Murder is a Girl's Best Friend Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Praise for MURDERERS PREFER BLONDES

  “A beautifully realized evocation of time and place; 1950s New York City comes alive for those of us who were there and even those who weren’t. Amanda Matetsky has created a very funny and interesting female protagonist, Paige Turner, and put her in the repressed and male-dominated year of 1954, which works like a charm. This is more than a murder mystery; this is great writing by a fresh talent.”

  —Nelson DeMille

  “Prepare to be utterly charmed by the irrepressible Paige Turner, and take an enchanting trip back in time to New York City, circa 1954 . . . A thoroughly fun read.”

  —Dorothy Cannell

  “Amanda Matetsky has created a wonderfully sassy character in the unfortunately named Paige Turner. In her 1950s world where gals are peachy and cigarettes dangle from the lips of every private dick, a busty platinum blonde finds herself at the wrong end of a rope and Paige is on the case of a swell who dunit, sweetheart. Delightfully nostalgic and gripping. Irresistible.” —Sarah Strohmeyer, author of Bubbles In Trouble

  “A great idea well-executed—funny, fast, and suspenseful.”

  —Max Allan Collins, author of Road to Perdition

  “Murderers Prefer Blondes is a gas; full of vivid characters and so sharp in its depiction of the fifties when you read it you’ll feel like you’re sipping champagne in the Copacabana.”—Betsy Thornton, author of Ghost Towns

  “Paige Turner is the liveliest, most charming detective to emerge in crime fiction in a long time. She is the product of her time and place—New York in the fifties—with a little Betty Boop and a little Brenda Starr in her makeup, but she is also her own woman, funny, smart, energetic, brave, hard-working, and determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. She is irresistible, a force of nature.”

  —Ann Waldron, author of The Princeton Murders

  “Matetsky adeptly captures the atmosphere of the 1950s, and her characters—especially Paige and her friend Abby—are a delight. This journey back to a time that now seems innocent is refreshing.”—Romantic Times

  “A fun new mystery series . . . a real page-turner . . . a delightful historical amateur sleuth tale.”—BookBrowser

  “A fast-paced, smart debut with a feisty heroine that entertains and keeps readers eagerly turning Paiges.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either

  are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,

  and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

  establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  MURDER IS A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with

  the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / July 2004

  Copyright © 2004 by Amanda Matetsky.

  Song lyrics on page ix are from “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”.

  Music by Jule Styne. Words by Leo Robin. Copyright © 1949 (Renewed)

  by Music Sales Corporation (ASCAP). International Copyright Secured.

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without

  permission. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the

  Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is

  illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic

  editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of

  copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-16155-5

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and

  the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design

  are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Molly,

  because a sister is a girl’s best friend

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have the best group of cheerleaders in the world, and I heartily thank them all: Harry Matetsky1, Molly Murrah, Liza, Tim, Tara and Kate Clancy, Ira Matetsky, Matthew Greitzer, Rae and Joel Frank, Sylvia Cohen, Mary Lou and Dick Clancy, Ann Waldron, Nelson DeMille, Dianne Francis, Art Scott, Betsy Thornton, Santa and Tom De Haven, Nikki and Bert Miller, Herta Puleo, Marte Cameron, Cameron Joy, Sandra Thompson and Chris Sherman, Donna and Michael Steinhorn, Gayle Rawlings and Debbie Marshall, Regina Grassia, Joan Unice, Judy Capriglione, Martha Cevasco, Betty Fitzsimmons, Nancy Francese, Jane Gudapati, Carleen Kierce, April Margolin, Margaret Ray, Doris Schweitzer, Carol Smith, Roberta Waugh and her saintly sidekick, Joseph.

  I send heaps of gratitude and good wishes to my dear friends at Literacy Volunteers of America-Nassau County, Inc., and my fellow mystery writers and readers at Sisters in Crime-Central Jersey. And to my wonderful co-agents, Annelise Robey and Meg Ruley of the Jane Rotrosen Agency, and my superlative editor at Penguin Group, Martha Bushko, I shout THANK YOU at the top of my lungs.

  “Men grow cold when girls grow old,

  And we all lose our charms in the end.

  But square-cut, or pear-shaped,

  These rocks don’t lose their shape—

  Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”

  —as sung by Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

  Prologue

  IT ISN’T EASY BEING ME. MY NAME IS Paige Turner, which is laughable enough all by itself, but when you couple the silly name with the fact that I’m a writer, my entire identity takes on an aura of absurdity. To put it more succinctly, I’m a living joke. People start giggling the minute they meet me. And then, when they learn that I’m a mystery novelist and a staff writer for Daring Detective magazine, the giggles turn into great big snorts and belly laughs. It’s so embarrassing and annoying I’m thinking of leaving my job to become a switchboard operator, or a stenographer, or a teacher, or a nurse—like every single other (okay, every other single) woman working in Manhattan.

  There I go, lying again (I’ve been doing a lot of that lately). I’m not really thinking about leaving my job. I’ve always wanted to be a crime and mystery writer—ever since I was a sk
inny midwestern teenager, eating potato chips in bed and reading Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely for the first time—and now that I finally am one, at the grand old age of twenty-eight, I’m not about to quit. I’d change my name before I’d change my job.

  But I’m not going to do that, either. I was deeply in love with my late husband Bob Turner, and even though he’s been gone for three years now (Bob was killed in Korea in late 1951), and even though we lived together as man and wife for only one short, glorious, rapturous month, I will keep my married name until the day I die—or get hitched again, whichever comes first. And the way things have been going for me in the last few months, I’m sure to be pushing up pansies long before my new boyfriend, NYPD Homicide Detective Sergeant Dan Street, ever dreams of popping the question.

  You probably think I’m kidding, but I’m not. Dan’s so mad at me right now he’d rather kill me than marry me. Plus, I keep getting myself into so damn much trouble—serious, scary, life-threatening trouble—it’ll be a flat-out miracle if some overexcited homicidal maniac doesn’t beat him to the punch.

  Eight months ago, when I started working on my first story for Daring Detective—investigating and writing about the rape and murder of a pretty blonde waitress/mother/call girl named Babs Comstock—I learned just how dangerous my line of work can be: extremely dangerous, if you must know. I came this close to meeting the same awful fate as the pitiful young victim I was writing about. And by the time I finished investigating this story—my sixth for the magazine, and the one I’m preparing to tell you now—I was a mangled and bloody mess.

  I’m not complaining, though. At least I’m still alive, which is more than I can say for some other people who made the mistake—or simply had the misfortune—of playing a part in this lurid and tragic tale. And even though I’m sitting here in my aqua chenille bathrobe at my yellow Formica kitchen table in my grubby little Greenwich Village apartment on a forced eight-week convalescent leave from work—my shattered leg in a plaster cast and my wounded shoulder strapped tight in five layers of gauze and adhesive tape—I can still inhale, and exhale, and think, and talk, and move all of my fingers.

  Which means I can still type—as I’m doing right now—and put all of my dreadful experiences down on paper. Which means I can now try, once again (with the help of my trusty baby blue Royal portable and about a thousand packs of L&M filter tips), to live up to my corny name and turn my most recent Daring Detective story of sex, greed, deception, and murder into the shocking, thrilling, full-length page-turner it was born to be.

  My best friend and next door neighbor, Abby Moscowitz, is pushing me into this. She’s so bossy it’s cruel! My first and only novel—the extended, true-but-slightly-fictionalized account I wrote about the Babs Comstock murder—hasn’t even been published yet, and already she’s badgering me to write another one. She says I’ve got to strike while the story’s hot. And while the details are still fresh in my brain. Ha! That’s another cause for big snorts and belly laughs. Abby refuses to acknowledge it, but my brain is as broken as the bones in my leg and shoulder.

  Still, I’m going to be out of work for eight long, lonely, desperately boring weeks. And I can’t walk without crutches. And I can’t use crutches because it hurts my shoulder too much. So I’m kind of stuck here in my dingy, dwarf-sized, fifty-dollar-a-month duplex with nothing to do but eat, and drink, and sleep, and smoke, and gobble aspirin, and hope that Abby will come over with a pitcher (or two) of martinis, and that Dan will forgive my latest “misconduct” (that’s his word, not mine!), and stop by for a quick make-up smooch between homicide expeditions.

  So I might as well get to work on my second novel, right? It’s either that or go crazy. Well, crazier, I guess I should say. And even though it’ll be really stressful for me to relive the pain and horror of the past few weeks—and to put all the loathsome and sorrowful details into a hundred-or-so thousand words—it’ll be better than just sitting here in my small, dark kitchen, listening to one awful radio soap opera after another, agonizing over what I’m going to have for supper tonight (Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup again?), or what bathrobe I’m going to wear tomorrow (a moronic concern since I only have one), or how the heck I’m going to drag my plastered (sic) and bandaged body up the incredibly narrow and precariously steep flight of steps to the bathroom.

  Some choice. I can write about murder, or just wish it on myself.

  Like I said, it isn’t easy being me.

  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.”