Free Felony File by Dell Shannon

in awhile,"
said Mendoza.
    * * *
    Landers, Grace and Conway had got to the Personnel
office at Bullock's about nine o'clock. "This is the damndest
job we've had in a while," said Conway plaintively. "I
didn't join the force to shuffle papers all day."
    "You were just after a uniform to impress the
girls?" asked Landers. Conway, who was good-looking and as
dapper a dresser as Mendoza, laughed.
    " Anything for a change, I suppose."
    The Personnel office had given them a little back
room, a table and some chairs. The stacks of file-folders they hadn't
examined were still high. Landers divided them into three piles,
emptied the ashtray filled at the last session, and they got to work
in silence.
    It was tedious work; they had to look in several
places on each employee's work record for the name, date of
employment, type of employment, and termination if any. Bullock's
updated these files only quarterly; at the next updating, the file of
any employee no longer on the strength would be weeded out, but as of
now there should be a few. And Bullock's had a lot of employees. They
broke for lunch early, were back at it by a quarter of one, and it
was nearly an hour later that Conway let out a whoop.
    " Beginners' luck, boys." He shoved a file
at Landers. "If that doesn't ring a bell! There you are, the
initials too—the time, the place, and the loved one all together."
    It was the file of one Mary Webster. She had been
hired last April, had worked as a salesclerk in the bedding
department, had quit her job in the middle of September. They looked
at a few more items on the file. Mary Webster was five-five,
Caucasian, had brown hair and brown eyes, weighed a hundred and
fifteen pounds, and was twenty-nine years old. Unmarried. Her address
was on Fountain Avenue in Hollywood.
    " I think you've turned something, Rich,"
said Grace.
    " M. W. And the time—"
    " Nearly six months?" said Landers. "She
wouldn't have had to stay in the job that long to find out the
routine on taking the money in."
    " We'd better take a look anyway," said
Grace. "Not that I think she'll still be at that address. Not if
she's it."
    It had stopped raining and was turning very cold. All
three of them went up to Hollywood in Landers' Sportabout. The
address on Fountain was a new garden apartment with a pool at one
side, now drained and covered for the winter; in the cold gray light
the brightly painted doors—scar1et, green, blue—looked garish.
The apartment they wanted was on the second floor at the back; it had
a bright orange door and surprisingly the nameplate said Webster.
    " So, coincidence," said Landers, pushing
the bell. In a minute the door opened and they faced a woman about
sixty, with gray hair becomingly waved, plain crystal glasses. She
was wearing a pink quilted housecoat and pink slippers. She looked
surprised to see them.
    " We're looking for a Mary Webster who used to
work at Bullock's," said Landers.
    She stared up at him—tall, lanky Landers with his
youthful face didn't look like anybody's idea of a cop and said, "I'm
Mary's mother." And then the tears welled up and began to spill
down her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she said. "Was it
something to do with the store? She had to leave without notice—and
she hadn't been there long, she used to work at the valley branch of
Robinsons' but when we moved here—it was nearer to drive. She'd
only been there since April, but they were very kind about it, they
paid her for the last two weeks. Was it a mistake?"
    " I—" Landers was taken aback.
    " Oh, I'm sorry, excuse me, but she—she was
only twenty-nine, and since her father died five years ago she was
all I had—such a good girl—and engaged to such a nice young man,
they were going to be married at Christmas—how I'd have loved
grandchildren, but she was an only child—hadn't been feeling well,
so tired for no reason, but we thought, just run-down—vitamins—"
    " Excuse me," said Landers, "I don't
think—"
    " And when she finally went to the