One for the Road by Fredric Brown

Author:Fredric Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

At police headquarters I found McNulty alone, sitting at his desk and doing nothing, unless he was thinking.

I said, “Hi, Mac. Anything new on Amy?”

“Not much. Right now I’m waiting for a couple of long distance calls and then maybe I’ll have something.”

“One of them from Kansas City?”

“No, I got that one. Know a little more about her now, but nothing that seems to fit in or be helpful. One of the calls I’m waiting for is from Douglas, about the autopsy. Other’s from Seattle. We got the name and address of her ex-husband there. I called the police there; they’ll check up on him and call me back.”

“You got his name and address from Kansas City?”

“Nope. Got it right here, even before the K.C. call came. Head teller at the bank remembers Amy all right. She didn’t open an account there but once a week she cashed a fifty dollar check. Cashed the last one day before yesterday, afternoon of the night she was killed, and they hadn’t sent it through for clearance yet so I copied the dope off it. It was signed— Just a minute.” He shuffled through some papers and found a notation. “Signed by Gerald H. Piggott, Attorney, one-fourteen Reese Building, Seattle. And marked ‘Alimony, account J. S. Waggoner.’ The Seattle boys are on it. If J. S. Waggoner isn’t in the phone book, they’ll find him through the attorney.”

“You think he’s a suspect?”

McNulty shrugged. “If I had to pay a woman fifty a week for life, I’d be tempted to do something about it. Course maybe he’s a rich bastard and that much don’t mean anything to him.” He stuck a cigarette into his mouth and lighted it.

“You said you did get a call from K.C. Get anything at all?”

“Same as we got last night but with a little more detail that doesn’t help. Lived two years at the rooming house address on the driver’s license. They found two places she’d lived before that, about a year at each, one a hotel and the other another rooming house. Apparently her divorce was before then. They haven’t found anybody who knew her husband.”

“Run out on any bills when she left?”

“Not that they’ve found. And she turned in a forwarding address at the P.O. besides giving it to her landlady. General Delivery, Mayville.”

“That may be the key, Mac.” I said. “If we can find out why she came here, why she picked this as a destination before she started, then—”

The phone rang and I broke off. What I’d been going to say was obvious anyway.

McNulty picked up the phone and spoke into it, then put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “It’s Seattle calling. If you want to listen in on the extension it’ll save me giving you a blow-by-blow afterwards.”

I went to the extra desk in the corner and picked up the extension phone. I got it to my ear just in time to hear “Here’s your call, Mr. McNulty,” and then a man’s voice, deep and resonant: “Mr.

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