Dial Me for Murder

by Amanda Matetsky

  Dan pierced me with his sharp, insightful, and suddenly distrustful gaze. “Are you hiding something from me, Paige?” (I told you he was a good detective.)

  “Of course not!” I said, changing my tone from innocent to indignant and stamping one foot on the floor. “Why are you always so suspicious of me?”

  Dan laughed out loud. “Stop playacting, Paige! We both know the answer to that question.”

  “Okay, okay!” I huffed, waving both hands in the air. “Maybe I have been a little cagey on occasion. But that was in the past, and it was always for a very good cause, so that’s no reason for you to distrust me now!” I spun away, whipped back to the stove, snatched the coffeepot off the burner, and stomped over to the table to fill our cups. I wasn’t playacting anymore. Now I was really annoyed. And scared. And desperate to make Dan believe me.

  “Calm down, baby,” Dan soothed, lighting up a Camel. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything. I was merely concerned. I just wanted to know what got you so upset today—why you felt the need to get so drunk.”

  Whew! “Then why didn’t you just ask me about my day,” I whined, “instead of suggesting that I was hiding something and demanding that I confess?”

  He laughed again. “That’s just the way I talk, Paige. It’s the language of my profession. You should be used to it by now.” He paused and took a sip of his coffee, keeping his eyes fixed, like flashlights, on my face. “Well . . . ?” he continued, stretching the word out in a long slow growl and emphasizing the question mark.

  “Well what?” I snapped. I was getting tired of his stupid cat-and-mouse game.

  “Quit stalling,” he said. “I’m waiting to hear why you drank yourself into a coma, and I haven’t got all night.” It was obvious from his tone that Dan was getting a trifle testy, too.

  The jig was up. I plunked the pot on the stove, stumbled back to the table, and sat down to face the music, stirring cream and sugar into my coffee and racking my brain for something persuasive to say.

  “There really isn’t that much to tell,” I began, deciding to stick to the truth, but not the whole truth. “It was deadline day at the office, so everybody was feeling extra tense. Pomeroy was acting really weird, and Mario was so frantic to get the boards done on time, he was totally out of control. To make matters worse, Lenny was so sick he couldn’t see straight.”

  I took a fast swig of my coffee, burning my tongue in the process. “Lenny never should have come in to work at all,” I continued, “and when I realized how deathly ill he was, I. . . .” Blah, blah, blah, I went on, making the afternoon’s office events sound as dreadful as possible, spouting extradramatic descriptions of the violent, sweater-wrenching abuse I’d taken from Mario before hustling Lenny downstairs and thrusting him into a cab to go home.

  “And after I paid for Lenny’s taxi,” I blabbered on, “I didn’t have any money left. I couldn’t even buy cigarettes! If I hadn’t found a dime in the bottom of my purse for the subway, I’d have had to walk all the way home! I tell you, Dan, by the time I got to Abby’s, I was a mess. And by the time I finished the enormous Scotch and soda she made for me, I was dead drunk. I don’t know why it hit me so hard, but it did. One minute I was sitting at Abby’s kitchen table talking about my rotten afternoon, and the next minute I was passed out on the couch in my own apartment.”

  “I figured it was something like that,” Dan said.

  “You did?” I said, pulse quickening in surprise. “How come?” I was delighted that he’d accepted my evasive explanation, but astonished that he’d bought it so quickly.

  “The first clue was the Pall Malls,” he said, pointing to the red pack of cigarettes sitting in plain sight on the table. “You don’t smoke this brand and Abby does, so it was obvious to me that your naughty neighbor had something—maybe everything— to do with the course of the evening’s events, not to mention your inebriated condition.”

  I snatched a Pall Mall out of the pack and quickly lit it with Dan’s Zippo, thanking Christ, Yahweh, and Allah—but especially Abby—for the heavenly cigarettes and the proof they provided.

  “Then, when I noticed your open purse sitting here on the table,” Dan went on, “and saw three dollar bills stuck partly under the bag instead of inside it, I reasoned Abby had left the money for you, in a place where you couldn’t possibly miss it. If,” he added, with an irritating grin, “you ever came out of your coma.”

  “Hardeeharhar,” I said, giving Dan a dirty look, then shooting a glance at the bills that were, indeed, prominently displayed on the kitchen table and anchored under one corner of my red suede clutch.

  My first reaction was a huge rush of gratitude to my most generous and thoughtful best friend. Abby had left me enough money for a breakfast muffin, a soup-and-sandwich lunch, and transportation to and from work—all I’d need to get through the day tomorrow. My second reaction was a jolt of extreme shock and dismay, because partially hidden under the three dollar bills and the edge of my purse—but still visible to the naked eye— were two folded sheets of lavender stationery.

  Sabrina’s list! I shrieked to myself, wondering why the hell Abby had taken it out of my purse, and how the hell I was going to get it back in (without arousing Dan’s suspicion, I mean).

  “There’s a note here, too,” Dan continued, showing off his superior skills of detection, “and judging from the purple paper, I’d say it’s from Abby. She’s probably apologizing for getting you swacked tonight, and inviting you over for cocktails tomorrow.”

  Taking advantage of the sudden opportunity, I yanked the list out from under the money and opened it in front of my face, acting like it was a note from Abby, and pretending to read both pages.

  “You’re one hundred percent right, Detective!” I said, mentally crossing my fingers behind my back. “Abby says she’s sorry she put so much Scotch in my glass and swears she’ll double the soda next time.” I quickly refolded the list and stuffed it, along with the money, into the depths of my open purse. Then I snapped the bag closed and put it on the seat of the chair next to mine, out of Dan’s sight. “She says she hated to leave me alone in such a weakened state, but she had a hot date and figured I’d be sleeping for hours.”

  “Weakened?” Dan chided. “Sleeping? I’d call it drugged and senseless.” He crushed his cigarette in the ashtray, downed the rest of his coffee, leaned back in his chair, and stretched his long legs out in front of him. Then he raised his arms and crossed them behind his head, breathing deeply and broadening his chest. His warm, wide, wonderful, welcoming chest.

  He looked so adorable (and so seductive) I forgot all about Virginia and Sabrina and the three all-powerful men on the lavender list. I stubbed out my cigarette, leapt out of my chair, scrambled around the table, threw myself down in Dan’s lap, and wrapped my arms around his strong, steady (and sometimes overly stiff) neck. Then I relaxed for the first time that night, moaning softly, burrowing my head into his shoulder, and letting my crazed, anxious, and exhausted body collapse—like a rag doll—on top of his.

  Dan chuckled and pulled me close, cradling me like a baby in his virile, protective warmth. “You’re pretty wiped out, aren’t you, kid?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” I reluctantly admitted. I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted to stay coiled up on his lap forever.

  “Then I’d better go home and let you get to bed.”

  “Unnnph,” I protested.

  “It’s late,” he said.

  “Not really,” I whimpered, snuggling closer and holding on for dear life.

  “C’mon, Paige, get up. If you keep on this way, you’ll get me excited again and I won’t go home at all.”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  “No, it would be great. But you’d hate yourself in the morning.”

  Rats! Dan was right, as usual. As much as I adored him, and as much as I was longing to consummate our relationship (i.e., make mad, passionate love with him), I still believed that breaking our society’s strict edict against extr
amarital intercourse would lead to nothing but heartbreak and ruin.

  What would I do if I got pregnant? I’d asked myself a thousand times. Would I coerce Dan into marrying me, then spend the rest of my life wondering if he’d taken me as his wife out of duty instead of love? Or would I be courageous enough to have the baby on my own? Would I try to raise it without a father—in total disgrace and greatly impoverished circumstances—or give it up for adoption to utter strangers? Most unthinkable of all, would I have a dirty, dangerous, illegal abortion that could mark the end of my life as well as my baby’s?

  None of the choices were good ones, it seemed to me.

  I had gone to the Margaret Sanger clinic on 16th Street to be fitted for a diaphragm ( just in case), but I hadn’t yet used the contraband contraption. It wasn’t foolproof, I knew, and I didn’t want to take any chances. So I was determined to remain celibate (though not a virgin, since my late husband had already relieved me of that label) until I was happily remarried. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t engage in plenty of hot, convulsive (i.e., mutually satisfying) fun with Dan on the couch (as you may have noticed at the beginning of this chapter). It just meant I wouldn’t go to bed with him, or—as the Village bohemians were fond of saying—go all the way.

  Not if I could help it, at any rate.

  But my determination was dwindling fast.

  Luckily, Dan was totally supportive of my wed-before-bed decision. As a rigorous law-abiding—not to mention law-enforcing—citizen, he was inclined to follow society’s rules as well as those of our criminal justice system. And after the pain and shame he’d suffered during the process of divorcing his unfaithful ex-wife, he was truly glad that I was the virtuous type. (All right, I admit it: I was a lot more cautious than virtuous. Sorry if I misled you, but what do you want from me? I had to try the halo on before I could tell it didn’t fit.)

  “Cut it out, Paige!” Dan sputtered, twisting his head and yanking his earlobe out of the reach of my tongue. “You’re asking for trouble, and if I don’t get out of here quick, you’re going to get it.” He shifted his weight forward and began to stand up, forcing me out of his lap. Fortunately, my feet hit the floor before my bottom. “I’m going home before we both do something we’re sorry for,” he said, walking over to the armchair and strapping his holster back on his shoulder.

  “Will I see you tomorrow night?” I asked, wanting to know his after-dark crime-fighting plans so I could safely make my own.

  “Not likely,” he said, putting on his jacket and trench coat, then setting his hat at a slanted, sexy angle on his head. “I’m looking into a string of Mafia hits right now. There’s a mob war going on. I have to track down and question some of Frank Costello’s boys, and they never come out to play until after midnight. By the time I knock off, you’ll be drifting in dreamland.”

  I wished.

  Dan walked over to the door and opened it. Then he turned around and opened his arms to me. “Come say good night, Gracie,” he grunted, doing a really dopey imitation of George Burns.

  I flew into his embrace, rose to my tiptoes, and lifted my lips to meet his, swooning with relief that our evening was ending with a kiss instead of a fight—and that my top-secret pact with Sabrina was still a big secret from Dan.

  Chapter 9

  I HADN’T HAD ANY DINNER, BUT I DIDN’T care. Food was the last thing on my mind. My coffee was stone-cold, but I didn’t care about that, either. All I wanted was to unravel the murder of Virginia Pratt—fast!—before Dan could discover what I was up to, forbid me to become further involved, get himself assigned to the case, and then find himself in serious (perhaps deadly) trouble with one (or all!) of Sabrina’s suspect clients.

  I poured my coffee down the drain and quickly cleared the kitchen table. Then I grabbed my purse off the chair and pulled out the list. Unfolding it to the second page—which was crammed with much more information than the first—I began pacing from one end of my apartment to the other, reading and analyzing every word Sabrina had written about Brigitte and Candy, Virginia’s two best friends at the agency.

  Brigitte’s real name was Ethel Maguire. She was a married nineteen-year-old nursing student, and she lived in Hell’s Kitchen with her husband, Ralph, who was twenty years her senior and so crippled from polio he was confined to a wheelchair. Ethel bathed and fed her husband every morning and then left him in the care of the elderly woman next door while—in noble pursuit of her chosen career—she attended classes at the Hunter College School of Nursing on East 68th Street. At night—after she’d given her husband his dinner, helped him get undressed, and tucked him safely into bed—Ethel transformed herself into Brigitte (so named by Sabrina because of her resemblance to screen sex kitten Brigitte Bardot). She slipped into a slinky dress, put on a pouty face, let down her long blonde hair, and went to work. Clever Brigitte. She had found a way to satisfy her deep personal desires and her demanding creditors at the same time.

  Candy’s real name was Jocelyn Fritz. She was twenty-four years old, single, an assistant designer in the hat salon at Saks Fifth Avenue, and a confirmed gold digger. All she wanted out of life was to marry a millionaire and curl up in the lap of luxury and leisure. Jocelyn had become one of Sabrina’s girls in 1952, when she first moved to New York from Idaho and discovered that living in Manhattan cost a heck of a lot more than living in Boise. And then—even after landing her respectable, fairly well-paying job at Saks—she remained with the agency. She felt an ongoing need to (a) meet and mingle with Sabrina’s wealthy clients, (b) acquire and maintain a dazzling, millionaire-worthy wardrobe, and (c) pay the sky-high weekly rental on her private suite at the Barbizon Hotel for Women. According to Sabrina, Jocelyn liked coming home after a hard night’s work to a clean, roomy residence where no men were allowed.

  Grabbing a Dr. Pepper from the fridge and a Pall Mall from Abby’s pack, I went into the living room and switched on the radio. Dean Martin was singing “Memories Are Made of This.” His voice was sort of soothing (and God knows I needed soothing), so I left the dial set where it was and sat down on the end of the couch closer to the phone. Then I took a swig of the soda pop, fired up the cigarette, and—steeling myself against the disturbing, sorrowful details to come—read the lengthy profile Sabrina had written about Virginia.

  Virginia Pratt had been incredibly beautiful and incredibly young (twenty, by Sabrina’s account), unmarried, and a secretary at the accounting firm of Gilbert, Mosher, Pechter & Slom, just as the newspapers had reported. She had worked at this firm not because she needed the money (her earnings as a call girl easily quadrupled her meager salary as a secretary), but because the head of the firm, Paul Gilbert, was her uncle, and if she’d ever tried to quit the job, he—as well as her strict, controlling parents in Vermont—would have become suspicious, and asked a lot of questions, and begun monitoring her every move. And if they’d ever found out what she really did for a living, they’d have had her spirited away, fitted for a straitjacket, and locked up in a sanitarium.

  In order to keep her secret life as secret as possible, Virginia had lived alone—in a fairly new, but quite reasonable, apartment in Peter Cooper Village on the Lower East Side. Though the Peter Cooper apartments had been built as affordable housing for World War II veterans and their families, Sabrina had called in a favor from one of her big real estate clients and seen to it that Virginia’s name was put at the top of the three-to-five-year waiting list. Six days later a shell-shocked vet and his wife moved out, and Virginia—aka Melody—moved in.

  She never got to spend much time in her new apartment, however—working night and day the way she did—but whenever Virginia was at home, and not grabbing some much-needed sleep, she had rehearsed her music. She practiced scales on the guitar, exercised her perfect soprano voice, and stayed up into the wee hours of the morning playing and singing the lovely folk songs she composed. To hear Sabrina tell it, Virginia wanted one thing, and one thing only: to become a successful singer/songwriter—and her talent
s were so exceptional she was sure to hit that target someday.

  I could see why Sabrina had given Virginia the name Melody, but I couldn’t understand why Virginia had gone to work for Sabrina in the first place. She must have needed a lot of money—but what had she needed it for? She didn’t have Candy’s overly expensive tastes, or an invalid husband like Brigitte’s to support. With her simple, unassuming, unfettered lifestyle, Virginia could have gotten by on the salary her uncle paid her. And she would have come much closer to achieving her singing and songwriting goals if—instead of working nights as a call girl—she had spent the time performing in the Village coffeehouses and clubs, building an audience and making a name for herself. The Billboard charts were studded with songbirds who’d flown to the top in just that way.

  So the burning question was: Why had Virginia taken the low road?

  Sabrina surely knew the answer, but she hadn’t revealed it in her notes—a conspicuous omission which led me to wonder what else she had neglected to tell me.

  I looked at my watch. It was 2:30 AM. I glanced down at the phone number written at the bottom of the list: GRamercy 5- 6003—Sabrina’s private line. She had said I could call her anytime, night or day. Without a moment’s hesitation (except for the split second it took me to down another dose of Dr. Pepper), I picked up the phone and dialed.

  SABRINA ANSWERED AFTER TWO RINGS. “HELLO?” Her voice was alert and clear, with an edge as sharp as a switch-blade.

  “It’s Paige, Sabrina. I hope I didn’t wake you up.” I said this even though she didn’t sound the least bit sleepy.