Once a Widow (12 page)

“I’ll see you later,” Shannon said. He walked swiftly to the administrator’s office and entered without knocking.

The pretty little nurse-to-be, Susan Archer, was sitting on the edge of the leather chair. Charles Grange was at his desk looking bored, his fat white fingers making a tent. Beckwith was leaning against the desk facing the girl. All three looked at Shannon, who said to the police chief, “Come outside a moment, Chad.”

Beckwith looked puzzled, but nodded and said to the girl, “Excuse me a second, Susan. There’s just a couple more questions, and then you can go.” He moved out to the corridor, ignoring Grange’s curious stare.

When the door was closed, Shannon said in a low voice, “Chad, you knew about that woman they found on Snake Island?”

Beckwith nodded. “Yep, I heard about her. Do you know who she is yet?”

“No, but she’s skipped—sometime last night, without any clothes—just a bathing suit, a night gown and a blanket.”

“Hmm,” the chief said. “She should be easy to pick up—if you want her picked up. Should I phone the station?”

“Maybe you’d better. She shouldn’t be running around loose. Last night when I talked to her she didn’t seem to remember anything.”

“Funny business,” Beckwith said thoughtfully. “Lew Sprang gets murdered, and now this. I—” He stopped abruptly and stared at the doctor. “Clint, that woman is not running around loose. I’ve got a hunch that somebody picked her up in a car.”

“Why do you say that?”

Beckwith nodded at the closed door to Grange’s office. “That little girl in there mentioned while I was questioning her that around eleven o’clock last night the woman stopped her in the corridor and borrowed a quarter to make a phone call. The girl said she had a blanket draped around her and used the booth at the end of the north wing. She didn’t think anything about it and only told me when I asked her if she’d noticed anything unusual while she was on duty last night.”

“Amnesia,” Shannon said with faint bitterness. “I had a suspicion that she was putting on an act, but you can never tell. She remembered a phone number, all right. And if she needed a quarter, it was a long distance call. A local call only costs a dime.”

“And the person she called probably picked her up in a car and took her God knows where.” Beckwith sighed. “To hell with her. This isn’t helping me to nab the bastard who did it to poor Lew.”

“No, I guess not,” Shannon said.

“I’ll call the station and alert the boys,” Beckwith said, “but you can be damned sure she isn’t walking around town in a blanket. You’d better get started on that autopsy.”

“Yes.” Shannon moved away and Beckwith returned to Grange’s office.

When the doctor was in his car he sat for a moment with his hands on the wheel and thought of the body waiting for him in Lee Hoyt’s embalming room, naked under a sheet, waiting for his scalpel. Shannon shivered a little, hating what he had to do, but knowing that it must be done. For the first time he was sorry that he was the county coroner. Grimly he started the motor and drove away.

Lee Hoyt was waiting for him and as Shannon went down the steps to the basement embalming room the undertaker said anxiously, “Don’t mark him if you can help it, Clint—his face and head, I mean. Lew was a big man in this town and I want him to look nice. My professional reputation, you know.
Must
you open his skull? Lew’s hair is a kind of odd shade of light brown mixed with gray, and he wore it pretty long, and I don’t have a matching—”

“Shut up,” Shannon said viciously.

When it was over, Shannon gently covered the thin body with a sheet and murmured under his breath, “Sorry, old friend,” and began to strip off his rubber gloves.

Lee Hoyt, who had been fussing around at the far end of the room with bottles, rubber tubes and jars of cosmetics, called eagerly, “All finished, Clint?”

“Yes.”

“Can I have him now? People will be expecting him to be laid out by this evening. I’ve already had six baskets of flowers.”

“He’s all yours,” Shannon said, thinking sadly that Lewis Sprang really belonged to no one now, not his body, or what was left of it. His kindly spirit was another matter. Shannon went up the stairs, feeling a tightness in his throat. Even without the lab reports he knew that the old lawyer had died before midnight the evening before, or not long after, at the latest, from a fractured skull and massive brain hemorrhage. He had probably not even stirred. The killer had been mercifully swift and accurate.

Lee Hoyt called happily, “It’ll be a big funeral, Clint. I’m gonna have hymns at the cemetery when they lower him in.”

Shannon stopped and turned, his hand on the railing. “There will be no burial,” he said evenly. “It was Lew’s wish that he be cremated.”

“What?” Hoyt started as if he’d been shot.

“That’s right. He told me yesterday.”

“But this is not a crematory,” Hoyt wailed. “I don’t have the facilities!”

“Arrange them.”

“But—but the nearest furnace is in Toledo, and I’ll have to have authorization from the next of kin, and—”

“That’s your job.” Shannon continued up the stairs, carrying his bag. He called Chad Beckwith, gave him a brief report of his findings, and then went out to his car and drove to his office.

As he entered by a rear door his nurse, Lucille Sanchez, trim in her white uniform, looked up from a steaming sterilizing tray and smiled at him. “Good morning, Doctor. You’re late.” In spite of Shannon’s protests, she insisted upon addressing him formally as “Doctor,” because she had been trained that way. Lucille Sanchez went by the book. She was a good nurse, devoted to her work, and to her a doctor was a person to be respected, M.D., that is. She was pretty in a dark Latin way, slim and small-boned, but as far as Shannon knew she had no gentlemen friends. Sometimes he worried about her love life.

“Things came up at the hospital,” he said, deciding not to tell her of the morning’s events, at least for the present. “Any calls?”

“Three,” she said. “They’re on your desk. And a man is waiting to see you. I told him that you did not have office hours until the afternoon, but he said it was important and that he’d wait.” Lucille Sanchez spoke with a faint accent.

“Who is he?”

The nurse lifted a hypo needle from the boiling water with steel tongs and laid it on a sterile towel. “I do not know—a young man.”

“Thanks, Lucille.” Shannon passed through his office and opened the door to his waiting room.

A young man sitting there, a stranger to Shannon, laid aside a magazine and stood up. He said pleasantly, “Dr. Shannon?”

“Yes,” Shannon said, noting that his visitor was tall, wide-shouldered, tanned, with clear blue eyes and a firm cleft chin. His black hair curled a little over his ears and his heavy black brows almost joined over the bridge of his nose. He wore light gray slacks, a gray tweed jacket and a dark blue shirt open at the neck.

“My name is Richard Barry,” he said. “I understand you treated my wife.”

“Your wife?” Shannon’s eyes were puzzled. “I have no patients named Barry.”

“You did yesterday, at the hospital. I’m sure you remember.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t.”

“The woman,” the man said softly, “the one they found out on that island in the lake.”

“Oh,” Shannon said.

The man waited, watching Shannon with a careful, expectant expression, as if he expected the doctor to say more. When Shannon did not speak, the man said, “My wife has been missing since Saturday afternoon. She went out alone in our cabin cruiser and did not return. I reported it to the coast guard, and they notified the Island County sheriff—we’re staying at our place at Erie Cliffs. Last night they told me that the boat had been found cracked up on the beach near Catawba—but my wife wasn’t aboard. Then I read in this morning’s paper that a woman had been found on an island in the lake and taken to Memorial Hospital, Her description answered my wife’s and I immediately phoned the hospital. They told me that you had treated her, but that she had left during the night. I—I don’t understand it, Doctor.”

“Neither do I,” Shannon said. “She went out a window, and unless someone brought her some clothes she was wearing only a night gown and a blanket—and maybe a bathing suit.”

“Out a window? Then you didn’t discharge her?”

“No, but I think she was sufficiently recovered.”

“Was—she hurt?”

Shannon shook his head. “Just a few scratches. She was suffering from fatigue, shock and exposure.” He gazed at the man curiously. “Are you sure she is your wife?”

“The description fitted her exactly.”

“But she was an older woman, in her forties, I would guess.”

“Karen is forty-three. I’m much younger, but—”

“When did you say you last saw her?”

“Saturday afternoon. I really shouldn’t have let her go out in the boat alone. She hasn’t been—well.”

“She seemed healthy,” Shannon said, “physically, anyhow. Do you mean she’s mentally ill?”

The man nodded. “Yes, Doctor. Not bad, though, and she has been greatly improved these last few months. Up until the time we came here for the summer she had been receiving psychiatric treatment in Cleveland. She has, well, spells, if you know what I mean.”

“What kind of spells?”

The man moved his hands. “She imagines things, Doctor, has—what do you call it?—hallucinations?”

“I see. And she hasn’t returned home?”

“No. I just came from Erie Cliffs. And she’s not at our place in Cleveland—I phoned there.”

“I’m sorry,” Shannon said, “but what do you want of me?”

“I’d hoped you could help me. You talked to her, didn’t you?” Shannon’s visitor gazed at him intently. “What did she say?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Didn’t she tell you what happened to her? I mean, how she came to be on the island?”

“No. Apparently she was unable to even tell me her name. It may have been amnesia, brought on by shock.”

“But she must have told you something!”

Shannon shook his head. “Not a thing. I’m sorry.” He gazed at the man curiously. “Why are you so concerned about what she might have told me?”

The man’s eyes shifted for a second, away from Shannon’s steady stare. “I—I hoped that she had told you something about where she was going, what she intended to do. What time did she leave the hospital?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Sometime during the night. I suspect that someone picked her up in a car, because she made a phone call from the hospital before she left.”

“Phone call?” the man blurted.

“It must have been an out of town call. She borrowed twenty-five cents from one of the nurses.”

The man said in a low intense voice, “I think she told you something—maybe something about me. But she imagines things.”

“You said that before,” Shannon said evenly. “She didn’t tell me anything, imaginary or otherwise.”

“Doctor, if you’re lying…”

“I’m not,” Shannon snapped. “The police have your wife’s description, but I suggest that you talk to them yourself.” He turned toward his office door.

“Wait,” his visitor said.

Shannon paused.

“I’m sorry. I want to pay you for your services, and the hospital, too. And the nurse who gave her the quarter. How much?”

“Twenty dollars will cover it. I’ll see that the nurse is repaid.”

The man took a wallet from an inside pocket of his tweed jacket and handed Shannon two bills, a twenty and a five. “The extra five is for you.”

“Twenty is enough.” Shannon took one bill. “I hope you find her soon.” From the inner office the phone began to ring.

“Thanks.” The man sighed. “I’m afraid she’ll have to be committed to a—a mental institution.”

“I’m sorry,” Shannon said. From behind him he heard Lucille Sanchez answer the phone. In a moment she called to him, “Telephone, Doctor. It’s Chief of Police Beckwith.”

“Goodbye,” the man said. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“No bother. I hope you find your wife.”

The man smiled, nodded, and went out. Shannon turned and entered his office. As he picked up the phone from his desk he glanced out of the window facing the street and saw his visitor get into a yellow Chevrolet Corvette and drive away. “Yes, Chad,” he said into the phone.

“Clint, we’ve got Lew Sprang’s murderer.”

“What?”

“That’s right.” Beckwith sounded smug. “He hasn’t confessed, but he will. It was George Yundt. You know—works in the State Bank?”

Shannon frowned. “I know who you mean—he was with Lew yesterday, on Mort Watson’s boat. But why would he—?”

“Plenty of motive,” Beckwith broke in. “George was stealing money from the bank, from customers’ savings accounts by forging withdrawals, and he had three thousand dollars of Lew’s money. Yesterday Lew told George that he was going to close out his account, all of it—George has admitted that. So the boy got panicky, sneaked into the hospital last night and killed Lew, to keep from being found out. Then this morning he tried to put the money back—just Lew’s money, see?—because he knew the shortage would show up when they settled Lew’s estate. He was in the clear, he thought, but Henry Swann caught him at it.”

“Henry Swann?”

“Assistant cashier at the bank where George works.”

“But if Yundt killed Lew last night, he’d certainly be smart enough to know that a savings deposit signed by Lew would be questioned. How could a dead man put money in a bank?”

“He was scared and didn’t think straight. He knew he had to put the money back right away, before they checked Lew’s account. He wasn’t worrying about dates. And he would have gotten away with it if Henry Swann just hadn’t happened to snoop. I’ve got George locked up on a charge of murder. No bail. In his room at the Y we found over four thousand dollars he took from other accounts. He’s confessed to that, but not the murder. But he’ll crack.”

“It’s circumstantial,” Shannon said.

“I know, I know,” Beckwith said irritably. “You sound as if you don’t want Lew’s killer caught.”

“You know better, Chad. Listen, there may be a man to see you—name of Richard Barry. He just left here. Claims he’s the husband of that woman found on Snake Island. He’s pretty upset, and from what he said she may be a mental case. Anyhow, I told him he’d better see you.”