[Maggie Sullivan 04.5] - A Concrete Garter Belt Read online

  A Concrete Garter Belt

  A Maggie Sullivan Short story

  M. Ruth Myers

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © 2015 Mary Ruth Myers

  No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information contact M.Ruth Myers, www.MRuthMyers.com

  This story is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, real events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This story originally appeared in Fifty Shades of Grey Fedora, an anthology from Private Eye Writers of America.

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  A Concrete Garter Belt (Maggie Sullivan mysteries)

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  Further Reading: No Game for a Dame

  Also By M. Ruth Myers

  I’D SPENT an unexpected bonus from a client on a tire for my DeSoto, slugs for my Smith & Wesson and a blue silk garter belt. I’d never owned fancy undies before, and I was at my desk feeling like a Vanderbilt. Then a woman with fading brown hair walked in and guilt elbowed me over my extravagance.

  She was in her mid-thirties but too much hard work and too little kindness had made her look older. Her dress had been washed so often you could read the headlines through it.

  “Maggie Sullivan?” Her eyes held the uncomprehending misery of an animal hit by a car. “Izzy at the five and dime, says you’re a real good detective. If you don’t help me, I don’t know what I’ll do!”

  I pushed aside the afternoon paper, which told me Dayton had finished installing two-way radios in all its police cars in preparation for a visit by FDR. The woman didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t notice as she came to sit in the chair in front of my desk, either. She just kept talking, scared I’d stop her before she’d said her piece.

  “It’s my sis. My kid sis. The police — they say since she’s eighteen, they can’t help unless I show there was — that she didn’t leave on her own. But she wouldn’t! She wouldn’t go off without telling me!”

  Tears started to spill down her face. I took out the bottle of gin that lent my office a homey touch and poured us both some.

  “Your sister’s disappeared?” I splashed in tonic and nudged one glass toward her.

  She’d fished out a handkerchief as tired as her dress and was dabbing futilely at her eyes. She nodded.

  “Why don’t you tell me your name? We’ll start there.”

  “Walsh. Norma Walsh. My sister’s Annie. See? This is her. You’ve got to give this back, though.” Tenderly she unwrapped a ragged towel to reveal a framed photograph. It showed an exquisitely pretty girl, her face sweet and fresh. “I raised her since she was a baby, three years old. We’re all we’ve got, the two of us. That’s why I know she’d never—”

  Threatened by tears again, she took a small sip of gin.

  My fancy garter belt started to pinch. Or maybe it was my conscience. I’d probably spent more on my bit of blue silk than the woman in front of me earned in a week. She’d earned it hard, too, scrubbing floors or clothes from the looks of her roughened hands. I knew she couldn’t pay, but I had a little pad in my bank account just now. Regular clients that just about paid my bills. Maybe talking to her would turn up some possibility she’d overlooked.

  “How long’s Annie been missing?”

  “A week yesterday. When she went off to work. Annie’s got a good job.” Norma frowned. “She was happy and humming and saying where should we go for my birthday, ‘cause we save so we can take the trolley to one of the parks to walk on our birthdays. But she missed — she’d never miss my birthday! That’s how I know—”

  Pressing her sodden hanky to lips that threatened to crumple, she struggled to hold herself together. I swiveled my chair and looked out my open window to give her some privacy. A freight train clattered by on the nearby tracks. The scent of tomatoes that had lain in the sun all day drifted up from carts in the produce market.

  What had made Norma frown when she mentioned Annie’s swell job? I waited to ask until I’d learned other things: Annie worked at a secretarial service. She didn’t have a boyfriend. The girls she’d gone to high school with were mostly married and she hadn’t been where she worked long enough to be close to anyone there, so as far as Norma knew, she didn’t have any friends.

  “When you started to tell me about Annie’s job, you stopped and frowned,” I said. “Was she worried? Having some sort of problem?”

  Norma looked down and twisted her handkerchief.

  “No.... Just... a couple weeks back she came home upset. Wouldn’t say why at first, but them she said someone at work had gotten fresh.”

  “Did she tell you who?”

  She shook her head. Life had returned to her eyes.

  “You’re going to look for her, aren’t you? I went to a man detective, and at first he listened, but then he turned nasty. Told me to get and called me a deadbeat. I don’t expect you to work for nothing, though, see?”

  Taking a two-dollar bill from her pocket, she smoothed it reverently.

  “It’s all I’ve got now, but I’ll pay every week—”

  “Wait till I learn something.”

  “No. I want you to take it.”

  Paying mattered to her. I nodded.

  “You’re going to find Annie. I know it.” She rose with more energy than she’d had coming in.

  It was almost six o’clock on a Friday.

  “I can’t do anything until Monday,” I said.

  “Can I stop by then? After I get off work? Maybe you’ll know something.”

  “Sure. I guess.”

  But Monday two paragraphs on an inside page of the morning paper told me they’d fished the body of a woman named Norma Walsh out of the river.

  ***

  “The woman’s lungs were full of water. She drowned herself.”

  Tipped back in his chair, the head of homicide, a grizzled guy named Freeze, squinted up at me through smoke from one of the cigarettes he smoked constantly. I stood with my fist planted on my hip to keep from popping his jellybean nose.

  “Look, Freeze—-”

  “Yeah, I know. She gave you her last two bucks. She was coming to see you today. You already told me six times.”

  We were in Market House, the ornate white building where detectives and police bigwigs were headquartered. Men at nearby desks pretended to work while their ears stretched, hoping for fireworks. Freeze was a decent cop, but he didn’t like ideas that weren’t his own. Mine had been right enough times that he resented it.

  “Look, Miss Sullivan, if you’ve got some kind of evidence, I’ll listen. Woman’s intuition or a leprechaun whispering in your ear doesn’t count.”

  Snickers issued from several men in the squad room. Freeze let his chair down on all four legs and ground out a stub of cigarette that would fit in a thimble.

  “Kid sister she dotes on is gone. Behind in her rent. Boss at the laundry she worked at had threatened to fire her because she’d been walking around like a sleepwalker. Why wouldn’t the dame drown herself?”

  Because she’d expected me to move mountains. Because she’d been sure I’d have something to tell her today.

  Two seconds more with Freeze and I’d wind up in jail for punching him. Instead I decided to listen to the leprechaun urging me to earn Norma Walsh’s retainer.

  ***

  My client was
dead, and I wasn’t inclined to believe it was suicide. The sister she’d hired me to find was still missing. I was in a lousy mood. To top it off, one of the metal supporters on my pretty garter belt was twisted and driving me crazy. All in all, it seemed like a good time to hunt a new job.

  Annie Walsh had worked at a second-rate secretarial service called Duncan’s Dependables. It was west of Wayne Ave. Through a front window I could see at least two dozen women, all of them young, typing away at desks that were lined up like eggs in a carton. Besides the typists, two men and a couple of girls plied telephones, providing answering service. In an open-front booth a man was trying to pace while a girl took dictation.

  At twenty-six I was nearly a decade older than most of them, but department store security work before I hung out my shingle had taught me some tricks about dressing. Walking back to my car, I buttoned my blouse all the way to the top and changed my hat for a perkier number. By the time I entered the secretarial service, I’d shaved off enough years to look wide-eyed in my little gray suit.

  “May I help?” A man with a mustache decorating his flat face came to the side-by-side desks that served as a counter.

  “Oh, I hope so,” I piped. “My friend Anne Walsh said this was a nice place to work, so I’ve come to apply.”

  “We’re not hiring.”

  “Gee, could I just have a word with Annie, then? She mentioned another place too, but I can’t remember the name.” I peered around as if hunting Annie. His face tightened.

  At one of the typewriters closest to us, a plump girl with a pink birthmark covering half her jaw looked up with interest. Her eyes dropped to her work again when she saw I’d noticed.

  “Any problem here, Mr. Brown?” A man appeared in the doorway of a small office to one side of the girl. He was neat albeit rotund. His brown hair was salted with silver and mostly still on his head.

  “No, sir. Anne Walsh apparently gave her the impression we were hiring. I told her we weren’t.”

  “Walsh.... Wasn’t that the girl who left a week or two back?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The girl with the birthmark cocked her head ever so slightly.

  The boss man was eyeing my gams. He gave me a smile from small, moist lips.

  “Well, now, it seems to me every young woman deserves a chance. Don’t you think, my dear?” His hand eased onto my shoulder and patted. The innocent, kindly uncle.

  “Oh yes, Mr.—?”

  “Duncan. I’m ringmaster here.” He chuckled affably. “The least we can do is let you take a typing test. I’ll show her back,” he added to the flat-faced man.

  “Oh, thanks!” I said as Duncan’s hand slipped to the small of my back to guide me gallantly around the front desk and between the rows. I had a feeling I knew who’d gotten fresh with Annie. “Gee, this does look like a nice place. Where’d Annie go?”

  “I think someone told me she found a better position. Happens to us all the time,” He chuckled again.

  Did I imagine one of the girls shrank back as Duncan passed? Maybe not. Another, a pretty brunette with rosy cheeks, swallowed nervously and hit a wrong key as he neared. She cranked out the page she’d been working on and reached for a fresh carbon set. Duncan leaned down, covering her trembling hand with his.

  “Don’t worry, dear. As long as she keeps her head, a smart girl like you’s not going to get fired over a spoiled page or two. In fact a little bird told me you’re going to start seeing something extra in your pay envelope.”

  She didn’t respond.

  At the back of the room he told a woman whose larger desk and appurtenances identified her as a supervisor to give me a typing test and let me fill out an application. That woman didn’t seem to like him much either. She gave a curt nod without looking up from her work until he’d left. When she did, her eyes flashed active loathing.

  I took my time settling in at a vacant machine to take my test. The supervisor attributed it to nervousness and murmured answers. One of the young fellows answering phones noticed me and gave me a wink and a thumb up before resuming his work.

  I didn’t pass my typing test, but by the time I left I’d learned two things: Several women there didn’t think much of affable Mr. Duncan; maybe even were wary of him. And the story of Annie getting a better job was bunk. She wouldn’t have run out on the sister who’d raised her.

  If Annie Walsh wasn’t already dead, she was in serious trouble.

  ***

  I spent the rest of the morning doing background checks on applicants for a job in a bank. The worn out two dollar bill from Norma Walsh held in place by the edge of my telephone reproached me silently. She’d hired me to find her sister, and if Annie was still alive, I was going to.

  That afternoon a man came in wanting to hire me to find a girlfriend who’d walked out on him six months before. I looked at Norma’s payment and said I couldn’t.

  Half an hour before quitting time, I put on a drab little Princess Eugenie hat. At a drugstore across from the secretarial service, I paged through magazines and watched the girls who’d typed all day bubble out to join other home bound workers hustling toward trolleys.

  When I spotted the girl with the birthmark, I went out and fell into step a few yards behind her. I checked in windows I passed to make sure neither Duncan nor the fellow with the flat face had appeared. A pair of girls from the secretarial service trotted past me, giggling and spoke to her. I saw her shoulders slump as they hurried on. She crossed the street and walked a block to catch another line. No one spoke to her at the stop where she waited, and no one seemed to notice her. Dawdling behind her, I got on when she did and squeezed into the empty seat next to her ahead of hefty man who’d paused to mop his brow.

  A frown appeared on the girl’s forehead as she tried to place me. Suddenly her eyes widened.

  “Yeah. I’m the one who came in asking about Annie Walsh. Her sister hired me to find her.”

  I gave her one of my cards.

  “Oh! I don’t know where she went, honest! Please! I don’t want to lose my job.”

  She looked around in a panic, fearful of being spotted with me.

  “Is that how Duncan gets away with putting his hands all over the girls? Because they’re afraid of losing their jobs?” FDR’s New Deal was improving things, but jobs were still too hard to find to risk losing one.

  I heard her gasp.

  “How did you—? Yes. But that’s all I know!”

  “You were curious what they’d say when I asked about Annie. It’s clear you’re smarter than most of the girls you work with. I’ll bet you’ve picked up things you don’t even realize.” I paused. “I was hoping if you had time for me to buy you a sandwich, you could tell me what Annie was like at least. That would help some.”

  The way her face lighted, I knew she hadn’t had many compliments. Or invitations. I didn’t always like myself for the things I did to get information.

  After looking around again, the girl said she guessed she had time if it would help. Her name was Irene. We got off near where she lived and she pointed out a mom and pop café. A bigger place across the way advertised booze as well as food. I asked if she’d mind going there. Her eyes got big, but she said she guessed it was okay.

  They didn’t have dark beer so I got a gin and tonic. She had ginger ale. I let her get comfortable first. We discussed the menu and I asked how long she’d worked at Duncan’s place.

  “I liked Annie,” she said, broaching the subject first. “We ate lunch together sometimes. The other girls... I guess they feel uncomfortable around me. Because of....” She indicated her disfigurement. “Annie usually just had an apple or boiled egg, though. She was saving to buy a birthday gift for her sister. I guess she must be real worried, huh?”

  I’d told her Norma had hired me, but not the part about her being dead.

  “Tell me about Annie’s last day at work. Everything you remember.”

  The rest of her face grew as red as the birthmark. She picked
at her sandwich.

  “That afternoon I went to the washroom. The supply room’s back there too, and I heard a shriek. And a... like someone getting smacked. A few seconds later, Annie came in crying. One side of her blouse was pulled out. I didn’t know what to do, she was so upset. So I said something stupid, like ‘hey, you’re going to make your eyes red if you keep crying’. And I - I left. I was at my desk typing when Mr. Duncan stomped into his office and slammed the door. He had a red streak on his cheek.”

  “Like someone had scratched him?”

  “No. More like slapped.”

  “What then?”

  “A little later one of Mr. Duncan’s friends came in. They walked through the office and out back. I don’t know why. On the way, Mr. Duncan stopped at Annie’s desk and gave her shoulder one of those nasty little rubs he likes to give. I thought poor Annie was going to be sick at her stomach. Mr. Duncan came back in alone. He said something to Mrs. French — that’s our supervisor — and not long after, she told Annie to take the rest of day off, that she looked peaked. That’s what the girl sitting next to Annie said anyway.”

  Irene traced patterns in the crumbs of her sandwich while I considered the merits of another gin and tonic. I asked if the girl who’d sat next to Annie might tell me anything. Irene didn’t think so. The supervisor? She had a kid and a sick husband who needed expensive medicine every month.

  “What about Duncan’s friend,” I said. “Do you know his name?”

  She thought a minute. “Charlie something. Mr. Duncan calls him Charlie.”

  “Do you know his last name? Where he lives? What he does?”

  She started to shake her head. Then her whole face brightened.

  “But we all think Mr. Duncan cats around when his wife goes to visit his sister. He comes in late and acts like he has a headache.” She leaned over her elbows, her earlier fear forgotten. “He took Mrs. Duncan down to the station this afternoon. Maybe you could follow him tomorrow like you did me — see if he goes out with Charlie.”

  Or maybe I could just pay Duncan a visit.

  ***

  The phone book back at my office told me Duncan’s address. I took the Smith & Wesson from its pocket under my chair. I doubted I’d need it with Duncan, but I might later. Five years of being in the business I was, and a woman, had taught me not to take chances.