Who Has Wilma Lathrop? (3 page)

“Good-night,” he said again.

Wilma’s voice was muffled. “Good-night.”

Lathrop lay a long time listening to the wind. Promptly at midnight, in the flat above, Dr. Klein turned off his television set and clomped down the long hall for his usual bedtime snack. From time to time, during lulls in the wind, Lathrop could hear cars pass in the square. A horn honked somewhere in the night. Once he thought he heard a girl cry out. Her voice sounded a little like Wilma’s. He tried to rouse himself and couldn’t. Sleep and physical exhaustion had too strong a hold on him.

• • •

Morning dawned cold and grey. Fogged with sleep, Lathrop heard the preliminary click of the alarm and groped through the dark to shut off the ringing mechanism before it awakened Wilma. There was no need for her to get up. He could make a cup of instant coffee and have his breakfast later in the lunchroom across from the Shakespeare Avenue Station. He didn’t relish what he was going to do, what he had to do. The officer in charge would think he was crazy.

The floor was cold to his feet. Snow had drifted in through the partly opened window. Lathrop closed it and looked at Wilma’s bed. Not even the top of Wilma’s head was visible. She was burrowed down under her blankets like some furbearing animal in hibernation.

And a very nice little animal, he thought.

Sex attraction might not be the most important foundation for an enduring marriage, but it was the keystone. All else depended on it. For a time he’d been afraid, even a little fed up, he realized, with Wilma’s sweet reserve. Now all that was behind them.

He found his robe and walked to the kitchen to put the tea-kettle on the stove. While he waited for the water to get hot, he shaved. He felt good. He felt fine. He’d never felt quite so content. If a man was married to the right woman, marriage was a wonderful institution.

The bathroom window was white with frost. He scratched a hole in the frost with his thumbnail and peered out. It had snowed hard during the night. For as far as he could see, the roofs and alleys and yards were white. The first few hours after a fresh fall was one of the few times when a big city Was really pretty.

Tiptoeing around the room so as not to awaken Wilma, Lathrop dressed as quickly as he could, then returned to the kitchen and made a cup of instant coffee. It wasn’t as good as the coffee Wilma made, but it was strong and hot. He drink it sitting at the kitchen table, listening to the new day come alive. On the floor below, plainly audible through the kitchen tile, Mrs. Metz turned on the disc-jockey programme to which she listened every morning. Someone down the block was having trouble starting his car. Lathrop hoped his car would start. He didn’t want to be late for school. He didn’t want any black marks against his record. While it might be a poetic truism that two could live as cheaply as one, it was a mathematical certainty that three couldn’t.

Lathrop considered the possibility as he got his overcoat from the front guest closet. It would be nice if Wilma had a baby. It would be nice to have several children, say one boy and two girls. He slipped into his overcoat, then turned and walked over to the bed. The stillness of the mound of blankets worried him. He lifted the top blanket and his smile faded from his face. Wilma wasn’t in the bed. What he had mistaken for her body was a loosely rolled blanket.

He said, “Wilma,” stupidly, then called her name aloud. The name bounced around the room and down the hall. The apartment suddenly had a strange, empty feel to it. Lathrop walked back slowly through the flat. Wilma wasn’t in the bathroom, the spare room, or the front room. Her black net négligé lay on the sofa, where she’d left it.

In mounting panic Lathrop opened the guest-closet door again. Wilma
had
to be in the flat. Both her new cloth coat with the fur collar and her grey squirrel coat were hanging where they should be.

He made a second tour of the flat, trying the doors this time. The front and back doors were locked. Feeling silly, he looked under the beds and in the closets and behind the television set. Wilma couldn’t be gone, but she was. He was alone in the flat.

SHAKESPEARE, LATHROP
thought, was an odd name for a police precinct station. He parked across from the station and sat in his car for a long time, watching the twin green lights on both sides of the door grow dim in the brightening day.

Such things didn’t happen to people like him. The wives of reputable schoolteachers didn’t disappear between midnight and morning — but Wilma had. He felt in his overcoat pocket, still incredulous. What was more, Wilma had taken the money-filled envelope with her. She had lied to him. She’d known what the two men in the parking lot had been talking about. The candlelight, the pitcher of Martinis, the wine, had been cheap feminine tricks to divert his attention.

“Did I show you what I did to my knees when I fell?”

It was a physical effort for him to open the door of his car and walk across the street. He was ashamed to tell the officer in charge what he had come to say. The more he thought of the affair, the more fantastic it became. Wilma was involved in something up to her pretty thighs, and instead of confiding in him, she had lied.

The police station smelled of wet wool and men and stale tobacco smoke. A heavy-set plain-clothes detective was leaning on the booking counter, checking the arrest sheet. He moved aside to make room for Lathrop.

The desk sergeant looked up incuriously. “Yes, sir? What can I do for you?”

Lathrop felt like a fool. “I want to report a missing wife.”

The sergeant poised a fountain pen over the docket. “Yes, sir. What’s the name?”

“Lathrop. James Lathrop.”

“And your wife’s name?”

“Wilma.”

“Address?”

“Thirty-two-thirty-eight Palmer Square.”

The plain-clothes man checking the arrest sheet grinned. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re the schoolteacher who owns the grey-stone three-flat a few doors from the corner of Kedzie, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” Lathrop admitted.

“I live in the apartment building on the corner,” the detective told him. He pushed his hat back on his forehead. “Now, what’s this about your wife being missing?”

“Just that. When I woke up this morning she was gone.”

“You mean she’s been gone only a few hours?”

“That’s right. She must have left some time between midnight and morning.”

The desk sergeant chuckled. “How long have you been married, fellow?”

“Three months,” Lathrop told him.

“You and the missus have a fight last night?”

“On the contrary. Everything was very harmonious.”

“You just woke up and she was gone?”

“That’s the way it was.”

“Did you call her family?”

A lump formed in Lathrop’s throat and he swallowed with an effort. “I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know if she has a family.”

A white-haired man in his early fifties, the booking sergeant leaned both elbows on his desk. “I see. Well, now, if I were you, Mr. Lathrop, I wouldn’t be too worried. Women do funny things. I know. I’ve been married for thirty years. And the chances are that Mrs. Lathrop has just stepped out for a few minutes. Maybe to get sugar biscuits for breakfast, or a pound of coffee.”

Lathrop resented the older man’s opinion of his intelligence. “At seven o’clock in the morning?” he asked coldly. “In this kind of weather? In her nightdress?”

The white-haired man stopped smiling. “You mean none of her clothes are gone?”

“I didn’t check her dresses,” Lathrop admitted. “But both her cloth coat and her fur coat are still hanging in the closet.”

“Oh-oh,” the sergeant said. “One of those queer ones, eh?” He looked at the detective. “You want to take it, Lieutenant?”

The detective replied, “I’ll be happy to be of service, if I can.” He added, as an afterthought, “The name is Jezierna, Mr. Lathrop. Lieutenant Jezierna. Suppose we step into my office.”

The office was small, cluttered with a battered desk, two chairs, and a filing case. Lathrop sat in the chair that Jezierna indicated.

“Now, let’s start at the beginning,” the Lieutenant said. “You’re a man of above-average intelligence or you wouldn’t be teaching high school. Why are you so worried? What makes you think your wife just hasn’t stepped out for a few minutes?”

Lathrop took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Because of the two men in the parking lot and the envelope they gave me to give to Wilma.”

Jezierna made a note on his pad. “When was this, Mr. Lathrop?”

“Last night.”

“Where?”

“In the Juvenile Court parking lot.”

“What were you doing down there?”

“I was appearing as a witness in a case in which one of my pupils was involved.”

“I see. And what was in this envelope these two men gave you to give to Mrs. Lathrop?”

Lathrop said, “I didn’t count the money, but I’d say there was approximately five thousand dollars in it.”

Lieutenant Jezierna laid his pencil carefully on his memo pad. “You aren’t kidding me, are you, Mr. Lathrop? This isn’t a gag of some kind?”

It was hot in the small office. Lathrop unbuttoned his overcoat and laid his hat on the desk. “I know it sounds fantastic. It is. But it happened.” He lit a cigarette and gave Lieutenant Jezierna a detailed account of his encounter with the two men.

When he finished, Jezierna asked, “You can identify these men?”

“I think so.”

“But you’re not positive?”

“No. It was dark in the lot. I had only one good look at them. All I’m certain of is that they were both big men, well dressed. At first I was under the impression they were detectives.”

“Now, let’s see if I have this straight,” Jezierna said. “Both men knew or claimed to know Mrs. Lathrop. And they told you to give her the envelope they gave you, a brown Manila envelope containing about five thousand dollars in fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills.”

“That’s right,” Lathrop said. “Then they beat hell out of me with a blackjack. Then when they got me down on the ground, they kicked me unconscious.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police last night?”

“I wanted to talk to my wife first.”

“That’s understandable. And what did Mrs. Lathrop have to say?”

“She said it must have been a case of mistaken identity, that she didn’t know any such men. That they must have thought I was some other Lathrop.”

“And you bought that?”

“I had no reason not to.”

“No,” Jezierna admitted, “not from what you’ve told me so far. Now tell me this: Are you sure you didn’t accuse your wife of knowing these two men and you and Mrs. Lathrop quarrelled last night?”

Lathrop could feel his face colouring. “No. Everything was very harmonious. Even more so than usual.” He hesitated briefly. “But looking back, I believe now that Wilma was just trying to keep me from thinking, from continuing the discussion.”

Jezierna was understanding. “Yeah. I think I know what you mean. Women have ways of distracting men. Did you ever hear of this Louie the two men mentioned?”

“No.”

“Does the name Prentiss mean anything to you?”

“No, it does not.”

Jezierna picked up his pencil again. “Hmm. From what you’ve told me, this could be serious, Mr. Lathrop. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. You give me Mrs. Lathrop’s description and I’ll get it out on the air right away, just in case she is in a jam of some kind. Then you go back home and wait and my partner and I will be over in about an hour.”

Lathrop protested, “But I’m supposed to be at school in an hour.”

“Call a substitute,” Jezierna advised him. “Frankly, if you’re levelling with me, I don’t like this business about the two men putting pressure on Mrs. Lathrop by threatening to beat you up. How old is Mrs. Lathrop?”

“Twenty-one.”

Jezierna recorded the information on his pad. “And the colour of her hair?”

“Blonde.”

“Eyes?”

“Grey with a greenish cast.”

“Height?”

“Approximately five feet.”

“Weight?”

“About a hundred pounds.” Lathrop added, “And she’s very pretty.”

Lieutenant Jezierna discounted the information. “All brides of three months are pretty. Unless they get mixed up with the wrong guy. And it looks as if Mrs. Lathrop may have done just that. What was her maiden name?”

“Wilma Stanis.”

Jezierna rolled the name on his tongue. “Stanis, eh? That sounds as if it might be a contraction. You know, from Stanislaw or Stanislaus. Your wife is of Polish extraction?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“Just that. She never talked about her family.”

“You don’t know if they live in Chicago?”

“No.”

“Or if she has a family?”

“No. When I met her she was living alone at the Devonshire Hotel.”

Lieutenant Jezierna returned his pencil to his pocket. “This was how long ago?”

“About five months.”

Jezierna stood up behind his desk. “Excuse me for saying so, Mr. Lathrop, but for all your education, you don’t seem very bright. If you went out to buy a new car, you’d insist on knowing all about it; the horsepower, the mileage, the reputation of the firm that made it. More, you’d insist on an ironclad guarantee for at least the first ten thousand miles. But you go ahead and marry a girl about whom you know absolutely nothing. Where did you meet Mrs. Lathrop?”

“At a studio party.”

“Where?”

“On the near north side.”

“Who introduced you?”

“I don’t remember. But a fellow teacher of mine, Bill Hendry, was giving the party.”

“And his address?”

“I don’t remember the number, but it’s the Eldorado Apartment Hotel on Rush Street.”

“O.K.,” Jezierna said. “I guess that’s all we can do here. Usually, I wouldn’t be concerned about a wife walking out until she’s been gone for two or three days. But this is the first time I’ve ever heard of a bride of three months leaving between midnight and six o’clock in the morning, in nothing but her nightdress, with the thermometer standing at ten above zero. You go on home and I’ll see you in about an hour.”

Lathrop drove back to the apartment. Neither Dr. Klein nor Mr. Metz had left for work yet. The snow on the front steps was unbroken. A triple set of footprints led back into and out of the areaway, made by himself, the milkman, and the janitor.

Lathrop walked back down the areaway. Mrs. Metz, wearing a heavy shawl around her shoulders, was lifting a bottle of milk from the box on the back porch.

“Good morning, Mr. Lathrop.” She smiled. “And how is our landlord this morning?”

“Fine. Just fine,” Lathrop lied. He started up the stairs to the second floor and turned back. “You haven’t seen Mrs. Lathrop, have you, Mrs. Metz?”

“This morning?”’

“Yes.”

Mrs. Metz was puzzled. “So early?” She shook her head.

“No, I haven’t. I haven’t seen Mrs. Lathrop since she came in last evening with her knees all bloody from falling down on the walk. Tell me. Is something wrong?”

“I’m afraid so,” Lathrop admitted, and walked on up the stairs.

Full daylight intensified the empty feeling of the flat. The sink was still filled with dirty pots and pans from the meal of the night before. The dish-littered table on which they’d dined by candlelight was still uncleared. Lathrop walked on into the front room. Wilma’s black net négligé was still on the floor by the sofa. He started to pick it up and thought better of the idea. Lieutenant Jezierna would want to see the flat untouched.

He phoned his school and asked the clerk to get a substitute, then attempted to look up the phone number of the optician who had made his glasses. The name was clear but the figures were blurred. As long as he wasn’t going to school, it didn’t matter. He could go to the shop sometime during the day.

His first feeling of having been put upon was fading. Now he was merely worried. If Wilma had lied to him about not knowing the two men, she’d had a reason. It was the first time since they’d been married that she’d lied to him. Lieutenant Jezierna’s insinuation that she might not be all she should be was so much hogwash. If a man didn’t know his own wife, who did? Still, last night Wilma had seemed different.

Lathrop checked the bedroom closet to find out if any of her dresses were missing. All of the dresses he remembered were hanging in the closet. So were her sweaters and her white wool sports coat. She couldn’t have left the flat wearing nothing but a sheer nightdress, but it seemed she had.

He returned to the living-room and sat in one of the over-stuffed chairs, trying not to look at the sofa. Things like this didn’t happen to men in his position. Such things happened only to strangers one read about in the newspapers. However, in one respect Lieutenant Jezierna was right. Most men did know something of their wives’ backgrounds and where they came from. All he knew about Wilma was that she was young and lovely.

It was almost nine o’clock when Lieutenant Jezierna drove up in front of the building. He rang the bell in the vestibule and climbed the front stairs, accompanied by another man.

“My partner, Sergeant Meyers,” Jezierna introduced the stocky younger man.

Sergeant Meyers shook hands with Lathrop. “I hear you’re having some trouble. Mind if we look around?”

“Of course not,” Lathrop said.

The two men prowled the flat, seeing everything, missing nothing. Lieutenant Jezierna remarked on the filled sink and uncleared dining-room table. “The missus didn’t get around to doing the dishes last night, eh?”

“No,” Lathrop replied, “she didn’t.”

“Does she usually wash her supper dishes in the morning?”

“No,” Lathrop said. “Last night was the first time I’ve ever known her to let the dishes go. We usually do them together. She washes and I wipe.”

“That could mean something,” Meyers said. “Think back, Mr. Lathrop. Would you say Mrs. Lathrop acted differently than usual last night?”

“Yes,” Lathrop said, “I would.”

“In what way?”

“Well, for one thing, she’d been drinking. And she had a pitcher of Martinis waiting. Then she insisted that I open a bottle of wine with our meal.”

“She drinks to excess?”

“No. Last night was the first time I’ve ever known her to take more than two drinks.”