On the other hand, I could no longer say the same of Arthur Clyde or Blaire Wentworth.
27
I pulled out of the lunch-hour traffic into the parking lot of the Putney Road Bank. Ron Klesczewski was leaning against his car, looking morose. He’d called me on the radio as I was driving back into town from Wentworth’s place, asking me to meet him here. His tone of voice had not been encouraging.
I glanced around as I got out of my car, looking for Sammie, with whom Ron was supposed to be working. “What’s up?”
He read me correctly. “She’s not here. We had a bit of a run-in.”
I suppressed a sigh. The combined pressures on us were beginning to spread. “What happened?”
His face was oddly still as he spoke, his emotions rigidly under control. “I screwed up, I’m afraid. I may have let the birds fly the coop.”
He and Martens were supposed to have researched and interviewed Hanson, Atwater, and Thomas. “All three of them?”
He nodded. “Yup. Hanson for sure. We checked his home, neighbors, business addresses, the works. Nobody knows where he went. All we know about the other two is that they didn’t show up for work today and that neither one is picking up their home phone.”
Part of his depression became clear to me now. Had he been more aggressive yesterday, he might have been grinning in victory instead of standing here empty-handed. I didn’t doubt the hard-charging Sammie Martens had driven that point home, perhaps deeper than usual, in compensation for her own screwup with Milo.
“That’s not all,” he added mournfully. “Sammie also found out that Hanson owns several businesses, not just the warehouses like I thought. None of the others are in his name, but he’s majority owner in all of them.”
“Anything directly relating to this case?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Who knows? Nothing on the surface.”
“So where’s Sammie?” I repeated.
“She went after Kenny Thomas. We did the basic background research on all of them early this morning, in preparation for the interviews. But after we discovered Hanson had taken a powder, I thought we should regroup, maybe talk things over with you. Sammie wanted to go after the other two without wasting any more time.”
He was doing this well, keeping his tone neutral, his account unprejudiced, but I suspected Sammie and he had actually had quite an argument.
“So, anyhow,” he concluded, “I thought I ought to let you know what was up, in case it was mentioned later.”
I nodded. “Fair enough. What’s your plan now?”
He looked toward the bank. “I thought I’d talk to them first, find out what I could about Atwater and Thomas, and then go over to Atwater’s place.”
I smiled despite myself, stimulated by Ron’s unremitting gloominess. “Lighten up, it feels worse than it is. We’ve all messed up at least once so far in this case. If Sammie still has a chip on her shoulder when you see her later, sort it out; but I think you’ll find it’s blown over.”
I opened my car door and slipped behind the wheel. “Look, why don’t we cut it three ways? You take the bankers, I’ll take Atwater, and we’ll leave Sammie to chase after Thomas, okay?”
He smiled weakly and began walking toward the building, a living monument to how a major case could be undermining to one’s self-confidence.
Atwater lived on Organ Street, parallel to Birge and lined up against a long row of ancient Estey Organ warehouses. Typically, however, while only a couple of hundred feet separated the two streets, Organ was some forty feet higher in elevation, perched along the edge of a treacherous slope.
The building I was after, like many in the center of town, dated back before World War I: boxy, two stories tall, with a one-windowed half-third floor tucked in under the gables. It had originally been sided with pine clapboards but was now surfaced with those oddly shaped, fluted composition tiles that some demented designer decades ago had apparently thought were the spitting image of cedar shakes, “only better.” I found Atwater’s doorbell on a mailbox by the front door and pushed it.
“She’s not home. Left yesterday.”
I stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked up. Leaning precariously out of a window was a large woman with a voice to match, wearing a tent-like cotton dress and a headful of brightly colored plastic curlers.
“I know you; you’re Lieutenant Gunther, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” She let out a bellow of laughter. “Just like ‘Dragnet.’ I’ve read about you in the newspaper. What’s up?”
“I’d like to speak with Paula Atwater.”
“She in trouble?” The woman sounded like she didn’t care one way or the other.
“Not with me. You know where she went?”
“Nope. She took off in a big rush late yesterday with a suitcase. You want to look around her place?”
It was a tempting offer, but I had to watch my step. “I don’t have a warrant.”
The woman laughed again. “Oh, hell, that’s no problem. I got the key. Come on up. I own the place.”
Still I demurred. “Can’t do it. Legally, that apartment is her property; we’d be trespassing, even though it’s your house.”
She scowled at me. “I’m not so sure it is her property. Her rent was due three days ago, and she blew out of here saying she didn’t know if or when she’d be back. Even gave me her keys, which she usually doesn’t do. I was thinking of throwing her out anyway-too noisy.”
Without knowing it, she had opened a small legal loophole, implying that Paula Atwater had terminated her lease. “So you don’t expect her back?”
“I was going to give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe a few days, but the rent is overdue and I’m not a wealthy woman.”
I smiled and bowed slightly. “Then I’d be charmed if you’d show me her apartment.”
I climbed the central staircase and met my hostess on the second-floor landing. She stuck out a large, sweaty hand I felt obliged to squeeze in greeting.
“I’m Shirley Barrows… Lieutenant Joe Gunther. Damn, you’re a real hero. My girlfriends and I are real fans of yours, ever since that ski-mask murderer. We would get together and read the paper out loud; it was just like watching the soaps.” She paused. “You got your hands full with this one, though, huh?”
“We’re working on it around the clock.”
Her eyes lit up. “And you think Paula’s tied in somehow?”
I made a sad face and started to mouth the usual platitudes, but she plunked me on the shoulder with her ham-sized mitt and took me off the hook. “Don’t say it. You can’t talk, I know; confidential, right?”
I smiled in relief. “Right. Sorry.”
She fished a key ring out of a large pocket on the front of her dress and waddled up one more flight to what had been designed originally as an attic. She fiddled with the door lock on the narrow, dark landing, barely wide enough to hold us both. Her moon-round face looked as grim as a judge’s. “No sorries about it. You take your time in here, and just pound on my door on your way out.”
She turned the key and stepped aside so I could squeeze by. “I can tell the girls we met, can’t I?”
“Absolutely.”
The silence was deafening following her departure. I stood motionless in the living room, looking, smelling, and listening to the muted sounds from outside, trying to absorb initial impressions.
It was obviously a young single woman’s apartment, hung with suggestive posters of Axl Rose and some group named Slash, a Leland and Gray Union High School pennant, and a personality dart board where the target rings had been replaced by a black-and-white photograph of a serious-looking older man in a tie and rimless glasses. I recognized him as the CEO of the Putney Road Bank, a regular at Rotary lunches and benefit affairs for the museum. His bland face had been pockmarked by the passage of darts, three of which now resided in his nose.
There were stuffed animals, open cassette tapes, pillows, and dirty clothing strewn about, but it was not the disarray of a hasty departure. Rather, it looked to me like the residue of a sloppy housekeeper. The air smelled slightly of seeped-in marijuana. The few books that were scattered about were all romances, soft-porn bodice-rippers with beautiful, half-naked people on the covers.