“Mood... I do not know that word.”
“Her behavior. Did she seem different in any way? You have been around Miss Carr a good deal over the last three years, so you must be familiar with how she acts, how she behaves.”
Sofia was silent for close to a half minute. When she spoke, it was once again in a voice that could barely be heard. “The last time I saw her, she seemed the same, although maybe a little quieter.”
“Would you say that she was sad?”
“I don’t... think so. Just quiet, like she was thinking.”
“Who would you say Miss Carr’s best friends are?”
“Miss Rowan is one,” she said, turning to Lily. “And Miss Evans and Mrs. Hart.”
“That would be Donna Evans and Cordelia Hart,” Lily put in. “They are part of a group Maureen and I are in, and I have talked to both of them about Maureen’s disappearance. They are every bit as puzzled as I am.”
“I believe you were present during some of the social events at Miss Carr’s residence.”
“Yes, sir. I helped to serve the food and the drinks,” Sofia answered.
“Are you collecting Miss Carr’s mail for her?” Wolfe asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Have you opened any of it?”
Sofia jerked upright as if she had been slapped. “No! I would never do that!”
“Tell me about the mail.”
She gave a sort of shrug, or really more a hunching, of her narrow shoulders. “I haven’t looked at any of it,” she said in a defensive tone.
“Some of that mail may be important to Miss Carr, or important in finding her,” Wolfe said. “I suggest you give all of it to Miss Rowan. You trust her, don’t you?”
“Yes, but...”
“But what?”
Sofia clenched small fists and shivered. I felt the young woman was getting stretched to the limit of her endurance. “All right... Miss Rowan can take all of the mail,” she said.
“We are not going to open that mail, Mrs. Jurek, just study it. Do you have any other thoughts about what might have caused Miss Carr to leave home so abruptly?” Wolfe asked.
Realizing she was nearing the end of what she felt was an ordeal, Sofia exhaled and seemed to relax slightly. “No, sir, I do not have any other thoughts about... about what has happened to Miss Carr. I am sorry that I cannot be of help.”
Wolfe rose without a word and walked out of the office as Sofia watched him with puzzlement. “Another of your boss’s abrupt exits,” Lily remarked. “He’s famous for them, of course.”
“If famous is the right word,” I replied. “Mrs. Jurek, I echo Mr. Wolfe’s thanks for your coming here. You were most patient.”
“Sofia, if you go to the hall and get your coat, I’ll be along shortly,” Lily said. “I need to talk to Mr. Goodwin.” The young woman couldn’t get out of the office fast enough, and as she exited, Lily turned to me.
“Seems to me that he was a little rough on her,” she observed, “or maybe curt is a better word.”
“Tact has never been one of Wolfe’s strong suits,” I conceded, “as you well know.”
“And on top of that, he did not get much out of Sofia, as far as I could tell.”
“Agreed. I don’t think there was a lot of gold to be mined there. Will you get Maureen’s mail for us?”
“I will, although I’m not sure how any of it will help us find her.”
“Neither am I, but it can’t hurt to take a look at it — unopened, of course.”
“You will have it tomorrow,” Lily said. “And we should bring Eric Mason up to speed on this development, or lack of a development. After all, he is a client, and the paying one, at that.”
“We will reach out to Mason,” I told her as I walked her to the hall, where Sofia was nervously waiting to get sprung.
Chapter 12
The next morning, Lily called and said she was coming over with Maureen’s mail. I then called Eric Mason and filled him in on Sofia’s visit to the brownstone and Wolfe’s interrogation of her.
“I really should have been present,” the ad man had grumped.
“You would have found the evening to be a colossal waste of time. One thing Wolfe requested at that time was to get Maureen’s mail, which has been stacking up at her place. Lily Rowan is bringing it here this morning. You’re welcome to come over when we take a look at it, although we don’t plan to open it.”
“When is Lily coming to your place?”
“At eleven, the same time Mr. Wolfe comes into the office from the plant rooms.”
“I will be there.”
Mason and Lily arrived within a minute of each other, and both were seated in the office when Wolfe came in, eyed both of them, placed a raceme of yellow Odontoglossum in the vase on his desk, and rang for beer.
“I have brought Maureen’s mail,” Lily told him from the red leather chair, which Mason had graciously insisted she take. “It’s in this paper bag,” she said as she handed it to Wolfe.
“I had expected more,” he said, opening the bag, pulling a two-inch-high pile of items out, and stacking them on his blotter.
Wolfe riffled through them. “A probable statement from Continental Bank and Trust, fat sales flyers from four stores, including Saks and Bloomingdale’s, likely invoices from Saks and Lord and Taylor, and envelopes bearing the return addresses of a number of charities, including Breast Cancer Research, Women’s Rights Organization, and a Manhattan orphanage.”
“Maureen is on the boards of all those groups,” Lily said, “and these probably are notifications of upcoming meetings. In fact, there was a meeting of the WRO last week that I attended, and Maureen’s absence was remarked on because she so rarely misses attending these sessions.”
Wolfe scowled and pushed the mail aside as if it were contaminated. “Nothing here adds to our knowledge concerning Miss Carr’s whereabouts, although I had suspected this was what Archie calls a long shot.” He turned to Lily. “Nonetheless, you should continue to monitor the woman’s mail, and you can return this batch to her residence.”
I knew Wolfe was at a loss and was flailing about, which is never a pretty sight. Lily and Eric Mason rose to leave, and I escorted them down the hall. “It seems like we’re at a dead end,” Mason said in a dejected tone. “I’m supposed to have a creative mind, but I’ll be damned if I have any suggestions as to what we should be doing next.”
“I feel exactly the same way,” Lily added in a tone meant to mollify the advertising whiz. “I can’t remember ever being this frustrated.”
“The good news is,” I told them, “that Nero Wolfe does not have the word surrender in his vocabulary. I realize the situation at the moment seems bleak, but we’ve been in worse spots than this before, and he invariably pulls the proverbial rabbit out of the hat.” I knew I sounded like a cheerleader trying to exude a confidence I did not at the moment possess.
They both must have sensed my underlying doubts, because neither of them seemed cheered by my little sermon as they left the brownstone wearing somber expressions.
When I got back to the office, Wolfe was in the process of cradling his telephone receiver. I gave him a questioning look, and he said, “I have just given Saul an assignment, and it may be of some help to us. I am a lackwit for not thinking of it before this.”
When he shared with me the subject of his conversation with Saul Panzer, I was inclined to agree that he was a lackwit, but then, that made me one as well. And Wolfe told me that Saul was himself chagrined.
Speaking of Saul, he knows well the daily schedule at the brownstone, so it was not surprising that he telephoned, saying he wanted to stop by at six, which is of course when Wolfe rides the elevator down from the plant rooms. “I have got some atoning to do, and the sooner the better,” he told me.