06 - Case Pending by Elizabeth Linington

In the grimy underbelly of the city, a girls lifeless body is discovered in a desolate lot, horrifyingly beaten and with an eye brutally gouged out. Across town, another young woman is found dead under similar circumstances. Lieutenant Mendoza is convinced theres a chilling connection. As he delves into this twisting mystery in this first riveting installment of the Lt. Mendoza series, he navigates a colorful landscape of intriguing characters, veiled secrets, and stark realism that resonates with the modern reader. (Summary by Ben Tucker)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter six of case Pending by Del Shannon. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. Chapter six, Mendoza realized
they'd have to let the Danny go. It might not
be impossible to find the Danny Alena Ramirez had known
if it would be difficult, but more to the point,
there was no way of identifying the right Danny. What

(00:23):
was interesting about this matter was that, by implication narrowed
de local, he had formed some very nebulous ideas, mere
ghosts of hypotheses over night out of the evidence. A
second murder inevitably added to the evidence from a first one,
And he thought that a restricted local was natural if
you looked at it a certain way. At least it
was a fifty to fifty chance, depending on just what

(00:44):
kind of lunatic they were hunting. If he was the
kind disregarding the psychiatrist's hair splitting solemn terms, whose impulse
to kill was triggered suddenly and at random, the odds
were that his victim would be someone in the area
where he lived or worked, and considering hour, probably the former.
If he was the kind capable of planning ahead, then

(01:05):
the place of the crime meant nothing or very little,
for he might have cunning enough to choose a place
unconnected with him. But to balance that, there was the
fact that madmen capable of sustained cunning generally chose victims
by some private logic. They were the ones appointed by
God to rid the world of prostitutes or Russian spies
or masquerading martians like that, and to do so they

(01:26):
had to be aware of the victims as individuals. So
there was a chance that this one, whatever kind he was,
lived somewhere fairly near the place he had killed, and
that might be of enormous help, for it suggested that
he had lived or worked somewhere near the place Carrol
Brooks had been killed last September. If he was the
man who had killed her, and Mendoza thought he was,

(01:47):
Sunday was only another day to Mendoza. He lay in
bed a while thinking about all this, and also about
Alison Weir, until the sleep brown Abyssinian personage, who condescended
to share the apartment with him, the green eyed bath
leaped onto his stomach and began to knead the blanket,
fixing him with an accusing stare. He apologized to her
for inattention. He got up and laid before her the

(02:09):
morning tribute of fresh liver. He made coffee. Eight o'clock
found him shaven and spruce, pouring over a small scale
map of the city in his office. When Hackett came
in at nine o'clock, he listened in silence to Allison
Weir's contribution of the muchacho extrano, who stared and grunted
over the neat penciled circles on the map. In the
center of one was the twenty two hundred block of

(02:31):
Tappin Street, and in the center of the other the
junction of Commerce and Humboldt, each covered approximately a mile
in diameter to the map scale. Call it a hundred
and fifty square blocks. Now, isn't that pretty? Said Hackett?
And where would you get the army to check out
all that territory? And for what the idea that I
go along with? And if your prettiest circles happened to

(02:52):
have prettier centers, say like Los Falies and Western, I'd
say we might come up with something, just on a
check to see who had moved where recently. But you
know what you've got here? He stabbed a blunt forefinger
at the first circle. About half of this area is
colored and none of it white or black. Is very fancy,
which also goes with bells on for the other area

(03:12):
out on the strip or Long Wiltshire. A lot of
places you've got people in settled lives, and they leave
records behind, city directory, phone book, gas company rent receipts,
forwarding addresses here. He shrugged. You needn't tell me, said Mendoza, ruefully.
This is just a little exercise and academic theory. In
these networks of streets, some of the most thickly populated

(03:33):
in the city drifted the anonymous ones, people who wandered
from one casual job to another, who, for various reasons
not always venal, were sometimes known by different names to
different people, and who owned no property. Landlords were not
always concerned with keeping records, and most rent was paid
in cash. There were, also, of course, settled householders responsible

(03:55):
people for economic reasons or racial reasons are both. They
lived cheeked by jowl, crowded, thick. They came and went,
and because they were of little concern to anyone as individuals,
their comings and goings went largely unnoticed. If we had
a name, but we'd get nothing for half a year's hunt,
not knowing what to look for. GESSI la de haase.

(04:16):
It can't be helped. But if the general theory's right,
there's a link somewhere. I'll go along with you, said Hackett.
But I'll tell you I think we'll get it as
corroborative evidence. After we've caught up with him by another route.
Somebody will see a newspaper cut and come in to
tell us that our John Smith is also Henry Brown,
who used to live on Tappan Street. We can't get
at it from this end. There's damn all to go on.

(04:38):
I agree with you, though, there's such a thing as luck. However,
Mendoza shoved the map aside. What did you get out
of the waits? Something to please you? Circumstantially, the Wades
were counted out. Irlck and his two attendants at the
rink had seen father and son leave and agreed on
the time as around ten to ten. The girl had

(04:58):
been a good ten or twelve minutes after of them.
By the narrowest reckoning, it was a twenty minute drive
to the Wades home, probably nearer thirty, and the neighbor
had happened to be present in the house on their
arrival an outside witness who was positive of the time
as ten twenty five, There hadn't been time, even if
you granted they'd done it together, which was absurd. The
wades Potter and mater Familias might be snobs, with the

(05:21):
usual faults and confused values of snobs, though much of
their social objection to the Ramirez girl was understandable. Mendoza,
supposing he were ever sufficiently rash or unwary to acquire
a wife and family, would probably feel much the same himself.
But it could not be seriously conjectured that a respectable
middle aged bookkeeper had done murder, and such a murder
to avoid acquiring a daughter in law addicted to double

(05:43):
negatives and peroxide. And if he had, it would hardly
be in collusion with the boy. The boy said, Hackett
hasn't got the blood in him to kill a mouse
in a trap. Anyway, all you got to do is
look at him. I'll take your word for it, said
Mendoza absently. He wasn't interested in them, never had been much.
The wads were irrelevant, but he was just as pleased

(06:04):
that by chance there was evidence to show that, and
the waves ought to be very damned thankful for it too.
They probably never realized it, but without that evidence, the
boy could have found himself in bad trouble. From Mendoza's viewpoint,
that would have been regrettable, chiefly because it would have
diverted the investigation into a blind alley. They had wasted
enough official time as it was. He looked again at

(06:24):
his map and sighed, the lunatic of this or that
sort was his own postulation, and he could be wrong.
That had sometimes happened. Ideally, an investigator should be above
personal bias, which admitted or unconscious inevitably slanted the interpretation
of evidence. And yet evidence almost always had to be
interpreted full circle back to personal opinion. There was always

(06:46):
the human element, and also what doctor Rhine might call
the X factor, which Mendoza, essentially a fatalist as well
as a gambler, thought of as a kind of cosmic
card stacking. Much of the time, plotting, routine and teamwork
led you somewhere eventually, but it was surprising how often
the sudden hunch, the inspired guests, the random coincidence took
you round by a shorter way, and sometimes the extra

(07:09):
aces in the deck fell to the opponent's hand, and
there was nothing you could do about that. The law
of averages had nothing to do with it. I dropped
in to see if the autopsy reports come through. Ah, well,
suppose we couldn't expect it over Sunday. Nothing much in
it anyway. Back to the treadmill, Hackett caught up. I've
still got some of the kids to see the ones
at the rink that night. The rink, said Mendoza, still

(07:32):
staring at his map. Yes, we'll probably get the autopsy
report by the night. The inquest's been set for Tuesday. Yes, bah,
go to its possible. Yes, get on with the routine
as becomes your rink. Me. I'm taking the day off
from everything else to shuffle through this deck again. Poor
de syro Assi. Maybe there's a Markuart to spot. He

(07:54):
brooded over the map another minute. When Hackett had gone
and penciled in a line connecting the two circles, he
shrugged and said to himself, maybe maybe folded the map away,
got his hat and coat and went out downstairs. As
he paused to adjust the gray Homeburg, a couple of
reporters cornered him. They asked a few desultory questions about

(08:15):
the Ramirez girl, but their real interest was in Sergeant
Galliano's husband killer, who was of a socially prominent clan.
The more sensational of the evening papers had put Elena
Ramirez on the front page, but it wasn't a good
carry over story. They couldn't make much out of a
heartner's stock room girl, and the boyfriend wasn't very colorful either.
The conservative papers had played it down an ordinary back

(08:37):
street mugging, and by tomorrow the others would relegate it
to the middle pages. They had the socialite and the
freight yard corpse, besides a couple of visiting dignitaries and
the Russians, and a two bit mugging in the Commerce
Street area that just happened to turn into a murder.
Was nothing very new or remarkable. Maneuvering the Ferrari out
into main street. Mendoza thought that was a point of view,

(08:59):
all right. Almost any way you'll look at it. It
was an unimportant, uninteresting kill, no glamour, no complexity, nothing
to attract either the sensationalness or the detective fiction fans.
In fact, the kind of murder that happened most frequently.
The press had made no connection between Elena Ramirez and
Carol Brooks. No, they weren't interested. But if the cosmic

(09:20):
powers had stacked the deck this time, and that one
stayed free to kill again and again, eventually someday he
would achieve the scare headlines, and then the veres eslo
dis sempre. Mendoza reflected sartonically the mixture as before, our stupid,
blundering police. Once off the main streets here, away from

(09:41):
the blinding gleam of the used car lots, the screamer
ads plastered across storefronts, these were the quiet residential streets,
middle class, unremarkable, most of the houses neatly maintained, if shabby,
most with carefully kept flower pots in front. Along the
quiet Sunday sidewalks, dressed up children on the way to
Sunday school, others not so dressed up, running and shouting

(10:02):
at play householders working in front gardens this clear morning
after the rain. This was all oriental along here, largely Japanese.
When he stopped at an intersection, a pair of high
school age girls crossed in front of him. But honestly,
it isn't fair. Tenhole pages of English lid, even if
it is on the weekend. She's a real fiend for homework.

(10:22):
One had a ponytail, one had an Italian cut. Their
basic uniform of flat shell pumps, billowy cotton skirts and
cardigans differed only in color. At the next corner he
turned into Tappin Street. This wasn't the start of it,
but the relevant link for him. This side of Washington Boulevard,
he drove slow and idle, as if he had all
the time in the world to waste. Wasn't exactly sure

(10:43):
where he was heading, and of course he wasn't. Essentially,
it was a long street, and it took him through
a variety of backgrounds. Past rows of frame and stucco houses,
lower middle class, respectable houses where the people on the
street were oriental and then brown and black. There late
model car sat in most driveways and the people were
mostly dressed up for Sunday. Past bigger, older, shabbier houses

(11:06):
with board and room signs, rank brown grass and patches
and broken sidewalks, dreary courts of semi detached single story
rental units, stucco boxes, scabberus for need of paint, black
and brown kids, and shabbier, even ragged clothes, more raucous
in street play. A lot of all that block after block,
past an intersection where a main street crossed, and a

(11:28):
Catholic church, a liquor store, a chiropractor's office, and a
gas station shared the corners. Past the same kind of old,
shoddy houses and courts for many more blocks. But here
the people on the street white. Then a corner which
marked some long ago termination of the street. Where it
continued across. There were no longer tall old camphor woods
lining it. The parking was bare, the houses were a

(11:51):
little newer, a little cleaner. They gave way to solid
blocks of smallish apartment buildings, and all this again was
settled middle class, and again the faces in the street
black and brown. At the next intersection, he caught the
light and sat waiting for it, staring absently at the
wooden bench beside the bus stop sign on the near
left corner. Its back bore a faded admonition to rely

(12:12):
on j Atwood and Son Mortitians for a dignified funeral there.
That night, Carroll Brooks had got off the bus on
her way home from work, and some time later started
down Tappin street. She had had only three blocks to walk,
but she had met something on the way and so
she hadn't got home. The car behind hanked at him angrily.

(12:33):
The light had changed across the intersection. He idled along
another block and a half, slid gently into the curb,
and took his time over lighting a cigarette. Three single
family houses from the corner there sat two duplexes framed
bungalows just alike, one white and one yellow. They were
or had been owned by the widowed Missus Shadwell, who

(12:54):
lived in one side of the yellow one. On that
September night, the left hand side of the white one
had been empty of tenants. The tenants on the other
side had been out at a wedding reception. The tenants
in the left side of the yellow duplex had been
given a barbecue supper in their back yard, and Missus Shadwell,
who was deaf, had taken off her hearing aid. So
just what had happened along here as Carroll Brooks came

(13:15):
by wasn't very clear. If she had been accosted, exchanged
any talker argument with her, killer, had warned of attack
and called for help. There'd been no one to hear
She had been found just about half way between the
walls leading to the two front doors of the white
duplex at twenty minutes past nine by a dog walker
from the next block. She had then been dead for

(13:36):
between thirty minutes in an hour. It occurred to Mendoza
that he was simply wasting time in the vague, superstitious
hope that the cosmic powers would tap his shoulder and
drop that extra ace into his lap. He tossed his
cigarette out the window, which was now by law a
misdemeanor carrying a fifty dollars fine, and drove on a
block and a half, glanced at the neat white frame

(13:57):
bungalow where Carroll Brooks had lived, turned left at the
next corner. This was a second business street, and it
marked one of the boundaries that side Negro. This side White,
the streets deteriorated sharply. On the white side, he knew,
lined with old apartment buildings only just not describable as tenements.
He turned left and wandered back parallel to Tappan, turned

(14:18):
again and then again came to the corner where the
bus stopped, passed two duplexes, and drew into the curb.
In front of the bungalow numbered two two one four.
A woman came up the sidewalk from the opposite direction,
turned in at the white house, hesitated and glanced at
the car, and turned back toward it. Mendoza got out
and took off his hat. Missus demerist, I wondered, if

(14:40):
you still lived here, well, where else would that be?
She was a tall, slim, straight backed woman and had
once perhaps been beautiful. The bones of beauty were still
there in her smooth, high forehead, delicate, regular features, small mouth.
Her skin was the color of well creamed coffee. She
was neat, even almost smart, and tailored navy blue dress

(15:00):
and coat, small gold ear rings. She might be seventy.
She might be older, but age had touched her lightly.
Her voice was firm, her eyes intelligent. It's mister Mendoza,
she said, Or I should say, lieutenant. You know, if
I was a superstitious woman, Lieutenant, I'd say there's more
in it than meets the eye. You turning up? Did
you want to see about something? I don't know. There's

(15:24):
been another, he said, abruptly, I think the same one.
Another color girl, she asked, calmly no and Miles away
over on Commerce Street that one. She nodded, I think
you'd best come in and I'll tell you there's nothing much,
though it's queer, but it's something you didn't hear about before,
you see. At first I thought I might write you

(15:44):
a letter about it, and then I said to myself.
They were half way up the walk to the house,
and he had taken the brown paper bag of groceries
from her. I thought, it's not important. I'd best not
trouble you. But as you hear, you might as well
hear about it. She had been away from Bermuda half
her life, but her tongue still carried the flavor the
broad a's, the interchange of v's and w's, the clipped
British fowls. She unlocked the front door and they went

(16:07):
into the living room. He remembered furniture old but originally
good and well to care for. If you'll just fetch
that right back to the kitchen, Lieutenant, you will have
a cup of coffee with me. We might as well
be comfortable, and it's always hot on the back of
the stove. Sit down. I'll just tinder the duke here
and then be with you. The cat surveying him with
cold curiosity from the hallway door was a large, black

(16:28):
nutered tom. He established himself on the kitchen chair opposite
Mendoza and continued to stare. I didn't remember he was
the Duke, said Mendoza, the Duke of Wellington, really, because
he always thought so almighty high of himself. You know,
we got him care second year in high and she
was doing history about it. Then cats there, like olives,
seem like either you're crazy about them or you just

(16:51):
can't abide them. I remember you liked them. It's why
I was out after his evaporated milk fresh you won't
look at and the evaporated he let's set just so long.
It's it stick the way he fancies it. You see
now he knows I've just poured it. He won't go
near you take milk or sugar, Well, I always take
it black too, you'll get the flavor. She set the
filled cups on the table and sat in the chair

(17:12):
across from him. You'll have missed your granddaughter, he said.
It was another absurd, superstitious feeling that if he asked
brought her to the point, it would indeed be nothing
at all. Well, I do. Of course, sometimes it doesn't
seem right that there the Duke should be sitting alive
and her gone. It be something to believe in some
kind of religion, that there was a god who'd some reason,

(17:35):
some plan. I never came to it somehow, but maybe
there is. I'd had two husbands and raised six children,
and luckiered them most in all of them, and you
could say I've worked hard. It was a grief to
lose my youngest son. That was Karl's bad, but I
had to figure I've five left and the other grand
children too. Take it all in all, There's been more
good than bad, and what you can't change you best

(17:55):
learn to live with content. I enjoyed life still, and
I don't want to die while it's still my hill
than my mind. But you know, Lieutenant, I won't be
too sorry in the way when the time comes, because
I must say, I'm that curious about the afterword part.
It's a point of view, he agreed, amusedly. So am
I now and then. But I'd rather be curious than dead.
She laughed, with a fine gleam of even white teeth. Ah,

(18:18):
you're lucky, you're half my age, But I said, i'd
something to tell you. It's just a queer sort of thing.
Maybe it doesn't mean much. She sapped and put down
her cup. Maybe you'll remember that the night when Karl
was killed, I told you I hadn't been too worried
about her being laid home, because she said something about
shopping along Hawk Street, that when she got off the
bus it was a Monday night, and all the stores

(18:38):
along there they stay open till nine Mondays and Fridays.
There's a few nice little stores, and it's andy, not
a crowd. It is down town and most everything you
want drug stores and Woolworths, beside a Heartners and a
shoe store, and a couple of nice independent dress shops.
And mister Grant, the stationery in card Place even keeps
a little circulating library. And then there's missus Breen's. He

(19:00):
remembered the name vaguely after a moment, he said, the
woman who had a stroke. That's right. She's had that
little shop a long while, and sometimes you find things
there that are, you're not unusual, different from the big stores.
You mightn't remember no reason you showed. But on the
one side, she's got gift wearers to call it china
figures and fancy ice trays and bases and such. And

(19:21):
on the other she's got babies and children's things, real
nice things with handiwork on them. The clothes and reasonable too.
You'll remember that your men ask around in all the
shops if Carroll had been in that night to get
some idea the time and all. And that was the
very night Missus Breen had a stroke, so you couldn't
ask her if Carroll had been in there. But it
didn't seem important because you found out that she'd been

(19:42):
in a drug store and a couple out places. Yes, er,
nothing unusual anywhere, no one speaking to her, and she
didn't mention anything out of the way to the clerks
who waited on her. That's all. It didn't seem as
if missus Breen could have told any more. She was
alone in a place, you know, and all right, it
could be when a daughter come at nine a bit
before to help her close up and drive her home.

(20:03):
It was while they were locking up she had a
stroke or thing, and they took her off to her hospital,
as she's been a long while getting back on her feet. Well, lieutenant,
let me heart up your coffee. What I'm getting to
is this. It went out of my mind at the time,
and when I thought of it, I hadn't a heart
to bother about. It didn't seem important somehow, and Missus
Breen was still in the hospital and her daughter's closed
up the shop. It'd meant asking her, Missus Robins, I

(20:25):
mean to go all through the accounts and so on.
With her so worried and living clear to the other
side of town too, I just let it go. You
thought Carol had been in and bought something there. It
was for Linda Sue, she said, and the troubled look
in her eyes faded momentarily. My first great grandchild. See
my granddaughter May. That's Carol's cousin May. Why Linda Suele's

(20:49):
her little girl. May and Carroll were much of an
age and chummed together, and Carrol was just crazy about
Linda Sue. It was along in June. I remember, Carroll
saw this and Missus Breen's and she wanted to get
it for lindas who's birthday in October. She told me
about it then, and if I thought it was foolish,
that much money I kept still on it. She wanted
to get it and it was her money, twenty dollars
it was, and she asked missus Breen if she could

(21:11):
pay a bed on it every week or so. Missus
Breen's obliging like that, and she said it was all right.
But she left it at the window for people to see.
Case anybody wanted one like it, she could order another.
The duke, who had been drowsing between them, suddenly woke
up and began to wash himself vigorously. Missus Demarest finished
her coffee. Inside it was a doll, Lieutenant. And while

(21:32):
that seems like an awful price for a doll, I
must say it was a special one. It'd be nearly
as big as Linda su herself. And it was made
of some stuff, you know, that looked like real flesh,
and it had real hair, gold hair. It was that
you could curl different ways. And it had on a
pink silk dress with hands smocking, and silver underwear with lace,
and there was a little velvet cape and velvet slippers
rose color. Well, Carol was buying it like that. I

(21:55):
wasn't sure to a penny how much she still owed
on it up to that night, And of course Monday
wasn't pay day, for I didn't think it was likely
she'd stop in at missus Breen's that night because she'd
done it day she got paid. You see, it was
just that she had paid on it. But as I say,
way things were, I didn't bother about going ahead with it.
There was time to sort it out. Missus Breen and
Missus Robbins are both honest. I got out of things

(22:17):
for Lindasu's birthday, and once in a while I just
said to myself, some day i'd best ask about it.
Straighten it out with missus Breen. Well, just last week
Missus Brin came into her shop again. She was sick
quite a while and then up and down like at
her daughter's. And now she's better, but not to be
alone any more, and she's selling off what stock she
has a going out of business. So I went round

(22:37):
last Thursday was to ask about Carroll's doll, and Missus
brain say that Carroll came in that night and pay
all the rest she owed and took the doll away
with her. She remembered it clear the stroke didn't affect
her mind. She's a bit slower, but all there. She
didn't hear about Carroll for quite a while, naturally, being
sick and all. And of course when she did, she
naturally thought everyone knew about the doll because you remember, yes,

(23:02):
he said. He remembered, in the glare of the spotlights,
the stiffening, disfigured corpse, and the several small parcels scattered
on the sidewalk, a card of bobby pins, two spools
of thread from the dime store, a magazine, a bottle
of aspirin, a candy bar from the drug store, an
anniversary card from the stationery store. He looked at Missus
Dimmerist blinkly. That's very odd, he said. She had it.

(23:27):
The woman sure, She nodded vigorously. She saw me the
account's book, Lieutenant, there's the date, and while there's no
time put down, it's the next to last entry that night.
And she said the last customer came in was a
woman she knows, a Missus Ratchet, and it was just
before nine. She thinks Carrol came in about eight thirty,
a few minutes before. Maybe probably it was the last

(23:48):
place Carroll stopped. You see, nobody else remembers her. With
a big parcel. She paid Missus Breen seven dollars and
forty six cents all she's still owed, and she didn't
have the doll gift wrap because she wanted to show
it to me and me and she took it with her.
Missus Demerist held out her hands, measuring like that. It
had been a big stout cardboard box, white, a good

(24:09):
yard or more long and maybe eighteen inches wide and
a foot deep, heavy too, and inside, along with the doll,
three yards of pink silk ribbon, and the tissue paper
for rapping it, and a birthday card. The whole thing
was wrapped up in white paper and string, and Missus
Brain made a little loop on top for her to
carry it by. They looked at each other. But that's

(24:30):
very damn odd indeed, he said softly, nobod's time there.
You know she was dead by nine at the latest.
It's possible that some one else came by and found
her first, didn't want to get involved, but picked up
the biggest parcel, maybe the only one he noticed in
the dark, on the chance that it was worth something.
But you'd think in that case he or she, of course,

(24:51):
might have taken time to snatch the hand back too.
After cash and I hadn't been touched the strap was
still on her arm. I guess you'd better hear how
she came to get the money. Not that it matters.
One of the girls working at the hotel would came
to see me two or three days afterward, a nice girl,
she was Nella Fosse, to say I was sorry, they
all were, and give me a little collection. The hotel

(25:12):
people taken up. They thought maybe I'd rather have the money,
you know, instead of flowers for the funeral. It was
real thoughtful of them. Well, Nella said that very afternoon
there had been a lady just checked out a hotel,
came back after a valuable ring she'd left, and Carrold
already found it going out the room, you know, and
turned it in and the lady gave her five dollars
as a present. I expect Carroll decided right off if

(25:32):
she'd finished paying for the doll with it at the time,
I thought, of course, what was then a purse? Three
eighty four? It was was what she had left out
at the five? Yes, but so little time do we
say it was the murderer took it away? Just that,
not a finger on her hand bag after cash? And
why not that I couldn't say, said Missus Demorest, placidly.

(25:54):
It's queer. Certainly, I'd say the same as you. Well,
I guess detecting things, it's just a matter of using
common sense and reasoning things out. I suppose somebody might
think there was something valuable in a big parcel like
that and steal it just on a chance. But a
thief would do that. It's just not logical. You wouldn't
take the iron back too, at least rummaged through it.
She cocked her head at him, and her brown eyes

(26:16):
were bright as a sparrow's lieutenant, Would you think I'm
a wool gatherin silly old woman. You're too polite ever
say it. If you did. If I said, maybe whoever
took it knew right well what was in that parcel,
you'd say, whoever killed her for a doll? I don't
know that, maybe somebody else first or afterward. But I

(26:38):
can tell you something else. I've studied about it. And
I went back to ask Missus Breen a couple of
other things. I said, she'd left the doll in the window,
didn't I. Well, I go past that three four times
a week, up to the market, and I do think
i'd a noticed if that doll had been gone out
of the window right after Carol was killed, and put
two and two together and asked then, but missus Brain
took it out of the window about a week before,

(26:59):
so I didn't expect it there, you see what I mean?
And she says now reasons she did that she had
noticed from a factory or whatever that made them that
they weren't making this particular doll anymore, so she didn't
want to show it and have to disappoint anybody wanted one.
And this is what I'm getting. At the morning of
the day that Carroll was killed, there was a woman
came into the door and wanted to buy that doll.

(27:20):
She wanted it real bad, Missus Brian said. She was
almost crying that she couldn't have that one or get
Missus Brian to order another. And she stayed a long
while trying to argue Missus briananto selling her the one
that Carroll was buying. An extra ace to pat hiss hand,
Mendoza had hoped, But could it be such a small thing,
such a meaningless thing. Did she know this woman? She'd

(27:43):
seen her before. It was a white woman lieutenant from
over across Hunter Avenue. She couldn't call her name to mind,
but she thinks she got it written down somewhere, because
the woman made a copy down her name and address
and promised to find out. Couldn't she get a doll
like that somewhere? You'd best see missus Brien and ask
if you think it means anything at all. She thinks
she remembers it was a middle and long sort of
name and started with an l end of chapter six