“I tried to call Debbie at ten-thirty,” Van Drimmelen said, “to tell her Nikkie and I might be about an hour later than we’d planned, but the phone was busy.”
“She was calling me about then,” Raglan said, nodding.
“I tried again three times in the next ten minutes,” Van Drimmelen continued, seeming to enjoy the limelight of his own testimony. “I even called the operator to see if the line was out of order. She was still talking, though. Half an hour later I tried again and Officer Shaffer answered.”
The woman returned and gasped when she saw the living-room. “Good heavens, this is a mess. Let me clean it up,” she said, starting forward. “Oh, what a mess!”
“Don’t touch anything,” Raglan said sharply. “The lab boys ought to be here any minute. I’ll need your prints, Frank, and your wife’s, so we can eliminate them.”
“You’ll find mine on both phones,” I volunteered. “I don’t think I touched anything else.”
The technicians arrived and spent an hour combing the house; it was nearly one by the time Raglan, Murphy and I got back to the police station. Raglan told me to check with him in the morning, and I went home.
The big detective had been in and out already when I called Homicide the next morning, which was Wednesday, so I bought a paper on my way in to the Bulletin building. The story was on page one. Jackson had slugged it, “CHIEF’S DAUGHTER VANISHES,” with a sub-deck reading, “Foul Play Suspected.”
Stanton Pritchard, perhaps the best city editor in three states, was pointing out the story to one of our newer staff members as I walked in. “Here’s how to be a star reporter, Nolan,” Pritch was saying. “Pick a cop, make him look like a hero, help him get promoted and twenty years later you’re the one he calls when something breaks. Oh, hello, Shaffer.”
“You’ve got it all wrong, Pritch,” I said. “The real secret is to work for a paper that pays you so poorly you’re forced to moonlight. So you start writing up old murders for the true crime magazines; that puts you in the cop’s office at ten-thirty at night when all the action starts. How you doing, Nolan?”
“Fine, Mr. Shaffer. Anything new on the Raglan story?”
“I don’t know, kid. I just got here. Pritch, I’d like to spend most of the day on this thing, unless you have something more pressing in mind.”
Pritchard grinned. “Can you give me twenty inches by four o’clock?”
“If you promise me a fourteen point byline. I’m going to talk to her schoolmates today, find out what sort of girl she was — pardon me, is,” I told him. “Tomorrow I’ll have a quote from Raglan that it might be the work of a revenge-seeking ex-con.”
“He tell you that?”
“Asked me to sit on it for a day or so.”
I spent a few minutes in the morgue giving Old Mayhew instructions to dig out every criminal Raglan had been instrumental in capturing, starting about five years ago and working backwards, in case the revenge theory was right. Then I called the Superintendent of McKinley High School and got his permission to talk to Deborah Raglan’s home room teacher. By the time I arrived he had rounded up several teachers, Debbie’s counsellor, the school nurse, her Phys Ed instructor, and the presidents of the two student organizations to which she belonged In all, I interviewed five teachers and about a dozen students. The picture which emerged was in line with Raglan’s statement that she was a lot like her father — a loner. Apparently Debbie had no “best” friends of either sex. She dated a variety of boys, apparently so sure of herself that she considered a “steady” an unnecessary social crutch.
I asked the blonde, buck-toothed girl who sat next to her in study hall if there was any chance Debbie might have staged the whole thing and run away.
“That’d be tough,” the girl replied, intrigued by the idea. “She’d have to have a real good reason, though. She figures everything out, you know?”
Caution seemed to be a Raglan family trait.
I stopped at a pay phone and called Homicide again. This time Raglan was in. “Any news about Debbie?” I asked.
“Nothing much. Some strange prints on that glass door, but they don’t match anything in R and I. You’ve been busy at the school?”
“They all say the same thing: bright, good character, no trouble, no enemies, no close friends, sort of a loner, fairly popular but she didn’t make a career of it. If you have no objections, Joe, I’d like to talk with your wife.”
“Sure. She’s at home. I told her to stay there in case Debbie called.”
“I’ll check with you later.”
“Do that. By the way, Shaffer, when are you going, to learn not to withhold information from the police?”
“What information?”
“I have to read in the paper that the phone was off the hook. Anything else you didn’t tell me?”
“The hi-fi was on.”
“Of course. I’m surprised she wasn’t watching television at the same time. I wonder if she was trying to call me back?”
“Could be,” I agreed. “Let me know if the lab comes up with anything newsworthy.”
Talking to Florence Raglan, I suspected, would be one of the least pleasant parts of my day. I figured that staying married to her was either a point of honour with Raglan, or he was doing it just to be near his kid. I took the elevator up to their third-floor apartment and thumbed the bell.
Florence Raglan had been a pretty woman once. Traces of it were still visible, if you looked past the hard lines around her mouth and the puffy eyes. She opened the door and stared blankly at me for a moment. “Yes?”
“I’m Ted Shaffer, Mrs. Raglan, with the Bulletin. I was with Joe last night when he discovered Debbie was missing. Can you tell me what happened earlier in the evening?”
She ushered me into her living-room and motioned me to a chair. When she spoke it was in a voice that had too many sharp edges.
“We had dinner at six o’clock, then Deborah walked over to the Van Drimmelens’. Joe has a crime show he likes to watch on Tuesday nights, so he stayed home. About a quarter of ten Deborah called and asked if her father could bring her one of her other school-books, so he drove over with it.”
“He would have seen her about ten o’clock, then,” I said.
“That’s right. I suppose he went to the office after that.”
“Did your daughter seem nervous earlier in the evening?”
Florence Raglan shook her head. “She read a book all through dinner.” She stared at the telephone, then massaged her forehead with the heel of her hand.
“I know this is upsetting you, Mrs. Raglan. Would you rather I came back later?”
She shook her head again.
“About a year ago,” I said, “I did a story on Debbie — I think you recall it. Does she still want to follow in Joe’s footsteps and become a criminologist?”
“That was just a phase she was going through,” the woman replied. “She worships her father, of course, but I think lately she’s been leaning towards writing.”
“What sort of writing?”
Her voice held a sharp note of contempt. “Mysteries, of course.”
Naturally. With Joe Raglan in her pocket she’d be a fool to write anything else.
“You’re hoping for a phone call?” I asked.
“It’s possible, I suppose, but not very likely.” Mrs. Raglan smiled thinly. “I’d be the last person she’d call.”
“Are any of her clothes missing?”
“No, nothing’s missing. There was money in her purse. There’s still over a hundred dollars in her savings account.”
“Would it be possible for me to take a look at some of her writing?”