Murder is a Girl's Best Friend Page 2

  I smiled. There was a time when Lenny wouldn’t have been so genial and chatty with me. He would have mumbled a shy answer to my question and scurried off to his desk at the back of the workroom, as breathless and red-faced from embarrassment as from exertion. But that was eight long months ago—before Lenny and I had become true comrades. Before we’d discovered our ardent respect and esteem for each other. Before he had saved my life.

  But that’s another story. (The Babs Comstock story, to be exact. See, I was trapped on the fifth floor landing of the office stairwell, being molested and strangled by a cold-blooded murderer—the same man who had murdered Babs Comstock—when Lenny just happened to come barging up the stairs on his way to work, in the miraculous nick of time to prevent my sudden death and accidentally cause the sudden death of my assailant. It was a freaky, but very fortuitous outcome. Ever since then Lenny and I have been as close as brother and sister—two peas in a mutually protective pod.)

  “How was your weekend?” Lenny wanted to know. He picked up his lunch sack and headed for his desk at the very back of the front workroom.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Dan took me to see The Silver Chalice at the Paramount. It’s in Cinemascope. Stars that popular new actor, Paul Newman. And Pier Angeli.”

  “Was it any good?”

  “Okay, I guess, if you like those sprawling, pompous, bigger-than-life biblical spectacles. Personally, I’d rather see a neat Alfred Hitchcock mystery. Or a slew of Tom and Jerry cartoons.”

  “Hey!” Mr. Crockett interrupted, sticking his head through the door of his office. “Where the heck’s my coffee?”

  “Coming right up, sir!” I chirped, pasting another phony smile on my kisser. Why do so many bosses feel they have a right to be rude? I gave Lenny a knowing wink, then took Mr. Crockett his morning fix of newsprint and caffeine.

  When I got back to my desk at the front of the workroom, Mike and Mario marched in. Mike Davidson was the tall, fair, flattopped assistant editor of the magazine, and Mario Caruso was the short, dark, ducktailed art director. Both were married and in their early thirties. They lived on opposite sides of town from each other, but for some weird reason I’d never been able to figure out, they almost always arrived at the office in tandem. Went out to lunch together every day, too. A regular Heckle and Jeckle.

  “Morning, Toots,” Mario said, unwinding his plaid muffler and ogling my bosom as usual. “You’re looking very pink and fuzzy today. Is that sweater as warm as it looks?”

  “Yes,” I said, wary of the question, knowing Mario’s motive for asking it would be ulterior.

  “Then take it off immediately!” he said.

  I didn’t bite. I just sat there, glowering at Mario and saying nothing, waiting for him to deliver the rest of his typical (i.e., sexually suggestive and incredibly stupid) gibe.

  “I need to borrow it for a while,” he said, shooting Mike a wicked glance, then leaning down over the top of my desk till his nose was just inches away from mine. “It’s colder than a witch’s you-know-what outside, and my you-know-whats are freezing!”

  Mike burst out laughing, but I didn’t crack a smile. “Oh, really?” I said, staring down at the big stack of proof sheets on my desk and shuffling the pages around. “Then you should have worn your flannel bra.”

  Mike laughed even louder, but Mario turned quiet and put on a long face. He could make ’em, but he couldn’t take ’em—and I knew he wouldn’t rest until he’d made me pay for the comeback, lame though it was. “What’s that you’re reading?” he soon asked, wrinkling his bumpy nose and pointing toward the pile of proofs in my hand. “A new Paige-Turner?”

  This was another of Mario’s typical routines. Whenever he couldn’t think up something funny to say, he called attention to my funny name. And my funny career goals.

  “These are the proofs for the next issue,” I said with a sniff, deciding to ignore the name game and play it straight. “Take a look at the production schedule. We’re up against an urgent deadline. You have to do the cover, and I have to do the backyard paste-up. Today.”

  “Oh,” Mario said, at a momentary loss for words. He didn’t like it when I talked seriously about work. There was a brief lull in the conversation, and then—frantic to regain control of the situation—Mario turned himself around, lifted the hem of his overcoat up over his rear end, and thrust the seat of his gray flannel slacks in my direction. “Hey, baby! How’s about pasting up m y backyard instead?”

  Now, really! I ask you! Was this any way for a full-grown man—a City College graduate, a married Catholic, a successful professional in the field of illustrative and commercial art—to act? And how was I—a well-educated but decidedly dirt-poor twenty-eight-year-old widow trying to make her own way in the perilous male-dominated world of publishing—supposed to respond?

  As far as I could see, there were only two courses of action open to me: I could kiss him on both cheeks, or kick him in the pants.

  Determined (okay, desperate) to keep my job, I chose to kiss instead of kick. “Maybe later, big boy,” I said, doing my best imitation of Eve Arden (which meant I probably looked and sounded more like a drunken Thelma Ritter). “I’m too busy to play in your backyard right now.”

  Mario was satisfied. My demeanor had been sufficiently obsequious and flirtatious. He gave me a slick, triumphant smirk, hooked his hat and coat on the rack, and then swaggered down the aisle toward his desk in the rear, across the way from Lenny’s .

  Copying all of Mario’s movements (including the swagger), Mike followed closely on his cohort’s heels, stopping at his own desk in the middle of the room. He sat down in his squeaky swivel chair and lit up a Lucky. “I trust you’re not too busy to bring me some coffee, doll,” he said, blowing smoke out of his freckled nose and leering at me across the seven or eight feet of space that separated our cheek-to-cheek work areas. “I need a warm-up, too.”

  Warm this! I fumed to myself, keeping my outward appearance under frigid control. Pretending that I was Lauren Bacall’s much cooler, more collected sister, I slowly straightened my stocking seams and leisurely combed my fingers through my thick, wavy, shoulder-length brown hair. Then I bit the bullet and got up to get the coffee.

  THE PHONE CALL CAME IN AT 11:25 THAT morning.

  I had finished the required newspaper clipping and story editing and proofreading, and was just starting to work on meeting the backyard paste-up deadline. Brandon Pomeroy—the editorial director of the magazine and the primary plague of my pitiful professional existence—had made his way into the office a few minutes before, and was sitting straight as a stick at his desk across the aisle from mine, smoking his pipe and fingering his mustache, looking petulant and arrogant as always. He was just biding his time, I knew—counting the minutes till he could go out for his three-martini lunch.

  When the phone rang Pomeroy lurched and spun around to face me, making frantic gestures with his pale, aristocratic hands. “I’m not here!” he sputtered. “Tell whoever it is I’m in a meeting.”

  “Daring Detective,” I said, answering the call in my usual upbeat manner.

  “Is Paige Turner there?” The voice was tense, troubled and masculine. “Could I speak to Paige Turner, please?”

  I didn’t know who it was. And from the anguished tone of the caller’s voice, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “Who’s calling, please?” I asked, keeping my own identity to myself. “And may I ask what this call is in reference to?” Ever since my near encounter with the icebox at the city morgue, I’d become as jittery and self-defensive as a Hollywood screenwriter during the McCarthy hearings.

  “My name’s Catcher,” the voice said. “Terence Catcher.”

  I still didn’t know who it was.

  “Is Paige Turner there, please?” he asked again. “I really need to talk to her.”

  “Then you’ll have to tell me what you need to talk to her about.” I wasn’t taking any chances. The last stranger who’d insisted on having a phone conversation with
me had been a sex-crazed killer.

  “Look, I don’t have time for this. Is she there, or not?” The man’s anguish had turned to exasperation. “Tell her I was an Army buddy of her late husband’s. We were in Korea together. ”

  My heart stopped beating and hurled itself against the wall of my chest. “Bob?” I croaked. “You were a friend of Bob’s?”

  “That’s right. We were in the same outfit.”

  I could hardly breathe. I felt dizzy and devastated—the way I always felt whenever my dear departed husband’s magnificent smiling face came flashing back into my consciousness.

  “Is this Bob’s wife I’m speaking to?” Terence Catcher asked. “Are you Paige Turner?”

  “Yes,” I said, still struggling for air. And equilibrium.

  “Thank God!” he said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be working there anymore and I wouldn’t be able to find you.”

  Deep breath. “I’m in the book.”

  “Yes, I know. I tried you at home, but there was no answer, so I figured you went to work. And I couldn’t wait till tonight to talk to you.”

  “But how did you know where I work?”

  “Well, Bob mentioned it once, but I also knew it from the letters.”

  “What letters?”

  “Your letters to Bob.”

  I stiffened. “How do you know what my letters to Bob said?”

  “He showed them to me. All of them.”

  What?!!! I felt bewildered and betrayed. Why on earth had Bob let this man read my letters? They were so emotional, so intimate—so personal. How could he have shared them with somebody else?

  “Look, don’t be upset,” Terence Catcher said, proving he could read minds as well as other people’s mail. “I can explain everything—but not on the phone. I need to see you. Now. When do you get off for lunch? Will you meet me someplace? I’d like to talk to you about Bob, and there’s something else I want to discuss with you, too.”

  I was hooked but still hesitant. What if the “something else” he wanted to discuss with me was something I didn’t want to know? “Sounds complicated,” I said, “and I only get an hour for lunch. Can’t we meet tonight, after I get off from work?”

  “I won’t be here tonight. I’m going back home to Pittsburgh and my bus leaves at three-thirty.”

  Oh, great. Another urgent deadline. “All right,” I said, heart ticking like a time bomb. “I’ll meet you at Horn & Hardart’s, on the corner of 42nd and Third, in twenty minutes. I’ll be the brunette in the red beret.”

  Chapter 2

  I TOOK OFF MY HIGH-HEELED PUMPS AND zipped on my fur-lined snowboots. As I was putting on my camel’s hair coat and my black leather gloves and my red wool beret, Brandon Pomeroy gave me a supercilious sneer and said, “It’s a bit early for lunch, Mrs. Turner. Twelve minutes early, to be exact. I hope you have a good reason for going out so soon.” The look on his face told me I’d better have a good reason.

  “I do, sir,” I said. (Pomeroy was only six years older than I was, but from my first day on the job he had insisted that I call him “sir.” And treat him like a titled duke. And since he was a genuine blood relation of the owner of Daring Detective—the outrageously wealthy and powerful publishing magnate Oliver Rice Harrington—I knew it was in my own best interests to comply.) “I have to meet a friend of my late husband’s,” I told him. “Someone who served with Bob in Korea. He’s going to be in town for just a few hours.”

  Mike, Mario, and Lenny all looked up from their work, suddenly interested in the conversation. Fully aware that we were being watched, Pomeroy leaned back in his chair and shot a meaningful glance at the big round clock on the wall. Then he lowered his bullet eyes and trained them on another target—my face. “You have my permission to go,” he said, glaring at me through the glittering lenses of his expensive horn-rimmed glasses, “but see that you’re back by twelve forty-eight. On the dot.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, smiling like an angel, successfully resisting the urge to give him a mock Heil Hitler salute. I was annoyed by Pomeroy’s strict time limit, but not terribly concerned about making (okay, breaking) it. I knew he’d never know what time I came back to the office. He wouldn’t be back from his own lunch—his regular belly-to-the-bar repast of peanuts, olives, and gin—until at least two or two-thirty.

  All eyes watched me leave (okay, flee) the office. I hurried down the hall to the elevators, buttoning my coat up tight around my neck, preparing to face the cold. As I stood waiting for an elevator to arrive, two young women strolled through the glass-walled reception area of Orchid Publications (the largest suite of offices on our floor), then pushed their way through the heavy glass doors and joined me in the hall. They were both dressed in the usual Orchid Publications style—form-fitting suits with tight sheath skirts, ruffled pastel blouses, white gloves, seamed silk stockings, stilettos, and they both carried large leather clutch bags. They had on their hats, but not their coats, so I figured they were going down to lunch in the lobby coffee shop.

  They began chatting immediately—to each other but not to me.

  “I can’t decide on a title for that story,” one of them said. “I might use ‘My Lover Got Me Pregnant on My Best Friend’s Kitchen Floor!’ How does that sound?”

  “Has a nice ring to it,” the other one said. “But shouldn’t it be a little racier? You could change the word Kitchen to Bedroom.”

  “But then I’d have to change the whole story, too. And besides, isn’t the kitchen racier than the bedroom? I mean, one expects people to have sex in the bedroom.”

  “Yes, I guess so. But I still don’t like the word Kitchen in the title. It makes me think of dirty aprons and greasy pots and pans. And I don’t like Pregnant, either. That’s the unsexiest word in the whole English language!”

  The first one laughed. “I see what you mean. Maybe I’ll just go back to my original title: ‘Raped After Dinner by My Best Friend’s Husband!’ ”

  “Better,” the other one said. “Much better. ”

  The elevator came and we all stepped in.

  In case you’re wondering, Orchid Publications was the largest publisher of grade B (some would say trashy) women’s periodicals in the country. They put out a slew of confession magazines (in which department my two elevator mates were obviously employed), and they published tons of movie, gossip, beauty, and horoscope magazines. They also published Daring Detective, but this fact had always been kept a deep dark secret—both from the industry in general and the public at large. Orchid’s owner (yep!—the one and the same Oliver Rice Harrington) didn’t want the company’s “clean” feminine image sullied by DD’s “dirty” (not to mention bloody) concerns.

  When the elevator doors popped open, I lunged into the lobby and hurried down the black rubber runner leading across the marble floor to the row of revolving glass doors on the Third Avenue side of the building. I stepped into one of the doors and pushed my way through to the sidewalk. A wall of cold wet air slammed me in the face, and my eyelashes were immediately caked with snowflakes. The sidewalk had recently been shoveled—you could tell by the knee-high banks of snow at the curb—but the fast-falling flakes had already formed a crunchy new white carpet underfoot.

  Lowering my head against the oncoming snow, I clasped my collar close around my chin and forged down Third to the automat. The restaurant was just one block away from my office, but with my lungs in shock from the freezing cold, and my heart caught up in my throat the way it was, I felt like I was crossing the tundra.

  HORN & HARDART’S WAS CROWDED AS usual. It wasn’t yet noon, but lots of people were already sliding their lunch trays along the waist-high service railings, popping nickels into allotted coin slots, then opening the little chrome and glass doors of the individual food compartments to remove their chosen dishes. The line at the change-maker’s register was long, and quickly growing longer. It seemed that everybody in Manhattan—rich or poor, beautiful or ugly, weak or strong—liked to meet and eat at the auto
mat, even during a snowstorm.

  I spotted an empty table for two and went to claim it. Taking the seat facing the door, I shrugged out of my coat and tucked it over the back of my chair. I removed my red beret, shook off the snow, and put it back on. Then I raked my eyes around the crowded room, looking for the total stranger who had been a friend of my husband’s—the man who could be bringing me a measure of peace and solace, or a load of sorrow and despair. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was ready (okay, resigned) to meet both the past and the future head-on.

  I didn’t have to wait long. Within minutes, a medium-tall, well-built man wearing a brown felt fedora and a brown suede bomber jacket, carrying a shoebox tied with twine, pushed his way through the door and began shooting his eyes around the restaurant, from one corner of the dining room to the other, obviously looking for someone. And that someone was obviously me, since the minute he spotted my red beret, he snapped to attention. He lowered his bright blue eyes to my brown ones, then strode over to my table—our table—with the energy of a man on a mission.

  “Paige?” he said. “Is that you?” His lean, clean-shaven face was burning with curiosity. And such a fiery intensity I wanted to back away from the heat.

  “Terence?” I said. “Terence Catcher?” I didn’t stand up from the table. I was afraid if I tried to balance my jittery body on my numb, unsteady feet, they’d slip right out from under me, and I’d find myself flat on my back—or, worse, face down—on the speckled beige linoleum.

  “Terry,” he said, sitting down and placing the Thom McAn shoebox on the table. He reached his gloved hand across the table and grabbed hold of mine. “Please call me Terry. ”

  “Okay, Terry” I said, removing my fingers from his leathery grip. I peered into the depths of his big blue eyes, searching for some clue to his character, but all I could see was a keen, penetrating intelligence. And pain. A truckload of pain.

  Terry returned my stare, then gave me a thin, crooked smile. “You’re even more beautiful than Bob said you were.”