Murder Is A Girl’s Best Friend

Chapter 21

“HEY, BOBBA REE BOP!” ABBY EXCLAIMED, taking the half-full bottle of bourbon out of the bag and placing it on her kitchen counter. “Who wants a bourbon smash?” Her long black hair was loose and streaming down her back like a waterfall of India ink.

“I’ll have one,” Terry said, watching Abby’s fluid movements with a look of sheer enchantment on his face. It was the first time since I’d met him that I’d seen him show any real sign of happiness.

“I’ll have two,” I said, feeling decidedly unhappy. If you’ve ever been pushed in front of a train, you’ll understand why. (You’ll also understand why I went straight to Abby’s apartment, instead of my own, when I got home. Misery loves company, whether the company’s as miserable as you are or not.)

“You don’t sound so hot,” Abby said to me. She took a tray of ice out of the freezer and cranked apart the cubes. “You don’t look so hot, either. What’s been going on?”

“Oh, I had a pretty rough day,” I said, sighing heavily. I reached for the open pack of Pall Malls sitting on the kitchen table and lit one up. “But I don’t want to talk about that right now. I’ll tell you all about it later-after I’ve had a drink… and after you’ve told me about your top secret trip to Tiffany’s.”

“How do you know about that?!” Abby cried. Both she and Terry were gaping at me in shock. If their jaws had dropped any lower, they’d have broken right off their hinges.

“Yeah!” Terry said. “How did you find out? We wanted to surprise you.”

Basking in the pleasure of my sudden one-upmanship, I took a deep drag on my cigarette and exhaled slowly. “No one can surprise the Shadow!” I intoned, referring to the hero of The Shadow radio show and trying to mimic his wicked laugh. “The Shadow knows!”

“Knock it off,” Abby said, unamused. “Just tell us what happened. You went to Tiffany’s yourself, right?”

“Right.”

“And you spoke to Jeremy-I mean, Mr. Woodbury.”

“Right. Jeremy and I are as close as this.” I held up two crossed fingers as a visual aid. If Abby noticed the sarcastic tone of my expression (verbal or digital) she paid it no mind.

“And he told you I was there?” She brought our drinks over to the table and sat down in a huff. “That really frosts me! I thought the manager of a swank place like Tiffany’s would be much more discreet than that.”

“He didn’t tell me your name. He just mentioned that somebody else had been in earlier-somebody who was also interested in jewelry from the early thirties-and that he’d helped her do some research in the archives.”

“So how did you know it was me?”

“Just a lucky guess,” I said, deciding to forego the diversion of describing Mr. Woodbury’s rapturous trance and randy smile. I was afraid Terry would get jealous and stop being so happy. “So what did you find out?” I asked Abby. “Did your, uh, research in the archives turn up any new clues?”

“Just wait’ll you hear this!” Terry broke in, excited as a foxhound near the end of a chase. “Abby really hit the jackpot. She discovered that the diamonds were originally purchased in 1933 by one of Tiffany’s steady customers-a wealthy socialite named Mrs. Augusta Farnsworth Smythe. She even got the woman’s address!” He was bowled over by Abby’s brilliant skills of detection.

And frankly, my dear, so was I. “Oh, Abby, that’s atomic! How did you ever get Woodbury to give you that information?”

“I didn’t,” she said, with a mischievous smirk. “I took a peek inside the file when he wasn’t looking.”

“What file?”

“The file Jeremy took out of the archives when he was trying to help me determine the origin of the vintage diamond jewelry left to me by my dear departed Aunt Hester.”

I smiled. Dear departed aunts were all the rage this year.

“You wouldn’t believe how thorough and well-organized Tiffany’s records are!” Abby went on. “All the invoices in that file were arranged in perfect alphabetical order. And since my real purpose was to get the dope on Gregory Smythe, all I had to do was turn to the S section. There was nothing under Gregory but, thinking Mrs. Augusta Farnsworth Smythe might be Gregory’s wife or mother, I memorized the address on her invoice. Trouble is, the statement was dated December 1933-twenty-one years ago-so she probably doesn’t live there anymore. If she’s still alive at all.”

“What’s the address?” I asked.

“ 957 Park Avenue.”

“Yep! That’s the place!” I threw my head back and took a big swig of my drink.

“What place?!” Terry croaked. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that’s the same address Smythe’s secretary gave me. That’s where Gregory lives with his wife, Augusta, and that’s where the party is being held tomorrow night.”

If their eyes had popped any wider, they’d have turned inside out. “What party?!” they cried in unison.

The Shadow strikes again! It felt so good to relax and fool around, I wanted to toy with Abby and Terry a little while longer, pull the cards slowly-one by excruciating one-from my stealthy sweater sleeve. But that would have been an unconscionable waste of precious time (mine and theirs). And, if you want to know the truth, I was way too skittish (okay, scared) to keep on playing games. Because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop one sickening thought from streaking round and round my one-track mind: If it wasn’t for Elijah Peeps, I’d be soup now.

Anxious to fill them in and get their feedback (okay, sympathy), I gave Abby and Terry a quick recap of recent occurrences: how Vicki Lee Bumstead had given me Smythe’s business address; how I’d gone to see him at his office, and quietly suffered his slobbering advances, and then been invited to his and his wife’s annual Christmas party; how I’d rushed across town to Tiffany’s and cornered Mr. Woodbury just as the store was closing. And then finally, after these current events had been described and discussed at length, I took a deep breath, did a little backpedaling, and fretfully revealed the more troubling (okay, terrifying) episodes of my recent past.

First, I told them how Jimmy Birmingham had followed me home from the Village Vanguard early yesterday morning, and then had lurked in the doorway of the laundromat across the street till he knew which apartment I lived in-and which window led to my bedroom. Then-doing my best not to break down and start crying like a baby-I told them how I’d almost been obliterated early this morning in the subway.

“Oy gevalt!” Abby cried, when I pulled up my skirt and showed her my lacerated knees and shins. “That looks really bad!”

“Could be worse,” I said, trying not to think about how much worse.

One look at my wounds, and Terry flew into a fury. “That does it!” he roared, banging his fist on the tabletop. He didn’t look so happy anymore. Now he looked as if his head were going to explode. “I’m calling this whole thing off now, Paige! Stop searching for my sister’s murderer immediately! Goddamn it all to hell! I should never have gotten you involved in this. How could I have been so selfish? How could I do this to my best friend’s widow? If anything happened to you, I’d never forgive myself!” He bolted out of his chair and started stomping around the kitchen like a deranged Cossack.

I didn’t know what to say or do to calm him down. But Abby did. “Come on now, baby,” she cooed, slowly rising from her chair and then planting her gorgeous self in his path. She was using the voice of a mother, but the body language of a harem girl. “Don’t get your sweet keester in a kink. Paige is just fine, you dig? A few shin bumps and knee scratches never hurt anybody. She’ll be fit as a philharmonic fiddle in no time.”

Blocked from continuing his stomping rampage, Terry slumped toward Abby and gave her a look of pure anguish. “How can you say that? She was almost killed.”

This was my cue. “But I wasn’t!” I said, in what I hoped was a composed and stalwart tone. “And that’s the main thing, Terry. Almost doesn’t count.”

“Oh, yes it does!” he insisted, aiming his anguished eyes at me. “Whoever tried to kill you is sure to try it again. What if they almost fail?”

He had me there. And instead of feeling stalwart, I suddenly felt as weak as the runt in a litter of kittens.

Seeing that my determination was melting away, that I was on the verge of a moral collapse, Abby threw up her hands and hollered, “Stop it! Both of you! Stop sniveling and face the facts. It’s too late for Paige to pull out now. The murderer knows who she is and where she lives-probably even where she works-and there’s not a goddamn thing we can do about that.” She walked back to the table, sat down, and gave me a piercing stare. “Oh, you could change your name and quit your job and move to South America,” she said, “but is that what you want to do?”

“No!” I declared, surprised by my own vehemence. Some stalwartness must have snuck back into my spine when I wasn’t looking.

“Good,” Abby said, “because even that wouldn’t guarantee your safety. The killer still wants the diamonds, don’t forget, and I have a feeling he’d follow you to the ends of the earth to get them.”

Finally, the light bulb lit. “That’s it!” I cried, electrified. “That’s why Lenny’s lunchbox was stolen!”

My friends were gaping at me again. “What the hell’re you talking about now?” Terry grumbled. His endurance was wearing a little thin. He returned to his chair at the table and tossed down the rest of his drink.

I explained who Lenny was, and why I had bought him a lunchpail for Christmas, and how I’d been carrying the wrapped gift to work that morning in a shopping bag. “Why didn’t I think of it before?” I stammered. “The devil who pushed me onto the subway tracks must have thought the diamonds were stashed in the jewelry box-sized package in my shopping bag!”

“Now you’re talkin’!” Abby crowed. “That would explain everything. I couldn’t figure it before, but now I can.”

“What do you mean?” Terry asked, exasperated. “What the hell couldn’t you figure?” He was looking a lot like Ricky does when he’s unwittingly caught up in one of Lucy and Ethel’s outrageous schemes.

“I couldn’t understand why the murderer would try to kill Paige now,” Abby said to Terry, “before he’d gotten his hands on the diamonds. See, as far as any of our prime suspects could possibly know, you and Paige are the only two people who might have knowledge of the jewelry’s actual whereabouts. And since nobody has any idea where you are, Whitey, Paige is the murderer’s only hope of finding the diamonds right now. So why would he try to kill her before he knew where the trinkets were? That would be plain crazy-unless, that is, he had reason to believe that the diamonds were concealed in the gift-wrapped container buried in the shopping bag he so greedily snatched from Paige’s unwary hand just seconds before he pushed her in front of a train.”

Grinning like a cream-fed Cheshire, Abby leaned back in her chair and lit up a cigarette. “Whew!” she said, exhaling loudly. “That was a mouthful.”

“But it makes perfect sense!” I said, excited by Abby’s new slant on the situation. “And the fact that the diamonds were not in Lenny’s lunchbox,” I added, heaving an inner swoosh of relief, “is a kind of protection for me. Could be I’m not in so much danger anymore.”

“Right!” Abby agreed.

“Wrong!” Terry argued, giving me an intensely paternal, admonishing look. “The killer will still be following you around, Paige, looking for a way to trap you and make you tell him where the diamonds are. And then he’ll kill you.”

Parade canceled due to rain.

“Well, at least I’ll have some advance notice,” I said, looking for a rainbow, however small. “That should boost my odds of survival.” I couldn’t believe I was sitting there at Abby’s round oak dining table, calmly discussing my own death as if it were the next course on the menu.

“Oh, don’t be such a shlemiel!” Abby heckled. “Why settle for a puny, almost nonexistent advantage when you can beat the odds altogether? Whitey and I will help you. If we pool our resources we can bust this case wide open!” She reminded me of Ethel Merman belting out the title song of her new movie, There’s No Business Like Show Business. “And when you think about it,” Abby added, curving her blood red lips in a sweetly sardonic smile, “there’s really only one teensy little thing we have to do.”

“What’s that?” I asked, though I knew too darn well what her answer was going to be.

“Catch the killer before he catches you.”

ABBY MADE ANOTHER BATCH OF BOURBON smashes and Terry ran across the street to get a pizza pie, which we devoured the minute he got back-while it was still hot enough to burn our tongues off. And as soon as we finished the pizza, we consumed the leftover cake and cookies I’d brought from the office. Then, sucking on cigarettes and slurping our smashes, we put our three heads together and got down to business.

We needed a plan of attack, we decided, so we reviewed what we knew about Judy’s life up to the murder, the details of the murder itself, and everything we’d found out since. We made a list of the people we still hadn’t talked to, and the ones we felt we should talk to again. We made some very calm and careful decisions about when and where and how the new round of interviews should be conducted, and then we fought like cats and dogs over who should interrogate whom.

Abby and I thought Terry should stay out of sight, not let his whereabouts be known to anybody-the police or the murderer. We figured that would force the killer to focus all his attention on me-which would not only keep me on my toes, but would allow us to anticipate (maybe even control) his impending actions more easily.

Well, Terry had a flying fit when he heard that idea. There was “no way on earth” he was going to “hide out” in Abby’s apartment-like a “gutless soldier cowering in a foxhole”-while I risked life and limb to find the “bastard” who had killed his sister. If anything, he wanted to make himself the target-reveal himself to the murderer (and even to the police, if need be), in the hope that “all the goddamn future catastrophes in this case” would happen to him instead of me.

I appreciated Terry’s solicitude. Actually, I was quite moved he was being so protective. But I still didn’t like the idea of him prancing around out in the open, calling attention to himself, maybe getting himself arrested by the tenacious (when he wanted to be!) Detective Hugo Sweeny. If Terry got thrown in jail, it would screw up our entire investigation. Not only would he be useless to us behind bars, but then we’d have to turn the diamonds over to the police-thereby losing our prime lure, not to mention my only form of life insurance.

And then Dan would find out about the case. And learn the details of my secret but total involvement. And then all hell would break loose. And I feared Dan’s final retributions as much as I did the murderer’s. (Okay, okay! So that’s a slight exaggeration. I’d rather have lost my lover than my life… I guess.)

After lots of arguing and analyzing and compromising (and another round of drinks), we finally agreed on a plan for the following day: Terry would make a surprise appearance at his sister’s old apartment on East 19th Street and question her former roommates-especially the one who had lost a handful of hair due to flirting with Judy’s then boyfriend, who may or may not have been Jimmy Birmingham; Abby would go with me to pay a call on the same Mr. Birmingham, at the East 8th Street address we found listed next to his name in the phone book. I had originally intended to drop in on Jimmy and Otto by myself, but Terry and Abby quickly nixed that idea. They thought it would be too dangerous-and after closer consideration, so did I.

As for the Smythe’s Christmas Eve party, we decided we’d all three go together. I would pass myself off as a new Farnsworth Fiduciary client, Terry would pose as my husband, and Abby would play the part of an out-of-town cousin who was staying with us for the holidays. I wasn’t worried about bringing an additional guest since Smythe had said his wife would never notice an extra face in the crowd. And I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that when girl-happy Gregory got a good look at Abby, she’d be welcomed with open arms (and puckered lips).

I was glad my friends would be going to the party with me. I figured I’d feel a lot safer with a “husband” by my side. And I knew Abby would be the perfect decoy to keep Mr. Smythe occupied (and thoroughly distracted) while I focused my investigative attentions on Mrs. Smythe. Augusta, after all, had been the one who originally purchased the diamonds, so they had rightfully belonged to her. Did that mean Gregory had stolen the jewelry from his wife to give to his girlfriend? Did Augusta know that her precious antique diamonds had been removed from the family vault and deposited in the Chelsea apartment of her husband’s new mistress-a nineteen-year-old blonde lingerie salesgirl named Judy Catcher?

I hoped to get the answers to these and a few other questions at the party. And now that Terry and Abby would be there to help me, I thought I had a chance. It felt really great to be part of a bona fide team instead of having to wing it so much on my own. But, team or no team, I was still a third wheel. And Abby and Terry were making eyes at each other again! So-as soon as we decided on a new hiding place for the diamonds (wrapped in tinfoil and buried deep in a canister of sugar in Abby’s overstocked pantry)-I knew it was time for me to vamoose.

I gathered up my coat, beret, gloves, and the Tiffany bag with Dan’s present in it, and said goodnight. Then I stepped across the landing to my own apartment. I wasn’t at all eager to be alone, but I was looking forward to a warm knee-and-shin-soaking bath, fresh applications of Mer curochrome and Unguentine, a change into something more comfortable, and a phone call-or, preferably-a surprise visit from Dan.

I was in for a surprise, all right, but it wouldn’t be delivered by Dan.