Where Is Bianca? (9 page)

“But you came here to talk to Peggy,” Travers Proehl said. He was quite listless now. “Do you want anything more of me, Captain?”

“We'll see,” Corrigan said, watching him closely. “For now, no. But stay on tap.”

The gross man laughed. “Where would I go?” he asked, as if the world ended at the bounderies of Manhattan Island. He shuffled to the door, opened it, and let himself out like a ghost.

Peggy Simpson reached out as if she felt a need to cling to Corrigan's hand. He pretended not to see it.

“Miss Simpson—” he began.

“Call me Peggy,” she said. There were still tears in her eyes. “He frightened me so. I don't know what's happened to everyone. People used to be fun.…”

“If you don't mind,” Corrigan said, “I have things to do, Miss Simpson. I'd like to borrow a few items that belong to Noreen, things only she handled.”

“Whatever for?”

“Fingerprints.”

The girl raised a limp hand. “Noreen's bedroom is there, the one with the bath. I slept in the little room off the kitchen. Help yourself. I don't think I'll ever have the strength to get out of this chair again.”

When Corrigan got to his office, he found Chuck Baer waiting for him.

“I'm checking the passport people and circulating pictures of Bianca Lessard among agents for overseas airlines,” Baer said. “Just in case she did decide quietly to take herself back to Europe.”

“Good. Fingerprinting should have something shortly.”

Corrigan went to his desk. Reports from the lab and the Medical Examiner's office were lying on the green blotter.

He scanned the reports, jerked his head up. “Jane Doe's lung tissue yielded water showing a trace of soap.”

“Soap?” Baer said.

“A French-milled type, the lab says. Expensive. That narrows it down, Chuck. The girl in the morgue was drowned in a bathtub in a house or apartment where you'd expect to find such luxuries as expensive French soap.”

“Upper East Side?”

“It would fill the bill.” Corrigan nodded slowly. “Then her body was carried out to a manhole and she was dumped underground.”

His phone rang. He did more listening than talking. When he hung up, he said to Baer, “Fingerprinting. The dead girl in the morgue is Noreen Gardner. The prints check against some things I took from her bedroom.”

Baer grunted. “So I've still got a client, and I'm still stuck with the original question: Where is Bianca?”

“This case is like a cancer cell,” Corrigan complained, “that keeps subdividing.
I'm
stuck with the question: Who killed Noreen Gardner?”

“I've only got the brains for one question at a time,” Baer said. “If a travel agent doesn't come through for me, I'll put some mileage on the swindle sheet and take a run up to Adirondacks Hall. It was the one place Bianca'd found peace and quiet. After her blow-up with her crumb of a husband, maybe she wanted to go back there for a while. And asked them not to get in touch with Lessard or tell him where she was if he inquired.”

“Keep me posted, Chuck.” Corrigan glanced at his wrist watch. “Jean Ainsley probably works late. I might still catch her at Fielding Realty.”

As he reached for his phone, Baer chuckled, “While you have dinner with the chick, think of this poor old private peeper gumshoeing the heels off his brogans.”

“Strictly in the line of duty,” Corrigan said with a straight face.

9

With the Chateaubriand pleasantly in his gut, Corrigan thumbed his lighter and held it to Jean Ainsley's cigarette.

Her hazel eyes examined him over the flame. She's lovely, he thought, and had to bring himself to remember what he was there for. But it was difficult. My God, he thought, have I finally fallen for a doll? It was not only unprecedented, it was unprofessional. She was an item in a case. A police officer on duty could hardly afford to lose himself in a pair of hazel eyes. But he had picked a bad place to keep his mind off his gonads. It was a hideaway restaurant with soft lights and self-effacing waiters and an excellent pianist in the background who was playing Mozart.

Jean smiled at him as she drew back from the lighter.

“Well, Captain?”

“Oh, the hell with it,” he said. “I'll have to admit something to you. You're far and away the unlikeliest lady executive I ever met. Certainly not what I pictured when I first heard about you.”

“Really?” Jean murmured. “Then I'll admit something to
you
. I have to keep reminding myself that you're a policeman. But I must, mustn't I?”

“We both must.”

“That sounds interesting,” she said. “Why do people always think of policemen in terms of big feet and brutality?”

“Because we're in the middle. If we don't do a job we're corrupt. If we do do it, we're brutal. We're damned either way.”

“Now you're feeling sorry for yourself,” she laughed.

“You'd better know it now,” Corrigan said, twirling his brandy by the stem. “My motives in asking you to dinner weren't entirely official.”

“You sound as if you really mean that.”

“I mean it.”

She looked at him steadily over her cigarette. He looked back. It was she who turned away, flushing. “Hadn't we better keep this official until the Bianca thing is settled?”

He kept looking at her. She's in trouble, he thought. Or troubled. He caught a flash of Carlton Ainsley and wondered what having a father like that must mean to a girl like this. Ainsley was enough to trouble any daughter. Or did it go deeper? Was it tied up with this Bianca Lessard business? But here his mood balked.

He said, “Bianca might well turn up safe, you know.”

She glanced back at him quickly. “But the girl in that morgue.…”

“I'd get a coarse dressing down if my superiors heard about this,” Corrigan said, “but I'm going to tell you anyway. Don't ask me why, but I trust you.”

“If you think you shouldn't.…”

“In my racket you play hunches.” And pray, he thought.

“All right, Tim,” she said.

Tim.

“We've identified the body. I don't want the papers getting it just yet A lot of questions remain unanswered. It's like war. What the enemy doesn't know we know can hurt him.”

“So the girl isn't Bianca,” Jean said, drawing a breath. “Thank God for that. Who is she, Tim? Can you tell me?”

“In confidence, Noreen Gardner. An actress.”

Jean looked a little sick.

Corrigan said quickly, “What's wrong?”

“Nothing. It's just that I thought some pretty drastic thoughts about that girl. Now, hearing she's dead, I suppose I feel guilty.”

“I had a brother whose wife died,” Corrigan said. “She was a bitch. It was a long time ago. But I still remember. My mother bawled me out for not ‘grieving' at the funeral. I said to her, ‘Ma, I didn't like her when she was alive, and I can't see why her death ought to make me like her any better.” I got smacked in the face for it; I had a tough mama. I still feel that way. What were the thoughts?”

“Noreen always seemed to me to be greedy and sly,” Jean said. “I hope you won't think me a snob if I characterize her as an alley brat. A pure slum product that never straightened out. Is that awful of me?”

“Along with the sweet-smelling roses,” Corrigan said, “a lot of garbage comes out of the slums. I'll accept the characterization; it only confirms what I've heard from other sources. Anyway, I thought it would help if you knew that Vincent Lessard had made a mistake about what was lying on that slab.”

Her hand closed over his. For the briefest moment. When she pulled back, he could still feel the tingle of its warmth. “Thank you, Tim. And for taking me into your confidence.”

“How well did you know Noreen Gardner?”

“Not well, really. She was part of the Travers Proehl gang. She tagged along a couple of times when Travers and Frances Weatherly came over to talk to me about a theater for the new Weatherly play.”

“Did Noreen try to get chummy with you?”

“I never gave her the chance. She knew my father had been a well-known actor, and she would pump me about life in Hollywood. I finally told Travers and Fran Weatherly not to bring her along any more.” She looked at him with a touch of defiance. “I'm trying not to be catty, Tim. But I've seen so many Noreens. The Coast is lousy with them. So is New York, for that matter. They hop from bed to bed with no more compunction than prostitutes, and they'll slice up anyone who stands in their way. I can't stand the. breed.”

Of course you can't, Corrigan thought with an inward grin. You're a female who has to do it the hard way. He changed the subject abruptly. “This new Weatherly play. Is it any good?”

“It isn't bad,” said Jean. “But it's not good enough to buck the competition of Broadway.” She shrugged. “It's one woman's opinion, of course, and I can be wrong. But I'm responsible for the Fielding properties, and I have to follow my judgment.”

“Weatherly and Proehl seem to think they can win you over, from the way they're chasing you.”

“If they had the money,” Jean said dryly, “they wouldn't give me the time of day. They keep trying because they have Vincent Lessard on their side.”

“Has Lessard put any pressure on you?”

“He's practically squashed me to death. Vincent is very anxious to get a favorable opinion from me to show Bianca. That would encourage him, with his power of attorney, to dip into Fielding money for additional financing of the play, as well as a theater.”

“This thing between Fran Weatherly and Lessard,” Corrigan said. “Could it be the Weatherly woman's way of getting Lessard over on her side? Is she that unscrupulous?”

“I can't answer that, but I don't think she's playing the bedroom game with him solely because of her precious play. I think Fran and Vincent would have gravitated together under any circumstances. Fran has a brilliance that Vincent lacks. But the two are made from the same material.”

The shadow of the maître d' fell across the table. “Telephone call for you, Miss Ainsley.”

Jean excused herself. She was gone for five minutes. When she came back, she looked bleak.

“Bad news?” Corrigan asked.

“My father, calling from Fran's apartment. Simply wonderful cocktail party, he said. Why didn't I join him?”

“Thoughtful of him.”

She shook her head. “Not my daddy, Tim. He went on a three-day tear recently. He's just showing me that he's being a good boy, keeping me posted on his comings and goings.”

“How did he know where you were?”

“These days,” she said grimly, “I leave him a schedule of my whereabouts. It's easier most times for him to find me.”

“Why don't we take him up on it?” Corrigan suggested. “It might be instructive.”

Jean recovered her humor. “That's the policeman talking. The human computer who'd like to gather data about Fran Weatherly, Carlton Ainsley and company in their natural habitat.”

“Not altogether,” Corrigan said. “You're stuck with me for the evening, anyway. I won't let go of you.”

“All right,” she laughed. “I can't fight the P.D. While you're taking care of the check, I'll make repairs on the face.”

The party lacked the verve that had once made Village get-togethers events either to be remembered or forgotten as quickly as possible. Nowadays, Corrigan mused, too many people regarded boredom as a status symbol.

Frances Weatherly's apartment was in one of those old Village buildings that had escaped real estate developers, urban renewers, and highway department planners. Half a century ago the apartment might have housed the descendant of some princeling of American history. The living room ceiling was vaulted, and tall French doors at the end of the long room had probably opened out on a romantic balcony.

Tonight, the underfurnished room was a raffish background for twenty-five or thirty people whiling away the evening. They sat, stood, milled about; small groups discussed the theater, op art, atonal music. A hi-fi set voiced some low-volume caterwauling to which a few couples jerked and twisted in the curious noncontactual dancing that would have so interested Sigmund Freud.

A lanky young man with lank hair admitted Jean and Corrigan and promptly turned his back on them. But the new arrivals were not ignored for long. Corrigan had barely begun scanning the scene when Frances Weatherly came bounding toward them.

She seized Jean's hand. “Carlton told me you'd mentioned the restaurant where you were having dinner, and I insisted he tell you to join us. So glad you could make it.”

While she was talking to Jean she was giving Corrigan the out-of-the-corner-of-the-eye once-over. She remembered him, all right. As Travers Proehl had remembered him, from that chance meeting in Jean's outer office. He wondered if Ainsley had also mentioned to the Weatherly woman that his daughter was having dinner with a cop.
The
cop, the one mucking about the whereabouts of Bianca Lessard.

“This is Captain Tim Corrigan,” Jean said.

“I hope you don't mind a gate-crasher,” Corrigan smiled.

“We get all kinds, Captain,” Fran Weatherly said coolly. “Crash right in.” She had trained her naturally nasal voice to a throaty huskiness, to go with the illusion of her body. She was sexy, all right, Corrigan thought, with a lean sensuality that must have been irresistible to Vincent Lessard. Certainly his marriage to Bianca, which more and more Corrigan was convinced had been only for Bianca's money, would be no impediment.

The Weatherly woman did something Corrigan disliked and Jean, from her struggling expression, loathed: she continued to hold on to Jean's hand as she linked her free arm in Corrigan's. She hustled her latest guests toward the long table with the stained cloth where Travers Proehl was imitating a bartender. Proehl was turned away and had not noticed them.