Murder is a Girl's Best Friend (10 page)

I had a feeling I was going to like this woman. “You don’t know me, Mrs. Londergan,” I said, speaking into the intercom. “My name is Paige Turner and I—”

“Oh, sure!” she broke in. “And I’m Jim Dandy. So what’s your real name and what’s your game?”

“No, really!” I said. “Paige Turner
is
my real name, and I’m a friend of Judy Catcher’s brother Terry. I was wondering if I could come in for a moment and talk to you about Judy? I won’t take up too much of your time.”

There was a long silence and no reply. Then, suddenly, the inner door buzzed open, and I pushed my way into the hall. The lighting was dim, but I could see the numbers on the apartment doors: 1A to my left, 1B to my right. I dashed up the stairs to the second floor and headed straight for the left rear apartment, which I figured would be 2C.

It was. I heard a rustling noise on the other side of the door, so I knew Mrs. Londergan was standing right there, probably peering at me through the peephole. Trying to mask my nosy detective face with a look of pure sweet innocence, I lifted my brows, fluttered my lashes, and lightly knocked on the door.

She opened it at once. Standing tall (very tall!) in the doorway, with one hand on the doorknob and the other one on her hip, she thrust her chiseled chin in my direction and said, “How’d you ever get a stupid name like Paige Turner?”

I giggled—not just because she had so cheekily branded my stupid name with the adjective it deserved, but also because she was the spitting image of John Wayne. I kid you not. An aging John Wayne in a red flowered dress. With a swipe of bright red lipstick and a cap of short wavy blue-gray hair. It would have made you giggle, too.

“It’s my married name,” I told her. “My parents are wise and kind. They never would have saddled me with such a silly signature.”

She smiled. A sly, smirky John Wayne smile. “So you actually took the name of your own accord? Love makes us do the craziest things!” Shaking her head and shrugging her brawny shoulders, she moved her large frame out of the doorway and motioned for me to enter. “Come on in, Paige Turner. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

“Thank you,” I said, stifling the urge to giggle again. I’d never thought of John Wayne as a tea drinker.

 

 

ONE STEP INSIDE THE APARTMENT AND I was in the kitchen. A cozy little kitchen with a green linoleum floor and a ruffled gingham curtain on the only window, which offered a sunless view of the gray stone wall of the building next door. A small table and two chairs sat near the window, and I thought
we’d
be sitting there, too, but my husky hostess led me on through the tiny kitchen, into the next chamber of her small railroad flat—an even tinier sitting room with no window at all.

“Take off your coat and have a seat,” she said, directing me to one of the two chintz-covered wing chairs positioned on either side of a low, round coffee (okay,
tea
) table. On the table were several silver-framed family photographs, a silver cigarette box, and a lamp with a fringed shade. The only other furniture in the room was a Philco television—a large wooden floor model with a small round screen.

I handed Mrs. Londergan my coat and she carried it into the next room—her bedroom—and put it on the bed. I could see what she was doing because there was no door, no wall—not even a folding screen—between the bedroom and the sitting room.

“Hold on a second,” she said, walking back through the sitting room and into the kitchen again. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

I was starting to get antsy, afraid the whole tea-for-two ritual would take up so much time I wouldn’t get to ask enough questions. Deciding not to wait for her to return to the sitting room to begin my investigation, I called out, “Are all of the apartments in this building the same as yours, Mrs. Londergan? Same layout, same number of rooms?”

“Yep!” she answered, running some water, clanging a pot on the stove. “They’re all the same. Skinny little railroads with open-ended rooms. Makes it easier for the cockroaches to get around. The only room that has a door is the bathroom. Gotta be grateful for small favors.” She had a deep voice for a woman, and a flat midwestern accent.

“Judy Catcher lived right across the hall from you, right? In 2D?”

“That’s right,” she said, adding nothing but a long, sad, heavy sigh. She opened and closed the refrigerator, scraped and scrambled through the silverware drawer, then rattled some china around. I thought she was making more noise than was absolutely necessary, but I could have been imagining things. Or maybe this was just the normal kind of racket made by a very large woman living in a very small space.

“Did you hear or see anything the night Judy was shot?” I asked.

“No. I wasn’t home. I was down the street at Milly Es terbrook’s playing canasta. Our landlord discovered the body and it had already been removed by the time I got home.”

“Terry told me that you and Judy were really close—that she was like a daughter to you.”

“That’s true,” she said. “I really loved that girl. Did my best to help her. Her mother died when she was just a baby, so . . . hey, whaddaya want in your tea? Cream? Lemon? Sugar?”

“Nothing at all, thank you,” I said, just hoping to speed the process along. I really wanted cream and sugar, but I
didn’t
want to make her take the time. My throat was getting sore from talking so loudly. “So what was Judy like?” I probed, trying to get her involved in the conversation instead of the tea preparation. “Was she as tough and feisty as Terry said she was, or was that just an act—a ploy to hide her insecurity?”

For some reason, that question got Mrs. Londergan’s undivided attention. Suddenly planting her large body in the doorless doorway from the kitchen to the sitting room, she propped both hands on her hips, craned her sharply sculpted chin toward me, and said, “Okay, Paige Turner. Why are you
really
here? You say you’re a friend of Terry Catcher’s, but how do I know that’s true? You could be a goddamn insurance investigator, for all I know. Why do you want to talk to me about Judy? Why are you asking me all these sneaky questions?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Londergan,” I quickly replied. “I should have explained myself sooner. I’m a writer, a true crime reporter. I work for
Daring Detective
magazine, and Terry Catcher has asked me to look into the facts surrounding his sister’s death. He believes Judy was intentionally murdered,
not
killed during a random burglary.”

She softened her wide shoulders and pulled in her chin. “Oh,” she said, staring down at the sitting room carpet for a few seconds. Then she returned to the kitchen and knocked some more china around. Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was probably less than a minute, she came back into the sitting room carrying two cups of tea on a small tray. She set the tray down on the table, and sat herself down in the chair across from me.

“You know, I wondered about that myself,” she said, aiming her eyes (which were every bit as blue as the Duke’s) directly into mine. “I thought, what if there really wasn’t any burglary? What if Judy
knew
the person who killed her? I asked the police about this, but they said I was barking up the wrong tree—that I had no reason to question their findings. The detective in charge, a nasty little man named Sweeny, actually told me to stop being a busybody. I don’t know about you, but I really hate it when a man patronizes me like that. Makes me want to knock his block off.”

I laughed out loud. Not only did I share Mrs. Londergan’s sentiments about patronizing men, but I knew that if one of them really deserved to get his block knocked off by a woman,
she
would be the best one for the job.

“Sweeny gave Terry Catcher the brush-off, too,” I told her. “Once he latched onto the random burglary premise, he wouldn’t let go. Case closed. He wouldn’t even
consider
Terry’s theory about the murder. That’s why Terry asked me to scout around. He’s hoping I can dig up enough evidence to convince the cops to get back on the case.”

“Poor Mr. Catcher,” she said. “Such a nice young man. And so devoted to his sister!”

“Yes,” I said, keeping a lid on my emotions, too pressed for time to sink into the sadness of the situation. “You said you tried to
help
Judy,” I interjected, hating to change the subject so abruptly, but feeling desperate to speed things up. “What did you mean by that, Mrs. Londergan? What kind of help did Judy need?”

“Call me Elsie,” she said. “My friends all call me Elsie, but my given name is Elspeth.” (I was surprised it wasn’t Marion.) She picked up her tea and slurped it noisily.

“Okay,” I replied, groaning to myself, watching a steady stream of sand plummet to the base of an imaginary hourglass. “Elsie it is.” I held my teacup aloft, as if in a toast, then took a big swig. After nursing my scorched tongue for a second or two, I urgently repeated the question. “So tell me, Elsie, what kind of help did Judy need?”

“Every kind.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Mothering, understanding, encouragement, advice—she needed it all. She was over here all the time, asking me what should she do about this, and what should she do about that, and which blouse looks best with this skirt, and what should she have for dinner, and why does every man she falls in love with have brown eyes? She was a bundle of self-absorption and instability. Just what you would expect from a girl who had no mother, and whose father was a worthless drunk.”

“But Terry said she was strong and tough—that she was a real fighter. That’s one of the reasons he doesn’t buy Sweeny’s conclusion that she was shot by a burglar. Terry thinks that if Judy had found an intruder in her apartment, she would have jumped him and beaten him to a pulp. Or
tried
to, anyway—in which case there would have been at least one or two cuts or bruises on her body. And there was nothing. Not even a scratch.”

Elsie frowned. “Yes, Judy
was
very strong. Physically, I mean, not emotionally. Emotionally, she was weak as a kitten. But bodily? Ha! She had more muscles than Mar ciano! And she wasn’t afraid to use them. She had a violent temper too—could be a real hellion sometimes. She kicked our landlord in the shin once, when he tried to pinch her on the bottom, and she ripped a big hank of hair out of her former roommate’s scalp because the girl was flirting with her boyfriend.”

Finally we were getting somewhere. “Speaking of boyfriends,” I said, leaping to take advantage of the lead-in, “was Judy seeing anyone special at the time of the murder?”

“No. Her most recent beau had just ended their relationship, and she hadn’t found a new replacement yet. She was gearing up for a serious manhunt, though. Judy couldn’t bear to be without a boyfriend for long.”

“Who had just broken up with her?”

“A man named Gregory Smith—but if you believe that was his
real
name, you’re as big a fool as Judy. He was an older man—much older than she was. Hell, he was probably even older than me! He was married, too, but that didn’t bother Judy one bit. She really loved the guy, and as far as she was concerned, he could do no wrong.” Elsie’s voice was dripping with disapproval.

“I take it you didn’t like him very much.”

“It wasn’t personal. I hate
all
snakes.”

“What made you think he was a snake?”

“I didn’t think it, I
knew
it. Show me an oversexed old married man who’s lured an emotionally unstable nineteen-year-old girl into becoming his love slave, and I’ll show you a snake.”

“From what I hear, Judy was quite capable of turning
herself
into a love slave. Terry said she would do anything for the man she loved, and that she fell in love at the drop of a hat.”

Elsie took another slurp of tea. “Well, that’s true, too, but . . .” she placed her teacup back down on the tray and gave me a mournful look, “. . . but Judy deserves your sympathy instead of your scorn. She was so hungry for love she would accept it from almost any source. Gregory Smith, on the other hand,” she said, pronouncing the name with a thick slur of contempt, “was merely hungry for sex. And he was willing to deceive his wife—and ruin a young girl’s future—just to satisfy his own greedy desires. In my book, he’s nothing but a snake. A perverted and poisonous snake.”

“Did you tell Judy how you felt?”

“Of course. I was always honest with her. I told her to dump the bastard and move back to her old apartment, with her old roommates.”

“But why would she have had to move?”

“Because, cheap and shoddy as it is, she couldn’t afford this palace on her own. She only lived here because
he
wanted her to. And because he signed the lease and paid the rent.”

So Judy
did
have a rich boyfriend!
I squealed to myself. A
little
rich, at least. Rich enough to put Judy up in a private playhouse without breaking his own household budget. But was he rich enough to buy her thirty thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds. too?

My pulse was pounding with the thrill of the chase. I was Philip Marlowe on the verge of a brilliant breakthrough! I was Sam Spade on the prowl! I was Nick and Nora Charles rolled into one! I was taking so long for lunch I was going to get canned the minute I got back to the office!

“Oh, my God!” I cried, gaping at my watch in disbelief. “I totally lost track of the time! I was supposed to be back at work a half hour ago. I have to leave right now!” I jumped to my feet and lunged into the bedroom for my coat.

“But you didn’t drink your tea.”

“I know, I know! I’m really sorry, Mrs. Londergan . . . er, Elsie,” I said, heading back into the sitting room, buttoning my coat, and putting on my gloves. “I wish I could stay. There’s so much I wanted to talk to you about, and I haven’t even scratched the surface! Can I come back later this evening, after I get off from work, and talk to you some more?”

She stood up and walked me into the kitchen. “Sorry, Paige Turner,” she said, patting her blue-gray permanent waves into place. “I’m playing bingo tonight, and I’m feeling lucky. If I hit the jackpot I could win three dollars! And I really need the extra dough.”