John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“I don’t think a registered nurse would be doing the billing and the bookkeeping and keeping the appointment book. So there probably had to be another girl working for Sherman, part time or full time.”

He squinted at the bright sky. He nodded. “And she was on vacation when he killed himself. Just now remembered. Okay, go ahead, dammit. Can’t recall her name. But Dr. Wayne’s office girl would know. Just don’t try to carry the ball if you come up with anything. Report to me first.”

“And you tell me what you find out from Holton.”

“Deal.”

He trudged toward the waiting car. I went back inside and used a pay phone in the lobby to call Dr. Wayne’s office. The answering service told me they opened the office at noon on Mondays.

I went back to 109. The cart was outside the door, the maid just finishing up. She was a brawny, handsome black woman. Her skin tone was a flawless coppery brown, and across the cheekbones she looked as if she had an admixture of Indian blood.

“Be through here in a minute,” she said.

“Take your time.”

She was making up the bed. I sat on the straight chair by the desk module that was part of the long formica countertop. I found the phone number for D. Wintin Hardahee and as I wrote it down I saw the maid out of the corner of my eye and for a moment thought she was dancing. When I turned and looked at her, I saw that she was swaying, feet planted, chin on her chest, eyes closed. She lifted her head and gave me a distant smile and said, “Feeling kind of... kind of...” Then she closed her eyes and toppled forward. Her head and shoulders landed facedown on the bed and she slipped and bounded loosely off and landed on the floor, rolling onto her back.

Suddenly I knew what must have happened. I went to the closet alcove and bent and picked the doctored bottle of gin out of the corner where I had put it and, stupidly, forgotten it. There were a couple of fresh drops of colorless liquid on the outside of the bottle, on the shoulder of it. Any moisture would have long since dried up in the dehumidifying effect of the air-conditioning. I licked a drop off with my tongue tip. Plain water. So she had taken a nice little morning pickup out of the bottle and replaced it with tap water.

I went to her and knelt beside her. Her pulse was strong and good, and she was breathing deeply and regularly. She wore a pale blue uniform trimmed with white. Over the blouse pocket was embroidered, in red, “Cathy.”

After weighing pros and cons and cursing my idiocy for leaving the gin where somebody might find it, I went looking for another maid. There was a cart on the long balcony overhead, in front of an open door to one of the second-floor units. I went up the iron stairs and rapped on the open door and went in. The maid came out of the bathroom. She was younger than Cathy, small and lean, with matte skin the shade of a cup of coffee, double on the cream. She wore orange lipstick, had two white streaks bleached into her dark hair, and a projection of astonishingly large breasts. Her embroidery said “Lorette.”

“Sir, I just now started in here. I can come back if—”

“It isn’t my room. Are you a friend of Cathy’s?”

“You looking for her, great big strong girl, she’s working the downstairs wing right under here, mister.”

“I know where she is. I asked you if you’re a friend of hers.”

“Why you asking me, mister?”

“She might need a friend to do her a favor.”

“She and me, we get along pretty good.”

“Would you come down to Room One-O-nine?”

She looked very skeptical. “What she wants to do and what I want are a couple of different things, mister. I do maid work, period. I don’t hold it against her, but she ought to know by now if she wants a girl for anything else, she can go call that fat Annabelle or that crazy kid they got working in the kitchen.”

“I got back to my room a couple of minutes ago, Lorette. Your friend Cathy tapped one of my bottles. She thought it was gin. It was sleeping medicine. She’s down there passed out. Now, if you don’t give a damn, say so.”

Her eyes were round and wide. “Cold stone passed out? You go on down, please, and I’ll come right along quick.”

Ten seconds after I was back in the room, she pushed the door open and stood on the threshold, staring in at Cathy.

“It’s like you said?” she asked. “You didn’t mess with her any kind of way, did you?”

“There’s the bottle over there. Go take a slug and in a little while you can lie down right beside her.”

She made up her mind and pulled the door almost closed as she came in. She dropped to her knees and laid her ear against Cathy’s chest. Then she shook her and slapped her. Cathy’s sleeping head lolled and Cathy made a little whine of irritation and complaint.

“Can you cover for her?” I asked.

She sat back on her heels and nibbled a thumb knuckle. “Best thing is get Jase to bring a laundry cart and he’p load her in and put a couple sheets over her and put her in an empty.” She stared suspiciously up at me. “That’s no kind of poison, is it? She’ll come out of it okay?”

“In two to three hours, probably.”

She stood up and stared at me, head tilted. “How come you don’t just call the desk?”

“Would they fire her?”

“They sure to hell would.”

“Lorette, if I’d had that bottle locked up in my suitcase and she’d gone digging around in there and tapped it, then I might have called the desk. Maybe I would have called anyway if she’d been giving me sloppy service since I’ve been here. But she’s kept this place bright as a button, and I plain forgot that bottle and left it on the closet floor over there where any maid would find it. So I share the blame.”

“And maybe you don’t want to have to tell a lot of folks how come you keep your sleeping medicine in with the gin?”

“I think you’re a nice bright girl and you can cover for her without any trouble at all.”

“Because it’s slack right now I can do hers and mine both, what rooms we got left. But one more thing. If you turned her in, could she rightly say that you’ve been messing with her some?”

“No. She couldn’t say that.”

“Then, I’ll be back in just a little while.”

It was five minutes before she came back. She held the door open for a tall young boy with enormous shoulders, who pushed a laundry hamper on wheels into the room. He parked it beside Cathy and picked her up easily and lowered her into it. Lorette covered her with a couple of rumpled sheets and said, “Now Annabelle will be waiting right there in Two eighty-eight, Jase. You just put Cathy on the bed there and let Annabelle tend to her, hear?”

“Yump,” said Jase, and wheeled her out.

“Finish up fixing your bed for you, mister.”

“Thanks.”

As she was finishing she giggled. She had a lot of lovely white teeth. She shook her head. “That ol’ girl is sure going to wonder what in the world happened to her.”

“Explain the situation, will you?”

“Surely. If you’re not checking out, she’ll be coming by to say thank you tomorrow, I expect.” She paused at the door, fists in the pockets of her uniform skirt. “It’s important Cathy shouldn’t get fired, mister. She needs the job. She lives with her old mother, and that old woman is mean as a snake. All crippled up with arthritis. She about drove Cathy’s man away, I guess. There’s three little kids, and Cathy could manage all right on the job money, but she’ll see a dress and keep thinking about it until she just has to have it, no matter what, and she’ll put it on layaway, and then she’ll have to use the money for other things at home, and she’ll be afraid she’ll lose the dress and what she paid on it, and then, well, she’ll take chances she wouldn’t otherwise and do things she wouldn’t otherwise. She’s older than me but lots of ways she’s like a kid. This place does a lot of commercial trade, and what she does, when you unlock a number and it’s a single in there, he’s maybe just waking up or he’s getting dressed, she gives a big smile and says something like good morning, sir, sure sorry if I disturbed you. And he looks her over and says, Honey, you come on right in here, and, well, she does. Then it’s ten dollars or twenty to keep from losing the dress, but she’s going to get caught someday and lose this good job. The reason I’m telling you all this is on account of from what I said about her messing around, I didn’t want you thinking she was nothing but a hustler. It’s only sometimes with her, and even if I wouldn’t go down that road, it doesn’t mean she isn’t no friend of mine. She’s my friend. She used to let me hold her first baby. I was ten years old and she was fifteen. And... thanks for coming and telling one of us.”