Death Spins the Platter

6

The red-haired girl blew her red-tipped nose into a handkerchief and said, “Excuse me for going female on you. It hit me all of a sudden that Tutter’s really dead. And that lying dame in there...” She said abruptly, “What do you want to know, Sergeant?”

“About your movements during the intermission,” Trimble said.

“Go to hell,” Lola Arkwright said.

The one detectival eye sharpened. “What are you trying to do, make it easy for me?”

“Look,” she snapped, “if you think I knocked off Tutter, stop making like Sherlock Holmes and say so. I don’t know who killed him, or why — or even if it was murder. All I know is I had nothing to do with it.”

Trimble waited patiently. Winterman, in the doorway, was grinning his head off.

“Now will you answer my question, Miss Arkwright?”

Lola shrugged. “Okay. I spent the intermission in my dressing room, period.”

“Was that what you usually did at the news break?”

“Depended on Tut’s mood. He wasn’t the calm and relaxed guy he always seemed on the air. Doing a two-hour show five days a Week for five years is no picnic. Sometimes Tut wanted to be let alone during the break, sometimes he felt like yacking.”

“Never mind him,” Trimble said. “I’m asking about you.”

“I’m telling you. I always knew how he was feeling by the way he acted as soon as he finished his intermission patter. If right away he jumped off the stand and headed for the door, he wanted to be alone. If he waited for me in the studio, we’d go out together and spend the ten-minute break either in his dressing room or mine. Today he didn’t wait, so I knew it was one of those I-want-to-be-alone days.”

“But you followed him out. Right out.”

“It had nothing to do with him,” the girl said wearily. “I just wanted to get to my dressing room.”

“How come if it was one of those I-want-to-be-alone days,” Layton interrupted, “Hathaway says he saw King stop in the hall and wait for you to catch up?”

Trimble and Winterman both glared at him. But the redhead seemed merely surprised. “He did, didn’t he?” she said slowly. “That’s funny. He almost never did that on one of his bad days. I wonder why he did it today.”

“Hathaway says you and King walked on just ahead of him,” Trimble growled, still glaring at Layton. “What did King say to you?”

“Nothing. Not a word. We separated at his dressing-room door—”

“I know all that Oh, Mrs. King,” Trimble said, as Nancy King came out of the washroom. “Would you mind waiting in the anteroom with the others?”

She went out past Sergeant Winterman without a word. Layton saw her sit down in the anteroom, away from Stander and Hathaway, and fold her hands in her lap. She had removed all trace of her tears.

“Miss Arkwright” Trimble went on in a lower voice. “Did Hathaway go on past your dressing room?”

“Hathaway? I couldn’t say. My door was closed.”

“For all you know, then, Hathaway might have stepped into King’s dressing room?”

“I suppose,” Lola said listlessly. “Though it hardly seems likely, since they weren’t on speaking terms.” Then her eyes widened. “Are you suggesting that old refugee from the silent flickers might have killed Tutter?”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” Trimble said. “Now about the ice pick we found buried in King’s chest. It’s the common variety, with a varnished pine handle. You recall seeing one like that around here?”

She shook her head.

“How about at King’s Hollywood apartment? Ever see one there?”

“No.”

Sergeant Winterman said suddenly, “Your dressing room is right next to King’s, isn’t it?”

“Yes, number 4.” Layton saw her stiffen a bit as she turned to the swarthy detective.

“Hear anything from number 2 while you were in your dressing room? Raised voices, for instance?”

“I don’t remember hearing anything.”

“Would you have heard — if an argument, say, had been going on in the next room?”

She looked doubtful. “I suppose so. If they were talking loud enough.”

Winterman signaled Trimble. Trimble said immediately, “When did you go back to the studio?”

Lola’s head swiveled again. “About two-three minutes before the newscast was over.”

“See anyone in the halls?” This was Winterman again, barking.

“Can’t you make up your minds which one is asking the questions?” she said angrily. “You’re giving me a stiff neck. No, I didn’t see anyone in the halls.”

Unperturbed, it was Trimble who asked the next question. “Layton says that about half a minute before you went back on the air you ran over to him and asked him to try and find King. Hadn’t you tried?”

“Okay, I’ll play,” Lola said in a grim voice. “Yes, Sergeant, I tried. On my way back to the studio I knocked on Tutter’s door — it was closed — then I looked in. He wasn’t there. When I got to the studio I went around checking with everybody in sight about if they’d seen Tutter. By then it was almost air time. I spotted Super-Newsman here, and I sent him hunting for Tut because I knew I’d have to take over the balance of the show if Tut didn’t make it. Is everybody happy?”

“Where are you going?” the one-eyed detective; said suddenly to Layton.

“Curses,” Layton said. “I thought I’d get to those two kids before you remembered you sent that cop after them.”

“Well, think again.” Trimble stalked out into the anteroom followed by Winterman, Layton meekly in their wake. They appeared to have forgotten Lola. The redhead hesitated. Then she went into the anteroom, too.

Trimble opened the door to the hall. The uniformed man was waiting outside with the bespectacled boy and the plump girl. “Okay, kids. In here.”

The anteroom began to look crowded. Hubert Stander and George Hathaway were perched on corners of the unmanned secretarial desk. Nancy King was still occupying the chair against the wall. Lola Arkwright had chosen a chair at the opposite wall. The two detectives and the two teenagers faced one another in the middle of the room. When the policeman went out at Trimble’s nod, Layton leaned against the door. He was wondering why the one-eyed sergeant proposed to question the boy and girl in the hearing of the others; but then he remembered that Trimble had a departmental reputation for doing the unorthodox. Maybe he was playing a hunch.

“You know what’s happened?” Trimble asked the teenagers. His voice was very friendly.

“Yes, sir.” Wayne Mission swallowed, the Adam’s apple in his thin neck jumping, like a fish. He seemed fascinated by Trimble’s scar. Nora Perkins, pressed against the boy as if for protection, was staring at Trimble’s glass eye. “Tutter’s committed suicide.”

“Oh?” Trimble said. “Where’d you hear that, Wayne?”

“It’s all over the place,” the boy said. “Why, isn’t it true?”

Trimble glanced over at Hathaway and Stander. The two station executives returned the glance defiantly.

“It could be,” the detective said in a kindly way. “We’re not sure. Is something the matter, Nora?”

She blanched and looked away, guiltily. “No, sir!”

“It’s the eye, isn’t it?” Trimble said with a smile. “Don’t worry about it, Nora — I don’t give it a thought any more. I know it makes me look like a monster from outer space, but I’m just a policeman doing his job. It was my duty once to stop a fight between a drunk and his wife. The ax he was aiming at her got me instead. No,” he went on, turning back to the boy, “we’re not sure just how Tut died. I thought maybe you two could help us.”

Layton could only admire Trimble’s technique. By adopting a fatherly tone and couching his explanation of the scar and the glass eye in modest terms, he evoked a hero image calculated to gain the teenagers’ confidence. Layton realized suddenly how desperate Trimble must be for a lead.

“Well, sure, sir,” Wayne Mission said. “Anything!”

“If we only could help,” Nora Perkins said fervently.

“Maybe you can, kids. I understand you both left Studio A through the employees’ door during the newscast intermission. Where were you going?”

“To Tutter’s dressing room,” Nora, said promptly.

“You knew him that well, did you?”

“Oh, sure,” young Mission said. His voice held a note of sad pride. “Nora and I are president and vice president of Tutter’s L.A. fan club — I mean, I’m president and she’s vice president. So Tutter allowed us special privileges. We often went back during the news break to talk to him.”

“Did you find him today?”

The boy shook his head. “He wasn’t there.”

“We figured he was in Lola’s dressing room,” Nora chimed in, “but of course we wouldn’t dream of going in there.”

Lola Arkwright’s head jerked to attention.

“No?” Trimble asked in a surprised way. “Why not, Nora?”

The teenagers immediately looked down at the floor. The boy muttered something to his companion, and her plain face flushed scarlet.

“You know, kids,” the one-eyed detective said gently, “I don’t like embarrassing people any more than you do. But after all, Tutter is dead, and we’ve got to find out everything we can. Why wouldn’t you dream of looking for Tutter in Miss Arkwright’s dressing room, Nora?”

“Wayne thinks I oughtn’t to say,” the girl mumbled.

“Why not, Wayne?”

It was the boy’s turn to flush. “Well, sir... it’s kind of disloyal to Tut.”

“What they don’t want to tell you,” Lola said unexpectedly, “is that one time, when they came back during the break — months ago — and looked for Tut in my dressing room, they caught us kissing. Big deal.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Miss Arkwright!” Nora Perkins said indignantly. “Admitting a thing like that right out in public!”

“And what’s more,” Wayne Mission added, “you got Tut mad at us. He wouldn’t let us visit him during the break for weeks after that.”

But Lola was not listening. She was staring in bitter triumph across the anteroom at Nancy King.

“I suppose my husband was as vulnerable as any other man would be,” Nancy said slowly, “to the advances of an attractive tramp. But it wouldn’t have meant anything to him. Not really.”

Lola was on her feet, her face as flaming as her hair. “You — calling — me — a tramp?”

She sprang.

Sergeant Winterman’s simian arms wrapped themselves around her just in time to keep her razor-edged fingernails from raking Nancy King’s pale face. The woman with the massed black hair had not moved a muscle.

“You wouldn’t want me to run you in for attempted assault,” Winterman said, holding the redhead fast. “Come on, stop it before I learn to like it.”

As suddenly as she had sprung, Lola Arkwright went limp. And pale, like Nancy King. Winterman cautiously released her. She bit her lip and turned away.

The teenagers were looking stunned. The Perkins girl said to Nancy King, “Did you say... your husband?”

“Yes,” Nancy said, as if nothing had happened.

“Tutter?”

She nodded. The girl’s unlovely jaw dropped.

“Tutter and Mrs. King have been married since you were about six years old, Nora,” Layton said. “He kept it a secret for professional reasons.”

The teenager shut her mouth with a snap. Then she said in an outraged voice, “How do you like that, Wayne? To think Tutter would do a thing like — that!” She might have been speaking of cannibalism.

Young Mission nodded in a dazed way.

So long, Tutter, Layton thought. You committed the unpardonable sin. He began reshaping in his mind the follow-up story he had to phone in, while he kept one ear mechanically open. Trimble was establishing that the teenagers had noticed Hubert Stander, as they came out of Studio A, walking down the hall toward the control room of Studio B and C; that they had actually seen him enter the control room; that they had returned to Studio A after finding King’s dressing room unoccupied.

“We’re going to release you people now,” Trimble was saying. “But please remember we’ve got an open book on this one, and nobody here is to leave Los Angeles without checking with me first. Give your addresses to Sergeant Winterman.”

While they clustered around Winterman, Layton murmured to Trimble, “Does this mean you’ve decided it’s homicide?”

Trimble smiled bleakly. “This means I don’t know what it is. Yet.”

Layton went into the board room and shut the door. He called for an outside line and spent a long time with the rewrite man in the Bulletin city room, angling his follow-up story.

“You seem to have got the jump on the whole town, Jim,” the rewrite man said. “I saw the boss a few minutes ago with a contortion of the features that might actually have been a smile. Why don’t you hit him for a raise while he’s feeling human?”

“The feeling won’t last that long,” Layton said, and hung up.

The anteroom was empty. He ran out into the hall.

She was waiting just outside the door.

For me? Layton’s heart jumped. For God’s sake, he said to himself angrily.

“Oh, Mrs. King,” he said, smiling, “I thought you’d be gone with the rest.”

Her answering smile was faint. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Layton, I... don’t know what to do with myself. I was just standing here trying to figure out where I go from here.”

“Suppose we figure it out together.” He put his hand on her elbow and urged her gently into motion. They began to walk down the corridor. “Did you drive in from the Valley?”

She nodded. “I’m parked on the station lot.”

“You look kind of shaky.” Touching her was like touching a hot iron. He took his hand away.

“I’m just beginning to realize that I’ll never see him again.”

“You’re in no shape to drive all that way. Let’s stop in here for a minute.”

She permitted him to steer her into Hathaway’s office. Hazel Grant had her hat on and was pulling on her gloves. Her hands paused for the briefest moment as she saw them.

“Sorry to bother you, Mrs. Grant,” Layton said. “This is Mrs. King. She’d like to leave her car on the lot tonight. Could you arrange for someone to deliver it to her in the Valley tomorrow?”

The blue-haired secretary surveyed King’s widow calmly. She’s not surprised, Layton thought. Did she know all along that King was married? Or had Hathaway just told her?

“We’re all so shocked about — what’s happened, Mrs. King,” Hazel Grant said. “I know there’s nothing anyone can say—”

Nancy murmured something.

“I’ll be happy to see to your car. If you’ll give me a description of it, and the keys and license number...”

They were walking across the parking lot before King’s widow said anything. “You’re very kind to be doing this, Mr. Layton. Whatever it is you’re proposing to do.”

“I’m proposing to drive you home.”

“Oh?” She smiled wanly. “Are you always so masterful?”

“Practically never.”

“I’m a good story, is that it?”

“Yes,” Layton admitted. “But you’re also somebody in trouble. And I’ve never got over my Boy Scout oath.”

She glanced at him — just a flash of the darkly liquid eyes. Then she looked down again.

They walked on in silence.