Lullaby of Murder (8 page)

“Until they know what actually happened to Tony, I’m afraid so,” Julie said.

“And what if they never find out?”

“I suppose they would go away in time. May I use the phone in here?” It was on a table between twin beds.

“Please,” Eleanor said. “Would you like coffee? I’ll bring it to you.”

“No, thank you.”

“I know: orange juice!” So Fran and her daughter had spoken of her.

While Julie was dialing, Kate Wylie of the drama desk came in looking for the bathroom.

Julie pointed to the bathroom door and said, “I hope meeting you at funerals doesn’t get to be a habit.”

“That’s right. We met last night, didn’t we? Who’d ever have thought…”

Tim Noble answered the phone and Julie turned from Wylie with an apologetic sign. “Where are you, sweetheart?” Tim wanted to know.

“Christ! Don’t call me sweetheart. You sound like Tony.”

“Sorry, Julie, but I don’t know whether I’m high or low. Both. I haven’t had any sleep. Hastings wants to see both of us and he isn’t going to wait much longer. Please come now before he changes his mind. He wants the column to go on. The police let me in here to wait for your call. It’s weird, like a thousand years since I was here last.”

“I’m on my way,” Julie said.

“Don’t walk, for God’s sake.”

While Julie was amending her lipstick Eleanor brought her a glass of orange juice. “Are you leaving?” the girl said, disappointed.

“I’ll come back later, and if there’s any way I can help with the arrangements, let me know.”

“There won’t be any arrangements. Just a messenger with ashes.”

Tony, death-size, Julie thought, and felt a chilling brush with reality.

Eleanor drifted from the room when Kate Wylie came out of the bathroom. “Who’s that?” Wylie wanted to know.

“Fran’s daughter.”

“Spooky, isn’t she?”

Julie said, “How was Trish Tompkins last night?”

“Marvelous. She
is
Little Dorrit. I intended to give Tony a ring about her. I can’t believe he’s gone…” Kate took a look at her own faded beauty in the mirror and grappled for her lipstick. “Are you staying on with the
Daily
? You should go see her and remember who told you first, hear?”

“What happened to the original Little Dorrit?”

“Abby Hill. Appendicitis. She’ll be going back in in a couple of weeks. Which is why you should go see Trish now.”

“Thanks,” Julie murmured. What she resolved to do was to find out where Abby was having her appendectomy and visit her.

I
N SPITE OF TIM’S
exhortation, Julie walked. It gave her fifteen minutes in which to contemplate whether or not she wanted a column of her own—half her own. Very few people would think her in her right mind to even hesitate accepting. Tim had called her sweetheart, à la Tony, already into the fantasy. Like Juanita playing teacher. She was aware of the change in herself in the year she had worked on
Tony Alexander Says
…. Cynicism was something she had affected in her teens, the epitome of being grown up. But that was a few yesterdays ago and she now considered cynicism a cheap shot, but one she often took just the same.

She kept going back in her mind to her story of Butts and the dance marathon. The police would now ferret out the connection between Butts and Tony, if there was one—among Butts, Phillips and Tony, if there was one. Jeff was probably right: it wasn’t incumbent on her…damn him. But whatever the source of Tony’s wrath with her, he had raised a question she had to answer: Did you really
gut
care? She had cared more about her smart-ass portrait of Butts. That was the problem. She had felt superior and that simply was not allowed. Then, as though to justify her portrayal of the man as ridiculous, she had grooved on the city” real estate. And without having properly done her homework, she had exposed the package to Tony. Jeff, in her position, would have known whether Tony was killing the piece or simply knocking her off the assignment, and he’d have known why. She was about as prepared to carry on a newspaper column as she was to birth a baby.

Tim had already gone down to Tom Hastings’ office, a cubby hole off the Editorial Room. Hastings looked like a sportscaster, breezy, sleek hair, tweeds. Electronic apparatus seemed to be seeking communication, but no one paid the slightest attention. Very hard on Julie’s nerves, for she was trying without much success to drag herself into the computer age. Miss Page, whose prep school she had attended, kept telling her girls that computers were a fad, like technocracy was when she was their age. Hastings rose and shook hands, as did Tim whose face was flushed all the way to his floppy ears.

“We’ve got it pretty well worked out if you agree,” Hastings said. How was she not going to agree, with Tim’s eyes as eager as bubbles and himself about as fragile?

She tried to take in Hastings’ outline of the operation: the column would run three days a week instead of Tony’s five; to be called
Our Beat
with
Formerly Tony Alexander Says
…in smaller type and their names in still smaller type, Tim’s first, he being the senior partner; all copy to be cleared by the Legal Department and then by the city editors; there were other restrictions and qualifications. They were to finish out the month in the fifteenth floor office since Tony had paid the rent, sublet it, and then work among the common folk in the Editorial Room.

“A month’s trial, and if it works we’ll go to three months. After that we can talk.”

Tim explained to her with annoying eagerness that they would be going on at their same salaries.

“How many people your age get an opportunity like this?” Hastings added. “It took Tony years to build his reputation.”

Exactly, Julie thought. Who had ever heard of Tim Noble or Julie Hayes? Therefore, why? Why not some established personality? What she said was: “What about a twenty percent cost of living increase?”

Hastings looked offended. “The cost of living hasn’t increased that much.”

“Ours will.”

He laughed, which ought to be worth something, Julie thought.

“And what about Alice Arthur who’s been everybody’s secretary?”

“She comes out of your cost of living increase.”

For one month, for three months…Julie still wondered why. Then, as they were leaving his office, Hastings said, “Julie…find out what happened to Tony for us.”

That put things in a more understandable perspective. And made it incumbent on her to participate in the investigation.

THE POLICE SEAL
had been affixed to the Alexander office door. They went across the hall to the borrowed office of Hale and Kister where Lieutenant Marks was going through Tony’s appointment book with Alice Arthur. Marks invited them to sit in and contribute anything they thought might be useful.

Alice looked much as she did most days: neat, efficient and so discreet it would make you scream. About the only personal thing Julie knew about her was that she got terrible cramps during her period and took massive doses of Midol for them. Tony had once remarked that he could prescribe something better than Midol. What, Alice had wanted to know. Do you really want me to tell you? Whereupon she had shouted no and burst into tears. Julie was sure Tony had never made a pass at Alice.

Alice kept deferring nervously to Tim or Julie with everything she said. Marks finally interrupted. He proposed to send out for coffee; then, when he looked at his watch he offered hamburgers. It was well past noon.

Alice was on her feet at once. Marks waved her down and put a rookie detective in charge of lunch. He gave him a twenty dollar bill. His attitude had changed since Julie’s interrogation. The aggressiveness had toned down. Or maybe he was just tired. Or maybe the suspicion that Fran Alexander was implicated and the fact that a higher echelon detective was in charge there eased the pressure on him.

Julie wanted to know how serious their suspicions were. “I saw Mrs. Alexander this morning,” she said.

Marks didn’t take the bait.

“Is she really a suspect in Tony’s murder?”

Marks looked at her with tired eyes. “If Inspector Fitzgerald says so, Mrs. Hayes.”

“Okay.”

Marks put his feet up on a magazine table, a copy of
Architectural World
beneath them. “Let’s go at it this way,” he said. “Let’s take it from the top of yesterday and see how it rolls for everybody. Alexander was the first person in the office, right? And that in itself was unusual.”

“Unless he slept over on the couch,” Alice said. “He did that once in a long while.”

“When last?”

“Maybe the night before last, but I’m not sure.” She was blushing, but you couldn’t tell much from Alice’s blushes.

Marks went on: “He was at his desk when you arrived, reading what turned out to be Julie’s story.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did Alice know he kept a gun in the copy box?” Julie asked.

“Yes,” Alice answered for herself. “But the only other person who knew it was Mrs. Alexander.”

“To the best of your knowledge,” Marks cautioned. “Then Tim arrived. Then Julie; and before she got to her desk he started criticizing the article.”

“Alice, do you know what he did with it?” Julie asked. “Did he put it in his pocket, his desk or where?”

“I didn’t see. I heard the drawer bang and I took for granted he put it away in his desk, but I didn’t look around.”

“Much safer,” Tim said. “Lot’s wife and that sort of thing.”

“About eleven,” Marks continued, “Julie left and Tim went downstairs with her. When he returned, Alexander gave him a rewrite job. He was still at it when Alexander went to lunch. Alice went shortly afterwards. She returned in forty minutes, at which time Tim gave her some typing and went off to The New York Aquarium to a…” Marks raised his eyebrows. “…Save the Whales luncheon. Alexander came back at two, still in a bad mood, and called Mrs. Alexander to bring the carrying case and her own revolver and pick him up to go for an hour’s target shooting. There was discussion about ammunition.” Marks, who’d been consulting his notebook throughout, turned to the secretary. “Miss Arthur, give us the phone conversation that followed, as you remember it.”

“He said he had a lot of aggression he wanted to get rid of. Mrs. Alexander said something. Then he said, Get your daughter over there. She ought to be good for something besides blackballing me.”

Marks took over. “In a half hour or thereabouts Mrs. A. arrived, and when he’d made sure the office door was locked, Alexander opened the desk box, using the key he carried on him, took out the thirty-eight and put it into the twin case. Alice did not observe whether he locked the box during his absence. Probably not, or she’d have noticed his unlocking it on his return.”

“I always tried not to look,” Alice said.

“At anything?” Tim said.

Marks stepped on his quip. “The Alexanders were gone for two hours. When they got back, the same routine. He locked the door, took the gun from the case and put it into the box. Mrs. Alexander went off with the carrier, her own revolver presumably the one inside. Now suppose Tim or Julie had been in the office, Miss Arthur: what would Alexander have done?”

“He’d have taken the case into the bathroom, removed the gun and kept it in his pocket until everyone had left.”

“What was his attitude toward the weapon? Did he like having it? Did it give him pleasure to hold it? Or was he afraid of it?”

“I don’t think I can answer that.”

Marks went on. “When he returned from the shoot, he was in a better humor. He washed up in your private bathroom, gave Alice his itinerary…”

“Excuse me, sir,” Alice said. “You left out that he had me call the Samovar and say that he would cover the nine o’clock show. He wanted the best table in the house.”

“Thank you,” Marks said and made a note. “The early itinerary checks out as he gave it to Miss Arthur: a brief stop at a theatrical backer’s party at Paul’s, a motion picture screening at the Eleven Hundred, then to the mayor’s birthday party. Shortly after he left the office Miss Arthur locked up and went home early. Well before five.”

“I had his permission,” Alice said.

Marks turned to Tim. “Why don’t you fill us in from the whale affair on?”

“I was in its belly for three days…”

“Tim,” Julie said.

He sighed. “I rode back to Manhattan with Judy Starr in her limousine and did an interview with her on the way. She’s decided not to marry that wrestling champ she’s been dating. He doesn’t dig the whales…”

This time Julie held her tongue. After all, she wasn’t his mother.

Tim stretched his skinny neck and his adam’s apple gave a bob above the turtleneck sweater. His facetiousness, she realized, owed to the difficulty of bringing himself to say what now came out: “I better give you something here, Lieutenant, which I skipped last time around. I dropped in for a Turkish bath at the Tripod on Thirty-fourth Street. Tony used to go there too: you know, to sweat out tensions.” He glanced furtively at Julie. She could not imagine why.

“What time?”

“Four thirty to five thirty. Then I came back here and rapped out the items on the whales and Miss Starr, deposited them in the copy box and took off for the seven o’clock opening of
Murder Money.
After that it was the opening night party at Pier Fifty-two, which takes me through till one
A.M.
”

Julie wondered what he was doing at an opening; that he would lay out his own money was out of the question. Somebody’s guest, probably, somebody whose name would show up in an item for the column.

Marks said that Tim’s copy had gone to the lab with the copy box. “Which brings us back to where we started: What has become of Julie’s story? If he put it in his pocket and carried it around with him, why was it not on his person when the police arrived? Who would he have given it to?”

“Morton Butts,” Julie suggested.

“Or who would have taken it without his leave?”

“Same answer,” Julie said.

“According to Alice’s best recollection,” Marks said carefully, and Julie noted that he had now gone on a first name basis with all of them, “it was the ending of that story that enraged Alexander, the straw that broke the camel’s back.”