Hotline to Murder (20 page)

Josh had been super nice to him ever since
their little “talk,” during which Josh had said he would move out
within thirty days. He hadn’t mentioned moving out since, and there
was no evidence that he was looking for another place to live. He
hadn’t violated Tony’s rules about having loud visitors over on
work nights. He was still a slob, but Tony could live with that. At
least Tony knew Josh’s habits. And he always paid his rent on time.
What would life be like with a new roommate he didn’t know anything
about? It would be risky, to say the least.

While he was driving to Carol’s apartment,
Tony thought some more about the panties. Even though he had
finally opened his mind to the probability that Josh was somewhat
of a misogynist, he still couldn’t picture him as a cold-blooded
murderer. Josh might have looked up the address of the Hotline
office in Tony’s notebook. He might have gone to the office out of
curiosity. He might have seen Joy come out. He might even have
accosted her, verbally, perhaps tried to make a date with her. But
murder her? Tony couldn’t picture it.

But this line of reasoning fell apart as
Tony thought once again about the panties stuffed into the bottom
of his attaché case. He couldn’t explain them. And they badly
needed an explanation.

Here was Carol’s apartment building.
Fortunately, a parking place appeared, on demand, on the street
close to the entrance. Unfortunately, Carol lived on the second
floor and there wasn’t any elevator. Tony had practiced using the
crutches on his own stairs; going up last night, coming down this
morning. It had not been easy.

He was glad that none of the apartment
dwellers was watching as he made his way up the stairs, trying not
to fall, trying not to look too awkward. It was like attempting to
play a new sport at which one has no experience. That he made it to
the second floor without disaster was a major relief to him.

As he rang the bell to Carol’s apartment, he
realized that he was looking forward to seeing her. That quickening
of his pulse, that feeling of glad anticipation—they returned as he
waited for her to open the door. When she did open the door, she
looked as good as he had pictured her, except for the expression on
her face.

“Tony, what happened to you?”

“I, uh, fell down.”

“You didn’t tell me. Oh, you poor dear. Are
you all right?”

She gave him a gentle hug, which he couldn’t
return because his hands were holding the crutches.

“It’s just my knee. It’ll be all right in a
couple of weeks. I can make it through the doorway.”

Carol was trying to help him, but she didn’t
know how to do it. He smiled a wry smile. Perhaps he should have
gotten hurt while they were dating. Then she might have had more
sympathy for him.

“Dinner is all ready. Here, would you like
to sit in this chair?”

“That should work. I just need room to
stretch out my left leg. There’s a bottle of wine in my fanny
pack.”

Carol laughed as she extracted the
Merlot.

“I can always count on you to bring the
right wine, even when you can barely walk.”

He had been using the fanny pack to carry
essential papers and other items today because his hands were tied
up. Carol had the small table set intimately for two, with candles
and even cloth napkins. When he had called her, asking for a little
of her time, he hadn’t expected her to invite him to dinner. But he
also hadn’t been able to refuse the invitation. What was the
occasion? He knew he shouldn’t ascribe any special meaning to
it.

Tony sat down in the proffered chair, and
Carol took his crutches—and placed them out of his reach. He almost
protested; he felt like a prisoner. He watched her as she opened
the wine in the adjacent space that was the small kitchen and
placed the food on the table. She looked unbelievably good in
form-fitting white pants and a purple silk blouse. A blouse that he
was sure he could see through in the right light.

And then when she passed through a beam of
light pouring in the window, courtesy of the setting sun, he had
the revelation that not only could he see through the blouse, but
she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath it. He had a sudden and
overwhelming urge to bury his face in that blouse. It was a good
thing he couldn’t get up. None of the outfits he had seen on the
teenage girls even approached this one in sensuality. All his
libidinous feelings for her came back. How long had it been since
their liaison had ended? How long had he been celibate?

Tony barely noticed what he was eating. The
Caesar salad, the barbequed ribs, the mashed potatoes, the wine; he
ate and drank them automatically, but didn’t taste them as they
entered his mouth and slid down his throat. Carol chatted about
various things, and he agreed with everything she said—for a
change. Until she started talking about the Hotline.

“You know that Josh called me because he was
worried about what had happened to you since you started working at
the Hotline.”

“Yes. Remember, you called me and told
me.”

“But I didn’t know what he was talking about
until I saw you with that teenybopper at the Beach House.”

“I work with her on the Hotline.” He kept
his voice even. And if it was Shahla that concerned her, he knew
that her concerns were different than Josh’s.

“Right. But as I recall, it was rather late
at night. And she had the kind of innocent good looks that men
can’t resist.”

Tony decided that silence was his best
option at this point and was thankful once again for his Hotline
training. He put a large bite of mashed potatoes into his mouth so
that he couldn’t say anything.

“Okay, I’ll get off it.” Carol smiled a thin
smile. “After all, it’s none of my business anymore.”

“Let’s talk about the reason I wanted to see
you,” Tony said after swallowing the potatoes.

“You said you wanted to show me a poem that
might have something to do with the girl’s murder. What was her
name?”

“Joy.”

Carol had been an English teacher for a few
years before she became disgusted with principals who didn’t back
her and the lack of discipline that made teaching difficult. She
had quit teaching and gone into the computer industry. She was
making far more money than she would ever have made as a teacher.
Tony explained the circumstances of finding the poem but not the
fact that Shahla had been with him. Don’t borrow trouble.

“If you gave the poem to the police, how is
it that you still have a copy?”

“I entered it into a computer, being careful
about fingerprints, of course.”

“Were there any fingerprints on it?”

“Only a couple of mine before I started
being careful. Whoever wrote the poem was even more careful than I
was.”

“So, as I understand it, what you want me to
do is to read the poem and then tell you who wrote it.”

“Yes, please, if you would be so kind.”

They both laughed. This was more like
it.

“All right. But before I perform this feat,
let’s have dessert.”

Tony had several more opportunities to
observe the enticements inside Carol’s blouse while she cleared the
table. He saw the mole on her breast that had bewitched him once
upon a time. He realized that he badly needed to find himself
another girlfriend.

Carol did something behind the counter that
separated the table from the kitchen. It involved matches, as Tony
could tell from the smell. He wondered whether she was going to add
to the two candles already on the table. Then she lowered the
lights, leaving the room lit mostly by the candles. She came back
to the table, carrying a cake with birthday candles on it and
singing “Happy Birthday.”

Tony was flabbergasted. He had completely
forgotten that his birthday was only two days away. Carol placed
the cake in front of him and gave him a light kiss on the lips.

“Make a wish and see if you still have
enough wind in your ancient body to blow out the candles.”

Tony did. He didn’t count to see if she had
gotten the number right. At some point, you had to stop counting.
He cut the cake and they ate it in an atmosphere as amicable as
that of the best day they had spent together, while drinking crème
de menthe in miniature glasses with silver stems that Tony had
given Carol for a Christmas present. Time stood still.

When they had finished, Carol broke the
spell saying, “Okay, let’s see the poem. And move your chair back
from the table. Will I hurt your knee if I sit on your lap? I think
I can get the best perspective from there.”

God. What was she trying to do? She was
temptation personified. How was he going to keep his hands off her
blouse? Tony realized that he would be the sourpuss if he refused
her, so he backed his chair up and guided her to a safe position on
his lap. He put his arms carefully around her waist, that being the
most innocuous place for them. Carol picked up the computer
printout of the poem, which Tony had placed on the table when he
arrived, and read it through, seemingly concentrating on the words
to the exclusion of everything else.

Tony read the poem again over her
shoulder:

She wears a summer dress,
spaghetti straps

to hold it up, or is this so?
Perhaps

it's gravity, the gravity of
con-

sequences should it fall. If she
should don

her dress one day but then forget
to pull

them up, those flimsy wisps of
hope so full

of her ripe beauty, do you think
the weight

of promises within, or hand of
fate,

would slide it down, revealing
priceless treasures?

If so, would she invoke heroic
measures

to hide the truth, for fear this
modest lapse

would air the secret of spaghetti
straps?

When she was finished, Carol said, “That
poem was written by somebody who has written a lot of poems. It was
not an amateur effort.”

“What else can you tell me about it?”

“There are not many people in the world who
can write a poem like this. Technically, it rates an A. It has
images, meter, enjambment, clever rhymes. As to the subject matter,
my first inclination is to rate it a C minus and say it must have
been written by a horny teenager.”

“Except that a horny teenager couldn’t write
it.”

“Exactly. Unless he had previously written a
few hundred poems and had some talent to boot. If that person
exists, I never saw him in any of my classes. And, in addition,
although the subject matter is suspect, the way it’s handled, in a
poetic rather than a voyeuristic fashion, would probably prompt me
to give it a higher grade than a C minus. I can imagine one of my
students writing something like, ‘What if her boobs flopped out of
her dress?’”

“Okay, we’ve settled the grading. I’m sure
the author will be pleased. But who did write the poem?”

“Somebody with talent and a lot of poetic
experience. Somebody who remembers what it’s like to be a horny
teenager.”

“Or somebody who is a horny adult,” Tony
said, his thoughts about Carol’s blouse still heavy on his
mind.

Carol turned toward Tony so that her mouth
was not more than two inches from his and said, “Do adults still
get horny?”

Tony couldn’t say anything. She kissed him.
At first he sat there, not responding, wondering what was going on.
Then, before he could return her kiss, she jumped up from his lap
and said, “This brings us to my present for you. Or perhaps it’s
for me.”

“Present?” Tony said dumbly.

Carol brought Tony’s crutches to him and
said, “We have to go into the bedroom.”

Tony slowly got up and followed her into the
bedroom, still not clear about what was happening. He noticed that
the bed was unmade, which wasn’t like Carol. The bedspread, the
blanket, even the top sheet, all lay on the floor at the foot of
the bed, leaving it covered by the bottom sheet.

“I didn’t figure on your injury,” Carol
said. “I don’t suppose you can kneel on that knee.”

“No.”

“Well, turn around.” She turned him so that
his back was to the bed and said, “Sit.”

He sat.

“Give me your crutches. Now lie down on your
back.”

He lay down, partly as a result of a push
from Carol. She helped him scoot his body up until he was
completely on the bed.

“All right,” Carol said, unbuttoning her
blouse. “I can do most of the work, but you have to help me some.
For starters, how about unbuckling your belt and unzipping your
pants.”

***

“Time for you to go,” Carol said, raising
her head from Tony’s chest.

Her naked body was lying on top of his naked
body, and Tony would just as soon stay like that forever. She
rolled off him and sat up.

“How much help do you need getting into your
clothes?”

“Oh, I think I can manage if you put them
within arm’s length.” Tony was still in a euphoric daze and was
having trouble coming back to reality. However, having no choice,
he started putting on his clothes. Carol did the same.

“There are a couple of things I need to tell
you,” Carol said. “I will be moving in with Horace next
weekend.”

“You’re moving out of the apartment?”

“I won’t need it anymore. Horace has a beautiful
house on the beach. Not only is he rich, he loves me to pieces. And
he listens to me. Even better, he pretty much agrees with
everything I have to say.”

Ouch. Well, Tony had not come here expecting
anything different. Still, this was a quick reversal. “You said you
needed to tell me a couple of things. What was the other?”

“If Horace is lacking in one thing, it’s…I
guess you would call it, libido. Something you never lacked. I just
wanted to experience what it was like between us one more time. But
the upshot is, this was the last time. If I’m going to live with a
man, I’m going to be faithful to him.”