Murder on a Hot Tin Roof

by Amanda Matetsky

  Both men were shocked, but pleased. Breathless and blushing. And for several long minutes after Abby danced away and returned to her chair on the other side of the desk, their chests were so puffed up with pride I thought they’d pop.

  I hated to put a damper on the friendly fireworks, but I was still curious about the case. “Was Detective Dash following me the night of the Fourth, when I went to the party at the Keller Hotel?” I asked. “The night I got hit on the head?”

  “Yes, of course he was,” Flannagan answered. “Who do you think called us when you were assaulted? How do you think we got there so fast?”

  “So Blackie… I mean, Detective Dash was the anonymous caller you told me about?”

  “Right.”

  “That settles it then,” I said. “The man who knocked me out was Aunt Doobie.”

  “The one and only,” Flannagan said. “But his real name is Christopher Dubin. He’s a thirty-four-year-old lawyer with a wife and two kids. He’s also a covert homosexual who was so terrified you would find out who he really is and expose his sordid secret to the world and his wife, that he bashed you on the head with a rock and took off like a bat outta hell.”

  Christopher Dubin. Married. Two kids. “How did you get all this information?” I sputtered, begging for more. “Did you find him at the Mayflower Hotel? Did he confess to hitting me? Did he admit that he was Gray’s lover?”

  Blackie, not Flannagan, answered my first question.

  “Never went to the Mayflower,” he said. “Didn’t have to. After Dubin hit you, he took off in a black limo and I memorized the plate number. Then-after I made sure you weren’t hurt too bad-I called the station for help and put out a citywide bulletin on the car. As soon as Detective Flannagan and the boys arrived at the scene, I jumped in one of the squad cars, got a location on the limo from the radio, and then tracked the vehicle to its final destination-an East 65th Street brownstone owned by one Randolph Godfrey Winston.”

  “Baldy,” I mumbled.

  “Yeah, the guy

  is bald,” Blackie said. “Completely. I saw that when he and Dubin got out of the car and went into the building.”

  “So what happened next?” I asked. “Did you go inside and question them both together?”

  “No, he did not!” Flannagan broke in, obviously annoyed that Blackie was claiming so much attention. “Detective Dash stayed outside and kept watch on the building until I got there-which wasn’t until after midnight since you took so goddamn long to tell me the truth about the attack and your own little private investigation.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said, really meaning it. “I was wrong. I should have told you everything from the very beginning.”

  “You’re goddamn right you should!” Flannagan snapped, tossing me such a gloating, self-righteous sneer I considered retracting my apology.

  I didn’t do it, though. I was still aching for more details about the case, and I was afraid Flannagan would clam up if I crossed him again. “So you conducted the interrogation yourself, Detective Flannagan?” I probed. “That night in Baldy’s brownstone?”

  “I sure did,” he boasted, sitting back in his chair and lighting up a Camel. Then, snorting two streams of smoke from his nostrils like a dragon, he launched into the longest, most drawn-out, most self-aggrandizing monologue you ever heard in your life. I’m not kidding! He described and explained every single moment of his session with Baldy and Aunt Doobie (i.e., Winston and Dubin), but his focus was on

  himself, not the subjects of his inquiry, and his zeal was reserved for his own “extraordinary” (his word, not mine!) powers of discovery. (He determined this, and he uncovered that, and then he established this, and he exposed that, and then he… well, you get the picture.)

  After all was said and done, Flannagan had delivered a lot more details than I’d bargained for. (Don’t worry! I won’t make you wade through a word-for-word account of his grandiose dissertation. I’ll edit out all the pretentious stuff and repackage the rest in a nutshell. Am I a considerate writer, or what?)

  What it all boiled down to was this: Christopher Dubin and Gray Gordon had been lovers for five months. They’d conducted their forbidden affair in hotel rooms so that Dubin-a successful theatrical lawyer and respected family man-would never be seen in Gray’s company. Because of his fear of being branded a homosexual, Dubin never would have been caught dead at the gay party at the Keller Hotel if: 1) his wife and kids hadn’t gone to spend the holiday weekend with her parents in Canada; 2) his beloved gay boyfriend hadn’t been brutally murdered; 3) his good friend and gay business associate Randolph Godfrey Winston hadn’t persuaded him to meet him at the party for a healing regimen of booze, fireworks, and forgetfulness.

  And he never would have bashed me on the head if I hadn’t called him Aunt Doobie.

  But once that name escaped my lips, Dubin knew that I had recognized him from our first meeting at the Mayflower-when, if you recall, I had also mentioned the name of Gray Gordon. And since the party at the Keller bar was for gays only, Dubin also knew that I now had ample proof that he was a homosexual. As a result, he went nuts and ran out of the bar, looking to get as far away from me as possible, hoping I’d never learn his real name and expose his secret life, which would destroy his public one.

  When Dubin realized that I had followed him out of the bar and over toward the river, however, and that I was standing watch under the West Side Highway-right between him and the limo in which his friend Randy had just arrived-his uncontrollable panic took over. He picked up a rock, snuck up behind me, and knocked me cold. Then he fled the scene in the black limousine.

  Toodleloo. Bye bye. Over and out.

  “What about Baldy?” I asked, when Flannagan finally stopped talking. “Did you find out anything more about him?”

  “Besides his real name, you mean?”

  Duh. “Yes,” I replied, “and besides his profession, too. I already know that he’s the producer of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. What I don’t know is why he was pumping the bartenders at the Village Vanguard for information about me. Did you ask him anything about that?”

  “Uh, yeah, I did,” Flannagan said, suddenly looking kind of vague, rubbing his pallid, baby-smooth chin with his nicotine-stained fingers. “He said something about seeing you and Miss Moskowitz backstage the night of Gray Gordon’s debut, and again the next day, after the matinee. And then, he said, when he saw you

  again at the Vanguard the very next night, he started wondering who you were and why you kept showing up everywhere he went. So he tipped the bartenders and asked them a few questions about you on his way out. That’s all there was to it.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed, utterly amazed (and also a bit amused) that a situation I’d thought so sinister could turn out to be so ordinary.

  Abby, on the other hand, didn’t even raise an eyebrow. She shrugged her shoulders, gave me an indulgent smile, and said, for the third time that day, “You always make such a

  tsimmis.”

  Chapter 37

  HAVE YOU EVER HAD THE FEELING THAT you were two people instead of one? That one of you was a smart, strong, insightful champion of truth and justice, while the other one was a perfect fool? Well, that was the way I felt that afternoon in Flannagan’s office. Like a pair of mismatched twins. Or a monster with two heads. I was brave and decisive one minute, dopey and delusional the next. I was Wonder Woman and Lucy Ricardo combined. I was Brenda Starr with a brain tumor.

  “What led you to believe that Barnabas Kapinsky was the murderer?” Flannagan barked, finally getting around to asking for my side of the story. He was glaring at me through squinted eyes, as if I were still under suspicion.

  “The long sleeves,” I said, “and his buttoned-up collar and cuffs.”

  “What?!” Flannagan squeezed his eyelids even tighter, peering at me through slits so narrow I was surprised he could see at all. “Long sleeves? Collar and cuffs? I think you’d better explain yourself, M
rs. Turner. And make it fast.”

  “Well, yesterday was the first time I saw Binky,” I began, “and it was so hot that-”

  “Binky?” Flannagan croaked. “Who the hell is Binky?”

  “Barnabas Kapinsky,” I said. “His nickname is Binky.”

  Flannagan’s accusing glare grew even more intense. “You called the murderer by his nickname? I didn’t know the two of you were so close.”

  “No!” I cried. “That’s not the way it was! I only called him Binky because-”

  It was at that moment-as I was just beginning to explain my theories and actions to Flannagan-that Dan walked into the office. He sauntered down the aisle between the desks and the file cabinets, shook hands with Detectives Flannagan and Dash, gave Abby a smile and me a curt nod, and then positioned himself-arms crossed, legs slightly apart-near the side of my chair.

  “Don’t let me disturb you,” he said, to nobody in particular. “Please go on with what you were doing.”

  Oh, sure. How could I go on with my explanation when all of my words were stuck in a huge lump in my throat? I couldn’t breathe, much less talk. My body temperature and blood pressure were shooting through the roof. My emotions were having seizures in every chamber of my broken heart.

  “Yes, go on, Mrs. Turner,” Flannagan said, with a smirk. “I believe you were telling us why you called the killer Binky.”

  I tried to say something clever and enlightening, but the only word that came out was, “Ack!”

  “Leave her alone already!” Abby snapped, leaping to my defense like a rabid Jewish mother. “Can’t you see she’s upset? She hasn’t slept in over thirty hours! And she’s had a really hard day, you dig? And she caught your murderer for you, didn’t she? What else do you want? You should be treating her like a queen-and I

  don’t mean a homosexual!”

  I smiled. That Abby. You gotta love her.

  “I advise you not to speak to me in that manner!” Flannagan seethed. His boyish face was changing colors again. “I’m the head of this department and I-”

  “Miss Moskowitz is right,” Dan interrupted. His voice was soft, but his tone of authority was coming through loud and clear. “What Mrs. Turner needs right now is a cup of coffee and some peace and quiet, which will improve both her frame of mind and her recollection of events. Therefore, since I have a special interest in this case, I think it best if I show her into a private room and continue taking her statement myself.” He leaned down, put his hands on my shoulders, and gently coaxed me to my feet.

  Flannagan rose to his feet, too. “But I don’t… well, I… do you really think-”

  “Yes, I do,” Dan cut in again. He put one arm around my back and began escorting me down the aisle toward the door. “We’ll be in the interrogation room across the hall,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder. “Please bring us some coffee.”

  I LOVED BEING ALONE WITH DAN; I HATED being alone with Dan. (I

  told you I was two people.) One of me was so turned on by his intense black gaze, disheveled hair, and determined jawline that I wanted to throw myself in his arms and attach my mouth to his for all eternity (or at least until next week). The other me was still so haunted (okay, incredibly hurt) by the way he’d kissed that redhead in Sardi’s last night that I couldn’t stand the thought of putting my lips where hers had been. Not now. Not ever.

  Averting my eyes from Dan’s gorgeous face and enticing mouth, I sat back in my chair at the table in the middle of the small interrogation room, crossed my legs, took a sip of my coffee, and hurriedly fired up a cigarette. (I knew if I waited Dan would offer me a light, and I wanted to avoid that painfully intimate gesture.) Staring at me from his chair on the other side of the table, Dan lit up, too.

  “Are you ready to tell me the truth?” he asked, in a voice as rich and dark as chocolate. “There’s no reason for you to keep any secrets now.”

  “Why should I bother?” I said, tossing my head back and exhaling a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “I’m sure you know everything there is to know already. Flannagan has obviously kept you clued in.” I was acting as cool as Lauren Bacall, but I was feeling as hot as Scarlett O’Hara during the burning of Atlanta.

  “You’ve got it wrong, Paige,” he said. “It’s the other way around.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m the one who’s been keeping Flannagan in the know, not vice versa. I’ve been in charge of this case since the day after Gray Gordon was killed.”

  “What?!” I shrieked, shocked to the bone. “That’s impossible! You were in Maine at the time! And this isn’t even your precinct!”

  Dan’s coal-black gaze stayed fixed on me. “

  You are my precinct,” he said, and the way his forceful voice echoed against the walls of the tiny room made my skin dance.

  Dan took a swig of his coffee and continued talking. “As soon as I read the reports of the murder in the Maine papers and saw that two young women who lived near the victim had discovered the body, I called Flannagan to find out who they were. And I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he named you and Abby. And I knew damn well your involvement wouldn’t end there. So the minute I hung up with Flannagan, I called the commissioner and got myself assigned to the case. After that I called Flannagan back, appointed him my second in command, and told him to put his best man on your tail to watch over you and keep you safe. Then, after making arrangements for Katy to stay with my parents for another week, I jumped in the car, and drove all night to get to you.”

  “But why didn’t you

  tell me?!” I cried, trembling with curiosity, gratitude, and outrage.

  “Because

  you didn’t tell me,” he said. “When I saw how far you were willing to go-how many lies you were willing to tell so you could keep me in the dark and stay involved in the case-I knew I couldn’t trust you to back off and let me handle things my way. And since I couldn’t trust you to tell me the truth, I was afraid I would jeopardize the investigation and cause you to put your life in more danger if I told the truth to you. You put me in a real bind, Paige. I was so mad I wanted to kill you myself.”

  The gross absurdity of our deceitful duet suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. “Good grief, Dan!” I sputtered. “If I had known that you’d been assigned to the case I would have told you the truth immediately! I swear! The only reason I lied to you was because I knew you’d order me to stop looking for the killer, and I simply couldn’t do that as long as Flannagan was in charge. He’s a horrible detective, Dan. You’ve got to believe me! He was trying to pin the murder on Willy Sinclair just because he’s gay!”

  Dan nodded and took a deep drag on his Lucky. “I realized that myself after working with him for one hour.”

  Aaaargh! “Then why didn’t you come back and tell me what was going on?”

  “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Like I said before, I thought the truth would hurt you instead of help you.”

  Uh oh. Dan was beginning to sound as shifty and slippery as somebody else I knew (i.e., me). “But how on earth could it possibly hurt me?” I asked, growing more confused by the second.

  He gave me a challenging smirk. “You want examples?”

  “Uh, yeah, I guess so,” I said, wondering what I’d let myself in for.

  “How many?”

  He was being too cute for comfort. “One will be quite enough,” I snapped.

  “Okay, how does this one strike you? How do you think you would have reacted to the knowledge that Dash was following you? Would you have been glad that he was watching your every move and working to keep you safe, or would you have dreamed up an elaborate scheme to ditch him so you could conduct your secret investigation in secret?”

  “I, er… um, I…”

  “Never mind,” Dan said. “You don’t have to answer that. I knew exactly what you would do, and that’s why I didn’t tell you the tr
uth. It was for your own good.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I busied myself putting out my cigarette and lighting another one.

  Dan stood up from his chair and began pacing the floor in front of me, giving me a good look at his powerful physique and devastatingly sexy walk. “This would all be funny if it wasn’t so damn serious,” he said, raking a wave of unruly brown hair off his forehead with his fingers. “Do you realize how much trouble you’ve caused? Do you have any idea how close you came to sabotaging the whole case?”

  “No way, Doris Day!” I huffed. “In fact it seems to me that the opposite is true. I mean, I

  solved the damn thing, didn’t I? Nobody suspected that Barnabas Kapinsky was the murderer but me! Nobody even knew who Binky was!” To say that I was irked would be like calling a heart attack uncomfortable. Would credit ever be given where credit was due (i.e., to me)?

  Dan stopped dead in his tracks and turned toward me with a look of pure fury on his face. “Yes, and why do you think that was, Paige? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, it was because you

  stole the only piece of evidence that showed a connection between Kapinsky and Gordon? Did it ever occur to you that you were hiding important information from the police-that the list of phone messages Rhonda Blake took down for the victim on or around the night he was killed might be indispensable to the investigation?”

  My heart sank to the pit of my stomach and stayed there. “So you knew about that,” I mumbled, staring down at the floor in shame.

  “You’re damn straight, I did! Rhonda told me about it when I questioned her at the theater. She said two extras from the

  Bus Stop cast had come to see Gray, and to get her autograph, and she thought they must have taken the message pad with them when they left because she hadn’t been able to find it since. I knew right away she was talking about you and Abby.”