The Murderers (Badge of Honor 6)

Mrs. Arne—Beatrice—Jensen answered the telephone on the second ring and told Mrs. Rogers her husband had just left in the

Cadillac to take it to Merion Cadillac-Olds for service.

“Mr. D,” Mrs. Rogers said, “Jensen took the limousine in for service.”

“Go get the Rolls, please, Violet,” Detweiler said, as calmly as he could manage.

“Oh, my God!” Mrs. Grace Detweiler wailed as she came into the room and saw her husband with their daughter in his arms. “What’s happened?”

“Goddamn it, Grace, don’t go to pieces on me,” Detweiler said. He turned to Violet.

“Not the Rolls, the station wagon,” he said, remembering.

There wasn’t enough room in the goddamned Rolls Royce Corniche for two people and a large-sized cat, but Grace had to have a goddamned convertible.

“What’s the matter with her?” Grace Detweiler asked.

“God only knows what she took this time,” Detweiler said, as much to himself as in reply to his wife.

“Beatrice,” Violet said, “get the keys to the station wagon. I’ll meet you by the door.”

“Oh, my God!” Grace Detweiler said, putting her balled fist to her mouth. “She’s unconscious!”

“Baxley has the station wagon,” Mrs. Jensen reported. “He’s gone shopping.”

Baxley was the Detweiler butler. He prided himself that not one bite of food entered the house that he had not personally selected. H. Richard Detweiler suspected that Baxley had a cozy arrangement with the grocer’s and the butcher’s and so on, but he didn’t press the issue. The food was a good deal better than he had expected it would be when Grace had hired the Englishman.

“Baxley’s gone with the station wagon,” Violet reported.

Goddamn it all to hell! Both of them gone at the same time! And no car, of five, large enough to hold him with Penny in his arms. And nobody to drive the car if there was one.

“Call the police,” H. Richard Detweiler ordered. “Tell them we have a medical emergency, and to send an ambulance immediately.”

He left the bedroom carrying his daughter in his arms, and went down the corridor, past the oil portrait of his daughter in her pink debutante gown and then down the wide staircase to the entrance foyer.

“Police Radio,” Mrs. Leander—Harriet—Polk, a somewhat more than pleasingly plump black lady, said into the microphone of her headset.“We need an ambulance,” Violet said.

Harriet Polk had worked in the Radio Room in the Police Administration Building for nineteen years. Her long experience had told her from the tone of the caller’s voice that this was a genuine call, not some lunatic with a sick sense of humor.

“Ma’am, what’s the nature of the problem?”

“She’s unconscious, not breathing.”

“Where are you, Ma’am?”

“928 West Chestnut Hill Avenue,” Violet said. “It’s the Detweiler estate.”

Harriet threw a switch on her console which connected her with the Fire Department dispatcher. Fire Department Rescue Squads are equipped with oxygen and resuscitation equipment, and manned by firemen with special Emergency Medical Treatment training.

“Unconscious female at 928 West Chestnut Hill Avenue,” she said.

Then she spoke to her caller.

“A rescue squad is on the way, Ma’am,” she said.

“Thank you,” Violet said politely.

Nineteen years on the job had also embedded in Harriet Polk’s memory a map of the City of Philadelphia, overlaid by Police District boundaries. She knew, without thinking about it, that 928 West Chestnut Hill Avenue was in the Fourteenth Police District. Her board showed her that Radio Patrol Car Twenty-three of the Fourteenth District was in service.