A Really Cute Corpse (21 page)

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Authors: Joan Hess

BOOK: A Really Cute Corpse
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He leaned across me and opened the door. I was eased off the seat with a gentle, unrelenting hand. The door slammed shut and the truck drove down Thurber Street. I realized I was standing in the rain, gawking, and moved under the marquee to gawk.
Sally Fromberger was a blonde. Feminist considerations aside, the pageant contestants were girls, not women. Eunice was not unappetizing, but I doubted she would be described as “attractive,” and she certainly was older than I. I could think of two women who fit Arnie's criteria. I realized my shoes were filling with water and my nose was dripping in rhythm with the falling rain.
Cursing the desk sergeant for his lack of concern, I dashed down the sidewalk beside the building and around the corner to the alley. My car was gone. My comments were drowned out by the rain. I ran back to the protection of the marquee, clutched my purse to my chest for warmth, and gazed at the empty street. Taxis relentlessly cruise the streets of Manhattan, but they do not cruise anywhere in Farberville unless requested to do so. As I mentally reviewed the route to my apartment, the rain began to pour down hard enough to pockmark the concrete. Lightning snaked across the sky, and three seconds later thunder boomed. A gust of wind threw rain across my face—cold, cold rain.
There were pay telephones in front of the copy shop across the street. There were several valid reasons why they were of no damn help whatsoever. One involved whom to call, and another how to operate the machine without so much as a penny, Arnie having fleeced me with the adroitness of an Australian sheep shearer.
A second flash of lightning sent me to the glass door of the theater. I peered into the lobby, which was dark, deserted, and dry. Police seals were plastered along the edges of the doors, and a cardboard notice promised all sorts of official retribution to anyone who entered the premises. I took out my key and entered the premises. After all, the current situation was Peter's fault. I was cold and wet; one small telephone call and I would be out of there. Surely he would understand. Ho, ho.
I
t might have seemed expedient to make the call and get the hell out of the theater, but once I was in the office, I went to the bathroom and grabbed a handful of paper towels to dry my face. I took off my shoes, held them over the sink, and watched brown water dribble down the drain.
Despite a gloomy prescience, I went to the desk and dialed Luanne's telephone number. She did not answer. For a gimp, she was out quite often, I told myself as I slumped back in the chair and studied the ceiling. She was having an affair with Mr. Whoozit of tomato-growing repute, she worked for the CIA in her spare time, or she was involved in something she certainly didn't want me to know about. And doing an exceptionally competent job of it.
I noticed two broken pencil pieces on the desk. I decided it would not be tactful to call Peter, tell him someone had stolen my car, and ask him to give me a ride home from the same theater I'd illicitly broken into minutes ago. If I'd known Arnie's last name, I might have called him; an omelette sounded pretty damn good. The sociology professor who lived below me rode a bicycle. Caron was twelve months away from driving her mother anywhere except up the wall.
The light flickered as thunder echoed outside. I took
my ever-ready flashlight from my purse and toyed with it while I contemplated my next move, which I was confident would prove to be brilliant. Things did not seem brilliant at the moment, however. I was stranded in a dark building which had housed two murder victims and had sheltered at least one murderer. If I stuck one toe outside, I would be struck by lightning, washed down the gutter with the litter, and arrested posthumously for trespassing.
On a more optimistic note, the office was reasonably warm and dry. I was the only inhabitant, and the police were not likely to drop by any time soon. The storm would end. I would then walk home, fix myself a hot cup of tea, and fall into my bed for six or eight hours. Eight or ten hours. Ten or twelve hours. The fantasy was so appealing that I went over to the couch and lay down, telling myself I would under no circumstances close my eyes for more than one second.
A jab in the rear woke me up a few minutes later. I felt the crack where the cushions met and found the perpetrator, a stiff corner of paper. I pulled it free and held it above my face. A sealed envelope, fresh and white rather than faded and yellow. It was thick enough to indicate it contained several sheets of paper. As I debated the delicate social dilemma of ripping open someone's mail to read the contents, I heard the front door open with a tiny click. Stealthy footsteps came across the lobby.
I scrambled to my feet, grabbed my flashlight from the desk, and hurried across the office to turn off the light. I used my flashlight to illuminate a path to the bathroom. I left the door open an inch and cowered behind the commode, feeling both inordinately silly and thoroughly alarmed. Police officers never sneak across
anything. The first course at the academy is in striding, plodding, and stomping. At the moment, my heart was doing all three.
The office door opened and the light came on. Footsteps continued across the room. The chair squeaked. After a metallic click, a drawer was pulled open with a grating noise. Papers rustled.
My ears were right on top of the situation, but I couldn't see anything except the dusty plastic plant and one end of the couch. I suddenly realized I had the envelope in my hand; I folded it several times, and stuffed it down the front of my shirt in true heroine fashion. Then, frustrated to the point of recklessness, I inched around the commode so that I could see the desk.
Luanne, dressed in a raincoat and scarf, was taking something from the drawer. She let out a yelp of surprise as I stomped out of the bathroom. “Claire? What in heaven‘s—what are you—you doing here? Why are you hiding in there?” she said amid stutters and gasps.
I put my hands on my hips and glowered down at her. “My presence is a long and marginally entertaining story. What are
you
doing here—and more to the point, what are you taking out of the drawer?”
She closed the drawer with a bang. “Nothing of any significance. Just a few personal things I left here several days ago. I thought Mac was our resident phantom; I still can't believe you were hiding in the bathroom at seven o'clock in the morning.”
“I am fed up with these evasions and digressions,” I snapped. “If what's in the drawer is so darn insignificant, why did you risk the wrath of the police to come into the theater at—as you so accurately pointed out—seven o'clock in the morning? Why are the drawers always locked and what are you keeping in there?”
“I can't tell you,” she said in a low voice. She looked down at her purse in her lap and sighed. “You'll have to trust me, Claire. I have a problem and I'm not ready to tell anyone about it. But it has nothing to do with the two murders and blackmail and all that crazy stuff. It's personal.”
I went to the couch and sat down. Hating myself, I said, “How do you know there's been a second murder?”
“Peter called last night to tell me what happened. I'm supposed to go to the station and make a statement this afternoon.”
“I called you last night right after Steve was killed, and you didn't answer the telephone.”
Luanne covered her face with her hands, then jerked them away and gazed steadily across the desk at me. “I was home all night. You must have called while I was in the shower. Listen, Claire, I know my behavior has been pretty flaky this last week, but I didn't hurt anyone, much less decide to cut short the pageant by murdering Miss Thurberfest and the emcee.”
“But you came here at an ungodly hour to get something from the desk drawer. Did Peter tell you to leave the drawer key at the police station when you went there?”
She nodded. “He wants to look through the contestants' applications, although I can't imagine what he's hoping to find—beyond whimsically creative bust measurements and inflated grade-point averages.”
“Or a starchy white envelope?”
“I have no idea, Claire. He told me what happened, mentioning something sarcastic about Miss Marple-Malloy along the way. I said I'd appear at the station and drop off the key. That was the gist of it,” she said with a look of bewilderment.
I slumped down and rested my head on the back of the couch. If the envelope wasn't Luanne's, then it was someone else's ( Miss Marple-Malloy was again beginning to feel potential brilliance in the offing) . It occurred to me that Steve's explanation for being in the theater involved some misplaced papers. The explanation hadn't held as much water as my shoes, but he certainly might have been looking for something. Something so vital that it warranted prowling around an inky theater.
Perhaps I'd disparaged Cyndi Jay too readily. She might have had enough sense to realize the inherent peril of chatting with her blackmail victim. The time-honored tradition was to keep the damning evidence in a safe place, and sneeringly inform the victim that he'd better not do anything rash. In fact, she'd been carrying an envelope before the parade. She'd been alone in the office afterward, and might have hidden it between the cushions of the couch.
Which led to the obvious conclusion that the envelope contained a detailed description of the affair. I could have ripped it open to confirm this, but, then again, it was still raining. Luanne didn't seem particularly comfortable behind the desk, but the couch was surprisingly devoid of springs poking through the plastic upholstery. And Super Cop might fail to be amused with torn evidence, which he would interpret as evidence of felonious interference on someone's part.
I dug around until I caught a corner of the envelope, then pulled it free and held it up for Luanne's inspection. “Do you know what this is? This is Cyndi's insurance policy. It's a lovely account of the blackmail ammunition she used on Steve for the last half-year, and was planning to utilize for the final payoff.”
Luanne blinked. “It is? Is that why Steve came to the theater last night?”
“It makes sense,” I said as I stretched out on the couch and closed my eyes. “She'd shown it to him earlier, minutes before the parade. After the parade, she was in this room, in her dressing room, and then at the hospital. The dressing room was too risky, since she knew the police would search for clues to her purported assailant. Steve must have been planning to check the greenroom or the audio booth when I appeared on the scene.”
“Did he really confess to everything—just out and out admitting he was a philanderer, a blackmail victim, and a murderer?”
“Most amiably,” I murmured. “So amiably that in retrospect I'm not sure I buy it. The affair is understandable; he was at the age when a lot of men lose their minds, and he sounded rather wistful when he talked about the grand passion.” I thought of someone else who'd seemed rather wistful about beaches and happy-ever-afterness. “Do you think this midlife crisis is a male phenomenon they all go through—a rite of passage to pensions and middle-age spread? Whatever they've been doing suddenly seems inadequate, and they decide it's time to make a drastic change?”
“Didn't you go through one?”
“I haven't reached midlife yet,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “That's why I was asking the opinion of an older woman.”
The older woman sniffed. “I haven't qualified for a discount at the movies quite yet, but it's possible I'm somewhat precocious for my age. About two years ago, at the stroke of midnight, no less. I sat up in bed and looked at my second husband, who was happily snoring
away like a freight train. I decided he was a great guy—sexy, cooperative, considerate, cheerful, trustworthy, loyal, obedient, et cetera. I then realized I didn't want to spend the rest of my life with a Boy Scout. Fred took the news well; he was a really nice man. My family, from my college-aged son to my dottery grandmother, all hit the ceiling of the family manor, and those babies are eighteen feet high.”
“Sounds like a classic example of a midlife crisis to me.”
“Well, I didn't start dallying around with the gardener's youngest son or the delivery boys from the market.”
“Why not?” I asked through a yawn. “Too respectable?”
“The gardener's youngest son was nine, and the delivery boys were covered with zits.”
“How old was the gardener?”
“Old enough to weigh several hundred pounds. And his fingernails were always so dirty; I don't know how Lady Chatterly stood for it. But now that we've explored the ramifications of the standard midlife crisis and found it genderless, if not senseless, what else did Steve say before he was killed?”
“He was terribly eager to admit his guilt, as if I'd already wrapped it up and stuck a bow on it. In reality, I was struggling with a lame story that would place a hypothetical key in his hypothetical pocket. He was a politician. Those guys can explain away a three-billion-dollar deficit—what's one little key?”
“Maybe he knew there was proof, once the police took off on the right tangent.”
“If I hadn't taken a nap on the couch, no one could have proved he had an affair with Cyndi, much less that
he tried to asphyxiate her twice. All he had to do was insist the theater door was unlocked when he arrived to look for his missing papers. Warren knew the truth, and Eunice had an idea what was going on, but—” I sat up so quickly I almost fell off the couch. “Patti knew, too. I heard her say something to Warren. At the time I didn't realize that she wasn't demanding an explanation—she was coaching him on his lines.”
“Do you think she killed Steve because of it?”
“It ended six months ago, and I can't see her simmering for half a year while she went hopping down the campaign trail with him.”
“Six months of luncheons with the Rotarians and I'd kill,” Luanne said with a dry laugh. “Think of the menu: chicken
à la
something, green beans almondine, new potatoes, salad with thousand-island dressing, apple pie, and iced tea. The woman could get off on justifiable homicide.”
I mumbled an agreement as I considered the significance of Patti knowing about the affair. No earthshaking conclusions rolled me off the couch. Four people knew for sure: Steve, Cyndi, Warren, and Patti. Eunice suspected. Mac had heard me tell Peter.
“Mac is involved in this somehow,” I muttered. “He'd like us to believe that Cyndi had a mild bit of dirt on him, and that on her orders he gave her a key, ignored her peculiar behaviors, and fired at the convertible. She's not around to confirm or deny his story.”
“But Peter said that Mac claimed he came to the theater to get the rifle before it was waved under a meddlesome amateur's nose, thus setting off all manner of questions.”
I told her what Arnie had told me, which didn't take long. “So someone paid Arnie to snatch the convertible.
It wasn't Mac and it wasn't Cyndi; Arnie may be a sot, but he's a credible sot. What if Patti were behind the shooting? She might have staged it for the same reason Cyndi was so frantically staging her pranks—publicity. The Senator didn't have the primary in the bag. His popularity would have shot up if he could stand tall against union thugs.”

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