Murder Is A Girl’s Best Friend

Chapter 4

DUCKING OUR HEADS AGAINST THE DRIVING snow, Terry and I helped each other stay on our feet as we skidded up the slippery sidewalk and across the slushy street to the tall, sand-colored brick building I worked in. It wasn’t until we had pushed our way into the warm, steamy lobby, and I got a whiff of the burnt hamburger smell wafting from the adjoining coffee shop, that I realized we’d never had any lunch.

I was so hungry I wanted to dart into the coffee shop and grab a sandwich to take upstairs, but I didn’t dare take the time. If Pomeroy got back to the office before I did, I’d be in big trouble. And if he saw me eating lunch at my desk during working hours-or, as he liked to put it, “working-class hours”-he’d blow his top.

“So you’re definitely going to help me, right?” Terry said, anxiously tugging me over to a secluded corner of the lobby, beyond the bank of partitioned telephones and directories, behind the huge, tinsel-draped Christmas tree. “You’ll find out everything you can about Judy’s murder?” His azure eyes were gleaming with expectation.

“Against my better judgment, yes,” I said. “But don’t expect any miracles. I’m just a woman who writes about crime. I’m no Sherlock Holmes. And I’m no Miss Marple either!”

“Who?”

“Never mind,” I said, heart sinking at the thought of the danger and disappointments that no doubt lay ahead. “It’s just that I don’t want you to get your hopes up too high. I could fail in the end, you know. To tell the truth, I don’t even know where to start.”

“Here!” Terry said, shoving the Thom McAn shoebox into my hands. “Start with this. Maybe you can trace the diamonds to a certain jeweler, and then find out who bought them, or stole them. And there’s some other stuff in this box, too-a couple of photographs, the address of the building where my sister lived, Mrs. Londergan’s apartment number and phone number, the names and address of Judy’s former roommates.”

“Did Judy have a personal calendar or an address book?”

“Yes, but the police took them into evidence before I got here. I never even got a look them. All I can give you is the stuff in this shoebox-things that should be of help.”

Suddenly, my nerves went haywire. And a flood of adrenaline shot through my veins. “But what about you?!!” I said (okay, shrieked). “You’d be the most help of all! Why do you have to go back to Pittsburgh today? Why can’t you stay here for a while-at least give me a chance to talk to you some more about Judy and learn everything I can about her life, and,” I added sadly, “her death. I can’t do this all by myself, Terry. I need you. Please don’t go!” In case you haven’t noticed, I wasn’t quite ready to be left to my own devices.

“I’ve already given you the most important information,” Terry insisted. “And we can always talk to each other on the phone. And besides,” he added, “you don’t have to work on this alone. Get the other agents at the magazine to help you. This could be a major story, and it’s a Daring Detective exclusive! They’ll be chomping at the bit to get in on the investigation.”

Other agents at the magazine? Boy, did he have the wrong idea! (Along, I should add, with the rest of the detective magazine-reading public.)

“You don’t understand,” I told him. “There are no agents at Daring Detective. Just writers and artists and editors. And there aren’t any big investigations going on either. Practically all the stories we publish are nothing but clip jobs. They’re written in-house and rehashed from assorted newspaper and magazine articles that are already in print.” I wasn’t exaggerating, either. To the best of my knowledge, the only exclusive, firsthand story Daring Detective had ever published had been the one about the Babs Comstock murder. My story.

“But you’ve got a police consultant on staff!” Terry argued. “A real homicide detective. What’s his name?… Street! Detective Dan Street. There’s a picture of him and a write-up about his career in every issue. Can’t you get him to help you?”

Terry looked so hopeful I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth: that the DD police consultant job was just a sham; that Dan Street didn’t actually work for the magazine, but was merely paid a small retainer for the use of his name and photo just to make the magazine look official; that even if he wanted to (which he most definitely wouldn’t!), the parameters of Dan’s real job-as a highly respected NYPD homicide detective in the Midtown South Precinct-would never allow him to join forces with a fledgling crime journalist (like me) to reopen a murder investigation that had already been shut down by a detective in another district.

And that wasn’t all. There was another truth I wasn’t in the mood to divulge, a rather awkward and personally disturbing (okay, embarrassing) truth: that in spite of the fact that he was my dearly beloved boyfriend, and had been for the past seven months, Dan would rather lock me up in jail than see me get entangled in another unsolved murder case.

“Street’s a pretty busy man,” I said, waffling, finding myself unwilling to destroy all of Terry’s naïve expectations so early in the game, “and this case isn’t in his precinct. But I’ll tell him about it, see if he can help me out.”

“Good,” Terry said, satisfied. He lifted his brown fedora, swiped his gloved hand over his silvery hair, then repositioned the hat lower on his forehead. “Look, I hate to leave you like this. I wish I could stay. But now I really have to go home.”

“But what about Detective Sweeny? He’ll find you if you go home!” Okay, I admit it. I was trying to scare him into staying.

The prospect of being arrested didn’t seem to disturb Terry at all. “Maybe he will, or maybe he won’t come looking, but I can’t worry about that now,” he said, eyes narrowing with resolve. “I have to go home. I can’t stay in Judy’s apartment anymore, and I’ve run out of money. But the main cause is my father. He’s having a really hard time over Judy’s death, and I’ve been away for the past three weeks. I simply can’t leave him alone over Christmas.”

“Oh,” I said, unable to challenge Terry’s reasoning. Nobody, but nobody, should have to be alone over the holidays. Three years ago-right after Bob was killed-I’d suffered through a solo Christmas, and I wouldn’t wish the same on my worst enemy. Not even Brandon Pomeroy.

“Actually, I have to go right now,” Terry said, checking his watch, then giving me an apologetic smile. “My bags are in a locker at the station and my bus leaves in one hour. With all this snow, it’ll take me at least that long to get across town to the terminal.”

“But it’s not safe to travel in this weather!” I whined, still trying-in spite of my own urgent need to get back to the office-to delay Terry’s departure. “I’ll bet the buses aren’t even running!”

“That’s a chance I’ll have to take.”

The fat lady was singing loud and clear. “Okay,” I said, heaving a huge, deflating sigh, “but promise you’ll call me when you get home? There’s so much more I need to know.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll call you. I have your home number and your office number in my wallet. And you have mine. It’s in the shoebox.”

“It’s better to call me at home.”

“No problem. I’ll call you tomorrow night.”

“Okay,” I said, forcing myself to stand up tall and straight, putting on a big show of self-confidence. I was a towering Eleanor Roosevelt on the outside, but a teetering Mamie Eisenhower within. As curious as I was about the case, as committed as I was to helping my late husband’s good friend, as determined as I was to find out everything I could about Judy Catcher’s horrible, untimely death, I still couldn’t help thinking what an idiot I’d been to let myself get so involved.

Terry leaned over and gave me a quick hug. “Thanks for everything, Paige,” he said, pulling back and resting his forearms on my shoulders. “You’re the best. Bob was a very lucky man.” He stared into my eyes for one brief but meaningful second, then spun himself around, strode across the marble floor, pushed his way through the revolving glass door, and vanished in a frosty flurry.

I was left standing there like a statue, holding a shoebox full of contraband diamonds in my hands, feeling as lost and lonely as Snow White in the forest-before all the birds and bunnies came out of the woods to comfort her. Where are my birds and bunnies? I wondered, though I knew from past experience they’d be hiding out like bandits till the heat blew over.

LENNY WAS STANDING UP FRONT, NEAR THE entrance, when I walked (okay, lunged) into the office. “Where the hell have you been?” he said, keeping his voice down to a scratchy whisper. “Do you know what time it is? You are so, so lucky Pomeroy’s not back. I was afraid you wouldn’t make it in time.”

“I was afraid of that, too,” I said, setting the shoebox down on the nearest table, tearing off my hat and coat, and hooking them both on the tree. I took a peek at Pomeroy’s empty chair and grinned. “I guess the gods and goddesses of good fortune haven’t totally abandoned me yet.”

Lenny looked at the box on the table and muttered, astonished, “You went shoe shopping? In the middle of a snowstorm, you went shoe shopping? You risked your steady job plus your entire freelance writing career to go shopping for shoes?”

His voice had climbed a little too high on the audio meter. Both Mike and Mario looked up from their work and began watching our little drama as if it were a mesmerizing segment of the “I’ve Got a Secret” game show. A Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Production.

“Hush!” I said, giving Lenny the evil eye. “Of course I didn’t go shoe shopping! There’s something else in this box. I’ll tell you about it later.” Turning away from Lenny before he could utter another syllable, I picked up the shoebox, whisked it over to my desk, shoved it way in the back of my lower left-hand file drawer, and sat down.

Jaw hanging open like a hatch, Lenny gawked at me for a couple more seconds, then shrugged, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and shuffled back to his own desk in the rear. I knew that he was miffed at me-unnerved by my brusque demeanor-but I also knew that he would forgive me. Ever since the day he’d saved my life, Lenny Zimmerman thought I was the best creation since waxed paper.

I’d barely gotten out of my boots and back into my pumps when Brandon Pomeroy returned. He was quite drunk, as usual, but-unless you were as familiar with his façade of sobriety as I was-you’d never know it. He wasn’t staggering or stumbling (or, God forbid, singing), and his spine was as straight as a drum major’s baton. He had no trouble at all removing his hat, muffler, and overcoat and hanging them-neatly-on the rack. His gray flannel suit looked freshly pressed; his crisp white shirt was spotless; his maroon silk tie wasn’t the least bit crooked.

And when he spoke, he didn’t slur a single word.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Turner,” he said as he walked past my desk and sat down at his own. His nose was so high in the air I was surprised it wasn’t snowcapped. “I trust you’ve been having a productive workday. Is the backyard paste-up ready to go to the printer?”

There are times when one has to be honest-when the truth, and nothing but the truth, will do. This wasn’t one of those times. “I’m almost finished, sir,” I said, shuffling some galleys around on my desk, trying to look busy and efficient. “I’ll have it ready for the afternoon pickup.”

“See that you do,” Pomeroy said with a sniff, swiveling around in his chair till his face was to the wall and his back was turned to me. Though he kept his head held high and continued to sit up straight as a fence post, he was, I knew, about to take his afternoon sabbatical (i.e., his alcohol-induced afternoon nap).

“Yes, sir!” I said, making a cross-eyed face at the ceiling and mentally shouting Arrrgh! I didn’t know what was worse-having to figure out a covert way to do four hours worth of work in two, or having to lick Pomeroy’s expensive Italian leather boots in the process.

Okay, I’m lying again. I did too know what was worse. It was the bootlicking. Definitely the bootlicking. The work I could handle.

And that’s what I proceeded to do. I gathered up my scissors, my Scotch tape, my pica ruler, the backyard galleys, the list and measurements of all the backyard ads, a big stack of three-column layout sheets, and a large folder of black and white cartoons. Then I snuck into the file room, where I spread all the materials out on the center worktable and went furiously to work.

First I measured and placed all the pinup calendar, body-building, hair-thickening, rupture-easing, how-to-be-a-hypnotist ads, carefully marking them up on the layout sheets, then I trimmed the story runover galleys and put them in position-leaving room for the necessary continued lines, of course. After choosing, sizing, and placing several spicy cartoons to fill the leftover space, I finally taped all the trimmed galleys to the layout sheets-without an eighth of an inch to spare-as if they were the key pieces of a large, complicated jigsaw puzzle.

I was very lucky. I only had to cut eight lines of copy to make everything fit exactly. If the mock-up had come out a few lines too short, I would have had to write new copy to fill, and that would have taken longer. As it was, I finished the backyard paste-up in record time, and placed the complete forty-four-page package in the pickup basket a good five minutes before the printer’s messenger arrived.

This was not the world’s most exciting accomplishment, I realize, but at least it kept me from getting fired-and from fretting my fool head off about the diamond-stuffed shoebox buried, like a land mine, in the depths of my desk drawer.

My timely completion of the backyard paste-up wasn’t the only miracle that occurred that afternoon. Brandon Pomeroy’s drunken coma lasted a full hour longer than usual (he must have had an extra martini), Harvey Crockett was out of the office all day at a meeting with our distributor, and Mike and Mario were laboring so hard to meet their own pressing deadlines that they didn’t have the time or the inclination to torment me with coffee demands and crummy jokes.

As a result, I had the time to look for the newspaper clips about Judy Catcher’s death that I presumed were still in our files. And since I was in charge of all the filing (that’s woman’s work, you know!), I knew exactly where to look: in the folder labeled MURDERS-NOV. 1954.

There were numerous homicide reports in the folder, but just three short clips on the Catcher murder. And each gave the same few details: A young woman named Judy Catcher had been shot to death in her West 26th Street apartment on Saturday, November 27th. The shooting was estimated to have occurred between 5:00 and 8:00 P.M., during a random burglary. The victim’s purse and watch were stolen and her apartment was ransacked. Anyone with information relating to the crime should notify Detective Hugo Sweeny at the 10th Precinct.

I hoped to have that privilege soon.

Taking the clips out of the file folder and stuffing them in my skirt pocket, I marched back into the front workroom and carefully (okay, sneakily) transferred the clips from my pocket to my purse. Not that I really needed them. Aside from the actual date of the murder and the estimated time of death, they didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.

I looked at the clock on the wall and was surprised to discover I still had twenty minutes to waste (I mean work!) before closing time. I was able to clip all the crime stories from the afternoon newspapers and file a big stack of fake corpse photos before Pomeroy became fully conscious, and before the hands of the office clock hit 5:30-at which point I changed back into my boots, pulled on my beret, slipped into my coat, snatched the shoebox out of my drawer and tucked it tight under my arm, bid a hasty goodnight to Heckle and Jeckle, blew a quick kiss to Lenny, and made a smooth getaway.