The Missing Daughter, Part 2

The Adventures of Rocky Stone continues with the very brief story of The Missing Daughter, from the notebooks dated April 23, 1949. As you will no doubt remember from last time, Rocky received a visit from Gus Cantelmi, a reporter from the Los Diablos Chronicle who writes under the name Hugh Cantelmi.

Gus drove me to a diner on Chestnut and treated me to the best meal five cents could buy. We sat at the counter trying to figure out how best to keep it down when he turned to me and asked, “Do you know Fulton Bricksetter?”

“Go fish,” I replied.

“He's one of your wealthier men in town. Invalid, confined to a wheelchair. Probably waiting to die, poor sap. He has a daughter.”

“I'm not interested.”

“You will be,” said Gus. “I happen to know he's searching for her whereabouts. A good word from me, and you're as good as in.”

“And in return, exclusive rights to the story?”

He grinned at me and it was disgusting. “What more could you do for an old pal?”

I said I wouldn't mind the work and we shook on it. The lunch he bought me chose that moment to kick me in the ribs and it made me think twice about the whole deal.

***********************

The home of Fulton Bricksetter was built for a king, provided the king was a sucker for the look of an old California mission. From a distance, the Bricksetter compound looked like a model, a group of sandy squares chained together along the surface of a dry valley, but on closer examination it was real and remote and slightly decaying. I rolled in through a small, open gate and parked in the front next to a convertible Italian roadster of an obscure make that probably cost the amount of money I've earned in my whole lifetime.

Along a far wing to my right, a maid in a black, full uniform sweated along a walkway with an armload of towels and disappeared along a corner. I emptied out of the Buick and felt the heat of the Santa Ana slicing into my face, glanced in at the roadster. The registration card was in the name of Lola Bricksetter, the only daughter of the lord of the manor.

A polite cough mingled with the hot breeze. At the front door stood an overstuffed man in a black suit with tails, a white tie, and white gloves. He stood at attention and coughed again into his glove.

“Dusty out here,” I quipped.

The butler said nothing in return and stood his ground until I came near. We walked inside in silence.

The rich have a couple of methods to describe their opulence. One is to be a sparse as possible with decoration, but to use decorations which inspire awe and wonder, such as a valuable first edition or the Hope Diamond. The second way is to force as many things as possible into the eye of the beholder, just to make sure everyone knows how many things they have. The Bricksetters used the latter method, spreading furniture and knick-knacks and paintings around like so much manure. A wide room filled with vases and statues and breakables, complete with a grand staircase in the center, the place reeked of money misspent.

“If you would wait here,” the butler said, and drifted down a hallway that seemed to have no end. I settled in an overstuffed armchair that looked inviting but from the feel of it was built only for decoration. After a minute of waiting I transferred myself to a matching couch which was slightly more comfortable.

A picture of the missing girl sat on the end table. Pretty enough. Her lips were a bit too thin and her hair didn't know whether to be blonde or brunette but the rest of her face could get her what she wanted with little trouble. One look at those dark eyes of hers and I could see was the type who wanted plenty, and the more it cost, the better. All to the good; the more money she left behind, the easier it would be to trail her. I settled back and counted my blessings.

The butler came back, rolling a struggling little man in a rickety chair in front of him. Fulton Bricksetter was wrapped in a pale yellow shirt and a white cravat, pinned together carefully with a pearl stick pin that appeared to be holding his head on. A dusty, blue smoking jacket covered him to keep him warm and his frail hands rested on the blanket that covered his legs from view. He had nothing but a wisp of hair on his head and a mustache so pale it blended in with his complexion. The butler wheeled him across from me, and the old man sniffed sharply.

“You are Stone?” he croaked in a voice that must have been powerful at its best, and still had a bit of juice left over.

“I'm flesh and blood, sir.” I quipped.

He tilted his head at the joke. No one had a sense of humor around these parts. “My daughter Lola has been missing for quite some time, Stone. She is all I have after her mother died. Just her and this old house, which I despise.” He wheeled on the butler. “Blodgkins, get this man a drink and quit standing around.”

“Ginger ale,” I added, and he vanished in a black-and-white streak before the master asked him for something else.

“I do admire a man who enjoys a good ginger ale. My doctor has forbidden me from indulging, so you'll beg my pardon if I take the drink through you.” Bricksetter sniffed again, a nervous habit of his. “A week ago, Lola and I had a heated argument over a gambling debt of hers. She frequents an after-hours place run by Louie Box. You know him, I trust.”

“By reputation only. He and I don't run in the same circles.”

The front door opened and I turned around to see who it was. To my surprise, it was the girl in the picture, the woman I had taken for Lola Bricksetter. She was tall and lean and could make her living as a javelin if she could take all the throwing around. Her eyes took one look at me and said You'll do as she breezed in and took over the room. The old man didn't even look at her.

“She is wild and hard and everything a girl of her age should not be. I will make no excuses. Anything she has learned how to be she has learned from her father.” The girl floated past and watched me as she pursed her lips and kissed the old man on the lower side of his jaw as he talked. “There is no good in her as there is no good in me. An old man's regret. Perhaps it is too late for her and I will go on paying these weekly debts for the rest of the life I still have left, but I...” He touched his cheek with his bony hand. “Oh, hello, dear. Stone, this is my daughter, Lola.”

I stood with a head full of bubbles and shook her hand lightly. “Pleased to meet you,” I said to her, and she winked at me. To the old man I said: “You have another daughter, I take it?”

“No, just the one. Why?”

“You hired me to find her. And here she is.”

The eyes of Fulton Bricksetter bounced between his daughter and me and back again. He considered this very carefully. “So she is. Blodgkins!” he called. “Pay this man, would you?”

The business apparently done, the daughter pushed her father down the hall in his wheelchair. Halfway down she turned and looked at me with a wild, wicked grin. “Call me,” she whispered.

In a few seconds, the butler returned with a ginger ale in one hand and a couple of saw bucks in the other. I emptied the glass in one short motion and crumpled the bills in a wad and shoved them in my pocket. “So much for that,” I shrugged.

“My name isn't Blogkins, by the way,” the butler replied, as he showed me to the door.

END