Love for Sale

me.“
    “I have a newspaper to get out this week,“ Jack objected. “This is too big a story to ignore. Brother Goodheart is a national celebrity. I’ll sell a ton of papers by getting the first shot at this story, and other papers clear across the country will want permission to reprint.“
    “I’ll tell you whatever I’m allowed to when I know more,“ Walker said. “Now, get out of here and let me get on with my job.“
    “Can’t I just watch you search the rooms?”
    “No. Go away.”
    Detective Williams had been the first to have information, and it was negative.
    “No prints on the bathtub. Not even Pottinger’s. There’s a towel on the floor somebody used to wipe them all off. Towels don’t take prints,“ he said as if Walker needed to be told this. “I’ll call your office when I know more.”
    Walker started the search in Pottinger’s suite. The man had made very few notes. His small suitcase contained only his cheap wig and a couple of changes of underwear. His toothbrush and tooth powder can was on the edge of the sink with his shaving materials. There was also another five hundred dollars in the suitcase with a gold clip holding the bills and a note saying “for the end of the meeting.”
    That money would have to be sorted out eventually. Presumably Pottinger had meant to use it to pay the Brewsters at the end of their visit, but possibly it was meant to pay off the other men he was conspiring with.
    There were no other documents except an address book in Pottinger’s suit jacket with the list of employees at the Institute, many of them crossed out.
    Walker found this interesting as he flipped through the pages. Pottinger seemed to have a lot of turnover, especially among the few women who worked as secretaries. He wondered how many of them were still at the addresses he had for them. Probably not many. Some of the entries had been crossed out so thoroughly that the paper was dented.
    Why, he wondered, did so many of them leave? How would he find any of them?
    He didn’t even know if Pottinger had ever married. He knew very little about the man except that he appeared to make a great deal of money on his preaching. Walker had only accidentally heard some of his talks when someone else was listening to them on the radio in the living room at his boarding house, and he had deliberately tuned them out. He didn’t enjoy programs that had so much yelling, bigotry, and pontificating. Fibber McGee was more fun to listen to.
    Had all these women left their jobs voluntarily? Was Pottinger a womanizer? It wouldn’t surprise him. At this point, nothing about the man would surprise him. Maybe the opposite was true: that he disliked having women on the staff, but occasionally had to put up with them, then discarded them as soon as he could.
    Walker and Officer Lawrence carefully searched the rest of the room, looking under furniture, turning out the seemingly unused bed, picking up the few ornaments set over the fireplace to see if there was anything pertinent under them, turning over pictures on the walls.
    “It’s odd, isn’t it,“ Walker said to Officer Lawrence, “that nobody appears to have made notes about the meeting.“
    “Maybe they did and that other fellow who stayed in the back room flushed or burned them.“ Then they went to the room where Edward Price had stayed, at the end of the narrow hall past the bathroom. Edward was the secretary, so he must have taken notes. They found his pad of papers under the unmade bed.
    It was mainly a list of meal times, arrival times, and prayer times, which explained the mysterious chanting that Lily told him Phoebe Twinkle had reported. The rest of the notes were in shorthand. Walker knew Lily had been studying shorthand, but not for long enough to know it well. He showed it to Officer Lawrence. “Do you know shorthand?“
    “Yes, sir.“
    “Take a look at this and tell me what it says.”
    Lawrence glanced through and said, “I can’t make sense of it, I’m afraid. Everybody’s shorthand becomes personal to them after they’ve done it for a long time. You’ll probably have to send the notebook to Albany as well and let them find someone who knows more about the variations.”
    Walker ran his hands through his hair. By the time this was done, all his suspects would have flown away to the four winds. This was a case he feared would never be solved and would become a huge blot on his good reputation.
    They moved on next to Nobby