“So you knew I existed,” Lola said at last, regarding the widow through narrowed eyes. “Look, honey, if anybody’s playing potsie around here, it’s you. Tutter hasn’t lived with you for years. I’ll bet you’ve forgotten what he looks like, husband-wise.”
“Stop her,” Nancy cried. “Why must I sit here and listen to this woman’s filth? Tutter and I have — I mean, had a home in the San Fernando Valley...” She choked and swallowed, hard. Layton saw tears tremble in her eyes.
“That’s where you live,” Lola Arkwright said. “He lived in Hollywood.”
“Mrs. King,” Sergeant Trimble said.
Layton watched her fight once more for control. This time the fight showed plainly. But she won.
“Yes, Sergeant.” Her voice was pallid again, like her coloring.
“You said before that King maintained a Hollywood flat to keep up that bachelor act of his, and that you’d never been in it.” Trimble’s one eye managed to convey sympathy. Layton knew that Trimble had about as much sympathy in his make-up as a Siberian wolf. “How often was he in your Valley house?”
“As often as he could be,” she said.
“How often was that?”
“More often than not. I can’t give you percentages, Sergeant.” The two liquid-dark eyes met the one bleak eye and refused after that to look away. “I know you don’t understand, especially after what Miss Arkwright’s said. Of course we had an unconventional marriage. But we were happy together. Tutter loved me. All those starlets he was seen with were publicity stunts. His bachelor apartment was just part of his public image. Also, he had to have an address for his business and professional friends to come to — he couldn’t bring them home... to the Valley, I mean... without their finding out about me.
“We had our own social life. We had friends whose homes we visited and who visited ours. Good friends, who understood and were willing to keep his — our secret.”
That old devil Slip-of-the-Tongue, Layton thought. Of course. It was Tutter who had wanted it that way, not she. She had hated every minute of it. What woman wouldn’t?
Winterman said with a deliberate grin, “Sounds like a hell of a married life to me.”
“No,” Nancy said in a tired way. “It was just an inconvenient one, Sergeant. When we did have each other, it was very special...” The voice faltered. “And now, just when we could start living normally, my husband’s been taken from me. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right!”
She burst into tears. Sobbing, she jumped up and ran into the washroom, banging the door.
Trimble and Winterman looked at each other. For a moment no one said anything.
Then Lola Arkwright tamped out Layton’s cigarette. “Well!” she said with an uncertain smile. “The gal sure has talent. Anybody here believe that performance?” And without any warning at all, she began to cry, too.
Hubert Stander threw up his hands and stalked into the outer office, muttering something uncomplimentary about women. Hathaway hurried after him. Winterman strolled over to the doorway, where he could keep an eye on them.
“Whenever you’re ready, Miss Arkwright,” Trimble said dryly, “let’s talk about you.”
6
The red-haired girl blew her red-tipped nose into a handkerchief and said, “Excuse me for going female on you. It hit me all of a sudden that Tutter’s really dead. And that lying dame in there...” She said abruptly, “What do you want to know, Sergeant?”
“About your movements during the intermission,” Trimble said.
“Go to hell,” Lola Arkwright said.
The one detectival eye sharpened. “What are you trying to do, make it easy for me?”
“Look,” she snapped, “if you think I knocked off Tutter, stop making like Sherlock Holmes and say so. I don’t know who killed him, or why — or even if it was murder. All I know is I had nothing to do with it.”
Trimble waited patiently. Winterman, in the doorway, was grinning his head off.
“Now will you answer my question, Miss Arkwright?”
Lola shrugged. “Okay. I spent the intermission in my dressing room, period.”
“Was that what you usually did at the news break?”
“Depended on Tut’s mood. He wasn’t the calm and relaxed guy he always seemed on the air. Doing a two-hour show five days a Week for five years is no picnic. Sometimes Tut wanted to be let alone during the break, sometimes he felt like yacking.”
“Never mind him,” Trimble said. “I’m asking about you.”
“I’m telling you. I always knew how he was feeling by the way he acted as soon as he finished his intermission patter. If right away he jumped off the stand and headed for the door, he wanted to be alone. If he waited for me in the studio, we’d go out together and spend the ten-minute break either in his dressing room or mine. Today he didn’t wait, so I knew it was one of those I-want-to-be-alone days.”
“But you followed him out. Right out.”
“It had nothing to do with him,” the girl said wearily. “I just wanted to get to my dressing room.”
“How come if it was one of those I-want-to-be-alone days,” Layton interrupted, “Hathaway says he saw King stop in the hall and wait for you to catch up?”
Trimble and Winterman both glared at him. But the redhead seemed merely surprised. “He did, didn’t he?” she said slowly. “That’s funny. He almost never did that on one of his bad days. I wonder why he did it today.”
“Hathaway says you and King walked on just ahead of him,” Trimble growled, still glaring at Layton. “What did King say to you?”
“Nothing. Not a word. We separated at his dressing-room door—”
“I know all that Oh, Mrs. King,” Trimble said, as Nancy King came out of the washroom. “Would you mind waiting in the anteroom with the others?”
She went out past Sergeant Winterman without a word. Layton saw her sit down in the anteroom, away from Stander and Hathaway, and fold her hands in her lap. She had removed all trace of her tears.
“Miss Arkwright” Trimble went on in a lower voice. “Did Hathaway go on past your dressing room?”
“Hathaway? I couldn’t say. My door was closed.”
“For all you know, then, Hathaway might have stepped into King’s dressing room?”
“I suppose,” Lola said listlessly. “Though it hardly seems likely, since they weren’t on speaking terms.” Then her eyes widened. “Are you suggesting that old refugee from the silent flickers might have killed Tutter?”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Trimble said. “Now about the ice pick we found buried in King’s chest. It’s the common variety, with a varnished pine handle. You recall seeing one like that around here?”
She shook her head.
“How about at King’s Hollywood apartment? Ever see one there?”
“No.”
Sergeant Winterman said suddenly, “Your dressing room is right next to King’s, isn’t it?”
“Yes, number 4.” Layton saw her stiffen a bit as she turned to the swarthy detective.
“Hear anything from number 2 while you were in your dressing room? Raised voices, for instance?”
“I don’t remember hearing anything.”
“Would you have heard — if an argument, say, had been going on in the next room?”
She looked doubtful. “I suppose so. If they were talking loud enough.”
Winterman signaled Trimble. Trimble said immediately, “When did you go back to the studio?”
Lola’s head swiveled again. “About two-three minutes before the newscast was over.”
“See anyone in the halls?” This was Winterman again, barking.
“Can’t you make up your minds which one is asking the questions?” she said angrily. “You’re giving me a stiff neck. No, I didn’t see anyone in the halls.”