Murder Is A Girl’s Best Friend

Chapter 11

I WENT BACK TO MY OWN APARTMENT TO make the call. The sales slip with the phone number was in my purse, and besides, I wanted to talk to Vicki in private, without Abby sticking her cheek up next to mine and mashing her ear against the receiver, trying to tune in Vicki’s words the very moment they came through the wire.

I dialed and the phone rang twice. Then a woman’s voice, much higher and shriller than Vicki’s, answered, “Hello, who’s there?”

“This is Phoebe Starr,” I said, “and I’m calling to speak to Vicki… Vicki Lee Bumstead. Do I have the right number?”

“Vicki!” the woman screeched, blasting my eardrum to smithereens, then dropping the phone down-hard-on a table, or the floor, or some other solid surface. “You got a call! Hurry up! It’s almost your bedtime!”

A few seconds passed, then I heard footsteps racing toward the phone. “Hello?” Vicki said, huffing as though she’d just run down to the deli and back. “Phoebe?”

“Yes!” I said, surprised that she knew it was me (or, rather, the “me” I was pretending to be) without her mother telling her.

“Thank God!” she exclaimed, her gravelly voice giving the words she spoke a rich and smoky intensity. “I was praying you would call.”

“You were? Why? What’s happening?” This sounded serious.

“I was thinking about everything you said-about Judy being killed on purpose by somebody who knew her-and I started wondering if you were right. And that started me wondering who could have done it-who could have actually pulled the trigger-and why that person wanted Judy dead. And you know what I think?”

“What?!” I squawked (and I’m sure the timbre of my voice was every bit as shrill as Vicki’s mother’s). “What do you think?”

“I think somebody killed her to get the diamonds.”

Big sigh. So Vicki knew about the diamonds, too… “What? What diamonds?” I said, playing dumb, waiting to see how she would explain the jewelry connection to me.

“Oh, come on, Phoebe! You know!” she insisted. “The diamond necklace and bracelets and earrings and stuff that Judy’s daddy-o gave her. Your aunt must have told you about it! I know for a fact that Judy told her.”

I wondered if Elsie would have mentioned the jewelry to me today if I hadn’t had to leave her apartment so suddenly. Then I wondered how many other people knew about Judy’s valuable rock collection.

“You’re right,” I said. “Aunt Elsie did tell me about the diamonds. I was just surprised that you knew about them, too.” God forgive me for being such a barefaced bamboo zler.

“I don’t know what you were so surprised about. I told you that Judy always told me everything!” She was getting impatient with me now. Was it because she thought I was being too slow and secretive, or because it was getting too close to her bedtime?

Deciding for both our sakes to hurry things along, I took a deep breath and posed the all-important question. “Did Judy tell you whether or not Smith was her daddy-o’s real name?”

“She didn’t have to tell me,” Vicki said. “I knew it was a fake. Judy knew it, too. She wasn’t stupid, you know.”

“Did she ever tell you what his real name was?” I took another deep breath and held it, praying for a definitive answer.

“She didn’t have to tell me that, either,” Vicki declared. “I knew the man long before she did. See, I started working in the lingerie department about six months before Judy, and he was a regular customer of mine. He bought a lot of sexy undergarments from me, and he charged everything to his account, which was credited under the name of Gregory Smythe, not Smith.”

Hallelujah! It wasn’t wrapped in pretty paper with a bow, but it was still a fabulous Christmas gift. Bursting with excitement, I grabbed the telephone directory out of the drawer of the living room table and opened it to the S’s.

“So, is that where he and Judy met? At Macy’s?” I asked, greedily pumping for more information and madly flipping through the pages of the phone book at the same time.

“Yep! It was Judy’s third day on the job, I remember, and Mr. Smythe came up to buy a black lace bra for his girlfriend. At least I thought it was for a girlfriend, since most men don’t usually buy stuff like that for their wives. Anyway, while I was back in the stockroom looking for the right style and size, Mr. Smythe and Judy got to talking-and flirting, she told me later-and I guess he took a real tumble for her, because by the time I came back with the brassiere he wanted, he’d already asked her to go out on a date with him that very same night.”

“Did she accept?” I asked, running my finger down the short column of Smythes, disappointed to find no listing under G. or Gregory.

“Sure did,” Vicki said, “and who could blame her? Her boyfriend Jimmy-the one I told you about before, the poet with the dog?-well, he was giving her a real bad time at that point, spending all his nights at the Vanguard and all his mornings with other girls, and Judy was desperate for a little attention and affection.”

“Which, I presume, Mr. Smythe was more than happy to provide.” My voice was sounding a tad sarcastic again.

Vicki giggled. “He sure was! He took her out that night-and every night after that-for about two weeks. And then-abracadabra!-he gave her a diamond bracelet, and he told her he loved her, and he talked her into becoming his mistress, and he set her up in her very own apartment, and I guess he ditched his other girlfriend, too-the one he had been buying all the slinky underwear for-because he never came back to the lingerie department after that. And I never laid eyes on him again. He was doing all his shopping at Tiffany’s instead of Macy’s.”

Did I detect a note of jealousy in Vicki’s husky alto?

“What does Smythe look like?” I asked her. “Aunt Elsie said he’s pretty old.”

“I would guess he’s in his fifties, but I can’t say for sure. He’s so handsome and debonair, you really can’t tell. He’s got sparkly blue eyes and thick, wavy gray hair, and he looks and dresses like a movie star. Like Cesar Romero.”

“Do you know where he lives, or what he does for a living?”

“No idea. He never talked about his personal life to me or Judy. Judy knew he was married, and that he was rich, but he never told her anything else about his work or his family. She didn’t even know if he had any kids or not. She never asked him any questions about his private life, either, because she didn’t want to bother him or make him uncomfortable. She said she didn’t care if he worshipped his wife and had thirty-six children-she loved him anyway.”

“Was it SmytheJudy loved, or the jewelry he gave her?”

“Judy wasn’t like that!” Vicki said, with an audible exclamation point. “She didn’t care about the jewelry at all! She never even wore any of it. She only accepted the gifts because Mr. Smythe insisted, and because it made him so happy to give them to her. She would do anything to make him happy.”

I thought about what Vicki said for a moment and realized that-in spite of the improbability of her statements-I was inclined to believe her. Her perception of Judy jibed perfectly with both Terry’s and Elsie Londergan’s-and three out of three was good enough for me. For the time being, anyway.

“I’d really like to speak with Mr. Gregory Smythe,” I told her. “Could you go into your bookkeeping files and get his address and phone number for me?”

There was a long silence. “Gee, I don’t know,” Vicki finally answered. “I couldn’t do it myself, but maybe I could get a friend of mine who works in the the billing office to look him up.”

“Please try,” I said. “It’s very important that I talk to him.”

“What for?” she inquired, with a sudden and unmistakable tone of disapproval in her voice. “You don’t think he killed Judy, do you?”

“I have to investigate all the possibilities.”

“But Mr. Smythe is definitely not a possibility!” she said with conviction. “He’s a real classy gentleman. I mean it, Phoebe! He wouldn’t hurt a gnat.”

“But would he hurt a girl?” I said. “That’s the thirty thousand dollar question.”

“Thirty thou…? What are you talking about?”

“That’s how much Judy’s diamonds were worth. Thirty-thousand dollars.”

“Wow!” Vicki blurted, obviously surprised. “I had no idea that…”

“Vicki!” her mother screamed in the background. “It’s past eleven! Get off the phone! Now!

“I’ve gotta go,” Vicki sputtered, responding to her mother’s orders on the double. “Call me tomorrow?”

“Uh, sure… okay,” I said, barely getting the last syllable out of my startled mouth before the line went dead.

I LOOKED AT MY WATCH. VICKI’S MOTHER was right; it was fifteen minutes past eleven. But the way I was feeling, it seemed much later. I was so tired, jittery, and confused-and still so upset about Dan-I wanted nothing more than to creep up the stairs to my bedroom and crawl under the covers with my clothes on. I wanted to curl myself up in a tight little ball and pull Bob’s old army blanket all the way over my head, I wanted to drop off into oblivion and forget I ever heard the names of Terry and Judy Catcher. Or, for that matter, Gregory Smythe.

But I didn’t have time for oblivion. Or even just a couple of winks. A murderer was on the loose, and I was the only person on earth (well, the only sober person on earth) who was trying to track him down. And tired and frazzled though I was, I knew for a fact that eleven-fifteen was the right and perfect time for me to set forth on my next clue-hunting expedition. The jazz (and, hopefully, the poetry) would be getting into full swing at the Vanguard right about now.

In an effort to boost my energy level (i.e., keep myself vertical for a couple more hours), I gulped down another cup of black coffee. Then I pushed myself up the stairs to my closet, took off my pale yellow sweater set, pulled on my black knit scoop neck, switched my sheer flesh-colored stockings for black, and put on a clean black sheath skirt. Lumbering into the bathroom to splash some water on my tired face, I then wiped off all my red lipstick, powdered my nose, and put on a pile of heavy black eye makeup. I looked as wan and bloodless as Count Dracula before his midnight snack, but I would blend in beautifully with the somber, sooty-eyed bohemians.

I went back downstairs and put on my coat and my snowboots. Then, grabbing my purse off the table and slapping my black beret on my head, I carefully let myself out of my apartment and inched my way down the stairwell, being as quiet as a baby chipmunk walking on tiptoes in slippers made of silk. I did not want Abby to hear me. If she came out into the hall and found out where I was going, she’d want to come with me. And God only knew what kind of trouble that would lead to.

Opening the door at the bottom of the stairwell as quietly as I possibly could, I slipped out onto the sidewalk, clicked the door closed behind me, then quickly started walking west on Bleecker, toward Seventh Avenue. It was freezing and the street was practically deserted. I pulled my coat collar up and held it around my face, breathing into it, trying to keep my nose warm. Nearly gagging from my hurried pace and the gamey smell of damp camel’s hair, I turned right onto Seventh and pushed northward, ducking my head against the arctic wind and keeping my eyes trained on the sidewalk, cautiously avoiding the most dangerous patches of hardened snow and ice.

There was more traffic on the Avenue-both human and automotive-and many more Christmas lights were twinkling, especially in the Sheridan Square area. From West 4th Street on, however, things got a little quieter-and a whole lot darker. Shaking from the cold (okay, my nerves were causing some trembling, too!), I walked as fast as I could past West 10th, Charles, Perry, and Waverly Place, until finally-at the ominous stroke of midnight-I found myself standing under the long, red, snow-topped awning stretching from the curb to the entrance of the Village Vanguard.

Striving to be as brave as Brenda Starr (but feeling as spooked as Cosmo Topper), I sucked in a blast of frigid air and blew out a cloud of white steam. Then I pulled the creaky, heavy wood door open and stepped inside.