John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“And those two men, Unger and...”

“Samuels.”

“They wouldn’t volunteer any information about the note?”

“Hell no. The days of volunteering any information to anybody about anything are long gone. Order yourself more coffee. Don’t go away. Be right back.”

It took him ten minutes. He sat down wearily, mopped his forehead on a soiled handkerchief. “Well, Bill Samuels was off yesterday and Holton came in about eleven in the morning. A clerk named Foster was on duty and Holton told him that the state attorney, Ben Gaffner, had asked him to take a look at the note that had been found in the Woertz girl’s apartment. So Foster unlocked the file and let him read the photocopy. It still doesn’t answer the question.”

“Can I give it a try?”

“Go ahead.”

“Would Holton know you were on the case?”

“Sure.”

“Would he know he wouldn’t be able to get much out of you?”

“He’d know that.”

“Would he know who’s working with you?”

“I guess he’d know... Oh, goddamn that motor-sickel idiot!”

He told me that as long as I’d had the grief of it, I might as well have the pleasure of seeing the chewing process. I signed the check for my breakfast and his tea and followed him out.

The car was parked in the shade. Nudenbarger, now in a sport shirt with green and white vertical stripes, was leaning against it smiling and talking to a pair of brown hefty little teenage girls in shorts. He saw us coming and said something. The kids turned and looked at us, then walked slowly away, looking back from time to time.

“All set?” he asked, opening the car door.

Stanger kicked it shut. “Maybe on the side you could rent that mouth. People could store stuff in it. Bicycles, broken rocking chairs, footlockers. Nice little income on the side.”

“Now just a minute, Al, I—”

“Shut up. Close that big empty stupid cave fastened to the front of your stupid face, Nudenbarger. Stop holding the car up. I just want to know how stupid you are. Every day you become the new world’s champion stupid. How did you get mousetrapped into talking about the note the nurse left?”

“Mousetrapped? I wasn’t mousetrapped.”

“But you talked about it, didn’t you?”

“Well... as a matter of fact—”

“After I told you you had never heard of any note?”

“But this was different, Al.”

“He just walked up and asked you what we found in the apartment?”

“No. What he said was that he was upset about her being killed. He was out to the place real early yesterday. I’d just got up and I was walking around calling the dog. He said he and his wife were very fond of her and grateful to her. He said he didn’t want to get out of line or step on any toes, but he wondered if maybe outside investigators ought to be brought in, and he thought he might be able to arrange it. Al, I know how you feel about anything like that, so I told him it looked like we could make it. He asked if we had much of anything to go on, and I said we had that note and told him what I could remember of it and said that the fellow she wrote it to, meaning you, McGee, had checked out okay.”

“What kept you from falling down laughing?”

“About what, Al?”

“That line about him and his wife being fond of the little nurse. And grateful to her? Jesus!”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Why in the world would Janice Holton be grateful to Penny Woertz?”

“Who said anything about Janice Holton?”

“Didn’t you say Holton told you that—”

“Holton! It was Mr. Tom Pike that stopped at the place. I haven’t said one damned word to Mr. Holton. Mr. Tom Pike only had a couple of minutes. He was on his way to the airport and he was taking the shortcut, the back road past my place, and saw me and stopped because, like he said, he was upset about the girl getting killed. Now you agree it was different? Do you?”

The anger sagged out of Stanger. “Okay. It was different. He’s the kind of guy who’d want to help any way he can. And the nurse helped take care of Mrs. Pike. Now, dammit, Lew, did you say one word to anybody else about any note?”

“Never did. Not once. And I won’t, Al.”

“You shouldn’t have told Pike either.”

Stanger turned to me. “Back where we started. Look, I’ll get it out of Holton and if I think you ought to know, I’ll let you know, McGee.”

I motioned to him and took him out of earshot of Nudenbarger. “Any more little errands on the side, as long as I’m stuck here?”

He scowled, spat, scuffed his foot. “I’ve got men ringing every doorbell in the whole area around that Ridge Lane place. Somebody had to arrive and kill her and leave in broad daylight. Somebody had to see something on Saturday afternoon. I’ve got men going through the office files of Doc Sherman that went into storage when he died, and the files that were taken over by the doctor who took over Sherman’s practice, Dr. John Wayne. Hell of a name, eh? Little fat fellow. Sherman treated some crazies when he was researching barbiturate addiction. So we don’t want to rule out the chance of an ex-patient going after the office nurse. She’d been working as a special-duty nurse, so I got hold of the list of patients she took care of ever since the doctor died, and we’re going through those. On top of that I’ve got a good man digging into her private life, every damned thing he can find, the ex-husband, previous boyfriends. Nothing was stolen from the apartment. She lived alone. Those are good solid front doors and good locks on the kitchen doors. I think she would have to know somebody to let them in. No sign of forcible entry. From the condition of the bed, she was sleeping and got up and put the robe on and let somebody in. No makeup. A man or woman could have shoved those shears into her throat. We’ve got a blood pattern, a spatter pattern. Whoever did it could have gotten some on them from the knees down. To reconstruct it, she put both hands to her throat, staggered back, fell to her knees, then rolled over onto her back. She hadn’t been sexually molested. There were indications she’d had intercourse within from four to six hours from the time of death. She wasn’t pregnant. She was going to start her period in about three days. She had a slightly sprained ankle, based on some edema and discoloration. There was a small contusion just above the hairline at the center of her forehead and a contusion on her right knee, but these three injuries had occurred a considerable time before death. We’re processing a court order to get into her checking account records and her safety deposit box. Now if you can come up with something I just haven’t happened to think of, McGee...”

It was a challenge, of course. And I was supposed to be overwhelmed by the diligence and thoroughness of the law.

“What about delivery and service people? Dry cleaners, laundry, TV repairs, phone, plumber, electrician? What about the apartment superintendent, if any?”

He sighed heavily. He was upwind of me and even outdoors he had breath like a cannibal bat. “Son of a gun. Would you believe me if I told you that was all in the works, but I just forgot to mention it?”

“I’d believe you, Stanger. I think you might be pretty good at your job.”

“I’ll write that in my diary tonight.”

“What about the nurses’ day room at the hospital? She’d probably have a locker there. There might be some personal stuff in it.”

He sighed again and took out his blue notebook and wrote it down. “One for you.”

“Maybe there’s another one too. If there is, can I check it out? I have... a personal interest in this, you know.”

“If there’s another one, you can check it out.”