“Billingsly put in the new generator. After he was dismissed here, he went to work for this motor sales agency — in the repair department. Come to think of it he didn’t last long there either, for when I went in with the carburetor trouble he was no longer there. That was around Christmas.”
“What was the name of the agency?”
“Freed’s, over on Second, East.”
“Thank you, Mr. Campbell,” said Sargent.
He left the Brick Block store and inquired of a traffic policeman the directions for reaching Second Street, East. He walked to the Freed Motor Sales in a few minutes.
They didn’t remember Billingsly in the repair department, but Mr. Freed, himself, recalled him vaguely. “The dreamy fella, yeah. He didn’t like to get his hands dirty. I had to let him go.”
“You don’t know where he is now?”
“Naw, never saw him again. Maybe he left town. You looked in the phone book, didn’t you?”
Sargent winced. He’d overlooked the obvious. “No,” he said, “I didn’t.”
Freed produced the directory and himself looked over the B’s. “Too bad,” he said. “There isn’t any Billingsly listed. Either he hasn’t got a phone or he’s left town.”
Sargent frowned. “You wouldn’t have his address in your files, would you?”
“Naw... maybe, I would, at that.”
He went to a filing cabinet and rummaged about for a few minutes. Suddenly he exclaimed and brought out a card. “Here it is, Robert Billingsly — shucks, he didn’t live in Duluth; he lived in Cloquet. Gosh, he must have needed a job bad to drive that back and forth every day. I didn’t realize.”
“How far is Cloquet from Duluth?”
“You never heard of Cloquet? Say, where’ve you been?”
“Chicago. I just came to Duluth today.”
Freed pursed up his lips. “You came all the way here to look up Billingsly?”
“Yes. I’m anxious to locate him.”
“You’re not a bill collector, are you?”
“No. Mmm, investigator, would be a better name.”
“Detective?”
“Not exactly. I merely want to get some information from Billingsly. About a man he knew up here.”
“Who’s that?”
“Chapman. Ben O. Chap—”
“Jeez!” cried Freed. “Why didn’t you say so? Why, dammit, I can tell you things about that no-good that’d curl your ears. Didn’t I sell Chapman a secondhand car and let him talk me into financing it myself? Didn’t want a finance company to get his name on their books; hurt his credit. Then he didn’t make the payments and it cost me more to repossess the car than it was worth, in addition to him practically wrecking the thing. If it hadn’t been for his wife, I’d have...”
“You knew his wife?” Sargent asked quickly.
“Ruth Reese? Hell, yes. She went to school with my sister-in-law. At the University.”
Ruth Reese had been the editor for nine issues of Sugar Beet Review.
“Where is Mrs. Chapman now?”
Freed shook his head. “I haven’t seen her since she and Chapman bust up.”
“How long ago is that?”
“Oh, they were only married a couple or three months. My sister-in-law’d know.”
“Where can I see your sister-in-law?”
“That’s the hell of it, she’s teaching school up in the country.”
Sargent groaned. “Far from Duluth?”
“ ’Bout forty miles or so. Place called Alborn. Don’t think it’s really a town. Least I never saw a town there. Just a station on the Mesabe that you pass going up to pick blueberries in the muskeg. Nearer the Iron Range than here. You figure on running up there?”
“Yes. What is your sister-in-law’s name?”
“Bessie... I mean Elizabeth Timmons.”
Sargent plodded back to Superior Street, then descended the hill to the Mesabe Depot.
“Better run,” the ticket agent told him as he puched a ticket for Alborn, “morning train leaves in about two minutes.”
Sargent made it and a few minutes later sat by a window, looking at the drab west end section of Duluth. The train was a local and stopped every few miles at a railroad station, which, together with a general store, usually constituted the “town.”
Chapter Nineteen
It took almost an hour and a half to travel the forty miles to Alborn, which turned out to be as Freed, the motorcar man, had guessed, merely a station and a few buildings. But on the station platform Sargent got a lucky break.
The station agent knew Miss Timmons. “The Baker schoolhouse. You can’t walk there, though. It’s more than five miles. Say... Sammy!”
A farmer wearing faded, patched overalls ambled over. “Sammy,” said the station agent, “this man wants to go out to the Baker schoolhouse. S’pose you could drop him off?”
“Don’t see any reason why not, since I’m goin’ to pass right there in a few minutes. Just goin’ to pick up a sack of middlings at the store. Mind waiting, stranger?”
“Not at all. Could I help you with the middlings?”
“Shucks, no. On’y one sack.”
Sargent followed the farmer to the weather-beaten general store and waited while the man bought the sack of middlings, which turned out to be a sack so large that Sargent would have had trouble even lifting it. But the farmer brought it out on his shoulder and walked easily to a battered flivver without a top. He dumped the sack in the back of the car, then said cheerfully:
“Climb in, mister, and we’ll be off.”
A moment later they were roaring down a narrow graveled road at all of thirty-two miles an hour.
“Yep,” said the driver of the car, “sure am glad to see you. Folks been wonderin’ ’bout Bessie.”
“How come?”
The farmer winked hugely. “ ’S all right, mister. We think a lot of Bessie around here. We only hope you don’t get married too soon.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Sargent chuckled, “but I never met Miss Timmons. In fact, I’d rather expected an older woman.”
“Bessie’s no young girl. She’s twenty-eight, twenty-nine. You ain’t no more’n that. Two-three fellas around here been makin’ eyes at Bessie, but she can’t see them... That’s the school up there.”
Sargent looked at the one-room frame shack on the right side of the road and whistled softly. He hadn’t known that such schools still existed.
“Thanks for the lift,” He said to the farmer as he climbed out of the ancient automobile.
“No trouble ’tall. My place is right beyond there. You’ll be wantin’ to go back to town, maybe. Just ring the bell once and I’ll come arunnin’ with the car.”
Gratefully, Sargent accepted the generous offer. Then he walked toward the little schoolhouse. He hesitated a moment before opening the door. When he finally did open it he looked into a room about twenty by forty in which there were perhaps thirty or thirty-five pupils ranging in age from five or six to about sixteen.
A rather plump young woman with reddish-brown hair was at the front of the room. She caught sight of Sargent and came toward him between a couple of rows of seats.
“Sorry to interrupt your classes,” Sargent apologized, “but I’ve come all the way from Duluth to ask you a few questions. As a matter of fact, I’ve come all the way from Chicago, but in Duluth Mr. Freed mentioned your name...”
“Otto Freed? Well! I don’t know what I could tell you that is important enough for you to come all this way.”
“It’s about Mrs. Ben O. Chapman. You know her as Ruth Reese, I believe.”
A pained expression flitted across the schoolteacher’s face. Then she said, “Would you mind stepping outside? We can talk better there.”
Outside the school, Bessie Timmons faced Sargent. “What about Ruth? Is she...?”