UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, I WOULD have closed the door and started bawling like a baby, wretched that Dan had mistaken my self-protective play-acting as an insult to his character, and ashamed of myself for even attempting to pull the wool over his honest, in sightful eyes. But the circumstances were far from normal, and I didn’t have time to wallow in remorse and self-pity. I had work to do, too! I had to hurry next door to confer with Terry and Abby about the murder, and I had to make a call to Vicki Lee Bumstead-before eleven-to see if I could dig up any new clues.
Since it was only ten o’clock (and since I was dying for another rum and Coke), I decided to go to Abby’s first.
“Is he conscious?” I asked as soon as she opened the door.
“Not by a long shot,” she said, motioning me inside. “I did my best to wake him up, get him to drink some coffee, but he never even opened his eyes. For a minute I thought he was dead, but then I realized corpses don’t snore.”
I walked over to the love seat and looked down at Terry’s senseless form. He was still lying on his back, with his legs hanging over the armrest. His lids were closed, his mouth was open, and his bright white hair gleamed against the crimson seat cushion like a cumulus cloud in a blood-red sky. I put my hand on one of his shoulders and gave it a vigorous shake. No response, so I did it again. Still nothing.
“See what I mean?” Abby said. “The man has the reflexes of a rock. You could hose him down with ice water and he still wouldn’t move. We just have to let him sleep it off, you dig?”
“I guess you’re right,” I said. “Do you mind?”
“Mind what?”
“If he stays here overnight.”
“Are you kidding?” she said, with a devilish smirk. “I’m hoping he’ll stay much longer than that! In case you haven’t noticed, your friend Mr. Catcher is a major dreamboat. Totally transcendental! I want him to stick around for a while, do some modeling for me.”
I knew what she meant by that. And, believe me, it wasn’t just modeling she had in mind. And I had the feeling Abby’s departure-delaying tactics would be far more effective than my own-that Terry would be staying in town for a few more days at least, bus or no bus, snow or no snow. I was glad for myself, but sorry for Terry’s father. I hoped the poor man could find somebody else to spend Christmas with.
“I need a drink,” I said, moving into the kitchen area and sitting down at the table. “Do you have any rum left?”
“No, but I’ve got some Scotch. Want a whiskey sour?”
“Just Scotch and water, thanks. Lots of rocks.”
Smiling from ear to ear, Abby danced over to the refrigerator and took a tray of ice out of the freezer. Next to painting and sex, bartending was her favorite occupation. She gave the lever on the aluminum tray a lusty yank, then loaded two glasses with the loosened cubes.
“So, what have you found out about Whitey’s sister’s murder?” she probed, pouring the Scotch, adding the water, and happily jumping into the swing of her fourth favorite occupation: poking around in my life and spurring me on to hazardous new heights of professional (not to mention emotional) intrigue. “Do you know who did it yet?”
I groaned out loud. As much as I loved my friend Abby and depended on her interest and support, I did not like being subjected to her often hasty and unreasonable expectations. “No, I don’t know who did it yet,” I said sarcastically, “do you?”
“Well, no, but I’ve got a few ideas.”
That figured.
“Pray tell,” I said, lighting a cigarette and exhaling loudly. “But make it snappy, please. I’ve got an important phone call to make.”
“Well, here’s the way I see it,” Abby said, breathlessly toting our drinks over to the table and flopping down in a flutter. Her stupendously beautiful face was glowing with the thrill of the chase. “Whoever murdered Judy was after the diamonds!”
I don’t know about you, but I found this to be a somewhat less than brilliant deduction.
“Of course the killer was after the diamonds!” I sputtered, disappointed in her simple theory. “That goes without saying! The question we need to answer is, who was after the diamonds? Was it Judy’s closest confidante and short-of-cash, bingo-playing next-door neighbor, or the penniless, dog-loving poet she threw over because he had too many other girlfriends, or the well-to-do, married older man who was paying the rent on her apartment and may have bought her all the jewelry in the first place? Was it Judy’s greedy, oversexed, violently spurned landlord, or the devious, down-and-out ex-roommate whose hair she ripped out by the roots? Or did Judy have a brand new boyfriend-a man who may, for all we know, have participated in some big diamond heist, and then coerced his malleable new girlfriend to hide his take in her apartment, and then shot her in the heart when she got scared and wanted to turn the loot over to the police?”
(Okay, okay! So I was stretching things a bit now, but I only did it to make a point-a salient and, I believe, legitimate point: that I was the one who had been doing all the homework here, and if anybody deserved to get a good grade on this test, it was me.)
“It was the well-to-do, married older man who bought her the jewelry in the first place,” Abby declared, unimpressed, totally ignoring my sarcasm and bid for distinction. “The richer they are, the deeper the killer instinct, you dig? I bet his wife found out about his pretty young plaything, and about all the pretty trinkets he’d bought for her, and I bet she threatened to haul him into divorce court and sue his playful pinstriped pants off-unless he ditched his little dolly and got all the diamonds back.”
“That could be true,” I said, so eager to talk to somebody about Judy’s murder that I stopped competing with Abby and teamed up with her instead, “but I don’t think he would have had to kill her to get the jewelry back. From everything I’ve learned about Judy so far, all he would have had to do was ask her for it. Judy wasn’t looking for diamonds, she was just looking for love.”
“Some girls get the two mixed up,” Abby said, raking her fingers through her wild black hair and tying it back in a ponytail with her red chiffon neckerchief. “Who is this rich guy anyway? Do you know his name?”
“I know his fake name,” I told her. “It’s Gregory Smith.”
“How did you get that name, and how do you know it’s fake?”
“I went to Judy’s apartment building on my lunch hour today, and I had a little chat with her manly-but-motherly next-door neighbor, Elsie Londergan. Elsie told me about Judy’s sugar daddy and gave me his alias. I think she just assumed it’s a phony name because of the Smith.”
“Does Whitey know who this rooster is?”
“I don’t think so, but I can’t say for sure. I haven’t had a chance to ask him yet. He’s been a little-how shall I put it?-under the weather.” The sarcasm slithered back into my tone with a stubborn will of its own.
Abby still paid it no mind. “Are there a lot of G. Smiths in the phone book?”
“Just a few hundred thousand,” I moaned. And that was just a slight exaggeration. (Really!) I had looked the name up when I’d gotten back to the office after my lunch hour (okay, two hours), and the roster seemed as long as HUAC’s blasphemous blacklist.
“Well, if it is a fake name, how’re you going to find out the real one?”
“From Judy’s landlord, maybe-or by tracing the diamonds back to their original source and trying to get the name of the buyer… Or maybe Vicki Lee Bumstead can help me.”
“Who’s that?” Abby said with a scornful smile. “Dagwood’s sister?”
“No, but she was kind of like Judy’s sister,” I explained. “They worked together at Macy’s for over a year. On my way home from work tonight, I stopped at Macy’s to speak to Vicki, and she told me that Gregory Smith was Judy’s lord and savior-whatever that means-and the greatest love of Judy’s life.”