Hotline to Murder (3 page)

He was at a loss, a feeling he was
unfamiliar with. What should he do? Could there be somebody in the
office behind the locked door? He had already stored the office
phone numbers in his cell phone. He took out the phone and called
the administrative office number. No answer. He tried the Hotline
number. No answer.

Maybe this was his way out. He had made a
good-faith effort to work his shift. If the Hotline was so
disorganized that he couldn’t even get in, it wasn’t his fault.
Looking back over the last few weeks, he had done everything he set
out to do. He had taken the Hotline training class and passed. He
had survived three mentoring sessions and received good marks. He
had shown empathy. In fact, he had learned all the skills that
Mona, his boss at his real job, had wanted him to learn, when she
had suggested that he volunteer for the Hotline. And although he
had agreed to work at least three shifts a month for a year, if the
Hotline staff members didn’t keep their part of the bargain, why
was he obligated to keep his?

But back to the present. There was a slight
chance a listener was inside, on another call. If so, she—or he,
would presumably be coming out in a few minutes—unless she was on a
long call. Decision time. Tony decided to wait until five minutes
after seven.

He nervously paced up and down the corridor,
wondering when a guard might come by and ask him what he was doing
here. None did. At three minutes after seven, he tried the Hotline
number on his cell phone again. No answer. He left.

***

Tony went into the third bedroom on the
second floor of his townhouse, the one he used as a home office,
and fired up his computer. He slept in one of the other bedrooms.
Josh occupied the second. Tony decided to check his e-mail. He had
an e-mail address at work, of course, but he reserved his home
e-mail for his personal life. He could also surf the Internet a
little, find out what the stock market did today, visit an adult
chat room. After all, he had no girlfriend at the moment.

His spam filter captured a lot of the junk,
but some still got through. There was the usual pleading letter
from a high-ranking nobody in Nigeria offering him millions of
dollars if he would just share his bank account number. He deleted
the letter without reading it. After the first few dozen, they all
sounded the same.

An e-mail message from the Hotline caught
his eye. He clicked on it immediately, partly because he was
feeling guilty for skipping his shift, even though it wasn’t his
fault. It was from Nancy, the Executive Director, addressed to all
listeners. He scanned the note in mounting horror and then went
back and read it carefully.

It said, in part, “As you probably know by
now, one of our listeners, Joy Wiggins, was murdered last night
behind the building in which the Hotline office is located, after
she worked the 7 to 10 p.m. shift.” It went on to express the deep
shock and sorrow of the Hotline staff and to say that the Hotline
would be closed until further notice.

Tony violently shoved his rollered chair
away from the computer with his feet, as if the mouse had burned
his hand. He stared at the screen from four feet away, hoping the
words would read differently from there, but they didn’t. Joy had
been a facilitator for the Saturday class that was held in his
townhouse. She was one of the girls and boys who had swum in his
pool—and the one he remembered most distinctly.

He continued to stare at the computer
screen, fighting the idea that a beautiful girl like Joy was dead.
It must be a mistake. He remembered seeing her laugh, he remembered
her bikini-clad body, and he remembered her critiquing one of the
role-play calls he had made during that class, with wisdom beyond
her years. She had given him a good suggestion about using silence
during calls.

She had been killed almost twenty-four hours
ago. Why hadn’t he heard about it before now? Tony went back over
his day. He had rushed out of the house that morning, barely taking
time to drink a glass of orange juice and eat a piece of toast. He
had driven seventy-five miles to a little burg east of Los Angeles
and had spoken at a meeting of a women’s club. On the way there, he
had listened to a CD on salesmanship—another one of Mona’s ideas.
He hadn’t listened to the news on his car radio.

He had spoken to the women about what his
company, Bodyalternatives.net, could offer them.
Bodyalternatives.net was a new type of company—one that was based
on the Internet. Its website, which was getting over a million hits
a month, with the number rapidly increasing, featured help for
people who had some sort of problem with their bodies—or who were
just plain dissatisfied with them. Most of the company’s income
came from plastic surgeons and other healthcare professionals who
advertised on the site.

Tony’s job, as Manager of Marketing, was to
make healthcare contacts, sell advertising space on the site, and
also to reach out to potential clients. That is what he had been
doing by giving a speech to the women’s club. He had used his
newfound listening skills to good advantage, had not judged his
audience, and had shown empathy when answering questions. For
example, he had not laughed when a woman complained about the
crow’s-feet beside her eyes that nobody else could see. Mona, who
was president of Bodyalternatives.net, would be pleased. He
intended to emphasize the good things he had done in his call
report.

Tony had made several other calls during the
day, but he had always listened to the tapes when he was in his
car. He had grabbed a quick dinner in a fast-food restaurant and
gone directly to the Hotline, without going to the office or coming
home. That’s why he had been out of the loop.

He rolled his chair back to the computer to
look for news reports. They weren’t difficult to find. The story
had a sensational aspect, and it had been picked up by all the news
services. The first thing he read was that Joy’s body had been
discovered in a pocket park behind the mall, cut and bruised,
almost naked. Some items of her clothing had been lying nearby.

When Joy hadn’t returned home last night,
her parents had driven to the mall. They had found her car parked
in the lot behind it. Listeners on the seven-to-ten shift were
supposed to call the guard when they left and could request an
escort out of the building. They exited by the back door because
the front door was locked at night. On the three evenings Tony had
worked, he had acted as the escort. Actually, the time he had
worked with the boy, they had escorted each other.

Joy’s parents had called the police when
they found the car, but not Joy. A search had turned up her body
within an hour. Tony tried to picture how devastated Joy’s parents
must be. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t put himself in their place.
And he didn’t want to. He would never have children.

There was more information. The police had
talked to the building guard. The guard claimed he had escorted Joy
out to her car and seen her get into it. But he had not seen her
drive away. She was an honor student and a member of the Bonita
Beach High School volleyball team, one of the best high school
teams in the country. Among other volunteer activities, she worked
at the Central Hotline, the news reports said.

Who would do such a thing? There were a lot
of weirdoes out there—stalkers, rapists. The murderer must have
been lying in wait for Joy. Someone who knew where the Hotline was
located? Listeners were supposed to keep its location secret, but
there were so many of them. Word must leak out—to family, friends.
And from there, to whom?

A noise downstairs told Tony that Josh had
arrived home from his job. He worked in the television industry,
which allowed him to start late in the morning. Of course, he got
home late, also, but that was fine with him because he didn’t like
to go to bed. Tony could follow Josh’s progress in his head. First
he would open the refrigerator and take out a can of beer. Then he
would scan his mail, neatly separated for him by Tony. After that,
he would come upstairs to change his clothes. A clump clump clump
told Tony that Josh was right on schedule.

Tony was prepared when Josh poked his head
into the doorway and said, “Tony, baby, I’m awfully sorry about the
girl. I found out about it when I got to the station. We had a ton
of people covering it. I meant to call you on your cell phone, but
I got tied up.”

“That’s okay,” Tony said. Josh was always
meaning to do things he never got around to doing. Actually, Tony
was glad he hadn’t heard about Joy until tonight. It would have
completely ruined his day. “I suppose there isn’t anything new
that’s not on here.” He motioned toward the computer screen.

“Not much. Autopsy pending. My guess is that
she was raped.”

“Is that confirmed?”

“Not yet, but why the hell would a guy drag
her into the bushes and tear her clothes off if he wasn’t going to
rape her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you know her? She was a real babe. We
got a picture of her from her parents.”

“I knew her slightly.” Tony wasn’t going to
tell Josh that she had been here at the townhouse, swimming in the
pool. Josh would complain that Tony had excluded him. That’s
exactly what Tony had done, of course, making sure that Josh was
out of town on the weekend he had volunteered to hold the class
here.

“Do you know what she was wearing?” Josh
asked, as if he were revealing a scandal. “Short shorts, skimpy
top. No underwear. If a girl’s dressed like that, she’s asking for
it.”

“It was a warm night. And maybe the killer
took her underwear with him. Maybe he has an underwear fetish.”
Tony was heating up. “Where do you get off, anyway, saying that she
was asking for it? That’s antediluvian thinking, Josh.”

Josh backed away in mock surprise. “Sorry,
Noodles. I forgot that you’re a born-again feminist. Working for
women. Working with girls. Listening to their problems. You’re
pussy-whipped, that’s what you are. You’re not the Tony I used to
know who could pick up a girl on the street just by smiling at her
and then would dump her with a frown. Now I bet you tell them you
feel their pain.”

Usually, Tony would have had a fast comeback
for Josh, but he was in no mood tonight. He stood up and said, “You
have exactly three seconds to get out of this room before I throw
you downstairs.”

It was doubtful that he could throw the
larger Josh anywhere, but Josh knew his temper and was smart enough
not to aggravate him further. Josh backed out of the room with his
arms up in a gesture of surrender and went down the hall to his own
room.

CHAPTER 4

Tony was driving to an appointment when his
cell phone rang. He pressed a button and said, “Tony speaking.”

“Hi, Tony,” a female voice said. And after a
pause, “It’s Carol.”

Carol? Why was his ex-girlfriend calling
him? He felt the same thrill she had evoked in him when they were
dating and he saw her or heard her voice. Then he became wary.
“Hello, Carol.”

“Can you talk? You sound distracted.”

“I’m driving on the 405. I don’t like to
talk on the phone when I’m driving.”

“Is there a better time when I can call you
back?”

No, there wasn’t a better time. If she had
something to say, he wanted to hear it now. He went into defensive
mode. “I’m late for an appointment, but I can talk to you for a
minute.”

“That’s big of you. All right, I guess I
deserve that. Anyway, Josh called me. He’s worried about you.”

Josh called Carol? That got Tony’s
attention. Josh and Carol got along like cobras and mongooses. Or
was it mongeese?

“Josh is worried about me?” That was
reflection. He was using his listening skills in ordinary
conversation. Perhaps, if he had mastered these skills when Carol
was his girlfriend, she wouldn’t have dumped him.

“He says you’ve changed. He says…well, he
didn’t explain it very well, but he doesn’t think you’re the same
person you were.”

“Maybe that’s an improvement. As I recall,
you didn’t like the old Tony.”

“You know better than that. It’s just
that…”

She hesitated. The old Tony would have
interrupted at this point. The new Tony used silence as a tactic,
waiting her out.

“It’s just that you didn’t seem to respect
my feelings.”

Feelings. Now he knew a lot more about
feelings than he had. Maybe that’s what Josh didn’t like about the
new Tony. Josh was not known for his empathy. But calling Carol was
potentially a mistake on Josh’s part. If Tony and Carol had stayed
together, Carol would have moved into the townhouse and replaced
Josh. Although Tony hadn’t gotten around to telling Josh that.

Where was this conversation going? What did
Carol want? Should he get his hopes up?

“Tony?”

He changed lanes to pass a slower car. “I’m
still here.”

“You were quiet for so long I wasn’t sure.
What I was wondering is, would you like to…uh, well, get together
and talk some more?”

He was tempted to say, talk about what?
Haven’t we talked about it all, ad nauseam
?
Or at least he
had listened while she talked. Well, sometimes he had argued.
Sometimes he had let his mind wander. He didn’t want to be the bad
guy now. He also didn’t want to get hurt anymore. He said, “When
would you like to get together?”

“What are you doing this evening?”

“I have to go to a meeting.”

“Oh. I’m going out of town on business
tomorrow. I won’t be back for several days. I hoped we could see
each other today. What time is your meeting?”

“Seven.”

“When will it be over?”

She was starting to act as if she owned him.
Again. “I’m not sure.”

“May I ask what kind of a meeting this
is?”

He didn’t want to get into that. It would
require too much explanation, which he didn’t owe her. Maybe if he
said it fast. “I-I joined a Hotline. The meeting tonight is for all
the listeners.”