Ration of Lies, page 21
Rachel Minsky’s frustration yesterday over siphoned gas had given me another idea. I trudged to houses on one side of the school, then on the other. Waving the clipboard I kept in my car, I blathered about a study of vehicle security.
“Car theft! Mercy me, no!” gasped a woman in pin curls who answered the door six houses away from the school. “Word about that would certainly get around, too. We’re a very close neighborhood.”
She started to close the door. I leaned against the jamb with a pasted-on smile so she couldn’t. Given my years of experience talking with strangers while I stood on their doorsteps, I should take up peddling encyclopedias.
“Well, not theft precisely, just joyriding. Has anyone’s car been taken and brought back? Or gas siphoned off?”
“Goodness no. This isn’t some railroad neighborhood. Mrs. Murphy with the blue roof went around saying her car was moved while it sat in the garage, if you can believe it, but the way she rattles on, nothing she says is worth two cents.”
I thanked her and made my way three doors up to a house with a blueish-green roof. A fiftyish woman in trousers and clip-on earrings like clumps of grapes opened the door. At her heels, a fat little dog with a caved-in face started barking the minute it saw me and kept it up throughout our ensuing conversation.
“I understand you believe your car was used recently without your permission. Would you mind telling me more about it?”
She broke into a smile.
“You’re the first to show any interest at all. Won’t you come in, Miss—?”
“Sullivan. Maggie Sullivan.” I offered my hand.
“Are you with the police? They sent a young fellow out, but he just scratched his head and asked a few questions and left. I don’t think he believed me.”
“Actually, I’m a private detective.” I gave her a card. “I’d like to keep that between the two of us, though, if you’ve no objection. I told your neighbors I’m collecting information related to vehicle safety across the city.”
“Goodness!” She stared at my card with delight. “Well, mum’s the word, then. Hush, Chipper. Be a good dog.”
The mutt had possibly barked himself deaf since he only barked louder. At his owner’s invitation, I perched on a chair.
“I’d gone to a concert down at the school — walked, of course. That’s one of the lovely things about this neighborhood, the programs they have down there. The next morning, when I realized someone had taken the car, I worked out that might have been when they took it. Of course, it could have been any time that night they took it. I just know that next morning when I went out to use it, it was obvious someone else had as well.”
I phrased my next question carefully so she wouldn’t misconstrue it as doubting her.
“What made it obvious?”
She looked at me as though I were dim.
“Why, my logbook, of course.”
“What?” I raised my voice to make sure she heard me. My left ear was starting to ache.
“My logbook. I keep a little notebook and pencil stub in my purse. If I drive somewhere, I jot down the date when I set out. When I come back, if I’m not going to use the car again that day, I jot down the mileage on that thingamabob on the dashboard. It helps me keep an eye on how much I’m driving, and whether I might use up my gas ration. When I opened my notebook that morning, the miles I’d written down the day before were lower than the ones on the dashboard.”
CHAPTER FORTY
My fingers got a workout typing up pertinent information from the past twenty-four hours. Yesterday there’d been the hitherto unknown observer who’d noticed the whistling man. This morning brought Mrs. Murphy with her wonderful notations on dates and mileage. The latter didn’t prove it was Roger Spooner who took her car. It did, however, strengthen my theory on leaving the concert and coming back. Freeze might need more convincing.
Signing up for my first ration book used a chunk of the afternoon. By the time I managed to use it on coffee and a few other items, it was time for Laura Gray to get off work.
It had started to rain, which made it tricky to spot her amid the umbrellas being unfurled by workers leaving the printing plant. She opened hers, and Velma, the gray-haired proofreader who giggled at the drop of a hat, trotted up to hold it over both of them while Laura put on a headscarf. The scarf had splotches of red on the back which made it easier to keep track of the two women as they hurried through the rain and boarded the trolley together.
Half a dozen blocks later, Laura got off alone. She dashed into a door marked Dry Cleaners and Laundry, emerging with a bundle of clean laundry clutched to her chest. After two more trolleys and stops at a butcher shop and a magazine stand, she got off near her house and started to walk. I let out a breath of relief.
The rain that at times had made it hard to spot the bright pattern on her scarf was slowing now. It became a steady drizzle. I turned into an alley and made a quick circuit that brought me out on the opposite side of the street, a short distance away from the front of Laura’s apartment house. Up ahead, she was bobbing toward me, her various purchases stowed in a canvas shopping bag.
I scanned both sides of the street for Boike’s car, then realized as I passed it that Mary Minerva’s truck sat at the curb. A car was parked in front of it, but the space in front of that was free. I pulled in. My rearview mirror, above the roof of the car between us, showed Boike’s distinctive shape in the cab of the pickup. As soon as Laura nudged her way through the apartment house door, I left the DeSoto and hurried over to join him. He opened the door.
“You’re drenched,” I said as I slid in, shaking off rain myself.
With a nod, he tossed me a towel so wet that wringing it out seemed more practical than using it.
“I didn’t want to give up my spot where I could watch front and back both.” He tipped his head in the general direction of Laura’s apartment. “There’s somebody in there, all right. A man. He’s smart enough to stay away from the windows, but he has to use the can now and then. That room has a window shade that stays down all the time. There’s nothing covering the window over the kitchen sink, though. You can see through it into a hallway or room they have to pass through to answer a call of nature. I’ve caught glimpses of him there, going back and forth.”
“It probably never occurred to him — them — that they could be seen there.”
“Or that anyone would be watching.”
I twisted and looked back, attempting to see what he was describing.
“You’d have to be closer than you are here in the truck. How’d you manage that?”
“Hedge trimming.”
“Hedge trimming?”
I looked back again. The first time I came here the hedge between the apartment house and its neighbor had been shaggy and overgrown. Now it was neat, and two feet lower.
“Sitting here all day, even in a car, risked attracting attention. When I got here this morning the truck was all loaded up with tools and a wheelbarrow. I went right to the manager’s apartment, gave him a spiel about being a newly returned vet trying to start a lawn care business. When I got to the part about doing the hedge for free in return for a letter of recommendation, he just about danced.”
“And you think the man you saw in there was Tosh?”
“All I could make out was dark hair. But having it turn out to be someone else would be mighty coincidental. “So. Shall we go in?”
“Just me. If it is Tosh, he’ll be less likely to clam up. Two people would make him feel threatened the minute he saw us.”
“No.”
“He’s not dangerous.”
“He’s cornered. You don’t know what he’ll do.”
“I’m armed. I doubt he is.”
“You’re not thinking of trying to keep this from Freeze if it is Hashimoto, are you? I couldn’t do that.”
“If it is Tosh, I’ll call Freeze myself. Just give me ten minutes. Then you can come up and see for yourself one way or another. Meanwhile, having you down here is insurance he won’t get away if he decides to make a run for it.”
After a long minute of hesitation, Boike nodded.
***
I added my partially closed umbrella to others in a rubber tray in the lobby of the apartment house. Shaking at least some of the raindrops from my coat and hair, I climbed the stairs to Laura’s apartment. There was no response to my knock.
“Laura?”
I tried again. Just as I was wondering if I’d need to knock a third time, the poised brunette proofreader opened the door enough for us to see each other.
“Yes? Oh...What do you want?”
I gave a smile I hoped would reassure her.
“It takes a bit of explaining. May I come in?”
“I suppose.”
It wasn’t the warmest welcome I’d ever received. On the other hand, she wasn’t quaking with nervousness. She’d removed her wet shoes. The seams she’d painted on her legs to look like stockings were smudged from the rain. That and her bare feet made her look vulnerable. With the same reserve she’d displayed in the workplace, she crossed her arms.
“Well? Why are you here?”
“To talk to Tosh Hashimoto.”
She gave a breathless laugh. “You’re mad. You expect to find him here just because we had coffee together a couple of times and went to a movie?”
“No, because you were more than that. Enough more that he drove his kid sister crazy whistling the same tune over and over, one with a title the same as your name, Laura.”
“That’s—”
“Look, I happen to think Tosh is innocent. I have the evidence to prove it, except for some bits about what happened that night that only he can provide. Otherwise, he’s a handy scapegoat, for whoever set the fire and for the police. A witness who thought Tosh might have been running in to help that night, not running away, has already been killed. I’m his best hope for getting a fair shake.”
Eyes clamped closed, and paler of face, she was shaking her head.
“He’s not here.”
“Yes, I am.”
From the back part of the hallway separating the living room from the rest of the apartment, a man I’d seen only in photographs stepped into view. Tall and good-looking, with black-rimmed glasses, it was Tosh Hashimoto. He caught Laura’s hand as she turned to him with her poise collapsing. He gave her knuckles a kiss.
“It’s no use, Laura. I’ve put you through enough.”
His other hand brushed her cheek, where tears were starting to slide. He drew a breath of resolve, then turned to me.
“What is it you want me to do?”
“I want you to tell me about that night.”
Tosh sank down on the couch, with Laura beside him. Removing my wet coat, I folded it inside out and sat down across from them. His voice was calm.
“Not long after I got home from work, Gene Spooner called. He said they’d hired a new night-shift proofreader who had experience but needed someone to spend a couple of hours going through how our particular system went — where to find things, where to put things, a few stylistic peculiarities of military usage. He wanted to know if I’d come in at ten that night and run through it so one of the regulars on the night shift didn’t have to stop work to do it. I said of course.”
“And you’re sure it was Spooner who called? You recognized his voice?”
“Ah. Sorry. I should have been more precise. It was actually Spooner’s secretary who called. Miss...uh...”
“That’s okay. I don’t know her name either.”
“And no, I couldn’t say if it was really her, just that it was a woman. I realized afterward that I’d been snookered. At least I believe that’s what happened.”
“Could the voice on the phone have been Mitzi Fitzgerald?”
“Mitzi?” The question startled him. “The predatory little blonde?”
I nodded.
“But why—?”
“I’m not sure.”
He rumpled his hair with both hands. The result was a patch that stood straight up.
“So, you were going in the back way,” I prompted.
“That’s right. The woman who called said I should, that the front would be locked. I didn’t mind. It was a nice night, and I was in a good mood. The day before I’d asked Laura to marry me, after the war when things aren’t as...complicated, and she’d said she would. I was still on Cloud Nine.”
He sent her a fleeting smile.
“When I was almost there, maybe thirty feet from the door, I heard a sound. A whump like when you put a match to a stove burner. And then...I don’t know how to describe it. Flames as tall as my shoulders all across the back there. I heard someone yell...shriek.
“I remembered I’d seen a hose somewhere back there, and I started to run, thinking maybe I could do something. I didn’t get very far before I realized I couldn’t see in anymore....”
When he’d stopped with his arm up.
“Right then, in what seemed like a single second — I don’t think I was actually conscious of any one of them — all these things hit me at once. That someone was yelling at me. Saying ‘Stop!’ Running toward me. That I was there, right outside where a bad fire had started.” He swallowed. “That looking Japanese, never mind where I was born, was enough to make me guilty in the eyes of lots of people.”
Rain spattered into the silence that followed his words.
“So, you turned and ran.”
“Like a fool. Like a coward,” he said bitterly.
“You were scared.”
“And made myself look even worse. I see that now. By the time I’d run a few blocks I started to realize it, but I didn’t know what to do. If I went to the police, were they going to believe me? What if they locked me away somewhere and didn’t let my family know? Because of the war, I thought they probably could.
“I didn’t want to go to my parents, or any of the fellows I lived with, or the Church Federation. It might make them look involved. I-I thought of the one person who might take me in, the one the police, if they started hunting for me, would have no reason to contact.”
“Laura.”
He nodded. “I called her from a pay phone. I told her I’d understand if she said No. I only meant it to be for a couple of days—”
“I wanted him safe!” she cut in. “This was the only way. And they did hunt for him, and then you started, too.”
“His family’s frantic. They don’t even know if he’s dead or alive.” I gave Tosh a wry look. “And your sister doesn’t take No for an answer.”
He chuckled despite the worry lines etched on his face.
“No, she doesn’t. So, what now?”
A glance at my watch told me it was almost time for Boike to make an appearance.
“Now I call the police — a man I know, a detective.” I’d already spotted the phone on a stand next to the short hall that gave access to kitchen and bath. “I’ll stay with you when they arrive. There won’t be any rough stuff. I’ll follow you to the station and make sure your parents and the Church Federation know where you are.”
I picked up the phone.
“There’s a policeman — ex-policeman — in the back yard,” I told the pair on the couch. “He said I could have ten minutes with you before he came up. Don’t panic when he gets here. He’s a good guy.”
Tosh swallowed and nodded. I dialed. To my relief, Freeze was still there. I didn’t have a plan for if he wasn’t.
“It’s Maggie,” I said. “I’m with Tosh Hashimoto.”
“Where are you?”
“First, I need your guarantee no weapons will be drawn. He’s unarmed. He won’t resist.”
“Tell me NOW before I charge you with impeding a police investigation!”
“Do I have your word?”
“Okay, fine. No weapons unless he presents a threat.”
It was the best I’d get. I gave him the address.
“One other thing,” I said as I turned. “You took a pair of glasses to work with you one day. Why?”
The question clearly puzzled him.
“To see if one of the Linotype operators could use the frames. She’d broken hers.”
“Did she take them?”
“I don’t know.” He was frowning now. “She said she didn’t want them, so I put them in these cubbyholes we had for stowing our lunches and that. They disappeared.”
I nodded.
“I’ll let you have a minute alone to say your goodbyes.” It would be their last time together before life tore them apart, maybe for good.
Bypassing the kitchen that had afforded Boike his view, I went into the bathroom that had a small window facing the back yard as well as one on the side. Rain had brought darkness early. When I raised the shade to get a look at the back yard, objects were only shapes against a lighter gray. Boike’s blocky form already was moving toward the back door.
As I watched, another figure burst from a clump of bushes beyond the hedge at the side of the house. He grabbed Boike from behind. Boike swung and spun. The attacker’s arm shot up, descending with lightning speed. Boike fell, motionless.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“Back door?” I shouted as I burst into the living room.
“Right and straight.” Laura pointed.
The apartment door banged as I flung it open, heedless of someone else going the opposite way behind me. I slid down the stairs. By the time I jerked the building’s rear door open, my Smith & Wesson was in my hand. I ran.
“Boike!” I dropped to my knees. He still had a pulse.
“Go!” he said thickly. He gestured.
Between the hedge and the side of the building a figure was fleeing. He glanced back. His arms and legs pumped. I tried to close the gap between us and slipped on the wet grass. Rain was soaking me. Boike’s attacker disappeared around the corner of the apartment building.
