“Well, the Gazette doesn’t seem to be putting you up on any pedestal.”
“It won’t be out until tonight.”
“I’m not talking about this case. I’m talking about the way they’ve been writing you up lately.”
“They’re friendly.”
“Well, you’d better watch out for friends like that.”
The sheriff was silent.
“It does seem to me,” Doris went on exasperatedly, “that if you had more git-up-an’-git you’d command more respect.”
The sheriff grinned. “You don’t get respect from the opposite political party — not publicly and in print, anyway. If you move along slow and easy, you’re an old fossil. If you have git-up-an’-git you’re trying to cover your incompetence behind a smoke-screen of hysterical activity.”
There was a moment of welcome silence while Doris thought this over. “Well,” she demanded at length, “who is this girl?”
“We don’t know.”
“What are you doing to find out?”
“We’ve got a couple of clues we’re working on.”
“What clues?”
“Cleaning marks on her jacket and skirt, the name of a score sewed to the inside of the jacket.”
“A local store?”
“No, one in San Rodolpho.”
The sheriff’s wife interposed to say quietly, “Bill, you want me to send that suit out to be cleaned and pressed?”
“Please.”
“How soon do you want it back?”
“Soon as I can get it!”
“You going to get some sleep today?”
“Afraid I’ll have to keep going today. I...”
The telephone rang.
The sheriff went to the phone. He heard a woman’s voice say, “Long-distance call from San Rodolpho,” and then the voice of Everett Gilmer, the chief of police in San Rodolpho. “Hello, Bill. Think I’ve got your party located. The Acme Cleaners has a record of cleaning the jacket. The girl’s name is Elizabeth Dow. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Not a thing. She live there?”
“Apparently so. We have an address in an apartment house. She’s moved from there, but we’re tracing her. The description fits. Want to come down?”
The sheriff hesitated a moment, then said, “Okay, I’ll be down. See what you can find out and have it ready for me by the time I get there. I’ll stop by the courthouse and pick up some photographs.”
The sheriff hung up the telephone and glanced over at the table. Seeing the alert angle at which the head of his sister-in-law was cocked, he said suddenly, “I’ve got to rush out. I’ll be back this evening.”
“Where are you going?” Doris demanded so eagerly that the words all ran together into one continuous rattle of sound.
“Out,” the sheriff said.
Everett K. Gilmer, chief of police of San Rodolpho, was a big bluff man whose twinkling eyes radiated cordiality to brother officers, but could assume an ominous hardness when scrutinizing prisoners. He said to Bill Eldon, “Well, Sheriff, I’ve got a line on her. If you’ve got some photos we might just check with someone who can make an identification.”
“Who you got?”
“Woman who runs the apartment house where she had an apartment for a while. She moved after that and left a forwarding address. But I thought we’d better check up first with someone who can make an absolute identification. If she’s the one, I’ve got quite a lot on her. And I think she’s the one.”
“Let’s go,” the sheriff agreed.
They drove to a frame house that had at one time been an example of three-storied prosperity, but with the encroachment of paved streets and the spread of the business area, had now been turned into an apartment house.
The heavy-set woman who ran the place promptly identified the photographs which Sheriff Eldon produced.
“That’s the girl. That’s Elizabeth, all right. What’s happened to her?”
“She was killed.”
“How?”
“Stabbed.”
“Good Heavens! And such a nice girl, too!”
“Any idea who might have done it? Enemies or anything of that sort?”
“No. While she was here she was just as quiet and well-behaved as anyone could ask.”
“Know anything about her friends or relatives?”
“No, I don’t. I took over the place just before she moved out and...”
“We got some more recent stuff lined up, Bill,” Gilmer interposed. “Just wanted to make sure that was the party before I started following the other trails.”
“Her mother had died just before she moved out,” the apartment manager volunteered, “somewhere in — now, let me see. I think it was somewhere in Colorado. I remember she got a wire saying her mother was very low and she flew out, and then wrote me that her mother had passed away and that she’d stay for the funeral and move to another apartment when she got back, and she sent me two weeks’ rent and asked if that would be all right.”
“Know where that letter is?”
“I burnt it.”
“About when was this?”
“About five or six months ago. I can look up the date when she left if you want.”
“I already have that,” Gilmer said to the sheriff. “It was in August.”
“That’s right,” the woman said. “I think it was around August.”
Bill Eldon nodded to Gilmer. “Let’s go, Everett.”
They went to the telegraph office and wired the Denver police to consult statistical records and rush any information concerning a party by the name of Dow who had died in Colorado within the last few months.
Thereafter Chief Gilmer and Bill Eldon spent a couple of hours plodding along in the dull monotony of routine leg-work, tracing Elizabeth Dow from one lodging house to another, finding where she had been employed and locating friends who had known her.
From this scattered pattern of information the sheriff and Gilmer pieced together a mosaic showing a clear picture of a young woman, vivacious, intelligent, alert, a steady, dependable worker, a loyal friend filled with the joy of life, yet respecting herself and commanding the respect of her friends. There had been one or two boy friends, but for the most part she had preferred a group of intimates to the less social but more intimate companionship of a tete-a-tete. She had been employed as cashier in a cafeteria. Her nimble fingers, quick eyes, and winning personality had made for adept efficiency as well as for popularity with customers.
The day before had been her day off, and about ten o’clock she had been seen with a young man who was strange to the girl’s set, although he had been seen with her off and on during the past week. The couple had sat for half an hour talking earnestly at a table in the cafeteria. And then Elizabeth Dow had secured a cardboard container and put up a lunch, roast beef sandwiches, deviled eggs, crisp lettuce, and pie. Then she and the young man, a tall, dark chap in Army uniform, had left the cafeteria. That had been around eleven. Neither one had been seen since.
At this point in the investigation, a wire came in from the Denver police:
ELVIRA DOW AGED FIFTY-SIX DIED CORONARY THROMBOSIS AUGUST 23RD, BURIED HERE, FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS MADE BY DAUGHTER ELIZABETH WHO REGISTERED HOTEL GIVING ADDRESS YOUR CITY.
“Well,” Gilmer said, “that’s all there is to it. Find the man who was with her and we’ve got the murderer. You say there was waxed paper on the table there in that old house?”
“That’s right.”
“Find this chap in uniform. That’ll be all there is to it.”
The sheriff reached for his battered sombrero and put it on. He started for the door, and then paused to regard the chief of police with thought-puckered eyes. “You know, Everett,” he said, “it may not be that simple. When you’ve been in office as long as I have you get so you pay more attention to people and less to clues.”