She suggested, “Let’s change the subject.”
I agreed. “Were you around when the Chinese girl’s belongings were itemized?”
“Yes. I signed as a witness.”
“What was in the handbag?”
“She had none.”
“No handbag? Not even a compact or something? Wasn’t anything found on the lake bank?”
“Not even a something, Chuck. Nothing.”
“Then how was she identified?”
“She wasn’t.” Elizabeth glanced at her wristwatch. “Or at least, she hadn’t been up until about eleven o’clock.”
“Nothing at all. Are you sure?”
“Do you doubt me, Chuck? There wasn’t a single thing except the identification bracelet on her wrist.”
“But you said—”
“The bracelet carried no identification. Mr. Thompson had pinned his hopes on that, too.”
“Blank?”
“Practically.” She wiped her lips with a paper napkin and a smudge of lipstick came off. “Except for a good luck token engraved on it.”
“Good luck!” I echoed bitterly. “She had precious little of that. First there was the — Elizabeth!”
She jumped. I half rose from my scat.
“Elizabeth, that good luck token, what was it like?”
“I don’t recall. Just a token.”
“Was it a Chinese token? A Chinese symbol?”
“What else? She was Chinese.”
Her words so elated me I impulsively leaned across the table and kissed her. She sat back, startled. I slid out of the seat, leaving the partly-eaten remains of the second waffle on the plate. I grabbed my hat and coat with one hand and her nearest arm with the other. The yank nearly pulled her to the floor. She made a wild grab for her purse.
“If you’re always like this,” she complained crossly, “you can take back your proposal. If that kiss was a proposal.” She got to her feet.
Still holding her arm, I sped up the aisle between the booths. She was struggling to button her coat and still hold onto the purse. I didn’t bother to put my hat and coat on.
Mike emerged from the kitchen in time to catch her last words. He watched the exodus, shouting advice.
“He’s always like that, lady. You betta’ not propose.”
“Never mind the offstage noises, Mike. We’re going to the county jail.” And I pulled Elizabeth out the door.
She dug her heels into the snow and dragged me to a full stop. “You’re inhuman,” she cried breathlessly. “Here are the keys.”
“Never mind the keys. We’ll walk. Only a few blocks.”
“But why the jail? The body is at the undertaker’s.” I had already started walking and she struggled to keep up with me.
“I don’t want to see the body. I want to see that bracelet. And unless someone has claimed the body, she’s a county liability. She’ll be buried in potter’s field and her possessions — that bracelet — will be on file at the jail.”
“But maybe someone has claimed the body?”
“And opened themselves to police questioning? In view of the fact that sooner or later some smart cop will tie the Chinese girl to the abandoned car? Oh, no!”
“But there’s no harm in that!”
“There is when you must be one of the parties who figured in a premeditated murder. Accessory before the fact. No one will claim that body — you can count on it!”
Just outside the jail entrance I stopped the girl.
“You’ll have to front for me, Elizabeth. My license ran out yesterday. I don’t expect them to do anything nasty, but if they do, you’re the one who wants to see the bracelet. Understand?”
“Just leave it all to me, Chuck.” And then she added bluntly, “I like you, Chuck.”
“Sure. Let’s go in.”
Leaving the cold, clean air of a biting winter dawn and walking into a jail is like... well, walking into a jail. The place smelled like a jail. It had the overpowering suggestion of a dirty, unsanitary, nostril-offending jail. Lysol did nothing to dispel the odor. No one but a jailkeeper would live there by choice.
The jailkeeper turned off a small radio when we entered and arose from a creaky rocking chair.
“Why, hello, Doc.” He grinned a toothy welcome at Dr. Saari, exhibiting teeth stained yellow with tobacco. “What can I do for you, Doc?”
“I would like to see the bracelet found on the body of that Chinese girl, if I may?” She backed up the request with a contrasty, white smile.
“Sure thing, Doc. It’s around here somewheres.” He turned his back on us to rustle through a stack of junk on his desk. “Here it is. We ain’t never identified her yet, Doc.”
Elizabeth removed the bracelet from the large manila envelope and turned the underside up. Engraved on the smooth undercurve of the bracelet was the “good luck” symbol. I nudged the doctor and she replaced it in the envelope.
“Thank you very much.”
“That’s all right, Doc. Drop in any time.”
We got out of there in a rush. I stopped outside on the steps to suck in a deep lungful of air. She was doing the same.
“Promise me something?” she asked between gulps.
“Anything, doctor. Anything. Well, almost anything.”
“Don’t ever call me ‘Doc.’ Call me anything you wish, anything at all, but never ‘Doc.’ ”
“It’s a promise. And thank you very kindly.”
“For what?” We had started back up the street.
“For what you just did. Come on — I’m hungry, now. Let’s go back and have another waffle.”
She grabbed my arm savagely and spun me around.
“What’s the matter?”
“Charles Horne, up to a certain point you are a very nice young man to know. You have just reached that point! Don’t go over it: give — or else!”
“The bracelet, you mean?”
“The bracelet, I mean! That meant something to you.”
“I’ll say it did. In Chinese, I’m told, that symbol means Fidelity and Friendship.”
“O...h?”
“Oh. And the last two places I saw Fidelity and Friendship, other than on that bracelet, was on the cover of Harry Evans’ amateur magazine and stamped in gold on the inside of Harry Evans’ wallet.”
“O...h.”
Good morning, Louise. And thank you for the letters.
Chapter 9
Boone, Ill.
Thursday, P.M.
My Dearest Louise:
Louise, I feel that I must apologize for what I’ve just done, without first taking the time to consult you. It affects some property jointly owned by us. There wasn’t sufficient time to ask your permission, really, because the funeral was this noon.
The funeral of the Chinese girl; Leonore, or Eleanor, or whatever her correct name might be. (Evans’ body has been returned to his widow in Croyden.)
Coming downtown this morning after writing you, I ran across Don Thompson. He mentioned in passing that the Chinese girl was to be buried this afternoon in potter’s field. That reminded me of what I had developed on her identity and I told him what little I knew, requesting that he pass it along to the police department. He appreciated that — he’s the only officeholder in the county of the opposite political party, and enjoys trumping them.
I’ve been doing a lot of moping about the Chinese doll. Perhaps it’s lack of sleep or perhaps it was the way she appealed to me the night she drove me out to the barn; it might even be my conscience dwelling on Harry Evans’ retainer of five hundred dollars. I’m unprepared to say.