by Ed McBain
'Mrs Phelps,' Carella said, 'you left for Florida on the 5th, is that right?'
'Yes,' Mrs Phelps said.
'Did you mail this letter from International Airport before you boarded your plane?' He showed her the letter in its blue envelope.
'Yes,' she said.
'You planned then to kill Annie Boone before you boarded that plane?'
'Yes,' Mrs Phelps said.
'Did you kill Annie Boone on the night of June 10th, Mrs Phelps?'
Mrs Phelps did not answer.
'Did you?'
'Yes.'
'Do you want to tell us about it?'
'Why?' she said dully.
'We'd like to know.'
'Go to hell,' Mrs Phelps said. 'I killed the woman who was stealing my husband from me. I killed Franklin's mistress. I don't have to tell you anything else.'
'You killed a lot more than a mistress,' Carella said. 'You killed a woman. In fact, you may not understand this, Mrs Phelps, but you killed a lot of women, a lot of different women.'
'I killed only one,' she said. 'My husband's mistress. That's the only one I set out to kill, and the only one I did kill.'
She looked at Carella unblinkingly.
'Do you want to tell us about it?' he asked.
And again Mrs Phelps said, 'Go to hell.'
The newspapers called it a crime of passion.
At the trial, the district attorney proved how coldly diabolical had been the murder plot conceived and executed by Mrs Franklin Phelps. At the trial, she told how she had got the idea to kill Annie at the same time she'd got the idea for a vacation in Florida, and then explained how her mind had related the two, wedded them in a fatal plan. On 5 June, she had left for Miami. She could not resist sending the note from the airport, the note which led to her eventual capture. Her plan was a simple one. Even as she flew down to Miami for the first time, she had tickets for two other flights in her purse—one from Miami to this city under the name of Frieda Nelson; the other from this city to Miami under the name of June Arbuthnot.
On 10 June, the Hotel Shalimar had thrown a cocktail party. The party was a stroke of luck upon which Mrs Phelps had not counted. She had planned to execute her scheme without benefit of any cover-plan, assuming her mere presence in Miami Beach at the time of a murder thousands of miles away would automatically eliminate her as a suspect. But since the party had presented itself, she used it. She appeared in her brightest red dress when the party started. She slipped away early and took a cab to Miami city and the airport where, as Frieda Nelson, she boarded a north-bound plane at 6.30 p.m. The plane landed at the International Airport here at 10.15 p.m.
Mrs Phelps had gone to her car where she'd left it in the airport parking lot five days earlier. She drove to the liquor store, killed Annie with the .25 calibre automatic she had illegally purchased two weeks before in a hockshop, and then destroyed her husband's stock in a further attempt to divert suspicion from herself completely.
Forty minutes after the murder had been committed, she was back at the airport. As June Arbuthnot, she boarded the 12.30 a.m. south-bound flight to Miami. The flight enjoyed good weather all the way down, arriving in Miami at 4 a.m. She took a cab out to the beach and was back at the hotel in time for breakfast.
At the trial, despite the plea of guilty, the D.A. called Mrs Phelps a 'cold-blooded killer' and a 'wanton murderess'.
At the trial, Mrs Phelps staunchly refused to divulge the name or location of the hockshop where she had purchased the .25.
At the trial, despite the D.A.'s roars for a death sentence, Mrs Franklin Phelps was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The detectives from the 87th Squad were riding back from the trial in the police sedan after their stints as state's witnesses.
It was August, and it was hot, and the bulls rode in their shirt sleeves, Meyer on the front seat alongside Kling who was driving; Carella and Hawes in the back.
'You know who cracked this one?' Meyer asked. 'You think it was us?'
'It was Cotton Hawes,' Kling said, smiling into the rear view mirror.
Hawes caught the smile and grinned back. 'Sure, sure,' he said.
'None of us,' Meyer said. 'Mrs Phelps cracked it herself. Except she had help. She had help from a drunken wino named George. George is the hero of this piece.'
Carella was strangely silent. Kling's eyes flicked from the thick traffic in the hot city streets to the rear view mirror.
'What's the matter, Steve?' he asked.
'Huh?' Carella said. 'Oh, nothing.'
'He's thinking of his wife,' Meyer said. 'It shakes a man to find out that wives are capable of homicide.'
Carella smiled. 'Something like that,' he said.
'You afraid Teddy'll take a gun to somebody?' Kling asked. 'Maybe I ought to stay away from marriage, huh?'
'No, no, that's not it. I was thinking of what Mrs Phelps said to me. She said, "I killed only one." Hell, maybe she didn't kill any.'
'That's not the way the D.A. read it,' Hawes said.
'No. But maybe somebody else did the real killing, the real killing. Maybe somebody else took Annie Boone's life and, for all practical purposes, Mrs Phelps's life, too. Maybe somebody killed them both.'
'Who, Steve?' Kling asked.
'Franklin Phelps,' Carella said. 'If George is the hero of this piece, maybe Phelps is the villain. Maybe he's the rotten bastard in this kettle of fish.'
'You mixed a metaphor,' Hawes said.
The car went silent.
The men breathed the hot summer air. Slowly, the car threaded its way uptown to the precinct and the squad room.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 663a0b74-6b95-4992-9f99-827b4cf1bcde
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 10.10.2013
Created using: calibre 0.9.22, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 software
Document authors :
Ed McBain
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