He called the girl back. "No, she hasn't come home. What have you found out?"
"I'm sorry, I haven't a thing to tell you. But we'll keep looking. Miss Holzer, have you checked with any of her friends? She could have stopped in to see someone. She could have-"
"At nearly one A.M.?" she said. "She told Mr. Shepherd she'd be in the office at nine, she's his secretary. Mr. Lynn Shepherd, he's the head of the firm-Shepherd, Lynch, and Morse. Mother's been his secretary for twenty years, and there was this important tax case, there has to be a deposition and the witness could only come in on Sunday. She said she'd be home by eight-thirty."
They both sounded like responsible citizens, but of course even that kind came all sorts. The sergeant said, passing the buck, "Well, we've done all we can do, Miss Holzer. I tell you, if your mother hasn't come home by morning, you can file a missing report with Central Headquarters."
"And what would they do?" she asked wildly.
The sergeant wasn't too sure. He said stolidly, "Well, that's what you'd better do. All I can tell you, your mother hasn't been involved in an accident in the last six hours."
"That's all you know?"
"I'm sorry, Miss Holzer. That's all."
"Well, thank you," she said.
THE MISSING REPORT on Edna Holzer got filed at nine A.M. on Sunday morning, but that was not a busy office, Missing Persons. Their business was quiet and slow, and Lieutenant Carey was off on Sunday. The sergeant in that office filed the report without thinking much about it. Carey didn't see it until Monday morning.
On Sunday morning there was another cable from the Surete. They had turned up Juliette Martin's passport number. She had applied for it on the first of August. It had been issued on the nineteenth. No information was required for a passport except evidence of citizenship. There was no address available. No further information.
"?Diez milliones de demonios desde infierno! " said Mendoza.
FIVE
ON SUNDAY Wanda Larsen was off. Higgins and Palliser might have taken her along to help break the news to Verna Coffey's daughter; a woman officer was helpful at that sort of thing. The address corresponding to the Pasadena listing was one side of a duplex, on a quiet middle-class street, but nobody had been home. Now this morning they tried there again and found the family just starting off for church, Robert and Julia Elmore and an eighteen-year-old daughter, Lila. There was the usual reaction to news of violent death. Palliser and Higgins gave them time. These were more honest solid citizens, as Verna Coffey had been. The husband worked at a Sears store here, the girl was a senior in high school. But Julia Elmore was a sensible woman and when her first grief subsided, she answered questions readily.
"I couldn't say exactly how much money might've been there. Mother only went to the bank once a week, on Wednesdays." She was a thin sharp-faced woman, not very 'black. "She didn't drive and her arthritis bothered her. She had to take the bus, she used to close the store for a couple of hours-same as when she went up to the market once a week."
"I don't suppose," said Elmore, "she made an awful lot out of the store, but more than you might think. It was a steady trade." He was a heavy-shouldered man, medium black. "I suppose she might've had a hundred bucks or so, in cash, maybe more."
"Where did she keep the money, do you know?" asked Palliser.
"She kept it all in an old handbag in the closet," said Julia Elmore. "But she was careful about keeping the doors locked, Sergeant, living alone like she did-and that's an old building and it was lonely at night there-you know, she was the only one lived there, all the rest of those stores were closed and empty at night. She was crying a little again. "Oh, we worried about it-"
Elmore said, "But there were good deadbolt locks on both doors, I'd seen to that, I don't see how anybody could break in, but you say it looked as if she'd opened the door to somebody." He shook his head. "She wouldn't have let anybody in after dark."
"Unless it was someone she knew," said Palliser.
"But nobody like that would've hurt her." They were incredulous.
"She knew a lot of people around that neighborhood," said Julia. "She'd lived there for more than forty years, but I don't think she'd have opened the door to anybody after the store was closed."
He said, "She'd had some trouble with kids. Some of the kids there-coming in and stealing candy bars. She was always having to chase them off. But no kid-"
"Oh, we did worry," she said. "I wanted her to close the store and come to live with us. She was sixty-nine and her arthritis was getting worse all the time, and she had Daddy's Social Security, but she'd had the store so long she didn't want to change. That isn't too good a neighborhood now, not like it used to be. Oh, I can't stand thinking how scared she must've been-the last time we saw her was a week ago today, she had a little birthday party for Toby-"
"Who's that?" asked Higgins.
"My sister Eva's boy, Toby Wells. Eva died last year. We were all there, she had a cake and ice cream and she gave Toby ten dollars for a birthday present. It was his twenty-fourth birthday. He's a nice boy, Toby. Got a good job at a Thrifty drugstore up in Hollywood." She wiped her eyes.
Higgins asked, "Was she hard of hearing at all, Mrs. Elmore? How was her sight?"
She was shrewd enough to catch his thought. "You mean she might've thought somebody she knew was at the door when it wasn't? Oh, no, I don't think so. She wasn't deaf and her eyes were good. It was just the arthritis bothered her. I just can't imagine her opening the door to anybody after dark."
"Do you know anyone in that area? Does anyone there know your name?" asked Palliser.
What had occurred to him, someone like that might have got her to open the door with a tale that the family had tried to call her-that the phone was out of order.
"Not for twenty-four years-since Bob and I were married," she said. "Of course, we didn't live in the store, then. We had a house on Twentieth. It was just since Dad died I that she lived in the back of the store. And the neighbor hood had changed, not the same kind of people around."
Higgins explained about the mandatory autopsy. That they'd be told when they could have the body. They just nodded quietly.
"Did she have any close friends around there?"
"Well, there's Mrs. Wiley. She lived next door on Twentieth Street and she's still there, she's a widow now. She came to see Mother now and then-and Mrs. Buford, but she's in a rest home on Vermont. Sometimes Mother went to see her."
Back in the car, Palliser rubbed a finger along his handsome straight nose and said, "Ways it could've happened-so she was a careful old lady. If somebody banged at the door and said the building was on fire-"
"She wasn't attacked in the store," said Higgins. "Not until they'd gone into the living room at the back." He hunched his bulky shoulders.
"Well, the women friends. Nothing likely there."
"I suppose they had families and she'd know them. But damn it!-that was a crude spur-of-the-minute attack-don't see any rudimentary planning to it. She was an old lady, John. She'd been familiar with that neighborhood for years-before the crime rate started to climb. Maybe she wasn't just as cautious as the family thinks. She might've opened the door for any reason. Wait and see what the lab report has to say. There just could be some prints on that hammer."