The Case of the Petticoat Murder

Chapter Nineteen

MCCONNERY's was a very small, very clean lunchroom with a chrome-and-red counter across a narrow aisle from a single row of chrome-and-blue booths. There was an elderly lady in the cashier's chair, a brunette waitress behind the counter, a heavy-set blonde woman drinking coffee in the last booth at the rear, and no customers at all.

The woman in the rear booth was wearing a waitress' uniform and, in a place the size of this one, the chances of her being the woman Edna Hardesty had told me about were pretty good.

She glanced at me, pursed her lips for a moment, and then smiled without really meaning it.

“Friendly cuss, aren't you?” she said.

“Most of the time,” I said.

“Cop?”

“Yes.”

“And no free coffee on the house? You're slipping.”

“Are you the only blonde waitress working here?”

She nodded. “Thanks for not saying fat blonde waitress. What's your problem?”

“A girl named Suzy.”

“Oh?”

“She came in here last week. She and another girl. You asked her if she didn't remember you, and she ran out on you.”

Her smile went away. “What about her?”

“Suzy acted very strangely. Why?”

“Are you backing into something else? Is that it?”

“I'm interested in why she acted that way. If that leads to something else, all right.”

“This straight?”

“All the way.”

“I sure don't want any trouble with cops.”

“The sight of you had quite an effect on her. How come?”

“You've got me. Why she should snoot me that way is something I can't understand.” She paused, her face hardening a little. “Of course, she's got it made now. Anybody could see that from her clothes.”

“What can you tell me about her?”

“If you mean in the last four or five years, I can't tell you anything. That's how long it's been since I saw her. That time last week was the only time I've even thought about her.”

“Something happened, Miss—?”

“Josie,” she said. “Josie Daniels.”

“Something happened to send her out of here that way,” I said. “It was a lot more than a matter of snooting someone, Miss Daniels.”

“Sure. But what? I tell you, you could have knocked me over with a napkin.”

“Could it have been something that happened four or five years ago?”

“I don't know what.”

“Where did you know her?”

“Down home. In Mississippi.”

“She's been away from there that long? Four or five years?”

“Call it four. Yes, she cleared out of there when she was about fourteen. Me, I've been on the go ever since I was about the same age. But I always made it home couple of times a year, no matter what.”

“What town is this, Miss Daniels?”

“Little wide spot in the road called Kirkman.”

“Suzy from the same town?”

“No. She lived right out in the cotton.”

“Plantation?”

“You Yankees! No. It was just a little old shack right out in the middle of nothing — just like all the other 'croppers' shacks.” She shook her head. “A lot she's got to snoot people about! Why, I knew her when she didn't have but one dress to her name.”

“Tell me what you can about her.”

“Don't think I won't. The way she snooted me? I should care!” She took a long swallow of her coffee, leaned a little nearer to me across the table, and rested her weight on her arms. “That girl's family was the laughingstock of the whole county. Why, that family would have starved if it hadn't been for Suzy's mother being friendly with the landlord and the storekeeper and so on. There wasn't any two of her brothers and sisters that looked alike; and she had eight of them. In fact, Suzy's the only one that looked any more like her old man than you do.

“They all lived out there like a bunch of damn hogs, and if that girl ever had a clean face before she was ten years old, I never saw it. When the old man would come to town, everybody would make fun of him. He couldn't read or write, and so they'd spell out words in front of him, just like you would with a little kid when you don't want him. to know what you're saying about him. You know what I mean?”

I nodded, trying to picture a girl like Susan Campbell being a part of what the waitress was telling me. It wasn't easy.

“It's no wonder she lit out,” Josie Daniels went on. “After a girl's been a laughingstock all her life, living no better than the pigs did, and running herself ragged trying to keep her old man from getting his hands on her, you can't blame her much for marrying the first man that asked her, even if he was—”

“Marrying?” I said.

“When she was thirteen. Just about old enough to start having babies or start going to high school. Suzy, she didn't do either.”

“At thirteen?” I said.

“Can't get over it, can you? Why, down there, a girl can get married at twelve, My sister-in-law did. And besides, the legal age right here in New York is only fourteen. What's a couple of years?”

I didn't say anything.

“But she jumped out of the frying pan into the fire, Suzy did,” Josie Daniels went on. “She married-this no-good from across the hollow, thinking he'd take her out of the mess she was in. So what did he do? He worked her ragged all day and beat on her all night.”

She finished her coffee. “How she ever stood it for a whole year, I'll never know. Damn if I'm not starting to feel sorry for her all over again. That Marty Hutchins was the meaniest boy in the entire state of Mississippi.”

I looked at her.

“What's the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Don't tell me I'm starting to affect you the same way did Suzy?” she said, suddenly beginning to smile again. “Pretty soon we won't have any customers left at all!”

Mrs. Suzy-Susan Hutchins-Campbell, I thought, of Kirkman, Mississippi, and New York City, New York.

“Hey I What's wrong

It wasn't easy, but I got a grin on my face, anyhow. “Nothing,” I said. “Little tired, I guess.”

“Oh. I was beginning to think you might've had some of our coffee, after all.”

“No divorce?” said.

“No anything at all. She just up and lit out. So far as I know, I'm the only one from around there that's ever ever heard of her again.”

“And her husband?”

“That one! A couple of months after Susan lit out, so did he. Nobody ever knew where or why, and cared less.” She lowered her voice confidentially. “Just between you and me and this empty coffee cup — what'd you want to know about her for?”

“I wasn't too sure,” I said as I slid out of the booth,

“I'm still not.”

“I've got another ten minutes yet before I have to go back to work. Why not stick around a while?”

“Thanks very much, Miss Daniels. Next time I'm in the neighborhood.”

“You do that,” she said. “Any time.”

I left the lunchroom, walked around the corner, and went into a drugstore to call Stan Rayder and tell him the alligator handbag had belonged to Susan, and that the young Mrs. Campbell had once been — and might very well still be — the even younger Mrs. Hutchins.