John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

I could not leave at that moment because it would give her the aftertaste of having been pumped, of having talked too much. So I invented a gaudy confrontation between me and the boyfriend of a wife I never had. I spun it out and when I was through, she said, “It’s wretched that people have to be put through things like that just because a wife or a husband is too immature to... to be plain everyday faithful. Do you ever run into her? Is she still in Lauderdale?”

“No. She moved away. I have no idea where she is now. I send the money to a Jacksonville bank. If I want to find out where she is, all I’d have to do is stop making payments. Look, do you want to come in for a nightcap?”

“Golly, where did the time go? Meg is a good neighbor, but I don’t want to take too much advantage. Mr. McGee?”

“Travis.”

“Travis, I didn’t mean to sound like a long cry of woe, but it’s made me feel better somehow, comparing bruises with somebody.”

“Good luck to you, Janice.”

“And to you too.” I had gotten out. She clambered over to the driver’s seat, snapped the belt on, and pulled it back to her slender dimension. “Night, now,” she called, and backed out and swung around and out onto the divided highway, upshifting skillfully as she went.

I projected a telepathic suggestion to her unknown friend. Grab that one, man. Richard Haslo Holton was too blind to see what he had. She’s got fire, integrity, courage, restraint. And she is a very handsome lively creature. Grab her if you can, because even though there are quite a few of them around, hardly any of them ever get loose.

No messages, no blinking red light on the phone. The maid had turned the bed down. Small hours of the morning. When I put the light out, a freckled ghost roamed the room. I said good night to her. “We’ll find out, Miss Penny,” I told her. “Somehow we’ll find out and you can stop this wandering around motel rooms at night.”

I had a hell of a night. Hundreds of dreams and from what little I could remember of them, they all had the same pattern. Either somebody was running after me to tell me something important and I could not stop running from them or understand why I couldn’t stop, or I was running headlong after somebody else who was slowly moving away no matter how hard I ran, moving away in a car or a bus or a train. Sometimes it was Penny, sometimes Helena. I woke with an aching tiredness of bone, a mouth like a cricket cage, grainy eyes, and skin that seemed to have stretched so that it was too big for me and wanted to hang in tired, draped folds.

After endless toothbrushing and a shower that did no good I phoned the Fort Courtney Police Department and left word for Stanger that I had called.

My breakfast had just been served when he settled into the chair across the table from me and told the waitress to bring him some hot tea.

“You look poorly, McGee.”

“Slept poorly, feel poorly.”

“That’s my story, every morning of my life. You get yourself a swing and a miss with Janice Holton?”

“They took the trip to Vero Beach together. And you could confirm it by finding out who she left the kids with, an old friend twenty miles from here, in the direction of Vero Beach. And Holton is serious about believing somebody killed Dr. Sherman. The Holton marriage has bombed out. She knew about the nurse. She’s going through the motions for the sake of the kids until she can find some way to land on her feet. And I think she will, sooner or later.”

He blew on his hot tea and took a sip and stared at me and shook his head slowly. “Now, aren’t you the one! By God, she cozies up pretty good to some damned insurance investigator.”

“I didn’t have to use it. You gave me a better approach.”

He aimed his little dusty brown eyes at me. “I did?”

I put my fork down and smiled across at him. “Yes, indeed you did, you silly half-ass fumbling excuse for a cop.”

“Now, don’t you get your—”

“You knew Holton was screwing her, Stanger. You knew that the note you found made it clear to anybody who can read simple words that she and I had something going for us. So what did you think Holton would do after he saw the note or a copy of it? Chuckle and say, Well, well, well, how about that? You probably know even that the ex-assistant state attorney carries a gun. But did you make any effort to tip me so I wouldn’t get shot? Not good old Stanger, the lawman. Thanks, Stanger. Anytime I can do any little thing for you, look me up.”

“Now, wait a minute, goddamn it! What makes you think he read the note?”

“Some direct quotes sort of stuck in his mind. He recited them.”

He drank more of his tea. He found a third of a cigar on his person, thumbnailed the remains of the ash off it, held a match to it.

“He try to use the gun?”

“He didn’t get the chance. I was tipped. I found him staked out and waiting, so I sneaked up on him and took it away. I don’t know whether he was going to use it or not. Give him the benefit of the argument and say he wouldn’t. He knew I hadn’t put the shears in her neck. He knew I was cleared of that. Let’s say he resented the rest of it, though. Incidentally, I gave the gun to his wife and she seemed to think it would be a good idea to tuck it away. Maybe there shouldn’t be a gun in that happy household.”

“So you took the gun away from him and?”

“I yanked his legs out from under him to get it. Then I had to trip him onto his face, and then I had to block him and somersault him onto his back. The last one took it out of him. He’d been drinking. It made him sick. I drove him home in his car. We became dear old buddies somehow. Drunks are changeable. He was passed out by the time I got him home. I helped get him to bed. She had a neighbor watch the kids while she drove me back. She’s known about the affair since it started. He sleeps in the guest room. I like her.”

He held up the hand with the cigar in it. He held it up, palm toward me, and said, “I swear on the grave of my dear old mother who loved me so much she didn’t even mind me becoming a cop that I just can’t figure out how the hell Rick Holton got hold of that note. Look, as an ex-prosecutor he’s got a little leverage. Not too much but some. I think he would know where to look, who to bug, if he knew there was a note. But how could he know? Look, now. The Woertz woman knew because she wrote it. I knew because I found it. Jackass Nudenbarger knew because he was with me when I found it. You knew because I read it to you. And down at the store, two men. Tad Unger did the lab work and made photocopies. Bill Samuels acts as a sort of clerk-coordinator. He sets up the file and keeps it neat and tidy and complete to turn over to the state attorney if need be. He protects the chain of evidence, makes the autopsy request, and so on.”

Had I thought for a moment, I would have realized there had to be an autopsy. They would want to know if a murdered unmarried woman was pregnant, if there was any sign of a blow that had not left any surface bruises, contusions, or abrasions, if she was under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, if she had been raped or had had intercourse recently enough to be able to type the semen. And the painstaking, inch-by-inch examination of the epidermis would disclose any scratches, puncture wounds, minor bruises, bite marks. And there would be a chemical analysis of the contents of the stomach, as death stops the normal digestive processes.

“You all right?” Stanger asked softly.

“I’m just perfect. When did they do the autopsy?”

“They must have been starting on it when I was talking to you in your room Saturday night.”