Free The Case of the Petrified Man by Caroline Lawrence Page B

outside in fine weather. Some of the cribs lean a little to the left or right.
    Big Gussie called her place the “Brick House.” It was two stories tall & made of red brick & it stood smack dab in the middle of those cribs. It reminded me of a mother hen with all her little chicks lined up either side, some of them leaning over to be near her.
    It was even nicer inside. She led me into a big,bright parlor with a flowery Brussels Carpet & a high ceiling. On the facing wall was a big mirror that reflected back light & seemed to double the size of the room as well as the plump couches & dark wood furniture. There were four little polished tables with lace doilies & vases full of flowers & china ornaments & fancy ashtrays & cut-glass decanters.
    There was a piano against one wall & a fiddle on top.
    At a big, long table in the middle sat four women playing a Card Game & drinking coffee. It was past 3 p.m., but they were still in their undergarments.
    “Girls,” said Big Gussie, “say howdy to P.K. Pinkerton, Virginia’s smallest detective.”
    “Howdy, P.K.,” said the four girls. I touched my hat, then remembered myself and removed it.
    “P.K. is investigating the death of poor Sal,” explained Big Gussie, as she placed two china teacups full of coffee on one end of the polished table. She gestured for me to sit. “Sally used to take her meals here,” added Gussie, “until we disagreed about runaways. She had no truck with them.”
    “Runaways?” I said, thinking of Martha. “Do you mean runaway slaves?”
    “Bless my stockings, no! I mean Leg Cases. Skedaddlers. Absquatulaters. Runaway Rebs.”
    “Beg pardon?” I said, as mystified as ever.
    Gussie rolled her eyes. “Deserters,” she said. “Especially Confederate deserters. We been getting quite a few of them recently. I reckon we’ll get more over the next few weeks on account of that terrible battle back east. Sally said weshould turn them cowards in. But I believe most of them just crave the company of soft and gentle women after all that blood and killing.”
    Big Gussie did not look soft
or
gentle but I nodded for politeness.
    “After our disagreement Sal stopped eating with us. Then she seceded from our profession, too.”
    I got out my Detective Notebook and pencil. “Can you tell me the names and descriptions of her Gentlemen Callers?” I said. “For my list of Suspects?”
    “Well,” said Gussie, taking a deep pull on her cigarrito, “as I just said, she hadn’t had none for a while. She was setting up to be a seamstress.”
    “You mean she stopped having Gentlemen Callers?” said I.
    “That is exactly what I mean,” said Gussie.
    “But she used to have some?”
    “Up till about a month ago.”
    “I believe one of those Gentlemen Callers killed her,” I said. “Can you tell me any of their names?”
    “Sure I can,” said Big Gussie. “You gals can help, right?”
    One of the girls at the other end of the table said, “Sure. We knew most of ’em.”
    Big Gussie introduced me to the four girls.
    One girl was called Irish Rose. She had freckles and reddish-brown hair and an Irish accent. So her name was easy to remember.
    Big Mouth Annie had a little rosebud mouth so that was easy to remember for her being the opposite of her name.
    The one they called Spring Chicken did not look like a chicken but her corset was grass-green and she was young with fluffy yellow hair, so I thought of a baby chick in the springtime grass.
    Honey Pie was plump & had honey-colored hair so I made a picture in my head of her eating pie filled with honey & remembered her that way.
    They all gave me names & descriptions & as much other information as they could remember. I wrote them all down in my Detective Notebook.
    At the end of our first session I had 23 Suspects, all men who were known to have visited Short Sally up till about a month ago.
    23 Suspects! I had to narrow it down some.
    Although Martha was short-sighted, she had been able to give me