Death Spins the Platter

5

But after a few minutes Sergeant Trimble became restless.

“About that ice pick,” he said. “You don’t see many ice picks around these days.”

“Well, I never saw it before,” Hathaway said defensively, “If that’s what you’re getting at. Any ice needed in the dressing rooms, or anywhere else in the building, comes in cubes out of refrigerators.”

“You ever see an ice pick in this building, Mr. Stander?”

Stander turned from the window. “What Sergeant?”

Trimble repeated his question. Stander did not even bother to reply. He shrugged and turned back to the window.

“How about you, Mrs. King?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Could your husband have brought one here from home?”

“We’ve never had an ice pick. Unless...”

Trimble glanced at Winterman, and Winterman said, “Unless what?”

“Unless he brought it from his apartment in Hollywood.” She seemed to feel a need to explain. “You see, that was necessary — I mean, Tutter’s maintaining a separate apartment. Our house is out in the Valley, but he had to have a place where he could pretend to be a bachelor.”

“Did he have an ice pick in the Hollywood apartment, Mrs. King?” the one-eyed detective asked.

“I can’t say. I’ve never been in it.”

The lovely, expensive voice told nothing, nothing at all. She’s had plenty of practice covering up, Layton thought. What a heel King must have been to make her lead a life like that. Layton had a sudden vision of Lola Arkwright leaning across the table in King’s dressing room and cupping his boyish face. I’ll bet the redhead knows her way around King’s Hollywood apartment, he thought grimly.

“What, Sergeant?” Layton said.

Trimble was eyeing him curiously. “I asked you if you’d seen an ice pick in King’s dressing room — number 2 — when you had that talk with him before the show you told me about.”

“I didn’t notice one.”

Winterman said, “Wait a minute, Harry. There must be a prop room here. Prop rooms store all kinds of junk.”

“Is there an ice pick in your prop room, Mr. Hathaway?” Trimble asked.

“How the devil would I know?” Hathaway said irritably.

“Ed, find out.”

Winterman went out, shutting the door. Nobody said anything. When Winterman returned, he said, “Yeah, they’ve got an ice pick, but it’s still there, the guy says.”

“Better have one of the men check.”

The swarthy detective made a face and went out again. When he came back the second time he said, “Say, the Arkwright babe ought to know, Harry. I mean about if Tutter kept an ice pick handy. She seems to’ve been on what Layton here would call ‘intimate terms’ with Tutter-boy.”

Layton, watching Nancy King, could have walked over and gladly punched Winterman’s ugly nose. It was all part of the game, he knew, this deliberate baiting of the principals at the start of a suspected-homicide investigation; but there was something about this woman that touched Layton in a spot he had never known existed. Her only visible reaction to Winterman’s foul blow was a slight quivering of her hands, immediately controlled. She was denied by King’s cruelty even the ordinary female luxury of showing jealousy.

Trimble changed the subject. “We may as well get a clear picture of the situation during the newscast, as long as we have to mark time here. Let’s see, we know your movements, Mr. Hathaway... Oh, Mrs. King. Where were you when your husband’s show stopped for the news break?”

“In the studio, Sergeant.”

“Studio A.”

“Yes. When Tutter left at the break, I decided to go back to his dressing room to see him — he hadn’t noticed me sitting there.”

“How soon after he left the studio did you leave?”

“Oh... a quarter of a minute or so.”

“Was he in his dressing room?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I knew of course that his room number was 2, although this is the first time I’ve actually been in the station. His door was shut.” She colored the palest pink. “I... decided not to go in, after all. Even though it was his last telecast, he might have been upset to see me here, and he still had the balance of his show to do. Anyway, I returned to the studio.”

“Anything special you wanted to see Tutter about?”

She shook her head. “Just to let him know I was here. As I say, I decided not to bother him till after the show. I didn’t think Tutter would be upset when it was all over. After all, it was his last show.” She stopped, apparently surprised by what she had said. “His last show,” she repeated slowly. “That’s very funny.”

No one laughed. As for Layton, he was engaged in looking into himself. This was something he had been shoving to the bottom of his mind ever since it had happened. What’s the matter with me? he thought. Don’t tell me Foot-loose and Fancy-free Layton is falling for a pair of big eyes!

So it came out of him defensively, with a sneering inflection. “I happened to notice you leave the studio after your husband, Mrs. King. It couldn’t have been more than twenty seconds or so later that I went out the same door. I didn’t see you. Anywhere.”

Even the distinguished chairman of the board turned around at that.

Nancy King became aware suddenly of the eyes and the silence. Her face turned Layton’s way, and it seemed to him she was seeing him really for the first time. He could have bitten his tongue off.

“How about that, Mrs. King?” Trimble said in a neutral voice. “You said just now you found your husband’s dressing-room door closed, you didn’t go in or even look in, but went back to the studio. How is it Layton didn’t see you?”

Her voice was as neutral as the sergeant’s. “Probably because Mr. Layton couldn’t see through the door of the ladies’ room. I didn’t think it necessary to mention that I stopped into the ladies’ room — next door to Studio A — on my way back. Are you satisfied, Mr. Layton?”

Through his self-disgust Layton had a wry recollection of his original theory about Nancy King’s disappearance. She had been in the women’s john, after all! Someday, he thought, I’ll learn to leave well enough alone.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. King. Of course, I couldn’t have known.” He thought he saw her lips lift in the tiniest smile, but in the murky room he could not be sure.

Trimble asked abruptly, “While you were out of Studio A, Mrs. King, did you see anyone? Anyone at all?”

“As I stepped out of the studio on my way to Tutter’s dressing room I saw that gentleman — I’m pretty sure it was he” — she was pointing at George Hathaway — “going into the control room at the far end of the hall.”

“Anybody else?”

“No.”

Trimble nodded. “You’re next, Mr. Stander.”

“I?”

“When did you get here? What did you do?” Trimble was evidently in no mood to cringe before lofty tones of voice.

“I entered the building at exactly four o’clock,” the board chairman said huffily. “I remember the time because I glanced at my watch. I went to Hathaway’s office. His secretary was on the phone, but hung up to tell me he had gone to the B and C control room. I therefore went there. Hathaway and I were in the booth for a few minutes, then we walked back to his office together.”

“On your way to the control room, did you see anybody?”

“I noticed Layton going into Hathaway’s office just after I left it,” Stander said with a remote nod toward the reporter. “I heard or saw no one else until I got near the B-C control room. Then the Studio A employees’ door opened back up the hall—”

“Yeah?” Sergeant Winterman said. “You must have pretty good ears, Mr. Stander. TV studio doors don’t make any noise.”

“Two hundred or so teenagers do, however,” Stander said with an icy glare. “I didn’t say I heard the studio door. What I heard was the burst of chatter as the door opened — Studio A was off the air for the newscast, and they sounded like a barnyard. I was annoyed, and I turned around. That’s how I happened to see those two slip out into the hall.”

“Which two?” Trimble demanded, surprised.

“I’m sure I don’t know, Sergeant. Two of the teenagers, a boy and a girl. They had no right using that door — it’s plainly marked ‘Studio Employees Only’ — and I was half-inclined to have them thrown out of the building. But I decided the fuss wasn’t worth it, so I went on to join Hathaway in the B-C booth.”

“Can you describe them, Mr. Stander?”

“The boy was — oh, seventeen, I’d say, thin, wearing thick glasses. The girl was younger — on the heavy side, rather homely.”

“I have a hunch, Trimble,” Layton said, “they were the president and vice president of King’s Los Angeles fan club. Mr. Stander’s descriptions fit.”

“Know their names, Layton?”

“Wayne Mission and Nora Perkins.”

Winterman glanced at his watch and said, “Harry, the show’ll be off the air in a minute. Want me to get those kids and this Lola?”

“You stay here, Ed.” Trimble nodded at the uniformed policeman. They went out.

Layton ambled after them. Trimble was a step from the Studio A employees’ door when it opened in his face and Lola Arkwright came hurrying out. The hubbub from the studio held an angry, uncertain note. The red-haired girl stopped in her tracks.

“Get those two kids, Mission and Nora Perkins,” Trimble said to the policeman. The man went into the studio. “You’re Lola Arkwright?”

“Yes. What’s wrong? Is something wrong?”

“I’m a police officer, Miss Arkwright Suppose we go into Mr. Stander’s office.”

“It’s Tutter,” the girl said slowly. “It’s Tutter, isn’t it? Something’s happened to him. I knew it — I knew it when he didn’t show up for the second half of the show. He never did that before...”

Trimble said nothing, nodding in the direction of the board chairman’s office. But at that moment the police lab man came out of dressing room 2.

“Oh, Harry, he said. “We lifted a flock of prints in number 2, but that’s all. Okay to release the body?”

“Body,” Lola Arkwright said. She moistened her thin, sensuous lips. “Tutter’s?”

The one-eyed detective looked disgusted. “As long as this half-wit’s spilled it, you may as well know now. King is dead with an ice pick in him. Yeah, yeah,” he said to the technician. The man shrugged and went into dressing room 1.

Lola Arkwright was staring at the sergeant, but not as if she were seeing him. Her complexion had turned a creamy yellow. Layton, who was watching her closely, was prepared and he caught her as she toppled.

He carried her into Stander’s office and eased her onto the big couch. “I’m about ready to hang out my shingle,” he complained as he began to chafe her hands. “Would somebody please get some water?”

“Here, I’ll help,” George Hathaway muttered.

As Layton and the station manager worked over the unconscious girl, the two detectives conferred in low tones. Layton overheard Winterman tell Trimble that the ice pick in the studio prop room checked out. Trimble nodded gloomily.

The first thing Lola said when she came to was, “Give me a cigarette, somebody.”

Layton lit a cigarette and handed it to her. He reached over to Stander’s desk for an ash tray and set it down on the couch beside her.

She took one drag, punched the cigarette out, and leaned back. “We were to be married.”

An incredulous voice said, “Who was to be married?”

Lola’s head jerked around to Nancy King. “Tutter was going to announce our engagement at the end of the program.”

“You poor thing,” Nancy King murmured.

Lola Continued to stare at her. “You’re Nancy?”

“His wife,” Nancy said quietly, “So you know about me.

“Sure. Tut and I had no secrets from each other.”

“Then may I ask how you could be ‘engaged’ to a married man?”

“That’s simple as hell, sister,” the redhead drawled. “Tutter was going to buy one of those quickie Mexican divorces and get you off his back. Then he was going to marry me.”

“I don’t know what your purpose is in lying,” King’s widow said, “but that just can’t be true, Miss Arkwright.”

“Oh,” said Lola, “then you know about me, too.”

“That you exist? Of course, as Tutter’s assistant.”

Lola was silent. Then she said, “Hey, Layton. Butt me again.” Layton lit another cigarette for her. This time she puffed on it steadily. Stander and Hathaway had retreated to a corner of the board room and were whispering together. The two detectives said nothing. Nancy King retreated into her thoughts again.

“So you knew I existed,” Lola said at last, regarding the widow through narrowed eyes. “Look, honey, if anybody’s playing potsie around here, it’s you. Tutter hasn’t lived with you for years. I’ll bet you’ve forgotten what he looks like, husband-wise.”

“Stop her,” Nancy cried. “Why must I sit here and listen to this woman’s filth? Tutter and I have — I mean, had a home in the San Fernando Valley...” She choked and swallowed, hard. Layton saw tears tremble in her eyes.

“That’s where you live,” Lola Arkwright said. “He lived in Hollywood.”

“Mrs. King,” Sergeant Trimble said.

Layton watched her fight once more for control. This time the fight showed plainly. But she won.

“Yes, Sergeant.” Her voice was pallid again, like her coloring.

“You said before that King maintained a Hollywood flat to keep up that bachelor act of his, and that you’d never been in it.” Trimble’s one eye managed to convey sympathy. Layton knew that Trimble had about as much sympathy in his make-up as a Siberian wolf. “How often was he in your Valley house?”

“As often as he could be,” she said.

“How often was that?”

“More often than not. I can’t give you percentages, Sergeant.” The two liquid-dark eyes met the one bleak eye and refused after that to look away. “I know you don’t understand, especially after what Miss Arkwright’s said. Of course we had an unconventional marriage. But we were happy together. Tutter loved me. All those starlets he was seen with were publicity stunts. His bachelor apartment was just part of his public image. Also, he had to have an address for his business and professional friends to come to — he couldn’t bring them home... to the Valley, I mean... without their finding out about me.

“We had our own social life. We had friends whose homes we visited and who visited ours. Good friends, who understood and were willing to keep his — our secret.”

That old devil Slip-of-the-Tongue, Layton thought. Of course. It was Tutter who had wanted it that way, not she. She had hated every minute of it. What woman wouldn’t?

Winterman said with a deliberate grin, “Sounds like a hell of a married life to me.”

“No,” Nancy said in a tired way. “It was just an inconvenient one, Sergeant. When we did have each other, it was very special...” The voice faltered. “And now, just when we could start living normally, my husband’s been taken from me. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right!”

She burst into tears. Sobbing, she jumped up and ran into the washroom, banging the door.

Trimble and Winterman looked at each other. For a moment no one said anything.

Then Lola Arkwright tamped out Layton’s cigarette. “Well!” she said with an uncertain smile. “The gal sure has talent. Anybody here believe that performance?” And without any warning at all, she began to cry, too.

Hubert Stander threw up his hands and stalked into the outer office, muttering something uncomplimentary about women. Hathaway hurried after him. Winterman strolled over to the doorway, where he could keep an eye on them.

“Whenever you’re ready, Miss Arkwright,” Trimble said dryly, “let’s talk about you.”