Conway half-feared that some emotion might well up in him when, for the first time since the night she had disappeared, he entered Helen’s room. But if there was any, it could hardly be called an emotion; he felt only the merest flicker of relief that she was not there, and never would be again. Irrelevantly, he realized that he would have to do something about disposing of Helen’s clothes.
Bauer headed straight for the dresser and opened the top drawer. Conway felt a moment of panic: it was the drawer in which he had replaced the new gloves Helen had been wearing, after he had cleaned and pressed them. The blithering idiot, Conway raged to himself. Why should he pick that particular drawer?
The detective straightened up almost immediately. In his right hand he held a small red imitation leather address book.
“See?” he said. “That’s what I mean about practically always being right.”
“It’s amazing,” Conway said. “I wouldn’t have gotten around to looking there for an hour.” Keep him taking bows, he thought.
Bauer was thumbing through the book, comparing the names he found with the ones on his list. After a few pages he stopped. “Who’s this?” he asked. Conway walked to him and looked at the open page.
“Oh,” he said. “The Gordons. They were the best friends we had out here. They went back to New York about three months ago.”
“That must be why she crossed out the address and phone number,” the sergeant observed. Conway mentally applauded this brilliant bit of deduction, but said only, “I suppose so.”
Bauer continued leafing through the book, which consisted mostly of blank white pages. “Didn’t know very many people, did you? Must of been kind of lonesome for you,” he remarked when he was halfway through.
“Not particularly,” Conway said. “Of course we’ve missed the Gordons, but my wife and I were perfectly happy just by ourselves.”