Murder is a Girl's Best Friend (13 page)

Now I was as upset as she was. “What murder are you talking about? And
who
are you talking about? Do you have somebody in your apartment? And, if so, who the hell
is
it?” I was too exhausted (okay,
exasperated
) to keep playing her little guessing game.

“Come see for yourself,” she said, turning aside and bowing low, gesturing with one sweeping, outflung arm for me to enter her mysterious domain.

I gave Abby a snotty look, then took a deep breath and stepped inside. I didn’t know what to expect, but I can truthfully say (and you should trust me on this), that if I’d walked in to find Vice President Richard Nixon himself lolling on Abby’s little red loveseat in a complete state of undress, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least.

It wasn’t Richard Nixon, though. It was Terry Catcher, and I was shocked right down to my snowboots.

He wasn’t undressed, I’m happy to report, but he
was
lolling (well,
sleeping,
I guess I should say), on his back, on the love seat, with his lower legs hanging over the armrest like two large salamis strung from a delicatessen ceiling. One arm was folded over his chest, and the other was dangling over the edge of the tiny couch, fingertips grazing the floor.

I tiptoed up to the couch and leaned over him. “Terry?” I whispered. “Are you okay? What are you doing here?”

His only response was a snort and a whistle. He was sleeping so soundly even the A-bomb wouldn’t have budged him.

“He doesn’t look so
worried
to me,” I said to Abby, resuming a normal speaking tone and walking back over to where she was standing, not bothering to tiptoe. “If you ask me, he looks
drunk
.”

“Well, he is
now!
” she said, still pouting. “But that’s just because you were so late getting home. He was worried out of his gourd about you, and he said if anything happened to you it would be
his
fault.” Abby flounced into the kitchen area, plopped down at her tiny dining table and lit up a Philip Morris.

I sat down and lit up, too, trying to collect myself. “So what’s going on?” I stammered. “How long has he been here? Did he tell you about his sister?”

“Sure did. Told me the whole sickening saga. But what I want to know is why
you
didn’t tell me about it,” she whined, looking more petulant by the moment. “When did you start keeping secrets from me?”

So
that’s
what she was so upset about. “I wasn’t keeping anything from you, silly,” I insisted. “I was dying to tell you everything! I wanted to talk to you about the murder last night, but you had
company,
if you recall, and it was obvious that the three of you wanted to be alone.”

“The
three
of us?” She gawked at me as if my ears were blowing bubbles.

“You, Tony, and the snake,” I said (and if you think it was easy for me to sit there so calmly and crack another stupid snake joke when I was literally jumping out of my skin with curiosity and concern about Terry, then you’ve got—as Vicki Lee Bumstead would say—another think coming).

Finally, Abby laughed and hopped down off her high horse. “Okay, you’re forgiven,” she said. “But you’d better clue me in on every single thing that happens from now on, or I’ll cut off your cocktail allowance.” Abby liked to play detective, too.

“I will,” I promised, “but right now
I’m
the one who needs to be clued-in. So put your answer hat on. What on earth is Terry Catcher doing here?!!!” I was trying to keep my voice down to a reasonable pitch, but I’m not so sure I succeeded. “How did he get here? When did he get here? And why is he flopped out in a coma on your love seat? He should have been back home in Pittsburgh by now! His bus left at three-thirty yesterday afternoon!”

“Are you sure about that?” Abby teased, dark eyes twinkling. She loved to play games when she was holding all the cards—which, when she was playing with little old simple-minded me, was pretty much all the time.

“Arrrgh!” I growled. It was all I could do not to scream and start pulling my hair out by the handful. “Please, Abby!” I begged. “Can’t you just give it to me straight? I’m having a nervous breakdown here!”

“Oh, all right!” she said, sighing loudly. “Don’t get your tushy in a twist. You’re such a prissy killjoy!” She took a deep drag on her cigarette, then blew the smoke out in a forceful gush. “Okay, here’s the scoop: I went uptown to deliver my new painting to
Lusty Male Adventures
today, and when I got back, around three this afternoon, your friend Terry—who, by the way, I
much
prefer to call Whitey—was standing right next to the door to our building, leaning his back against the wall and looking as lost and tired and scruffy as a stray dog.

“At first I was wary of him,” Abby continued, “but then, when I got close enough to see how well-built and handsome he was, I figured he must have come to see
me
—that the agency had probably sent him over. So I walked right up to him and introduced myself, and asked him if he was looking for modeling work. You can imagine my surprise when he said no, he was looking for
you
.”

Abby stuck out her chin, gave me an accusatory look, took another puff on her cigarette, then went on with her story. “When I told him you wouldn’t be home till six or six-thirty, he said that was okay, he’d wait. Well, I couldn’t see leaving such a gorgeous, intriguing, and obviously lonely man like Whitey standing all by himself out on the street, in the freezing cold and snow, for three whole hours! So I did what any thoughtful, compassionate, red-blooded American girl would do under the circumstances—I invited him up for a drink.

“Which reminds me,” Abby quickly interjected, “do you want a rum and Coke?”

“Yes, please,” I said, too weak (okay,
wicked
) to resist. “But keep talking while you’re pouring. Dan’s due here i n . . .” I looked at my watch . . . “twenty minutes, and if he sees Terry, and finds out about his sister, and discovers that I’m working on another sensational murder story, he’ll have me locked up for life in the Women’s House of Detention.”

“Well, at least you’ll be close by,” Abby said, moving over to the kitchen counter to mix our drinks. “The girlie slammer’s just a few blocks away on Greenwich Avenue. It won’t be too much trouble to visit you.”

I would have laughed, or at least smiled, but I was too anxious to be amused. “Go on with your story,” I pleaded, puffing furiously on my cigarette. “Terry came upstairs with you, and then what happened?”

“Well, we got to talking, of course, and we got real friendly, and then—after we’d had a few drinks, and after I told him that you and I were so close we were practically sisters—he came clean and gave me the whole lowdown. He told me that he was an Army buddy of Bob’s, and that his sister Judy had been murdered, and that
you
had promised to help him find the killer.”

“Did he tell you about the diamonds?”

“Of course! He said he gave them to you to help in your search for the killer. What did you do with them, by the way? Hide ’em in your apartment somewhere? Are they pretty? Can I see them?” If she’d had a tail, it would have been wagging out of control.

“Later,” I said, in the strictest tone I could muster. I knew if I showed Abby the jewelry, she’d want to try it on. And once she had it on, it would be difficult (probably
impossible
) to get her to take it off. Call me a killjoy if you want to, but the last thing in the world I needed was for my new boyfriend, Dan Street, to catch even one tiny little glimpse of my best girlfriend, Abby Moskowitz, standing decked out like a Christmas tree in a twinkly tangle of illicit diamonds that had just been pirated from the 10th Precinct police station . . . right out from under Detective Hugo Sweeny’s nose.

“But why is Terry still here?” I asked, changing the subject as quickly as I could. “Why isn’t he in Pittsburgh?”

“He said he’d been trying to get home for Christmas, but his bus was canceled because of the storm, so he had to spend the night at the station.” Abby finished her pouring and stirring and brought our drinks over to the table.

“But what about . . . ?”

“Stop interrupting me, Paige! I’m trying to tell it straight, like you told me to do, and I need to concentrate!” She sat down and retrieved the cigarette she’d left burning in the ashtray. “Now then, where was I?” she said, taking her own sweet time, blowing a slow succession of perfect smoke rings. “Oh, yes, now I remember . . . Whitey spent last night at the station . . . and then this morning, when they announced that no buses would be leaving today, either—and when he realized he didn’t have a dime left in his pocket to buy a donut, or a cup of coffee, or even a ride on the subway—he picked up his duffel bag and started walking downtown to your apartment, not having anywhere else to go, not knowing anything else to do. The poor man
shlepped
over forty blocks—through the wind and the snow and the ice—to get here. And he got very, very cold. And very, very tired. So now he’s sleeping like a baby on my couch, you dig? End of story. Final curtain. Thunderous burst of applause.”

“Sleeping like a
baby?
” I said, poking a hole in her tidy but conspicuously incomplete summary. “Since when do babies get drunk?”

“What can I say?” Abby simpered, batting her thick black lashes and curling her lips in a mischievous smile. “The man’s a sucker for Mai Tais.”

AS SOON AS I FINISHED MY DRINK (OKAY, I’m a sucker for them
all
), I made Abby promise to take care of Terry—i.e., sober him up if possible, give him something to eat, and keep him out of sight until Dan had come and gone. Then she made
me
promise that, as soon as Dan had, indeed, departed, I would hurry back over to her place and reveal every scrap of information I’d picked up about the murder so far (which, admittedly, was next to nothing, but in the interest of securing Abby’s complete cooperation, I didn’t tell
her
that). Then I gathered up all my stuff, darted across the landing to my own apartment, and let myself in.

The first thing I did was check on the diamonds. (They were fine—sleeping like drunken babies on the oatmeal mattress in their round Quaker bed.) The next thing I did was start dashing around like a beheaded chicken, dropping my purse and parcel on a kitchen chair, shedding my coat, beret, and boots, madly running upstairs to put on fresh makeup and a pair of stiletto pumps, then stumbling back downstairs again to straighten my stocking seams, fluff out my hair, fire up a cigarette, plug in the lights of my tiny Christmas tree, and turn on the radio. Quickly bypassing all the merry holiday music, I tuned in one of the top pop stations.

Patti Page was singing “Steam Heat,” and the lyrics expressed my mental temperature to a T. I draped myself languidly (okay,
leadenly
) over the daybed in my living room, pretending with every ounce of strength I had left that I was a damsel in zero distress—a lovestruck lady in waiting with nothing but romance (and certainly no thoughts of
murder
) on my mind.

 

 

By the time Dan arrived, I almost believed it myself.

Chapter 10

HE WAS RIGHT ON TIME. (OKAY, SIX MINUTES after nine, but who’s counting?) I buzzed him in, opened my front door, and watched him bound up the stairs in three strides—like a man with a burning purpose. I only hoped that purpose was me.

“Well, if it isn’t Sergeant Street,” I said, leaning seductively against the back of the open door, doing my best Kim Novak. “What a pleasure it is to see you.”

Well, it must have been a pleasure for him to see me, too, because the next thing I knew he was standing up close to me, brushing his cold nose across my cheek, and covering my mouth with a kiss so deep and warm it sent a jolt of electricity down to my toes. My cool, blonde Kim Novak act took a swan dive down the stairwell. Instead of a curvy tower of restrained desire, I was a wobbly wet mass of mush. I’m not kidding. My head was swirling, my spine was melting, and my knees were threatening to ooze right out from under me.