Turn all evidence over to Detective Croyden. And Tony would. But first he was going to look at it. He took a handkerchief out of his pants pocket and picked up the envelope again, this time through a layer of cloth. He wasn’t going to get any more fingerprints on it. He covered his other hand with another piece of the handkerchief and worked the flap open. Then he carefully extracted the paper from the envelope, using the handkerchief to keep his fingers from touching the paper.
It was a regular piece of white paper, folded in thirds. Very neatly. Tony shook it to unfold it and placed it on the table.
“What’s going on?”
Tony jumped, startled by Shahla’s voice just behind him. He had been concentrating so hard that he had almost forgotten about her. “Do you always sneak up on people?” he asked to cover his loss of composure.
“Next time I’ll wear a bell so you’ll know I’m coming. I saw you out here looking as though you were practicing a magic trick. What are you trying to do, make the envelope disappear?”
“Somebody slid it under the door.”
“Do you think it was the murderer?” She looked apprehensively toward the door.
“I don’t know, but the door is locked. Don’t touch anything. We don’t want to leave fingerprints. Let’s see what it says on the paper.”
Tony and Shahla bent over the table. The writing on the paper was printed in black ink, by a computer printer.
“It’s a poem,” Shahla said.
“Read it,” Tony said. She was the writer. He had never read poetry, other than the few poems required in English classes, and didn’t want to embarrass himself by reading it badly, even if it was a bad poem, which it probably was.
“It’s called ‘Spaghetti Straps,’” Shahla said. She read:
“ She wears a summer dress, spaghetti straps to hold it up, or is this so? Perhaps it's gravity, the gravity of con- sequences should it fall. If she should don her dress one day but then forget to pull them up, those flimsy wisps of hope so full of her ripe beauty, do you think the weight of promises within, or hand of fate, would slide it down, revealing priceless treasures?
If so, would she invoke heroic measures to hide the truth, for fear this modest lapse would air the secret of spaghetti straps?”
“What do you think?” Tony asked. He didn’t feel qualified to comment on it as a poem and he wasn’t about to be the first to comment on its contents.
“It’s actually a pretty good poem.”
“You’re not offended by it?”
“Are you kidding? After some of the stuff I’ve heard, this is a nursery rhyme. If our grosser callers like the Chameleon talked like this instead of the way they do, I wouldn’t hang up on them so fast.”
“So you don’t think the Chameleon is capable of writing this?”
“Not from what I know about him. Unless he’s hiding his talent under the bed with his dirty magazines.”
“Can you think of any callers who might be able to write like this?”
Shahla contemplated the question for a period of time. Finally, she said, “When I first started on the Hotline, there was this guy who called a lot who said he wrote poetry. But he wasn’t from around here. In fact, he said he lived in Las Vegas.”
“So he was calling long distance.”
“For a while after 9/11 our 800 number was nationwide so that people suffering from-what’s it called?-post traumatic stress disorder could call us. But as I understand it, the number cost too much to keep so now our 800 number is just for California. Anyway, since that change, he doesn’t call as often as he did.”
Shahla went and got a copy of the Green Book and pointed out a page to Tony. The Hotline handle for him was “Paul the Poet.” His story was that he had been abused by his parents as a child.
The telephone rang. It was Tony’s turn to answer it. A woman with a cultured voice was on the line, with a slight New York accent. She was definitely a cut above the usual Hotline caller. Tony immediately pegged her as living in West Los Angeles, perhaps Beverly Hills. He would try to get that information before the end of the call.
The call went on and on. She was middle-aged, married and divorced, and trying to decide what to do about her boyfriend. He had his pluses and minuses. In fact, she recited them so readily that Tony wondered whether she had already taken a sheet of paper, drawn a line down the middle, and written the pluses on one side and the minuses on the other.
While they talked, Shahla took a number of calls. At the end of two hours Tony figured that he and his caller had solved most of the world’s problems. Or at least the problem of her boyfriend. She had a plan of action and thanked him for helping her arrive at it.
After Tony hung up, Shahla said, “I thought you were going to marry her.”
“She’s too old for me,” Tony said laughing, “but it sounds like she has some money. Maybe it’s not a bad idea.” He looked at the clock on the wall of the listening room. It was almost ten. He said, “Time flies when you’re straightening out the world. I want to make a copy of that poem before we get out of here.”
“On the copier?”
“No. Flattening it on the copier might destroy any fingerprints. I’ll enter it on one of the office computers and then print it out.” Tony went to the administration room, turned on Patty’s computer and typed in the poem, using Microsoft Word. He had honed his typing prowess writing papers in college and made short work of it. Then he printed it. Shahla asked him to print a copy for her. When he was through, he deleted the poem from the computer.
“No sense leaving evidence,” Tony said. “Now, we’ll replace the original poem in the envelope and place that in a larger envelope to preserve whatever there is to preserve.” He used his handkerchief to handle the documents, determined to keep them as clean as possible. “Then I’ll take the evidence to the police station.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, tonight. No time like the present. And I need to explain to them how my fingerprints got on the envelope.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“We’ve been through this, Shahla.”
“This is different than the other night. First, it’s Friday night. There’s no school tomorrow. And it’s only a few blocks to the police station. I’ll call my mother and tell her exactly where I’m going so she won’t worry.” Tony’s look must have been disbelieving because she said, “Yes, some teenagers do actually communicate with their parents. Besides, I never got a chance to tell you why I think Martha may be a suspect.”
Shahla whipped out her cell phone before Tony could mount a solid defense and got her mother on the line. Her side of the conversation went something like this: “Hi, Mom, it’s me. I won’t be home for a little while…I have to go to the police station…Just to give them some evidence…Don’t worry, I’m going with Tony. He’s a lot older, but he’s pretty strong. He’ll keep us safe…I’ll see you later…Bye.”
“Do I have to show her my muscles and my AARP card?” Tony asked.
“It’s okay. I may have exaggerated a little, but she trusts me.”
CHAPTER 10
The guard who walked out with them was a middle-aged nonentity. Tony wondered whether he had been the one on duty the night Joy was killed but decided not to ask him because he didn’t want to get trapped into a long discussion about what had happened to her.
There was one slight deviation to the plan. Tony had Shahla drive her car home, and he followed her. It was a couple of miles out of their way, but he didn’t want to have to return her to the mall in the middle of the night. She ran inside her house and told her mom she was riding to the police station in his car.
“What kind of a car is this?” Shahla asked as she returned and settled into the passenger’s seat.