Murder Is A Girl’s Best Friend

Chapter 6

I WAS HALFWAY UP THE STAIRS WHEN THE phone rang. I spun around and scrambled back down to the living room to answer it, hoping it would be Dan.

“Hellohhhhh?” I said, making my voice as soft and sultry as possible in case it was.

“Hi there,” Dan said, in his deep, delicious baritone. “Did I wake you up? You sound kind of groggy.”

So much for sultry. “I wasn’t sleeping,” I admitted, reverting to my normal voice, “but I am tired. I was just on my way up to bed.”

“Tough day?”

He should only know. “It was the worst!” I exclaimed, widening my eyes and flapping my lashes, doing my best Lucille Ball-even though Dan couldn’t see me. “We had to meet a major deadline at work,” I told him, furtively evading all mention of you-know-who and what, “and all the afternoon pickups and deliveries were late because of the snow. ”

I felt terrible that I had-once again-put myself in the position of having to hide the truth from Dan, but I soothed my feelings of guilt by reminding myself that it was his own darn fault. I mean, if Dan hadn’t forbidden me to ever get involved in another unsolved murder case (which was a pretty harsh ordinance when you consider my line of work!) then I wouldn’t have had to be keeping any secrets from him. I could have told him all about my late husband’s friend Terry Catcher, and the horrible murder of his little sister Judy, and the diamond jewelry hidden in the oatmeal box. And then Dan might have been able to help me instead of making me feel like a felon-and lie like a rug.

Okay, okay! I guess I’m not really being fair here. I mean, I knew the main reason Dan ordered me off the Babs Comstock story-and all dangerous murder stories thereafter-was for my own protection. And I knew he felt even more protective of me now that we’d become romantically involved. And I loved the fact that he worried about me so much-I really, really did! But that didn’t change the fact that I’d wanted to be both a true crime writer and a mystery novelist since I was a freshman (freshgirl?) in high school. And-though Dan’s deep concern for me was a continuing source of joyous, heart-soaring delight-it still wasn’t enough to make me relinquish the only real career goals I’d ever had. No matter how dangerous (or unwomanly) they happened to be.

And now I had an even more compelling reason to pursue those goals. I had someone who was depending on me to exercise my sleuthing skills. How could I possibly turn my back on Terry Catcher? He had been Bob’s best friend in Korea, and one of the last people to see my husband alive. Bob had risked his own life to save Terry’s. Twice! So wasn’t it only natural that I should feel responsible for Terry, too? I couldn’t save his sister’s life, but I could try to find out who had caused her death. And I knew that’s what Bob would want me to do.

“I had a rough day, too,” Dan said, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “Two prostitutes slashed to ribbons in Bryant Park. No witnesses because of the storm. Luckily, a mailman decided to cut through the park and found the bodies. He notified the station immediately, and we got there pretty quick, but it was snowing so hard that whatever clues there may have been were already buried. No footprints except the mailman’s. By that time, even the corpses were covered. And the ambulance had a hell of a time getting down the snowbound street to the scene. I was there all afternoon and evening, digging through the bloody ice, freezing my castanets off.”

“That’s awful!” I cried, glad the focus of our conversation had shifted from my day to his, and hoping I could keep it that way. “But how do you know the victims were prostitutes?” I asked. “Have the bodies been identified?”

“Yes, that was the easy… ”

“And what about the weapon? Did you find a knife or anything?”

“Uh, no, we… ”

“Did you check out the mailman? His story sounds kind of fishy to me. Why would he cut through the park in the middle of a snowstorm?”

“Hold it right there, Paige!” Dan said, in his toughest law enforcement tone. “No more questions. I’ve told you too much as it is. And don’t think for one second you’re going to play detective again and write a big story about this case. I’ll stop you before you even sharpen your pencil.” He sounded so cute I wanted to kiss him on the neck. His lovable but insufferably stiff neck.

“The thought never crossed my mind,” I said, telling the truth and nothing but the truth (if you don’t count the pouty inflection I put in my voice to give Dan the impression-just the slightest hint, I swear!-that he may have hurt my feelings). “I’m innocent of all charges!”

“That’s my girl,” Dan said, relieved. “You know I hate to be a bear, but it’s only for your own good.”

“I know… I know!” I said, heaving a huge (and totally honest) sigh. Then I quickly changed the subject. “I’m sorry you had to stay out in the cold so long. Have you thawed out yet? Where are you now?”

“Back at Headquarters. Got a lot of paperwork.”

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” I asked, suddenly longing for his company. I wasn’t feeling tired anymore. Now I was just feeling lonely. Desperately lonely. (The specter of death often has that effect on me.) “Come on over for a nightcap,” I begged, neglecting to mention that all I had in the house to drink was Dr. Pepper.

“I’d love to, Paige, but I really can’t. Too much work, and the driving’s impossible. I even canceled my regular Monday evening visit with Katy,” he said, referring to his much beloved fourteen-year-old daughter-his only child (and the only happy outcome of his very unhappy marriage to the vain, unfaithful wife he divorced some six years ago). “I’ve got at least an hour’s worth of forms to fill out,” he grumbled, “and with all this snow, it could take me two hours to get downtown to you.”

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “Come on-a my house, my house-a come on,” I crooned, trying to sing like Rosemary Clooney, but surely sounding more like Andy Devine. “I’m-a gonna give-a you figs and dates and grapes and cakes… ”

Dan chuckled, and the way his laughter curled around in his throat made my skin tingle. “Very tempting,” he said, “but I’ve got to write these reports up now, while the facts are still clear in my mind. And I thought you said you were tired… on your way up to bed.”

“The sound of your voice rejuvenated me,” I told him. “And I feel sorry for your cold castanets.”

The minute those words were out of my mouth, my face turned hot as a bonfire. I hardly ever made suggestive comments like that (except to Mike and Mario, when I was trying to deflect their suggestive comments to me). And I never spoke that way to Dan. Really! I don’t know what came over me. Either I’d lost my head in the whirlwind of the day’s startling and emotional events, or I’d picked up a racy (okay, raunchy) new manner of self-expression just from hanging out with Abby.

If Dan was shocked by my risqué remark, he didn’t let on. If anything, he seemed pleased. Another deep chuckle came rumbling through the receiver, ending in a long, luscious (dare I say lusty?) sigh. “I’ll come tomorrow night,” he said. “Snow or no snow. Around nine o’clock. Will that be okay?”

“Sure thing, Sergeant,” I said, trying to sound cool though my face was still flaming. “Be there or be square.”

AS ON-EDGE AND ANXIOUS AS I WAS, I FELL asleep the minute my bones hit the mattress. It wasn’t a deep and restful sleep-I kept thrashing around in the tangled covers, dreaming about guns, and diamonds, and dimples, and dachshunds, and soldiers with snow for hair-but at least I squirmed through the night in a somewhat unconscious state, and when my alarm clock woke me up in the morning I felt somewhat refreshed.

I showered, dressed (black wool skirt, pale yellow sweater set), slapped on some makeup, and hurried downstairs to the coat closet. The Thom McAn shoebox was there, right where I’d put it on the shelf, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that the upsetting events of the previous day had been real, not an invention of my freaky imagination. I took the shoebox down, yanked off the lid, and dumped Terry’s notes and the two photos out on the table. Then I scraped the scattered items into a neat little pile, stuffed the pile into the side pocket of my large black leather clutch bag (next to the newspaper clips about the murder), and zipped it closed.

After putting on all my outerwear-my camel’s hair coat, black beret, black gloves, green plaid muffler, and warm, dry, fur-lined, ankle-high snowboots-I stepped over to the cabinet above the kitchen sink and pulled it open. The white-haired man in the Quaker hat was still there, smiling out at me from the shadows, standing tall behind the Campbell ’s soup cans like a faithful yeoman of the guard. I gave him a sly wink and a grateful curtsy, closed the cabinet door, and left for work.

No traffic was moving on Bleecker. The cars lining the curb were all buried under a foot of snow, and there was an accumulation of at least ten inches in the street. The sidewalks weren’t much better. A few bundled-up pedestrians were making their way to the subway (and onward, I assumed, to work), but they were walking very slowly and carefully, in single file, along narrow footpaths that had been worn, like trenches, through the hardening snowbanks.

It was colder than a butcher’s freezer, but at least it wasn’t snowing anymore. Wrapping my muffler over the lower half of my face so my breath would keep my nose warm, and hugging my clutch bag in close to my chest like a baby, I joined the slow-moving procession toward Sixth Avenue and the West 4th Street entrance to the BMT.

It was freezing cold below ground, too. The handful of people waiting near the track for the uptown train were standing unusually close together-in an almost-but-not-quite huddle-hoping, I realized, to draw some warmth from each other. I wormed my way into the middle of the small crowd and stood there, shivering, watching everybody’s breath turn to steam, until the train screeched into the station.

It was one of the older, heavier, clankier trains-the kind that had been around since the late 1920s-with the long, segmented, caterpillar-like cars. When the doors slid open, I scurried into the closest car, hoping the air would be warmer inside. It was-a little. Sitting down in the first forward-facing seat I came to, I carefully arranged my coat underneath my legs to keep my nylons from snagging on the frayed rattan seats.

The train was old, but the overhead advertisements were new. Judy Garland smiled down from one of the posters, proclaiming that Westmore lipstick had been KISS-TESTED, and had PROVED BEST in movie close-ups, while right across the aisle-dressed in a white evening gown and proudly smoking a cigarette-Mrs. Francis Irénéé du Pont II of Wilmington and New York, “one of Society’s most charming young matrons,” declared she wouldn’t go anywhere without her Camels. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis made hostile faces at each other in an ad for The Colgate Comedy Hour, and the owners of a certain brewery were proud to present Miss Adrienne Garrott-a golden-skinned girl with a thick, foamy head of light blonde hair-as Miss Rhein gold of 1954 (I wondered if she’d been chosen for her likeness to a glass of beer). There were lots of other ads, too-for products like Ovaltine, Tussy lotion, Duz detergent, Camay soap, Odo-ro-no cream deodorant, and (eerily enough) Thom McAn shoes-and I dutifully scanned them all.

I was beginning to read the ads all over again, for the fourth and (I hoped) final time, when the train pulled into the Times Square station. As soon as the doors opened, I jumped out onto the platform and dashed through the underground depot to the 42nd Street shuttle. Then I got on that train, and stood-lurching and swaying from a leather hand strap near the door (not even one of the male passengers got up to offer me his seat!)-until the shuttle reached the Third Avenue stop. My stop.

A short block’s trudge through the snow, a quick dash into the lobby coffee shop for my take-out morning muffin, a fast flight up nine floors in the elevator, a brisk stroll down the hall to the third door on the left, and I finally walked into the cold, dark Daring Detective office.

As always (i.e., as required), I was the first employee to arrive. One of my primary daily duties was to make the place comfortable-turn on all the lights, warm up the radiators, open the blinds, gather up the newspapers, sort the mail and so forth-for my five male “superiors,” who wouldn’t begin rolling in until thirty minutes later.

The early bird catches the worm, they say, but in my case it just meant I got to make the coffee.

“SO WHAT WAS IN THE SHOEBOX?” LENNY asked me as soon as he stumbled into the office. He was still gasping for breath from his nine-floor climb. His black-rimmed glasses sat crookedly on his large hook nose, giving him the appearance of a cockeyed goose.

“Shhhhhh!” I hissed, holding my index finger up to my lips, jerking my head toward Harvey Crockett’s private office, where our ex-newsman boss sat swilling coffee and reading the papers-with his door (and probably his ears) wide open. “I’m secretly working on a new story,” I whispered. “I’ll tell you all about it later.”

Lenny looked like he was going to pop. “Another murder story?” His lips were murmuring, but his eyes were screaming their heads off. He was, I knew, scared that I might be getting involved in something I shouldn’t. Something perilous and catastrophic. Something that might-in some seemingly indirect, but still horribly injurious way-involve him. Like the last time.

“Don’t worry, Lenny,” I quickly replied, trying to soothe him with my soft, steady tone. “I’m not in any danger at all. This is just a simple, straightforward murder case that the police are too lazy to solve. I’m looking into it for a friend of mine, actually a good friend of Bob’s.”

“Oh, I get it!” Lenny said, in a voice so acidic it could have stripped the enamel off the side of a bus. “You’re just skipping through a field of daisies, singing ‘Little Things Mean a Lot,’ and looking for another cold-blooded killer to play hide and seek with.” His normally thin, pale face was puffed up like a pink balloon. “And there’s nothing for me to worry about because you’re doing this for a good friend, right? Oh, no! Excuse me! I’ve got that all wrong, you’re doing it for a good friend of Bob’s! Your wonderful, perfect-need I remind you, dead?-husband Bob.”

Lenny had gone too far, and he knew it. Way too far. His puffy face registered a sudden look of horror and disbelief, then melted into a soggy mass of shame. “I’m sorry, Paige,” he muttered, staring down at his feet with the intensity of a man who’d just discovered he was standing barefoot in a briar patch. “Please forgive me. That was an awful thing to say. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

“I know you didn’t mean it, Lenny,” I said, quickly brushing my fingers down the side of his cheek and shoulder, then resting them on the damp sleeve of his thin black overcoat. “And I don’t blame you for being worried. But, please believe me, there’s no reason for you to… ”

The office entrance bell jingled, and in walked Mike and Mario.

“Hey, what’s going on here?” Mario cried, when he saw me standing up close to Lenny with my hand on his arm. “This is an office, not a dance hall! So ditch the tango, Zimmerman, and get to work!” Ever since Lenny had saved my life, Mario had been extremely jealous of his assistant’s newborn hero status (and of his newborn friendship with me).

“Maybe he’s not dancing,” Mike chimed in, snickering. “Maybe he’s just turning a Paige!”

They laughed like insane hyenas for a couple of seconds, then began hanging their hats and coats and mufflers on the tree. Embarrassed by their gibes (and still mortified by his own hurtful remarks to me), Lenny pulled away from me and slunk over to his desk, plopping down in his chair with his coat still on. Then, as if prompted by a slapstick comedy director with a sadistic sense of timing, Harvey Crockett stuck his big bulldog head out of his office and hollered, “More coffee!”

My workday was off to a splendid start.