Murder on a Hot Tin Roof (7 page)

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Authors: Amanda Matetsky

BOOK: Murder on a Hot Tin Roof
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Luckily, Flannagan didn’t catch on.
Under different circumstances, I’d have laughed my head off. (Abby really slays me sometimes.) In my current state, however—slick with sweat, sticky with blood, sweltering on the hot seat in a weird-looking stranger’s insufferably warm apartment, trying to defend my thoughtless actions at the scene of a brutal murder—well, I couldn’t muster up a snicker, much less a laugh.
I was about to apologize, once again, for the way Abby and I had messed up the evidence at Gray’s apartment—thereby causing a whole lot of confusion and extra work for the medical examiner and crime scene investigators—when one of the uniformed cops who’d been stationed out in the hall marched into Willard Sinclair’s living room and told Detective Flannagan that he was needed next door.
“All right!” Flannagan said, grinning like a kid at an amusement park, obviously raring to return to the recreation at the murder scene. He took off his suit jacket, loosened his tie, and rolled up the sleeves of his white cotton shirt. “That’ll be all for today, ladies. You’re free to go. We know where you live and we have your phone numbers. But you’re under strict instructions not to leave town, understand? And I want to see you both in my office tomorrow morning at ten.”
“What?!” I sputtered, sounding like Donald Duck on the brink of a breakdown. “Tomorrow is Sunday—the day of rest. Don’t you want to spend it with your family? This is the Fourth of July weekend, for Pete’s sake! We’re all entitled to a little time off.”
Flannagan looked at me and grinned again. “When you’re on the homicide squad, and there’s been a murder, there’s no such thing as time off.” He was having the time of his life. I swear he was. You could tell from the way his small hazel eyes were sparkling. “That goes for the people who discovered the body, too.”
“But we’ve told you everything we know,” Abby said, keeping her anger under admirable control.
“We’ll see about that tomorrow,” he replied. “Ten o’clock sharp.” Hooking his suit jacket on one finger and slinging it over his shoulder, Flannagan turned and headed for the door. Then, just as he was about to step out into the hall, he swung back around and glared at Willard Sinclair, our potbellied host—the queer little man who’d been sitting in shock on a chair in the corner, saying nothing and chewing his nails to the quick.
“As for
you
, Mr. Sinclair,” Flannagan said, puckering his boyish features in obvious but uncalled-for aversion, “stay right where you are. That’s an order. Don’t set foot outside this apartment. I’ll be back to question you later.”
 
 
AS SOON AS FLANNAGAN WAS GONE, Abby let out a humongous groan. “That man is a raving
putz
!” she croaked, jumping up off the couch and pacing around the living room. “I wanted to knock his snotty block off! He was treating us like we were the ones who killed Gray. He should be spanked. No, he should be fired!”
I agreed with her, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have the energy.
Willard Sinclair, on the other hand, had energy to burn. He sprang out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box, shot across the room in a flash, and then quickly, but ever so quietly, pushed his front door all the way closed. “Oh, mercy me!” he cried, darting back to the middle of the living room and joining Abby in her anxious pacing. He was wringing his hands as well. “What am I going to do now?” he said, speaking with a faint Southern accent I hadn’t noticed before. “That awful little worm is coming back to give me the third degree. I know the way he works! He’ll grill me till I’m limp as a wet noodle, and then he’ll do it all over again, just for fun—like the last time.”
I snapped to attention and sat up straighter on the couch. “The last time? You mean Flannagan has questioned you before? About another murder?” My wheels were spinning like crazy. Could it be that Gray’s peculiar, kimono-wearing next door neighbor was a deranged serial killer?
Sinclair stopped his frantic pacing and combed his fingers through his gummy hair. “Yes . . . Flannagan has interrogated me before,” he admitted, staring down at his pink-flowered living room rug, avoiding eye-contact like the plague. “But it didn’t have anything to do with murder.”
“Then, what
did
it have to do with?” I probed, suddenly driven to launch an interrogation of my own.
“Oh, nothing . . .” He kept on staring, bug-eyed, at the field of flowers beneath his feet. “Really. It was nothing at all.”
“The cops don’t usually give somebody the third degree over
nothing
,” I pressed, hoping to provoke a revealing reaction.
“What dream world have you been living in?” he cried, shifting his gaze from the floor to my face, then rolling his protruding eyes up toward the ceiling. “They do it all the time, honey. You just don’t hear about it so much. It’s their dirty little secret, and they usually manage to keep it out of the papers.”
“He’s right, Paige,” Abby said, sitting down and lighting a cigarette. “Not all Manhattan detectives are as swell as your man Dan. Especially the ones who work down here in the Village. A lot of them don’t dig the free thinkers and artistic types who live in this area. They think a groovy, far-out cat with a beard is nothing but a mangy dog.”
“That’s a fact!” Sinclair crowed, nodding at Abby in grateful agreement. “And they drag us off to the pound every chance they get.”
“Oh? Do you consider yourself a groovy, far-out cat?” I asked him. “You sure don’t have a beard.”
“No, but I have other . . . um . . . eccentricities.” He was staring down at the floor again. “And the police
do
treat me like a dog. I’ve been hauled off to the pound more than once.”
Look, I wasn’t a total dope. I had already figured out that Mr. Willard Sinclair was a homosexual. If the yellow silk kimono and pink-flowered rug hadn’t convinced me, then the ruffled throw pillows on the purple couch—not to mention the fringed shades on all the living room lamps—surely would have done the trick. (See what an observant sleuth I am?)
And I wasn’t totally in the dark about the way the police treated homosexuals, either. I had written a story on the subject for
Daring Detective
, so I knew that popular homosexual hangouts, and even private parties, were frequently raided, and that these raids generally resulted in numerous arrests. I also knew that many of the detainees had suffered brutal beatings while in police custody.
Homosexuality was illegal, and some of the city’s more “manly” law officers considered it the world’s most heinous crime. And they felt it was their solemn duty (though others might call it their pleasure) to prosecute (or rather,
persecute
) the criminals. I was not, I should tell you, in accordance with either the law or the so-called public servants who delighted in carrying it out. As a matter of fact, I found the whole situation abhorrent.
So, in an effort to spare Mr. Sinclair any further discomfort or embarrassment about his forbidden sexual preferences, I quickly dropped my line of questioning about his previous dealings with the police, and switched my focus to the subject that interested me the most: his relationship with Gray Gordon.
“Tell me, Mr. Sinclair,” I began, “how well did you know your next door neighbor?”
“Call me Willy,” he said. “My friends all call me Willy.”
I didn’t know that I was—or was ever going to be—his friend, but I was glad to be offered the use of his first name. It would make it so much easier for me to pry into his personal life. “Willy it is!” I chirped, giving him an earnest smile. (Okay, so it wasn’t a really
earnest
earnest smile, but it was the best I could do considering the fact that I’d only just met the man a couple of hours ago and was now trying to figure out if he was a throat-slashing, chest-stabbing, gut-ripping killer.)
“So tell me, Willy,” I cooed, “were you and Gray good friends? Had you known each other long?”
“Not very,” he said, standing slumped in the middle of the room, shoulders sagging toward the floor. “Gray moved into the building two years ago, but we never became close friends. He was so busy going to acting school, freelancing as a model, and bussing tables at Stewart’s Cafeteria, that he didn’t have time for me. Then after he became an understudy, I hardly saw him at all. I longed for a deeper, more intimate bond, but I knew it would never happen. He was a young, strapping, gorgeous Greek god, and I was a flabby old frog. And there isn’t a kiss in the world that could turn me into a prince.”
Willy flopped down in a chair across the room and covered his face with his hands. He looked so wretched and pathetic, I felt drawn to comfort him in some way. Pat him on the back. Massage his sloping shoulders. Uplift his sunken ego with heaps of flattery. But such gestures were out of the question, of course. Willy’s unrequited passion for Gray might have been the motive for the murder! How could I, in good conscience, try to bolster the self-image of a possible slasher? (And besides—as much as it discomfits me to disclose it—he really
did
look like a frog.)
“
Oy vey
!” Abby cried out, jumping up from the couch again. “It’s hot as fire in here! If I don’t get some air, I’m gonna die! I need some lunch, too. C’mon, Paige, let’s go. Flannagan said it was okay for us to leave.”
I was hot, but I wasn’t hungry. The bloody scene next door had murdered my appetite. And there were still tons of questions I wanted to ask Willy. “Gosh, I don’t know, Ab,” I said, piercing her with a pointed stare. “I think I’d like to stay for a while and—”
“Yeah, what’s your hurry?” Willy broke in, wringing his hands again. He stood up and walked over to Abby, a pleading look in his protruding eyes. “I’ll fix you a nice lunch,” he said. “I made a lovely batch of chicken salad this morning. And a pitcher of iced tea. With fresh mint.” He clearly didn’t want us to leave.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Abby said, ignoring both Willy’s and my respective appeals. “No offense, pal, but we’ve got to blast off before Flannagan comes back. Otherwise we’ll get stuck here for the rest of the day.”
Abby’s warning hit home. Suddenly I was in a hurry to blast off, too. I felt uneasy about leaving Willy to face the intolerant—possibly abusive—authorities alone, but I couldn’t afford to get caught up in Flannagan’s afternoon inquisition. I simply couldn’t spare the time. I had my own investigation to conduct.
Chapter 6
ABBY AND I WALKED HOME IN TOTAL silence and as fast as we possibly could. The blood on our knees, shins, and shoes had dried, but the crusty streaks were still very much in evidence—both to the people on the street and to our own horrified senses. We couldn’t wait to shower and change our clothes.
“Come over as soon as you’re finished,” Abby said, as we each opened the door to our own apartment and stepped inside. “We’ll go get something to eat.”
“Okay,” I said, quickly shutting my door and locking it, hoping to keep the demons at bay. It was a wasted effort. The demons crawled in under the door, followed me upstairs to the bathroom, and sat on the edge of the bathtub while I tore off my gory, sweaty clothes and dropped them in a pile on the floor. Then the nasty little devils got into the shower with me and haunted me with horrible visions as I scrubbed Gray’s blood off my legs and watched it swirl in a bright red whirlpool down the drain.
Poor Gray, poor Gray, poor Gray,
I repeated to myself like a mantra.
Poor, poor Gray. Last night he was on top of the world; today he’s gone from the world altogether.
Is there any more fickle fate, I wondered, than to be dealt the lowest blow at the moment of your highest glory?
After I finished my shower and dried myself off, I put on another pair of capris, a different halter top, and my white ballerina flats. Then I gathered up the clothes on the bathroom floor and carried them downstairs, thinking I’d throw them in the garbage. I never wanted to see them—much less wear them—again.
But as I was about to toss the clothes in the trash, I changed my mind and stuffed them into a brown paper shopping bag instead. Then I set the bag on the floor of my coat closet and kicked it deep into the darkest corner. Maybe some of the blood on my sandals and capris had been shed by the killer instead of Gray. (There had, after all, been a whole lot of slashing going on!) Maybe Flannagan would want to run tests on the bloodstains. If two different blood types were discovered—either at the scene or on Abby’s or my clothes—then the police would have at least one true, indisputable clue to the killer’s identity. I decided I would take the bag of bloody clothes to Flannagan tomorrow.
Feeling much more alert and responsible than I’d felt all morning, I closed the closet door, grabbed my white leather clutch bag off the kitchen table, and hurried next door to Abby’s.
“Let’s go!” she said, lunging out onto the tiny landing between our apartments before I’d even had a chance to knock. “I’m so hungry I could eat a moose. Do they serve moose at Chock Full?”
“Sure,” I said, chuckling. “They make a great moose-burger. But you won’t be having one today since that’s not where we’re going.”
“Oh, really?” she said, leading the way down the stairs to the street, long black ponytail swaying with every step. “Then where
are
we going? To Twenty-One? El Morocco? The Copa?” She was trying to act gay and chipper, but I could tell from the catch in her voice she was still feeling as sad and shaky as I was.

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