Murder Is A Girl’s Best Friend

Chapter 1

WHAT’S BLACK AND WHITE AND RED ALL over? A blood-soaked newspaper-like the Monday, December 20, 1954 edition of The Daily Mirror I was reading that fateful morning. The blood wasn’t real, of course-not in the sense that I could actually see it, or touch it, or accidentally smear it on the sleeve of my brand new pink angora sweater-but the paper was dripping with it just the same.

Twenty-six people had been killed in a plane crash at Idlewild airport. British troops had opened fire on student demonstrators on the island of Cyprus, slaying an undisclosed number and wounding many more. Chinese Nationalists had dropped forty bombs on two Communist islands off the shore of Formosa -number of casualties unknown. A man in Chicago had taken a rifle from the gun rack in a Sears Roebuck store and shot himself to death in the midst of a crowd of Christmas shoppers (how the gun happened to be loaded wasn’t explained), and another berserk gunman had gone on a spree in the Bronx, shooting four people before being brought down in a hail of police bullets. A woman walking her miniature poodle was killed by a hit-and-run driver at the corner of York and 69th Street. The dog was dead, too.

I felt bad about all of these fatalities, including that of the pitiful pooch, but the story that claimed my closest attention was the one about the sixteen-year-old girl who was found stripped and stabbed to death in a roadside motel room in Middletown, Rhode Island. The two sailors who had rented and subsequently fled the room had already been tracked down by police and were being held for questioning. I snatched up my scissors, cut the article out of the paper, and placed it in the labeled and dated manila folder sitting on top of my desk. This was the kind of killing Daring Detective readers were interested in. Brutal murder, with a nice thick slice of sex on the side.

What a way to start the day, I thought, taking a bite of the buttered English I’d bought at the coffee shop in the lobby downstairs. A muffin and a murder for breakfast.

The office entry bell jingled and in walked Harvey Crockett, my boss, the corpulent, white-haired, cigar-smoking ex-newspaperman who-in spite of his gloomy, cynical, don’t-give-a-damn outlook on life-was still shocked and dismayed to find himself employed as the editor in chief of a lowly (okay, sleazy) true crime magazine. “Coffee!” he grunted, giving me his usual one-word greeting. He took off his hat, tapped it against his thigh to remove the snow, and then looped it on an upper branch of the coat tree near the front door.

“Good morning, Mr. Crockett,” I said, batting my lashes, grinning like an idiot, doing my best to look properly submissive and worshipful. (If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this odd, out-of-bounds-for-a-woman occupation of mine, it’s that you must treat the men you work for like gods. If you don’t, they will act like the gods they know themselves to be, and make your life a living hell.) “Did you have a nice weekend?”

“Lousy,” he said, removing his wool overcoat, shaking off the snow, and hanging it on the rack. Not bothering to explain himself further, he straightened his too-tight tie, gave me a gruff nod, then propelled his colossal belly past my desk and down the aisle of the large front workroom toward his small private office in the rear. “Coffee!” he repeated over his retreating shoulder. “Bring the newspapers, too.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, growling to myself and making a cross-eyed face at the ceiling. Would it have killed the man to give me a polite hello and ask about m y weekend? Apparently yes, since Crockett had never once-in all the time I’d worked my fanny off for him-offered me anything more than one long-overdue raise and an occasional surly smile. I still liked the guy, though. He was smart, shrewd, and fairly open-minded-which was a heck of a lot more than I could say for three of the other four men who (along with me, the only woman) made up the rest of the Daring Detective staff.

I was standing at the small worktable where (thanks to me, the only woman) the electric coffeemaker and clean cups were always set up, when the entry bell jingled again. My back was to the door, but I didn’t have to turn my head to find out which of my male “superiors” had arrived. The loud huffing and puffing noises told me all I needed to know.

“Hiya, Zimmerman!” I called over my shoulder. “How’s it going?” Lenny Zimmerman was my only friend at the office-the one member of the staff who didn’t make lousy jokes about my name and gender or treat me like a personal servant.

“Fine,” Lenny sputtered, still gasping for air.

I knew without looking his face was as red as a radish. Yours would be too if you’d just trudged up nine full flights of stairs to the office, as Lenny did every Monday-through-Friday morning of his life. The rail-thin, dark-haired, bespectacled twenty-three year old art assistant was deathly afraid of elevators.

“Still snowing up a storm outside?” I asked, stirring cream into Crockett’s coffee and turning to face my breathless, red-cheeked chum.

“Sure is,” he said, giving me a wide, slightly snaggle toothed grin. He set his lunch sack on the nearest chair (when you work on the ninth floor and you’re too scared to use the elevator, you always bring your own sandwich), then hung his slouch hat and overcoat on the tree. “Got three, maybe four inches already. By the time we get off work we’ll have to hail dogsleds to get home.”

I smiled. There was a time when Lenny wouldn’t have been so genial and chatty with me. He would have mumbled a shy answer to my question and scurried off to his desk at the back of the workroom, as breathless and red-faced from embarrassment as from exertion. But that was eight long months ago-before Lenny and I had become true comrades. Before we’d discovered our ardent respect and esteem for each other. Before he had saved my life.

But that’s another story. (The Babs Comstock story, to be exact. See, I was trapped on the fifth floor landing of the office stairwell, being molested and strangled by a cold-blooded murderer-the same man who had murdered Babs Comstock-when Lenny just happened to come barging up the stairs on his way to work, in the miraculous nick of time to prevent my sudden death and accidentally cause the sudden death of my assailant. It was a freaky, but very fortuitous outcome. Ever since then Lenny and I have been as close as brother and sister-two peas in a mutually protective pod.)

“How was your weekend?” Lenny wanted to know. He picked up his lunch sack and headed for his desk at the very back of the front workroom.

“Not bad,” I said. “Dan took me to see The Silver Chalice at the Paramount. It’s in Cinemascope. Stars that popular new actor, Paul Newman. And Pier Angeli.”

“Was it any good?”

“Okay, I guess, if you like those sprawling, pompous, bigger-than-life biblical spectacles. Personally, I’d rather see a neat Alfred Hitchcock mystery. Or a slew of Tom and Jerry cartoons.”

“Hey!” Mr. Crockett interrupted, sticking his head through the door of his office. “Where the heck’s my coffee?”

“Coming right up, sir!” I chirped, pasting another phony smile on my kisser. Why do so many bosses feel they have a right to be rude? I gave Lenny a knowing wink, then took Mr. Crockett his morning fix of newsprint and caffeine.

When I got back to my desk at the front of the workroom, Mike and Mario marched in. Mike Davidson was the tall, fair, flattopped assistant editor of the magazine, and Mario Caruso was the short, dark, ducktailed art director. Both were married and in their early thirties. They lived on opposite sides of town from each other, but for some weird reason I’d never been able to figure out, they almost always arrived at the office in tandem. Went out to lunch together every day, too. A regular Heckle and Jeckle.

“Morning, Toots,” Mario said, unwinding his plaid muffler and ogling my bosom as usual. “You’re looking very pink and fuzzy today. Is that sweater as warm as it looks?”

“Yes,” I said, wary of the question, knowing Mario’s motive for asking it would be ulterior.

“Then take it off immediately!” he said.

I didn’t bite. I just sat there, glowering at Mario and saying nothing, waiting for him to deliver the rest of his typical (i.e., sexually suggestive and incredibly stupid) gibe.

“I need to borrow it for a while,” he said, shooting Mike a wicked glance, then leaning down over the top of my desk till his nose was just inches away from mine. “It’s colder than a witch’s you-know-what outside, and my you-know-whats are freezing!”

Mike burst out laughing, but I didn’t crack a smile. “Oh, really?” I said, staring down at the big stack of proof sheets on my desk and shuffling the pages around. “Then you should have worn your flannel bra.”

Mike laughed even louder, but Mario turned quiet and put on a long face. He could make ’em, but he couldn’t take ’em-and I knew he wouldn’t rest until he’d made me pay for the comeback, lame though it was. “What’s that you’re reading?” he soon asked, wrinkling his bumpy nose and pointing toward the pile of proofs in my hand. “A new Paige-Turner?”

This was another of Mario’s typical routines. Whenever he couldn’t think up something funny to say, he called attention to my funny name. And my funny career goals.

“These are the proofs for the next issue,” I said with a sniff, deciding to ignore the name game and play it straight. “Take a look at the production schedule. We’re up against an urgent deadline. You have to do the cover, and I have to do the backyard paste-up. Today.”

“Oh,” Mario said, at a momentary loss for words. He didn’t like it when I talked seriously about work. There was a brief lull in the conversation, and then-frantic to regain control of the situation-Mario turned himself around, lifted the hem of his overcoat up over his rear end, and thrust the seat of his gray flannel slacks in my direction. “Hey, baby! How’s about pasting up m y backyard instead?”

Now, really! I ask you! Was this any way for a full-grown man-a City College graduate, a married Catholic, a successful professional in the field of illustrative and commercial art-to act? And how was I-a well-educated but decidedly dirt-poor twenty-eight-year-old widow trying to make her own way in the perilous male-dominated world of publishing-supposed to respond?

As far as I could see, there were only two courses of action open to me: I could kiss him on both cheeks, or kick him in the pants.

Determined (okay, desperate) to keep my job, I chose to kiss instead of kick. “Maybe later, big boy,” I said, doing my best imitation of Eve Arden (which meant I probably looked and sounded more like a drunken Thelma Ritter). “I’m too busy to play in your backyard right now.”

Mario was satisfied. My demeanor had been sufficiently obsequious and flirtatious. He gave me a slick, triumphant smirk, hooked his hat and coat on the rack, and then swaggered down the aisle toward his desk in the rear, across the way from Lenny’s.

Copying all of Mario’s movements (including the swagger), Mike followed closely on his cohort’s heels, stopping at his own desk in the middle of the room. He sat down in his squeaky swivel chair and lit up a Lucky. “I trust you’re not too busy to bring me some coffee, doll,” he said, blowing smoke out of his freckled nose and leering at me across the seven or eight feet of space that separated our cheek-to-cheek work areas. “I need a warm-up, too.”

Warm this! I fumed to myself, keeping my outward appearance under frigid control. Pretending that I was Lauren Bacall’s much cooler, more collected sister, I slowly straightened my stocking seams and leisurely combed my fingers through my thick, wavy, shoulder-length brown hair. Then I bit the bullet and got up to get the coffee.

THE PHONE CALL CAME IN AT 11:25 THAT morning.

I had finished the required newspaper clipping and story editing and proofreading, and was just starting to work on meeting the backyard paste-up deadline. Brandon Pomeroy-the editorial director of the magazine and the primary plague of my pitiful professional existence-had made his way into the office a few minutes before, and was sitting straight as a stick at his desk across the aisle from mine, smoking his pipe and fingering his mustache, looking petulant and arrogant as always. He was just biding his time, I knew-counting the minutes till he could go out for his three-martini lunch.

When the phone rang Pomeroy lurched and spun around to face me, making frantic gestures with his pale, aristocratic hands. “I’m not here!” he sputtered. “Tell whoever it is I’m in a meeting.”

“Daring Detective,” I said, answering the call in my usual upbeat manner.

“Is Paige Turner there?” The voice was tense, troubled and masculine. “Could I speak to Paige Turner, please?”

I didn’t know who it was. And from the anguished tone of the caller’s voice, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “Who’s calling, please?” I asked, keeping my own identity to myself. “And may I ask what this call is in reference to?” Ever since my near encounter with the icebox at the city morgue, I’d become as jittery and self-defensive as a Hollywood screenwriter during the McCarthy hearings.

“My name’s Catcher,” the voice said. “Terence Catcher.”

I still didn’t know who it was.

“Is Paige Turner there, please?” he asked again. “I really need to talk to her.”

“Then you’ll have to tell me what you need to talk to her about.” I wasn’t taking any chances. The last stranger who’d insisted on having a phone conversation with me had been a sex-crazed killer.

“Look, I don’t have time for this. Is she there, or not?” The man’s anguish had turned to exasperation. “Tell her I was an Army buddy of her late husband’s. We were in Korea together. ”

My heart stopped beating and hurled itself against the wall of my chest. “Bob?” I croaked. “You were a friend of Bob’s?”

“That’s right. We were in the same outfit.”

I could hardly breathe. I felt dizzy and devastated-the way I always felt whenever my dear departed husband’s magnificent smiling face came flashing back into my consciousness.

“Is this Bob’s wife I’m speaking to?” Terence Catcher asked. “Are you Paige Turner?”

“Yes,” I said, still struggling for air. And equilibrium.

“Thank God!” he said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be working there anymore and I wouldn’t be able to find you.”

Deep breath. “I’m in the book.”

“Yes, I know. I tried you at home, but there was no answer, so I figured you went to work. And I couldn’t wait till tonight to talk to you.”

“But how did you know where I work?”

“Well, Bob mentioned it once, but I also knew it from the letters.”

“What letters?”

“Your letters to Bob.”

I stiffened. “How do you know what my letters to Bob said?”

“He showed them to me. All of them.”

What?!!! I felt bewildered and betrayed. Why on earth had Bob let this man read my letters? They were so emotional, so intimate-so personal. How could he have shared them with somebody else?

“Look, don’t be upset,” Terence Catcher said, proving he could read minds as well as other people’s mail. “I can explain everything-but not on the phone. I need to see you. Now. When do you get off for lunch? Will you meet me someplace? I’d like to talk to you about Bob, and there’s something else I want to discuss with you, too.”

I was hooked but still hesitant. What if the “something else” he wanted to discuss with me was something I didn’t want to know? “Sounds complicated,” I said, “and I only get an hour for lunch. Can’t we meet tonight, after I get off from work?”

“I won’t be here tonight. I’m going back home to Pittsburgh and my bus leaves at three-thirty.”

Oh, great. Another urgent deadline. “All right,” I said, heart ticking like a time bomb. “I’ll meet you at Horn & Hardart’s, on the corner of 42nd and Third, in twenty minutes. I’ll be the brunette in the red beret.”