“Was it SmytheJudy loved, or the jewelry he gave her?”
“Judy wasn’t like that!” Vicki said, with an audible exclamation point. “She didn’t care about the jewelry at all! She never even wore any of it. She only accepted the gifts because Mr. Smythe insisted, and because it made him so happy to give them to her. She would do anything to make him happy.”
I thought about what Vicki said for a moment and realized that-in spite of the improbability of her statements-I was inclined to believe her. Her perception of Judy jibed perfectly with both Terry’s and Elsie Londergan’s-and three out of three was good enough for me. For the time being, anyway.
“I’d really like to speak with Mr. Gregory Smythe,” I told her. “Could you go into your bookkeeping files and get his address and phone number for me?”
There was a long silence. “Gee, I don’t know,” Vicki finally answered. “I couldn’t do it myself, but maybe I could get a friend of mine who works in the the billing office to look him up.”
“Please try,” I said. “It’s very important that I talk to him.”
“What for?” she inquired, with a sudden and unmistakable tone of disapproval in her voice. “You don’t think he killed Judy, do you?”
“I have to investigate all the possibilities.”
“But Mr. Smythe is definitely not a possibility!” she said with conviction. “He’s a real classy gentleman. I mean it, Phoebe! He wouldn’t hurt a gnat.”
“But would he hurt a girl?” I said. “That’s the thirty thousand dollar question.”
“Thirty thou…? What are you talking about?”
“That’s how much Judy’s diamonds were worth. Thirty-thousand dollars.”
“Wow!” Vicki blurted, obviously surprised. “I had no idea that…”
“Vicki!” her mother screamed in the background. “It’s past eleven! Get off the phone! Now!
“I’ve gotta go,” Vicki sputtered, responding to her mother’s orders on the double. “Call me tomorrow?”
“Uh, sure… okay,” I said, barely getting the last syllable out of my startled mouth before the line went dead.
I LOOKED AT MY WATCH. VICKI’S MOTHER was right; it was fifteen minutes past eleven. But the way I was feeling, it seemed much later. I was so tired, jittery, and confused-and still so upset about Dan-I wanted nothing more than to creep up the stairs to my bedroom and crawl under the covers with my clothes on. I wanted to curl myself up in a tight little ball and pull Bob’s old army blanket all the way over my head, I wanted to drop off into oblivion and forget I ever heard the names of Terry and Judy Catcher. Or, for that matter, Gregory Smythe.
But I didn’t have time for oblivion. Or even just a couple of winks. A murderer was on the loose, and I was the only person on earth (well, the only sober person on earth) who was trying to track him down. And tired and frazzled though I was, I knew for a fact that eleven-fifteen was the right and perfect time for me to set forth on my next clue-hunting expedition. The jazz (and, hopefully, the poetry) would be getting into full swing at the Vanguard right about now.
In an effort to boost my energy level (i.e., keep myself vertical for a couple more hours), I gulped down another cup of black coffee. Then I pushed myself up the stairs to my closet, took off my pale yellow sweater set, pulled on my black knit scoop neck, switched my sheer flesh-colored stockings for black, and put on a clean black sheath skirt. Lumbering into the bathroom to splash some water on my tired face, I then wiped off all my red lipstick, powdered my nose, and put on a pile of heavy black eye makeup. I looked as wan and bloodless as Count Dracula before his midnight snack, but I would blend in beautifully with the somber, sooty-eyed bohemians.
I went back downstairs and put on my coat and my snowboots. Then, grabbing my purse off the table and slapping my black beret on my head, I carefully let myself out of my apartment and inched my way down the stairwell, being as quiet as a baby chipmunk walking on tiptoes in slippers made of silk. I did not want Abby to hear me. If she came out into the hall and found out where I was going, she’d want to come with me. And God only knew what kind of trouble that would lead to.
Opening the door at the bottom of the stairwell as quietly as I possibly could, I slipped out onto the sidewalk, clicked the door closed behind me, then quickly started walking west on Bleecker, toward Seventh Avenue. It was freezing and the street was practically deserted. I pulled my coat collar up and held it around my face, breathing into it, trying to keep my nose warm. Nearly gagging from my hurried pace and the gamey smell of damp camel’s hair, I turned right onto Seventh and pushed northward, ducking my head against the arctic wind and keeping my eyes trained on the sidewalk, cautiously avoiding the most dangerous patches of hardened snow and ice.
There was more traffic on the Avenue-both human and automotive-and many more Christmas lights were twinkling, especially in the Sheridan Square area. From West 4th Street on, however, things got a little quieter-and a whole lot darker. Shaking from the cold (okay, my nerves were causing some trembling, too!), I walked as fast as I could past West 10th, Charles, Perry, and Waverly Place, until finally-at the ominous stroke of midnight-I found myself standing under the long, red, snow-topped awning stretching from the curb to the entrance of the Village Vanguard.
Striving to be as brave as Brenda Starr (but feeling as spooked as Cosmo Topper), I sucked in a blast of frigid air and blew out a cloud of white steam. Then I pulled the creaky, heavy wood door open and stepped inside.
Chapter 12
THE FAMOUS WEDGE-SHAPED ROOM WAS crowded-packed to the low-slung rafters with groovy young artistic types, all dressed in black, all drinking and smoking, and all listening intently, with half-closed eyes, to the hip, cool sounds of the Negro jazz quartet performing on the slightly raised stage. A few Negroes were sitting in the audience, too, thrumming their fingers on the tabletops, scatting, bobbing their heads and rolling their shoulders in perfect sync with the music. The Vanguard was one of the few public places in the city where Negroes and Caucasians could mingle in easy harmony-and one of the few public places in the world that was likely to be so crowded on a late, wintry Tuesday night (okay, Wednesday morning) like this.
I spied a small, empty table at the very back of the room, hurried over and sat down, hoping nobody would notice me. Even in the Village-the most liberal and progressive neighborhood in Manhattan (and probably the whole country)-it wasn’t considered proper for a woman to go out to a nightclub alone. I slipped my coat off my shoulders, folded it over the back of my chair, took off my beret and gloves, and immediately lit up a cigarette. Then I slumped into a boneless slouch, trying to look cool and intellectual, like a beat jazz-lover whose boyfriend had just gone to the bathroom. (It isn’t easy to look cool and intellectual when your heart is banging like a kettle drum and your brain is stuck on the subject of murder.)
Some of the people sitting nearby turned to gape at me-rather suspiciously, I thought-then began whispering among themselves. They probably thought I was a doped-up prostitute on the prowl for a jazzed-up john.
Hunching over till my hair made a wavy brown curtain around my face, I squinted my eyes and scanned the room, searching for a dark-haired, bearded young man with a dog. There were at least twelve dark-haired fellows with beards in attendance, but only one of them had a dog. He (the man, not the dog) was standing and leaning against the bar, watching the show and listening to the music, with one elbow propped on the counter and his fringed chin propped on the shelf of his upturned hand. The miniature dachshund was sitting-in as upright a position as a long narrow dog with extremely short legs can achieve-on the barstool next to him.