The bride wore black (12 page)

She crumpled; not in a faint, but her legs gave under her. The nurse and doctor caught her, supported her between them. They pivoted her slowly around to face the door, started her over toward it, taking small steps. She was incapable of saying anything further, but noth-

ing further needed to be said. It was all in Wanger's hands now.

Just before the door closed on the pathetic little procession, the doctor snarled crankily over his shoulder, "You fellows make me sick."

"Can't be helped," answered the detective doggedly. "Had to be done."

She was in the middle of a flock of kids in a subdivided section of the school yard, separated from the rougher activities of the older children. They were playing games, marching one at a time under the arched hands of two pivots, and then being imprisoned there and swung back and forth, and then being given a whispered choice of two incalculable treasures, and then being posted behind one or the other of the two pivots, according to the selection they'd made. They'd never played that in Wanger's day, down on East 11th Street, so he couldn't follow it very closely.

He hated to do this more than he'd ever hated any job before, even though it was not an arrest yet or anything even remotely resembling it. He supposed the sight of the kids made him feel that way. There was something brutal, almost unclean, about hauling her off from here, to find out if she had taken a human life.

She saw him watching and left them a minute and came over to him. She was a short, slender little body with coppery gold hair; young, not more than twenty-four, or -five; pretty behind her shell-rimmed glasses. In fact, even pretty before them, if a trifle more austere. Sparingly gilded with freckles on her cheekbones. They were becoming.

"Were you waiting for one of them?" she asked pleasantly. "The session won't be over for another "

He'd asked that he be allowed to find his way out here to her unescorted or rather guided only by a "moni-

tor," one of the older children, who had now gone back and hadn't explained his business to the principal; it seemed more considerate. "It's you yourself I'd like to speak to," he said. He tried to do his job without frightening her unduly. After all, she was just a stray name on a child's lips, so far. "I'm Wanger, of the police department "

"Oh." She wasn't particularly frightened, just taken aback.

"I'd like you to come over and see Cookie Moran you know, Mrs. Frank Moran's youngster with me as soon as you're through here, if you don't mind."

"Ah, yes poor little soul," she commiserated.

The game had stalled meanwhile. The children were still in playing formation, all faces turned toward her for further instructions. "Should we start pulling now, Miss Baker?"

She glanced at him inquiringly. "Finish your class out first," he consented. "I'll wait for you."

She went back to her charges immediately, no premonition of impending difficulties seeming to mar her attention to her duties. She clapped her hands briskly. "All right, now, children. Ready? Pull! . . . Not too hard now. . . . Look you, Marvin, you're tearing Barbara's sleeve "

In the classroom later, the children all safely packed into the bus and sent off, he watched her clear the desk at which she held sway over them, putting things neatly away into the drawer. "Those little crayon drawings they do for you like those you've got there don't they take them home every day?"

It was the idle question of a man standing by watching something he is not familiar with. It had that sound, at least.

"No, Fridays are our days for that. We let them accumulate during the week, and then on Fridays we clear

out their little desks and send everything home with them to show their mothers how they're progressing." She laughed indulgently.

He picked up one of the color plates at random. It was an oversize robin perched on a limb. He chuckled with hypocritical admiration. "Is this pattern from last week or from this week?" Another of those idle, stopgap questions, as if simply to make conversation while she was straightening her hat.

'This week's," she said, glancing around to identify it. "That was their Monday afternoon assignment."

Monday night was the night

They took a taxi to the Moran house. Wanger was the more diffident of the two, kept looking out the window on his side. "Is this a police matter you're taking me over on or, er, an errand of mercy?" she finally asked, a little embarrassedly. It wasn't the embarrassment of guilt, it was the uncertainty of a totally new, uncharted experience.

"It's just a bit of routine, don't pay any attention to it." He looked out the cab window again as though his thought were a thousand miles away. "By the way, were you over there the night it happened?" He couldn't have made it sound more inconsequential if he'd tried.

Not that he was being unduly considerate or leaning over backward about it; the situation so far didn't warrant any heavier handUng. He would have been out of order.

"Over there at the Morans'?" She arched her brows in complete astonishment. "Why, good heavens, no!"

He didn't repeat the question and she didn't repeat the denial. Once each was enough. She was on record.

Wanger had looked on at many confrontations, but he thought he had never been present at a more dramatic one than this. She was so defenseless against the child, in

one way. And the child was so defenseless against the whole grown-up world, in another way.

He was overjoyed to see her when the matron brought him in. "H1.o, Miss Baker!" He ran across the room to her, clasped her below the hips, looked up into her face. "I couldn't come to school today because my daddy went away. I couldn't come yesterday, either."

"I know, Cookie, we all missed you."

She turned to Wanger as if to ask, "Now what do I have to do?"

Wanger got down on his haunches, tried to keep his voice low and confidence inspiring. "Cookie, do you remember the night your daddy went into the closet?"

Cookie nodded dutifully.

"Is this the lady that was here with you in the house?"

They waited.

She had to prompt him herself finally, "Was I, Cookie?"

It seemed as though he were never going to answer. The tension became almost unendarable, as far as the grown-ups in the room were concerned.

She took a deep breath, reached down, sandwiched one of his little hands between her two. "Was Miss Baker here with you the night daddy went into the closet. Cookie?" she asked.

This time the answer came so suddenly it almost jolted out of him. "Yes, Miss Baker wuss here. Miss Baker had supper with my daddy and me 'member?" But he was talking directly to her, not to them.

She straightened slowly, shaking her head blankly. "Oh, no ... I can't understand it. ..." Their faces had sort of closed up around her. Nothing was said.

"But, Cookie, look at me "

"No, please don't influence him," Wanger cut in, civilly but decisively.

"I'm not trying to " she said helplessly.

"Will you wait for me outside, Miss Baker? Hi be with you in just a moment."

When he came out presently, she was sitting by herself out there, in a chair against the wall. True, there was a man busy with something or other in one of the adjacent rooms that commanded the front door, but she didn't know that. She was fastening and unfastening the clasp of her handbag, over and over. But she looked up at him with directness. "I can't understand that "

He didn't say anything more about it one way or the other. The child was on record now, too, that was all.

He'd brought a crayon-colored outline pattern out to show her. An oversize robin on a bough. "You've already told me that this is the pattern you gave them to fill in Monday afternoon. And that they only bring their work home once a week, on Fridays."

Her eyes clung to it much longer than was necessary for mere identification. He waited a moment, then folded it and put it away.

"But it was found right here in the house. Miss Baker, in the early hours of Tuesday morning. How do you suppose it got here?"

She just looked at the place where it had last gone into his clothing.

"It's possible, of course, that the youngster brought it home with him himself without permission that day, before it had even been marked." The suggestion came from him, questioningly.

She looked up quickly. "No, I I don't think he did. I excused him ahead of the rest that day, because his mother was waiting outside to take him with her. You can ask Mrs. Moran, but "

"I have already."

"Oh, well, then " she stood up. A little added color peered slowly into her face. "Then what was that supposed to be, a verbal trap for me?"

He quirked his head noncommittally.

"This seems to have put me in a somewhat awkward position."

"Not at all," he said insincerely. "Why say that?"

She looked down at her handbag, unfastened and re-fastened its catch one more time, then suddenly looked up, flung at him with a spirited little flare-up of impatience that matched her hair, "Although I don't know why it should! That was hardly a fair test in there just now."

He was urbane to the point of silkiness. "Why wasn't it? Doesn't the child know you well enough? Doesn't he see you five days a week? It's not conclusive as far as we're concerned, that you're entitled to say, but fair it was."

"But don't you see? A child's mind, a child that age, is as sensitive as an exposed camera plate; itil take the first impression that comes its way. You asked me not to influence him just now, but you men have undoubtedly already influenced him, maybe without meaning to, during the past few days. He's heard you talking about my being here and now he believes I was. In children the borderline between reality and imagination is very "

He spoke in a patiently reasoning tone. "As far as our influencing him goes, you're entirely mistaken. We'd never heard the name, any of us, until he first mentioned it, so how could he have heard it from us first? As a matter of fact, we had to send for Mrs. Moran and have her explain who you were, when he first brought it out."

She didn't actually stamp her feet, but she gave a lunge of her body that expressed that state of mind. "But what am I supposed to have done would you mind telling me? Walked out of here, when such a thing took place, without notifying anybody?"

"Now, please." He spread the flats of his hands dis-

armingly. "You've already told me once you weren't here, and I haven't asked you a second time, have I?"

"And I repeat I wasn't. Most decidedly! I've never been in this house before today."

"Then that's all there is to it." He made a calming motion, as of pressing something gently downward with his hands. Peace at any price. "Nothing more to be done or said about it. Just give me a rough outline of your movements that night, and we're through. You don't object, do you?"

She quieted down. "No, of course not."

"No offense, it's just routine. We've asked Mrs. Moran that herself."

She had sat down again. Quiet become thoughtful-ness. "No, of course. ..." Thoughtfulness became a loss in innermost contemplation. "No. ..."

He cleared his throat presently. "Whenever you're ready."

"Oh, beg pardon. I seem to do everything wrong, don't I?" She opened and closed her handbag catch one final time. "The children were sent home at their usual hour. Four, that is, you know. Until I cleared my desk and so on, it must have been four-thirty by the time I left. I went back to my room at the Residence Club, stayed in it until about six, resting and doing a little personal laundering. Then I went out and had my dinner, at a little place down the block where I usually go. You want the name, I suppose?"

He looked ruefully apologetic.

"Karen Marie's; it's a little private dining room run by a Swedish woman. Then I took a walk, and at, oh, sometime around eight, I dropped in to a moving picture "

"Don't recall just which one it was, I suppose?" he suggested leniently, as though it were the most unimportant thing in the world.

"Oh, oh, yes. The Standard. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, you know. I don't go to them very often, but when I do, the Standard's the only one I go to. Well, that's about all, I guess. I came out when the show did and got back to the Residence Club just a little before twelve."

"All right, well, that'll do very nicely. Thanks a lot, that takes care of everything. Now, I won't keep you any longer. ..."

She stood up almost unwillingly. "You know, I almost would rather not go under under these circumstances. I'd feel better if this whole thing were cleared up one way or the other right while I'm still here."

He gave one hand a paddle twist. "There's nothing to clear up. You seem to be reading more into it than we're willing to put into it ourselves. Now don't worry about it, just run along and forget the whole business."

"Well. . . ."She went reluctantly, looking back until the very last, but she went.

The minute the front door had closed on her he seemed to get an electric shock from some unseen source. "Myers!" The man who had been in the room farther down the hall popped out. "Day and night. Don't let her out of your sight a minute." Myers went hustling by to seek the back way out.

"Brad!" Wanger called. And before the staircase had stopped swaying with tumultuous descent: "Beat it out of here fast; check with the Standard Theater and find out the name of the other picture they were showing there Monday night, with Mr. Smith. That's one good thing about double features; they come in handy in our business. Then check with this Karen Marie's place; find out if she ate there. I'm going to go over this alibi of hers every inch of the way and God help her if it doesn't hold up under hundred-pound weights dropped from a height!"

First phone call to Wanger, at the Moran house, twenty minutes later:

"Hey, Lew; this is Bradford. Listen, I didn't have to check with the Standard movie house. The name of the second feature that night was Five Little Peppers, if you still want it. But somebody else stopped by just ahead of me and asked them the same question, I was told. The girl in the box office wondered why all the sudden interest in a grade-B filler."