He smiled, very faintly. “Erika’s sleeping jags were a family joke.”
“And let’s face it,” I said. “We don’t know all of her friends. You can easily have missed up on someone.”
He seemed to relax a little. He reached out for a cigarette in the box on his desk. “Thanks for the pep talk,” he said. He gave me an odd, narrowed look. “I don’t know how I’d have got on without you these last few years, Vance.”
I grinned. “I hope you never do find out how.”
“I hope not,” he said.
Somehow, the way he said it wiped the grin off my face. “There’s a mob of reporters outside, Mike. Don’t you think—?”
“No. Not till we hear from Erika,” he said.
“I’m going to grab off a sandwich from William. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“Okay,” he said. I started for the door, and he called after me: “What was that you said when you first came in, about some friend of Joan’s?”
“Girl named Eloise Morton,” I said. “Joan went to school with her. She burned to death at the Spain.”
“Morton?” He frowned. “I don’t seem to remember her. Does Joan know?”
“I ran into her at the Spain, checking. She took it pretty hard. I bought her a brandy and she went off to see the Morton girl’s family.”
“This seems to be a rough day for a lot of people,” Mike said, and forgot I was there.
I went out through the library and started back toward the kitchen. Kathy hailed me. She was coming down from upstairs. She didn’t look herself, either. I guess the strain was telling on everyone.
“What do you make of it, Vance?” she asked.
“She’s asleep somewhere,” I said.
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“It could be,” I said. “You’ve checked for accidents, Mike tells me. That makes it more likely.”
“Vance, I’m scared,” she said. “Mike dictated some notes to me on the Layne business. The gun — the small-caliber gun—”
“You, too?” I said. “I thought about those toys Mike bought the girls.”
“I just checked upstairs,” Kathy said. “I can’t find them.”
“Let’s face it,” I said. “Erika takes a pot shot at Waldo and goes into hiding!”
Kathy’s eyes widened. “But both guns are missing, both Joan’s and Erika’s,” she said...
McCuller showed up at the house about 5 o’clock. He looked shot and I realized he’d been on the go steadily since he’d been called to the Wakefield at three in the morning. He also looked as though his patience had frayed a little at the edges. He had another guy with him, an old man with a loose, twitching mouth. McCuller told him to sit on a chair by the front door. He didn’t introduce him.
“Mrs. Layne?” McCuller asked me.
“She hasn’t turned up yet,” I told him.
“Where’s Malvern?”
“In his study.”
“Let’s go.”
“I don’t think he wants to see anybody right now.”
“That’s too bad,” McCuller said.
Mike apparently hadn’t moved since I left him. He gestured to us to come in, and tried to make an effort to straighten up and be himself.
McCuller came over to the desk and stood looking down at Mike. “Let’s stop kidding around,” he said. “Where’s Mrs. Layne.”
Mike played it straight. “The honest truth is, I don’t know, Lieutenant,” he said.
“That’s better,” McCuller said. “She didn’t come home last night, did she?”
“No,” Mike said. “I’ve been trying to locate her. I’ve called her friends — I’ve checked hospitals — the whole routine.”
“You should have told me this morning,” McCuller said. “I’d have started a systematic search.”
“I didn’t think it was serious this morning,” Mike said. “It’s not unusual for her to spend the night with friends.”
“Without telling you?”
“That isn’t usual,” Mike said, “but it has happened. I expected to hear from her at any time.”
“Do you expect to hear from her now?” McCuller asked, his voice expressionless.
“Of course,” Mike said.
McCuller’s eyes moved slowly around the room. “Do you have a photograph of Mrs. Layne?”
“Yes. In my bedroom upstairs.”
“May I see it?”
“Vance—”
I went up to his room and got the leather-framed portrait of Erika that stood on his bedside table. It was one of those two-picture frames, and in the opposite side from Erika’s was a picture of her mother. They did look alike.
When I came back downstairs I noticed the old guy was no longer sitting on the chair by the front door. I found him in the study with McCuller and Mike.
The detective reached out for the photograph. He studied it a moment and then handed it to the old man. “The one on the right,” he said.
The old man stared at it with rheumy, frightened eyes.
“Night elevator man at the Wakefield,” Mike said casually. “He remembers taking a dame up to Waldo’s room about 2:30 this morning.” Mike didn’t seem worried.
“Well?” McCuller said.
The old man shook his head, first uncertainly, and then with more assurance. “It wasn’t her,” he said. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t her.”
“Pretty sure?”
“Positive,” the old man said. “I’m positive, Lieutenant.”
McCuller sighed. “We’ll check again in the flesh when Mrs. Layne turns up,” he said. “This is a good likeness, Malvern?”
“Excellent,” Mike said.
McCuller put the picture down on the desk. “What do you propose to do about finding her?”
“If she’s in New York I’ll know in the next two or three hours,” Mike said.
“How?”
Mike smiled faintly. “Every head-waiter, bartender, hat-check girl, and half the taxi drivers in town are my friends,” he said. “They’ll locate her if she’s around. I’ve already spread the word.”
“How about Missing Persons?” McCuller said.
“I’d rather hold off for a few hours,” Mike said. “I still think she’s with friends somewhere and hasn’t heard the news.”
McCuller looked at his watch. “At 8 o’clock I send out a general alarm for her,” he said. “I don’t know why I wait, except I need a couple of hours’ sleep, myself.” He took a pencil out of his pocket and wrote a phone number on Mike’s desk pad. “My home. Call me there the minute you hear anything.”
“I will, and thanks,” Mike said.
I walked out through the library with McCuller and the old guy. Just as we got into the entrance hall the front door opened and Joan came in. During the moment the door was open I could hear the reporters on the front steps still gabbing at her. She threw us a quick look and went straight for the stairway.
The old guy reached out and tugged at McCuller’s sleeve. “That’s her.”
“What?”
“That’s her — the one that came to the hotel last night.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure I’m sure, Lieutenant. That’s her, all right.”
“Just a minute, miss,” McCuller called out.
Joan turned to face him, holding tightly to the stair rail...
Mike stood by the window in his study, his back turned to us, looking out at the darkening street. Joan was huddled in the big leather armchair beside Mike’s desk. McCuller prowled back and forth in front of her, firing questions at her. I stood off to one side, the inside of my mouth dry.
“You know I don’t have to give you the break of questioning you here in front of your father, Miss Malvern,” McCuller said. “I could take you down to headquarters and really put you through it.”
“I know.” Joan’s voice was small and far away.
“You went to see Waldo Layne at 2:30 this morning. Why?”