Dial Me for Murder (2 page)

I’m not complaining, mind you. I really love my job. I’ve wanted to be a crime and mystery writer since the age of fourteen, when I discovered that reading Erle Stanley Gardner and Rex Stout was a lot more fun than studying Shakespeare. And now, at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, I’m really proud that I’ve finally broken through the gender barrier to become a
Daring Detective
staff writer, and that I’ve managed to develop and expand a couple of my true
DD
stories into twenty-five-cent paperback novels (like the one you’re reading now).

It hasn’t been easy, though. And as hard as it was for me to break into the “manly” world of crime periodicals and paper-backs, that’s how tough it’s been to maintain my position.

Did I say tough? Ha! That’s an understatement if ever I wrote one. Being the only woman on the six-member staff of a testosterone-driven magazine like
Daring Detective
is downright treacherous. Except for Lenny Zimmerman—the skinny, smart, bespectacled art assistant who’s my only friend in the office—all of my male coworkers would like nothing better than to see me stripped naked, tarred and feathered, and run out of the publishing business on a rail. They simply can’t handle having a determined, ambitious, and reasonably attractive young woman running alongside (and in some cases ahead) of them in the nine-to-five rat race. It threatens their supremacy and makes them turn beastly.

Brandon Pomeroy—the tall, dark, and somewhat handsome editorial director of the magazine—is the most beastly one of all. Not in a brash, masculine, animalistic kind of way (I could deal with that), but in a cold, slithery, reptilian way that makes your skin crawl. If Brandon Pomeroy—or
Mister
Pomeroy, as he insists on being called, even though he’s only six years older than me—ever had a soft, warm, friendly feeling for any female in his life, I’d eat my favorite hat (and those of you who know me know I wouldn’t part with my beloved red beret without a fight).

Pomeroy comes from a very rich and powerful family. In fact, his older second cousin is none other than Oliver Rice Harrington—the superwealthy publishing mogul who owns half the country’s newspapers and magazines,
Daring Detective
included. That’s the only way Pomeroy ever landed his job at
DD,
you should know—by being born into the right family. He certainly isn’t qualified to be an editorial director! Not unless acting like an effete snob, drinking gin for breakfast, and snoozing at one’s desk are the main requirements for that lofty position.

Fortunately for the lowlier members of the staff (of which, by virtue of being female, I am the lowliest), Pomeroy isn’t
DD
’s first in command. That distinction belongs to Harvey Crockett, the big-bellied, white-haired, cigar-chewing ex-newspaperman who’s been editor in chief since the magazine’s inception. Crockett is gruff, grouchy, and impatient—a lifelong bachelor and proud of it. The only reason he ever brought a woman (i.e., me) onto the staff was to make and serve the coffee. (All the typing, filing, phone-answering, letter-taking, news-clipping, invoicing, and proofreading chores were, I’m convinced, an afterthought.) And the only reason I was ever assigned to write any stories for the magazine was because the exclusive, in-depth, first-person reports I investigated in secret and wrote on my own time—and finally prevailed upon Crockett to publish— increased
DD
sales by more than 30 percent.

So, guess what. I’m being “allowed” to write lots of
DD
stories now.

Mike Davidson, the magazine’s near-illiterate yet ultracocky head staff writer, isn’t too happy about that. And neither is Mario Caruso, the touchy-feely art director who thinks he has a right to touch and feel me whenever (and wherever) he likes. Mike and Mario are both married and in their early thirties, and they each have two little kids. That explains, I suppose, why they’re so grudging and possessive of the
Daring Detective
payroll. They have families to feed, and they don’t want some “flighty female upstart” (their words, not mine) laying claim to any portion of the magazine’s extra assets—even when she’s generating those assets herself!

But Mike and Mario don’t know me very well. I’m not the least bit flighty (except when I’m swooping around the city, flapping my investigative wings), and I don’t have an upstart bone in my body. I’ve been working for the magazine for almost four years now, and I’m still making just seventy-five dollars a week. (The guys all make a hundred or more—and in the case of Crockett and Pomeroy it’s
much
more.) And though I
do
try a lot harder, and take many more risks, and work many more hours than any of my male coworkers do, that doesn’t mean I’m an upstart. What it means is that I’m a single working woman— a struggling Korean War widow, if you want to get specific— striving to pay my bills and cough up the fifty-dollar-a-month rent on my tiny, rundown, cockroach-infested Greenwich Village apartment.

Paige Turner isn’t my given name, you should know. (What decent, self-respecting parents would burden a daughter with a ridiculous moniker like that?) And it isn’t my pen name, either. (I’ve had some stupid ideas in my life, but that wasn’t one of them.) What it is, is my married name, and I have only my late husband, Bob Turner, to thank—or should I say blame?—for it.

My best friend, Abby Moscowitz—the gorgeous, oversexed, opinionated beatnik artist who lives right across the hall from me—says I should change my name altogether. “It’s a joke!” she keeps insisting. “When people hear it, they laugh, you dig? You’ll never be taken seriously—especially in the publishing industry. You need a smart and sassy name. Something that will grab people’s attention without giving them the giggles.”

Abby’s right, I know—but I don’t care. Paige Turner I am, and Paige Turner I’m going to stay (unless my divorced, thirty-eight-year-old boyfriend, Detective Sergeant Dan Street, ever offers me
his
last name—which at this point in our troubled relationship seems a distinct impossibility). I was very much in love with Bob Turner, you see, and—though we were married for only one blissful month before he was sent off to die in a blast of machine gun bullets in a dirt trench in North Korea—I will always keep him safe in my heart. And I will always honor his name . . . no matter how silly mine became because of it.

Dan isn’t jealous about this, in case you’re wondering. Quite the opposite. As the staunchest, most resolute homicide detective in the entire NYPD, he’s really proud of me for sticking to my guns. Dan values loyalty and stamina above all other character traits, and openly praises me for keeping my married name in the face of constant ridicule (Mike and Mario waste more energy cracking Paige Turner jokes than they do watching for the hands of the office clock to land on lunchtime). It’s lucky for me that Dan is seduced by my small reserve of faithfulness and fortitude, because when it comes to his next most highly valued character trait, I come up shorter than bobby socks on a giraffe.

I’m talking about honesty now, and according to Dan, that’s the one area of my moral makeup that needs improvement. A whole
lot
of improvement. You know what Dan says? He says I can’t be trusted—that I don’t even know
how
to be honest. He insists I wouldn’t know the truth if it walked right in the door and kicked me on the shin. He claims I’ve told him more lies during the one and a half years of our stormy relationship than Lucy ever dreamed of telling Ricky.

But that’s not true! I swear it isn’t! Honest to God!

Okay, forget I said that. The truth is, I
have
told Dan a few fibs in the past—but not so very many, I promise! And the pitiful, self-defensive expression of a few little white falsehoods doesn’t make me a dishonest person! Not in the
true
sense of the word. Not in the devious, unscrupulous, mean-spirited sense. No way, Doris Day! I can honestly say that I’m a
very
sincere, conscientious, and steadfast individual, and I’ve never, ever, ever told Dan a lie unless I had to.

If Dan would just accept the fact that I work for a detective magazine and stop carrying on about how much danger I’m always putting myself in, we wouldn’t have a problem in the world. No lie. If he hadn’t forbidden me to work on any more unsolved murder stories and threatened to end our relationship if I did . . . well, then I wouldn’t have had to keep my more dangerous story investigations secret from him or create a single coverup to hide my activities.

You see what I’m saying? Dan
makes
me lie. And it’s all because I’m searching for the truth! How ironic is that? Jeez! Doesn’t Dan realize that we’re both working for the same thing? Can’t he see that the triumph of justice matters just as much to me as it does to him? If only he would stop worrying about me so much! If only he would support me in my undercover quest for the facts instead of demanding that I stop “meddling” in police business and putting myself in peril.

But Dan’s never going to change his position on this point, and I know it. He didn’t get to be the most renowned and respected homicide detective in the whole darn city by questioning his own beliefs or backing down from confrontations. He’s as strong and solid as a hardwood tree trunk—the most loyal, courageous, and, yes, honest man I’ve ever known—and when he takes a stand on something, you can bet it’s for real.

But I’m pretty stubborn, too. And I didn’t get to be Manhattan’s only female crime reporter by caving in to opposition or running away from danger. And if there’s anything in the world I hate, it’s an either/or ultimatum. Either I leave the job I love . . . or I lose the man I love. I ask you, what kind of choice is that?

I’ll tell you what kind it is. It’s the kind I can’t—and
won’t
— make!

Which is why I’m now sitting alone at midnight in my dreary Bleecker Street apartment, smoking one L&M filter tip after another, listening to Nat “King” Cole on the radio, wondering if Dan will ever forgive me for my latest transgressions, praying that nothing too dreadful will happen to me tonight, and typing away on my trusty baby blue Royal, trying to wrap up this self-pitying prologue and get on with the story.

It’s a shocking and scary story, and I’ve had to risk my life— as well as my relationship with Dan—to get it. (I’ve told more lies and gotten into more trouble during the last few days than ever before.) It’s all been for a good cause, however, and—though I’m still working to conclude my investigation and am not a hundred percent sure how the story’s going to end—this much is certain: If, or rather,
when
I get to the bottom of this sensational murder scandal, all of Manhattan is going to benefit. In a big, sensational way.

Okay, I realize that’s a pretty bold statement, and— considering my admitted frailties in the honesty department— you may choose not to believe it. And you may not believe (or even read!) the horrific, behind-the-scenes tale I’m going to start putting down on paper right now. I sincerely hope you will, though. It’s a very important story, and—as astonishing and incredible as my exclusive, first-person version may be—I’ve got my right hand in the air and my left hand on the Bible when I say it’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Chapter 1

FOR ME, THE NIGHTMARE BEGAN IN THE MORNING. It was 8:35 AM on Wednesday, October 5, 1955. I was sitting alone in the
Daring Detective
office—at my desk in the front of the large communal workroom—waiting for the vat of coffee I’d just made to finish brewing, and combing the pages of the
Herald Tribune
for fresh, hot-off-the-press murder reports. I hadn’t worked on a major story in over two months, and I was getting antsy.

Hey, don’t get me wrong. I certainly wasn’t hoping that somebody had been killed! Heaven forbid! I just wanted to make sure that if there
had
been a headline-making murder in the last twenty-four hours or so, I would be well versed on all the reported facts, and prepared to swing into action if Crockett or Pomeroy decided to give the story assignment to me.

The first four pages of the
Tribune
were, however, devoted to milestones other than murder. The Brooklyn Dodgers had just won their first World Series, four games to three over the New York Yankees, in a 2-0 shutout pitched by southpaw Johnny Podres. Roy Campanella scored in the fourth and Pee Wee Reese in the sixth. President Eisenhower was still in the hospital, recovering (slowly) from the massive heart attack he’d suffered in Denver last month, and the stock market was continuing to fluctuate (wildly) according to reports of his health.

The country was also still reeling over the tragic death of actor James Dean, who had crashed his beloved Porsche Spyder into a tree in California just five days ago. A lengthy article about this shocking event appeared on page 3 of the
Tribune
, complete with a rehashed accident report and numerous mournful statements by the young star’s grieving fans. (I didn’t read the article all the way through, I must admit. My friend Abby had been supplying more than enough tearful reminders of Dean’s sudden demise while staggering back and forth between her apartment and mine, extra-strong highball in hand, wailing about the “atomic loss” of her “fave new screen boy” and vowing to wear black for the rest of her life.)

Finding nothing homicidal—or even very interesting—on page 4, I turned my attention to page 5. Much to my horror, there it was—the new murder story I had been searching for. It was printed in a short, slim column under a big, bold headline: NUDE BODY OF SLAIN SECRETARY UNCOVERED IN CENTRAL PARK. No photo accompanied the article. I sucked in a chestful of air, let out an audible moan, lowered my nose to the newsprint, and read every appalling word.

A young, unmarried secretary named Virginia Pratt had been killed Monday night, and her bound and gagged nude body was found wrapped in a bedsheet and buried under a mound of leaves in Central Park yesterday afternoon. Cause of death: suffocation—determined by the fact that the victim’s nose and mouth were packed with turpentine-soaked wads of cotton and tightly sealed with adhesive tape. Police believed the young woman was murdered in an unknown location and then dumped in the park. Her blue satin cocktail dress, mink jacket, lacy underwear, diamond jewelry, high heels, purse, and identification were found wrapped in the bedsheet along with her body. Anyone with information about the crime should contact Detective Sergeant Casey O’Connor at the Midtown North Precinct.