Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

“Sure. It’s like you don’t want just anybody reading your mail, right?”

“You can’t read this, though.”

“Sure I can.” The boy looked at the wall. “It says, ‘Secrets don’t keep. Pay me.’ ”

Robideau reappraised the fat, pillowy characters, and immediately the phrase jumped out at him. The boy was right! Secrets Don’t Keep. Pay Me!

“I don’t suppose you know who wrote this,” he said hopefully.

“Nope, I don’t. But they weren’t really serious.”

“How do you know?”

“ ’Cause they didn’t sign it. See, a guy’s serious, he initials his work.”

Robideau looked at markings on the dumpster. Sure enough, every effort was initialed, like a work of art.

“Thanks,” said Robideau.

“No problem.” The boy slouched away, slapping the ground with his stick.

Now, said Robideau, pleased with himself, onward and upward! He would take on Mrs. Pashniak. Get something out of her if he had to give her the third degree.

Mrs. Pashniak received him sheepishly, as if she had been waiting for him to call and confront her. But she had enough spunk to put him on the defensive. “Have you found her, Chief Robideau?”

“No, not yet, but...”

“Did you figure out where the voice was coming from?”

Robideau informed her it might have come from the furnace room or from the upstairs storage room, but he was forced to admit he had not gone further along that line of investigation.

“Then you should, chief. You should. After all, it’s where all this started.”

“I don’t disagree. But there’s some unfinished business between you and me, isn’t there?”

The sheepish look returned.

“This changes things,” she said as if to herself.

“Changes what, Mrs. Pashniak?”

“I lay awake all night fretting about it. I made a promise, and I don’t take my promises lightly. But as I said, things have changed.”

“Do you know where Miss Lemay is?”

She shook her head. “No. I wish I could tell you that, but I can’t.”

“Then...”

She silenced him with a raised hand, opened a drawer in the coffee table, extracted two keys and a small plastic bag, and thrust them at him. “Miss Lemay meant to go away, you see, and asked me to keep an eye on things. Take in her mail, water her plants until she sent for them — she loved plants. But she made me agree not to tell anyone. She never said as much but I got the feeling she’d be in awful trouble with somebody if they knew she was sneaking away secretly like that.”

“But if you knew she was leaving, why did you worry?”

“I didn’t. It was the other girls who worried. I thought I knew what was going on, but then...” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Then I started thinking, what if something happened to her before she got away? What then? So I decided to tell you.”

Robideau nodded. “This at least explains why the plants weren’t dried out.” He took the mail and leafed through it. It didn’t amount to much, but then the girl hadn’t been here long enough to establish a presence. There were a few fliers, a cable television bill, and a manila envelope from a national seed company...

His interest quickened.

The manila envelope had been redirected, a previous address scribbled out with a pen.

A previous address.

An address in the city.

“I won’t be arrested over this, will I?” fretted Mrs. Pashniak.

“Not today,” Robideau assured her.

The girl who received him was thin and plain, though with remarkable eyes and a faultless complexion. Her name was Sidney Brixton, and certainly she knew Angela. They had been friends since enrolling in Fine Arts, where Sidney had majored in photography, and Angela in modem dance. Angela had done well. Won some awards for choreography. But she’d had trouble landing employment after graduation.

Sidney Brixton was consternated to hear that her friend had gone missing. The chief said, “You haven’t heard from her, then, since she left?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re not just saying that because she asked you to?”

“Oh, no!”

“You were close, then? Friends and roommates?”

“Yes. Then she went off to that little town. I told her it was silly, that the city was a better place for her, but she was determined. She had a benefactor, she said. A patron. Someone who would help her get established.” Sidney ruefully blinked her large, sad eyes. “She hoped to open a dance school. It was her fallback plan, you see — to teach. But it would take money to set it up, and she didn’t have any.”

“Who was this benefactor?”

“A man. I never actually met him. If he came to get her, they’d meet down at the door. We spoke on the phone a few times, and I didn’t like him because he seemed arrogant. Smug and superior. I never said as much to Angela, though.”

“Why not?”

“She would have had ten fits. She’d have asked me how I could say such a thing about someone I knew nothing about.”

Sidney shrugged. “We parted on good terms, though, and I expected to hear from her.” Her face clouded. “And now I think you’re telling me that I may not hear from her ever again.” Her large eyes glistened.

“I need to find this man,” Robideau said. “Can you tell me his name?”