Twenty Plus Two

Chapter 10

After Pleschette had gone, Alder waited fifteen seconds and opened the door. The big man was just turning a corner of the corridor, going toward the elevators. Alder closed the door again and got the Manhattan telephone directory.

He searched for a number, then got the hotel operator. A moment later a male voice said, “Detectives, Incorporated.”

“Jim Honsinger,” Alder said.

“Call back in the morning for Mr. Honsinger,” said the voice on the phone.

“No, I want to talk to him now. Call him at his home. Tell him it’s Tom Alder in from Los Angeles.”

“Hold on.”

Alder kept the phone to his ear. After a full minute, there was a connection and a blustering voice boomed into his ear, “What the hell, Tom, I’m playing bridge!”

“Be dummy long enough to talk to some of your people on the phone. Got a pencil handy?... All right, a woman named Sally Weaver — at least that was her name in 1938, when she attended Miss Tabitha Tubbs’s School for Girls...”

“That name rings a bell, Tom. Mmm, 1938...”

“She was Doris Delaney’s best friend.”

“Holy Hannah! You out of your mind, Tom?”

“Spare me the remarks, Jim. You’ll get paid for everything you do.”

“Sure, sure, but I hate to take the money. I worked on the Delaney thing when I was in the department. All I know of that case for sure I could put on the back of my left thumbnail and have enough room left to write a good book.”

“That’s good, then your mind isn’t cluttered up with theories.”

“Hell, I got those, too.”

“Give me one of them, Jim. What do you think happened to the girl?”

“Kidnaped. The snatchers got scared when the F.B.I. moved in and cut her up into little pieces. She’s dead and gone these twenty years.”

“Twenty-two. Still got your pencil? Dr. Drucker, a pediatrician...”

“Nothing there, Tom, believe me. I talked to him myself. He couldn’t identify the girl.”

“Get me his address. Now, hold on... this next one may give you trouble. The address of Mrs. Delaney, the girl’s mother. And her private telephone number.”

“You’re right, it may be tough. But — next!”

“The February 18th issue of the New York Bulletin page four, section two. I want a photostatic copy of the entire page.”

“You could’ve got that yourself for a dollar. Right from the paper.”

“They have two bound files. Each has been mutilated, a three-inch chunk cut out. That’s what I’m interested in — the piece that’s cut out.”

There was a slight pause on Jim Honsinger’s part. “Who’d cut out a piece from the file copy — both copies?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Now, last but not least — a complete history of Big Frenchy Fanchon, the con man.”

“I can save you time. Frenchy was a blue-sky stock and bond man. He might, in a pinch, sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. Kidnaping, uh-uh — not big Frenchy.”

“I didn’t say he had anything to do with this case. It’s really a different matter. By the way, Big Frenchy’s real name is Jacques Pleschette.” Alder spelled it out. “He has a younger brother, Auguste Pleschette. See if you can get anything on him. He probably changed his name too.”

“Nice people you associate with. I suppose you want all of this by yesterday?”

“Would I have interrupted your bridge game otherwise?”

“Yes, you would!”

“I just thought of something else, Jim — a wild one. A woman named Julia Joliet. In her fifties. And Leroy Dane...”

“The movie actor? My wife’s secret passion. Hey — he mixed in this?”

“Not necessarily. Incidentally, his real name isn’t Leroy Dane, although a lot of people think it is. See if you can get his real name. Okay, Jim?”

“I’ll get the office on it right away. And if you’re not too busy tomorrow, drop by — we’ll have lunch.”

“I’ll try.”

Alder hung up. Before he had time to move away from the telephone, it rang.

“Mr. Alder?” said the hotel phone operator. “We have a long-distance call for you. From Los Angeles...”

“Tom, you louse!” cried Linda Foster. “You ran out on me!”

“You wouldn’t listen,” Alder said. “I tried to tell you I had a job to do...”

“You were afraid of me, weren’t you?”

“Maybe I was. Yes, I guess I was afraid.”

“For once you said the right thing. You didn’t trust yourself. But it’s no good — you’ll be back. Unless you’ve fallen for the gorgeous Nikki — Nikki Collinson, who makes every other beautiful woman look like a hag. It’s a good thing she’s married to a hundred million dollars. If she were in circulation I’d throw acid in her face.”

“She’s the woman who was in your party last night...”

“Whoa-ho!” cried Linda. “You’re not going to try that on me. She’s also the little lady whose hand you tried to hold on the plane all the way to Chicago!”

“Oh,” was all Alder could say, “you know about that!”

“How’d I know where you’d gone? She phoned me from Chicago this afternoon. It took me until now to find your hotel. I had the operators call every hotel in Manhattan.”

Alder settled back in his chair. “What did Nikki have to say?”

“About you? What could she say that I didn’t know already? That I was a fool...”

“She told you that?”

“That’s all I’m going to tell you. Any girl who’d talk to a man about Nikki deserves to wind up an old maid.”

“Just one thing, Linda — what was the occasion of Nikki’s calling you?”

“The occasion? None. She’s visiting her family in Chicago and she called Walt, as soon as she got there. I happened to be with Walt at the time...”

“With Walt — oh, Harris Toomey...”

“Now one moment, Tom — I won’t have you making wild guesses. You and I had a date for lunch at the Beverly Hills Brown Derby. You didn’t show up. At one o’clock, Walt Collinson came in — with his best friend who just happens to be Harris Toomey. One o’clock our time is three o’clock in Chicago and Nikki’s plane landed in Chicago at ten minutes to three. She called from the airport...”

“She called the Brown Derby?”

“Walt told her that was where he’d be for lunch. See, darling, it’s all very simple. That detective brain of yours — never mind that! I should have let you figure it out yourself. Let you worry about it. Also, what I am doing this evening...”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m calling you from The Tuilleries. Sitting beside me is, mmm, Hollywood’s gift to women, Leroy Dane, your movie star friend. Now would you like to call me back — at The Tuilleries and make sure that I am here?”

“Where are you, really?”

“At my hotel, stupid. I’m lying here on the bed, reading a good book. No, I’m talking to you, but when I get through I might, I just might, do some reading. There’s a Gideon Bible in the drawer of the telephone stand. I’ve always wanted to read one — a Bible. And what are you doing, Tom?”

“I’m going to bed in about two minutes.”

“Not in two minutes you aren’t. Well, all right, I’ll let you go. You’re probably pretty tired, the trip — and last night...” Her tantalizing laugh had a wicked note to it. And then she hung up. But not before Alder heard a sound over the wire, a voice speaking on a loudspeaker: “Flight to New York...”

She had muffled the announcement with her laughter. But she was at the airport. She would be in New York in ten hours.

As tired as he was, Alder had difficulty going to sleep. He tossed and twisted until well past two o’clock. His brain would not relax, but he finally fell asleep. And then it seemed only a moment or two before he was awakened.

It was daylight and the phone was ringing. He looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to eight.