The door closed, and her high heels echoed down the alley. I peeked over the hood of the car, but ducked as a light came on in the office and a darkly tanned man with a crewcut appeared. His mouth was moving as he reached for a cord and closed the curtains on whatever the hell was going on in there.
I stood up slowly, ascertained my forehead was as last I'd seen it in the cracked mirror (with the exception of a heavy glaze of sweat), and eased around the Cadillac to the edge of the building. Gaylene was gone.
I arrived at the sidewalk in time to see her turn at the corner and head down Broadway. Seconds later, two figures emerged from a deli and took off after her at what I'm sure they felt was a prudent distance for amateur sleuths hot on the trail of Manhattan's version of Mata Hari.
Half a block later said sleuths yelped loudly as I clamped down on their shoulders. Ignoring the pedestrian traffic that flowed around us as if we were submerged rocks in Boone Creek, I said, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"You'd like to give me a heart attack!" Ruby Bee said, clutching her chest and blinking at me.
Estelle looked no more thrilled to see me. "I can't believe you don't know better than to sneak up on folks like that! Why, the very first thing that flashed across my mind was that that psychotic man had finally caught up with us and was aiming to murder us right here in broad daylight."
"In broad daylight on Broadway," I said agreeably. "It has a certain poetic ring to it, doesn't it? At the moment I'm the only one thinking about murdering you two, but I'm willing to hold off for a few more minutes. We can discuss your behavior here, or we can do it in this bar. God knows I could use a beer."
Ruby Bee glanced down the sidewalk, but her prey had vanished. "I could do with one myself, come to think of it. But I don't have all the time in the world to sit and chat. I'm supposed to be in the lobby at two o'clock sharp so Geri can fetch me to fix my cake for the contest."
I followed them into the bar, and we found a table near the window.
"This is right nice," Estelle commented, nodding at the wide mahogany bar and row of padded stools. "Of course it ain't at all as homey as yours, Ruby Bee, but I must say those ferns add a summery feeling."
"Ferns shed," Ruby Bee said. "I'm not about to have to sweep the floor any more than I already do, and-"
I unclenched my teeth long enough to say, "Stop it!" then subsided as a waitress approached our table and took our orders. "We are not going to debate the decor. You are going to tell me what the hell's been going on, and why you were following Gaylene just now."
"Following Gaylene? " Estelle chuckled at the very idea. "We wanted to see Times Square, so we figured we had enough time to walk over and look around. It's kinda odd how the famous theaters are stuck between those nasty shops, isn't it? It seems to me the police ought to-"
"We're not going to debate the zoning, either," I said coldly. "I came to find you because Jerome Appleton's body was discovered in a dumpster behind the hotel less than an hour ago."
Estelle gasped. "But that can't be! He's on an airplane going to South America."
"Not anymore," I said. "I recognized him."
"Then that's who was in the kitchen last night," Ruby Bee said. "I thought that might be who it was, but Brenda's such a dithery thing that I didn't want to worry her. I took a real fast look and almost fainted on account of the blood being as awful as it was…"
The waitress banged down two beers and a glass of sherry, regarded us with a frown until I'd paid the tab, and returned to the stool at the end of the bar to resume her conversation with the bartender. I suppose she'd overheard worse.
"Why did you go to the kitchen?" I demanded.
She looked at Estelle, who took a sip of sherry and said, "I already told Arly that you might have been in the mood for a glass of warm milk."
"And I already said I didn't believe one word of it." I realized I was strangling an innocent beer glass and forced myself to uncurl my fingers.
"I reckon you don't have much choice," Ruby Bee said with a mulish frown.
"May I point out that the police do have choices? The most obvious one is to drag you back to that cold, dirty cell and leave you to regale the rats with your silly lies. Then again, they might choose to interrogate you night and day until you come up with a better explanation."
Her lower lip may have quivered just a tad, but she shook her head, finished her beer, and put down the glass. "I need to get back to the hotel and study my recipe. Come on, Estelle, you can coach me on the order of the ingredients."
"There is no contest!" I said so loudly that the waitress and bartender stared. "There has been a murder, dammit! The police will be there to conduct an investigation, not to sample the entries and pick the winner! They may even want to ask you some questions-none of which will have anything to do with teaspoons and measuring cups and pinches of salt and Krazy KoKo-Nut!" I could hear myself getting more strident with each sentence, but I was unable to stop myself. "You found the goddamn body, Ruby Bee! Don't you remember?"
"How could I forget a thing like that? Do you really think they'll stop the contest? Jerome wasn't a contestant, you know." She shrank under my glare, then took a tissue from her handbag and dabbed at her nose. "Maybe you're right about the contest being canceled. It'd be hard on Brenda to fix her entry not ten feet from where they found her husband's body."
"She'd be fumblin' like a pup," Estelle added. "Of course he was supposed to have left her for a younger woman, so it's not like she planned on seeing him anytime soon."
I gestured at the waitress for another round. "I can see you're both too distressed by Jerome's murder to discuss last night. Let's talk about the night Durmond was mugged and tucked into bed in your room. Where were you before you came back to the room?"
"Shopping," they said in unison, although not with the melodious effect of the Methodist choir.
"At nine o'clock?" I took my sweet time raising my eyebrows. "I would have thought you'd be worn out from the trip, if not a tiny bit intimidated about prowling after dark in a big, bad city. Where did you go?"
"Just here and there," Ruby Bee mumbled. She stared at Estelle, who nodded nervously in agreement.
"What did you buy?" I persisted.
Estelle hesitated until the waitress had replaced our glasses with full ones, then cleared her throat and said, "I picked up some souvenirs at a shop at the end of the block. Nothing really interesting."
"A shop at the end of the block?" I said. "Do you mean the porn shop at the end of the block? What exactly did you buy-a leather bikini? Handcuffs? Edible underwear?"
She turned bright pink. "It's none of your business, missy. I just browsed for the most part."
"You didn't tell me it was that kind of place," Ruby Bee said, then realized her error and got real busy with her beer.
"And where did you go?" I growled at her.
"I decided to visit a few grocery stores, just to compare what they carry with what's at the SuperSaver back home. I went into one place that was run by these Asian people. You'd think one of them could speak American, but they were all gobbling in some language that I couldn't make heads or tails of. They sounded like a flock of turkeys the way they were carrying on."