Chapter One #3
“How was The Overlanders last night?” Billie asked him. She hadn’t seen a lot of pictures lately, but it was something Sam enjoyed spending his paychecks on. “Did Eunice like it?” she added. He’d only just started dating Eunice, though he didn’t talk about her much.
Sam was expounding upon Chips Rafferty’s portrayal of a Western Australian drover when the telephone rang. He put down his cup, cleared his throat, and answered in a professional tone. “B. Walker, Private Inquiries, how may I . . .”
Sam trailed off and Billie raised an eyebrow, watching.
“They hung up,” he said, puzzled, and replaced the receiver in its cradle. “Or they were cut off.”
“You didn’t hear anything?”
He shook his head. “The street, perhaps.”
It was just past three in the afternoon, only minutes after Billie had suggested Sam might leave early, when she heard a polite knock on the door of the outer office and the sound of him letting someone in.
“I . . . I understood it was a lady detective,” said a small, panicked voice in the next room, emphasizing the word “lady” as if it were terribly important.
Not everyone knocked on that outer door.
In fact, most people came walking straight in with their troubles and needs, so Billie deduced that this was someone either especially polite or especially nervous.
She rose swiftly from her desk and made her way to the open doorway of her inner office before Sam could explain.
No sense in losing a customer who might skedaddle through nervousness, especially when business was a little too slow for comfort.
A tense woman in her late thirties or early forties stood in the outer office, giving the impression of a spooked deer, her feet planted slightly apart as if she might bolt at any moment.
Billie took her appearance in quickly: she stood roughly five foot three and wore an impressive chocolate-brown fur stole clasped at the bust, probably mink or musquash, and fine quality at that.
Beneath that was a brown suit of a light summer weight, a little drab and conservative in its design.
Probably tailor-made, but not recently. Her Peter Pan hat was prewar in style, not the latest fashion.
It was a slightly lighter brown than the suit and was finished with a chocolate-brown feather.
The woman wore very little makeup, and a pair of round, plain cheaters made her brown eyes seem huge, adding to the impression of a startled doe.
Like her attire, the woman’s hair was brown.
Her shoes were good-quality reptile skin to match her handbag, but not flashy.
The heels were low, sensible. A little worn, but nicely kept.
Her gloved hands were clasped tightly over the handle of her small handbag, and both seemed as sealed shut as her mouth, which looked to have lately sucked a lemon.
Billie imagined her wearing a darker, heavier suit of similar utilitarian cut and color in autumn and winter and this one throughout spring and summer, but her fur .
. . now, that was special, almost out of place on a person like this.
For an antipodean November, Sydney wasn’t too hot yet, but this accessory was by no means worn to ward off the cold.
The hairs on the stole were gleaming and brushed down evenly.
It seemed new and Billie wondered about the story behind it.
“I’m Ms. Walker, the principal here. This is my secretary and assistant, Mr. Baker,” Billie explained with a wave of her hand, and the woman’s eyes widened for a moment.
“Would you like to come into my office, Mrs. . . . ?” The woman did not complete the question with a name.
Nonetheless, Billie stepped smoothly back into her office and pulled a chair out for the woman before making her way around the wide wooden desk and waiting by her seat.
It took a moment for the woman to follow her from the outer office.
Sam offered to take the woman’s stole, but she mumbled a thank-you and refused.
After an awkward silence, during which it seemed even odds whether the woman would sit down or bolt, she finally entered and took the offered seat across from Billie.
“Please, make yourself comfortable,” Billie said gently. “Samuel, would you please bring some tea?” Billie hoped it might help settle her flighty companion.
Sam tactfully closed the inner office door.
“How may I be of service to you?” Billie asked, watching as the woman’s eyes went to the floor, then the globe on the filing cabinet, before finally settling on the big map of Sydney on the wall. Her lips remained sealed throughout.
Billie was used to this initial process sometimes taking a while.
She was patient and she didn’t press for names or personal information before it was necessary.
Many people who came to see her were upset by their circumstances, and for some the mere prospect of dealing with a private inquiry agent about any matter was distressing enough on its own.
As Billie well knew, PIs had a mixed reputation.
This fact hadn’t escaped her, growing up with a PI dad, and little had changed on that score.
She suspected that the American detective pictures that were currently popular did not help—they were full of ultramasculine shady types, handy with their fists, who said “sweetheart” while their eyes said something else.
Some female clients intentionally sought out private inquiry agents of their own sex, particularly if their problem was a domestic matter that they would find awkward to discuss with a man, or perhaps simply because the prospect of dealing with a Sam Spade type did little to comfort them.
This was the bread-and-butter work of a woman like Billie Walker, and she wondered what story the potential client before her would tell. Cheating husband?
The Bakelite wall clock above the doorway ticked away the minutes until eventually Sam returned with a tray assembled with a teapot, milk jug, two cups, sugar, and spoons.
He slipped away again without a sound, and the door closed with a soft click.
For a big man, he knew how to achieve strategic invisibility.
After several more ticks of the clock, her tea sitting untouched, the stranger finally spoke.
“I wanted to see you because . . .” She was finding something difficult to say. “I need . . . a woman’s intuition.”
Billie let that one lie. She didn’t believe in what was often called “women’s intuition,” even if it was what some people came to her for.
Men’s intuition was simply called knowledge, or at the very least an informed and rational guess.
When the little woman in her stomach told her something was wrong, it was informed by a thousand tiny signals and observations of human behavior.
It was deduction at work—some of it conscious, some subconscious, though no less rational than a man’s reasoning.
Billie did believe in paying attention to the knowledge in that lifesaving gut of hers, but not because she thought it was some mysterious and almost mystical feminine ability.
Listening to her gut had been vital in getting her through the war, and it was put to good use in her business.
It was something her father, Barry, had done before her.
Such instincts were about being observant, about listening—something many women happened to do very well, which was probably where the term had come from.
But there was no sense in breaking down the notion of women’s intuition now.
In fact, for the moment there was no sense in speaking at all.
The stranger in her office was now wringing her hands.
Billie watched and waited for her to open up.
She was like a kettle building up steam.
“My son . . . is missing,” the woman finally said. The words sounded heavy and hard to say. Billie noted a light accent slipping in—was it European?
Not a divorce number, then, Billie thought.
She’d only just wrapped a rather unfortunate case that had required her to hop four fences to chase a man down, ripping a good pair of silk trousers.
She was tempted to swear off divorce cases for however long she could—which likely wouldn’t be long at all if she wanted any paying business before 1947 rolled around.
“I see,” Billie responded in a level tone. “How old is your boy?”
“He turned seventeen in August.”
The jury was out on whether his age was in his favor or against it, but Billie was secretly relieved she wouldn’t be looking for a toddler. “Has anything like this happened before?”
“No.” The woman shook her head adamantly. “Adin is a good boy. He’s just . . . gone. He had dinner, went to bed as usual, but then he was gone. His bed hadn’t been slept in.”
No one was ever just gone. There was always a story.
He went to bed, but his bed wasn’t slept in.
It was unlikely to be abduction, though of course that wasn’t completely out of the question.
Had he climbed out a window, gone out on the town, and decided not to come back?
Or could he have walked out the front door without being detected, perhaps?
“How long ago was this?” Billie asked.
“Two days ago. Well, I knew on Thursday morning that he was gone.”
Billie nodded. It was Friday now, so if he went missing on Wednesday after dinner, that was almost two days. A lot could have happened in that time, but it wasn’t terrible odds. “Have you spoken to anyone else about this? The police, perhaps?”
The woman nodded, and her mouth cracked a little, turning down.
“Yes. I checked with his friends and when they hadn’t seen him I went to see the police.
They were not helpful . . .” Again the voice strained a touch.
There was something there. “I was at the police station yesterday, and when I was leaving, a Miss Primrose recommended I see you.”