John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“Oh, she’s so sly ! Oh damn her, anyway. Just when everything was going so well. Tom was dubious about bringing her. But she seemed so... kind of better organized. Excuse me. I’d better find Tom. I thought she was still with him.” She made a wry mouth. “And he probably thinks she’s with me. He’ll be sick, absolutely sick.”

I found windows and oriented myself and went to a wide corridor that led past small offices to the big offices at the end. People were roaming up and down the corridor, being given the tour by some of the Development Unlimited staff. I turned a corner and went into an office and looked out and down and estimated I was not more than fifteen feet too close to the street side. I moved back toward the corner of the corridor and realized it had to be a room with a closed door. Almost all the others were open for inspection.

A pretty little redheaded woman came trotting along and stopped and stared up at me. She wore green and a pint of diamonds and a wide martini smile. “Well, hello there, darling! Are you one of his darling new engineers? Christ, you’re a towering beast, aren’t you? I’m Joanie Mace way down here.”

“Hello, Joanie Mace. I’m not an engineer. I’m a mysterious guest.”

“With a lousy empty glass? Horrors! Wait right here, mysterious guest. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. I’m a handmaiden.”

She trotted away. My side of the corridor was empty. I heard voices approaching. I opened the door and stepped into a small office, unlighted. As I closed the door I saw that it was stacked with cartons of office forms and supplies. I made my way to the windows and found that the center window was fixed glass but that the narrower ones on either side cranked inward. A sliding brace stopped them when they were open perhaps eighteen inches. They were five feet tall, and the sill was a foot from the floor. The one on the left was open. I leaned and looked down. It was the right one. I closed it, then pulled my jacket sleeve down across the heel of my hand and pressed the turn latch until it clicked into the fully latched position. As I turned, my toe came down on something soft. I could tell by the feel of it that it was a small leather evening bag. I shoved it into the front of my shirt and tightened my belt another notch.

I opened the door a careful fraction of an inch. A chattering group was approaching. When they had passed, I took the chance and walked out, perhaps too exaggeratedly casual, but there was no one there to fault the performance. I leaned against the corridor wall. Mrs. Mace brought me my drink, scuttling, holding it high, proud of her accomplishment. It was an extraordinarily nasty martini. I gave extravagant thanks. She said I should come by Sunday and swim in her pool. She would round up a swinging group. We’d all drink gallons of black velvets. Delighted. Yes, indeed.

We drifted along behind a group and ended up in the big room. Biddy came quickly to me and drew me aside. She looked determined and angry.

“Trav, I haven’t told Tom and I don’t intend to. Sooner or later he’s going to find out she’s missing and that will be time enough. I’m just not going to let my sister spoil the best part of it for him. She’s done enough spoiling already. Would you please do me a very special favor?”

“Sure.”

“Go down and start checking every bar you can find, and there are quite a few within three or four blocks of here. If you find her and if she isn’t in bad shape yet, bring her back, please. But if she’s had it, stay with her and put her in the station wagon down below. The tag is—”

“I know the car.”

“Thanks so much! Poor Trav. Always doing stupid favors for the dreary Pearson family. And look, dear, do not ever let Tom know that I knew she was missing. He’d kill me. He would think I should have told him at once. But, darn it all... and... thanks again.”

I started the slow journey through the crush of guests. I had to pass a group standing in respectful attention, listening to Tom Pike. He stood, tall, vital, dark, handsome, a little bit slouched, a little bit rustic and cowlicky and subtly aw-shucks about everything, his voice deep, rich, resonant as he said, “... job-creating opportunities in urban core areas, that’s the answer if we’re going to continue to have a viable centercity economic base here in Fort Courtney. The companion piece to this fine building should be — if we all have the guts and the vision — an enclosed shopping mall taking up that short block on Princess Street. Urban renewal to help tear down the obsolete warehouses and get the city to vacate the street, and I don’t see why we couldn’t have...”

I was by him, and a pack of ladies whooping at something that had just about tickled them to death drowned out the rest of the visionary address to the potential investors.

I rode down with a silent couple in the elevator. She stared with prim mouth and lofty eyebrows at the ceiling of the small machine. With clamped jaw and moody brow he stared at the blue carpeting underfoot. As we walked down into the parking area she did not realize I was as close behind them as I was. In a thin, deadly, indifferent tone she said, “Sweetheart, why don’t you let me drive home alone while you go right on back up there and stroke Gloria’s vulgar little ass all you want. She may be missing the attention.”

He did not reply. I walked to my car and unlocked it and got in and clenched the wheel so tightly my knuckles made crackling sounds. I shut my eyes so tightly I could see rockets and wheels of fire. Little improvements come along, because the luck can go either way, and when you play the longer odds you open up the chance of the good luck and the bad. Her reaction helped. I had not expected it. I had wanted her to tell him that McGee had seen Maureen leaving by a route other than the one he knew she had taken, and so that would target him in on me, bring him in close enough for me to see what he was. But it was better the way she was doing it.

And I had to find Stanger, and find him fast.

I didn’t get to Stanger until nine fifteen. I told him that it might save a lot of time and a lot of questions later if it went down on tape on the very first go-round.

“You look funny,” he said. “You look spooked.”

“It’s been one of those days, Al.”

“What’s this all about?”

“When the tape is running.”

“All right, all right!”

So he left Nudenbarger on traffic cruise by himself and rode down to headquarters with me in my car. I said I’d like to do it in the car if possible. He came out with a battered old Uher with an adaptor for the cigarette lighter. I found a bright white drive-in on Route 30 and parked at the far edge with the rear against the fence. A listless girl made two long walks to take the order and bring out the two coffees and hook the tray onto the car. Stanger had checked the recorder. It had some hiss but not too much. The heads needed cleaning and demagnetizing.

He rewound and started it again on record and established his identity, the date and time, and said he was taking a voluntary statement from one Travis McGee of such and such a place, said statement having some bearing, as yet unknown, on the murder by stab wound of Penny Woertz, and that said victim had been acquainted with said McGee. He sighed and handed me the mike.

As soon as I got into it, he stiffened and he boggled at me. As I kept on he wanted to interrupt so badly he began making little lunges and jumps, so I didn’t give him an opening. At one point he bent over, hands cupping his eyes, and I could hear him grinding his teeth. I finished. I turned the remote switch on the mike and said, “Want me to turn it back on for questions?”