Murder is a Girl's Best Friend (20 page)

THE CHELSEA REALTY OFFICE WAS ON THE ground floor of a three-story brownstone. The large hand-painted sign in the front window showed the name in bold black letters above a bed of orange-yellow flowers with dark centers. Looked like black-eyed Susans to me. It was odd to see them rising from a windowsill heaped with snow. The company logo appeared again on the entrance door to the office—gold letters with black outlines. Just the name, no posies.

I pushed the buzzer but I didn’t hear it ring. Thinking the bell was out of order, I knocked lightly on the door and waited for somebody to let me in. Nothing happened, so I tried the knob. To my great surprise the door clicked open, and I cautiously stepped inside.

At first I thought the place was deserted. There was nobody sitting up front at either of the two old wooden desks that—along with the bank of tall wooden filing cabinets—practically filled the long, narrow room. As I stood there, however, listening to my own jumpy heartbeat and looking around at the pale green walls, dying potted plants, and badly scuffed bare wood floor, I realized I wasn’t alone. There was somebody in the back room. A man. I couldn’t see him through the half-open door between the two rooms, but I could hear him plainly.

“So what the hell’re you tellin’ me, Lily? It’s not over yet? Haven’t you had enough? Jesus H. Christ! I did what you wanted. Give it up already!” His voice was extremely loud, and he sounded
very
angry. Since there was a long silence after he spoke, and no audible reply, I figured he was talking on the phone. To somebody named Lily. (Am I a masterful detective, or what?)

I stood perfectly still in the front office, trying not to make a sound, straining both ears toward the half-open door. If the man in the back room had anything further to say, I wanted to hear every word.

Big mistake. “Screw you!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “I’m through! Go find yourself another stooge!” There was a loud crash, made—I assumed—by the collision of the receiver with the body of the phone, and then a harsh string of curse words I’d rather not repeat. (Use your wildest imagination, and you still won’t come close.)

By this time I was feeling kind of scared. I mean, this guy was going off his rocker in there! There were sounds coming out of that room that brought to mind the breaking of human bones and the gnashing of vicious tiger teeth. Not wanting to meet the madman face-to-face, or madden him further with my surprise appearance, I decided to flee the Chelsea Realty office and come back later, when he was feeling better.

Good plan—bad timing.

I had just opened the front door to leave when the man came storming out of the back room, growling obscenities and flailing his fists against every wall and piece of furniture in reach. He looked like he wanted to kill somebody. And his murderous demeanor became even more pronounced when he saw me.

“What the . . . ?!! Who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing here?” His mean little eyes were blazing and his short, wiry body was poised to attack. And I may have been hallucinating, but I would swear that two big streams of fire were shooting out of his nostrils.

“I’m sorry!” I sputtered, backing away from the heat. “I rang and knocked, but nobody answered, so I came on in. The door was open.”

He banged his fist on the closest file cabinet. “I’m gonna fire that stupid girl! She never locks up when she leaves the office!” He looked at his watch and cried, “Goddamn it! It’s three-thirty already! I sent the brat to show some office space over an hour ago and she’s still not back!” He gave me a closer look and then an overt head-to-toe once-over. “Hey, can you type? You want a job?”

“Uh, no. No, thank you, sir,” I said. “I’ve already got one.”

My rejection angered him even more. He shoved his fingers through his coarse brown hair and glared at me, screwing his long skinny pockmarked face into an ugly scowl. “Then what’re you here for, sister?” he barked. “Out with it! I haven’t got all day!”

Was the man so upset he’d forgotten what kind of business he was in?

“I’m looking for a new apartment,” I said, straightening my backbone and pasting a cordial smile on my kisser. I took the ad for Judy’s place out of my skirt pocket and handed it to him. “I saw this listing in the newspaper yesterday, and it sounds just right for me. So I was hoping to see the apartment this afternoon. Is it still available?”

He looked down at the ad in his hand, then back up at me. Now he was smiling also—so broadly and intensely I thought his tiny, tobacco-stained teeth would pop out of his gums and blast out of his mouth like buckshot. “Sure, doll,” he said, suddenly acting like my best friend. “The pad’s available. And it’s vacant, too, so I can show it to you right now—soon as you fill out an application.” Scooting over to the front desk, he snatched a printed form out of the top left drawer and gave it to me. “Need a pencil?” Before I could answer, he plucked one from the holder on the desk and handed it over.

What a chameleon!
I thought, marveling at the man’s quicksilver mood change. Was he merely busting to make a buck, or was he hustling to unload a bad luck rental where a young woman had recently been murdered? From the way he was smiling and sweating, I figured both motives were applicable.

“Thank you, Mr. . . . ah . . . Mr . . . ?”

“Swift,” he said, still grinning, “but you can call me Roscoe. Come sit over here while you fill out the form.”

He snaked his arm around my waist and guided me over to the guest chair at the side of the desk.

To avoid any sneaky fanny pats or pinches, I sat down quickly.

“Thank you, Roscoe,” I said, gazing up at his lizardlike face and batting my lashes to beat the band. I was trying to look alluring and flirtatious (as Abby always advised me to do), but the effort was making me kind of sick to my stomach, so I probably just looked like a bilious cow with gnats in her eyes.

Deciding to ditch the nauseating coquette routine and get down to business, I turned my attention to the application form and hastily filled it out, giving my name as Phoebe Starr and listing my address as 104 Christopher—which was just a few blocks away from where I really lived. I put down my true phone number, however, in case Roscoe decided to dial it to check me out. Then I gave Abby as a reference, stating that she was my current landlady.

The minute I finished, Roscoe swerved over to the desk, snatched the form out of my hands, and shoved it into the top right-hand drawer. Then he pulled a set of keys out of a different drawer and jingled them in the air. “C’mon, doll,” he said with another too-wide grin. “The apartment’s right around the corner. And I got a hunch it’s the perfect pad for you.”

He didn’t mention that it had been somewhat less than perfect for the last tenant.

 

 

STANDING IN THE HALL OUTSIDE JUDY’S apartment, waiting for Roscoe to fish the keys out of his pocket and open up, I studied the lock, knob, panels, and jamb of the door for evidence of breaking and entering. Terry was right. There were no unusual marks on any of the metal parts, and no telltale nicks or gashes in the wood.

I looked at Elsie Londergan’s door for a second, thinking I might learn something by comparing the two entranceways, but quickly lost my train of thought and flew into a major panic. What if Elsie heard us out here in the hall, or saw us through her peephole, and came out to see what was going on? If she let on that she knew me and called me by my real name, my cover would be totally blown! I’d have to confess my real purpose for being here. And then I’d have to deal with Roscoe Swift as my
actual
self, which could significantly lower my chances of digging up any info about Gregory Smythe—not to mention leave me exposed to a possible new source of danger.

(Why, oh, why hadn’t I thought of this before? Before I had hoofed it up to Judy’s apartment like a demented donkey? Before I had so willingly—okay, mindlessly—placed myself in the position of a sitting duck? If I had any sense at all I’d quit my job at
Daring Detective
and look for work as an oyster shucker. Or maybe a street sweeper. Some kind of job where foresight didn’t figure.)

But I was a lucky duck (or donkey) for the moment. Elsie didn’t appear. And Swift lived up to his name by opening the door to Judy’s apartment swiftly. Then we both stepped inside and he closed the door behind us, flipping on the light.

My heart screeched to a halt. Standing there in Judy’s kitchen, holding my breath and blinking against the glare of the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, I felt as if I had entered a tomb. Or a church. I was both deadened and electrified. And I felt closer to Judy Catcher than I ever had before. A trace of her cheap, spicy perfume still hung—like incense—in the stagnant air. I thought if I closed my eyes real tight, and concentrated real hard, I might be able to hear her humming . . .

But Roscoe quickly broke my spell. “You got to use your imagination,” he said, snapping open the kitchen window shade, then flinging wide the door to the bathroom. “The single girl who was living here moved out a few weeks ago, so the place looks empty and dreary right now. Needs some furniture and a homey touch. But just look at this flooring!” he exclaimed, gesturing toward the dingy, cracked linoleum as though it were a layer of marble veined with gold. “It’s like a ballroom dance floor! And the carpeting’s even better,” he said, lurching into the tiny sitting room and twirling once around like Arthur Murray himself. “It’s the perfect shade of red. They call it Prussian Passion. It goes with any color.”

Especially the color of blood,
I thought, walking into the room and staring down at the carmine carpet, searching for the section I knew poor Terry had soaked and soaped and scrubbed with his own hands. It was faintly visible in the center of the floor, midway between the sitting room and the bedroom. A dusky oblong stain the size of a bathmat. The very spot where Judy’s soul had left her bleeding body.

The location of the stain didn’t actually prove anything, I realized, but it
did
indicate that the killer had been admitted to the interior of the apartment before the murder took place. (Okay, okay! I may have been jumping to conclusions. Yes, Judy
could
have been shot in the kitchen when she opened her door to the killer, and then she
might
have stumbled halfway to the bedroom before she fell. But it was far more likely that the two bullets fired straight into her heart would have killed her instantly—i.e., kept her from stumbling anywhere.)

“The apartment’s the right size for me,” I said, carefully bypassing the barely discernible bloodstain and heading into the bedroom. “And the location couldn’t be better. But my major concern is safety.” I walked over to the bedroom window, raised the worn shade and looked out at the rusty, partially snow-covered fire escape. “Do you have many break-ins here?”

“Never had a single one!” Roscoe swore, lying through his little brown teeth (the police
had,
after all, declared that Judy was shot during a random
burglary
). “This is the safest building in the whole goddamn city!” he insisted. “The neighborhood’s safe, too.”

Pretending to test its workability, I unlocked the bedroom window and raised it a couple of inches, checking both the frame and the glass for signs of a forced entry. There were no scratches or scrapes to speak of, and the glass panes were uniformly filthy, suggesting—if not proving—that none of them had been recently replaced. A blast of cold air prompted me to close the window and relock it.

“Next to safety, privacy is the most important thing to me,” I said, shivering, turning to look Roscoe right in the eye. “I don’t need any new friends or enemies. And I can’t stand gossips or busybodies. I’m an unmarried woman with a liberated lifestyle, and I want to live in a building where all the residents keep their noses in their
own
behinds.”

Roscoe let out a horsey laugh. I was speaking a language he understood. “Then you’ve come to the right place, toots,” he said, snorting and winking suggestively. “The last renter of this apartment felt exactly the same way you do and was very satisfied with the accommodations.”

“You mean the single gal who just moved out?”

“No,” he said.” Wink, wink. Snort, snort. “I mean the married guy who was paying the rent for the single gal who just moved out.”

“Aha,” I replied, lifting one eyebrow to a peak—letting Roscoe know, with a salty smile, I had gotten his message.

“And how did the neighbors react to this scandalous situation?” I asked. “Did they cause the illicit lovebirds any trouble?”

His scrawny chest puffed out with pride. “I never had one complaint from any of the other tenants.”

“That’s nice,” I said, “but what about the lovebirds themselves? Did any of the residents ever bother
them?
Were they ever hissed at, or spat on, or bombarded with rotten tomatoes?”

Roscoe laughed again. “I don’t know where you been livin’, sister, but here in Chelsea, we don’t do things like that.”

“Well, that’s good to know,” I said, trying to turn on the charm again—i.e., look alluring and bat my lashes. “But you know what would
really
help me make up my mind about this apartment, Roscoe?”

“What?” he said, jutting both his chin and his pelvis in my direction.

“If I could just talk to one of the lovebirds—either the guy or the gal—and ask a few questions, find out what it’s like to live here. I’m sure everything you’ve told me about the apartment and the area is true, but I’d still like to get a firsthand report. Nothing speaks like experience.” I paused and gave him a flirty smile. “And I don’t mind telling you,” I added, flapping my eyelids like a vapid fool, “if I get the good review I expect to get, then you’ve got yourself a brand new occupant!”

I was hoping he’d clap his hands and jump for joy, and then whip out pen and paper to write down Gregory Smythe’s unlisted phone number for me. But he didn’t . What he did was stiffen his puny spine, cock his lizardlike head to one side, narrow his steely eyes to the thinnest of slits, and start breathing fire through his nostrils again.