Murder is a Girl's Best Friend (27 page)

The silver cigarette lighters, however (and as I said before), were pretty nifty.

“How much do these cost?” I asked the salesman, pointing out the most modest (and to my mind, sleekest) line of lighters.

“They’re all in the twenty to twenty-five dollar range,” he told me.

“Really?” I said, getting excited. I could buy one of these lighters for Dan, I figured, and still have twenty-five dollars of my bonus left over to send to Elijah Peeps. Twenty-five dollars for the new
love
of my life, and twenty-five dollars for the man who had
saved
my life. There was something poetic about that emotional equation.

“I want
that
one,” I said, indicating the simplest lighter of all, the one that was shaped just like a classic Zippo, with a satin finish so smooth it was eloquent. “Can I have it engraved? Does that cost extra?” I was so happy to have found Dan’s Christmas present, I had forgotten that I didn’t have the cash to pay for it.

“You may have it engraved at no extra cost—but not before Christmas,” the long-faced middle-aged salesman replied. “The store closes in twenty minutes and won’t reopen until Monday, the day after Christmas. You may, however, bring the lighter and your receipt back to the store later, if you wish—after the twenty-fifth—and we’ll do the engraving for you then.”

“You’ve got a deal,” I said, “providing I can pay by check.”

“If you have proper identification, Tiffany’s will be happy to accept your check.”

“Great!” I said, whipping out my driver’s license, social security card, and checkbook. Since all the banks were closed until Monday, I wasn’t worried that my check would bounce. I knew I’d be covering it first thing Monday morning, when I deposited my bonus. “How much should I make this out for?” I asked.

The sad-faced salesman consulted the hidden price tag and added on the tax. “That’ll be $23.48,” he said, punctuating his statement with a condescending sniff.

I made out the check and handed it over to him. He slipped the lighter into a little blue velvet pouch, then into a Tiffany’s gift box, then into a Tiffany’s shopping bag, which he then handed over to me.

“Thank you,” I said, smiling. Then I leaned over the counter and added, in a conspiratorial tone, “And now I have a very important, very confidential matter to discuss with the manager. Is he on the floor now? Will you point him out to me please?”

“This is not the best time, Miss . . . Mr. Woodbury
is
here, but he’s sure to be overseeing the closing of the store for the holiday weekend. He’ll be much too busy to talk to you now.”

“Too busy to talk about forty thousand dollars worth of diamonds?”

“That’s him right over there,” the salesman said, nodding toward the tall, portly, red-haired man standing off to the side of the showroom—away from the now-thinning crowd. He looked to be about forty and he was wearing a sedate but stylish dark gray suit. A white linen handkerchief peeped to a perfect peak from his breast pocket.

I sauntered over to him—shoulders back, head held high, Tiffany bag positioned in
front
of the other shopping bag I was carrying. I was trying to look rich and respectable. (Stop laughing!) “Mr. Woodbury,” I said, “may I speak with you for a minute?”

He looked down at his watch, and then raised his watery blue eyes to look at me. “Yes, but just for
one
minute. It’s almost closing time.” His hair was the color of carrots.

“Can we go to your office or someplace private?”

“Sorry, but I have to keep an eye on things out here.” As if to prove his words, he stared right past me, watching the last of the last-minute shoppers complete their purchases and begin leaving the store.

It was clear that Mr. Woodbury would invite me to leave soon, too. “I just want to ask you about the diamond jewelry I recently inherited from my dear departed aunt,” I blurted, speaking as fast as I could and trying to capture his interest. “There are several beautiful pieces and they were all created by Tiffany in the early thirties. There’s a necklace, a pair of earrings, a pin, and two bracelets. And I was hoping you could tell me what they’re worth.”

I had his full attention now. His watery blue eyes were gawking at my face and they had grown as big as coat buttons. “What a coincidence!” he declared. “You’re the second person today who’s asked me about jewelry from the early thirties. And if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were both talking about the very same collection.”

Now
I
was the one who was gawking.

“What?! Who?!” I spluttered, so dumbfounded I couldn’t form a complete sentence. My mind was reeling with questions for Mr. Woodbury, but I couldn’t get them out of my mouth.
Who was it who spoke to you? Was it over the phone or here in the store? Do you have the person’s name? Was it a man or a woman? What did the person look like? Do you think he or she could be a murderer?

But even without me asking the questions, Mr. Woodbury gave me the answers. “The attractive young lady who came to see me this afternoon was also inquiring about the value of an inheritance,” he said, clearing his throat, straightening his tie, and gazing dreamily up at the ceiling. “And she was very curious about the history of her newly acquired diamonds, so we went upstairs to the Tiffany archives to research the early thirties designs together.” A lustful smile spread wide across his pale, plump lips, and his eyes glazed over with what looked like a
very
pleasant memory. He was so entranced he didn’t even notice that the closing bell had sounded and that the store was now devoid of customers.

Except for me, that is. But I didn’t have to stick around one moment longer. Mr. Woodbury’s lustful smile told me everything I needed to know, including the name of the young woman who had visited him that afternoon. It had to be Abby.

Chapter 21

“HEY, BOBBA REE BOP!” ABBY EXCLAIMED, taking the half-full bottle of bourbon out of the bag and placing it on her kitchen counter. “Who wants a bourbon smash?” Her long black hair was loose and streaming down her back like a waterfall of India ink.

“I’ll have one,” Terry said, watching Abby’s fluid movements with a look of sheer enchantment on his face. It was the first time since I’d met him that I’d seen him show any real sign of happiness.

“I’ll have
two,
” I said, feeling decidedly
un
happy. If you’ve ever been pushed in front of a train, you’ll understand why. (You’ll also understand why I went straight to Abby’s apartment, instead of my own, when I got home. Misery loves company, whether the company’s as miserable as you are or not.)

“You don’t sound so hot,” Abby said to me. She took a tray of ice out of the freezer and cranked apart the cubes. “You don’t look so hot, either. What’s been going on?”

“Oh, I had a pretty rough day,” I said, sighing heavily. I reached for the open pack of Pall Malls sitting on the kitchen table and lit one up. “But I don’t want to talk about that right now. I’ll tell you all about it later—after I’ve had a drink . . . and after you’ve told me about your top secret trip to Tiffany’s.”

“How do you know about that?!” Abby cried. Both she and Terry were gaping at me in shock. If their jaws had dropped any lower, they’d have broken right off their hinges.

“Yeah!” Terry said. “How did you find out? We wanted to surprise you.”

Basking in the pleasure of my sudden one-upmanship, I took a deep drag on my cigarette and exhaled slowly. “No one can surprise the Shadow!” I intoned, referring to the hero of
The Shadow
radio show and trying to mimic his wicked laugh. “The Shadow knows!”

“Knock it off,” Abby said, unamused. “Just tell us what happened. You went to Tiffany’s yourself, right?”

“Right.”

“And you spoke to Jeremy—I mean, Mr. Woodbury.”

“Right.
Jeremy
and I are as close as this.” I held up two crossed fingers as a visual aid. If Abby noticed the sarcastic tone of my expression (verbal
or
digital) she paid it no mind.

“And he
told
you I was there?” She brought our drinks over to the table and sat down in a huff. “That really frosts me! I thought the manager of a swank place like Tiffany’s would be much more discreet than that.”

“He didn’t tell me your name. He just mentioned that somebody else had been in earlier—somebody who was also interested in jewelry from the early thirties—and that he’d helped her do some research in the archives.”

“So how did you know it was me?”

“Just a lucky guess,” I said, deciding to forego the diversion of describing Mr. Woodbury’s rapturous trance and randy smile. I was afraid Terry would get jealous and stop being so happy. “So what did you find out?” I asked Abby. “Did your, uh, research in the archives turn up any new clues?”

“Just wait’ll you hear this!” Terry broke in, excited as a foxhound near the end of a chase. “Abby really hit the jackpot. She discovered that the diamonds were originally purchased in 1933 by one of Tiffany’s steady customers—a wealthy socialite named Mrs. Augusta Farnsworth Smythe. She even got the woman’s address!” He was bowled over by Abby’s brilliant skills of detection.

And frankly, my dear, so was I. “Oh, Abby, that’s atomic! How did you ever get Woodbury to give you that information?”

“I didn’t,” she said, with a mischievous smirk. “I took a peek inside the file when he wasn’t looking.”

“What file?”

“The file Jeremy took out of the archives when he was trying to help me determine the origin of the vintage diamond jewelry left to me by my dear departed Aunt Hester.”

I smiled. Dear departed aunts were all the rage this year.

“You wouldn’t believe how thorough and well-organized Tiffany’s records are!” Abby went on. “All the invoices in that file were arranged in perfect alphabetical order. And since my real purpose was to get the dope on Gregory Smythe, all I had to do was turn to the S section. There was nothing under Gregory but, thinking Mrs. Augusta Farnsworth Smythe might be Gregory’s wife or mother, I memorized the address on
her
invoice. Trouble is, the statement was dated December 1933—twenty-one years ago—so she probably doesn’t live there anymore. If she’s still alive at all.”

“What’s the address?” I asked.

“957 Park Avenue.”

“Yep! That’s the place!” I threw my head back and took a big swig of my drink.

“What place?!” Terry croaked. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that’s the same address Smythe’s secretary gave me. That’s where Gregory lives with his wife, Augusta, and that’s where the party is being held tomorrow night.”

If their eyes had popped any wider, they’d have turned inside out. “What party?!” they cried in unison.

The Shadow strikes again!
It felt so good to relax and fool around, I wanted to toy with Abby and Terry a little while longer, pull the cards slowly—one by excruciating one—from my stealthy sweater sleeve. But that would have been an unconscionable waste of precious time (mine
and
theirs). And, if you want to know the truth, I was way too skittish (okay,
scared
) to keep on playing games. Because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop one sickening thought from streaking round and round my one-track mind:
If it wasn’t for Elijah Peeps, I’d be soup now.

Anxious to fill them in and get their feedback (okay,
sympathy
), I gave Abby and Terry a quick recap of recent occurrences: how Vicki Lee Bumstead had given me Smythe’s business address; how I’d gone to see him at his office, and quietly suffered his slobbering advances, and then been invited to his and his wife’s annual Christmas party; how I’d rushed across town to Tiffany’s and cornered Mr. Woodbury just as the store was closing. And then finally, after these current events had been described and discussed at length, I took a deep breath, did a little backpedaling, and fretfully revealed the more troubling (okay,
terrifying
) episodes of my recent past.

First, I told them how Jimmy Birmingham had followed me home from the Village Vanguard early yesterday morning, and then had lurked in the doorway of the laundromat across the street till he knew which apartment I lived in—and which window led to my bedroom. Then—doing my best not to break down and start crying like a baby—I told them how I’d almost been obliterated early
this
morning in the subway.

“
Oy gevalt!
” Abby cried, when I pulled up my skirt and showed her my lacerated knees and shins. “That looks really bad!”

“Could be worse,” I said, trying not to think about how
much
worse.

One look at my wounds, and Terry flew into a fury. “That does it!” he roared, banging his fist on the tabletop. He didn’t look so happy anymore. Now he looked as if his head were going to explode. “I’m calling this whole thing off now, Paige! Stop searching for my sister’s murderer immediately! Goddamn it all to hell! I should never have gotten you involved in this. How could I have been so selfish? How could I do this to my best friend’s widow? If anything happened to you, I’d never forgive myself!” He bolted out of his chair and started stomping around the kitchen like a deranged Cossack.