That seemed to put the damper on my bright idea of tracing the girl down.
After leaving Ruth, I decided to call at Mrs. Meyers’ flat again. I had an idea that she would probably be at work, but I tried anyway. I timed it just right, because I caught her just coming in. She was in the lower hall collecting her mail.
“Hi, Mrs. Meyers,” I said. “I thought probably you’d be at work, but I took a chance on catching you.”
“Oh hello, Mr. Moon. I just got off work at three-thirty. I go into the restaurant at seven A.M. Come on up.”
She led me up the worn stairs to her kitchen and motioned me to a chair. Like Stella Quint’s her grief had now settled into a quiet hopelessness, but she seemed to have adjusted to the necessity of going on with her everyday life. I waited without saying anything while she checked over what the mailman had brought that morning.
A card which looked like a gas bill and an envelope I recognized as the kind the electric company uses, she placed in a tray on top of the ice box. An envelope addressed in a flourishing feminine hand she put aside on the kitchen table without opening. A slim brown envelope with a typed address she tore open, drawing from it a small printed form of some kind. She examined the form puzzledly.
Reading half aloud and half to herself, she muttered, “Due to your new employment, you are no longer eligible... If you are not satisfied with the decision of this office, procedure for request for review of your case is...”
She looked up at me and emitted a humorless chuckle. “This is good. The welfare finally got around to letting me know I’m off relief, when I been off two years.”
Crumpling the form into a ball, she dropped it into a waste basket under the sink and took a chair across from me. “Now what can I do for you, Mr. Moon?”
“Probably nothing,” I said. “I’m still convinced Joe Brighton is innocent of your son’s death, but I’ve come to a dead end, so I’m starting the investigation over.”
I explained to her about the girl I was trying to locate. “Would you have any idea who made that call?” I asked.
Wonderingly she shook her head. “How would I know, Mr. Moon?”
“I didn’t think you would,” I said, rising. “But none of the Purple Pelicans’ auxiliary seems to know either, and I thought it was worth the chance to ask you.”
After I had thanked the woman and left, I sat in my car out in front of her place and brooded for a time. There didn’t seem to be any logical next move to make except to tackle the Gravediggers, and I was so unenthusiastic about that possibility, it hardly seemed worthwhile checking. Nevertheless this seemed to be the only remaining field of research, so I unenthusiastically decided to tackle it. But to put it off, I decided to drop by and see Ed Brighton first.
It was near the close of Ed’s work day, and he’d already done his piecework quota for the day, evidently, because he was sitting on a piece of crated machinery with other workers when I found him. When Ed saw me, he jumped up, took my arm and led me to one side.
“I’d rather not talk about this thing in front of the guys,” he said. “They know Joe’s in jail, of course, but you know how it is working with guys. They’re embarrassed about it and so am I, so we just skip it. Anything new?”
I gave him the bad news about the D.A.’s going ahead with asking for an indictment on Joe, and Ed looked as though I had kicked him in the stomach. “I’m sure the kid’s innocent,” I assured him. “There’s bound to be proof of it somewhere.”
“Where?”
“That’s the question,” I said.
I told him of my unsuccessful attempt to run down the girl who had phoned the police, and also of Joe’s theory about the Gravediggers.
“Planning a slick frame-up like this seems to me beyond what you’d expect of a kid gang. Then too, whoever swiped that knife must have been familiar with where Joe lived, which would seem to narrow it to a resident of this section.”
When Ed merely silently brooded over what I had told him, I said, “Can’t you remember where you kept that blamed knife? Joe insists he never in his life saw it before he found it sticking in Bart Meyers.”
He shook his head. “I hadn’t used the thing in years, Manny.”
“What in the devil did you ever buy the thing for?” I growled at him. “You never did any hunting, did you?”
“I used it to clean fish.”
We both lapsed into moody silence. For some reason Ed’s last remark lingered in my mind and wouldn’t go away. “You used it to clean fish,” I repeated. “That why it didn’t have a sheath?”
“Yeah. I just used to pitch it in my bait box.”
I felt a peculiar tingle race along my spine. “Say that again.”
“What?” he asked, surprised. “I just said I used to pitch the knife in my bait box. When I was getting ready to go fishing, I mean.”
It was as simple as that. For more than a full week I’d been pounding my legs off, talking myself hoarse and ducking knives and guns without making an inch of progress. Then Ed Brighton made a casual remark and I knew who had killed Bart Meyers.
I wasn’t sure of the motive, but I even had an inkling about that. And now that I knew where to look, it wasn’t going to be much trouble to check.
18
It was nearly ten after five when I pulled up in front of the building where Public Welfare was officed, after fighting traffic across the most congested part of town.
The first thing I did was check with Sara’s plump supervisor, Mrs. Forshay, catching her just as she was about to leave for the day.
“Welfare cases are confidential, Mr. Moon,” she told me, when I explained what I wanted. “I’m afraid I’d need a pretty good explanation before I could accede to a request like that.”
So I gave her a pretty good explanation. When I finished, she stopped looking astonished and started looking upset. Without any more argument she led me to the Record Room.
When I found what I wanted, she agreed not to take any action until she heard from me, but she wasn’t ready to let me go. First she wanted to know how the swindle had been worked.
I wasn’t sure, but I had some ideas. With my ideas and her knowledge of agency procedure, we worked out most of the answers between us.
When I left the welfare office, I worked straight on through until eight o’clock in the evening without even stopping for dinner. I made five calls, and the answers I got in each case were the same.
Each of the women I called on was either a widow, divorced or separated. Each worked, so was not at home in the daytime when the mail was delivered. Each had at least one son who belonged to the Purple Pelicans.
And while all of them had been on relief at some time or other, none had been on the rolls for over two years or more.
I didn’t call on Mrs. Meyers again, because I knew her situation. And I skipped the last three names because I knew I’d find the same answers there and I already had enough evidence.
19
When I rang the buzzer, Sara came to the door dressed in a neat gray suit which must have cost a hundred dollars. She looked at me in surprise.
“It’s nice to see you, Manny!” she exclaimed.
She led me into the well-furnished parlor and I looked it over again, as I had the evening I stopped by while she was doing case records. But this time I was doing more than just admiring it. I was adding up the cost of the obviously expensive furnishings and trying to reconcile it with the kind of salaries received in the underpaid profession of social work.
“Drink?” Sara asked.
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m afraid I’ve come on business, Sara. About that fishing rig in your clutter room.”