Hostage For A Hood (2 page)

She backed out of the garage into the street, swung the wheel and put the car into forward, clashing the gears as they meshed. There was no time to get out and close the garage doors.

She had a moment's worry, knowing that she wouldn't be returning directly, as she usually did. But she shrugged and dismissed the thought. It wouldn't matter; there was nothing in the garage of value. Everything she had of value was sitting there next to her on the front seat of the old car, waiting to join a few hundred other commuters on their way to Manhattan on the eight thirty-five.

* * * *

The lieutenant had missed his supper. Actually, except for periodic containers of coffee which had been brought in to him through the day, he'd had nothing at all to eat since his breakfast at eight-thirty that same Monday morning—and it was now well past ten o'clock in the evening. This was, however, merely a contributing factor as far as his annoyance was concerned.

It had been a highly unusual day in more respects than one; otherwise, he would not have been in his tiny office on the second floor of the combined police station and town hall this late. Also he wouldn't have barked at Coogins—Patrolman First Class Clarence Coogins—when the man came in to tell him that the young fellow was still hanging around waiting to talk with him.

The lieutenant looked up, impatience and irritation reflected in his shadowed, tired eyes. He ran a lean, hard hand through his short-cropped iron-gray hair and with the other hand pushed away the telephone into which he had been speaking. He made a conscientious effort to keep the annoyance out of his voice.

"Okay, Coogins. What is it now?"

"It's this Sherwood fellow—he's still here. Insists on seeing you. I tried to tell him ... "

The lieutenant sighed. "All right, all right, send him in. But I should think you guys downstairs could handle these routine jobs. I have enough on my mind ... "

Coogins mumbled something and turned quickly to the door. He'd been on the force for thirty-five years and could well remember when Marty Parks had been assigned to him as a rookie patrolman more than two decades ago. But things had changed—and now he looked on the other man not only with understanding but also with a certain degree of fearful respect.

The lieutenant shuffled through the papers lying on the scarred oak desk in front of him until he found the slip which Coogins had left for him the first time he'd been in about the matter. He adjusted his reading glasses, pulling them down from where they rested on his forehead.

Bartwell Sherwood,
97
Olive Drive. Wife, Joyce Sherwood, missing.

He put the slip of paper back on the desk as the door opened and a painfully slender, rather carelessly dressed man in his late twenties entered the room.

Lieutenant Parks quite unconsciously took in the heavy, horn-rimmed spectacles, the brown, slightly curly hair cut crew fashion, the long, sensitive hands. He catalogued him immediately: Junior executive, undoubtedly a commuter, and a half of one of those young married teams who had been flocking out into the suburbs during the last few years. A young man with a very obviously serious problem on his mind.

Bart Sherwood didn't bother to take the stiff-backed chair which Parks indicated, but stood straight and tense in front of the desk. His spare, rectangular face was pale and he nervously fingered the dead pipe in his hands. The blue eyes under the wide, high forehead were worried and the lieutenant at once realized that whatever the problem was, it was vital, at least to Sherwood himself.

"I am absolutely sure something has happened to her," Sherwood said. "Absolutely sure. You have to do something."

"I've got to do a lot of things," Detective Lieutenant Parks said, his mind still on that other and far more important matter. "Good Lord, I've got ... " and then quickly he stopped, remembering that after all this thing was a police matter, at least for the moment, and that the man standing in front of him was a resident of the town and a taxpayer and without doubt considered his particular difficulty all-important.

"I'm sorry," he said, interrupting himself. "It's been one of those days. Perhaps you better tell me what it's all about. I understand your wife is missing." He looked down again for a second at the scribbled note. "You're Bartwell Sherwood, and you have reported your wife, Joyce Sherwood, missing. Is that right?"

"Exactly," Sherwood said. "I came home and ... "

"Came home from where—and when?"

"I work in New York. Copy writer with the Markson Advertising Agency. Joyce—that is, Mrs. Sherwood—drove me to the station this morning; I get the eight thirty-five. She left me as the train was coming in and I went to work. I called her early this afternoon about theater tickets I was planning to pick up. Tomorrow's my birthday," he added irrelevantly, "and I was trying to get seats to a Broadway show, and ... "

"You called her, and—"

"I called her and there was no answer. That was around two o'clock. And then I called back after half an hour or so. She could have been out shopping. Well, I didn't get her on the second call and so I kept on phoning throughout the rest of the afternoon. I never did get her. I was worried because I knew she was expecting my call—about the tickets, you know. Anyway, instead of taking the usual five o'clock commuter's special, I got a train at four thirty-two. Got me here into Brookside at a few minutes after five-twenty. I grabbed a cab at the station and went directly home. I don't know why, but I was worried."

"Any special reason to be worried?"

"As I told you, I'd been telephoning .... "

Lieutenant Parks waved his hand. "Yes—yes, of course," he said.

Bart Sherwood looked at the police officer and frowned. "I got home and the house was locked. The car was gone. I let myself in. The breakfast dishes were still on the table, and as near as I could tell Joyce had never returned after dropping me at the station this morning."

"Why else, aside from the breakfast dishes, did you think she hadn't returned?"

"Well, actually, the breakfast dishes, being left there all day unwashed, would have been enough. Joy is a neat housekeeper. Anyway, I started looking around and the only clothes of hers which seemed to be missing were the ones she was wearing when she'd driven me to the station. The milk, which is delivered around ten in the morning, was still sitting on the back porch. Another thing—the garage doors were open."

"Yes?"

"We're always in a hurry in the morning. To catch the train, you know. So Joy leaves them open, but the minute she gets back—she always goes directly home even if she has shopping to do later—the minute she gets back she closes them, and if she goes out later, for any length of time, she keeps them locked. So I don't think she ever got back from the station."

"Where do you think she went, then?"

Sherwood shifted on his feet and put the dead pipe in his mouth. His expression was half puzzled and half annoyed.

"That's what I'm trying to find out from you people," he said. "I looked around the house and then I started calling up a few friends where she might possibly be. No one had seen her. By seven o'clock I was really worried. I called the local hospitals and the police station, checking to see if there could have been an accident. There was nothing. I made several other calls and then I came down here, around nine o'clock. I reported her missing to the man downstairs on the desk. I can't say he seemed very interested."

"We're always interested when someone turns up missing," Lieutenant Parks said. "Let me ask you a couple of questions. We want to help you all we can, so think carefully about your answers. How long have you been married? Do you have any children? Do you have anyone else living with you? Relatives or anything?"

Bart shook his head.

"There's just the two of us. We've been married exactly one year today."

"Mrs. Sherwood ever leave you before?"

Sherwood shook his head, frowning. "She hasn't left me now. She's missing, I tell you. Something must have happened to her."

Lieutenant Parks nodded.

"You have any arguments recently? Maybe some sort of little tiff this morning, perhaps?"

"Good Lord, no. I tell you there was nothing—nothing at all wrong. Why, we were talking about the celebration tomorrow night and about my getting the tickets to the show. There was no argument at all. We never argue."

"Never? You mean to tell me you've been married a year and you never ... "

"Listen, Officer," Bart said. "Of course we argue sometimes. But never anything serious. Never anything serious at all. Everybody disagrees now and then with everybody else, but I tell you ... "

"What was your last argument about?"

Sherwood looked at the other man and his eyes were dark with anger.

"What does it matter?" he asked. "If you must know, it wasn't really an argument at all. I wanted to get a new car, and Joyce thought we should keep the money and save it toward the down payment on a house. I didn't want her driving that seven-year-old heap, but's she's a lot more sensible than I am and she was right. It wasn't really an argument at all."

"All right, all right, you didn't have any serious argument. We have to find these things out, you know. Does your wife have any family, or very close friends whom she might suddenly decided to visit? Maybe someone without a phone?"

"No family. Her folks are dead and she was an only child. I've called all her friends. But she simply wouldn't ... "

Lieutenant Parks stood up, fighting the temptation to yawn. He wasn't bored or indifferent; he was just very tired.

"There were no signs around the house of a struggle or anything?"

Sherwood's head jerked up and stared at the other man. "Why no. But what do you think ... "

"I don't think anything—yet," the lieutenant said. "Anyway, you've made a formal report downstairs, is that right?"

"That's right. But ... "

"Okay, I'm going to have a man go out and look your place over. We can handle the routine end from here. You've given us the license number and make of the car, a description and so forth?"

"Yes."

"All right, I'll have one of our men run out home with you. He may turn up something. And in the meantime, try not to worry. We'll find her, all right. Probably nothing at all. Maybe she just .... "

Sherwood turned away, a defeated, baffled expression in his eyes.

"I'd go out with you myself," the lieutenant said, "but we're pretty busy here just now. As you may have heard, an armored car was stuck up in town this morning and the thugs got away with close to a quarter of a million dollars. A guard was shot. He died up in County Hospital about an hour ago."

He pushed a button on his desk and a moment later the door opened and Coogins put his head in.

"Get Detective Sims," Parks said.

As they waited for the detective to arrive, the lieutenant took a cigarette from a crumpled pack and then offered the pack to Sherwood, who shook his head.

"By the way, do you know if your wife was carrying any particularly large amount of money with her? Or wearing any valuable jewelry or anything?"

For a moment, Sherwood almost smiled.

"Junk jewelry, if she was wearing anything. I doubt even that. Joyce doesn't care for jewelry. As far as money goes, she probably didn't have more than four or five dollars in her bag. She never carries anything much. When she shops she usually pays with a check. Makes it easier for her to keep track of things."

"And nothing was missing from the house? Nothing of value?"