends, girlfriends?”

“There was only one boyfriend that I remember, and she left to marry him.”

“Other friends? Relatives?”

“There was a girl in the office she was friendly with, Susan something, but she left before Natalie did.”

There was a nameplate on his worktable that said
STEVE
. “I'm almost at a dead end, Steve. If there's anything you can think of—”

“It was an office friendship. We had a cup of coffee together, lunch once in a while. We didn't date, we didn't see each other after work. I liked her. She was peppy and upbeat. I'm neither one of those things. If she had sisters and cousins and aunts, she never talked about them.”

I took the ring of keys out of my bag and put them in front of him. “Were those Natalie's?”

“I don't know.” He picked them up and looked at them, then got up and walked away. “Come with me,” he said, looking back. “We moved here last summer and a lot of old stuff was thrown out, the stuff H and J started with. But a
few of the desks from the original office were bought new, and they came along. I think one of them was Natalie's.”

I followed him to a small office on the hall that led to Arlene Hopkins's big office. The door was open, but no one was inside. “I think this was hers. Let's give it a try.” He put one of the small keys in the keyhole in the top center drawer. “Fits like a glove. Want to try it?”

I turned the key to lock, then back to unlock, the drawer. As I did so, the occupant of the office came in. Steve explained and the new man seemed unfazed.

“Was anything of hers in the desk when you inherited it?” I asked.

“There was just the usual junk. I cleaned it out and threw everything away. Besides, I think someone else used it for a while before I got it. I've only been here a year.”

Steve and I went back to his work station. At least I knew now the keys actually belonged to Natalie. I wrote my name and phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to him. “Call me collect,” I said, “if you think of anything.”

He looked at it. “What do you think happened to her?”

“I don't know. I suppose she was kidnapped, but I have no idea by whom or why.”

“You think her husband did it?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Isn't that the way it usually is? They have a fight and he kills her? All the rest is just to prove to the world he's innocent.”

“My instinct is that he didn't.”

“Well, you've probably got better instincts than mine.” He put the paper in his pocket. “Let me know if you turn anything up.”

I was on my way down in the elevator when I remembered the voice on the phone when I had called for the appointment. I hadn't met anyone who sounded like that
woman. When the elevator stopped on the ground floor, I took it right back up again.

“Forget something?” the receptionist said as I walked in.

“There was someone I wanted to talk to, but I didn't meet her, the woman I spoke to on the phone.”

She looked baffled. “You talked to me.”

“It was someone else.”

“Arlene Hopkins?”

“I don't think so.”

“I'm afraid I can't help you.”

“Can I talk to Steve again, please?”

“Steve who?”

“In the word-processing room.”

“He just left.”

I hate when people think they can put something over on me. “I just talked to him five minutes ago,” I said.

“And he left right after you did. I'm surprised you didn't run into him at the elevator.”

I knew how to get from where I was standing to the room where Steve had his work station, but I don't really have what it takes to do something like that when it's pretty clear I've been asked to leave. This was private property, after all, and I didn't think I had any right to be there if they didn't want me.

I left.

I rode down to the ground floor feeling irritable. My visit, now that it was over, seemed orchestrated. Arlene Hopkins had said the papers connected to Natalie's tenure had been destroyed only last year, after her disappearance. Why would they have done such a thing? And the people they had invited me to talk to, the ones working in the word-processing area—weren't there others in the agency who might have known Natalie? Why had I been steered only toward one group and kept carefully away from everyone else?

But what bothered me most of all was the voice on the phone when I called from Westchester. It hadn't been Arlene Hopkins, and as a partner, she wasn't likely to answer a phone without someone running interference. There had been a woman and she called Sandy while I hung on and then agreed to give me an appointment in an hour. Who was she and why couldn't I talk to her again?

I buttoned my coat in the lobby of the building and pulled on my gloves. A man in a hurry opened the door and held it for me. As I thanked him, I thought I heard my name called. I looked around on the street and saw no one.

“Chris Bennett?”

I turned toward the building. The man named Steve was just coming out, still in his shirtsleeves. “Steve?”

“Glad I caught you. I missed your elevator going down and I must have lost you in the street. Did you go back inside?”

“I forgot something and went back up. Let's go inside. You must be freezing.”

“I thought of something right after you left.” He was rubbing his bare hands together as though he had the first stages of frostbite. “Who else did you talk to besides our group?”

“Arlene Hopkins.”

“That all?”

“That was it.”

“I don't know if they have something to hide or what, but Arlene is Miss Fixit around here. You've heard of the glass ceiling? She's the iron wall. You talk to Wormy?”

“Who?”

“The office manager, Eleanor Wormholtz. She's kind of a charter member of H and P. Wormy knows everything. Wormy knows things that haven't happened yet.”

“I wonder if she's the one I talked to when I called for an appointment.”

“She gets the overflow sometimes. Besides, she has brains. The girl at the door gave hers up a long time ago.”

“How can I talk to this Eleanor Wormholtz? When I asked the receptionist if I could talk to the woman who answered the phone, she said she had. She hadn't.”

“They're really giving you a runaround. You mind if I give Wormy your number?”

“I'd be grateful if you would. I don't suppose you know her number?”

“I can't do that.”

“I understand. I appreciate your help.”

“I told you. I liked Natalie. I want you to find her.”

We shook hands and he went off to the elevators.