So it came out of him defensively, with a sneering inflection. “I happened to notice you leave the studio after your husband, Mrs. King. It couldn’t have been more than twenty seconds or so later that I went out the same door. I didn’t see you. Anywhere.”
Even the distinguished chairman of the board turned around at that.
Nancy King became aware suddenly of the eyes and the silence. Her face turned Layton’s way, and it seemed to him she was seeing him really for the first time. He could have bitten his tongue off.
“How about that, Mrs. King?” Trimble said in a neutral voice. “You said just now you found your husband’s dressing-room door closed, you didn’t go in or even look in, but went back to the studio. How is it Layton didn’t see you?”
Her voice was as neutral as the sergeant’s. “Probably because Mr. Layton couldn’t see through the door of the ladies’ room. I didn’t think it necessary to mention that I stopped into the ladies’ room — next door to Studio A — on my way back. Are you satisfied, Mr. Layton?”
Through his self-disgust Layton had a wry recollection of his original theory about Nancy King’s disappearance. She had been in the women’s john, after all! Someday, he thought, I’ll learn to leave well enough alone.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. King. Of course, I couldn’t have known.” He thought he saw her lips lift in the tiniest smile, but in the murky room he could not be sure.
Trimble asked abruptly, “While you were out of Studio A, Mrs. King, did you see anyone? Anyone at all?”
“As I stepped out of the studio on my way to Tutter’s dressing room I saw that gentleman — I’m pretty sure it was he” — she was pointing at George Hathaway — “going into the control room at the far end of the hall.”
“Anybody else?”
“No.”
Trimble nodded. “You’re next, Mr. Stander.”
“I?”
“When did you get here? What did you do?” Trimble was evidently in no mood to cringe before lofty tones of voice.
“I entered the building at exactly four o’clock,” the board chairman said huffily. “I remember the time because I glanced at my watch. I went to Hathaway’s office. His secretary was on the phone, but hung up to tell me he had gone to the B and C control room. I therefore went there. Hathaway and I were in the booth for a few minutes, then we walked back to his office together.”
“On your way to the control room, did you see anybody?”
“I noticed Layton going into Hathaway’s office just after I left it,” Stander said with a remote nod toward the reporter. “I heard or saw no one else until I got near the B-C control room. Then the Studio A employees’ door opened back up the hall—”
“Yeah?” Sergeant Winterman said. “You must have pretty good ears, Mr. Stander. TV studio doors don’t make any noise.”
“Two hundred or so teenagers do, however,” Stander said with an icy glare. “I didn’t say I heard the studio door. What I heard was the burst of chatter as the door opened — Studio A was off the air for the newscast, and they sounded like a barnyard. I was annoyed, and I turned around. That’s how I happened to see those two slip out into the hall.”
“Which two?” Trimble demanded, surprised.
“I’m sure I don’t know, Sergeant. Two of the teenagers, a boy and a girl. They had no right using that door — it’s plainly marked ‘Studio Employees Only’ — and I was half-inclined to have them thrown out of the building. But I decided the fuss wasn’t worth it, so I went on to join Hathaway in the B-C booth.”
“Can you describe them, Mr. Stander?”
“The boy was — oh, seventeen, I’d say, thin, wearing thick glasses. The girl was younger — on the heavy side, rather homely.”
“I have a hunch, Trimble,” Layton said, “they were the president and vice president of King’s Los Angeles fan club. Mr. Stander’s descriptions fit.”
“Know their names, Layton?”
“Wayne Mission and Nora Perkins.”
Winterman glanced at his watch and said, “Harry, the show’ll be off the air in a minute. Want me to get those kids and this Lola?”
“You stay here, Ed.” Trimble nodded at the uniformed policeman. They went out.
Layton ambled after them. Trimble was a step from the Studio A employees’ door when it opened in his face and Lola Arkwright came hurrying out. The hubbub from the studio held an angry, uncertain note. The red-haired girl stopped in her tracks.
“Get those two kids, Mission and Nora Perkins,” Trimble said to the policeman. The man went into the studio. “You’re Lola Arkwright?”
“Yes. What’s wrong? Is something wrong?”
“I’m a police officer, Miss Arkwright Suppose we go into Mr. Stander’s office.”
“It’s Tutter,” the girl said slowly. “It’s Tutter, isn’t it? Something’s happened to him. I knew it — I knew it when he didn’t show up for the second half of the show. He never did that before...”
Trimble said nothing, nodding in the direction of the board chairman’s office. But at that moment the police lab man came out of dressing room 2.
“Oh, Harry, he said. “We lifted a flock of prints in number 2, but that’s all. Okay to release the body?”
“Body,” Lola Arkwright said. She moistened her thin, sensuous lips. “Tutter’s?”
The one-eyed detective looked disgusted. “As long as this half-wit’s spilled it, you may as well know now. King is dead with an ice pick in him. Yeah, yeah,” he said to the technician. The man shrugged and went into dressing room 1.
Lola Arkwright was staring at the sergeant, but not as if she were seeing him. Her complexion had turned a creamy yellow. Layton, who was watching her closely, was prepared and he caught her as she toppled.
He carried her into Stander’s office and eased her onto the big couch. “I’m about ready to hang out my shingle,” he complained as he began to chafe her hands. “Would somebody please get some water?”
“Here, I’ll help,” George Hathaway muttered.
As Layton and the station manager worked over the unconscious girl, the two detectives conferred in low tones. Layton overheard Winterman tell Trimble that the ice pick in the studio prop room checked out. Trimble nodded gloomily.
The first thing Lola said when she came to was, “Give me a cigarette, somebody.”
Layton lit a cigarette and handed it to her. He reached over to Stander’s desk for an ash tray and set it down on the couch beside her.
She took one drag, punched the cigarette out, and leaned back. “We were to be married.”
An incredulous voice said, “Who was to be married?”
Lola’s head jerked around to Nancy King. “Tutter was going to announce our engagement at the end of the program.”
“You poor thing,” Nancy King murmured.
Lola Continued to stare at her. “You’re Nancy?”
“His wife,” Nancy said quietly, “So you know about me.
“Sure. Tut and I had no secrets from each other.”
“Then may I ask how you could be ‘engaged’ to a married man?”
“That’s simple as hell, sister,” the redhead drawled. “Tutter was going to buy one of those quickie Mexican divorces and get you off his back. Then he was going to marry me.”
“I don’t know what your purpose is in lying,” King’s widow said, “but that just can’t be true, Miss Arkwright.”
“Oh,” said Lola, “then you know about me, too.”
“That you exist? Of course, as Tutter’s assistant.”
Lola was silent. Then she said, “Hey, Layton. Butt me again.” Layton lit another cigarette for her. This time she puffed on it steadily. Stander and Hathaway had retreated to a corner of the board room and were whispering together. The two detectives said nothing. Nancy King retreated into her thoughts again.