13 Suspense

by Parnell Hall

  “Oh? And what were you typing?”

  “Letters, mostly. Answering his fan mail.”

  “Fan mail?”

  “Sure. Mr. Winnington has lots of fans. They write him care of his publisher. The publisher forwards the letters. Not one at a time, but as they accumulate. A batch came yesterday. Maybe twenty, twenty-five. Mr. Winnington likes to answer his mail personally. So I read all those letters, and typed responses for his signature.”

  “Wait a minute,” Frost said. “You answered the letters?”

  “That’s right.”

  “As if you were him?”

  “Yes, of course. People want a personal response. I go through the letters, find one item in each one to respond to. That way people know they’re not getting a form letter.”

  “How nice for them,” Frost said. “And did you have to consult with Mr. Winnington on any of the replies?”

  “For fan mail? No, it’s just routine.”

  “Uh-huh,” Frost said. “Then he can’t vouch for your presence yesterday afternoon.”

  David Pryne, who had relaxed somewhat while discussing the fan mail, looked betrayed.

  “And you can’t vouch for his,” Frost said. “Mr. Winnington, what were you doing yesterday afternoon?”

  “Don’t answer that,” Barney K. Rancroft put in.

  ADA Frost made a face. “Haven’t we been over this? Your client is cooperating to keep his name out of the press. I don’t for a moment believe he’s a suspect, but I have to ask these questions. Am I going to hear the answer, or read in the paper why I didn’t get one?”

  “That sounds like a threat.”

  “Then I hope it’s effective,” Frost said. “Are you going to allow your client to discuss what happened yesterday afternoon?”

  “I have nothing to hide,” Kenneth P. Winnington said. “The idea that I had anything to do with this at all is absurd. Aside from the business with Mr. Hastings, yesterday was a normal day. After he left, I went back to work.”

  “Work?”

  “Yes. I’m a writer. I’m working on a book.”

  “You spent yesterday afternoon writing?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you were home all day?”

  “No, actually I went out to the park.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. I like to walk in Central Park when I’m working out ideas. It helps me relax, think, clear my head.”

  “You spent yesterday afternoon in the park?”

  “Part of it.”

  “What part?”

  “I don’t know. I went out for a couple of hours in the middle of the afternoon.”

  “Could you be more precise?”

  “I don’t know.” Winnington turned to his wife. “What time did I go out, dear?”

  “Around two.”

  “So you were out from two to four?” Frost said.

  “Don’t answer that,” Rancroft said. He turned to Morton Steinway. “And you might want to advise your client also. You want to earn your fee?”

  “Now see here,” Steinway said.

  Frost put up his hands. “Please. Gentlemen. Life is too short. Do I have to make another speech about how we’re all cooperating, or could I move on? Now then, Mr. Winnington has already stated that he went out for a couple of hours around two o’clock. Mrs. Winnington, what were you doing at that time?”

  “You make all the speeches you want,” Morton Steinway said. “But I’m still going to advise my client. Mrs. Winnington, do you wish to confer with me before answering that question?”

  “No, I do not,” Maxine Winnington said. “This is getting ridiculous. Let’s move things along. Yesterday afternoon I was home until about two. Then I went shopping. Grocery shopping. At the Food Emporium.”

  “For how long?”

  “Quite a while. This was not just running out to the store. This was a major shop. Close to two hundred dollars worth of food. I had it delivered, so the store may have a record of it, if you really care. So I can prove I wasn’t killing someone, I was buying frozen peas.” She rolled her eyes. “Good god, I can’t believe this is really happening.”

  ADA Frost nodded. “So you were out for most of the afternoon.” He turned to Kenneth P. Winnington. “And you were out for most of the afternoon.”

  He spread his arms and shrugged. His baby face was beatific.

  “So none of you can vouch for each other at all.”

  20.

  MACAULLIF THREW UP HIS HANDS when I came in. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Look who’s here. Look who comes walkin' in the door large as life, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “What’s the matter with me? The man asks what’s the matter with me. What do you thinks the matter with me?” MacAullif leaned back in his chair, cocked his head, and said with elaborate irony, “I’m sittin here at my desk, mindin’ my own business, trying to solve a homicide or two, and what should happen but the phone rings. Which is not that unusual an event, seein' as how I happen to be in charge of a number of murder investigations, and people do call me now and then when they have information relating to one of them. So I am pleased when I answer the phone, because I think, hey, whaddya know, this just might be a clue.” MacAullif raised one finger in the air, which despite his smile gave him the look of a dynamite stick about to explode. “And guess who was on the phone?”

  “ADA Frost?”

  “Bingo, right on the button.” MacAullif jabbed his finger. “It was old Baby Face himself, and guess what the gentleman wanted to know?”

  “About your involvement in the Sherry Pressman murder?”

  “You really know how to turn a phrase, don’t you?” MacAullif said, “Yes, that’s exactly what he wanted to know. You know what that’s like for a homicide investigator—to have an ADA question his involvement? Do you have any idea?”

  “You’re not involved.”

  “Tell it to him, why don’t you? Hell, you told him everything else. What, you couldn’t tell your story without mentioning me?”

  “I was acting under advice of counsel.”

  “Who, Richard Rosenberg? I should have known. I swear to god that guy is out to get me.”

  “Oh, quit grousing, MacAullif,” I said. “So you traced a couple of phone calls. You think anybody really gives a damn? It’s not like it had anything to do with the murder.”

  “Then why the hell bring it up?” MacAullif said. “Look, I know you, you’re a straight arrow, an ADA questions you you’re gonna tell the truth. Tellin' the truth is one thing. You don’t have to tell him your life story.”

  “Hey, why do you think I’m here?”

  “You probably need a lead.”

  “I came here to warn you. I’m sorry he got to you first.”

  “You don’t need a lead?”

  “Well, now that you mention it.”

  MacAullif shook his head. “You’re unbelievable.”

  “So how’s about ten minutes of your time?”

  “Ten minutes?”

  “Sure. In return for which I’ll tell Baby Face to go easy on your interrogation.”

  “Oh, you’re really pushing your luck.”

  I shrugged. “Well, I’m in a good mood. No one really thinks I did this one. Anyway, how much do you know about it?”

  “Just what I got from Frost. Somebody croaked a woman you called on tryin' to find out who had access to that guy’s phone number.”

  “Let me bring you up to speed.”

  “Yeah, well, make it snappy. You got ten minutes, and the clock is running.”

  I gave MacAullif a rundown of the case. I can’t say he looked particularly thrilled.

  “So, what’s your assessment?” I said.

  “My assessment?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a load of shit.”

  “I had hoped for more than that.”

  “Then you should have given me more than that. I just
call ’em as I see ’em.”

  “Fine,” I said. “You wanna assess this load of shit? From what I told you, what’s your take on the crime?”

  “Off the top of my head?”

  “Sure.”

  “Off the top of my head nothing you told me means anything and the motive isn’t there.”

  “You’re saying she just happened to get killed?”

  “Not at all. No one just happens to get killed. I’m sayin’ she was killed for a reason, but the reason is not apparent from what you know.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t. You told me off the top of my head. That’s only one solution, and it doesn’t have to be right. Another solution would be the answer’s right there in the load of shit. That, stupid as it seems to me, the murder was the act of some anonymous phone caller who had gotten the phone number from her, and who bumped her off to prevent you from discovering their identity. That solution shouldn’t be discarded just because it sounds like a bad novel. Also, it gives you something to work on, whereas without it you got nothin’. Now, if that was the case, you say there were two people called on the woman could have learned the number.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And who would they be?”

  “They’re both writers. Or would-be writers. One’s an old man, keeps writing books, paying this woman to read them. His name’s Wilber Penrose. He’d just given her his fourth or fifth manuscript at five hundred bucks a whack.”

  “Five hundred?”

  “That’s right.”

  “This woman charged him five hundred dollars to read his book?”

  “And tell him what to do with it.”

  “I’d tell her what to do with it. Five hundred bucks. Jesus Christ. Just to read his book? Four or five times? That would be justifiable homicide. Who’s the other suspect?”

  “These aren’t really suspects.”

  “Don’t quibble. Who’s the other one?”

  I consulted my notebook. “The other is Linda Toole.”

  “Sounds like a transvestite stripper.”

  “You’re all heart, MacAullif. Linda Toole happens to be a perfectly nice woman with a mystery novel about cats.”

  MacAullif made a face. “Then I hope she did it.”

  “What?”

  “They’re the worst, these cat women. They’re the ones give people the idea cops are stupid jerks couldn’t solve a crime if it weren’t for some fucking cat.”

  “I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that.”

  “Well, it isn’t good. You got a whole generation of people raised on a steady diet of Murder She Wrote who think crime isn’t solved by cops, it’s solved by mystery writers who are so much smarter than cops because they spend all their time thinking up solutions to things. I got news for you—the only crimes mystery writers can solve are the ones they write themselves. If this woman has any theories on the case, I’d watch out for her.”

  “Oh, come on, MacAullif.”

  “I’m not kidding. If I were you, I’d set my sights a little higher on Linda Toole.”

  “Any more bright ideas?”

  “How does the secretary strike you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s his story? You think he could be in on this?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why of course not?”

  “He was there when the calls came in.”

  “He could have had an accomplice. Besides, the caller doesn’t have to be the killer. The two things don’t have to be related at all. Anyway, what’s his story?”

  “He says he was typing letters all afternoon.”

  MacAullif waved it away. “No, no. I don’t mean his alibi. I mean his story. What’s he doin’ there? What makes the guy tick?”

  “He’s doing a job.”

  “Yeah, but why? Why that one? What’s the guy want out of life?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Then how can you judge him as a suspect? These other two, at least you know what they want. They’re trying to sell their books. But this guy—” MacAullif shrugged. “What the hell does he want?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Any other ideas?”

  “What about those other two?”

  “What other two?”

  “The other two you told me about. The editor and the agent. What about them?”

  “What do you mean, what about them? They didn’t get killed.”

  “Exactly. And if I understand you correctly, you called on them before you called on her. Which means they not only knew what you were up to, they knew where you were going.”

  “But, but, but—”

  “But what?”

  “But they had the number. They had it themselves. They didn’t need to get it from someone else.”

  “Yeah, but there you go again assuming the phone number had something to do with it. The phone number was the reason you called on these people. It doesn’t have to be the reason one of them died. Suppose it’s not the phone number, but just the idea you’re poking into their business at all. And one of these other two says, Uh-oh, wait’ll he gets to her, there’s gonna be hell to pay, and tags along behind you and bumps the broad off.”

  “Why?”

  “How the hell should I know? I haven’t got a single fact. I only know what you told me, and you don’t know shit. Now then, I hate to break it to you, but your ten minutes is almost up-

  “Any more suggestions?”

  “You’re not gonna wanna hear this, but the most likely suspects are your client and her husband.”

  “Why wouldn’t I wanna hear that?”

  “Don’t be a jerk. They’re payin’ the bills. Anyway, they top the list. They got no alibi, and they’re the most involved.”

  “What’s the motive?”

  “How the hell should I know? We got no information yet. You get some more, you work it out.”

  My beeper went off. “Mind if I use your phone?”

  “Oh, sure, why not. Just move right in. Take, over the whole office.”

  I called the Winningtons. Maxine answered the phone.

  “It’s Stanley Hastings. Did you beep me?”

  “Yes, I did. Can you get over here?”

  “Why?”

  “We got another call.”

  21.

  “IT WAS ON THE ANSWERING machine when we got home,” Maxine said.

  “The answering machine?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t tell me that on the phone.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “No, I don’t suppose I did. This guy left a message on the answering machine?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s the message?”

  “Prepare to die.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  I had been following my client from the front door of her apartment to her husband’s study. He was conferring with his secretary when we came in. He looked up, saw me, and declared, “This has got to stop.” A typical Winnington statement, asserting his authority in matters over which he had absolutely no control.

  “I understand the caller left a message,” I said.

  “He sure did,” Winnington said. “Only we weren’t here to get it because you got us dragged downtown.”

  “Where’s the message?”

  “On the answering machine.”

  “Is it still there?”

  “Where else would it be?”

  “I don’t know, but you better take it out before it gets recorded over.”

  Winnington glared at me. You could tell he knew it was the right thing to do, but didn’t want to do it because I was the one who had suggested it. After a moment he said, “David, take it out.”

  “You want to play it for me first?”

  “You think we should risk that?” Winnington said ironically. “What if he were to accidentally erase it?”

  “Oh, I don’t think he will.
Go on. Play it.”

  David Pryne stepped up to the machine, pressed the button. There came the whir of the tape resetting, then:

  “Prepare to die.”

  It was a low hoarse whisper, the same voice we’d heard before. Only then it had just seemed strange and unsettling. In light of what had happened it was positively chilling.

  “Okay,” I said. “Take it out. You call the cops?”

  “The police?” Winnington said. “No. Why?”

  “They’re gonna want that tape.”

  “Well, I’m not sure they should have it.”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  “The more we give them, the more they’re going to think we’re involved. I’ve already been dragged in once. I don’t want it to happen again.”

  I put up my hand. “I think you’re missing the big picture here. That ADA is cooperating with you on this thing. The only reason you don’t have every reporter in town at your door is because he agreed to control publicity. Now, you wanna turn around, kick him in the teeth by withholding evidence, you wouldn’t believe how quickly that cooperation will be withdrawn. Now then, you gotta call. It’s evidence. In all likelihood it’s a voice print of the murderer. And you’re gonna give it to the cops.”

  “I don’t like being told what to do.”

  I smiled. “It’s all right. I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you what I’m gonna do. I know it’s evidence, and I’m turning it in to the cops.”

  “You have no right to do that.”

  “Oh, yes, I do. I not only have the right, I have the responsibility. Now, you wanna take the position that’s your property and I have no right to touch it, well, that’s fine, I won’t. I will merely tell the cops you have it. After that, it’s between you and them.”

  Winnington stood there blinking, as if he couldn’t believe I’d said that. I could see him groping for the appropriate response. Clearly, he didn’t want to lose face in front of his secretary and his wife. But, short of firing me, which seemed a distinct possibility, there wasn’t much he could say.

  That didn’t stop Kenneth P. Winnington. After a moment’s hesitation he made an abrupt about-face, and embraced my opinion as if it were his own. “He’s absolutely right,” he said. “This has to go to the cops. David, call and tell them we have it. And get it out of that damn machine.”