Women's Wiles

by Joyce Harrington

  At 10:50, Maunders and Fox stood up together, grim-faced, and stepped to the table of weapons. The old Fox, his arthritic fingers quivering slightly, picked up the revolver. He broke open the cylinder, emptied out the cartridges and pocketed them, snapped the cylinder shut and placed the gun back on the table.

  At 10:55, Branigan and Coszyck rested their hands lightly on Mrs. Abbott’s shoulders.

  Devereaux, at Abbott’s bedside, pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and wiped beads of moisture from his forehead.

  The old man on the bed breathed weakly, in and out, in and out, and the blankets piled over him rose and fell almost imperceptibly.

  At 10:57, Gould stood up fitfully. He peered around the room and saw that there was nowhere left for him to go, and flung himself back into his chair.

  It was 10:58. They tensed.

  Huber and Braun and Devereaux inched closer to the old man’s bed. Branigan and Coszyck tightened their grips on Eleanor Abbott’s shoulders. Maunders and Fox braced themselves, leaning towards her as if defying her to seize one of the weapons on the table. Even the five men still seated—Szambel and Carpenter, DiNapoli, Gould, and Ryan—found themselves on the edges of their chairs, ready to spring into action.

  But as the clock on the wall ticked loudly and its minute hand crawled closer and closer to the twelve, Eleanor Abbott sat calmly on her high-backed chair, and did not move.

  Just before 10:59, Gregory Eliot Abbott’s wrinkled eyelids flickered and closed, and his shallow breathing stopped.

  “Gentlemen!” Eleanor Abbott’s voice shot through the uproar. “If you’ll go back to your seats and calm down, I’ll explain.”

  They obeyed her.

  She stood by the side of her chair, watching them, her full lips turned slightly upward.

  “I warned you,” she said. “I told you I was going to kill him, and I did.”

  “How?” Huber demanded.

  Her smile broadened.

  “Gregory’s accident did serious damage to his heart, Mr. Huber, weakened it to a point where it was no longer strong enough to function normally by itself. What’s kept it going all year has been medication, a heart stimulant that has to be administered at very regular intervals.”

  Branigan’s eyes went wide. She waited, though, until Maunders saw it, and Szambel, and DiNapoli.

  “The stimulant,” she went on, pointing to the table of weapons, “is in that bottle. It’s an incredibly powerful drug, which makes it incredibly dangerous if taken by a person with a normal heart. That’s why the bottle is labeled with a skull and crossbones: even a small dose would make a healthy heart speed up so enormously that it could actually burn itself out. But Gregory needed that stimulant to make his heart beat normally, and he needed it frequently. He was due for a dose of it at ten minutes past ten this evening. I got up and tried to give it to him, but you stopped me.”

  “You said it was poison!” Coszyck rasped.

  “I said no such thing. You assumed it was poison, and it would have been if you had swallowed it—but it was medicine for Gregory, and it was keeping him alive. I tried to give it to him, I tried three times, and each time I tried, you and Inspector Branigan chose to stop me. Without it, Gregory’s heart just wasn’t strong enough to go on beating, and so he died.”

  And so he died, Branigan thought. I took the bottle out of her hands myself, and so he died.

  The twelve criminologists were silent.

  Until, “Well?” Ryan said, his voice thick.

  “Well,” Eleanor Abbott told them, “you’ve got two choices. You can arrest me and accuse me of murdering my husband, but I’d like you to stop and think about that for a second. After all, gentlemen, I tried to give Gregory his medicine. You are the ones who stopped me, and caused his death. If you look at it that way, then you killed him, not me. I might get slapped on the wrist for not telling you what was in the bottle an hour ago, but once it gets out that you all sat back and let this happen, you men will be ruined. Your careers will be over.”

  “She’s right,” Braun said heavily. “With a story like this, there isn’t a jury in the country that could convict her of murder.”

  “And we’d be sunk,” Carpenter added. “I don’t think anyone would dare to try and make out any kind of a case against us, but the publicity would rip us to pieces. It would destroy us.”

  The old Fox cleared his throat nervously.

  “You said we had two possible choices,” he reminded her.

  “Yes, I did. I’ve gotten what I wanted, now: a release for Gregory. Is that such a terrible thing to have done? Do you really think he was better off the way he was, in that empty state that medicine and the law agreed was ‘alive’? You can turn me in and see where it gets you, gentlemen—or you can work with me, and help me to get away with it.”

  “You’re asking us to help you get away with murder!” Szambel protested.

  She held up a hand.

  “No, Mr. Szambel, I’m not asking you for anything. Arrest me and ruin yourselves, or help to protect me. The choice is entirely yours.”

  “I can’t!” Devereaux cried. “I’ve spent forty years upholding the law. How can I turn around now and make a mockery of it?”

  “We’ve got to,” DiNapoli muttered. “She’s got us over a barrel. There’s no other way out.”

  “Forget it,” Maunders grumbled. “Even if we wanted to, it’d be impossible. We’d never get away with it.”

  “The twelve of us?” Judge Gould chuckled grimly. “Don’t be ridiculous! Who’d ever even think of challenging us?”

  Branigan made the decision for them. “We’ll all have to discuss it,” he said.

  She waved a hand at them and turned away.

  They gathered in together and talked. Across the room, Eleanor Abbott was unable to make out individual voices or words, but she listened absently, confidently, to the meaningless hum, smiled at explosions of obvious protest, grinned at the eventual murmurs of agreement.

  When they finally became silent, she turned to face them.

  They were staring at her.

  “Gentlemen of the jury,” she said, mocking them in her triumph, “have you reached a verdict?”

  And Branigan stood up. There was a strange light in his eyes, a light Eleanor Abbott could not have known, a light that had never been there before.

  “We have,” he said clearly.

  And stopped, waiting.

  For a moment she was confused, and then she realized what he wanted and completed the ritual: “How do you find?”

  “We find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree, as charged.”

  Her smile faded.

  “What?” she asked him, not understanding it at first. “What do you mean?”

  But when Branigan walked to the table of weapons in the center of the room and picked up the amber bottle and came toward her, she understood.

  The Ransom of Retta Chiefman

  Stanley Cohen

  They watched her get out of the taxi, pay the fare, and hurry into Bergdorf Goodman. They quickly told their own cabbie to stop and then climbed out. “You go in and keep an eye on her,” Harry said. “I’ll stay out here.”

  “Why don’t you go in and let me take the outside watch? I don’t know how to act in a place like that.”

  “Just act natural. Act like you might wanta buy something. But don’t let her notice you. Now move!”

  Bert walked uneasily across the street and into the store. He spotted her in the shoe department, trying on some sandals. A solicitous young salesman was waiting on her. When she held out her foot and shook her head decisively, the salesman jumped up and hurried into the back, reappearing a moment later with three more boxes. Bert circled the shoe department and came to a good vantage point by a rack of expensive blouses.

  “Can I help you with anything?” An elderly woman, tall, slim, bluish gray hair, elegantly dressed. She looked at him disdainfully. He obviously didn’t belong, despite his suit
and tie.

  “Just kinda shoppin’ around,” Bert said. He lifted a blouse off the rack and held it up by the hanger. After looking at it with great aplomb, he placed it back on the rack. “If I see somethin’ I like, I’ll let ya’ know.”

  “Please do.” She walked away.

  Bert took another blouse off the rack. He delicately examined the hem of the fragile silken fabric with his rough fingers and nodded in appreciation. He fumbled with the tag and read the price. “Jesus H. Christ!” The words were practically a gasp.

  Bert glanced back at the shoe department; she was gone! The heat of panic engulfed him. He began looking frantically in all directions, but she was nowhere in sight. Had he blown it? Harry’d kill him. He whirled around and suddenly found himself face to face with her. Up close she seemed older than twenty-seven, middle thirties at least, and a little heavy.

  As she glanced at him, her expression suggested that she wondered what he could be doing there. A Bergdorf’s customer he wasn’t. She took a blouse from the rack and studied it.

  As Bert backed away, the elderly saleslady approached. “Mrs. Chiefman. So nice to see you. Can I help you with anything today?”

  “Oh, hi. I’d like this blouse, please. And wrap it as a gift, it’s for my mother. Be sure and take off the price, of course. And could you please hurry, I have an important appointment in ten minutes?” Her voice had a nasal whining quality. She took her charge card from her wallet and handed it to the saleslady.

  Bert moved into handbags and leather goods and watched from there.

  After the saleslady returned with the package, Mrs. Chiefman added it to the shopping bag with the two pairs of shoes. Then she left the store. Bert followed her out.

  When she reached the sidewalk, she headed uptown. Bert crossed Fifth Avenue and returned to where Harry stood waiting. “There she goes,” he said.

  “Walk ahead of me. She notice you in there?”

  “I don’t think so. Like you told me, why should she?”

  “Let’s go,” Harry said.

  They walked up Fifth Avenue, watching her from a distance. She crossed Fifth at Fifty-eighth and went into the lower level of the GM Tower to Vidal Sassoon.

  “What now?” Bert asked.

  “We wait.”

  “You got any idea how long?”

  “This should take about an hour,” Harry answered.

  “Here she comes now,” Harry said. He nudged Bert, who was thoughtfully observing people and traffic and things.

  “She looks a little different,” Bert said.

  “That’s the idea,” Harry said. “Let’s go.”

  They followed her back across Fifth Avenue and into the Plaza. She went into the Palm Court and was led to a table. “Now what?” Bert asked.

  “We eat lunch.”

  “In here?”

  “We gotta eat somewhere.” They followed the maître d’ between tables toward a far corner. As they moved across the area, Bert looked down at the food being eaten by people already served. Definitely not his idea of a good meal. Harry asked for the farthest table and they sat down, facing her back.

  After the waiter had left them with their menus, Bert began studying it. “Jesus, look at these prices for this stuff!”

  “Relax. It’s an investment.”

  “There’s nothin’ to eat here.”

  “F’Crissakes, just pick somethin’ and eat it!”

  “What’re you gonna have?”

  They managed their finger sandwiches with fruit garnish and coffee and then trailed Henrietta Chiefman back down Fifth Avenue, taking turns following her into store after store. First it was Tiffany’s, where she bought several pieces of expensive costume jewelry and dropped them into her shopping bag as casually as if she were buying groceries. She also bought a large sterling tea set and asked that it be delivered. Then off to Bendel’s, where she found a blouse she liked and took one in every color. Then I. Miller for three more pairs of shoes, and finally Saks, where she made purchases on every floor.

  They almost blew the whole thing when she left Saks by the side door and hailed a cab. Bert raced after her, heard her say Grand Central, and then ran to the front of the store to get Harry. They caught up with her as she was boarding the train for Scarsdale with her two shopping bags.

  They sat a few seats behind her and when the train reached Scarsdale, they also got off. Then they trailed her Cadillac Seville in their panel truck and when she pulled into the long circular driveway, they were right behind.

  As she was getting out of the car and the garage door was descending, they dashed under it, wearing their rubber masks, each carrying a gun.

  She threw up her hands. “What is this?”

  “You’re coming with us.”

  “You mean, you mean this is a kidnapping?”

  “Call it what you want. Only, let’s get moving.” Harry grabbed her arm roughly and pulled her toward the door. He pressed the wall switch and the door began to rise.

  “You’ll live to regret this,” she said. “My Harvey’ll see to that.”

  “If we do, lady, at least we’ll regret it with money. Now do as you’re told and you won’t get hurt. Let’s go.”

  The apartment was small, the upper floor of a tiny duplex house, isolated, the lower floor vacant. Henrietta Chiefman sat on a sofa in the living room, a set of crude manacles fastened around her ankles. Another lengthy section of heavy chain went from the manacles to a radiator pipe. The whole business was fastened together with a couple of bulky padlocks and was sufficiently long to give her range to reach the bathroom. The chains made dreadful noises when she moved around. And so did she. She didn’t like the arrangement at all.

  Harry had been watching the Chiefman house, studying their habits for weeks. He’d seen Harvey Chiefman come and go each day in his Maserati. He had also observed that Thursday was the maid’s day off. He’d even followed Henrietta Chiefman on some of her past shopping trips to the City, as well as other places she routinely went—her clubs, local shopping, her friends’ homes.

  He’d decided it was time for them to make their move. Since it was Thursday, she’d be home alone. They would speak to her through the intercom, getting her to open the door on the pretense that they were deliverymen, and would simply grab her when she opened the door, pulling on the rubber masks at the last possible moment. However, when they reached the house, she had already started driving out, a little earlier than usual, to go to the station. Harry chose to follow her rather than wait for her return. He didn’t think it wise to have been parked in front of her house all day on the day she was taken.

  “You’ll pay dearly for this, I’ll promise you that.” She hadn’t stopped since they picked her up. “You’ve done a stupid thing. A stupid thing. You’re in big trouble.”

  Bert tried to ignore her as he sat across the room and watched television. Some of his favorite shows were on Thursday nights. He said to her finally, getting hot under his mask, “Look, why don’cha just knock it off and watch the TV, whatta’ya say?”

  “You just call my Harvey so he can start arranging to have you put where you belong.”

  Harry checked his watch. “Now that she mentions it,” he said to Bert, “I think it is about time for me to go and make the first call.”

  Bert glanced at Henrietta Chiefman. “Why don’cha stay here and let me go make the call?”

  “Just take it easy. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

  “Is this Harvey Chiefman?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “We’re holding your wife.”

  “What do you mean you’re holding my wife? Holding her how? Who is this?”

  “Chiefman, we grabbed your wife today and we’re holding her for ransom.”

  “Retta? You’re holding Retta for ransom? So that explains where she is.”

  Harry scratched his head in confusion over the tone of Chiefman’s response. “Chiefman, your wife’s safe return will cost exactly one million dollars.�
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  “Well, you’ll never get it from me!”

  “Then don’t expect to ever see her alive again!”

  “Look, whoever you are, if you kill her, you’re in a lot of trouble. As a matter of fact, you’re already in a lot of trouble, you know? But don’t expect to get any money out of me.”

  “Isn’t she your wife?”

  “She is at the moment. Listen, I might as well let you have it straight. I’m planning to leave Retta. And when I do, what you’re asking could turn out to be peanuts compared to what she and some lawyer are liable to come up with.”

  “Chiefman, how much are you willing to pay?”

  “I won’t pay anything. I thought I said that.”

  “Chiefman, you won’t get away with this!”

  “What are you going to do, call the police?”

  “Chiefman…”

  “One thing, though,” Chiefman said. “Whoever you are, do me a favor and don’t tell her I’m leaving her. Okay? I think the least I can do is tell her myself. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “We’ll be in touch, Chiefman.” Harry hung up the phone and left the booth. He drove back to their flat and called Bert into the kitchen. “I think we may have a problem, pal.”

  “How long do you expect to be holding me here?” Retta Chiefman demanded plaintively.

  “It’s hard to say for sure,” Harry answered. “I’m trying to negotiate with your husband and frankly, he’s not too...too cooperative.”

  “Well, if you plan to keep me in this—this place for another night, I’m going to need some things.”

  “What kinda things?” Bert asked.

  “Some beauty aids. And some special foods. I cannot eat what you eat. I need certain special items.”

  “Such as?”

  “Why don’t I just write you a list?”

  “Forget it. We can’t be bothered.”

  “Don’t tell me to forget it,” she said with a raised voice. “I insist that you go and get what I ask for. I will not stay in this house another night unless I have the things I need!”