Murder on a Hot Tin Roof

Chapter 5

TWO HOURS LATER, ABBY AND I WERE still sitting on the purple couch in apartment 2A-the poshly decorated domain of Gray’s pudgy blond neighbor, Willard Sinclair-answering Detective Sergeant Nick Flannagan’s relentless and repetitious questions.

“So, let me get this straight,” Flannagan said for the umpteenth time, “you both got covered with the victim’s blood because you were kneeling in it?” His thin, youthful, clean-shaven face was wrinkled in disgust and disbelief (as it had been every time he’d made the same inquiry). “And then you hopped up and tracked it all over the place without realizing it?”

“Yes, that’s right, Detective Flannagan,” I wearily repeated, “except for the hopping part. I’m sure we didn’t hop anywhere.” I was so ashamed of my heedless behavior at the crime scene that I couldn’t raise my voice above a murmur. “We were both in shock, you see, and in a kind of stupor. We didn’t know what we were doing.”

“Yeah, that’s what you stated before,” he said, glowering at me as if I were his prime suspect. “You also claimed you didn’t notice whether or not there were any bloody footprints on the carpet before you discovered the body. But, you know what, Mrs. Turner? Much as I want to believe you, I just can’t bring myself to accept that explanation. It seems farfetched to me. It seems very unlikely that-”

“Things aren’t always as they seem,” Abby interrupted, brown eyes flashing with fury. Detective Flannagan was getting under her skin. Way under her skin. “Paige has given you the facts, ma’am, just the facts,” she seethed, quoting the corny, overused line from the

Dragnet television series-and casting aspersions on Flannagan’s masculinity in the same breath. And with a totally straight face.

Luckily, Flannagan didn’t catch on.

Under different circumstances, I’d have laughed my head off. (Abby really slays me sometimes.) In my current state, however-slick with sweat, sticky with blood, sweltering on the hot seat in a weird-looking stranger’s insufferably warm apartment, trying to defend my thoughtless actions at the scene of a brutal murder-well, I couldn’t muster up a snicker, much less a laugh.

I was about to apologize, once again, for the way Abby and I had messed up the evidence at Gray’s apartment-thereby causing a whole lot of confusion and extra work for the medical examiner and crime scene investigators-when one of the uniformed cops who’d been stationed out in the hall marched into Willard Sinclair’s living room and told Detective Flannagan that he was needed next door.

“All right!” Flannagan said, grinning like a kid at an amusement park, obviously raring to return to the recreation at the murder scene. He took off his suit jacket, loosened his tie, and rolled up the sleeves of his white cotton shirt. “That’ll be all for today, ladies. You’re free to go. We know where you live and we have your phone numbers. But you’re under strict instructions not to leave town, understand? And I want to see you both in my office tomorrow morning at ten.”

“What?!” I sputtered, sounding like Donald Duck on the brink of a breakdown. “Tomorrow is Sunday-the day of rest. Don’t you want to spend it with your family? This is the Fourth of July weekend, for Pete’s sake! We’re all entitled to a little time off.”

Flannagan looked at me and grinned again. “When you’re on the homicide squad, and there’s been a murder, there’s no such thing as time off.” He was having the time of his life. I swear he was. You could tell from the way his small hazel eyes were sparkling. “That goes for the people who discovered the body, too.”

“But we’ve told you everything we know,” Abby said, keeping her anger under admirable control.

“We’ll see about that tomorrow,” he replied. “Ten o’clock sharp.” Hooking his suit jacket on one finger and slinging it over his shoulder, Flannagan turned and headed for the door. Then, just as he was about to step out into the hall, he swung back around and glared at Willard Sinclair, our potbellied host-the queer little man who’d been sitting in shock on a chair in the corner, saying nothing and chewing his nails to the quick.

“As for you, Mr. Sinclair,” Flannagan said, puckering his boyish features in obvious but uncalled-for aversion, “stay right where you are. That’s an order. Don’t set foot outside this apartment. I’ll be back to question you later.”

AS SOON AS FLANNAGAN WAS GONE, Abby let out a humongous groan. “That man is a raving putz!” she croaked, jumping up off the couch and pacing around the living room. “I wanted to knock his snotty block off! He was treating us like we were the ones who killed Gray. He should be spanked. No, he should be fired!”

I agreed with her, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have the energy.

Willard Sinclair, on the other hand, had energy to burn. He sprang out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box, shot across the room in a flash, and then quickly, but ever so quietly, pushed his front door all the way closed. “Oh, mercy me!” he cried, darting back to the middle of the living room and joining Abby in her anxious pacing. He was wringing his hands as well. “What am I going to do now?” he said, speaking with a faint Southern accent I hadn’t noticed before. “That awful little worm is coming back to give me the third degree. I know the way he works! He’ll grill me till I’m limp as a wet noodle, and then he’ll do it all over again, just for fun-like the last time.”

I snapped to attention and sat up straighter on the couch. “The last time? You mean Flannagan has questioned you before? About another murder?” My wheels were spinning like crazy. Could it be that Gray’s peculiar, kimono-wearing next door neighbor was a deranged serial killer?

Sinclair stopped his frantic pacing and combed his fingers through his gummy hair. “Yes… Flannagan has interrogated me before,” he admitted, staring down at his pink-flowered living room rug, avoiding eye-contact like the plague. “But it didn’t have anything to do with murder.”

“Then, what did it have to do with?” I probed, suddenly driven to launch an interrogation of my own.

“Oh, nothing…” He kept on staring, bug-eyed, at the field of flowers beneath his feet. “Really. It was nothing at all.”

“The cops don’t usually give somebody the third degree over nothing,” I pressed, hoping to provoke a revealing reaction.

“What dream world have you been living in?” he cried, shifting his gaze from the floor to my face, then rolling his protruding eyes up toward the ceiling. “They do it all the time, honey. You just don’t hear about it so much. It’s their dirty little secret, and they usually manage to keep it out of the papers.”

“He’s right, Paige,” Abby said, sitting down and lighting a cigarette. “Not all Manhattan detectives are as swell as your man Dan. Especially the ones who work down here in the Village. A lot of them don’t dig the free thinkers and artistic types who live in this area. They think a groovy, far-out cat with a beard is nothing but a mangy dog.”

“That’s a fact!” Sinclair crowed, nodding at Abby in grateful agreement. “And they drag us off to the pound every chance they get.”

“Oh? Do you consider yourself a groovy, far-out cat?” I asked him. “You sure don’t have a beard.”

“No, but I have other… um… eccentricities.” He was staring down at the floor again. “And the police do treat me like a dog. I’ve been hauled off to the pound more than once.”

Look, I wasn’t a total dope. I had already figured out that Mr. Willard Sinclair was a homosexual. If the yellow silk kimono and pink-flowered rug hadn’t convinced me, then the ruffled throw pillows on the purple couch-not to mention the fringed shades on all the living room lamps-surely would have done the trick. (See what an observant sleuth I am?)

And I wasn’t totally in the dark about the way the police treated homosexuals, either. I had written a story on the subject for

Daring Detective, so I knew that popular homosexual hangouts, and even private parties, were frequently raided, and that these raids generally resulted in numerous arrests. I also knew that many of the detainees had suffered brutal beatings while in police custody.

Homosexuality was illegal, and some of the city’s more “manly” law officers considered it the world’s most heinous crime. And they felt it was their solemn duty (though others might call it their pleasure) to prosecute (or rather, persecute) the criminals. I was not, I should tell you, in accordance with either the law or the so-called public servants who delighted in carrying it out. As a matter of fact, I found the whole situation abhorrent.

So, in an effort to spare Mr. Sinclair any further discomfort or embarrassment about his forbidden sexual preferences, I quickly dropped my line of questioning about his previous dealings with the police, and switched my focus to the subject that interested me the most: his relationship with Gray Gordon.

“Tell me, Mr. Sinclair,” I began, “how well did you know your next door neighbor?”

“Call me Willy,” he said. “My friends all call me Willy.”

I didn’t know that I was-or was ever going to be-his friend, but I was glad to be offered the use of his first name. It would make it so much easier for me to pry into his personal life. “Willy it is!” I chirped, giving him an earnest smile. (Okay, so it wasn’t a really earnest earnest smile, but it was the best I could do considering the fact that I’d only just met the man a couple of hours ago and was now trying to figure out if he was a throat-slashing, chest-stabbing, gut-ripping killer.)

“So tell me, Willy,” I cooed, “were you and Gray good friends? Had you known each other long?”

“Not very,” he said, standing slumped in the middle of the room, shoulders sagging toward the floor. “Gray moved into the building two years ago, but we never became close friends. He was so busy going to acting school, freelancing as a model, and bussing tables at Stewart’s Cafeteria, that he didn’t have time for me. Then after he became an understudy, I hardly saw him at all. I longed for a deeper, more intimate bond, but I knew it would never happen. He was a young, strapping, gorgeous Greek god, and I was a flabby old frog. And there isn’t a kiss in the world that could turn me into a prince.”

Willy flopped down in a chair across the room and covered his face with his hands. He looked so wretched and pathetic, I felt drawn to comfort him in some way. Pat him on the back. Massage his sloping shoulders. Uplift his sunken ego with heaps of flattery. But such gestures were out of the question, of course. Willy’s unrequited passion for Gray might have been the motive for the murder! How could I, in good conscience, try to bolster the self-image of a possible slasher? (And besides-as much as it discomfits me to disclose it-he really did look like a frog.)

“Oy vey!” Abby cried out, jumping up from the couch again. “It’s hot as fire in here! If I don’t get some air, I’m gonna die! I need some lunch, too. C’mon, Paige, let’s go. Flannagan said it was okay for us to leave.”

I was hot, but I wasn’t hungry. The bloody scene next door had murdered my appetite. And there were still tons of questions I wanted to ask Willy. “Gosh, I don’t know, Ab,” I said, piercing her with a pointed stare. “I think I’d like to stay for a while and-”

“Yeah, what’s your hurry?” Willy broke in, wringing his hands again. He stood up and walked over to Abby, a pleading look in his protruding eyes. “I’ll fix you a nice lunch,” he said. “I made a lovely batch of chicken salad this morning. And a pitcher of iced tea. With fresh mint.” He clearly didn’t want us to leave.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Abby said, ignoring both Willy’s and my respective appeals. “No offense, pal, but we’ve got to blast off before Flannagan comes back. Otherwise we’ll get stuck here for the rest of the day.”

Abby’s warning hit home. Suddenly I was in a hurry to blast off, too. I felt uneasy about leaving Willy to face the intolerant-possibly abusive-authorities alone, but I couldn’t afford to get caught up in Flannagan’s afternoon inquisition. I simply couldn’t spare the time. I had my own investigation to conduct.