Murder is a Girl's Best Friend (19 page)

“WOW!” ABBY EXCLAIMED, STARING DOWN at the glittering mound of jewelry I’d just removed from the oatmeal container and placed on my kitchen table. “Nice little stash of sparklers.” She poked her index finger into the pile and—with the uncanny precision of a Geiger counter—plucked out the most desirable piece (i.e., the one with the most diamonds). “Now
that’s
what I call a necklace,” she said, quickly clasping the double string of gems around her throat. “Mind if I try it on?”

I
told
you she was going to do that, remember? Self-restraint was
not
one of Abby’s specialties. I only hoped it didn’t bother Terry that she was suddenly prancing around my kitchen like the Duchess of Windsor, sporting his poor dead sister’s necklace—and now her earrings, too!—with such unbounded glee.

“Do you think you should take all the jewelry with you, or just some of it?” I said to Terry, hoping to divert his attention to more serious matters. “I suppose it’s important to have each and every piece checked out . . . but if you happened to get robbed, or anything like that, it would be terrible to lose all the evidence.”

“I’m not worried about getting robbed,” Terry said. “I’m just worried about getting arrested.”

“What?!! What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that I stole these diamonds from Detective Hugo Sweeny’s office, and he probably thinks I’m trying to sell them now, so he—or one of his bloodhounds—may be sniffing around the Diamond Exchange, looking for me.”

“God! I hadn’t thought of that!” I said, head spinning. “But what makes you think the police are looking for you here in New York? It’s far more likely they’re in Pittsburgh, sitting in an unmarked car outside your father’s house, waiting for you—and the diamonds—to come home for Christmas.”

“You’re right about the last part,” he said. “Two dicks
are
sitting in a car outside my father’s house. But neither one of them is Sweeny. They’re two of Pittsburgh’s finest, doing a little freelance surveillance work for their fellow flatfoots in New York. I know this because they paid my dad a visit yesterday. They grilled him about where I was, and when I was coming home, and they—or two other jokers like them—have been watching the house ever since.”

“So you’ve spoken to your father.”

“Yeah, twice. Yesterday, when I called to tell him I couldn’t get home because the buses weren’t running, and again this morning, when I called to find out how he was doing and if the cops were still there.”

“See? I
told
you they’d be looking for you,” I said. “Thank God for the snowstorm! If your bus had left on schedule, you’d be in jail right now—and you wouldn’t be getting out until you turned the diamonds over to the police . . .” I had a disturbing afterthought, and added, “. . . which means you would have had to turn
me
over to them, too.”

Oh, lordy, lordy, lordy!
I shrieked to myself, heaving my breast and rolling my eyes like Hattie McDaniel. Why hadn’t I foreseen this possible consequence before? Was I a selfless and fearless defender of truth and justice—or just a stupid fool? (Don’t answer that!) When I thought how furious Dan would have been to learn about my willing (not to mention
illegal
) participation, I almost wet my pants.

“Hey, what are you two gabbing about?” Abby broke in, finally waking from her diamond-studded daydreams. By this point,
all
of Judy’s jewelry—the necklace, the earrings, the pin, and both bracelets—was draped, or screwed, or clipped to Abby’s body in the customary places. She looked like a goddamn chandelier. “Am I missing anything?” she asked.

“Just a tiara,” I snapped. “But if we ever find Smythe, maybe he’ll buy you one.”

“
That’s
not what I meant!” Abby squawked, giving me a dirty look. “I was talking about your conversation with Whitey, and you know it!”

“Oh,
that!
” I teased, smiling, glad that Abby had returned (sort of) to the realm of reality—and that I hadn’t been thrown in jail (yet!) for tampering with evidence. “We were just discussing whether or not it’s too dangerous for Terry to go to the Diamond Exchange today. One or more of the detectives involved in Judy’s homicide investigation may be casing the joint, looking for him.”

“Why would they be doing that?” she wanted to know.

Terry explained the situation to her, and she grasped it quickly. She even came up with a possible solution to the problem.

“You can wear a disguise!” she whooped, getting excited by her own idea. “Something that will hide your white hair and help you meld into the crowd.” She wrinkled her brow in thought for a few seconds, and then the light bulb over her head flashed about a thousand watts brighter. “I’ve got it!” she cried. “The perfect camouflage, you dig? And I think we have everything we need to put the getup together. Hey bobba ree bop! C’mon, Whitey, let’s go across the hall. I’ll round up the stuff and you can try it on. You wait here, Paige. When we’re all finished, we’ll come over and you can be the judge of the results.”

You could tell from Terry’s forlorn expression he wasn’t too fond of the disguise idea, but before he could utter a single word of protest, Abby grabbed him by the hand and tugged him back across the hall, into her own apartment. I stood at my open door and watched as she pulled him across the room, then led him up the stairs to the second floor.

I knew where she was taking him. And it wasn’t to her bedroom, believe it or not. It was to the tiny
spare
bedroom—the little cubicle she called her Vault of Illusions—the room where she kept all the costumes and props for her paintings. It was just a big closet, really, full of all different kinds of clothes and hats and shoes and wigs, plus a large assortment of oddball items—things like swords and beach blankets and pitchforks and peacock feathers—anything she felt might help her set the scene for one of her colorful magazine illustrations. In order to keep her Vault of Illusions well-stocked, Abby collected castoffs from all her relatives and friends, and made regular appearances at all the local rummage sales.

I wondered what kind of outfit she would rummage up for Terry. And I hoped, for his sake, it would be warmer—not to mention more
concealing
—than a purple loincloth.

 

 

AS SOON AS THEY WERE GONE, I TOOK MY baby blue Royal portable down from the coat closet shelf and set it up on the kitchen table. Then I ran upstairs to
m y
spare bedroom (the unfurnished nook I planned to turn into an office if I could ever save up enough money to buy a desk) and grabbed a package of typing paper from the small stack of office supplies I kept stashed on the floor in the corner. Then I raced back down the stairs, slapped the package of paper down on the kitchen table, and sat myself down at the typewriter.

I couldn’t put it off one minute longer. I had to start making notes for my story (I mean
Judy’s
story), and I had to do it
now,
while I had the time. This was probably the last workday I’d be taking off for another whole century at least. More importantly, I knew if I didn’t write down all the details soon (i.e.,
immediately
), they’d begin disappearing from my flimsy memory like snowflakes landing on the hood of an overheated car. And, as every true crime or mystery writer knows, too many forgotten details can result in a totally forgettable story. Or a clean forgotten crime.

I rolled a sheet of paper into my loyal Royal and began typing like a lunatic, recording every word, fact, clue, conjecture, and impression I could remember, beginning with Terry’s initial phone call to me at the office. I paid no attention to spelling, grammar, or punctuation. All I cared about was getting all the data down on paper, where it would be preserved for future reference.

I don’t know how long Abby and Terry were gone—or how long I sat there, typing my fingers to the bone. All I know is I had just finished documenting last night’s phone call to Vicki, thereby completing my eighteenth page of notes, when Abby came barging back into my apartment.

“Shut your peepers,” she said, all aflutter, “and don’t open them till I tell you to.” She was so excited I thought she might pop.

“Okay,” I said, putting my notes aside and covering my eyes with my hands, feeling like a five-year-old.

I heard some whispering and rustling in the vicinity of my front door. Then Abby giggled, and Terry groaned, and Abby bellowed “Open sesame!” in a voice that belonged under the big top.

I uncovered my eyes and took a peek. And then I flat out
shrieked
in amazement. Standing before me—in a long black overcoat, a black fedora, a pair of black pants, a white shirt, and a long brown beard with long brown side-curls—was a tall, dark, and handsome Hasidic Jew.

For those not familiar with the species, a Hasidic Jew was a man or a woman who belonged to a certain ultra-Orthodox sect of Jewish mystics that was founded in Eastern Europe in the eighteenth century, and was still going strong today—in America, among other places—in 1954. Many of them lived in Brooklyn. Every Hasidic male wore a black overcoat and a black fedora. They all had beards and
payos
—the unshorn ear ringlets which, according to Abby, were the outgrowth of an ancient law forbidding the shaving of the temples.

More to the point (well, to my and Abby’s and Terry’s point, at any rate), was the fact that hordes of Hasidic Jews were gem traders by profession and, therefore, worked on West Forty-seventh Street in Manhattan, at—you guessed it—the Diamond Exchange. So many Hasidim worked there, in fact, that the street was jokingly called the
Rue de la Payos
. Terry would blend in perfectly—like just another pickle in the pickle barrel.

“It’s wonderful!” I cried, standing up to make a closer inspection. “It’s the
ideal
disguise! The hat hides his white hair and the
payos
hide his white sideburns.” I gave Abby an admiring look. “They look so real. How did you make them?”

“I cut a few tendrils off a curly brown wig and glued them to the inside of the hat.” She was radiant with pride.

“I see you colored the hair around the back of his neck, too,” I added. “What did you use for that?”

“A toothbrush and a tin of brown shoe polish.”

I patted her on the back and gave her an enormous grin. “It’s the consummate costume, Abby. Perfect in every way. Edith Head would die of envy!”

“Well, I’m glad
you
like it,” Terry growled, squaring his shoulders as if for a fight, “but I think it’s god-awful. I feel like a total jerk dressed this way. These frilly things hanging down the sides of my face are annoying and embarrassing, and this ratty old beard smells like a sweaty gym sock.”

Abby tossed her head and shot him a haughty glare. “Would you rather spend one afternoon breathing into a smelly beard, or several months suffocating in the smelly slammer?”

“Good point,” Terry said, shuffling his feet and relaxing his shoulders. I think he was smiling, too, but it was hard to tell since you couldn’t see his mouth for all the hair.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Abby crowed, reeling toward the door. “It’s almost two-thirty! I’ll get my coat! Let’s get this show on the road!” I’d never seen her so aroused—except on those all-too-frequent occasions when she was gearing up to make a move on one of her half-dressed male models.

“Hey, hold on a second!” I cried. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What?!!” she snorted, with a rather impatient huff .

“The diamonds,” I said, with a huff of my own. “Call me crazy, but I think it would be safer if you hid them away in your purse, or under Terry’s hat, instead of flaunting them all around town, strung all over your body like a batch of blinking Christmas lights.”

“Oh,” she said, finally remembering that she still had the jewelry on. She gave me a sheepish look, then reluctantly took it off, piece by glittering piece, putting it back down on the kitchen table. “I didn’t like it anyway,” she said, with a dramatic flick of her diamond-braceletless wrist. “It made me look too snooty.”

We all had a good laugh over that one. Then Abby carefully wrapped the diamonds up in their original tissue paper package and handed them to Terry, who stuck them deep in the pocket of his long black overcoat. “Are you ready, Whitey?” she asked, politely deferring (finally!) to his rightful authority in the situation.

“Yeah, let’s go right now,” he said, “before I change my mind and rip this moldy carpet off my face.”

TWO SECONDS AFTER THEY LEFT, I snatched up the phone and dialed the Midtown South Precinct. Dan’s precinct.

Look, I
knew
it wasn’t proper for an emotionally undone woman to call the office of the man who’d undone her—unless she happened to be his wife (and even then it was considered overbearing!). But I wasn’t exactly the proper type. And I had a very strong suspicion that if I waited until I became Dan’s wife to give him a personal call, I’d never speak to him again.

And what harm could one teeny-weeny phone call do? All I wanted was to hear the sound of his luscious voice and talk to him for a minute or two, ask him to forgive me for the way I had acted last night. (Last night? Was it only last night that he’d flown into a rage and walked out on me? With everything that had happened to me since, it felt more like a month ago.)

 

The man who answered the phone told me Dan wasn’t there. “Street’s out on the street,” was all he said.

 

I hung up and smoked a cigarette, giving myself a phony pep talk, working like the devil to keep my soul from sagging to the floor. Dan or no Dan, I couldn’t afford to let my energies fall. I had a lot on my plate that day, and there was only one way to deal with it all. Stay hungry.

Chapter 15