The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes (16 page)

“But, as Vera said, what’s the point of going out with a columnist if you can’t even get your name in his column?”

“Brass dislikes having his personal life known,” I said. “He wants to be known only by and through his writings. I am quoting him in this.”

She shook her head. Such behavior was out of her ken. “But I do appreciate what he’s doing,” she said. “Brass is devoting a lot of his time—and a lot of your time—in helping me find out what happened to my mother. And he probably won’t be able to use any of it in his column.”

“My time comes cheap,” I told her. “The boss is always looking for excuses to get me out of the office. I can’t decide whether I’m an employee, a trainee, or a pilot project for the make-work program of the WPA.”

She smiled a slight smile. “Whatever his motive,” she said, “it’s nice of him. And of you.”

“My pleasure,” I told her sincerely.

Sandra stared out the window at the passing trees and shrubs atop the transverse wall for a minute and then turned back to me. “I had dinner with some of the girls from the show last night,” she said. “The other two female principals and a few of the gypsies. We talked about Lydia Laurent most of the evening. We didn’t intend to, but there it was. About her and her murder and the way they found her body. I knew the kid. She was sweet. Kind. Not awfully talented, but she tried hard and she worked hard. Who would want to harm her? Who would do a thing like that?”

“You’ve got me,” I told her. “There was a kid in my home town who used to set cats on fire. He said he didn’t know why, it just came over him on occasion that it was something he should do. Then one day he drowned. The story went around that the King of the Cats had come and held his head underwater. It was as good a story as any.”

“The King of the Cats?” Sandra asked.

I shrugged. “That’s what they said.”

She sort of smiled, and then shook her head. “It was a dismal dinner,” she said. “Dismal.”

“I can imagine,” I said.

“Someone suggested that there’s some connection between Lydia and my mother. Do you know about that?”

“Did this someone say what the connection was?”

“She didn’t know. It was just a rumor she heard. Lydia was the roommate of that missing girl, Billie Trask. Did you know that?”

“We had a visit from a police inspector yesterday,” I told her. “He told us all about it.”

“Is it true she was found in the park naked? That’s what the papers said. Was she molested?”

I told Sandra what Inspector Raab had told us about the way the body was found. She shook her head. “It is dismal. It’s as if there’s a strange epidemic going around. First Billie Trask and my mom disappear, and now this.”

“It could all be connected,” I agreed. “But we don’t know in what way. I guess that’s what we should be trying to find out.”

“Just what is it we’re going to do now?” Sandra asked. “Your boss wasn’t very informative on the phone.”

“Did he tell you about your mother’s putative husband?”

She smiled. “Putative, I like that. It sounds like one of Brass’s words.”

“I guess it rubs off,” I said.

“He told me a little. A Texan. Full of oil.”

I relayed what we knew of the tale of Phillippa and the Texan.

“So this is the apartment we’re going to? The one Mom was supposedly living in when Pearly Gates came courting?”

“The one,” I said.

“How are we going to do this?” Sandra asked as the cab left the transverse through Central Park and headed up 79th Street.

I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

“What did Brass say?” she asked.

“That it would be a good idea to go look at this apartment. The method, he said, would be dictated by circumstance. He did suggest that a five-dollar bill might work wonders.”

“Well, let us hope so.

“If not you can practice your histrionics. Few men can resist a crying woman.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “They do what she wants just to shut her up. Is Pearly Gates going to join us?”

“No. Since we don’t know what’s going on, Brass thought that the less your putative stepfather knew about your mother’s past, until and unless she chooses to tell him, the better.”

Sandra nodded. “Well then,” she said.

“Just so,” I agreed.

We pulled up to the corner of 80th Street and Park Avenue, and Thomas Jefferson Finkle turned around and opened the glass panel. “Okay, sport, we’re here,” he said. “That’ll be forty cents.”

I handed him two quarters and a dime. “No, no, don’t thank me,” I told him. “I’m a big fan of Clifford Odets.”

“Whatever,” he said, pocketing the money.

Nine-ten Park Avenue was a quiet, unassuming twelve-story building on the southwest corner of 80th Street. The doorman’s uniform was hardly as ornate as that of a captain in, say, the Italian navy. “Good morning,” he said, holding the taxi door for us. “May I help you?”

I paused until the door was closed and the cab had driven off. “I believe Mrs. Phillippa Gates lives here,” I said.

He cocked his head thoughtfully. “Mrs. Phillippa—”

“You probably know her as Mrs. Stern,” I suggested.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Of course. Mrs. Stern. I’m sorry but Mrs. Stern is not in residence at the moment.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” he said, looking offended. “But I can ring her apartment if you like.”

“We would appreciate it,” Sandra said.

“Of course. Follow me.”

We entered the lobby and the doorman went to the house switchboard, which sat in a small alcove between the two elevators. After a few manipulations with the earpiece to his ear, he unplugged it and shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, “Mrs. Stern doesn’t answer.”

“How long has she been away?” I asked.

“Sorry, I couldn’t tell you that.”

“Did she leave word as to where she was going?”

He shook his head. “Sorry.”

I leaned forward. “Are you sure that she is not in the apartment?”

He looked at me with the patient, exasperated look that Parisians reserve for American tourists. “I just rang—”

I palmed a five-spot, preparing to pass it to him. “We’d like to go up and see,” I told him.

He shook his head. “That would be irregular. The super wouldn’t allow it.”

“Have you asked him?”

“As a matter of fact, Mr., ah, Gates, was here on Saturday and, as we haven’t formally been advised of the new, ah, relationship, the super didn’t let him upstairs.”

I put the bill back in my pocket. If he wouldn’t take Pearly’s money, he wouldn’t take mine. “Can’t be too careful,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” he agreed.

“Are you sure there’s nobody up there?” Sandra asked, looking concerned and slightly tearful. “Supposing that Mother broke her leg or had an attack or something. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had an attack. She may be just laying up there alone!”

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

I stepped closer to him and spoke earnestly. “Have you looked into the apartment, say anytime in the past week?”

He drew back. “Of course not!”

“Are you certain that Mrs. Stern isn’t lying on the floor in the living room, or the bedroom, unconscious—in need of medical help?”

“Well, sir, that’s highly unlikely. After all—”

I interrupted him. “This lady is her daughter, she’s very worried. She hasn’t heard from her mother in some time, and we can’t get an answer on the phone. We’d like to go upstairs and look around, make sure she’s all right.”

The doorman looked doubtful. “You can ask the superintendent,” he said, “but I’m sure he wouldn’t allow it.”

“Will you call the superintendent for us?” I asked.

“I’m sorry. He isn’t in at the moment.”

Sandra’s eyes got wide and a note of hysteria crept into her voice. “Mother might be upstairs, lying unconscious,” she cried, wringing her hands, which I thought was overdoing it, but she’s the actress. “Or worse! I have to get to her! What are we to do?” She dissolved into sobs.

I patted her gently on the back. “Perhaps we should call the police,” I suggested. “I imagine a policeman could open the door for us. Just to look around, make sure Mrs. Stern is all right. I just hope it doesn’t upset the other tenants, to see policemen in the building. But that can’t be helped.” I gestured toward the plug board. “Is this the outside line?”

The doorman had taken a step back, as one might retreat from someone carrying the plague. “No, sir, it is not. This is the house phone only. The central switchboard is in the superintendent’s apartment.”

“But if he isn’t here…?”

“His wife and another lady operate the switchboard,” the doorman told us. “One of them is always at the board.”

“Admirable,” I said. “You wait here,” I told Sandra. “I’ll go out and find a policeman.”

“Wait!” the doorman said. “We wouldn’t want—It wouldn’t be—You just wait here for a minute. Please!” He touched the call button for the elevator on the left, and shifted from foot to foot until it arrived. After a whispered colloquy with the elevator man, they changed places, and the doorman entered the elevator while the elevator man stood by the door and tried not to stare at us. The elevator door closed and it groaned and whined and started up.

Sandra clutched my arm and, bringing her sobbing face close to mine, she whispered, “I need a drink!”

I patted her on the shoulder. “Be brave,” I said loudly and firmly.

After a couple of minutes the elevator returned, whining and groaning, and thumped to a stop and the door opened. A tall, slender man emerged. He was dressed in a tweed suit and Ascot and carrying a walking stick of some dark wood with a gold handle in the shape of an owl. His dark hair was graying at the temples, but his carefully trimmed mustache and beard were still jet-black. He was past middle age, but how much past I couldn’t say. He was wearing steel-rimmed glasses. If he was introduced as the president of a bank, or a sporting club, or a small European country, I would believe it.

“Now then,” he said in a smooth, reasonable voice, looking from Sandra to me and back. “What’s all this?”

“We’d like to see Mrs. Stern or Mrs. Gates, whichever you prefer,” I told him. “Who are you?”

“My name is Colonel Wills. You’ve been feeding Bernard here with some cock-and-bull story about poor Mrs. Stern lying unconscious in her apartment. And this young lady claims to be her daughter, when I happen to know she has no daughter. I want an explanation. And, by God, if anyone around here is going to call the police, it shall be I!”

Sandra was looking at Wills with a funny expression on her face. She took a handkerchief from her purse and dried her eyes. “Your name is Colonel Wills?” she asked.

He nodded. “That’s right, young lady.”

Sandra nervously clutched at the strand of pearls that circled her neck. “Couldn’t you help us? I just want to make sure that my mother, Mrs. Stern, is okay.”

He peered at her over his glasses. “That’s all, eh?”

“Do you live here?” Sandra asked, twisting the pearl strand between her fingers. “Perhaps we should go up to your apartment to talk this over.”

“Well,” he said. “Well.” He looked at me and back at Sandra. She dropped her hands to her side and stared intently at his face. He smiled. “Perhaps we should.”

Now if that don’t beat all, as my childhood buddies back in Ohio would have said. He had changed his tune quicker than Kay Kyser, and I was nonplussed at his sudden acquiescence. But Sandra and the colonel seemed to be plussed, so I kept quiet.

He gestured us into the elevator. The doorman and elevator man switched places again, and we went up.

The apartment was large and could have been the stage setting for an elegant drawing-room comedy. The furniture was antique, but not overpowering and, if I’m any judge, cost a bundle. But, of course, I’m no judge. The colonel waved us into the living room, which was mostly shades of white, and we sat down on an el of a couch. The colonel sat on the right-angle section and propped his feet up on the coffee table.

“Well?” he said.

“I could use a drink,” Sandra said.

“Silly me,” the colonel said, “I’m forgetting my manners.” He pushed a small gold button on the end table, and a real-live butler appeared at a side door and stood motionless.

“What will you have?” the colonel asked.

“A martini,” Sandra said.

“Scotch and water,” I said. It would have been churlish to refuse.

The butler disappeared back through the door.

“Nice place,” I said.

“I like it,” the colonel replied.

The drinks came. Colonel Wills was drinking something green with club soda. “All right,” he said after taking a sip. “You gave me the office, now tell me the tale. What’s the pitch? What do you want?”

“You don’t recognize me?” Sandra asked.

“No,” he said. “Should I?”

“I was smaller the last time you saw me.”

“No doubt,” he said, unimpressed.

Sandra smiled and put her hand lightly on my arm. “This is Morgan DeWitt,” she told the colonel. “He works for Alexander Brass, the columnist. They are helping me find my mother.” Twisting in her seat she indicated the colonel with an upturned palm. “Morgan, this is the Grand Duke Feodore Alexandrovitch, or Manderson Kent of the Shropshire Kents, or Leopold van Spottsbergen, or Astor K. Vandermier, or Captain Sander Biddell, United States Navy, Retired, or…”

The colonel with the many names put his glass on the table with a thump and rose to his feet. “Now look—” he said.

Sandra rose with him. “Better known to those who love him as the Professor,” she finished. “Professor, I’m Lucille—Amber’s kid.”

He stared at her.

“Really,” she said.

“No!” he sat down. “Well, I’ll be—Little Lucille. Say—remember that time in Sheboygan—”

“We were never in Sheboygan,” she told him.

“I guess you’re right. Remember the Fisher brothers, Jim and Alec?”

“You mean Peter and his sister Sal?”

“Was that their names? Remember the big score we made running the golden wire on that grain elevator bates from St. Louis? Rented a private railroad car for that one. Had him running around the country and took him for twenty thousand dollars, then we blew him off with a cackle bladder in Buffalo, New York.”