First phone call to Wanger, at the Moran house, twenty minutes later:
“Hey, Lew; this is Bradford. Listen, I didn’t have to check with the Standard movie house. The name of the second feature that night was Five Little Peppers, if you still want it. But somebody else stopped by just ahead of me and asked them the same question, I was told. The girl in the box office wondered why all the sudden interest in a grade-B filler.”
“Who?” Wanger jumped through the phone at him.
“Her. The Baker girl. I got her description. Must have headed straight over there as soon as she left you. How d’ya like that?”
“I like it pretty well,” answered Wanger with grim literalness. “Polish the rest of it off. The kid just came through with the color she was wearing that night. Another of those freak spills, like his popping the name. Dark blue, got it? Go over to the Residence Club, see if you can get a line on what color she had on when she left her room Monday evening; somebody might have noticed. And do it cagey; no badge. I don’t want her to tumble we’re taking stitches until the sewing up’s all done. You’re just a guy trying to follow up a crush on someone whose name you don’t know; you can get to her by elimination.”
Second phone call to Wanger, same place, half an hour later:
“Brad again. Holy smoke, is her alibi cheesecloth! I think we’ve got something now all right.”
“All right, never mind the schoolboy ardor; when you’ve been at this as long as I have you’ll realize that the time you think you’ve got the most is when you’ve got two big handfuls of nothing.”
“Well, d’ya wanta hear it or should I keep it confidential to myself?”
“Don’t get fresh, rookie. What is it?”
“She didn’t eat in Karen Marie’s that night! First the Swensky woman that runs it backed her up solid. ‘Oh, ya, ya. Sure she vos dare.’ Well, after what happened at that movie box office, I dunno why, but something gimme kind of a hunch, so I took a chance and played it. And it paid off! I threw a big bluff and got tough about it and told her, ‘Whattaya trying to do, kid me? Don’tcha suppose I know she was just in here herself and told you to say that, if anyone asked you? Now, d’ya wanta get in trouble or d’ya wanta stay out of it?’
“She caved right in like wet cement. ‘Ya,’ she admitted, kind of scared, ‘she vos here yust now. I like to help her if I could, but as long as you know dot already, I don’t want to get in no trouble myself.’
“And wait, there’s more yet. I spaded around over at the Residence Club lobby. The elevator girl and the desk clerk both remembered seeing her pass through that night, and she was wearing — dark blue.”
“Come to Papa,” intoned Wanger fervently.
Third phone call to Wanger, next day:
“Hello, Lew? This is Myers. I’m outside the school. I’ve got her safely nailed down until four this afternoon. I’ve been practically sitting on her shoulders ever since yesterday. But here’s a little something just turned up; I wanted you to get it right away. It might mean something and then again it might not. I picked her up when she came out of the Residence Club doorway just now, and on her way to the bus I noticed a fruit-stall keeper give her the old good-morning and she smiled back. So I dropped behind and cased him quick, so I’d still be able to make the same bus she did. He told me she bought half a dozen Florida oranges from him at six o’clock Monday evening. I’m remembering that two glasses of orange juice turned up in the Moran refrigerator the morning after that Mrs. Moran couldn’t account for, that she was certain she didn’t prepare herself before she went up to her mother’s.”
“I’m remembering that, too. At six she was on her way out, not in, even according to her own story. She took them somewhere with her. I’m going over there right now and have a chat with the cleaning maid that does her room. One good thing about oranges, from our point of view, is you can’t eat the peel, too.”
Wanger to superior:
“How’s it looking up. Lew?”
“Almost too good to be true. I’m afraid to breathe on it for fear the whole thing’ll collapse. Believe it or not, chief, I’ve got a life-size, flesh-and-blood suspect at last, after chasing will-o’-the-wisps until now. I’ve actually talked to her and heard her answer me. I keep pinching myself all the time.”
“Pinch her, that’ll be a little more constructive.”
“This girl has tried to palm off a tissue of lies on us for an alibi. I’ve heard of them with one weak link, and two weak links, but this thing is spun sugar in the sun! She wasn’t at the restaurant where she said she was, she wasn’t at the picture show, she left her room in a dark blue outfit. The Moran kid identified her to her face as having been with him and his father that night. A crayon drawing he did in school Monday afternoon was found there in the house in the small hours of Tuesday morning, and Mrs. Moran is dead sure he didn’t have it with him when she called for him and took him away. And just to do it up brown: she bought half a dozen Florida oranges at a fruit stall near the club six o’clock Monday evening and took them with her — to wherever she was going. There were two large double glasses of the stuff found standing in the Moran Frigidaire afterward that Mrs. M is positive were prepared by some other hand than her own. True, there were already oranges in her bin, to the best of her recollection. But then where did the ones this Baker girl bought go to? They never showed up in her room from first to last; I’ve questioned the cleaning maid and she didn’t remove any orange peel from that room all week long, not so much as a dried seed.
“Now, what does it look to you?”
“It looks like three strikes and out. Suppose you let her flounder for, say, another twenty-four hours and see if she goes in any deeper. Then get ready for the jump. But don’t lose her whatever you do. Stick close to her day and night—”
“And even at other times,” amended Wanger remorselessly.
“This is Wanger, chief.”
“I’ve been waiting to hear from you. I think you better bring the Baker girl in with you now.”
“I am, chief. I’m calling you from the lobby of the Residence Club right now. I wanted your O.K. before I go up to her room and get her.”
“All right, you’ve got it. I just got a report that gives the kid’s story grown-up confirmation for the first time, even if it’s only partial. A man named Schroeder who lives on the other side of the street a few doors down happened to go to his bedroom window to pull down the shade and definitely saw the figure of a woman leaving the Moran house shortly before midnight. He couldn’t identify her at that distance and in the dark, of course, but I don’t see much sense in holding off any longer.”
“No, there isn’t. Not with her past record of disappearances. I’ll be in in about fifteen or twenty minutes.”
The girl elevator operator tried to bar his way. “I’m sorry, sir, no gentlemen are allowed up in the rooms.”
“I’m not a gentleman, I’m a detective,” Wanger was half-tempted to say, but didn’t. He had to admit there had been pickups he’d like better than this one. “The desk cleared me,” he told her gruffly. She looked out across the lobby and got a surreptitious high sign that it was all right to go ahead up with him. Wanger hadn’t been willing to take a chance on his slippery quarry to the extent of waiting below and having them call her down.