Love for Sale

he pulled off on a side road and parked.
    Gingerly, he pulled each effort out of its envelope to study it. Their printing didn’t match the printing on the original note. However, anyone could disguise the way they printed, so that didn’t matter much.
    Susanna Cooper’s was letter perfect: very neat handwriting, everything spelled right. Kathryn Staley’s was tidy writing and she’d written the suspicious words correctly, but she’d spelled groceries as grocerys. He put the samples back in their envelopes and headed for Joan Wilton’s home.
    When she came to the door, she opened it only enough for him to see she was wearing only a skimpy nightgown that was grubby and frayed around the low neck.
    “You’re back. You’ll have to wait your turn. Give me fifteen minutes.“
    “I don’t think you understand why I’m here. I need you to write out something for me. We can do it here or I can take you to the jail for it just as you are.“
    “You bastard!“ she sneered. “Let me get a coat at least.“ There was the sound of a man’s voice raised in objection inside the house, then Joan Wilton appeared a moment later with a coat and scruffy slippers on. She sat down on a rickety bench by the door. “Let’s get this over with.”
    Walker handed her a pencil and sheet of paper and his notebook to write on and read her the statement she was to print. When she was done, he took them back gingerly, holding the paper and the notebook by the corners. There might be fingerprints on them that could be useful.

    Monday morning, Walker was a bit late getting to his office. Ralph had taken a call from Colling’s fingerprint expert.
    “He says this here piece of wrapping paper has really been around the block. Lots of fingerprints. Mostly smudged. None clearly belonging to anyone at the Institute. He noticed a tiny thread caught on the corner. Says it looks to him like a thread from a pair of black cotton gloves.“
    “Take these notes back to him. And my notebook. See if any of them can be identified.”
    When Ralph had left, Howard had to resist the impulse to bang his head on the desk. Of all the crimes he’d dealt with, this one seemed to him to be the most fruitless and frustrating. Chances were that he’d never solve this case, and it would ruin his so-far-perfect record of solving crimes.
    To be perfectly honest with himself, he didn’t care very deeply who had killed Pottinger. He was an evil person who was simply out to rob the poor and downtrodden to line his own pockets. Who could guess how many other young women he’d taken advantage of in his life? He wasn’t a loss to society, except to the people who’d worked for him.
    Howard had no idea where to go, what to do next. If, by the remotest chance, any one of the fingerprints he’d just collected could be proved to match any of the ones on Joey’s note, he might come out all right and get this case off his plate.
    He seriously doubted it would work out that way.
    While he was brooding over this, his phone rang.

    Monday afternoon, Lily had to fulfill her promise to Mrs. Tarkington to call again on Miss Jurgen.
    As she expected, Amelia Jurgen didn’t know very much more about her renter than she’d already told Lily.
    “All I know is that she didn’t seem to cook much,“ Miss Jurgen said with a smile. “The same furnace serves both parts of the house, and I have a very good sense of smell. I suppose she ate elsewhere most of the time.”
    Shifting the conversation, Miss Jurgen said, “I just received a lot of payments for my patterns. Enough to get my car repaired. I’m going out back to see if I can make it work long enough to get it to the man who’s supposed to be repairing it. If I can’t get it rolling, I’ll fix us something to nibble on.”
    Lily followed her to the big garage at the back of her long lot. There was another car in the garage as well that Lily assumed belonged to the renter. Miss Langston must have taken the train home. She watched as Miss Jurgen tried to get the car started. It ran for a moment, then coughed and died. Miss Jurgen tried a couple more times with the same result. Lily leaned back on the front of the other car and was surprised.
    “Miss Jurgen, this engine is warm.“
    “It can’t be. It’s Miss Langston’s car. I assumed she took the train to wherever she went. I supposed the only reason she’d come back was to fetch her car.“ She hopped out of hers and felt the front of the