Murder Is A Girl’s Best Friend

Chapter 31

WHEN I COULDN’T TAKE THE NOISE AND the heat anymore, I turned off the dryer and unhooked the air hose from the hood. Leaving the hot vinyl cap on my head so my still-damp hair would continue to dry, I scooted into the bathroom to retouch the spots where my makeup had melted.

That’s when I heard it-a noise from downstairs that sounded like a book dropping to the floor.

What was that? Was somebody there? Had Abby come over to borrow my copy of Pride and Prejudice again? Had Dan arrived early, let himself in with a police department passkey, and decided to make a secret study of my current taste in detective fiction? I tiptoed into the hall and stood at the top of the stairs, holding my breath so tight I felt faint, and listening with all my might for other suspicious sounds.

The silence was so thick it was sliceable. All I could hear was the soft, low hum of my refrigerator. No pages were rustling; no floorboards were creaking; no knuckles were cracking; no sighs were escaping through unsealed lips. ’Twas the last day of Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a louse. Finally coming to the conclusion that I had imagined the original noise, I started breathing again. Then I began making my way downstairs to take a quick look around.

Halfway there, I came to a dead stop. The kitchen door had suddenly come into view, and I was paralyzed by what I saw. The flattened Duz detergent box wasn’t covering the shattered door pane anymore. It was dented and twisted and dangling down from the edge of the perfectly square hole by several tangled strips of masking tape. The linoleum by the door looked wet and splotchy, as though somebody had walked through a giant snowdrift before entering and tracked plenty of slush inside.

Frozen in fear, I stood stiff as a stick in the middle of the staircase, madly searching my brain for a swift, safe plan of action. Should I run back upstairs, climb the little wrought-iron ladder bolted to the wall by my bathroom, and try to escape out onto the roof of the building? No! I’d never be able to get the heavy, snow-laden overhead trap door open in time. The intruder would catch up with me before I could even pop my noggin through the hatch! Should I dash down the rest of the stairs, throw open the kitchen door, flee out onto the icy landing and over to Abby’s back door-or down into the courtyard-screaming my head off for help? God, no! That seemed a surefire way to get my screaming head shot off.

The only scheme that made any sense to me at all was to go all the way downstairs and talk to the intruder (okay, by this time I was pretty sure it was the murderer). Since he or she was still desperate to get hold of the diamonds-and still had no idea where I’d hidden them-I figured I wouldn’t get killed immediately. If I played my cards right, and said all the right things, I might be able to confuse the killer and delay my death indefinitely. Maybe I could stall everything for an hour or so, until Dan was due to arrive. Or maybe I could work my way over to the cabinet under the kitchen sink, and get my hands on my trusty bleach bottle…

Having no idea how I might accomplish any of these goals, but determined to make a hearty attempt, I sucked up all my courage (which, at that point, would have barely filled an eyedropper) and walked down the rest of the stairs. As soon as my horse slippers hit the kitchen floor, I reared back on my heels and spun around a full ninety degrees to face the monster who had killed Judy Catcher.

“WELL, DON’T YOU LOOK CUTE,” ELSIE LONDERGAN said, voice oozing with sarcasm. She was standing tall, very tall, in the middle of the room-right where the kitchen linoleum ended and the wood floor of the living room began-with one hand stuffed into the pocket of her coat and the other stuck straight out in front of her. That hand (as you may have already guessed) was holding a gun. A very small gun, to be sure, but it looked big as a bazooka to me.

“What the hell have you got on your head?” Elsie asked, aiming the pistol at my plastic-capped cranium. “A fucking turban?” Her chiseled John Wayne features were twisted in a grisly scowl.

“It’s the hood of my hair dryer,” I said, trying to breathe evenly and keep my knees from knocking. Both efforts were unsuccessful.

“And your feet?” she said, targeting my toes. “What the hell have you got on your feet?”

“My horse slippers,” I stammered. “I got them in the children’s department at Klein’s. They’re supposed to look like Trigger.” I regretted the use of that word, hoping Elsie wouldn’t be tempted to pull it.

“And what’s with the sexy underwear?” she said with a nasty smirk. “Got a hot date?”

“My boyfriend’s coming over.” I considered telling her that my boyfriend was a homicide detective, and that he’d be there any minute, but I was afraid that would spook her, make her anxious to kill me and get the hell out of there-with or without the diamonds. I decided to save that information for later use, when things got really hairy, as I was sure they would.

“When’s he coming?”

“In about an hour.”

“Good. Then you’ll have plenty of time to show me where the diamonds are.”

“Yes, I will,” I declared, encouraging her wholehearted belief in that scenario. Then, hoping to divert her attention to other subjects, I added, “And you’ll have plenty of time to tell me how a mature and motherly widow like yourself could find it in her heart to kill an innocent young girl like Judy Catcher.”

Bingo. I hit the emotional jackpot on my very first spin.

“I’m no widow!” Elsie shrieked, her contorted face turning three shades of purple. “I’d give anything if my lying, cheating rat of a husband was dead, but he isn’t! He’s living the high life somewhere in Hawaii with his 22-year-old whore of a girlfriend. They ran off together six years ago when he was fifty-two and she was only sixteen!” Elsie’s fierce blue eyes were darting all over the place, but her gun was pointed straight at me. “If that filthy, thieving snake was here right now, I’d plug him so full of holes he’d do nothing for the rest of his short, painful little life but bleed.”

Ugh. A rather disgusting-not to mention distressing-image. “Thieving?” I said quickly, trying to keep her talking instead of shooting. (I just love to reminisce, don’t you?) “Why did you call him a thieving snake? Did he steal anything from you?”

“He stole every goddamn cent of our life savings. All my jewelry, too.”

“How horrible!” I sputtered, doing my best to sound sympathetic. “I don’t blame you for wanting to kill him!… But,” I added, working to keep up my end of the conversation, “I still don’t understand why you wanted to kill Judy.”

Elsie lowered the gun to waist-level, propping her elbow on her hip and squeezing her upper arm tight against her ribs. “Because she was a goddamn homewrecker, that’s why!” Her shrill voice was vibrating like a wire stretched to the limit. “She was young-so young-and stupid as a stump. I couldn’t stand the way she was always bouncing around, acting so blameless and bubbly, asking my advice about every goddamn thing under the sun, and raving over her two-timing, slobbery old boyfriend like he was Clark Gable or Kirk Doug-las. Made me sick to my stomach!”

I was surprised by her show of repugnance. “I thought you loved Judy like a daughter.”

“April fool!” Elsie cried, mouth grinning, eyes twinkling. She looked so crazy I was chilled to the bone.

“This is December,” I said, hoping my nonchalant response would disarm her, take some of the fire out of her fury.

Big boo boo.

“Shut up!” she screamed, jerking her arm up and aiming the gun at my face.

I raised both my hands and didn’t say a word. The time had come to take Elsie Londergan seriously. Very, very seriously.

“You’re a real smart aleck, you know that?” she said, eyes blazing. “I wanted to kill you that first day you showed up at my place and started sticking your nosy beak in my business! But I had to wait because of the diamonds. I figured Judy’s brother had found the jewelry when he was staying in her apartment and packing up all her stuff. And then-since he’d asked you to help him find his sister’s killer-I figured you were hiding the fucking diamonds for him, or at least knew where he had hidden them.”

“You’re a very smart lady,” I said, trying to pacify her with praise. “Three giant steps ahead of me! But there’s still one thing that puzzles me. Whatever made you think that I had stashed the jewelry in the lunchbox?”

Elsie laughed. It was a wild, mean, hyena laugh. “I saw you through the window of the hardware store when I was on my way to meet you at the Green Monkey. You were buying the goddamn lunch pail and you had such a gloating, self-satisfied smirk on your face, all I could think was that you were buying it to use as a secret jewelry box. It was the perfect size, and a perfect hiding place, and what the hell else could you need the stupid thing for? Silly me,” she said, giggling. “Sure jumped to the wrong conclusion that time! Guess I’m a woman with a one-track mind.”

Hating to think where her one-track mind might lead her next, I took a deep breath and ventured on. Elsie was in a talkative mood, thank God, and I had to make the most of it. “You took a big risk pushing me in front of that train, you know. If I had been killed, you would have lost your chance to find the diamonds forever.”

“That wasn’t me!” Elsie screeched. “I would never have done a half-witted thing like that! Roscoe was the biggest blockhead on earth!”

“You mean Roscoe was the one who pushed me?” I was surprised, but not completely shocked.

“Yes indeedy!” she crowed, beginning to take pleasure in the telling of the tale. “I told Roscoe about the lunchbox, see? And then I gave him your address and told him to go downtown and watch you leave for work the next morning. After you’d gone, he was supposed to break into your apartment and look for the lunchbox and the diamonds. But when you came prancing out of your building with a goddamn shopping bag in your hand, he freaked out and abandoned the original plan. He felt he had to follow you into the subway to see what was in the bag. And when he snuck up behind you in the crowd and looked down into the bag and saw the lunchbox-shaped package… well, he just lost his moronic little mind

“He was certain the diamonds were in the package, see?” Elsie jabbered on. “And he didn’t know where you were taking them. So he thought he better grab them while he could. But he knew the minute he snatched your shopping bag you would start screaming and calling for help, maybe even chase him through the station yourself. So he had to do what he had to do. He had to wait till he heard the train coming, and then he had to grab the bag and push you down on the tracks at the same instant. That way nobody-not even you-would know what was happening, and he’d be able to make a clean getaway.”

So that’s the way it was, I groaned to myself. Just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong bag… er, box. “Did Roscoe hang around to watch me get creamed?” I asked. I could imagine the little beast hovering there in the rush hour crowd, craning his skinny neck to watch me crawling on the tracks, baring his little brown teeth in eager anticipation of the bloody, bone-shattering spectacle to come.

“Sure did,” Elsie said, with a sickening grin. “And I don’t mind telling you he was really disappointed when that big Negro pulled you up to safety. If you’d been killed, Roscoe said he would have snuck off to a dark corner of the station, opened the lunchbox, and seen that the diamonds weren’t inside. Then he would have run back to your apartment, busted in through the back door, and turned the place upside down till he found them. But with you still alive, he couldn’t do that. He had to get out of there fast-before you saw him. So he just stepped on the train-the same one that almost turned you into hamburger-and came straight to my place. We opened the package together.”

What a heartwarming scene, I muttered to myself. Right up Norman Rockwell’s alley. A perfect Christmas cover for The Saturday Evening Post.

“So, that was the same wrapping paper I saw in your wastebasket!” I said, excited, so caught up in the lurid details of Elsie’s narration I was forgetting the lurid climax that loomed ahead.

“Yeah,” Elsie admitted, also engrossed. Her arm was now hanging at her side, gun pointed toward the floor. “When you ran out of my place this morning like a crazy bat out of hell, I knew you’d seen something, or thought of something, that had suddenly made you suspect me. I didn’t know what it was, though, until later, when I went into the bedroom to throw away a snotty Kleenex. And there they were, four or five wrinkled-up, red-cheeked Santa Claus faces, grinning up at me in glee, making me feel like a goddamn idiot for not emptying the trash more often.”

Elsie was starting to get agitated, so I changed the subject again. I made a sharp U-turn and bounded back to the beginning of the story, panting and wagging my tail for answers. (Curiosity killed the cat, they say, so I was doing my best to act like a dog.) “Were you and Roscoe in cahoots from the start?” I asked, begging for another bone. “Did you plan Judy’s death together?”

“Don’t make me laugh!” Elsie snapped. “I would never have willingly joined forces with that greedy little weasel. How stupid do you think I am? I killed Judy all by myself! I didn’t want to share the diamonds with anybody!”

“So what happened? How did Roscoe get involved?”

“That was the worst damn luck of all,” she said, suddenly looking very tired. She must have been feeling tired, too, because she sat down on a kitchen chair and rested her outstretched right arm-the one that was holding the gun-on the table. “About ten minutes after I shot Judy, Roscoe came up to her apartment and started knocking on the door, calling out to her to open up for the landlord. I was still there, down on my knees in her bedroom, looking for the diamonds in her bottom dresser drawer. I didn’t answer the door, of course. I just knelt there next to the dresser, not making a sound, hoping he’d give up and go away.

“My first thought was that somebody in the building had heard the gun go off, and called Roscoe to report the noise. But then I figured if somebody had heard the shots, they would have called the cops instead of Roscoe. And then I realized that even if they did call Roscoe, he wouldn’t be fool enough to dash upstairs all by himself and start knocking on the door of an apartment where he thought a gun had just been fired.”

“So why was he there?” I asked. “What did he come for?”

“Oh, he probably just stopped by to make a pass at Judy,” she said with a sneer. “He was always doing that-showing up at her place when he knew Smythe wouldn’t be there, making suggestive remarks, trying to sneak a feel. What a creep he was! Judy said he made her skin crawl.”

“So what happened next?” I urged, so eager for information I forgot I was supposed to be taking it slow. (Hey, am I a born mystery writer, or what?) “Did he go away, or did you let him in?”

“He let himself in!” she wailed. “He opened the door with his own goddamn key! I couldn’t believe my eyes. He just waltzed inside like he owned the place.”

“Well, he did, didn’t he?”

“What?”

“Own the place,” I said. “He was the landlord, you know. ”

“Oh, who the hell cares? He had no business walking in on me like that, catching me in the act and scaring my fucking pants off, ruining all my plans for the future. If I’d had the gun in my hand, I’d’ve killed him on the spot! I wouldn’t have had to wait until this morning!”

I looked at the gun in her hand and shivered. Was the muzzle still warm? Were there two bullets left in the chamber just for me? “So where was it?” I asked, in a voice so tiny I could barely hear it myself.

“Where was what?” Elsie screeched. There was nothing tiny about her tone.

“The gun,” I said, in a near whisper, hoping against hope that the softness of my speech would induce a softness in her mind (i.e., make her forget that we were talking about a certain firearm-the same one she was grasping at that very moment).

“It was on top of the TV in the sitting room,” she said. “I’d set it down there as soon as I was sure Judy was dead, right before I began searching for the diamonds. It wasn’t there long, though!” Elsie added, getting agitated again. “When Roscoe came in, the first thing he saw was Judy lying dead in a pool of blood on the floor. The next thing he saw was me kneeling by Judy’s dresser, going through the drawers. And the thing he saw after that was the gun lying on top of the TV set.

“And that gun was in Roscoe’s hand in a flash!” Elsie sputtered on. “He didn’t waste a single second worrying about Judy, or kicking up any kind of fuss, or even asking any questions about what happened. He just grabbed the pistol up off the TV and pointed it at me! Then-acting cool as a cucumber popsicle-he asked me what I was looking for. I didn’t have any choice but to tell him about the diamonds.”

“So he decided to make himself a partner.”

“Give that girl a cigar!” Elsie crowed, tossing her head so hard her hat was knocked off kilter. She laid the gun down on the table and raised both hands to straighten it. I was preparing to leap across the kitchen and pounce on the released revolver, but Elsie snatched it up in her hand again before I could pry the hoofs of my horse slippers off the floor.

Hiding my thwarted intentions behind a sheepish smile, I fired off another question. “So what did you do then? Tear the place up looking for the rocks?”

“Tore it up good,” Elsie admitted. “But as you damn well know, we couldn’t find the goods. We looked everywhere, too-behind the radiators, in the freezer, under a loose floorboard, even down inside the toilet tank-but we never found a single fucking piece. Not even an earring. Finally, Roscoe said I should go play canasta at Milly Esterbrook’s like I do every Saturday night. He said he’d wait for an hour or so, then call the police and tell them he just discovered the body. That way, with the place being such a mess and all, they’d think Judy was killed during a burglary.”

“Nice of Roscoe to provide you with an alibi,” I said. “He could have turned you over to the cops and come off like a hero.”

“Yeah, he covered my ass all right,” Elsie said. “I’ll give him that much. But don’t think for one second he did it to be nice. He figured the diamonds were bound to turn up soon-either the police would dig them up, or somebody in Judy’s family would find them-and since I lived right across the hall, I was in the best position to keep an eye on the scene, keep him posted on the proceedings. So he didn’t want anything bad to happen to me until after the diamonds were discovered. See?”

“I get the picture,” I said, wishing with all my soul that I was gazing at a different landscape.

“So where the hell were they?” Elsie rasped. “Shoved deep in the stuffing of Judy’s mattress? Jammed behind a false wall in her closet?”

“They were buried in a box of oatmeal.”

“Oatmeal?!” she cried, clearly shocked by the utter domesticity of the simple hiding place.

“Here, I’ll show you,” I said, moving slowly toward the kitchen counter, motioning for her to stand up and join me there. (Don’t ask me why I did that. I didn’t-and still don’t-have a clue.)

Elsie rose from her chair and walked toward me, keeping the gun aimed at the center of my chest. Her eyes were burning and her face was smeared with a rapacious smile.

I opened the cabinet over the sink, took out the Quaker container, and placed it on the counter. “This box came from Judy’s apartment,” I said, trying to infuse my voice with Edward R. Murrow-style drama and mystery, but surely sounding more like Speedy in the Alka-Seltzer commercials. “This is where the diamonds were. Terry Catcher found them when he was dumping all the food in her kitchen.” I opened the box, extracted my story notes and tossed them on the counter, then-with an exaggerated theatrical flourish-slowly poured the remaining dry cereal into the sink. (Don’t ask me why I did that, either. I guess I was just trying to keep her intrigued and pass the time.)

Elsie gave my little demonstration her full attention, but lost interest the second the last grain of oatmeal hit the porcelain. “Yeah, so that’s where the diamonds were,” she said, grinding her words through clenched teeth. “Now you can stop all your yakking and stalling and show me where the hell they are.” As she issued these orders, she poked the barrel of the gun hard into middle of my chest, right above the black lace edging on the bosom of my black silk slip.

“Keep your pants on!” I cried, raising both hands in the air again. “I was getting to that!”

“Then get to it now!” Her jaw was set and the veins in her temples were throbbing. Her talkative mood was officially over.

“Okay, okay!” I said, backing a few inches away from the gun and wondering what the devil I was going to do next. (To say that I was panicked is like calling a massive stroke distracting.) Knowing Dan wouldn’t arrive for a good half hour, and unable to think of a safe way of summoning Terry and Abby to my aid (I didn’t want them to get killed, too!), I finally came to the conclusion that my best hope of survival was the Clorox.

“The diamonds are right down here,” I said, giving Elsie a meaningful nod and slowly lowering myself into a squat by the cabinet under the sink. Heart pounding so hard I thought it would knock me over, I opened the door of the cabinet and took hold of the bottle of bleach. As I pulled the bottle forward, praying I’d find a way to open it, splash the bleach in Elsie’s face, and grab hold of the gun, my eyes caught sight of the scrunched-up shopping bag I’d hidden there the day before. The bag with Dan’s Christmas present in it. The Tiffany’s shopping bag.

Presto. There was a sudden change in plans.

“Here they are!” I said, letting go of the bottle and grabbing hold of the bag. I pulled the bag out of the cabinet, smoothed out all the wrinkles, and held it up for Elsie to see. I thought the sight of the famous Tiffany logo would thrill her, dazzle her, confuse her, make her think the diamonds were in the bag. And I was right! Elsie’s eyes lit up like beacons and her face split open in the brightest and greediest of all possible smiles. I had led her to believe-with all her evil, avaricious, murderous little heart-that the treasure was finally hers.

Which was the stupidest thing I could have done, of course. Because Elsie quickly concluded she didn’t need me anymore. And to prove it, she took a wide stance, aimed her gun at me with both hands, let out another hideous hyena laugh, and blasted me to kingdom come.