Lullaby of Murder (The Julie Hayes Mysteries, 3)

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “You ought to get the office business from Alice Arthur,” Julie said. “She’s much closer to Tony and she’s been on the job a lot longer than I have.”

  Marks nodded. “Perhaps you can tell us now what you meant by ‘in the building, but not in the office.’”

  “I started to sign in at the night desk. Then I noticed Tony’s name in the book and decided not to come up.”

  “Why?”

  “It was almost ten o’clock…. No, that wasn’t the reason. I just didn’t want to see him.”

  “It was almost ten o’clock,” Marks repeated. “Did you think he might have someone in the office with him?”

  “I don’t think that crossed my mind. I was only thinking of myself.”

  “So you did not come upstairs?” the detective persisted.

  “I did not.”

  Marks sighed heavily, giving her the impression that he had other information. “So what did you do?”

  “I went out and caught the first cab I could and went home.”

  “Do you remember the cabbie’s name or number?”

  “No, sir. But I think he might remember me—an extra dollar tip to wait until I got inside the building. The phone rang at eleven thirty but I let the answering service pick it up. I woke up alarmed when it rang at one fifteen.”

  Marks nodded sympathetically, which put her on guard. Which, in turn, was ridiculous. Why should she be on guard? “What was your purpose in returning to the office in the first place, Mrs. Hayes?”

  “I did not return to the office, Lieutenant Marks. I intended to look up some names in what we call the celebrity file.”

  “At ten o’clock at night?”

  “Yes.” What else could she say?

  “When have you been in the office at that hour before?”

  “I haven’t been.”

  “You just happened to be in the neighborhood?”

  “Could I tell you in my own words what happened yesterday?”

  “In your own words. Of course.”

  Julie recounted her day from Tony’s blast at her the moment she entered the office. The tape rolled silently. Marks made an occasional one word note, but he did not interrupt. When she finished he deferred to his partner. Herring asked for Mary Ryan’s address and that of Murray’s Funeral Home.

  “That’s a fair walk all by yourself on a rainy night,” Marks started again.

  “I know.”

  “How did Phillips die?”

  “He’s supposed to have jumped from the George Washington Bridge.”

  “Ah, yes.” Then: “Supposed?”

  “I believe there was a witness.”

  He waited a second or so and then asked: “Is there any association in your mind between the two deaths?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That sounds like a qualified yes.”

  “To explain I have to go back to Wednesday night when my husband and I were having dinner at a restaurant before he left for Europe.” She told of Jay Phillips’ remarks to her and Jeff. “But I ought to say, Jay’s opinion of Tony Alexander was probably shared by a number of people.”

  “A legion of enemies,” Marks suggested.

  “A number. It’s inevitable in the business.”

  “Who else do you have in mind?”

  Oh, Julie, she thought, never volunteer. “I was just speaking generally, Lieutenant.”

  “I understand. Have you been able to learn why this Mr. Phillips felt the way he did?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How did Alexander feel about him?”

  “Contemptuous is the first word that comes to mind.”

  “We may want to go into this later,” Marks said, “but we must assume for now that Phillips, already dead, is not a suspect in Alexander’s murder, which is the crime under our investigation.”

  “Am I a suspect?” Julie asked.

  “Well, you’re very much alive,” Marks said with the slightest of smiles. “Let’s talk some more about you. I understand you and your husband were personal friends of the Alexanders…”

  Julie turned that over in her mind: she had scarcely thought of Fran, only of herself. “I ought to have thought about Fran,” she said aloud. “We used to be closer friends than we’ve been lately. I haven’t seen her since shortly after I went to work for Tony. He and my husband did meet.” She wondered if it was Fran who had told him of the family friendship.

  “Did you know she was in the office this afternoon?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Any ill will between you and Mrs. Alexander?”

  “Not on my part certainly. I’m fond of her. But the longstanding friendship was between Tony and my husband. Jeff started his career working for Tony.”

  “Geoffrey Hayes?”

  Julie nodded and thought how often she had mentioned him.

  “Are you familiar with the box on Alexander’s desk, the one with the slot ink?”

  “Yes, sir. We put our copy in it for Tony.”

  “Ever try to get anything out of it?”

  “No. I don’t think it’s possible without the key.”

  “You know the box is bolted to the desk?”

  “I know that I’ve never seen it in any other place,” Julie said, wondering now for the first time why it was so carefully secured.

  “Ever see inside of it?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Did you know that Alexander kept a loaded revolver in that box?”

  “No, sir. I certainly did not know that.”

  Marks got to his feet. “Let’s see if we can go over there now. Wally, anything more you want on the tape from Mrs. Hayes?”

  “Mrs. Hayes, did you notice any other name besides Mr. Alexander’s in the registry?”

  “No. I only noticed Tony’s because it was familiar to me.”

  “Yes, ma’am. What was the name of the man you wrote the story about?”

  “Morton Butts.”

  Marks and Herring exchanged glances. “I’ll check it out,” Herring said.

  EIGHT

  JULIE CAUGHT SIGHT OF Tim Noble as she moved across the hall with Marks. Herring was waiting for him. Tim looked bereft. Julie wondered why she had no such feeling. She kept wanting to ask, How’s Fran? or How’s Fran holding up? but even as she framed the words they seemed forced and hollow.

  In the office technicians were gathering their gear, repacking their kits at the conference table. Tony’s desk was covered with a sheet except for the corner where the copy box had been. There the wood was lighter in color and two holes showed where the bolts had been removed. The floor in the area of the desk and the celebrity bank was marked with masking tape. Chalk circles enclosed dark splotches it took Julie a few seconds to recognize as blood. The shock of reality finally hit home. The room tilted and momentarily went out of focus.

  “Are you all right?” Marks asked.

  “I’ll make it.”

  When he was sure she was not going to pass out, Marks said, “I thought you might like to look up those names you missed out on last night.”

  Julie just looked at him.

  Marks sighed. “The world is full of s.o.b.s, isn’t it?” He echoed Phillips’ words to a purpose of his own. “But you do see how hard it is to believe that someone would walk that distance last night in a cold rain?”

  “Nevertheless, I did,” Julie said.

  “Unless the person’s mind was on fire, if I can put it that way. And the rejection of a story doesn’t seem sufficient motive for that.”

  “How did you know I came in at all? No name in the book or anything.”

  “A security officer recognized you, but having recognized you he lost interest and couldn’t say what direction you took from the desk.”

  “Now I understand,” Julie said. “Have you reached Alice Arthur?”

  “We have,” Marks said.

  “And Mrs. Alexander?”

  He almost seemed amused. “And her daughter.”


  “I’ve never met her. I don’t even know her name,” Julie said.

  “Family friends and never met the daughter?”

  “She’s always been away at school or someplace.”

  Marks grunted and looked around. The dilapidated leather couch where Tony had claimed to do his best thinking was covered with plastic. A card read: Do not disturb by order of the Police Department. “Would you like to sit down? Perhaps at the table?” The technicians were leaving.

  “I’m fine,” Julie said.

  “Tell me again now: what’s in those file drawers?” The whole bank was isolated by movable posts.

  “They’re profiles of celebrities, or just source material—gossip, rumors, leads…. They’re terribly confidential.”

  “And you wouldn’t like to take advantage of access to them now? Who knows when you’ll have the opportunity again?”

  He was not going to give up until she yielded information that justified her intended visit to the office. “All right. Lieutenant, I wanted to look up Jay Phillips.”

  “Shall we do it together?”

  Naturally.

  He cautioned her to touch nothing, especially she was not to touch the cards. The drawers had been examined for prints, but he turned the cards with tweezers. The only entry under Phillips was Ellen Duprey Phillips.

  “Wait,” Julie said. They both read: “An actress yet. Femme fatale. If you saw her naked you’d say go put some clothes on before you catch cold.”

  “Any relation?” Marks asked, deadpan.

  “She was Jay’s wife, and she’s been dead for ten years.”

  “Having caught cold, no doubt,” the detective said dryly. “Didn’t Alexander ever clean out his files? Ten years—to keep something like that?”

  “I think you’d better ask Alice Arthur that question, Lieutenant. I don’t know.”

  “Anyone else while we’re here?”

  “Morton Butts,” Julie said.

  “Yes, of course,” Marks said. “We must look him up.”

  “Why?”

  He looked up at her from where he was about to tweezer his way through the b’s. “You know, Mrs. Hayes, it is customary for the police to ask the questions, not to answer them.”

  Julie shrugged.

  “Because,” Marks went on, “there is a name scrawled in the registry downstairs that could be Morton Butts.”

  “I was wondering whether Tony knew Butts and never let on to me. When I learned at the funeral parlor that Jay Phillips was doing the publicity for this dance marathon, it just didn’t make sense. Phillips was a big time public relations man. Why would he take on a two-bit operation on the fringe of Harlem?”

  “And one that interested Tony Alexander so that he sent his number one reporter to cover it. How did he find out about it?”

  “From a release out of Phillips’ office?” Julie suggested. “Alice Arthur might be able to tell us that. I can’t really believe he knew Butts. He didn’t mention him by name, and Butts seems like an insignificant little man. It was the dance marathon that interested Tony. He’d won a two hundred dollar prize in one when he was young.”

  Marks continued through the cards to the end of the b’s. “No Butts,” he said. “But me no buts.”

  “It wouldn’t be hard to remove a card if you wanted to,” Julie said.

  The detective smiled. He took a piece of chalk from his pocket and marked the drawer. “Who else shall we look up?”

  “That’s it.” Alone, she would have looked up Patti Royce. She would also have looked up the star and the understudy in Little Dorrit, but she held back, thinking of the headline possibilities of the merest mention of actors in a hit show.

  Marks guided her out of the cordoned area. “I’d like to see your article on Butts and the dance, if you don’t mind,” he said.

  “So would I,” Julie said.

  “You don’t have a copy?”

  “Not allowed,” Julie said. “Wasn’t it in his desk?”

  “No, Mrs. Hayes. Nor in the waste baskets, nor in the office. Nor anywhere Miss Arthur could think of.”

  “She told you about it?”

  “She did.”

  “Boy, she got here in a hurry,” Julie said. “All the way from Brooklyn.”

  “There are investigative facilities in Brooklyn, Mrs. Hayes, and excellent police liaison.”

  “Oh,” Julie said.

  NINE

  SLEEP CAME, FINALLY, HALF-WAY through the four A.M. showing of Boston Blackie starring Chester Morris. It was not the picture that tranquilized her. Julie escaped the endless repetitions of the day’s trauma by thinking of names she considered unsuitable for an actor: Chester, Elmer, Archibald, Percy…. The phone wakened her at nine. It was Jeff. The first thing she asked was where he was.

  “At our Paris office.”

  “Jeff, do you know about Tony?”

  “It came over several hours ago. I thought you might be trying to reach me.”

  “I was with the police until almost four. Jeff, they even tested me to see whether I’d fired a gun. I haven’t ever in my whole life. Did you know Tony kept a gun in the office?”

  “I knew he had one, a thirty-eight revolver. Fran has its mate. They belong to a gun club in Queens. But you probably know that.”

  “I didn’t know it,” Julie said. “I seem to have known very little about them.”

  “You’ll find that information in the morning paper,” Jeff said. “It’s in the Herald here. They took practice together yesterday afternoon. Do you have anything recent on Fran? I gather she’s a prime suspect.”

  “Is she? I didn’t know. Jeff, when you said they were having trouble, did you mean with their marriage?”

  “I purposely did not say and I think now it’s better to leave it that way.”

  “Okay,” Julie said. “What else did you purposely not say that might help me figure out why Tony was murdered?”

  “Is it incumbent on you to participate in the investigation?”

  “Jeff, I’m going to hang up on you. What’s the matter with you?”

  His voice grew even colder. “I’m upset at Tony’s death. There ought to have been more I could have done at our last meeting than exchange epithets with him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Julie said. “I didn’t know about Fran, only that the police had talked with her and with the daughter. I don’t even know the girl’s name.”

  “Her name is Eleanor. I don’t know much more about her than you do. She’s Fran’s daughter by a previous marriage. Tony adopted her as an infant. She’d be twenty-one at least. Tony and Fran were married while I was working for him.”

  “All I know,” Julie said, “is that Fran was visiting her once when I went somewhere with Tony. That’s the only mention I ever heard him make of her. Could she be retarded or anything like that?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Didn’t Tony ever talk to you about her, for God’s sake?”

  “Not one word that I can remember.”

  “That’s crazy—like somebody they kept in a closet. Anyway, the police talked with her, wherever she is.”

  “She’s home,” Jeff said. “She’s the last known person to have spoken with him—on the phone last night.”

  “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” Julie said. “Some crazy things have happened since you left. Besides Tony’s death. Can we talk for a few minutes?”

  “Take your time. It’s on the WATS Line.”

  “Remember the press agent who came to our table at Sardi’s—Jay Phillips?”

  “I remember. He had no use for Tony and he’d lost his biggest account—and you know, it skipped through my mind later that Tony might have had something to do with his troubles. But I’ve interrupted you. What were you going to say about him?”

  “He committed suicide a few hours after we saw him.”

  Jeff whistled softly.

  “What made you think Tony might have something to do with his troubles?”

  “
Some pretty free association, I’m afraid. Tony was like a lot of other people with a taste for power, always on the lookout for more. There was something of the bully in him…”

  Now he tells me, Julie thought.

  She might as well have said it aloud, for Jeff went on: “There was no point in my ever saying this to you. Remember, you asked him for the job yourself, without consulting me. So it was up to you to make your own evaluation and your own adjustment. Tony and I did not become friends until we reached parity, not long before you and I were married. I doubt we’d ever have become close friends if I hadn’t acquired a certain reputation of my own.”

  Jeff always took time to say what he wanted to say, the way he wanted to say it. Much as he wrote. Julie hung on, knowing he would come back to Phillips, and that everything in-between would be relevant. And so it happened. “Now to connect all this to your press agent friend, and the connection is weak, to say the least, one of the Broadway tokens of power Tony coveted in my day was first night tickets.” (What he usually got, Julie knew, was second night or preview; only the major critics were sure of opening night.) “Something that came back to me on the plane was having heard Tony on the phone bullying someone for opening night tickets to a show called Lollopaloozer. I have a hunch it was Phillips. You ought to be able to look it up if you think it might mean something to you. What I especially remember was his not letting up, a sort of harassment. I was uncomfortable listening to it.”

  “Jeff, could I try a couple of names on you and see if they ring a bell?…Morton Butts.”

  “No, and I think I’d remember that one.”

  “Ellen Duprey.”

  “Oh, yes. An actress who gave up the theater to become a nun and after a year or so came out of the convent and took the part of a nun in a play that closed overnight. Don’t remember the name of the play. Tony had me interview her, but he never ran the piece. It irritated him for some reason. I remember his saying, ‘I didn’t ask you for Song of Bernadette, kiddo.’”

  Déjà vu. Of sorts. “Listen, Jeff. Ellen Duprey was married to Jay Phillips. Ten years ago she committed suicide, and Tony used it in the column. Unnecessarily, I’d say. There is a connection but I’ve got to find it before I can tell you where.”