Murder is a Girl's Best Friend

by Amanda Matetsky

  Mad enough to kill her? I wondered. “Did you keep seeing Judy after she moved to Chelsea? Did you visit her at her new apartment?”

  “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t go inside that pad for all the bread in the bank. I wouldn’t set foot in the whole fucking neighborhood. It made me sick to think about her living there with that perverted old fart. I saw Judy sometimes—at the Vanguard, or the Kettle of Fish, or some other Village hangout—but I never went anywhere near that lousy damn apartment.”

  That’s not what Elsie Londergan says, I thought, remembering that she’d seen Jimmy in the neighborhood a couple of times. “You mean you never went to Chelsea while Judy was living there? Not even once?”

  “Not on your life!” he declared. “I never even . . . no, wait a second . . . I just remembered something . . .” He stopped his angry pacing and turned to face us. “I did go there one time. But I didn’t go up to Judy’s apartment. I just went to the Chelsea Realty office to tell Judy’s fucking landlord to leave her the hell alone.”

  “What?!” Abby and I cried in unison.

  “You went to see Roscoe Swift?” I sputtered.

  “Yeah, Swift. That was the creep’s name.”

  “Why did you tell him to leave Judy alone?” Abby urged. “Was he bothering her somehow?”

  “Sure was. All the time. He kept showing up at her apartment, late at night, without even calling first, claiming there was some problem with the heat, or that her sink was leaking into the apartment underneath, or that somebody had complained she was playing the radio too loud. And once he was inside the apartment, he’d make a pass at her. He’d tell her she was really sexy, and then he’d try to cop a feel or give her a kiss. Once he even pinched her on the ass. He always came late so he could catch her in her nightgown.”

  “But he knew a man was paying her rent,” I said, “so he knew she had a lover. How could he be so sure she’d be alone?”

  “I can answer that one,” Abby said. “Swift knew that Smythe was married, right? I mean, that’s the way these arrangements usually work. So it was a pretty safe bet that if he went to Judy’s place real late, her dear old daddy-o would have already gone home to his dear old wife.”

  Suddenly feeling exhausted, I sat down on the side of the bed again. So many complicated questions—so many confounding answers. I looked up at Jimmy and said, “So Judy told you that Swift was making advances and asked you to take care of it?”

  Jimmy started pacing in circles again. “She told me Swift was bugging her, but she didn’t ask me to do anything about it. Going to see the little creep was my own idea. I marched into his office and told him if he ever touched Judy again I’d break his legs and cut his filthy rod off. Scared him pretty good. He didn’t bother her so much after that.”

  “Did Judy tell Smythe that Swift was annoying her?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jimmy grunted. “Like I said, she never mentioned Smythe—or whatever the hell the old fart’s name was—to me.”

  My brain was spinning with the new information. And the new details were getting all tangled up with the old ones. And I didn’t know what to believe, or what not to believe, or what to believe just a little bit. Finally realizing I couldn’t possibly come up with any sound conjectures on the spot—that I needed some time to think things over, try to fit the pieces of the puzzle together—I decided to just fire off a few more questions while Jimmy was in a talkative mood.

  “Do you have any idea who killed Judy?” I asked, training my eyes on Jimmy’s face, watching for telltale expressions. “Do you think it could have been Swift?”

  “I don’t know who did it,” he said, frowning. “The newspapers said it was a random burglar, but it could have been Swift, I guess. He’s a nasty little fucker. But does that make him a murderer? I don’t know, doll. I really don’t know.” Looking as sad and tired and frustrated as I felt, Jimmy came and sat down next to me on the bed. Otto stretched his skinny body over Jimmy’s bent arm, nuzzled his nose into the cup of my hand, and licked my palm and fingers.

  “Did you know that Smythe gave Judy some diamond jewelry?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he said, fingering his beard again. “But she wouldn’t have told me even if he did. And I never saw her wearing any ice, either. Judy wasn’t the diamond-flashing type.”

  I stored his response in my mental file cabinet and moved on. “Why did you follow me home from the Vanguard the other night?”

  Jimmy widened his eyes and furrowed his brow. “You knew about that?”

  “I saw you lurking in the laundromat doorway.”

  He looked embarrassed for a moment, but quickly regained his composure. “It was only because you said you were a good friend of Judy’s,” he declared, “and I wanted to see you again. You never told me your name, so the only way I could keep track of you was to find out where you lived.”

  Since he already knew where my apartment was (and may, in fact, have already broken into it), I didn’t see any reason to keep my identity a secret from him any longer. “My name is Paige Turner,” I said, ripping a piece of paper out of the little notebook in my purse, which I had tossed on the bed when I began my search of his apartment. “And here’s my phone number.” I wrote the info down on the slip of paper and handed it to him. “Will you call me if you think of anything—anything at all—that might help the police find Judy’s murderer?”

  “Sure thing, doll.” He started to fold the paper up and stick it in his pocket, but thought better of it. “Can I borrow your pen?” he asked. Then, still holding Otto in his arms, he stood up, walked over to Abby, and handed the pen and the slip of paper to her. “Here you go, Miss Muffet,” he said with a goatish grin. “Better put your number down here, too. If I ever get to Pittsburgh, I’ll give you a ring.”

  “Okay, baby!” Abby cooed, flapping her lashes so fast I thought they’d stir up a dust storm. She wrote what I assumed was a fake number down on the piece of paper and handed it back to him. “I’d ask for your number, too,” she said, “but the phone book already gave it to me. Mind if I use it the next time I’m in town?”

  “I’ll be waiting for your call,” he said, still grinning.

  I had a feeling he wouldn’t have to wait long.

  Chapter 25

  “MUFFY GURCH?!” ABBY SCREECHED AS soon as we hit the street. “How could you saddle me with a stupid ugly name like that?! I was mortified!”

  “Sorry,” I said, smiling. “It was the first moniker that came to mind. It just popped into my head like a weasel.”

  “Well, it better pop right out again! I hate that name! Especially the Muffy part.” She wheeled around and started walking (okay, stomping) toward home. This being Christmas Eve day, all the stores were closed, and the sidewalks were practically deserted, so she was moving pretty fast.

  “I don’t understand what you’re so upset about,” I hollered, running to catch up with her and tramping alongside. “It was just a temporary alias, you know. Nobody but Jimmy Birmingham will ever think of you as Muffy Gurch again . . . Or even Miss Muffet,” I added, unable to resist the temptation to tease. (When your real name is Paige Turner, you’ve got a license to make fun of other silly appellations, even when you’ve made them up yourself.)

  “But I don’t want Jimmy to think of me with that name,” she whined. “I like him! He may not be the world’s best poet, but he’s damn good-looking. And he’s got a cute tushy. And he’s sexy as all get-out. And,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “I don’t think he’s a murderer, either.”

  “But shouldn’t you be sure of that before you hop in the sack with him?” I asked, trying, but failing, to keep the sarcasm out of my tone.

  Abby came to a dead stop on the sidewalk, in front of a store window full of ladies’ hats. “I resent that question!” she huffed. “Do you really think I’m so oversexed I’d go to bed with a possible killer?”

  “Well, no, but . . .”

  “Then why did you say it?”

  �
��I don’t know, I just . . .”

  “Something else must be bothering you,” Abby seethed, “something you don’t feel comfortable talking about. So what is it? You might as well say it and get it off your chest.”

  “I really don’t know what you . . .”

  “C’mon, out with it Paige! What’s going on in that meshugge twisty brain of yours?”

  “Well . . . er . . . um . . . it’s really none of my business,” I stammered, staring at one of the hats in the window behind her. (In case you’re interested, it was a large pink and white cartwheel hat with a black net veil and a black satin streamer down the back. Pretty awful.) “But I can’t help wondering how you can be all wrapped up in Terry Catcher one minute, then wrapped around Jimmy Birmingham the next. I mean, Terry’s obviously crazy about you. And he’s such a great, really wonderful guy. Don’t you feel any loyalty to him at all?”

  “Oh, Paige, you’re such a simpleton!” she said, linking her arm through mine and towing me on down the sidewalk. “You just don’t get it, do you? I’m as loyal to Whitey as he wants me to be—which means I won’t sleep with anybody else while I’m sleeping with him, and his concerns will be my concerns as long as he’s here in New York, living with me. But he’s not going to be here very much longer, Paige. We’ve discussed it at length. As soon as his sister’s murder is solved, he’s going back to Pittsburgh to take care of his father, and to start a new life in the city he knows and loves. And I’m going to stay right here in the city I know and love.

  “So all Whitey and I have is the here and now,” she went on, walking and talking, her hot breath vaporizing in the arctic air. “And we plan to enjoy it as much as we can. And since we both know we’ll have no long-term future together, we’re each free to make contingency plans. And that’s all Jimmy Birmingham is, you dig? A contingency plan with an adorable ass.”

  I laughed out loud. “You mean it wasn’t his soaring poetry that won you over?”

  “Not a chance,” she said, chuckling. “I always keep my feet firmly planted on the rotted dizzy ground.”

  TERRY WAS SITTING AT ABBY’S KITCHEN table—smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper—when we got home. His white hair was glowing in the bright kitchen light. His blue eyes started glowing, too, when we walked in. (The gleam was mostly for Abby, of course, but I could tell one sweet, shiny shaft of it belonged to me.)

  “Hello, baby,” Abby said, darting over to give him a tight hug around his neck. I wanted to hug him, too, but there wasn’t enough room. I settled for sitting across the table from him and lighting up one of his ciggies.

  “How’d you make out today, Terry?” I asked. “Find out anything interesting?”

  “Not really,” he said, blushing from the warmth of Abby’s embrace. “One of the two girls Judy used to live with wasn’t there. She went out to Long Island to spend Christmas with her family. And the one who was there—Angela Prickens—hadn’t seen or spoken to Judy since she moved out, and didn’t know anything about her subsequent life . . . Or her death,” he added sadly. “She had heard that Judy was murdered, but she didn’t seem to care very much.”

  “That’s odd,” I said. “Why wouldn’t she care? Was she the one Judy had the hair-pulling fight with?”

  “Yes, and she’s still upset about it.”

  “Upset enough to kill?”

  “No!” Terry insisted. “She’s just a young girl with her head in the clouds. All she thinks about is boys and romance and finding a good husband. She’s a lot like Judy was.”

  “Did she know about the diamonds?”

  “She says she didn’t, and I believe her.”

  Abby took off her coat and sat down next to Terry. “Did you find out the name of the guy Judy and Angela were fighting over? Was it Birmingham?”

  “The one and only.” Terry leaned back in his chair and took another puff on his Pall Mall. “Did you go to see him today as planned? Was he at home?”

  “Yes, we did,” Abby said, smiling, “and, yes, he was.”

  Terry gave her a teasing look. “Angela says he’s a real dreamboat—her word, not mine—and that every chick who sees him falls for him. Do you agree with that assessment?”

  “Well, let me put it this way,” Abby said, giving him a teasing look in return. “He may be dreamboat material, but my ship’s already come in.” Adding weight (okay, heat) to her words, Abby snaked her hand across Terry’s shoulder and began stroking her fingertips up and down the side of his neck.

  Aaaargh! It was time for me to leave again!

  I really didn’t want to go. There were so many things that Abby and Terry and I needed to talk about. So many theories and clues to mull over. I hadn’t even told them that my apartment had been broken into! (I’d started to tell Abby earlier, but she’d been so focused on the time—and the need to get over to Jimmy’s place in a big fat hurry—that I’d finally decided to break the news later, when we were all three together, so I wouldn’t have to tell the story twice.)

  And that was just the half of it. We still had tons of preparations to make for the party we were going to attend that night. We had to draw up a synchronized plan of attack—decide which of us should do what, and talk to whom, when—and then we had to go through Abby’s Vault of Illusions, looking for elegant, upper-crusty clothes to wear to the fancy uptown shindig.

  Okay, I admit it. Those weren’t the only reasons I didn’t want to leave Abby’s right then. Truth was, I was scared to go back to my place alone.

  But being an unwanted guest would cause me even more discomfort, I felt, so I bid my amorous friends a quick “catch you later,” and hopped across the hall to my own habitat. Either because of my stupid name or in spite of it, there’s one thing I’m pretty darn good at: knowing when to turn the page.

  EVERYTHING WAS JUST AS I’D LEFT IT—specifically the flattened Duz detergent box, which was still taped over the broken door pane in the exact same position as before. I inspected it carefully, checking for rips in the tape or dents in the cardboard, finally deciding that the makeshift patch had in no way been disturbed. There’d been no drop in the indoor temperature, either, so—even though I still didn’t feel the slightest bit secure—I was, at least, warm.

  I looked at the clock. It was only three-thirty. Hours to kill till party time. I had a bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup and ate about a thousand Nabisco saltines. I typed up three more pages of story notes and stuffed them into Judy’s oatmeal box. I turned on the radio and fiddled around with the dial, hoping to find some good jazz or blues, finally giving up and settling for Frank Sinatra. I tried to read a few pages of the new novel I’d recently borrowed from the library— Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis—but soon gave up on that, too. I prayed for Dan to call, but of course he didn’t .

  Luckily, all the time I spent dashing around like a loon, from the front window to the back door of my apartment—peering out onto Bleecker Street or down into the rear courtyard looking for stalkers or murderers—kept me pretty busy. Likewise the nine cigarettes I smoked down to the nub.

  When Abby knocked on my door at six-fifteen and told me to come next door for cocktails and a confab, I almost fainted with joy. Now I knew how Otto had felt when Jimmy gathered him back into his arms.

  Wagging my tail and panting for company, I bounded into Abby’s living room-cum-art studio and sat down next to Terry on the little red couch. My whiskey sour was waiting for me on the coffee table. Terry’s was half gone. Perched on the big wooden easel in the corner was Abby’s new painting, a wild western bar scene with a lean and sexy cowboy standing—legs apart, hips cocked, both six-guns drawn—in the foreground. A busty blonde floozy sat on a barstool behind him. The cowboy didn’t have white hair, but he sure did look a lot like Terry.

  “Did you pose for that?” I asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said, face reddening.

  “How ever did you find the time?” I teased, thinking—but not saying—since Abby’sbeen keeping you so busy in the bedroom.

/>   “It wasn’t easy,” he said, giving me a sheepish (and, I thought, weary) grin.

  “What are you two yakking about?” Abby asked, toting her own drink into the studio and sitting down, cross-legged, on the canvas drop cloth that covered the floor.

  “Nothing much,” I answered, dying to get our homicide investigation back on track. “We were just waiting for you. We need to fill each other in on everything we learned today, and then map out a plan of action for tonight.”

  “Right,” Terry said, obviously eager to get down to business, too.

  “I’ll go first,” I said, taking a big gulp of my drink, lighting a cigarette, and proceeding to tell them about the break-in.

  They both went crazy. (I’m talking all the way out of their minds!) They took turns screaming and shouting their heads off about all the horrible things that could have happened to me, and then they both gave me hell for not coming to get them the very second I discovered that my window had been smashed and the back door left wide-open. They were furious, really furious at me for spending the whole night in my apartment alone, with nothing but a piece of cardboard, a few strips of tape, and a bottle of bleach to protect me. They were mad at me for spending the afternoon alone there, too.

  And throughout their long, vociferous diatribe about my incautious behavior they called me some very unflattering names: reckless fool, blithering moron, donkey with no brain, irresponsible daredevil, thoughtless nitwit—to list but a few. Not once did either one of them suggest that I had been strong or self-sufficient or brave—or deserving of their praise instead of their scorn.

  And I never gave voice to the thought that kept circling through my allegedly absent donkey brain: that if they hadn’t been so fixated on each other, they might have been more available to help me.

  Some team we three were turning out to be!