Presumed Puzzled

by Parnell Hall

  “I thought you said she didn’t.”

  “That’s certainly my opinion. I can’t count on prosecutor Henry Firth being that broad-minded.”

  “So what’s her story?”

  “She came back from wherever the hell she was, walked in, and found him dead. The knife was in the body. She thought he was still breathing and tried to revive him.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. You and Chief Harper walk in to find her in an unenviable position.”

  “But—”

  “But what?”

  “That’s no story at all.”

  “I quite agree. And that’s where you come in.”

  “You want me to talk to her?”

  “You can’t talk to her.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s in police custody.”

  “You talked to her.”

  “I’m her lawyer. They’re not catering to her social schedule.”

  “So you get me in there.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I told you. You can’t talk to her with me in the room. The things she says to you while I’m in the room are not a confidential communication.”

  “So get me in there and leave me alone.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Are you trying to be annoying?”

  “No, but I can’t say I’m not enjoying it. It’s the only thing I am enjoying about this case. I got a client who couldn’t look guiltier, who was holding the murder weapon, and won’t say where she was at the time of the crime. She doesn’t want to talk about it. How do you mount a defense of that?”

  “You poke holes in the prosecutor’s case.”

  “What holes? She was caught with the murder weapon. She had blood on her hands. A cliché, and there it is. She actually had blood on her hands.”

  “Yeah, she was caught red-handed,” Cora said. “So, you’re giving up?”

  “Why? I got a retainer. In a hopeless case. It’s a legal gold mine. I can make more losing this case than I can winning a dozen small ones.”

  “Becky,” Cora said irritably.

  “Oh. Pissed you off, didn’t I? You cranky from quitting smoking?”

  “I barely miss it. Well, maybe four or five times a day. It’s not an obsession. Are you really throwing in the towel on this one?”

  “Don’t be silly. I got you. You’re going to win it for me. Come up with the key piece of evidence to demolish the prosecution’s case. To prove her guilty, they gotta prove motive, opportunity, and means. Opportunity’s there, the means is in her hand. The motive is not. The police assume he had a lover because he didn’t come home. She claims it isn’t true. She can claim it till she’s blue in the face, but it’s either wishful thinking or it’s a bad lie. If he was having an affair and the police can prove it, she’s dead meat.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Which is where you come in.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Find out.”

  Chapter

  12

  Feldspar Investments had already heard the news. Brokers eager for details descended on the reception desk when Cora announced why she was there. Interest flagged considerably when they realized she was a woman instead of a cop. On the other hand, they felt freer to ask questions.

  “It’s true, then,” a fresh-faced boy with large round steel-rimmed glasses said. “Roger’s wife really killed him.”

  “You must forgive Dawson,” the man Cora figured most likely to be Feldspar, if there indeed was one, said. “He’s young and eager and dying for some excitement. He thought it would be like Wolf of Wall Street. He keeps waiting for the strippers.”

  “It’s not true Roger’s wife killed him,” Cora said. “It’s true he’s dead, and the police are holding her for questioning. The police always question the wife in a case like that, but I wouldn’t read too much into it.”

  “Has she been charged?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Are you working for her?”

  “I’m working for her attorney.”

  “She has a lawyer?” the young broker named Dawson said.

  “She’d be a fool not to. Now, I assume you want to help. Have the police talked to you?”

  “Absolutely,” the possible Feldspar said. “They were here first thing this morning. They were very interested in what time Roger left work. When I told them he hadn’t been in all day they were considerably less interested.”

  “What else did they want to know?”

  “That was basically it. I think they were concerned with what time he would have gotten home. Why does that matter? From what I understand, his wife was found at the scene of the crime.”

  “With blood all over her,” Dawson said. “I hear she was covered with blood.”

  “He wasn’t in all day yesterday?”

  “That’s right. I suppose he could have popped in and popped out again, but Pam would have seen him.”

  “And I didn’t,” the receptionist said. She was chewing gum and had a pencil stuck in her hair. A computer on a stand was next to her desk. Clearly, she hadn’t been hired for her social graces alone. “And I would have noticed. I remember thinking it strange he hadn’t been in.”

  “When he was here, who did he hang out with?”

  Dawson seemed amused. “Hang out? This is not a social club. We work here.”

  “Yes, yes,” one of the other brokers said. “You’ll get your brownie points, Dawson. She means, who did he go out to lunch with? That would be Brinkman.”

  “Which one of you is Brinkman?”

  “He must be in his office. Show her, Dawson.”

  Brinkman was on the phone when Cora came in. He put up his hand, finished his conversation, which had something to do with stocks, hung up the phone, and said, “Yes?”

  “It’s about Roger Martindale.”

  “Oh. Terrible thing.”

  “You two were friends?”

  “I wouldn’t say friends. We’re closer to the same age, occasionally go out to lunch.”

  “You see him yesterday?”

  “He didn’t come in.”

  “Talk to him on the phone?”

  “Can’t say as I did.”

  “Where’d you think he was?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When he didn’t come in.”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think about it.”

  “If you did.”

  “He got sick. That’s the usual reason. People call in sick.”

  “Did he call in sick?”

  “Well, he wouldn’t have called me. He’d have called Pam at reception. And she wouldn’t have told me. She’d have told Feldspar.”

  “So there is a Feldspar.”

  “Of course.”

  “The police called yesterday. Checking up when he left the day before. You heard about that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you knew he wasn’t home sick. Where’d you think he was then?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Cora smiled. “Come on, Brinkman. You’re buddies. You go out, you shoot the breeze, talk turns to women, some girl in the mailroom with obvious attributes, you get the impression if he wound up somewhere after work you wouldn’t have far to look.”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “What’d you guys talk about?”

  “Work.”

  “You got to be kidding me.”

  “It’s what we do.”

  “Yeah, so you don’t want to talk about it.… You talk about the Yankees. You talk about the Knicks. You talk about women. You ever have lunch in a strip club?”

  “No!”

  “Really? There’s enough of them around here. I would think by the law of averages you’d blunder into one of them.”

  “No, we didn’t. It wasn’t like that at all.”

  “What was it like? Come on, Brinkman. I’m trying to find out w
ho killed Roger. If there’s some woman he might have been with the night he stayed out, I need to know.”

  “I’d like to help.” Brinkman shook his head. “I just don’t know anything.”

  Chapter

  13

  Crowley looked up from his desk. “Oh, hi, Cora. Good to see you. You tell Stephanie you were stopping by?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “No, I was just asking if you did.”

  “No, I came to see you.”

  “I figured that, since you’re here. This business or social?”

  “If it was social I’d have called Stephanie.”

  “Would you now.”

  “No, I just said that because you asked if I had.” Cora flopped into a chair. “I’m getting old, Crowley. Old and tired and not up to my job.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  “I don’t want it to sound like me. Things have been frustrating lately.”

  “Are you hinting at something?”

  “I’m not eager to mess up your life.”

  “You never are.”

  “Yeah.” Cora took a breath, blew it out. “You know that case Becky was looking for?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She found it.”

  “Oh?”

  Cora gave Crowley a rundown of the situation.

  Crowley was amused. “A client holding out on her attorney. Not an entirely unique situation. At least in terms of detective fiction. Didn’t Perry Mason’s clients always hold out on him?”

  “They usually lied to him. With disastrous results.”

  “Did you point that out to the client?”

  “Becky won’t let me talk to her.”

  “That must be frustrating.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “So what do you need?”

  “I gotta find out where he was the past twenty-four hours. Not the past twenty-four hours. From when he left work the day before yesterday until seven o’clock last night, when he got home and either was or wasn’t killed by his wife.”

  “You talk to his friends at work?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They any help?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Okay. I’ll put Perkins on it. See if the guy used a credit card anywhere. If he did, we can nail him. I’ll call you if I get anything.”

  “I don’t have a cell phone.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “I’ll call you if you get anything.”

  “How will you know?”

  “That’s what makes it fun,” Cora said.

  “You got a picture of the guy?”

  “Yeah.” Cora showed him.

  “Not bad-looking. Probably doesn’t look so good now.”

  “I was there when they found the body.”

  “Right. Good thing you had a cop with you.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Okay. Anything else you need?”

  “As a matter of fact…”

  “What?”

  “The guy from work Roger hangs out with. Name of Brinkman. I asked him about Roger’s outside interests and he said there weren’t any.”

  “Maybe there weren’t.”

  “Yeah, but I got twenty-four hours to account for, and I can’t think of a better solution.”

  “So?”

  “I got the impression this guy Brinkman didn’t want to talk to me about it because I’m a woman.”

  Crowley nodded. “Say no more.”

  Chapter

  14

  “Okay, Brinkman,” Crowley said. “I’m a busy man, I don’t want to waste the day with this. Roger might have had a woman on the side. Someone he might have stayed with before he went home and got killed. Now who might that be?”

  The stockbroker shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea, Officer. I don’t think there was one.”

  “Fine,” Crowley said. “Get your hat and coat.”

  “What?”

  “Actually, it’s pretty warm. You can come just like that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t want to answer questions so you’re going downtown, where I can charge you with obstruction of justice and hold you until someone bails you out or your memory improves.”

  Brinkman gawked at him, open-mouthed.

  Crowley was out ten minutes later.

  Cora was sitting on the fender of his car.

  “You know that’s a police car, lady.”

  “What’d Brinkman say?”

  “Roger had a woman, all right. The guy had no idea who it was, but he knew that he did.”

  “You get a description?”

  Crowley shook his head. “Guy didn’t know.”

  “Think he was telling the truth?”

  “Oh, yeah. He tried not telling the truth. It didn’t work.”

  “So Roger had a girlfriend. You think that’s where he was during the missing twenty-four hours? With someone he saw after work?”

  “Or during work.”

  “Oh?”

  “He used to go for a late lunch, take his time getting back.”

  “He ever leave work early?”

  “Not that he knew. All he knew was Roger had a girlfriend and he didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Roger didn’t want to talk about it?”

  “Or this guy Brinkman. But he had no choice.”

  “And Brinkman thought he might have been with this girlfriend when he went missing?”

  “It was possible. He really didn’t know.”

  “Any indication it might have been someone else?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know. Everything is during the day. He suddenly pulls an overnighter. What’s that all about? If it was the same woman, why would he do that? Odds are it’s another.”

  “Well, it’s a theory.”

  “Did you ask him?

  “That question specifically? No, but he had no idea.”

  “Sometimes you can jog a memory.”

  Crowley’s car phone rang. He reached in the window, scooped it up. “Yeah?… Give me that again.… Good work, let me know if you get anything else.” He hung up the phone. “Got a lead.”

  “Oh?”

  “Roger’s Amex. Rented a room in a hotel on Fifty-seventh Street.”

  “The day before yesterday?”

  “No. Half a dozen times in the last two months.”

  “Not what we want.”

  “Are you kidding me? It’s the missing woman. Who cares what day it is?”

  “I do.”

  “Why?”

  “My job is to find out where he was.”

  “Well, don’t be so damn ungrateful. ID-ing the woman’s gotta help.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Let’s take a run over there.”

  “Now?”

  “Hey. We’re a full-service department. You come for help, you get help.”

  The drove over, found the hotel. Crowley parked at a fireplug and they went inside. Cora hung back, let Crowley take the lead.

  The desk clerk was a middle-aged man with bifocals and a sour expression.

  Crowley flopped a shield in front of him. “NYPD. Let’s see the register.”

  The clerk didn’t seem impressed. “We’re computerized.”

  “Fine. Call this up. Roger Martindale. Hang on, I’ll give you his Amex card.” Crowley flipped open his notebook, read the number.

  The clerk entered it into the computer. “Yeah, he was here. A few times. All within the last month.”

  “All single-night rentals?”

  “Let’s see. Yeah, all one-night.”

  “You notice who he was with?”

  “I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”

  “Show him the photo.”

  Cora dug in her purse, slid the picture on the counter in front of the clerk.

  He picked it up, looked at it. Shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said, and h
anded it back to Cora.

  His mouth fell open. His face became animated. He pointed at her. “It’s you!”

  Cora shrunk back from the accusation.

  Crowley stared at her in surprise.

  “You’re the woman on TV! Selling the breakfast cereal! You solve puzzles and help the police!” He pointed again. “Puzzle Lady! That’s it! You’re the Puzzle Lady!”

  “That’s me,” Cora said. “Now about the picture—”

  The clerk wasn’t about to be distracted by a picture. He had a goofy grin on his face. “What a week this has been! Last Saturday—you’re not going to believe this—last Saturday we had Steven Tyler here! You know, from Aerosmith. And he was on American Idol for a while. Sam said it wasn’t him, but come on, who looks like him? And he wasn’t staying here, just visiting someone, so why couldn’t it be him?”

  “I’m sure it was,” Crowley said. “Now, about Roger Martindale.”

  The clerk knew nothing about Roger Martindale. Apparently, if the guest wasn’t a celebrity, the clerk didn’t notice him. Still, he was eager to help, if only to ingratiate himself with the Puzzle Lady.

  “Bob might know,” he offered, in a sudden flash of inspiration.

  “Bob?” Crowley said.

  “My replacement. On my days off. Let’s see here.” He scanned the computer screen. “The fourteenth? What day of the week was that? No, I was on. Here we go. The twenty-third. That would be Bob. He may remember him checking in.”

  “Got a phone number?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Got a name?”

  “Just Bob. But if you want to see him, he’ll be in on Tuesday.”

  “Yeah,” Crowley said. He whipped out his cell phone, punched in a number. “Perkins?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That hotel on Fifty-seventh Street. I got a desk clerk named Bob.”

  “What about him?”

  “Exactly,” Crowley said, and hung up.

  Chapter

  15

  “Well, that was unproductive,” Cora said as they drove back.

  “I’ll say. For a moment there I thought he was going to peg you as the woman.”

  “Me, too. I was not amused.”

  “You just have no sense of humor.”

  “Oh, yeah? How’d you feel if he pegged you for Martindale?”

  “Couldn’t happen. You had a photo.”

  “I could have shown him your photo,” Cora said. After a pause she added, casually, “No reason Chief Harper needs to know about this.”