Don't Dare a Dame (7 page)

   
It reminded me about Otis Ripley, the ex-con threatening to even scores. With all that had happened since yesterday, he’d slipped my mind. There wasn’t a suit in the world that could disguise Oats from ten feet away, though. Still, he might have friends. Or more accurately, people who owed him a favor. I found it hard to believe any of them would know the way to the library.

   
Outside on the steps, I pretended to reach down and flick some lint off my skirt. It gave me a quick peek back. The man was sauntering along, too far behind me for me to make out features and too nondescript of both build and attire to be much help. The light was red when I reached the corner, so I did a girlie spin, hugging my books and doing a quarter turn as if bubbling over with happiness I couldn’t contain.

   
The man’s steps hesitated. He decided to jaywalk, cutting across in mid-block. By the time I crossed with the light, he was going in a different direction than the one I was headed, leaving me to wonder if I’d only imagined something suspicious. I made a face at my vigilance and stretched my legs for a couple of blocks till I reached the gravel parking lot where I kept my car.

***

   
Percy was a pleasant little street southeast of downtown. It was only three blocks long, and consisted mostly of neighborhood shops, except for a couple of small office buildings. The area had a tidy look. Although it didn’t trumpet prosperity, it didn’t show the vacant storefronts and peeling paint that scarred too many neighborhoods since the Depression. Wayne Avenue, a much larger thoroughfare, split the street in two.

   
The address once occupied by Dillon’s drug was on the western arm of the street. That lot and the one to its right which had housed the menswear store now held a single two-story brick building. Its lack of ornamentation suggested even to my untrained eye that it had been constructed sometime since the flood. The ground floor housed a bank branch. A separate doorway that opened into a small entry where stairs led up to what a directory indicated were medical offices, a dance studio and a lawyer.

   
Before my spirits could sag as much as they wanted, I turned toward the place on the left. It was smack on the corner where the sewing shop had been located. From the outside I couldn’t begin to guess the age of the building. It was painted robin-egg blue with white trim around arched windows. It housed an upholstery place now. I opened the door, causing bells above the door to jingle softly.

   
“Gee, what a nice place,” I said to a middle-aged woman seated behind an attractive desk that apparently took the place of a counter. “How long has it been here?”

   
“Oh, my, eighteen years now,” she said with a laugh. “How time flies.”

   
She stood up and came forward to greet me. Eighteen years wasn’t long enough to help me. Through a door to a back room came sounds of rhythmic tapping.

   
“I’m trying to get in touch with the man who used to own the place next door back when it was a drugstore,” I said. “Dillon’s Drugs. Was it still here when you moved in?”

   
“Goodness no. Next door was already pretty much like it is now.”

   
“What about this place? Was the sewing shop still here before you?”

   
“No.... Well, actually I’m not sure.” She was starting to frown. “Wally’s parents were the ones who started the business. My in-laws. They’d had a shop before that, over on Richard. Wally worked with them, of course, and I helped out some, but I was mostly busy with babies.” Her fingers trailed nervously over a bolt of brown plush with a pattern cut into it. “Is it important about the place that was next door?”

   
“It is to the two girls trying to find him. He knew their father.” Maybe that would tug at her heartstrings. It seemed to.

   
“Oh. Maybe.... Wally?” she called over her shoulder.

   
The tapping in back stopped. A man emerged with tacks lined up between his lips.

   
“She’s trying to find out about the place that used to be next door,” his wife said. “A drugstore.”

   
Wally plucked the tacks from his mouth one by one, thinking.

   
“Back when?”

   
“Twenty-five, twenty-six years ago.”

   
He shook his head. “We haven’t been here that long. But I do know this whole block burned down around then.”

   
“Burned—” It wasn’t what I’d been expecting.

   
He chuckled awkwardly.

   
“During the big flood. Hard to picture, isn’t it? Fire you can’t put out with all that water around. But I guess the gas line broke....”

   
“Yeah. I’ve heard about that. I thought it was downtown, though.”

   
The night before, I’d talked to my landlady some about the flood. She’d told me a big patch of several blocks right where my office now stood had burned to the ground when the gas lines exploded. It made sense there might have been smaller fires elsewhere, yet I felt a tickle along my spine. The kind of tickle that told me something wasn’t right.

   
My feeling had nothing to do with the couple in the upholstery shop. They were more than a little helpful. What bothered me was hearing there’d been a fire in the area where I was increasingly certain John Vanhorn had disappeared.

   
“Your wife said your parents were the ones who opened the shop here. Any chance they’d know?”

   
Wally’s face told me the answer before he spoke.

   
“They’re both gone now.”

   
“I’m sorry.”

   
“Old Mr. Brigham at the grocery store down on the corner might have been able to help. He was here then, and he rebuilt. I guess some of the shop owners didn’t. But he died about a year ago. I can’t think of anyone else who might know. You could try his son Sterling. He runs things now. Maybe he remembers his father talking about the old days.”

   
I thanked them and asked them some questions about what sort of things they upholstered, to make them feel good. Then I made my way up their side of the street. For the time being I skipped the bank. Trying to ask questions there would eat up time since I’d have to speak to a teller and then a supervisor and on up the line. If I came up empty everywhere else, they’d be my last resort.

   
By the time I reached the grocery store on the corner, I hadn’t found anyone who’d been in the neighborhood at the time of the flood. The owner of the grocery store shook his head in apology.

   
“If my dad were alive, he’d be able to help you. He’d talk your ear off. His store was right here where we’re standing, and it got hit pretty hard. He lost just about everything. Had to struggle and scrimp to get going again. At least he didn’t have fire damage like some of the places farther up did.”

   
My attention sharpened.

   
“The fire didn’t take out the whole block?”

   
His attention had drifted beyond me to something that was happening in the canned good section.

   
“Only about half,” he said absently. “Three or four places down at the other end got the worst of it. More in the middle lost roofs and had damage. Don’t know why it didn’t spread all the way. Sorry.”

   
He was starting to frown. I turned and saw the top cans on a pyramid had fallen. A kid who was scampering to catch up with his mama might have had something to do with it.

   
“Anybody still around who might be able to help me?” I asked.

   
“I don’t think so. I was just a kid at the time, didn’t notice the grown-ups much. I kind of remember a drugstore, but that’s about it.”

   
I crossed the street to try establishments on the opposite side. The waitress in a little café looked old enough to remember things, but she hadn’t been in this area then. She brought me a piece of blackberry pie that was good except for too much lard in the crust. I couldn’t bake a pie, but my taste buds had been to college when it came to eating them.

   
With energy replenished by pie and coffee, I worked my way through half a dozen more places of business.

   
“Sure I was here then,” a leathery old fellow who ran a cobbler’s shop acknowledged querulously. “Had a place across the street, but it burned. Don’t remember nothing about the drugstore, though. Don’t believe in pills and doctors. Now, have you got shoes to fix? I don’t have time to yak.”

   
 My inquiries at an up-to-date looking drugstore two doors down got me information that they’d only been there ten years. And that the cobbler had never set foot inside.

   
“Puts all his faith in drinking buttermilk and sleeping with the windows open,” said the owner.

   
The last building on that side of the block was a five-and-dime. It sat directly across from the cheerful blue upholstery shop. Bright and uncluttered, it featured a cosmetics section prominently at the front, with less enticing household items at the back. Compared with McCrory’s the place was small, but from candy to sewing supplies it had most of the necessities of daily life. A man nearing fifty with a skinny, leading-man mustache balanced halfway up a stepladder, getting set to retrieve something for a customer who was pointing at the shelf above him. Toward the other side of the store a very young blonde was dusting a display of cheap leather wallets.

   
“May I help you?” she asked looking up with a smile.

   
Her dress had a Peter Pan collar. A bow held the waves of her yellow hair back at one temple. The shiny pink of her lips had come from a tube, but she didn’t look cheap, just up-to-date and fresh and eager. I put her at about seventeen.

   
“I’m trying to find someone who might have known a man who owned a drugstore across from here before the big flood of 1913.”

   
“Not me. I wasn’t born then.” She giggled, then covered her mouth with embarrassment. “If you wait just a minute Mr. Marsh should be finished. He can help. His family’s owned a store around here since the time of the pilgrims, I think.”

   
Her gaze had been devouring my hat, a pumpkin gold Robin Hood number with a long, wispy feather.

   
“Gee, that’s a great hat. I have to scrimp and save to even get one of the little felt ones we sell here.”

   
“It’s tough when you’re starting out,” I sympathized. “I used to drool over hats like this. I’d have a million if I could afford them. I’d been eyeing this one for weeks — putting a quarter aside here and there — when it went on sale.”

   
Her sigh was curtailed as she straightened, all business.

   
“Mr. Marsh? Could you help this lady?” She waited until he was close. “She’s trying to find out about a man who used to have a drugstore across the street before the big flood.”

   
Marsh, the man from the stepladder, gave me a sharp look.

   
“Sorry. Can’t help. Don’t know anything about it.” Without so much as a phony smile, he started to turn away.

   
Perplexity crossed the blonde’s smooth face. Before she could say anything to land her in hot water with her boss, I spoke up.

   
“Gee, that old cobbler a couple doors down told me you’d been around for the flood and the fire and could fill me in.”

   
The lie didn’t bother me in the least. The two disagreeable men deserved each other. Better still, it halted Marsh in his tracks.

   
“My folks had the store then,” he said testily. “It was years ago. I don’t even remember what was across the street — just the mess cleaning up. As to what that old coot claims to remember, I wouldn’t trust it as far as I could spit.” He noticed the young clerk, who was listening avidly. “Emily, when you finish that dusting, restock the candy. You’ve dawdled all day.”

   
She moved on, but not before her eyes caught mine to signal I should talk to her. The five-and-dime owner had turned his attention to me again.

   
“Now, if that’s all you came in for....”

   
“Gee, you’ve been a peach about helping.” I gave him a smile so sunny it just about scorched him. “Since I’m here and you’ve got such a nice place, I think I’ll just look for a new tube of lipstick to wear on my date tonight.”

   
Marsh stared at me uncertainly, maybe wondering if I was unhinged.

   
“Uh, yes. It’s right there.”