Write Murder Down

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  Shepley was wearing slacks and a white polo shirt. His beard was neat again. He said, “All right. I’m sorry I yelled at you,” and said that, yes, he could do with some coffee.

  “We’re sorry to break in on you,” Shapiro said. “I’m afraid we picked a bad time.”

  “You sure as hell did,” Shepley said and that he’d take his coffee black.

  Tony poured coffee into three cups. He added cream to his and a lump of sugar to Nathan’s.

  “If it’s more about the Lacey girl,” Shepley said, “there isn’t any more. I ran into her at a party and saw her a few times afterwards. I didn’t sleep with her or particularly want to. I’ve got a—I think I told you—a regular girl. The one upstairs. Not that Jo-An wasn’t a sweet, pretty kid for all she was one hell of a novelist, but all we did was to have dinner a couple of times and talk.”

  “I don’t question that,” Shapiro said. “I hope your—regular girl won’t.”

  “Well,” Shepley said, “I can’t say you’re doing me any good. But I’ll make out. What are these questions that are so damned important?”

  “When you were talking with Miss Lacey,” Shapiro said, “did you talk about this new book of hers? The one she was working on when she died?”

  “Not much,” Shepley said. “She wasn’t the kind who talk their books. Oh, they’re around, but she wasn’t one of them.”

  “Did you gather she’d finished the book?”

  “Or thereabouts,” Shepley said. “Oh, I gathered she had a bit more to do on it. Things in it she thought she could perhaps make better. That’s an occupational complaint, Lieutenant. Some of us have it worse than others.”

  “But you gathered she was about finished? About ready to turn it in to her publisher?”

  “She brought it up here from the South,” Shepley said. “Sure, it must have been finished, or damn near finished.”

  “But she rented this apartment in Gay Street so that she could do more work on it?”

  “I guess so. I was never in this Gay Street place of hers. I told you that, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. You were from the South yourself, originally, Mr. Shepley?”

  “My God,” Shepley said. “Can you still hear it? Yes. Georgia. I didn’t know I still sounded like it.”

  “You don’t,” Shapiro said. “Not to me anyway. A man said something about it, is all. A man named Morton. Your agent, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. And a damned nice guy. Does it make any difference I was born in Georgia, Lieutenant? Lots of people are.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference where you were born,” Shapiro said. “You and Miss Lacey were both from the South. Brought you together somewhat, perhaps.”

  “My God,” Shepley said. “We’re not a pack, Lieutenant. Some of my best enemies are Southerners.” He looked at Shapiro’s sad face. He said, “Sorry I put it exactly that way.”

  Shapiro said, “Enemies, Mr. Shepley?”

  “Just a paraphrase,” Shepley said. “A damned stupid one. I don’t have any special enemies I know of.”

  “About Mr. Morton,” Shapiro said, “he handles all your work for you?”

  “Not all of it. Most of it.”

  “And you sold, through him, a couple of books to this Oscar Karn concern?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think Miss Lacey had finished her book,” Shapiro said. “Or almost finished it. There wasn’t—hasn’t been since she died—any question of your finishing it?”

  Shepley said he didn’t get it.

  “We’ve heard it sometimes happens,” Shapiro said. “An author dies with a manuscript not quite completed. The publisher gets somebody else—somebody in whom he has confidence, I suppose—to finish it.”

  Shepley shrugged his shoulders. He had strong shoulders, Shapiro noted. He said, “Maybe it happens,” in a doubtful voice. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard of its happening. And nobody in his right mind would ask me to finish a book by Jo-An Lacey. For one thing, I don’t write at all the way she wrote. If her book wasn’t finished, and some publisher wanted a writer to finish it, he’d get another woman. Unless he was a damn fool.”

  “If you had agreed to finish somebody else’s book,” Shapiro said, “Mr. Morton would have handled the arrangements?”

  “Probably. But I didn’t. Nobody asked me to. Anyway, I’ve got my own work.”

  Shapiro said, “Of course.” He said, “Mr. Morton had an unpleasant experience this morning. A rather baffling experience.”

  He told Shepley about Morton’s experience.

  Shepley said, “Jesus! Was he banged up badly?”

  “He’ll live,” Shapiro said.

  “Just the files? L to S? Wait a minute. That would take in Lacey to Shepley.”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “A contract Morton had arranged between Miss Lacey and a publisher. Not Oscar Karn, Incorporated. A contract which hadn’t been signed by her or the publisher.”

  Shepley said he didn’t get it. Shapiro said, “We don’t, either, Mr. Shepley. Would there have been anything special in your file, Mr. Shepley?”

  Not that Shepley knew of. Then he laughed.

  “Maybe Xeroxes of letters from magazine editors,” Shepley said. “Saying, ‘Thanks for letting us see this very interesting article by Laurence Shepley. We’re sorry the consensus is that it’s not for us.’ Only I don’t know that Phil has them copied. Can’t think of any reason why he should. Nothing much else I can think of. I send pieces in to Phil and he sells them or he doesn’t sell them. Doesn’t require much correspondence.”

  Shapiro nodded his head.

  “Then if that’s all you want—” Shepley said and finished his coffee and started to stand up.

  There was the click of a woman’s heels on the staircase outside Cook’s apartment. The clicking sound receded down the stairs.

  “Damn,” Shepley said. “I guess there’s no great hurry now. So if you want to go on with your grilling, Lieutenant?”

  “Not grilling,” Shapiro said. “Just a search for information. There is one more thing you might be able to help us with.”

  “If I can. Sure.”

  “During the time you knew Miss Lacey,” Shapiro said, “did you and she run into other people she knew? Other friends of hers?”

  “I suppose so. Sure, one or two. And people did recognize her. Say things like, ‘Aren’t you Jo-An Lacey? I’ve heard so much about you. And I just love your books.’ Crap like that. Probably happened to her all the time.”

  “Probably,” Shapiro said. “You didn’t run into any close friends of hers, I take it?”

  “No. Not that I recall, anyway.”

  “Did she mention any close friends? Here in New York, I mean?”

  “Look,” Shepley said. “I keep telling you we just had a—oh, a damn casual acquaintance. I took her to dinner a couple of times. We had drinks a couple of times and talked about our trade. That was the size of it.”

  Nathan Shapiro said he saw. He said, “People get impressions, Mr. Shepley. I’m sure you did about Miss Lacey. One of them, say, whether she had, here in New York, any—call it close relationship with anybody. Did you?”

  “I had a feeling she was pretty much on her own. More or less a loner, actually. Up here, anyway. Of course—” He broke off. He looked at the coffee cup he’d just emptied. Tony Cook got up and refilled it.

  Shepley said, “Thanks.” Then he said, “Of course, sometimes when I called her up for a date—just a date for drinks or dinner—she’d be tied up. Or say she was. But everybody’s tied up sometimes.”

  “Of course,” Shapiro said. “She didn’t give you any idea how she was tied up? Who with, I mean?”

  “No. Why the hell should she?”

  “No reason,” Shapiro said. “You see, Mr. Shepley, whoever killed her obviously knew about this Gay Street place of hers. May have gone to see her there several times. We don’t know, of course. We—well, we just have to ask around.”

  “All I know abo
ut her is what I’ve told you,” Shepley said. “Took her to dinner a couple of times. Met her at the Algonquin. Had drinks with her a couple of times. Once in the Algonquin lobby. Once she came to my apartment upstairs and we had a drink or two and talked a lot. Nothing that would interest the morals squad of yours. I keep telling you that.”

  “I know you do,” Shapiro said. “And we don’t keep asking. You met her a few times, as writer to writer. I don’t doubt you, Mr. Shepley. So that’s all you can tell us about her personal life?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were never at her apartment?”

  Shepley sighed heavily—a sigh of boredom. He said, “No,” at the end of the sigh and said it wearily.

  “When you made engagements with her you did it by telephone? Called her at the Algonquin?”

  “Usually. She did give me a number to call if she wasn’t at the hotel. Said something about its being a hideout to work in. I called that once or twice and—”

  He stopped abruptly. He said, “Has either of you got a cigarette? I left mine upstairs.”

  Tony gave him a cigarette and a light for it. Shepley drew heavily on the cigarette.

  “I just thought of something,” Shepley said. “Not that it means anything, probably. Once when I called this hideaway number a man answered. I asked if Miss Lacey was there and he said something like, ‘No Miss Lacey here. Afraid you’ve got the wrong number,’ and I said, ‘Sorry,’ and hung up. I figured I’d dialed wrong, and after a bit I had another try at it. Got Jo-An that time, all right. But it was one of the times she was tied up.”

  “It’s easy enough to make a mistake when dialing,” Shapiro said.

  Shepley said, “Sure.” Then he said, “Can’t say I do very often. Must have that time, obviously.”

  “This man who answered. You didn’t recognize his voice?”

  “No, Lieutenant, I didn’t recognize his voice.” He stubbed out his half finished cigarette and said, “Anything else, Lieutenant?”

  “I don’t think so,” Shapiro said. “Sorry we had to break in on you at a bad time. I hope your friend wasn’t too—”

  “Oh,” Shepley said, “she’ll be back. And I’m sorry I yelled at you at first.”

  They watched Laurence Shepley go out of Cook’s apartment. He didn’t seem in much of a hurry.

  11

  In Shapiro’s small, and increasingly hot, office they agreed that they came up with questions, not answers—particularly not with the big answer. They had a fact—somebody had put Nembutal in Jo-An Lacey’s coffee and, when it had taken effect, had cut her wrists and put her in a bathtub to die. Drunk coffee with her and washed one of the cups and not the other? Why not the other?

  “To make it look like suicide,” Tony suggested and got “Mmmm” for an answer. Shapiro was flipping through papers he had taken out of his In basket.

  The State Police reported that John Henry Lacey III—or a man answering his description—had been brought to Oscar Karn’s house near Mount Kisco the night before and had been brought in Karn’s Cadillac, driven by Kenneth Stokes, half of the couple who took care of the Karn house and of the Karns. State troopers get to know the people of their territory. Lacey apparently had spent the night with the Karns. At least, when a police cruiser had happened to be in the vicinity that morning—time 10:17—the Cadillac, still driven by Stokes, had come down the driveway with Oscar Karn and the subject in the back seat. The cruiser had happened to be going in the same direction as the Cadillac, and behind it. The Cadillac had gone to a country club, and when it was parked there, Stokes had taken golf clubs out of the trunk. Two sets of clubs. Karn, who was dressed for golf, and the presumptive Lacey, who was not, had waited their turn and teed off.

  So—Karn was a considerate host and John Henry Lacey III was a golfer.

  Shapiro lighted a cigarette. He said, “Yes, Tony, to make it look like suicide. Did Shepley make a mistake in dialing? Or was there really a man in the girl’s apartment? Or is Shepley just feeding us a story?”

  “And,” Tony Cook said, “why would anybody want to steal an unsigned contract from an agent’s office? If, of course, Morton didn’t just walk into a door and bang his own jaw, to make things come out even. And—”

  He stopped because Nathan Shapiro was looking at the ceiling. Involuntarily, Tony looked at the ceiling too. There was a fly walking on it. The fly didn’t seem to be going any place in particular. Tony felt a measure of kinship with the fly.

  “It’s too bad most people don’t keep diaries any more,” Shapiro said. “At least I suppose the girl—”

  He did not finish. Instead he reached for the telephone. He had to wait for a couple of minutes. He said, “Lieutenant Shapiro, Homicide South. Sergeant O’Rourke happen to be around?”

  “Day off, Lieutenant. Sergeant Proskowitz speaking. Something I can do?”

  “Effects of Miss Jo-An Lacey,” Shapiro said. “Got a list handy, Sergeant?”

  “Take a minute,” Proskowitz said. “Yeah. Something special you want?”

  “They include a desk calendar? Memo pad sort of thing? Or a diary?”

  “Hold it,” Proskowitz said and, almost at once, “Yeah. Calendar pad we’ve got. No diary.”

  Yes, he would send it up. And the lieutenant knew, of course, he would have to have a receipt.

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “Send it along, Sergeant.”

  He hung up. He said, “I suppose we might have something to eat while we’re waiting, Tony. If the place is open.”

  “It will be,” Tony said. “Cops have got to eat.”

  In the squad room, they stopped by Lenny Johnson’s desk and waited until he finished taking down a squeal. There would be a package coming from the property clerk. A signature on a receipt would be needed. Lenny, who was a new third-grade detective, said, “Sir.”

  Joe’s Place was open. It was one o’clock on Sunday afternoon, and the bar was open. “Joe,” whose name was Thomas, had to be careful about the law. Most of his customers were policemen. There were only men in Joe’s Place when Shapiro and Tony Cook went into it. Two of the men were in uniform; the rest in civilian clothes. There were slight bulges in their jackets on the left side of their chests, except for one man who had the bulge on the right side. Detectives can be left-handed like anybody else.

  Tony had the pot roast and a beer. Nathan had corn beef on rye and, since it was technically his day off, a glass of sherry to precede it. He could be sure of the sherry at Joe’s Place. It wouldn’t be that sharp stuff they called “dry.” Nathan had iced coffee after his sandwich and Tony had another beer. They crossed the street and walked two blocks on the shady side and agreed that it was getting muggy as hell—too damned muggy for late June. July didn’t bear thinking about in advance.

  The office of the property clerk had been prompt. Lenny Johnson handed Shapiro a small, flat package and said, “Sir.” They took the package into Shapiro’s office, which was even hotter than it had been before lunch, and Nathan Shapiro opened the single window, which didn’t help matters appreciably.

  Jo-An’s memo pad was small. It was open at Thursday, June 22. It was held open by a rubber band. There was no notation on the sheet for June 22. The last sheet she had turned over, Shapiro thought. If she had written a memo on it, what would the memo have been? “I die today?” Only she had, probably, died the twenty-first. After she had turned the sheet to a tomorrow which had never come.

  The sheet for the twenty-first, when Nathan flicked back to it, was as blank as that of the twenty-second. That was mildly disappointing. She had had a date that day, or that night. The time of death can only approximately be set even by the best of pathologists. Dead on the morning of Friday, the twenty-third. Dead then thirty-six hours or longer. It might have taken her some time to die in the bathtub. The water in which she had died might have been hot when she was put into it, which would somewhat obscure matters. Say the night of Wednesday, June 21. If she had had a date, she had not noted it on the ca
lendar pad.

  “We may as well start at the beginning,” Shapiro said. “You may as well sit over here so we can both look at it.”

  Tony moved his chair and sat beside Shapiro at the small desk. Shapiro had the best of that. He had the kneehole. Of course, it was his desk.

  January first that year had come on a Saturday. Presumably, Jo-An had been at the plantation outside Mobile on the first day of her last year. If she had, nothing had occurred worth noting down on the calendar pad.

  She had put the sheets for the new year in on top of the last days of the old, as most people do. He flicked to the year before. He came on pencil marks. “Pt J’s.” Was that what Jo-An meant to write? Or: “Qt P’s?”

  “If that’s a sample of the way she wrote, God help us,” Tony said. “Party at somebody named J something? Or a quart of something that begins with P?”

  “Anybody’s guess,” Shapiro said, and flicked pages—blank pages until late in January. On January 28 there was something which might be “Bu del.” And as easily be something entirely different. On the sheets of calendar pads people write reminders to themselves. Such reminders are cryptic at the best. In what Jo-An had used for handwriting they were indecipherable. “Buick delivered?” That was Tony’s suggestion. If, of course, what looked like a “B” was in fact a “B.” It might as well be an “H.”

  “No wonder she typed her stories,” Cook said, as Nathan flicked the year’s sheets. Shapiro said that it was possible she had written more clearly when she was not writing only to herself. It was Tony Cook’s turn to make the “Mmmm” sound of doubt.

  Most of the sheets Shapiro flicked back on their curved supports were blank. If Jo-An Lacey had had engagements, had things she wanted to remember, during February she had not entered them on her calendar pad.

  A recluse, Shapiro wondered? Or a woman who lived only at her typewriter—the typewriter to which she was so devoted that her brother had to go down the road for his meals? Nothing for February. Nothing for the first half of March. Then, on March 14, “LS 2.” (If it was “LS.”) The “2” was reasonably clear. It might, of course, have been a “3.”