John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“He’s a banker?”

“You may call him a banker if you wish. He found a place for us for Saturday. He couldn’t get away until about noon. So I was going to drive back and wait for him in the parking lot of a small shopping center north of town, then follow him to the place. He said it was safe and private and nobody would know. He said that not even the person who lived there would ever know we’d been there. So I guess we both knew that if we were ever alone together in a place like that, nothing could help us or save us.”

“But good old Rick decided to make the Vero Beach trip.”

“He was in horrible shape Monday morning, so stiff and sore and lame he could hardly get out of bed. And terribly hung-over, of course. When I told him I’d taken his friend, McGee, back to the Wahini Lodge, he stared at me and then laughed in the most ghastly way. We’re not speaking, of course. Just the absolute essentials.”

She came and took my empty bottle and dropped the two of them into the tilt-lid kitchen can. “Again I’m doing all the talking, Travis. You have a bad effect on my mouth. Was there something you wanted to see me about, particularly?”

“I guess I’ve had you on my mind, Janice.”

She stared at me, and her frown made two vertical clefts between her dark brows, over the generous nose. She shook her head slowly. “Uh-uh, my friend. If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking. Help the embittered lady get her own back? Eye for an eye, and all that? What’s the next part of the gambit? Healthy young woman deprived of a sex life, et cetera, et cetera? No, my dear. Not even to keep Meg happy by confirming her suspicions.”

“Now that you bring it up, the idea has some merit, I guess. I’ve had you on my mind for a different reason.”

“Such as?”

“Suppose I named your boyfriend by name. The dear, kind, tender, sensitive, wonderful and so on.”

“You can’t, of course. What are you getting at?”

“But if I did, would you feel you had to go to him and tell him that somebody knows?”

“On a hypothetical basis? Let me see. If you did name him, what would be your point, really, in wanting to be certain? What would you be after?”

“A clue to what kind of man he is.”

“He is a marvelous man!”

“Does everybody think so?”

“Of course not! Don’t be so dense! Any man who has strength and drive and opinions of his own will make enemies.”

“Who’ll bad-mouth him.”

“Of course.”

“Okay, his name is... Tompestuous K. Fliggle, Banker.”

“Travis, you are an idiot.”

“These are idiotic times we live in, my dear.”

And the little inadvertent muscles around her eyes had clued me when I hit the first syllable of the invented name, which was as far as I cared to go.

At a few minutes past noon I read the nameplate on the mailbox at 60 Ridge Lane. Miss Hulda Wennersehn. The name of the real estate firm that managed the garden apartments was on a small sign at the corner. From the first drugstore phone I came to, I called the real estate offices and was switched to a Miss Forrestal. I told her I was with the credit bureau and would appreciate some information on Hulda Wennersehn. She pulled the card and said that Miss Wennersehn, age fifty-one, had been in number sixty for four years and had never been in arrears. I asked if Miss Wennersehn was employed by an insurance company and she said, “Oh, no, unless she changed jobs and didn’t inform us. Of course, she’d have no reason to inform us, actually. But we have her as working for Kinder, Noyes, and Strauss. That’s a brokerage firm. She works as a cashier.” So thank you, my dear.

So I phoned the brokerage house and the switchboard girl told me that, my goodness, it had been at least two years since Miss Wennersehn had worked there. She was working for a real estate company. She gave me the phone number. On a hunch I asked her if a Mr. Tom Pike had ever been with the firm, and she said that he had, but that had been some time ago. The number she gave me turned out to be Development Unlimited.

“Miss Wennersehn? I’ll transfer you to... oh, excuse me, sir. She is still up at our Jacksonville office. Shall I see if I can find out when she’ll be returning?”

I thanked her and told her not to bother.

I went back to the motel to see if there were any messages. Stanger was waiting for me.

Something had changed Stanger, tautened him, given him nervous mannerisms I had not noticed before. We went to 109. He moved restlessly about. I phoned for sandwiches and coffee.

When I asked him what was wrong, he told me to let him think. He paused at the big window and stood with his hands locked behind him, teetering from heel to toe, looking out at people playing in the pool.

“I could maybe go with one of those security outfits,” he said. “Gate guard. Watchman work.”

“You get busted?”

“Not yet. But maybe that’s what they’ll want to do.”

“Why?”

“That Mrs. Boughmer was off on some kind of garden club tour. I finally got the daughter to let me in. Went into my act. Want to warn you you’re in serious trouble. Withholding information about a capital crime. Maybe I can help you if you level with me now. And so on and so on. Until she split open.”

“What was her problem?”

He turned and walked over and sat heavily in the armchair. “She was bellering and squeaking and sobbing. Spraying spit. Words all jammed together she was trying to say them so fast. Grabbing at my hands. Begging. Confessing. Jesus!”

“Confessing what?”

“That poor dim ugly girl was in love with Doc Sherman. Not so much romance and poetry. Passion. Hot pants. You saw her. Any man ever going to lay a hand on her? So there was something she was doing, God only knows what. Last to leave. Lock the doors. Leave the office lights on. Go into the dark treatment room. Do something in there. She wouldn’t say what. Something, according to her, that was nasty and evil. Went on for years, I guess. Some kind of release. No idea what Broon was after or how he got in. She was working on the files after Sherman had died, a few days later. She was in the treatment room and the lights suddenly went on and Broon is in the doorway watching her. Told her to put her clothes back on and he’d talk to her in the office. Apparently, McGee, he convinced that poor sick sad homely woman that there was some law, crime against nature, jail her as a degenerate or some damned thing. Told her that if she ever tried to tell anybody Sherman didn’t kill himself, he’d have her picked up and taken in right away. He took some kind of ‘evidence’ away with him. How the hell was I supposed to know she was so close to the edge? All of a sudden she went rigid as a board, bit right through her lip, started whooping and snapping around, eyes out of sight. Followed the ambulance in. Some kind of breakdown. Left a neighbor woman on the lookout for Mrs. Boughmer. Probably Dave Broon slipped the lock on the rear door that night and came easing in.”

“That won’t be anything to bust you for, Al.”

“It isn’t that. It’s what comes next. Maybe.”

“Which is?”

“Dave Broon. I’ve come right up to it with him. Too many years, too many things. No way to nail him according to the rules I’m supposed to follow. We’re supposed to be on the same ball club. He gives the whole thing a bad smell. Maybe there’s a time when you don’t go by the book. Look, I’ve got to have somebody with me. The things I’m thinking scare me. I’ve got to have somebody stop me if I can’t stop myself.”

“Maybe you’d better think it over.”

“Meaning you don’t want any part of it.”