Manhattans & Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

  The pleasant glow on Russ’s face turned serious. “You aren’t telling me that you haven’t agreed to this with Johnson, are you?”

  “That is exactly what I’m telling you.” I told him about my brunch with Johnson and his suggestion that we do such a book together. “I turned him down flat,” I said.

  “Well, that does put a different spin on things. But don’t discount it out-of-hand, Jess. Could be a pleasant respite to be writing about something real. We have other novelist clients who occasionally turn to nonfiction to change pace. Let’s talk more about it. Free tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I have some appearances to make. There’s a party at Vaughan’s house in the evening.”

  “I know. I’ll be there.”

  “Splendid. Maybe we can continue this conversation then.”

  Russ stayed another twenty minutes, excused himself, and left.

  “Jessica Fletcher, I must speak with you immediately,” said a wisp of a man with shoulder-length mouse-colored hair.

  “I’m just about to leave,” I said. “I have another engagement.”

  “It will only take a moment. Please. It is very important.”

  I internalized my sigh and leaned closer to better hear him. Not only was he short, he had lips that didn’t move when he spoke. Lip-reading was out of the question. “I’ve just finished reading your new book, and there is a serious error in it.”

  I stifled a smile. Every book I’ve ever written elicited mail from “experts” taking me to task for missing an important point of fact. I prefer to receive those objections by mail. Having to face my accuser proved more difficult.

  “You have the victim dying within twenty-four hours of mushroom poisoning,” he said. “That doesn’t happen. It usually takes two or three days for amanita phalloides to destroy the liver.”

  I replied, “I appreciate your comment but I disagree. Yes, it often takes longer for poison mushrooms to kill the victim, but not always. My victim died of a collapse of his circulatory system. I checked it very carefully with a forensic pathologist, a friend at the University of Maine Medical Center.”

  He wasn’t deflated by my response. Instead, he puffed up to an inch taller and said through clenched teeth, “I respect the credentials of this person you consulted, but I’ve studied the field of mushroom poisoning extensively, as well as other poisons. Every one of my books is totally accurate.”

  “I don’t doubt that at all,” I said, desperate to escape. “I would enjoy reading one of your books.”

  “I’ll be happy to send you a manuscript.”

  “Manuscript? Haven’t they been published?”

  He stood on tiptoe and said in a voice dripping with anger and frustration, “The publishing industry is corrupt. No one is published without paying off editors. I will never stoop to that.”

  I considered pointing out that I had never paid off anyone, but realized it was futile. Instead, I said, “I think you’re probably right about mushroom poisoning. I’ll be more careful next time.” And I was gone, moving past him with the fluid skill of a premiere football running back.

  I rounded up Ruth Lazzara and suggested we head for our next appointment, the cocktail party with Buckley House’s sales force. She seemed happy to be rescued, too. Once word got around the party that she was head of publicity for Buckley House, she was inundated by fledgling authors seeking an in with the prestigious publisher. We retrieved our coats—not an easy task considering there was one young man trying to keep track of hundreds of garments—bid farewell to a few people, and headed down the stairs. We were halfway to the lobby when I spotted Bobby Johnson coming through the front door. “Jessica,” he said loudly, wedging his way through knots of people. He reached the foot of the stairs. “I have to talk to you,” he said.

  “Yes, I certainly think you do.”

  “We have to go,” Ruth said, pulling me by the arm. Johnson took my other arm. I felt like I was on a medieval torture rack. Eventually they pulled in the same direction and we ended up in a corner.

  “Mrs. Fletcher doesn’t have time for interviews right now,” Ruth said.

  “I don’t want an interview,” Johnson replied. “Please, just two minutes.”

  “Would you excuse us, Ruth,” I said. When she was gone, I said to Johnson, “How dare you approach my agent and suggest I’m interested in doing a book with you?”

  I couldn’t read whether his expression was contrite or smug. His tone, however, said he considered my upset to be unjustified. “Mrs. Fletcher—Jessica—you are some hard lady to track down these days.”

  “And I intend to keep it that way. Why did you go to Russ Checkett with your fraudulent claim that we intend to work together?”

  “Hey, calm down. I figured there was nothing to lose by contacting your agent. I didn’t tell him you agreed. I just said we’d talked about it and that I thought it would make a best-seller.”

  “You had no right.”

  “Okay. I had no right. But hear me out. You’d like to know the whereabouts of this mysterious Joe Charles character. Am I right?”

  “Yes. I would like to know where he is.” My matter-of-fact expression of interest hardly reflected how anxious I was to receive that information. If Waldo was right—that Joe Charles had been behind the attempt to murder him on Fifth Avenue—and if I was right that it had been Joe Charles at Nancy Morse’s house the day I visited—finding Charles could be the key to Nancy’s survival.

  “Well?” I said.

  A smirk crossed Bobby’s face. “Hey, Jessica, tit for tat as they say. If I tell you how to find Joe Charles, what do I get in return?”

  There goes that free lunch again, I thought. I asked, “What is it you want from me?”

  “The go-ahead to your agent for us to do this book together.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Suit yourself,” Johnson said, shrugging. “But finding Joe Charles might answer all your questions about why your buddy, Waldo Morse, got killed.”

  Ruth frantically waved for me to join her. “Where will you be later tonight?” I asked.

  “At the paper until ten, ten-thirty. Then home. You have both numbers.”

  “Yes, I do. I’ll call you later.”

  “I’ll be waiting with bated breath,” he said.

  As Ruth and I went to the street, I realized how dramatically my perception of Bobby Johnson had changed during those few minutes. When we’d first met, I disliked him and his groveling for a story. But then he put forth a different, less predatory face. Now, my feelings were what they’d been initially. He was not to be trusted.

  It also occurred to me as we climbed into the waiting town car that he still thought Waldo Morse was dead. That information could prove to my advantage, depending upon how I chose to dispense it.

  “Where are you?” Ruth asked.

  I snapped back to the here and now of the backseat. “Just reeling from all the conversation,” I said. “So many people writing books, so few opportunities for them to see their work published.”

  “It’s a tough business.”

  The party for the sales force was held in the Wings Club, in what used to be the Pan Am Building on Park Avenue. How could there be an aviation industry without the airline that opened the world to travelers? I wondered as we rode the elevator. But nothing is forever, as they say, which I hoped would prove to be true where the party was concerned.

  “Your book is breaking all sales records, Jessica,” the vice president of sales, Bill Kelly, told me.

  “That’s wonderful news,” I replied. “You and your people have obviously been busy.”

  “Can’t sell a bad book,” he said. “I’m looking forward to your next. Interesting idea turning to true come. ”

  “What?”

  “The true-crime book about the Santa Claus murder. Will that be the title? The Santa Claus Murder?”

  “I don’t think so. I mean—excuse me.”

  The party didn’t last
long, for which I was grateful. No matter who I talked to, the subject of my “new book” came up. The publishing gossip mill was evidently more potent than even Cabot Cove’s.

  We left the Wings Club with a larger contingent than when leaving the mystery writers’ party. Vaughan and Olga Buckley, Bill Kelly and three Buckley House executives would also attend dinner with the German businessman, Wolfgang Wurtzman, who now controlled, to some extent, the publishing house’s future fortunes. Our chauffeur-driven limousines were parked on a ramp at the side of the building. Olga and I stood on the sidewalk and chattered as the group decided who would ride in which car. I glanced beyond her to a walkway across the ramp. A man in a tan raincoat and dark knitted watch cap observed us. I hadn’t noticed him at first. Now that I had, he quickly turned and walked south in the direction of Park Avenue.

  “Your dress is lovely,” Olga said.

  My eyes remained on the man as he continued to distance himself. “Thank you,” I said absently. He disappeared around a comer.

  “Anything wrong?” Olga asked.

  “No, just a little battle-weary. Sorry.”

  The Buckleys and I would ride together. Olga got in, and Vaughan waited for me to do the same. I was about to when a car suddenly appeared from the direction in which the man in the watch cap had disappeared. It approached slowly—very slowly. I looked into the driver’s window as it came abreast. I didn’t recognize the driver, but I certainly knew the man in the front passenger seat. Detective Alphonse Rizzi. No question about it, not with his memorable profile. He looked directly at me, then snapped his head away.

  “You’ll love the view of Manhattan from the River Café, Jessica,” Olga said. “It’s Mr. Wurtzman’s favorite restaurant when in New York.”

  Another fancy restaurant held little appeal for me. I glanced through the rear windshield to see whether Rizzi’s car was following, but it was impossible to tell with so much traffic. By the time we had crossed to the Brooklyn side of the East River, had been ushered to our window table, and I’d been introduced to Wolfgang Wurtzman as “the pillar of Buckley House,” I’d almost forgotten about having seen my detective friend again. But not completely. Seeing him had created a gnawing sense of apprehension that would stay with me the entire evening.

  Chapter Twenty

  “... Da klatscht keiner Beifall—das ist das Ungeziefer, das mit den Flugeln schlagt.”

  One of Buckley House’s executives laughed heartily at the punch line of Mr. Wurtzman’s joke. The rest of the table, including me, also laughed but only because our host’s delivery was so animated.

  “Wolfgang told the actress that it wasn’t applause she was hearing. It was insects flapping their wings,” the German-speaking member of our party explained. We laughed a little harder and louder this time, although it didn’t strike me as especially funny. But I didn’t want to be impolite.

  I tried to dismiss having seen Detective Rizzi, and the call I was to make later that evening to Bobby Johnson. It wasn’t easy, but focusing upon the view of Manhattan’s twinkling lights, and the food—my appetizer of fresh oysters with a minignonette sauce, and an entree of perfectly prepared red snapper—helped.

  A great deal of wine was consumed by everyone at the table with the exception of Olga and me. Wurtzman, a gregarious, heavyset gentleman with round red cheeks, small green eyes, and thinning hair, became even more expansive as the long, thin bottles of Trockenbeerenauslesen, expensive German white wine, disappeared.

  As we left our table and headed for the lobby, Wurtzman, who spoke perfect English when he wasn’t telling jokes in German, said to me, “Jessica Fletcher, you are one of the reasons I invested in Buckley House.”

  “That’s very flattering,” I said.

  “I want you to know that every resource under my control will be available to help sell your books. Might I also say that not only are you one of the world’s best writers, you are a beautiful and charming woman.”

  I flushed a bit and thanked him for his kind words. “Auf Wiedersehen,” I added, coming up with the only German phrase I knew.

  He took both my hands and said, “Yes, until we meet again.”

  We were about to leave the restaurant when a hostess grabbed my arm. “Mrs. Fletcher? You are Jessica Fletcher?

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a telephone call for you.”

  Who would be calling me at the River Café? I wondered. Probably Seth or Morton. The hostess handed me a phone at the desk. “Hello?” I said.

  “If you want a merry Christmas, Fletcher, butt out.” The man hung up.

  I stayed at the desk a few moments to regain my composure before joining the others outside. Ruth Lazzara and I shared a car back to the Sheraton-Park Avenue. She offered to buy me a nightcap, but I declined, said good night, and entered the hotel. As I crossed the lobby and waited for the elevator, the warning voice on the phone at the restaurant repeated in my head like a tape loop playing it over and over. The elevator took what seemed to me to be an inordinate amount of time to arrive, and ascended slower than usual. I watched the light for each floor come and go: “If you want a merry Christmas, Fletcher, butt out.”

  Miss Hiss greeted me by rubbing against my legs. I tossed my coat on a chair and went to pick up the phone to call Johnson. The message light was flashing. I’d call down for my messages later. I dialed his number at the Post, but was told he’d left for the evening.

  I called his home number. He picked up on the first ring. “I figured you wouldn’t call,” he said.

  “Why would you think that?” I asked. “I’m sorry it’s late. I was at dinner and—”

  “Do you want to know where Joe Charles is?” He sounded angry.

  “That’s why I’m calling.”

  “He’s performing in a little joint tonight.”

  That surprised me. If he was serious about disappearing, why would he make a public performance? Then again, I reasoned, he had to eat. And, of course, appearing in a tiny, off-the-beaten-track jazz club did not necessarily translate into a “public performance.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Not so fast,” Johnson said. His voice still had a nasty edge. “I’m not giving you this information out of the goodness of my heart, Jessica. I can run with this story on my own.”

  “Then why don’t you?” I asked.

  “Because I think you and I could make one hell of a score by working together. But you have to back off on this attitude about not collaborating with me on a book.”

  I was being blackmailed, and that made me angry. There was nothing that would cause me to work with him on a book. I’d made that clear, and my resolve had not changed.

  But someone’s life was at stake here, Nancy Morse, and possibly her children. If I summarily shut Johnson off, he would pursue the story without having a clue that her life was in jeopardy. Would that be sufficient motivation for him to cooperate with me without having to make a commitment to a book? He didn’t seem like an especially sentimental person. Ambition was written all over his sleeve, and I’ve learned over the years that people driven to that extent by ambition seldom care whose body gets in the way. But it was worth a try. I said, “Nancy Morse, Waldo’s wife, is in danger, Bobby. That danger might come from Joe Charles. There’s more at stake here than a story—or any book. Please, tell me where he is. If I can talk to him, it might save her life.”

  I waited for him to digest what I’d said and to respond. Finally, he said, “Are you being straight with me, Jessica?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Why would his wife be in danger? Joe Charles? The guy is just a musician.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” I’d debated during his silence whether to tell him that Waldo Morse was, in fact, alive. I decided to, and did.

  “What? Santa Claus is alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I spoke with him.”

  “Jesus. I mean—what a story!”

  “Wh
ere is Joe Charles appearing?”

  “He’s—”

  “I won’t ask again, Bobby, and I won’t grovel. I assure you I will not commit to doing a book with you. You’ll have to make your own moral judgement. If Nancy Morse ends up dead, it will rest on your conscience. Maybe you can write in your next story how you indirectly helped bring about the death of a woman—and her children.”

  I knew I was being melodramatic but didn’t care. The negotiation had gone on long enough. Either he agreed, or he didn’t. If he didn’t, I was in a quandary because I would not learn how to contact Joe Charles. All I could do was hope that he would see things my way, if only to find out more about Waldo being alive.

  “Okay,” he said. It brought a smile to my face. “But don’t do an end-run on me, Jessica. Well go see him together. Remember, we’re a team.”

  I ignored his comment. “Where will I meet you?”

  “Come to my place.” He gave me his address, an apartment building on the Upper West Side.

  “Can’t we just meet where Joe Charles is appearing?”

  “No. Come here. We can talk a little bit before going there.”

  I didn’t like having to go to his apartment, nor did I see the need for any further talks between us. But he held the cards, as they say. Unless I chose to toss in my hand, I had to go with what I’d been dealt. I told him I’d be there as quickly as I could.

  I threw on my coat, took a fast peek into the bathroom to make sure Miss Hiss had water, and raced from the suite, rode the elevator down, heart pounding, quickly crossed the lobby and got into a cab. I gave the driver Johnson’s address and sat back, my mind functioning at a gallop. Had things happened at a more leisurely pace, I might not be in the cab, might not be going to an apartment somewhere in Manhattan and then to an unnamed jazz club in search of a musician who possibly was a murderer.

  But things hadn’t happened slowly. They’d taken on their own pace and urgency, and I was swept up in the current, feeling very much like an unfortunate insect in a swimming pool about to be sucked into the skimmer.

  Chapter Twenty-one