Columbo puffed on his cigar. “Some guy, Charlie Manson,” he muttered.
“Lieutenant… You don’t understand. If you never met Charlie you can’t understand.”
“I did meet Charlie,” said Columbo. “I was one of the detectives that worked on the Tate-LaBianca murders. Yeah, I met Charlie. And the rest of them.”
“Then you should know that locking Charlie up in a prison—or me, for that matter—doesn’t make any difference. Charlie will one day lead his people into the wilderness, to protect them from what’s going to happen; and when all that’s over, we’ll come back and govern the world. You think I’m nuts. But that’s because you don’t really know Charlie. Listen—Manson. Man’s Son. Can’t you get it? When Charlie is ready, all this kind of thing, bars and locks, will fall away and won’t make any difference. If Charlie called me now, I could just walk out of here. You couldn’t stop me.”'She stood again and gripped the bars. “I can’t get out of here right now. But when Charlie calls I’ll get out. I don’t know how, but I will. Because Charlie is love, and there’s nothing stronger than love.”
Columbo scratched his head and nodded. ‘‘Well, that’s very interesting, Miss Murphy. I hope I can be here to see it when you walk out. That’ll be very interesting.”
2
The receptionist at the store had told Columbo he would find Kimberly Dana at a restaurant called Hammond’s. “She’ll be there at lunchtime, Lieutenant. At twelve-thirty. Doing a fashion show.” He had hoped to spend his lunch hour at Burt’s, over a bowl of chili and a game of pool, but the newspeople were going nuts over the Mulholland Drive murders, and he figured he had to give up what he’d rather do and keep working.
The parking attendant at the restaurant frowned and shook his head over the wheezing old Peugeot and asked if the gears were in the usual positions.
“Well, in the usual positions for a French car,” Columbo told him. “Y’ see, my car’s a French car.”
“You don’t see very many like this still running,” said the young man.
“No, you don’t. But I take very good care of it. One of these days the speedometer is gonna roll over two hundred thousand miles. You take the right kind of care with a car, you can get that kinda mileage.”
“I’ll take good care of it, sir.”
Columbo stood on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, looking skeptically at the redwood facade. It was going to cost money to eat lunch in this place. Well… There was no escaping it. He shrugged and walked in.
A maitre d’ approached him immediately. “Can I be of assistance to you, sir?” he asked. He was a bald man with a pinched little face, and wore a tropical-weight light-blue jacket, a red bow tie, and white slacks.
“Well, uh, yeah. I’m Lieutenant Columbo, LAPD homicide. I was told I’d find a Miss Kimberly Dana here.”
“You will indeed. Lieutenant. She’s doing the Khoury show today.”
“Show? Oh, yeah. A fashion show, the receptionist at the store told me.”
“Yes, sir. On Wednesdays at lunchtime, we show items from the Khoury Collection. Miss Dana is here with the other models. At first I suggested maybe it wasn’t appropriate, considering what happened to Mrs. Khoury last night, but Miss Dana said she was sure Mr. Khoury would want the show to go on as usual. So—”
“Well… Maybe I should see her some other time, if she’s busy.”
“Why don’t we let her decide?” asked the maitre d’. “That is she, coming from the dining room now. Miss Dana!”
Columbo couldn’t remember ever before having seen so beautiful a woman. She was statuesque and perfect in every way: she wore a dress of vivid, iridescent green that clung to her figure and showed it off to advantage. She was taller than he was, and he felt halfway foolish looking up into her lovely face.
“This is Lieutenant Columbo, Kim,” said the maitre d’. “He is a homicide detective.”
Her model’s smile, which was maybe a little too perfect, faded. She frowned. “Yes, of course,” she said quietly, then sighed. “We’re all in shock.”
“Maybe I don’t have to bother you now, ma’am,” said Columbo. “I wanted to ask a couple or three questions, but—”
“It will be no bother at all, Lieutenant,” she said. “In fact, I’d like to talk with you. I’d like to know what progress you’re making. Have you talked to Joe?”
“Joe?”
“Mr. Khoury. Yussef Khoury. He likes for his friends to call him Joe.”
“No, I haven’t talked to him yet. He was sleeping when I was at the house. Under a sedative his doctor gave him. I hope he’s still asleep.”
“He’s awake,” she said. “He called about an hour ago and said we should go on with the show. Why don’t we sit down?” She turned to the maitre d’. “I could use a drink, Emory.”
The maitre d’ nodded. “Let me have your raincoat, Lieutenant Columbo. What would you like to drink?”
“I don’t usually drink when I’m on duty, sir, but maybe a bourbon and water wouldn’t be out of line.”
Kimberly led Columbo to her table, where she had a Khoury catalog and a Khoury calendar lying open on the tablecloth. “You sit on the banquette, Lieutenant,” she said. “Otherwise, you’ll have your back to the show.”
He looked around the room. Men sat around most of the tables, drinking, eating their lunches— some of them a little too animated, as if excited in anticipation of the show they were about to see. It looked as if few women were interested in the Khoury Collection show.
“This show, ma’am. Just what—?”
“We show things from the Khoury Collection,” she said. “Do you know what the Khoury Collection is?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve seen the calendar.”
“We’ll be showing one of the outfits pictured in the calendar,” she said. “The March one.”
She flipped over the pages and showed him a picture of a young woman wearing not very much: a pair of black string bikini panties, a black bra, a garter belt of black lace, and stockings.
“That’s, uh, very attractive,” said Columbo. “She won’t be modeling, but we are showing the outfit,” said Kimberly. “Anyway… What can I do for you. Lieutenant?”
“It’s just a little awkward, ma’am. But I have to ask. It’s not that Mr. Khoury is a suspect, but when a wife is murdered and we don’t know who did it, we have to try to find out where the husband was at the time. And, uh… And somebody says he may have been with you.”
Kimberly smiled. “It’s no secret, Lieutenant. And it’s not awkward. Joe Khoury and I have a relationship and have had for some time. If you want to know where we were last night, we were at a place where we often go. It’s a motel called Piscina Linda. In Beverly Hills. We take a suite there, have dinner. We arrived there last evening about… oh, say, seven-thirty. We left at—I’m not sure. It was later than we usually stay. We usually leave a little after midnight. But this time it may have been one-thirty.”
Columbo nodded. “I’m glad to hear it, ma’am. That means I can put the question of where Mr. Khoury was out of my mind. You can vouch for his whereabouts for hours before and after the murders. And I bet people at the motel can, too. That’s very helpful.”
“What else do we need to talk about?” she asked.
“Nothin’ really,” he said. “I—”
He paused as a waitress put a martini in front of Kimberly and a bourbon and water in front of him.
“I guess you maybe know somethin’ about Mr. Heck. I hate to have to tell Mr. Khoury this, but, you see, Mrs. Khoury and Mr. Heck were in bed together when they were murdered.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” she said, “but I can see why you’d want to know if Joe had an alibi for last night. I can see what you’d think: that he caught them in the act and took a husband’s revenge.”
“Well, no, not really,” said Columbo. “He couldn’t have done that. Y' see, they were killed with knives. It couldn’t have been done by one person, because certai
nly one or the other of them would have rolled out of bed and tried to get away while the other one was being stabbed. So it had to be at least two people.”
“He told me there was writing in blood on the walls.”
“Yeah. Stuff like ‘Helter Skelter.’ You remember where we saw that before.”
“Lieutenant, I may be able to give you some information about that, but right now I’ve got to go back and get my show started. Have some lunch. I’ll rejoin you as soon as I’m finished.”
She left the table. As he sipped his drink he glanced through the Khoury Collection catalog. The pictures gave him an idea of why some of the men at the nearby tables were so animated. If models came out wearing some of this stuff—Well… It was all expensive. Some of it was very expensive.
He looked at his menu. Lunch was expensive. The waitress came.
“You don’t, by any chance, serve a bowl of chili?” he asked.
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
“Ah, well… then this seafood salad. I’ll have that.”
The show began. Emory, the maitre d’ announced it and then switched on a recorder. Kim herself announced the show, from a tape. “Our first model is Karin, and she is showing the items you see on page twenty-eight of the Khoury Collection catalog.”
Few of the onlookers flipped the pages of the catalogs that lay at every place on every table. Most of them stared at the slender blonde model who was walking through the room in a turquoise satin bra-and-panties set. The panties consisted only of a trifle of satin held in place by elastic string, accentuating the model’s long, slender, tanned legs. Columbo checked page 28. The bra sold for $63, the tiny panties for $28.
The model walked around the room, stopping briefly at each table to give the people a close look.
Okay. He wasn’t going to say, even to himself, that he wasn’t interested, though he couldn’t imagine Mrs. Columbo wearing what the model was now showing or what Miss March was wearing in the calendar. No. Mrs. Columbo was a huskier woman than these models, more athletic. She was a first-class bowler. She was just as sexy as the model, in her way. But… in her way.
Another one came out in a fine-weave fishnet body suit. It covered everything, sort of—but nothing, really. That appeared on page 61 and cost $94.
Kimberly Dana came third. She wore a white cotton outfit. It was like a man’s ribbed-cotton vest undershirt, except that it was cut short and came to an end six inches above her navel. The panties were bikini style. You couldn’t see through the cotton, exactly, but what was inside it wasn’t exactly hidden, either. She spent a long moment standing in front of Columbo. “You like?” she whispered.
He nodded, and after she was gone he checked the catalog and saw that the outfit cost $65.
The seafood salad tasted strange to Columbo. They’d put some sort of spice in the dressing, something he wasn’t used to. It tasted good, he supposed, but he liked familiar things best, and right now he would have liked the taste of shrimp and crab and lobster, with just mayonnaise. This mayonnaise had something odd in it.
Each of five models showed two outfits. Kimberly was the last model. She appeared in a bra, bikini panties, and garter belt, all sheer black and all trimmed with black lace, with dark thigh-high stockings and high-heeled black shoes. A big glittering rhinestone was sewed to the center of the bra, in the V-dipping waistline of the panties, and just below her navel on the garter belt. After she had stood and displayed the outfit to him, he looked in the catalog and saw the three items were priced at $112—which did not include the stockings or shoes. She paused before him an extraordinarily long time, he thought, and he was embarrassed, unsure of whether he should look up into her face or glance up and down her body.
Five minutes later she sat down again at the table with him.
“Here you go, Lieutenant,” she said, handing him a package in the distinctive aluminum-and- blue Khoury wrapping. “The first outfit I modeled. Take it home to your wife.”
“I… appreciate the thought, Miss Dana, but Mrs. Columbo is a… a different-style figure from you.”
“Stretch fabric,” she said. “One size fits all.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you. Mr. Khoury sure does sell elegant things. I’ve only been in his store once, but I saw when I was there that he sells an elegant line.”
“That’s his whole life,” she said. “Elegance. Taste. Nothing but the best… within reason, that is. Khoury merchandise is not overpriced, Lieutenant. It’s all good value for the money paid. The lingerie, for example, is all well made, nothing flimsy. Joe has a very definite pride in what he sells, and a sense of ethics.”
Columbo nodded. “Well, he’s got deluxe taste, that’s for sure. Uh, you said you could tell me something more.”
“Yes,” she said. “You said someone had written ‘Helter Skelter’ on the walls. You might be interested to know that Arlene Khoury’s secretary is one of the original Manson girls. She was in jail at the time of the Tate-LaBianca murders, but she still considers herself one of Charles Manson’s disciples.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Cathy Murphy. Joe hired her because he felt sorry for her. She’s been in and out of prisons most of her life, so she couldn’t get the kind of job she wanted, that is, as a secretary. She was working behind a counter in the store, and he brought her up to the executive suite as his secretary. Arlene didn’t like it and wanted Joe to get rid of her. She agreed to have the woman stay on, only if she worked as her secretary.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Columbo. “The Tate-LaBianca murders were twenty-five years ago. How old does that make this Cathy Murphy?”
“Forty-six,” said Kimberly. “But she still thinks she’s a—What w'ould you call it? A hippie?”
“It was nice of Mr. Khoury to give her a chance,” said Columbo.
“Joe’s a nice guy, Lieutenant. I wish I could say as much for Arlene. It’s tactless to speak ill of the dead, but Arlene was spiteful and treated Cathy cruelly. Cruel. There’s no lesser word to use for it.
She kept Cathy working late. She tore up letters she typed and made her type them over, when there was really nothing wrong with them. One day she’d tell Cathy the margins on letters had to be an inch and three-quarters on each side; the next day, after Cathy had typed a dozen letters that way, she’d scream at her that the margins had to be an inch and a half—and swear that’s what she’d told her.”
“Aww, that’s too bad,” he said.
“Lots of people will confirm it. Joe was thinking of transferring Cathy Murphy to some other office, where she wouldn’t have to put up with Arlene.”
“Are you suggestin’ Cathy disliked Mrs. Khoury?”
Kimberly shook her head. “I never heard her say anything like that. Joe didn’t either. But how could the woman help but despise Arlene?”
“What do you suppose made her act like that?”
“She was on the bottle,” said Kimberly. “Half the time she was in the office, she was drunk. You can find a dozen witnesses to that. The only part of the business she was interested in was Khoury Productions—I mean, Joe’s motion-picture investments. She’d go to the studio; she’d come to the office—always full of ideas about pictures.”
“What was Mr. Heck’s relationship with Mr. Khoury, with the business?”
“Steve Heck is—Was. It’s hard to get used to speaking of these people in the past tense. He was a production designer. He worked on two of Joe’s pictures. He gave them a certain style. Joe’s fabled exquisite taste didn’t exactly hold up in the picture business, and Steve did a lot to make the last two Khoury pictures successful.”
“You said everybody knew Mrs. Khoury had an intimate relationship with Mr. Heck. Did that include Mr. Khoury? I mean, did he know?”
. “Absolutely. To speak the truth, Lieutenant, I don’t think he cared much. Arlene had gotten old and fat. To say it better, she’d let herself get old and fat. And he…”
Columbo had finished his s
eafood salad and drunk about half his coffee. “Well, ma’am,” he said. “I’ve taken too much of your time. I’ll be getting along. I’ll, uh, need to get my check.”
Kimberly shook her head. “It’s taken care of, Lieutenant.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. I couldn’t let you—”
“It’s on the house,” she said. “Part of the deal for the show. Don’t worry about it. And please don’t call me ma’am. I’m Kim.”
“That’s kind of you… Kim,” he said. “I hope I’m not rude in rushing off before you have your lunch, but I’ve got things to do.”
“Not at all,” she said. “I don’t eat lunch. One of the sacrifices I have to make to keep my figure.”
“Uh… you’ve been very successful at that, if I’m not outa line in saying so.”
“Thank you,” she said with a smile.
He slid to one side and stood. “I hope I’ll see you again,” he said.
“I hope so, too.”
“Well, uh—Oh, uh, there is one little thing I guess I oughta ask you. Nothing important. But in my line of work I have to get every little fact straight in my mind. Anything unusual, if I don’t get it explained, keeps me awake nights. And you said you did something unusual last night. I was running some of this over in my mind during the show said you usually left the motel not long after midnight, but last night you were there till maybe one-thirty. Was there any particular reason for that?”
Kimberly smiled mischievously. “It’s a rather personal question, Lieutenant Columbo.”
“Oh. Yeah, I suppose it is. I don’t mean to—”
“Even so, I’ll answer it,” she said, still smiling. “The unhappy fact is, Joe and I went to sleep. I don’t know what time. Sometime after our coffee was brought up by room service, which always delivers it to our suite about midnight. We had some coffee, and I suppose about twelve-twenty, twelve-thirty, we went to sleep.”
Columbo: The Helter Skelter Murders Page 6