This Dame for Hire (21 page)

“I’m just doin my job. I have to ask these questions.”

“No, you don’t. I told you I knew nothing about this Claudette, and you continued to ask me this and that about her.”

“But ya can’t be sure that she wasn’t one of Brian’s girls, can ya?”

“Of course not. But I’d swear on a stack of Bibles that he had nothing to do with her death. Now I’d like you to leave.”

I got my cigs, put them in my pocketbook, stood up, gathered my coat and hat, and made my way to the door. Maureen Wayne was right behind me like a shadow. She reached in front of me to open the door.

“I have one last thing to say to you, Miss Quick.”

I had a flash of hope. Maybe she’d give me a crumb to go on.

“What’s that?”

“I think what you do for a living is disgusting. I don’t know what kind of woman would do something so sordid.”

“Now ya do.”

“What?”

“Now ya know what kind a woman. Me.”

I took my time going down the stairs. Out on the sidewalk I lit up even though I knew
nice
women didn’t smoke on the street, or so my aunt Dolly said. Truth was, I hardly ever did, but my little skirmish with the perfect Maureen Wayne made me want to rebel.

It must be swell to be so sure of things. But I couldn’t take Maureen Wayne’s word for gospel. I didn’t know her Brian the way she did, but I
did
know that even though he wouldn’t hurt a fly, that didn’t mean he couldn’t kill a girl.

TWENTY-THREE

I needed to find a phone booth to call Birdie and see if she’d heard from Richard Cotten about Mr. Garfield.

On Sixth Avenue I looked up at the Jefferson Market Courthouse. I loved that building with its big four-sided clock in the tower. I wished I’d been around to catch the Harry Thaw trial there, but, as they say, I wasn’t a gleam in my parents’ eyes yet. In fact, they hadn’t even known each other.

To the left of the courthouse I could hear, as always, the women yelling from the House of Detention. Sometimes they shouted pretty off-color things.

I walked down Sixth Avenue to Eighth Street. Walgreen’s was on the corner and across from it a phone booth. I went in, shut the door behind me, and sat on the wooden seat. I was feeling weak and woozy, and I needed to rest. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone out after all.

A knock on the glass made me jump. A tall man in a Superman costume stood outside. He was a fixture around the Village.

I opened the door. “Hey, you don’t need this booth, yer already changed.”

We both laughed. He said, “I don’t want it for myself, it’s just that you looked like you needed help.”

“That’s real nice of ya, Superman. But I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am. Thanks.”

“All right,” he said. “But if you feel bad, give a shout, I’ll hear you.”

“Swell.”

We smiled at each other, and he walked away. I shut the door again. Probably anywhere else on the island of Manhattan Superman would be locked up. But in the Village we saw strange people all the time. Superman was the least of them.

I stood and scrabbled around in my pocket to come up with some change. I found a coin and dialed my office.

“A Detective Agency,” Birdie said.

She told me there’d been no call from Cotten, but Barry Shields, one of my clients, had checked in. Shields had a cheating wife, and once a week I followed her to the Plaza, where she met up with a man named Arthur Fitzgerald. A regular tryst, you might say. I’d passed this on to Shields, so I wasn’t sure what more he wanted me to do. If it was pictures, I’d already told him I didn’t do that. Fact was, I hated this kinda work. But when I’d started the case, it had been a slow month.

“How ya feelin, Faye?” Birdie asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, well, ya don’t sound fine.”

“I bet ya say that to all yer bosses.”

“Very funny. I’m serious. Ya get yerself in a mess today you’ll be out of commission more days than you’ll like.”

“I’m just gonna do one more interview and then I’ll go home.”

“I’ll be callin ya at home.”

And I knew she meant it. She would call me to check up. But what could I do? I was so close to NYU. I left the booth and made my way across Eighth.

I wondered if Richard Cotten was ever gonna give me the first name of the Garfield guy. It had occurred to me that maybe there wasn’t any Garfield and Richard was shining me on. But why? The only reason would be cause he was guilty, and the more I talked to him, the more I didn’t think he was.

It was time to have a chinfest with Dean O’Hara, even though Maureen claimed he and Brian were in cahoots. I might get something from him, maybe a different bead on Wayne.

I turned at MacDougal, and when I hit the park I took a left toward the university.

While I waited in the dean’s outer office for him to become available, I flipped through a
Life
magazine. It had a Montgomery beret on the cover and, among other things, a photographic essay about the kaiser’s empire inside, but I couldn’t concentrate enough to look at it. My head was giving me a good spin, and I hoped O’Hara would be free soon. But not right now. I didn’t want to pass out at his feet. I leaned back and shut my eyes. Worse. I opened them again and stared at his secretary, who seemed to have the phone permanently attached to her ear. I focused on her nose, which was of the Jimmy Durante variety, and I started to feel steadier. I wasn’t sure why this worked, but I didn’t question it except to wonder if my cure for dizziness belonged in
Ripley’s.

A few minutes later the Nose told me I could see Dr. O’Hara. I got up real slow and took my time getting to his office. I knocked, and he told me to come in.

O’Hara was standing behind his desk, a man of medium height with a long face and white hair. His eyes were sharp and smart, and I knew I had to be a straight shooter with this one.

“Please sit down, Miss Quick.” He gestured to the maroon leather chair on my side of the desk. Where else was I gonna sit?

“Thank you.”

He sat when I did. “I must say you look too young to have a child at the university, so it must be a sibling you’re inquiring about.” He smiled easily. Too easily, I thought.

“I don’t have anyone here, Dr. O’Hara.”

He looked down at the paper in front of him. “But it says here that you—”

“I lied.”

“Young lady, I don’t find this a bit amusing. I’m a very busy man.”

“Yes, I know. But I do have someone I want to talk to ya about. I didn’t think you’d see me if I told the truth.”

“The truth is always best, Miss Quick.”

“I agree. But in some cases, well . . .” I started over. “I’m inquiring about Brian Wayne.”

A big storm cloud covered his puss.

“I don’t discuss my staff with outsiders. Who are you, and what do you have to do with Dr. Wayne?”

“I’m a private investigator, and I’m lookin into the death of a student from this university. Claudette West.”

“Ah, yes. That was unfortunate.”

Unfortunate?
“She was murdered ya know.”

“Yes, I do know. Was that case solved?”

“It wasn’t.” I couldn’t believe he didn’t know.

“And what does this have to do with Dr. Wayne?”

“Claudette was one of his students. And there’s reason to believe that Wayne had an illicit relationship with her.”

“That’s absurd.” His cheeks seemed to puff up along with his chest.

“Why is that?”

“Because Bri . . . Dr. Wayne would never have relations with a student.”

Was this guy serious? “From what I’ve heard he’s had affairs with lots of students.”

“Then you’ve heard wrong.”

“I don’t think so. You and Dr. Wayne are good friends, aren’t ya?”

“What are you implying?”

“It’s just a question, Dean. You friends or not?”

“Yes, we’re friends. I’m friends with many people on my staff.”

“I’m sure ya are. And it’s yer job to protect them, isn’t it? All yer staff, I mean.”

“I look after them, of course. Keep their interests in mind. What are you getting at?”

“As dean, would it be part of yer job to cover up for members of yer staff?”

“Cover up? I don’t like the sound of that.”

“I understand why you’d want to do that. But we’re talkin murder here.”

It looked to me like beads of sweat were forming on the dean’s brow.

“You think I’d cover it up if I knew about such a murder?”

“Ya might not realize that murder was involved. Ya might just know about the affair. So let’s try this again. Did ya know that Brian Wayne was havin an affair with Claudette West?”

“I did not.”

“How about other girls? Did ya know he had affairs with other students?”

He took a deep breath. “I heard . . . there were rumors.”

“And ya never asked yer good friend Brian about these rumors?”

“That would have been an insult to him. I’m not in the habit of questioning my staff about every tale that gets told around here, every bit of scuttlebutt, much of it malicious.”

“I see.”

“I’m not sure you do. A university is like a small town, Miss”—a speedy glance down—“Quick. Rumors, whispers, gossip. It’s part of the territory. If I took all the things I hear seriously, I’d have no time for anything else. If they were all true, professors would have no time to teach. Student–teacher dalliances are a staple.”

“You’ve heard this about other professors?”

“Of course . . . with great regularity.”

“And you’ve never looked into any of them?”

“Only if a student came directly to me. Or a parent.”

“And no one ever approached ya about Wayne?”

“Never.”

“They weren’t shy about talkin to Mrs. Wayne, ya know.”

He batted her name away like an unruly Ping-Pong ball.

“Maureen Wayne is an unstable girl.”

“Is that so?”

“Have you met her?” he asked.

“I have.”

“Then you must have recognized that she’s a neurotic.”

“Nope.”

He sniggered. “That doesn’t say much for your detecting skills.”

“Maybe not. Did ya know that a lotta girls went to Mrs. Wayne, beggin her to give Brian a divorce?”

“Mrs. Wayne supplied this information, of course.”

“She did.”

“Then it’s not to be taken seriously. As I’ve said, she’s most unreliable. She’s being treated by a psychiatrist.”

I managed not to fall off my chair hearing this info. A lot of people thought this was an indictment, roughly equal to being locked up in Bellevue Hospital. But not me. Although I couldn’t see me ever going to a psychiatrist, I have a cousin who sees one, and I know a man who gets the same treatment. I don’t think either of them is crazy.

“So she sees a psychiatrist, what does that prove?”

“Simply what I’ve been saying about her. She’s very fragile and tends to make up things.”

“Ya mean like Brian Wayne seein other women?”

“Exactly. Now, if there’s nothing else I can do for you . . .” He stood.

“Just one more question.”

“Yes?”

“Is it possible that Brian Wayne could’ve been havin an affair with Claudette West and you didn’t know about it?”

He cocked his head to one side to show me he was thinking.

“Of course that’s possible.”

“Thanks for yer time, Dean.”

Once again I waited outside of Brian Wayne’s office. I could tell no one was inside, but I hoped he’d show up soon. Think of the devil. There he was, turning the corner toward me, and then he stopped.

“You again?”

“Yeah. The bad penny.”

“What now?”

“Same thing.”

“I told you everything I know.”

“Yeah, but that was before I talked to your wife.”

He took a step backward. “You saw Maureen?”

“I did.”

His face squirreled into a mask of hate. “You had no right to do that.”

“I didn’t?”

“Who told you you could talk to her?”

“For the record, nobody. Nobody had to, Brian. Why are you in such a lather?”

“My wife has serious problems.”

“Far as I could tell, her most serious problem is you.”

“Let’s not stand out here.” He walked past me and unlocked his door.

Inside the small room it looked like trouble lived there. Books and papers were everywhere. If he coulda managed it, I was sure he’d have had them on the ceiling. A chaise longue and a desk took up most of the space. I wondered how many professors kept a chaise in their offices.

It smelled of smoke and the unmistakable odor of perfume. Many perfumes. The chaise was covered in a fabric of green diamond shapes and little yellow and pink flowers, on a field of white. I wondered if Maureen had done that for him. It was an oddball choice for a man, I thought. But girls would like it and probably think it was his homey side or something corny like that.

I picked up some papers from the straight-back chair on my side of the desk and held them in my lap. He put out his hands, and I reached across the desk to give them to him.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said. “I get so involved I don’t get around to tidying up.”

Involved with what? I wanted to ask, but thought I wouldn’t get a straight answer so I deep-sixed it.

“Before we go any further, where were ya last night?”

“I was playing poker with friends.”

“Can ya prove that?”

“Of course.”

“Good.” I didn’t really think Brian had attacked me, but I had to rule him out.

“Just what did Maureen tell you?”

“That you’re a ladies’ man. But then I knew that.”

“You can’t believe anything she says.”

“But I do. Even so, she didn’t seem to know about Claudette West.”

“I told you there was nothing to know.” He shot his cuffs, and a ray from his lamp threw a glint in the air. Cuff links.

“Nice links,” I said.

He looked at one of them as though he was surprised it was there. “Thanks.”

“Who gave them to ya?”

He pursed his lips together and didn’t answer.

“Ya hear me, Brian?”

“Yes.”

“So who gave ya the cuff links?”

“I bought them myself.”