Free Entr'acte by Frank Juliano Page B

It can cost thousands. I’d love to be there when the bill for this comes through.”
    Bart said that her hospital care would probably come to about $15 per day, “but everybody pays that themselves if they have it.”
    The doctor came up to the bed. “The people at the restaurant up in Maine said that Muriel and Connie Pettit, two sisters from there, are here working as showgirls,” the doctor said.
    He picked up her watch off the bedside table, flipped the band inside out and read the back of the fob. “So, you’re Muriel. Hello, Muriel. We can let you out of here in a few days.”
    When the doctor left, Joyce turned to Bart. “Muriel is my grandmother. She gave me her watch a few years ago when I graduated from high school. Could you go find her for me? I don’t know the address, but it’s near the theater district.”
    Bart promised to find Muriel through the phone book, the Player’s Directory or friends he had among theater musicians.
    Joyce tried to get some sleep while she waited for him to return, but imagining her meeting her grandmother again had her too excited.
    Barely two hours later an attractive dark-haired young woman bounded into the room ahead of a sheepish Bart, and charged up to the bed.
    “Connie, I swear! When are you going to stop this crazy living,” the woman demanded.
    76

Chapter 14
    Ryerson pulled the rusted clips together and opened the worn manila envelope, pulling out a sheaf of faded papers and several small items. A second box, labeled “Personal effects, Case # 39-2461, C. Pettit” sat next to them on his desk.
    “I don’t know what this will do except satisfy some curiosity,”
    Ryerson told Doug and Debbie. “Although it’s a baffling coincidence, there is no connection between this woman’s disappearance and the fact that you haven’t heard from your girlfriend.
    “You don’t often find a 68-year gap in a case, even when it involves the same family,” the veteran cop said.
    Debbie had briefed him that the missing girl, Joyce Waszlewski, had tried to break it off with her boyfriend, the serious, intense man who was reporting her missing.
    “He followed her to New York and she didn’t expect that,”
    Debbie had told the detective. “She told me yesterday that she had to get rid of him in her own way; I think she’s giving him the slip.”
    Ryerson took all this information down, including Debbie’s belief that Joyce may have gone back to Maine for a few days. She 77
    FRANK JULIANO
    had probably decided against her earlier plan of having Doug stay with them until the weekend, Debbie said.
    Doug sorted through the files. First was the missing person’s report. It was dated Oct. 17th, 1939 and said that Connie had last been seen leaving the Empire Theater at 40th and Broadway, on June 4th.
    “They sure were casual about this whole thing, weren’t they?”
    he asked.
    “It says here in Joyce’s grandmother’s statement that Connie often took off for days at a time without telling anybody, and that she’d reappear all of a sudden without any explanation,” Debbie read.
    “Maybe that’s what Joyce is doing,” Ryerson suggested helpfully. “The apple never falls far from the tree.”
    It was a bad suggestion. Doug paled and began rubbing his palms on his thighs. “But they found Connie dead!”
    “Look, son,” the detective said quietly. “You need to face up to the fact that this young lady did not want to see you anymore, and is probably avoiding you.
    “As painful as that is for you, that is almost certainly what is happening here. Every year 30,000 people are reported missing in New York City,” he said. “In the vast majority of those cases the missing person turns up a few days later saying he just needed some time.
    “It may be inconsiderate, but it isn’t criminal,” Ryerson said.
    “A large number of others are runaways who do not want to be found, parental abductions and some cases of foul play.”
    “How do you know that’s not what