Vanishing Ladies

Chapter one

I picked Ann up at nine o’clock.

Wait a minute, it must have been closer to nine-thirty. She lives with her father. Her mother is dead, you see. Her father was still home when I got there. He’s usually off to work by about eight- thirty, but I think he was worried about Ann going off alone on a vacation with me. Not that he doesn’t trust me or anything, but you know how it is when a girl has no mother, I guess a man worries about her. He didn’t have to worry, actually, because Ann and I are pretty old-fashioned, I guess, for this day and age.

I know everybody is supposed to be living together and all before they’re married, but we don’t. We just don’t. Ann had a very strict upbringing in a very religious family, and she feels... well, I don’t think I ought to go into it much further than that. Let’s just say that everybody thinks we’re crazy for waiting, but that’s what we’re doing — waiting. Which, when you think of what happened at Sullivan’s Point... well, it might not have happened if we were like everybody else is today, I guess. But we’re not.

Anyway, I had a cup of coffee with her father while Ann finished dressing. I think she held off dressing on purpose, so that I’d have a chance to talk to her father before we left. I’ve got no reason to believe that except that she’s usually pretty punctual, and she knew we were supposed to leave at nine. I guess Mr Grafton got convinced over our coffee that I wasn’t going to sell Ann into white slavery or anything. Anyway, we began talking about the chances the baseball teams had, and in a little while Ann came out of her room.

She’s a pretty tall girl, I mean not a giant, but wearing heels she’d give most fellows a little trouble. She was wearing a white sun dress with bare shoulders and she looked pretty, but I’m prejudiced, I’m going to marry her someday.

Incidentally, I have to tell you what she looks like and what she was wearing because it’s pretty important to what happened later on. She’s got very black hair, you see, hair that’s really black — as if it’d been dipped in India ink. And she’s got wide brown eyes, and a good figure even though she’s tall. You meet a lot of tall girls who look like telephone poles. Ann’s not that way. Anyway, she was wearing a white cotton dress, and she carried a straw bag and she wore these straw pumps with lucite heels.

She went over and kissed her father, and he put his arm around her shoulder and then turned to me and said, Take care of her, Phil.’

‘I will,’ I promised. We shook hands then, and all three of us went down to the car together, Mr Grafton carrying one of Ann’s bags, and me carrying the other. The car we used for the vacation wasn’t my own. I drive a Dodge sedan. But one of the fellows on the squad, a detective named Burry O’Hare, drives a Chevy convertible, and he suggested I use that for the trip. As it turned out, the borrowed car wasn’t such a good idea, but Burry of course didn’t know what was going to happen and he was only trying to be nice.

We got under way at about ten that morning, the top down, and a nice breeze rushing through the city. We couldn’t have chosen a more beautiful day to start our vacation if we’d tried. It was one of those days when even the city is comfortable even though the sun is shining to beat the band.

When we pulled away from the curb, Ann said, ‘Did you reassure Dad?’

‘I told him I’m going to rape you as soon as we’re over the bridge,’ I said.

‘I’ll bet you did.’

‘I did.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He said it couldn’t happen to a nicer fellow.’

‘I agree with him.’

‘How do you like the car?’

‘I love it,’ she said. ‘It was very nice of O’Hare.’

‘Sam Thompson offered me his car, too.’

‘Why didn’t you take it?’

‘Who wants a beat-up old Cadillac?’

‘Does he really drive a Caddy?’

‘On a cop’s salary?’

‘All cops take graft. I happen to know.’

‘How come you’re so smart?’

‘I’m in love with a cop.’

‘That’s the one thing I’m not going to like about this vacation.’

‘My being in love with a cop?’

‘No. All the graft I’ll miss while I’m gone.’

I better explain here that we were kidding. I better explain, too, that Ann and I do a lot of kidding with each other, and I don’t know if you want to hear all the kidding or not but the only way I can tell you what happened is to tell it to you as it happened. Anyway, it’s that way in my mind, and it’s mixed up enough as it is without trying to cut corners.

We drove crosstown to the bridge. The traffic was pretty light at that time of the morning, and we were in no real hurry, half the fun is getting there, you know. So we took our time crossing the bridge, watching a big liner coming in, billowing smoke all over the place. I guess we didn’t really feel as if we were on our way until we hit your state after we crossed the bridge. With the river behind us, with the road stretching out ahead of us, with the sun beating down, and the wind streaming around the car, we really felt as if we were on our way. Ann reached over to turn on the radio, and then she squeezed my hand on the wheel and said, ‘Oh, Phil, I’m so happy.’

‘Before you get too happy,’ I told her, ‘get the map out of the glove compartment and let’s see where we’re going.’

She fished out the map, and began reading off road numbers to me. I have to confess that I’m unfamiliar with your state. I was here once for a wedding, but I was only thirteen then and my father did the driving. I almost came again when some fellows wanted to see a burlesque, but somehow I caught a cold and couldn’t make it.

Ann knew the state like a native, though. She’d spent a lot of time in the mountains as a kid and had traveled the roads a lot with her father. Which is where she got the idea for Sullivan’s Point in the first place, I suppose.

‘We should be there sometime this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Phil, you’ll love it. It’s the most beautiful spot in the world. These big pines, and this finger of land that juts out into the lake. I hope you swim.’

‘Do fish swim?’ I asked.

‘Yes, but does Phil Colby?’

‘What kind of town is there?’ I asked. ‘Or is there?’

‘Sullivan’s Corners,’ she said. ‘A few miles from the Point. Small. Quaint.’

‘Any big cities nearby?’

‘Davistown,’ she said.

‘Never heard of it.’

‘It’s big.’

She told me all about Davistown, and all about Sullivan’s Corners and Sullivan’s Point and her travelogue took us right to lunch-time. We pulled into a Howard Johnson’s, had a leisurely snack, and then hit the highway again. We drove steadily, and we talked, and we laughed, and it was beginning to feel like a vacation, if you know what I mean. Eventually we began picking up the Davistown signs, and then the Sullivan’s Corners signs; twenty miles to Sullivan’s Corners, ten miles, five miles, and then we passed a big sign saying ‘You are entering SULLIVAN’S CORNERS’, and about a half mile past that, we picked up the state trooper. It was Ann who first spotted him.

‘Darling,’ she crooned, ‘I don’t want to upset you, but the minions of the law are on our trail.’

I looked into the rearview mirror, just catching a glimpse of the blue uniform and the motorcycle. The trooper was riding some hundred yards behind us, away over on my right rear fender where he hoped my mirror wouldn’t pick him up. I glanced at the speedometer.

‘I’m only doing forty,’ I said to Ann.

The trooper pulled up and got off his bike. He was a tall, muscular fellow with a ruddy brown complexion. He wore sunglasses, and when he got off the bike he stretched and yawned and then casually strolled over to where I was sitting behind the wheel.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hello.’

‘In a hurry?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘No? Maximum speed in this state is fifty-five miles per hour. You were tearing along at close to sixty-five.’

For a moment, I couldn’t believe I’d heard him correctly. I looked at his smiling face and I tried to read the eyes behind the tinted glasses.

‘You’re kidding,’ I said at last.

‘Am I?’ and he reached for the pinch pad.

‘I’m a cop,’ I told him. ‘Besides, I was only doing forty.’

‘You were doing sixty-five, and I don’t care if you’re a judge,’ he said. ‘Let me have your license and registration.’

‘Look, officer...’

‘Let me have your license and registration!’ he repeated, more sharply this time.

I dug into my wallet, making sure he saw the detective shield pinned to the inside leather, and then I handed him my license together with my acetate-encased police identification card and a card telling him I belonged to the Police Benevolent Association.

‘Never mind the rest of the garbage,’ he told me. ‘I just want the license and registration.’

‘The rest of the garbage is part of the license,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’d better look at it.’

He glanced at it. ‘So you’re a Detective/3rd Grade,’ he said. ‘So what? In this state, we don’t allow nobody to speed. Not even detectives from across the river.’ He handed my cards back, unfolded my license and then said, ‘Where’s the registration?’

Up until that point, I still had some hope of getting out of this with a small lecture about law-enforcement officers speeding-which I hadn’t been doing in the first place. When he mentioned the registration to me, though, it suddenly occurred to me that O’Hare and I had never even discussed it. Expecting the worst, I thumbed open the glove compartment.

‘I borrowed this car,’ I said. ‘I hope the owner keeps his registration in the glove compartment.’

‘You borrowed it, huh?’ the trooper said.

‘Yes. From another detective.’

‘The registration in there?’

I was wading through the pile of junk O’Hare kept in the glove compartment. There was a flashlight, a map of New Hampshire, a booklet advising him to how to keep up the maintenance on his car, several charge carbons from his gas station and — of all things things — a .32.

‘What’s that?’ the trooper said.

‘Huh?’ I said, knowing very well he wasn’t referring to the map of New Hampshire.

‘You got a license for that pistol?’

‘I’m a peace officer,’ I said. ‘You know damn well I don’t need a license to—’

‘Whose gun is that?’

‘Probably O’Hare’s. He’s the man I borrowed the car from.’

‘Did you find the registration?’

‘No,’ I said dully.

‘You’d better come along with me,’ the trooper said.

‘Why?’

‘How do I know this isn’t a stolen car? How do I know those credentials you showed me aren’t phony?’

‘I showed you my tin,’ I said. ‘I sure as hell didn’t buy that badge in the five and ten.’

‘You might have stolen that, too,’ the trooper said. ‘Follow me.’

‘Listen...’

‘I hate to hurl clichés,’ the trooper said, smiling, ‘but you can tell it to the judge.’ Then he stalked back to his bike as if he were ready to enter an International Motorcycle Competition.

‘Damn idiot,’ I said.

‘You were doing forty,’ Ann said. ‘I’m your witness.’

‘Sure, but whose word is the judge going to take? Mine or a cop’s?’

‘But darling,’ Ann said, ‘you are a cop.’

‘And why the hell didn’t O’Hare leave the registration with me? Of all the stupid.

‘Our friend is taking off,’ Ann said.