by Jane Heller
“Melanie, get up!” I yelled at her lifeless body as I tried not to gag. I moved away from her and began to pace back and forth across the room, stepping over the debris on the floor. What should I do? What should I do? I asked the doll-like, curiously-still Melanie. I had fantasized her death so many times, but now that she had actually bought the farm, I was paralyzed! Melanie dead? How? For how long? By whose hand?
Whose hand? Oh my God. Melanie had been murdered! Quick! A joke! A joke! When in pain, make a joke! It was bad enough that Melanie was dead, but murdered? Oh, God. My fingerprints were all over the place. And I’d been alone with the body for hours. What if people thought I was the murderer? What if they thought I was some disgruntled employee who went berserk, bopped her boss on the head, and then continued to clean the house? You hear about nut cases like that all the time, only they’re usually disgruntled postal workers, not disgruntled maids. But what if people thought I did it? What if I had to go to jail? What if my picture were splashed all over the tabloids with the caption: “Mad Maid Murders Melanie”? What if I were tried, convicted, sentenced to life imprisonment, and raped repeatedly by a band of crazed lesbians? What if the state of Connecticut had a death penalty and I got it? And I worried about people finding out I was a maid!
Quick! A joke! A joke! Don’t let all this get to you. Don’t let your imagination run wild. Don’t panic. Quick! A joke! Okay. Okay. Here’s one:
Why did the Mafia murder Einstein?
Because he knew too much.
Okay, sport. Now what? Stop with the jokes and do something, I scolded myself. Dial 911, dial 911. My hand shook as I punched in the numbers on Melanie’s Panasonic three-liner.
“Nine-one-one emergency,” a male voice answered.
“Help! Help! Somebody’s been murdered!” was how I described the problem.
“Address?”
“Seven Bluefish Cove.”
“Name?”
“My name or the name of the person who was murdered?”
“The complainant’s name.”
“Complainant?”
“Yeah, the one who’s calling in the homicide.”
“Oh. That would be me. Alison Koff.” God, now I was a complainant.
“And the name of the deceased?”
“Melanie Moloney. She’s a famous author.” I didn’t know if the people who worked at 911 kept up with the bestseller list, so I thought I’d tell them Melanie was famous to make sure we got VIP treatment.
“We’ll be right there,” said 911. “Try to stay calm. Oh and Miss Koff?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t leave the crime scene and don’t touch anything.”
I hung up the phone and stared at Melanie’s body. Suddenly, my mind flashed back to the manuscript hidden under her bed. Was it possible that the person who killed her had come looking for the manuscript? Was there some revelation in the book that the killer desperately didn’t want revealed?
Something told me that I’d better get my hot little hands on that manuscript before the police did. Maybe it held the key to Melanie’s murder. At the very least, it would make juicy bedtime reading.
I ran upstairs at full speed, charged into the master bedroom, crawled under the bed, and retrieved both boxes. I lugged them downstairs, stopping in the kitchen to catch my breath. I looked out the window to see if the cops had arrived. They hadn’t. I pulled open the kitchen door, raced out to my car, and stuffed the boxes under the front seats of my Porsche. Then I ran back inside the house, waited by the front door, and tried not to look guilty. Seconds later, a police car and an ambulance tore into the driveway.
“Alison Koff?” two officers asked simultaneously as I opened the front door to let them and two EMS technicians in. Melanie probably would have made them all go around to the service entrance.
“Yes, I’m Alison Koff,” I said, trying not to sound winded.
“I’m Patrolman Murphy and this is Patrolman DeRosa,” one of the cops said.
“Ms. Moloney’s down the hall,” I said, leading them to Melanie’s office.
The EMS guys gave poor Melanie the once-over, while the patrolmen bolted for the rest of the house, searching for “perpetrators” and waving their guns in the air.
Satisfied that there was no one in the house but the six of us (including Melanie), the patrolmen returned to Melanie’s office and took a quick look at the body. “There’s lividity,” Patrolman Murphy said, eyeing my former employer’s purple hands and wrists.
“She was always livid about something,” I said.
Both officers shot me a bewildered glance, shrugged their shoulders, and got back to business. “You guys can forget it,” Patrolman Murphy said to one of the ambulance operators. “This one doesn’t need CPR. She needs the mortician.”
Everybody nodded in agreement. “I’ll go call,” said Patrolman DeRosa as he walked the ambulance crew outside. When he returned, he informed his partner that their car radio was on the blink. He was carrying a huge roll of plastic yellow paper that read, POLICE CRIME SCENE—DO NOT CROSS. He erected a little yellow fort around Melanie’s office. Then he went back outside to seal off the perimeter of the house.
Meanwhile, Patrolman Murphy and I stood together in Melanie’s office. I made nervous small talk while he made notes in his little spiral-bound pad.
“This phone work?” he asked, pointing to the Panasonic three-liner on Melanie’s desk.
“It should. I just called 911 on it.”
Patrolman Murphy nearly sent Melanie’s stiff corpse flying as he reached over her to grab the phone, planting his fingerprints all over the handset and, presumably, obscuring everybody else’s—including the murderer’s. He punched in a few numbers and said to whomever answered, “Looks like a homicide. Send the technicians and have somebody get a Mincey Warrant.”
“What’s a Mincey Warrant?” I asked after he hung up. I was gaining a whole new vocabulary.
“The thing we gotta get before we can search the place.”
Several minutes passed. Patrolman Murphy was in the midst of asking me about my position as domestic in the Moloney household when four or five more police officers stormed into Melanie’s house.
“Whadda we got here, Murphy?” said a man in jeans and a T-shirt.
“Homicide,” said Patrolman Murphy. “Famous author.”
“A celebrity? Whoa. Corsini’s gonna love it.” The man looked at me and then asked, “Who’s this one?”
“The maid,” said Patrolman Murphy.
“What’s her name?” the man asked.
“Hazel,” I said. I knew I was behaving bizarrely, even for me, but the only way I could get through this ordeal was to make a joke.
“Says her name is Alison Koff,” Patrolman Murphy offered, as if I wasn’t there.
“My name is Alison Koff. Who are you and these other men?”
“I’m Detective Michaels. That’s Detective Origi. Over there is Sergeant Brown. And next to him is Sergeant Petrovich.”
“Pleasure to meet you all,” I said, although no one heard me. They were too busy greeting each other.
“Hey, Dr. Chen. Good to see ya,” said Patrolman DeRosa as he waved to a man wearing a dark gray suit.
“Who’s he?” I asked the room at large.
“Coroner,” said Detective Michaels. “Now, why don’t we go over here and talk.” He steered me to a corner of Melanie’s office.
How can I concentrate with all this activity around me? I wondered, as I watched police officers photographing the scene, barking at each other in TV police talk, and then greeting the six technicians who entered the room carrying medical instruments and little plastic bags.
“What’s your exact relationship to the deceased?” asked Detective Michaels as he started writing in a small notebook.
“I’m her housekeeper,” I said. “No, was her housekeeper.” God, now that Melanie was dead I didn’t have my maid’s job anymore. And when Alistair and Bethany found out I’d worke
d for Melanie, I wouldn’t have my newspaper job either. “Will I have to stay here awhile?” I asked the detective.
“Yeah. I gotta get your story. Then I’m gonna take you down to headquarters so my partner can interview you.”
“Your partner?”
“Yeah, Detective Corsini. He’ll take your statement, too.”
“I understand,” I said, understanding nothing that had happened to me in the past three years.
“You seem pretty cool about this whole thing, huh?” Detective Michaels said suspiciously.
“Cool? Me? No, I’m terribly upset. I worked for Ms. Moloney for nearly a month and enjoyed cleaning her house tremendously.” Well, what did you expect me to do? Admit I despised Melanie and spent my days fantasizing about killing her?
“I’m gonna ask you about your work here, how you discovered the body, all that. Okay?”
“Of course. I have nothing to hide,” I said, wiping my clammy hands on my maid’s uniform.
“Before we get started, I gotta ask you: Is everything just like it was when you found the body?” said Detective Michaels. “You didn’t remove anything from the house, right?”
“Not a thing,” I said. Well, not from this room.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened, Miss Koff,” said the detective. “And don’t leave anything out.”
Part Two
Chapter 10
“Sit there, Miss Koff,” said Detective Joseph Corsini, the Layton Police Department’s answer to John Travolta, as he pointed to the chair opposite his desk. Tall, dark, and handsome in the manner of a person who frequents discos at Holiday Inns, Detective Corsini was easily the most fidgety man I’d ever met. When he wasn’t running his hands through his curly black hair, he was buffing his fingernails on his skin-tight pant leg or smoothing his tie so it lay flat against his shirt. At first, I thought his incessant preening was a tactic, meant to distract and unnerve suspects so they’d blurt out a full confession and beg for mercy. Later, I came to understand that the Detective was what Sandy would have called “appearance-driven.” In other words, he was more intent on showing off his looks than on stamping out crime.
“Don’t I get to make a phone call?” I asked him. We were in his office at the station house, two short blocks from Koff’s Department Store.
“Why? You want to call a lawyer or something?”
“A lawyer? Of course not. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Nobody said you did, Miss Koff.”
“Right.” If I didn’t stop acting so defensive, the detective might think I murdered Melanie. Stay calm, I coached myself. Pretend this interrogation is just a nice little chat with a local cop. No big deal. “I thought I’d call a friend, if that’s okay with you.”
“Be my guest.”
“Thanks.” Great, but who would I call? Oddly enough, the first person that came to mind was Sandy. Sandy, who used to take care of me. Sandy, who used to solve all our problems by writing a check or flashing his Platinum Card. Sandy, who was probably so busy taking Soozie to Lamaze classes that he wouldn’t even remember my name, let alone trek down to the police station to support me in my time of need. No, Sandy wouldn’t do at all. Then there was my mother. No, she wouldn’t do either. The thought of having to tell her that I was a suspect in a murder case—and that I was the murder victim’s maid—was more than I could endure. What about Cullie? Yes, Cullie would help me, I was sure.
I walked down the corridor to the pay phone, fished around in my purse for Cullie’s business card and a quarter, and dialed his number. Unfortunately, I got his answering machine. I gulped, then said, “Cullie, it’s me. Alison. If you get this message soon, could you please come down to the Layton Police Station? I’ll tell you why when you get here. I need—” I cut myself off and hung up. I was starting to cry.
“All set?” Detective Corsini asked when I returned to his office.
I nodded.
“Good. Let’s get your interview now, okay?”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath and said, “Exactly what do you want to know?”
“I’ll just ask you some questions about your relationship with Miss Moloney, how you came to work for her, how you liked the job, where you were on the night of the murder, and the rest of it.”
“But I already answered those questions for Detective Michaels.”
“Yeah, I know. But you’re gonna have to answer them again. For me.”
“No problem.”
I went through the whole sorry saga yet again—that I had been employed as Melanie Moloney’s maid for nearly a month, that I had gone to work on the day of the murder and had found Melanie stone cold dead in her office, that I had spent the previous evening with Charles Cullver Harrington on his boat, which was anchored at the Jessup Marina, that Mr. Harrington had brought me home close to eleven o’clock that night, and that I neither saw nor spoke to anyone from that time until the police arrived at Melanie’s the next afternoon. As I talked, Detective Corsini took notes. When he ran out of questions to ask me, he typed up the notes and handed them to me.
“Read this over. If everything’s okay, we’ll take your statement.”
In nearly incomprehensible police-speak, his notes rehashed everything I had told him. “Seems fine,” I said. “Now what?”
“I’ll take your statement. Raise your right hand and repeat after me: I, Alison Koff…”
“I, Alison Koff…”
“…do solemnly swear…”
“…do solemnly swear…”
“…that the statement contained herein…”
“…that the statement contained herein…”
“…is true to the best of my knowledge.”
“…is true to the best of my knowledge.” All except for the parts about how much I enjoyed working for Melanie and how sorry I was that she was dead. Oh, and the part that said I didn’t take anything from the crime scene.
“Now I’ll take your John Hancock. Need a pen?”
“No. I’ve got one.” I rummaged around in my purse and pulled out the sterling silver Tiffany pen Sandy had bought me as a gesture of thanks for interviewing him for the Community Times six years before. Six years before. Life had seemed so much simpler then, but maybe God was only resting me up for all the bullshit ahead.
I signed the document and handed it to the detective.
“Now I’ll just get the Sergeant to notarize it and you can go.”
Thank God.
The notarizing ritual took a few more minutes. When everything was done, I rose from my chair. “Okay to go now?” I asked.
“Not just yet. There’s something else I gotta know.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, what was it like?”
“What was what like?”
“Working for a celebrity like Melanie Moloney. Did she have movie stars over all the time? Did you get to meet anybody big? Anybody important?”
“You mean, important in the sense that the person had a motive for murdering her?”
“Naw, I mean anybody big, important. You know, anybody who’s been interviewed on a Barbara Walters special.” Detective Corsini winked at me, then buffed his nails on his pant leg.
“So you’re looking for suspects from among the entertainment community,” I volunteered. I was still under the delusion that Joseph Corsini was a police detective, not a media groupie.
“Fuck that,” he laughed. “I’m looking for some good dirt. The kind of stuff that’s in the National Enquirer. You know, ‘inquiring minds’ and all that.”
The man was a fool, but I felt obliged to play along. If I gave him some “dirt,” maybe he’d let me go home. “Actually, there was this one time when Melanie gave a luncheon for magazine editors.”
“Yeah?” Corsini’s tongue was hanging out of his mouth.
“Yes. There were editors from People and Entertainment Weekly. There was also someone from the Star.”
“The Star? Wow, my favorite newspaper. Did they talk
about anyone big at this lunch? You know, any celebrities?”
“Not that I recall. Most of the discussion centered around Alistair Downs and the book Ms. Moloney was writing about him.” Damn, why did I say that? Now Corsini would ask about the manuscript.
“Oh, sure. Yeah. I almost forgot about him. I’m not one for books though. Not much of a reader, you could say. I’m one of those guys that like a good tabloid TV show. Give me a half-hour of ‘Hard Copy’ and I’m as happy as a pig in shit.”
“How nice for you.”
“Yeah, well. Listen, before I forget, if anybody asks you about this case, send him to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“The press. TV reporters. Anybody. They’ll be swarming the area as soon as they find out that Melanie Moloney was murdered. Layton’ll be a zoo.”
“When will that happen?” Things were happening entirely too fast for my taste.
“My boss, Lieutenant Graves, will be holding a press conference later this afternoon. After that, this town will become Media City.” Detective Corsini straightened his tie.
“Will this Lieutenant Graves be telling the media about me?” I asked.
“What about you?”
“That I was the one who found Melanie’s body?”
“Sure. That’s in my report.”
“But does he have to use my name?”
“Naw, not at this point.”
“I’m very relieved to hear you say that. What’s the next step in your investigation?”
“Our forensic technicians will be going over the crime scene with a fine-toothed comb. Today’s homicides are all about forensics. You know, testing of hair fibers, that sort of thing. We may be a local police department but we’re just as up to date as the federal boys.”
“I’ll bet.” I squelched a smile as I remembered how the Layton Police Department’s crack officers had trampled the crime scene and the corpse, and very probably obscured whatever forensic evidence there was. Besides, I was in possession of the Alistair Downs manuscript which, I was certain, held more clues to Melanie’s murder than all the hair fibers in Layton combined. I couldn’t wait to pore over every page.
