Dames Fight Harder Read online

  From the day we met, Jolene’s ability to talk for what seemed minutes at a time without pausing for breath had fascinated me.

  “He says there’s lots of other needs and I’m right here where I could volunteer at something, but I got to thinking they’re wanting war workers, and that’s a lot more important than working in a nightclub. Plus I’m already used to working funny hours, so I filled this out and if the place doesn’t want me—”

  “If they don’t want you, they’re not very smart. I need to see Mrs. Z about something. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you, Jolene.”

  Waving happily, she raised the lid on the mailbox.

  Our landlady lived in a cozy downstairs apartment and was an absolute peach except for one thing: She owned a nasty yellow tomcat whose greatest delight was to shoot out past her feet and sink his front teeth into the first female leg he encountered. I knocked on her door and held the manila envelope down to deflect him.

  Mrs. Z opened the door with her pussycat overflowing her cradling arm. He hissed at me.

  “Oh, Margaret. Come in.”

  “Thanks, but I just want to know if it’s okay if I burn what’s in the trash barrel. I’ve been cleaning out some old files and had a couple of things I’d like to toss in. I’ll stay and watch till it burns out.”

  “Of course, dear. As long as you watch it. Uncoil the hose in case you need it, if you don’t mind.”

  I went out through the kitchen, which we girls got to use on Saturday mornings, and held Rachel’s envelope over the metal drum next to the garbage can. Every backyard I’d ever been in had a can like it, or maybe a wire basket. When it filled up with discarded mail, paper that had wrapped meat and debris from the sweeper, you set it on fire so the contents burned down and kept things tidy.

  I stirred the contents with a stick to fluff things up, then dropped in a kitchen match. I held the envelope over the flames.

  Its weight told me it must contain quite a few sheets of paper. It wasn’t sealed. The metal tab that held it closed had been bent and straightened numerous times. Either its contents had been added to bit by bit or someone had been a frequent visitor to whatever it held.

  Nothing to do with this, Rachel had said.

  Then why destroy it?

  It wasn’t up to me to question. Before I could change my mind, I dropped it into the flames. Then I sat on the back steps and watched it burn, savoring the forgotten pleasure of being alone in your own backyard, smelling the earth and listening to bird sounds, as I felt a sharp, sharp longing for my girlhood.

  * * *

  One thing I was curious about was how the cops had known where to find Rachel. I’d always supposed she lived with her parents. Something about the way she’d mentioned the “place” — apartment, presumably — where she’d been arrested made me suspect her family didn’t know it existed. Who did know about it? I added that to the list of things that didn’t add up for me, like the tip from the dog walker.

  After a quick lunch at a diner I liked, I looked at the particulars on Rachel’s arrest. The police logbook was open to the public, though members of the press, and probably lawyers and law clerks, were ordinarily the only ones to peruse it. The only new information it gave me was the exact time of her arrest, the names of the officers who’d gone to her apartment, and what I’d come for, the location. Without any idea what I expected to learn, or do, I decided to have a look.

  Rachel’s private little nest was in a brown brick building overlooking the river. It had five stories and a hint of Spanish or Moorish style thanks to a crenelated top and tile roof. Even with those touches it wasn’t the sort of place that would attract a second look. It was small, two or four apartments on each floor, depending on size; respectable and quiet.

  The police car I had an eye out for was parked discreetly in the alley beside it. Uniforms, or even detectives, were going over the place hunting evidence. There was no point trying to get in with them still there. I went back to the office where all I managed to do for the rest of the afternoon was wait for phone calls that never came while simmering in growing frustration.

  Surely Rachel was out by now. If she was going to get out. She’d asked for my help, and for all the good I was doing I might as well be stuffed in a closet with my hands tied and a bag on my head.

  I stuck around half an hour past my usual quitting time on the off chance Joel Minsky might call after his staff had gone home, or that Pearlie would call, or that Rachel herself would come strolling in. All I got for my optimism was thirsty.

  SIX

  The regulars at Finn’s pub, and Rose and Finn who owned it, were the closest I came to having a family. A childhood friend had taken me there the day of my dad’s funeral and I’d been finding my way through the door ever since. Framed photos of Irish scenes decorated its walls. The chairs at the tables were mismatched. Cops were plentiful among its clientele.

  Somehow I’d managed to miss my childhood friend, whose teasing always raised my spirits. When Rose had pulled me a perfect Guinness, I made for a table where a cop with brindled hair sat alone with his legs stretched comfortably out. He was wearing civvies.

  His name was Mick Connelly and for the better part of three years I’d been frustrated by his patient pursuit of me no matter how many times I told him I had no interest in kids and marriage. Somehow Pearl Harbor had changed things between us. I still didn’t want any part of an ivy-covered cottage but I no longer tried to deny the connection between us. What we did about the physical attraction simmering below the surface, I didn’t know, but life seemed better when we saw each other. I sat down.

  “Off night shift, are you?”

  “’Til next time, and glad enough of it.”

  Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dayton’s police had adopted a schedule that left no question they were part of the war effort. Street cops like Connelly worked in what they called platoons, one week the day platoon, then evening platoon, then overnight, after which the rotation repeated. Their “week” had become seven days working followed by a day off. After six such weeks they got two days in a row off. Then the seven-one schedule started again.

  “Seamus is on evenings now, though, so I’ve no one to keep me out of mischief.” As he spoke, he reached across the table and turned my hand over, turning my insides to liquid with the circles his index finger traced in my palm. “That part falls to you for a bit. Think you’re up to it?”

  The lines fanning out from his steel blue eyes were deeper than usual.

  “Tired as you look, you’re not up to mischief. And no, I’m not equal to keeping you out of it right now.” I caught his disturbing finger. “I’m working on something.”

  “Ah.” Leaning back he drank some Guinness. “You look a bit angry, too. Don’t think it’s at me. It must have to do with whatever you’re working on.”

  “It’s not about you, so don’t get a swelled head. My friend Rachel’s been arrested for murder.”

  “Jaysus!” Connelly sat upright. “That Jewish woman?”

  For reasons I couldn’t identify, the words stung like a slap.

  “Yes. My friend who happens to be a Jew. Is that the only way you think of her?”

  “Maggie—”

  “Not even ‘the voluptuous one’? Or ‘the one whose upstairs puts Mae West to shame’? She has her own business — her own company! She’s smart. She’s pretty. That time we ran into her on the street and she mentioned reading Padraig Pearse, you nearly fell over. But that’s what she is in your mind? ‘That Jewish woman’?”

  “Maggie—”

  “Tell Seamus he’s too old to be working evenings or nights either one. He was fixing to put in for retirement until the war came along.”

  Downing the remnants of my stout in two gulps, I stalked out. I wasn’t sure if I was angry at Connelly’s words or that Seamus, who’d been part of my life since I could remember, was working a schedule that was hard enough on younger men. Maybe it was something else altogether.r />
  * * *

  I got a bite to eat with one of the other women who roomed at Mrs. Z’s. When we got back I curled up on my bed and tried to read, but I couldn’t concentrate. I went downstairs and called the number Pearlie had given me to see if he’d heard anything about Rachel. The voice that answered said there was nobody there by that name and hung up in my ear.

  Frustrated, and too restless to do anything else, I got in my car and drove to Rachel’s apartment. The cop car was gone, but just inside the entry a rotund little man sat importantly behind an elevated desk signing visitors in and out and barring non-residents. No, he told me, Miss Minsky wasn’t in. The way his otherwise pleasant expression grew mildly evasive when I asked for her suggested he knew about the police activity and was troubled by it.

  Rachel and I were similar in several ways. When I’d had the pins knocked out from under me, or when I needed familiarity and a sense of control, I sought refuge in my office. I wondered whether it might be the same with Rachel. If her brother had managed to get her out on bail, that might be where she headed.

  It was almost eleven o’clock now. Back in the DeSoto I cranked down the window to let in the night air, which had grown cooler. Its spring scents were pleasant, but my real motivation was that the open window let me hear things I couldn’t see. A year ago the streets where I drove would have been better lighted. Now, even though there was no official blackout yet, lights had been doused.

  War had been good for putting people without jobs during the Depression back to work. I drove east past factories that were running three shifts. The rutted street where Rachel’s business was located was as silent as a graveyard by comparison.

  A few feet shy of the turn-in to Minsky Construction, I parked at the curb with dwindling hope. There was no sign of Rachel’s big Buick. There was no car of any kind parked at her building. The only vehicle visible anywhere was a pickup truck pulled close to a pile of coal that dwarfed it in the coal yard across the way, probably a casualty of overloading whose tire had blown or worse. Everything around me was dark shapes save for glints here and there where starlight bounced off facets in the coal.

  My hand was on the gearshift preparing to abandon my fruitless mission when a flicker of something caught the edge of my eye. I turned my head toward Rachel’s building. Had I seen a light?

  No, everything was... There. A pinprick. Moving. At the rear of the building. On the side where Rachel’s office was.

  If anyone had been watching, my headlights had announced my arrival as effectively as a brass band. But then whoever it was would have doused their light too. I turned off the ignition. Easing my Smith & Wesson from its holster, I opened the car door wide enough to slide out. I closed it without latching it.

  As I neared the building, I saw that a gate stood open into the fenced area given over to building supplies and unused construction equipment. I cut through. Huge metal dinosaurs with jaws and blades poised to crush and devour loomed over me. Belatedly I realized it made a swell place to lie in ambush for someone. Nobody was expecting me, though. And whoever had come this way wasn’t Rachel. She owned the place. She would have walked in the front door.

  The graders and diggers that could hide an enemy also provided good cover for me. As quickly as stealth allowed, I moved from the shelter of one to the next, fighting the notion one of them might start to roll. I expected another gate at the back side of the equipment pen. Instead, that side was unfenced.

  Was there rear access to Minsky Construction from an alley or street? I couldn’t see, but I could make out the back door to the building now and there weren’t any cars.

  As I ducked under the window to Rachel’s office I spotted a jiggle or two of light. Someone inside was using a flashlight. No windows decorated the utilitarian back of the building. Keeping flush to the wall I got to the door. My eyes had adjusted to darkness enough now for me to make out a matchbook wedged in the door to keep it from closing.

  Still sticking to the wall like paint, I moved to a spot where the opening door would hide me and reached for the door with my free hand. As my fingertips brushed the knob, the door itself opened. I dropped to a crouch as a man came out. He spotted the movement.

  “Raise your hands.”

  I brought the .38 up to persuade him. He aimed a kick at it. Jerking the gun out of harm’s way threw me briefly off balance. In the seconds required to keep my footing, he took off running toward the equipment yard. I plunged after him.

  I heard a snap and ducked as close as I could to the side of the building. The sound repeated. He was shooting at me. When I returned the favor, the nonsense stopped.

  Ahead of me, toward the front of the building, a man’s voice shouted. It wasn’t the shout of a man in pain from a bullet wound, though. Had someone happened by and heard the ruckus? Did the intruder have a pal who’d been waiting for him?

  Moving cautiously, I stepped from the sheltering shadows next to the building far enough to have a look. A man was headed across the street at a run, making for the coal yard across the way. Headed toward the pickup truck I’d blithely dismissed as inoperable, I thought bitterly. I couldn’t catch him, but I might get a look at the license plate on the truck. I started to run again.

  An engine sputtered to life. All at once I became aware of a massive shape plummeting toward my head. Jumping awkwardly, I fell to the side and rolled on my hip.

  The shape was at ground level now, coming at me full tilt. It was some sort of metal bucket with jaws, part of one of the big machines.

  Pulling my legs up I managed a faster somersault than I’d ever done as a kid. Pain jolted up me as the bucket clipped my bottom, spinning me ninety degrees. Getting hit full force would hurt a lot worse. Through the darkness I could just make out the shape of those lethal metal jaws swinging back to have another go at me. Heart pounding, I dragged myself back on my elbows. Ducking bullets I understood. Trading punches I understood. This mindless chunk of metal was a different kind of adversary.

  Another shout sounded. Sharp. Giving orders. I hadn’t managed to scoot far enough. Searing pain swept the skin on my shins, and a second later flared again. I heard a cry and realized it was me.

  The metal jaws were receding again. I hitched myself backward another few inches. This time as they launched another attack, they didn’t come quite as close. As they retreated with the indifferent precision of a pendulum, I began to suspect that was exactly what they had become — a pendulum whose arc was decreasing. Whoever had been at their controls had taken off. Pushing up, with one eye on the swinging metal, I staggered to my feet and went a few steps forward. Slightly dizzy and hard pressed to make out more than shapes in the unlighted surroundings, I saw a car shoot from behind the coal across the way. Seconds later, the pickup I’d supposed inoperable took off in the opposite direction.

  Limping a few steps more, I caught my breath and looked down at my legs. Blood oozed down them. The swinging bucket had scraped off some skin. Considering that it could have broken my bones or crushed my skull, I’d gotten off lucky. Still, as I hobbled toward my car, I wondered what the man I’d just tangled with had been after in Rachel’s office, and what she’d gotten me into.

  SEVEN

  “Those trousers look nice on you,” Izzy said as she slid my morning oatmeal in front of me at McCrory’s lunch counter.

  The skinny little waitress was off delivering toast and eggs to another customer before I could thank her.

  For my birthday, the girls at Mrs. Z’s had gone together and bought me a pair of tailored trousers like some stylish women and movie stars now were wearing. I hadn’t worn them for work before because they didn’t look as professional as a suit. Today, thanks to my encounter with the construction equipment, I’d decided they beat showing off my scraped shins. Izzy’s verdict reassured me that what with a good blouse and tweed bolero, which had a few dots of color that went with the trousers, I looked reasonably smart.

  I folded the morning paper I’d been rea
ding and concentrated on my oatmeal. There’d been no mention of Rachel in yesterday’s late edition of the Daily News, or in the Journal that lay beside me. If the News still didn’t have anything when it hit the streets today, either the charges against Rachel had been dropped or her brother had done some serious string pulling to keep her name out of print. I wished I knew which.

  Four things bothered me about the pickle Rachel was in. First was how the police had known to go to her apartment rather than her parents’ house. Second, who was the dog walker and what was he doing at the construction site? Third was how little blood I’d seen where the body was found, although Freeze might be right in what he theorized. Finally, what was the intruder doing — or hunting — in Rachel’s office last night?

  “Mr. Minsky’s in court,” his secretary said when I called and asked to speak to him. No point in asking her for information. She probably didn’t know, and wouldn’t tell me if she did.

  I didn’t know the name of Rachel’s father. The phone book carried a listing for eight Minskys, all but one at good addresses. If all else failed, I could call my way through all of them and turn on my charm.

  Right now, a faster way to learn whatever there was to learn might be to have a chat with Cecilia, so I drove out to Minsky Construction.

  A car I didn’t recognize was parked at the door. It was the make the cops used for their unmarked units. Two men, one roughly dressed, the other in a cheap suit, conferred behind the fence protecting the construction equipment. The gate to the enclosure now had a closed padlock.

  “Maggie! Am I ever glad to see you!”

  Cecilia sprang up and hurried to the counter as I went in.

  “Is anything wrong?”

  Her blonde head shook.

  “No. Well, yes, but it’s over now. Someone broke into Rachel’s office last night.”

  “Broke in! Did they take anything?”