Poking around the girl’s suite, inspecting her meager mail, interviewing her neighbors, the chief had learned nothing conclusive. The ladies had been helpful to a point, and forthcoming — with the possible exception of Mrs. Pashniak. She almost seemed frightened, as if she knew more than she was telling.
On the other hand, she might simply be afraid for the missing girl.
As for the disappearance of a man who may have defaced the rear of the Highcliff apartments, was it coincidence? Not likely. With a connection running from Tozer to Overberg, and from Overberg to Angela Lemay, one couldn’t dismiss the matter so easily. Besides, Tozer was a middle-aged man. Why on earth would he be scrawling graffiti?
He drank some coffee.
But if Ted were the graffiti bandit, was he caught by Angela Lemay scribbling on the rear of the building? Had she admonished him, and had all that bottled up hate and spite come boiling out, driving him to attack her, and — perhaps unintentionally — knock her head too hard against the wall? Panicking, had he hidden the body in the dumpster and run off?
But why wait so long? He’d hung about another two weeks or more, and in that time would surely have calmed down long enough to pack a suitcase.
And then there was Overberg, who, like Mrs. Pashniak, seemed to know more than he was admitting to.
But none of this explained the voices in the chute, or Miss Lemay’s distress on the staircase as dutifully reported by Mrs. Remillard.
Start over.
Suppose Tozer had attacked Lemay and was seen by someone. This “someone” later emerged with a blackmail threat, prompting Tozer to flee...
But you don’t blackmail a penniless loser.
Robideau ordered a sour-milk doughnut. He lacked information. He didn’t know precisely when Lemay had come to harm, or even if she had come to harm. The plants were being seen to, the mail was being collected, but the clock showed the wrong time. Of course, resetting the clock would be a priority only to somebody actually living there. And Overberg had yet to produce that canceled check...
Overberg.
These were murky waters, but every time Robideau stirred them, the old businessman bobbed up like a cork.
So turn it around. Say Overberg was the instrument of Miss Lemay’s disappearance and Tozer the witness. It hung together better. Tozer’s bedroom overlooked the rear of the Highcliff, so conceivably he might have witnessed something. And if that incident were compromising to Overberg?
Tozer attempts blackmail. A reasonable assumption — the man being a cheat and a crook. Overberg doesn’t respond. Tozer applies pressure with some fake graffiti, emulating the stuff appearing all over town. (If only Robideau knew what that damned scrawling meant!) But despite Tozer’s efforts, Overberg identifies his tormentor, perhaps by determining which house and window have a view of the crime scene. Exposed, Tozer takes off running.
The argument was rickety, in need of a crutch, but it could stand. There were missing elements, such as the nature of the relationship between Overberg and Lemay. The chief didn’t know yet that there had been a relationship.
But Robideau smiled inwardly. He was starting to get somewhere.
The following day, Tozer’s hieroglyphs in hand, Robideau drove to the Highcliff. He walked up the alley to the back of the building, where some boys were amusing themselves by bouncing a hockey puck off the side of the garbage dumpster.
He quickly settled one thing. The two sets of markings were a match, with identical if indecipherable words appearing both on the wall and on the sheet of paper. They were the product of the same hand. Apparently, as he had surmised, Boski’s “gerfeedy kid” was none other than Ted Tozer, a middle-aged man. Robideau struggled with it. Secretary. An unlikely word. Might this actually be “secret,” with a flowery embellishment tagged on?
On impulse he called to the boys. One of them ambled over, cautious but inquisitive. “We’re not hurting anything,” he said defensively.
“I can see that. But I’ve got a question — if you can answer it.”
“My mom told me not to talk to strangers,” the boy said deadpan, eliciting a burst of hilarity from his pals.
“That’s good advice. I doubt if you can explain it anyway.”
“Explain what?” The boy shuffled closer.
“Well, I’m wondering why this graffiti is so hard to decipher. I mean, if someone wants to say something, why not make sure people can read it?”
“People can read it,” said the boy. “Some people.”
“People like you?”
“Sure. It’s like you don’t want just anybody reading your mail, right?”
“You can’t read this, though.”
“Sure I can.” The boy looked at the wall. “It says, ‘Secrets don’t keep. Pay me.’ ”
Robideau reappraised the fat, pillowy characters, and immediately the phrase jumped out at him. The boy was right! Secrets Don’t Keep. Pay Me!
“I don’t suppose you know who wrote this,” he said hopefully.
“Nope, I don’t. But they weren’t really serious.”
“How do you know?”
“ ’Cause they didn’t sign it. See, a guy’s serious, he initials his work.”
Robideau looked at markings on the dumpster. Sure enough, every effort was initialed, like a work of art.
“Thanks,” said Robideau.
“No problem.” The boy slouched away, slapping the ground with his stick.
Now, said Robideau, pleased with himself, onward and upward! He would take on Mrs. Pashniak. Get something out of her if he had to give her the third degree.
Mrs. Pashniak received him sheepishly, as if she had been waiting for him to call and confront her. But she had enough spunk to put him on the defensive. “Have you found her, Chief Robideau?”
“No, not yet, but...”
“Did you figure out where the voice was coming from?”
Robideau informed her it might have come from the furnace room or from the upstairs storage room, but he was forced to admit he had not gone further along that line of investigation.
“Then you should, chief. You should. After all, it’s where all this started.”
“I don’t disagree. But there’s some unfinished business between you and me, isn’t there?”
The sheepish look returned.
“This changes things,” she said as if to herself.
“Changes what, Mrs. Pashniak?”
“I lay awake all night fretting about it. I made a promise, and I don’t take my promises lightly. But as I said, things have changed.”
“Do you know where Miss Lemay is?”
She shook her head. “No. I wish I could tell you that, but I can’t.”
“Then...”
She silenced him with a raised hand, opened a drawer in the coffee table, extracted two keys and a small plastic bag, and thrust them at him. “Miss Lemay meant to go away, you see, and asked me to keep an eye on things. Take in her mail, water her plants until she sent for them — she loved plants. But she made me agree not to tell anyone. She never said as much but I got the feeling she’d be in awful trouble with somebody if they knew she was sneaking away secretly like that.”
“But if you knew she was leaving, why did you worry?”
“I didn’t. It was the other girls who worried. I thought I knew what was going on, but then...” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Then I started thinking, what if something happened to her before she got away? What then? So I decided to tell you.”