Pam drummed her fingers on the table. “I watch Columbo, too, and there was this one case where the husband left a building and then went around to a back alley and shimmied up a drainpipe to get back in the house. He murdered his wife and then went back down the pipe to a local bar where dozens of people could see him and furnish an alibi.”
“Pam, I doubt that there is an alley or drainpipe in the back of The Dakota.”
She was really into it now. “Don’t be so sure that Craig couldn’t reenter the building unseen. Suppose he bribed a maintenance worker to open a side door or something?”
“Then he’d have to kill the maintenance worker or he’d always have to worry about the guy double-crossing him.”
Pam thought that over for a moment. “Maybe the worker was in the country illegally. He could be back in Santo Domingo or wherever by now.”
Her theory made sense but I didn’t want the game to stop. “Let’s forget Craig for a minute. How about an angry neighbor? After I leave, he slips up to Annabelle’s place, does the dirty deed, and takes the elevator back up or down to his own apartment. That’s why he isn’t seen on the lobby videotape. The sister goes up, finds the body, and runs screaming down to the lobby.”
“How did the sister get into the apartment?”
I shrugged. “She must have a key.”
“Okay, what is the neighbor so angry about?”
“Maybe he wrote a book, Annabelle read it, and refused to publish it.”
This sent Pam into gales of laughter. “Isn’t it awful when you let people know that you work in publishing? I’ve had pages thrust at me by my lawyer, dry cleaner, and even the woman who does my nails.”
“I stopped telling folks what I do for a living a long time ago.”
We talked shop after that for a while and then paid the check. On the way back to the office, I made a mental note to put Alyssa and Pam together.
The rest of my day was spent in splendid anticipation.
Victor had chosen a fine, upscale Chinese restaurant called A Dish of Salt, which was a few blocks away, and as we walked along chatting pleasantly, I marveled at how quickly my dreary existence had been transformed. After weeks of dread, sadness, and panic, I was now moving closer to my dream of true love in the arms of Victor Bell.
“Where do you live?” I asked curiously.
“In Park Slope. I’m a native Brooklynite.”
He went on to tell me that he was an only child, raised by a single parent. His mother was a nurse who now lived in San Francisco with her second husband in a house that was much too big for the two of them. “It’s psychological,” he said. “We always lived in such small apartments that now she’s gone overboard.”
Well! Paul and I had built our friendship on the fact that we were the only two members of the Black Pack who did not come from upper middle-class homes. All the rest of them were the children of professional parents who attended private schools, were able to afford music and dance lessons, braces for unruly teeth, and household help for cooking and cleaning. Paul’s youth had been even more deprived than mine. We always listened in jealous amazement at Black Pack meetings when some of the others talked about their young lives, which seemed straight out of the Cosby show.
Now, it seemed that Victor might have more in common with Paul and me than he did with the others.
“Money was tight in my house, too.” I offered him the opening shyly.
He looked down at me in surprise. “Mom and I didn’t have financial problems. Registered nurses do pretty well, you know. My problem was loneliness. She had to work the night shift a lot and I didn’t have anyone to play with.”
Allrighty then, I’d have to find some other way to bond with him.
I chuckled lightly. “I’m an only child, too. When I get married, I’m going to have a houseful of kids so they’ll have plenty of playmates.”
He looked uncomfortable and that’s when I remembered that you were never supposed to mention the word “marriage” on a first date.
“So how is work coming along?” I asked hastily.
“Not as well as I’d like. I was up for district manager a few weeks ago and the job went to someone else.”
By now we’d reached the restaurant and we waited for a few minutes until a table became available. I was still full from the salmon I’d had at lunch. What could I order that was light and yet plentiful enough to keep Victor at the table for a long time?
When we were seated, he gave me a sexy smile. “Thanks for coming out with me.”
He should thank me five hundred times. After referring to my vagina as a THAT! Maybe I should give it a name . . . something elegant like Grace, in case another man did the same thing to me. I would haughtily reply, Her name is not THAT. It is Grace.
Victor was looking at me curiously. “A penny for your thoughts.”
“I was thinking about what you said about the district manager position,” I lied smoothly. “The same thing happened to me recently.”
He sighed and spread his napkin over his lap. “I’m going to open my own business. I’m sick of this kind of nonsense. These decisions are not based on ability . . . it’s all politics.”
We ordered wonton soup and agreed to share some kind of shrimp dish. He asked the waiter to bring him a straight vodka on the rocks.
“Why don’t you want a drink?”
Because I’ll end up telling you about the pornographic dreams I have about you at least three times a week, I thought.
“I’ve just started a new diet.”
“You look fine to me just the way you are.”
The gods were smiling down on me.
“Thanks.”
“So, tell me about the job you didn’t get.”
“It’s the next step up the editorial ladder. I’ve done mysteries, romance, suspense, biography, every category I could think of over the past five years so that I’d be ready for an executive editor slot if one opened up. Well, one did open up and my boss gave it to a woman named Astrid Norstromm.”
“Did she give you a reason?”
“She said that Astrid had worked in a wider variety of categories. What she really meant was that all my work was with Black authors. Astrid’s authors are all white.”
“Damn! What did you say to her?”
“Nothing. Not a word. I got up and walked out.”
“Was that before or after the CEO was killed?”
“My conversation was with the CEO. She got killed the next day.”
Victor was about to say something when a thought suddenly occurred to me.
“Wait a minute! Annabelle never had the chance to announce her decision. I wonder . . .”
“You wonder if it’s too late,” Victor observed quietly. “It is too late. By the time Annabelle talked with you, the paperwork on this other woman was already done and processed. That is how the corporate machine works. They’re just waiting until a decent amount of time has passed before they start announcing promotions and such. After all, the poor woman’s killer is still on the loose.”
He was right.
“Oh, well,” I offered lamely. “Better luck next time.”
He hunched forward and stared at me intently. “Tell me, Jackie. Did you see anyone lurking around the building that morning?”
“What building?”
“When you ran out of the lobby . . . did you see anyone you knew?”
What an odd question for Victor to ask. “No. I was too intent on getting a cab. Was there someone around who I should have noticed?”
“I’m . . . well, um . . . of course not.”
I finished the last drop of my soup and let the spoon clatter into the bowl. “That reminds me—I saw you at Annabelle’s funeral. What were you doing there?”
“We met once years ago at an industry function,” he replied smoothly. “I was just getting started as a sales rep in publishing. She was nice enough to answer all my stupid questions. I figured the least I could do was show up and pay my respects.�
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“The whole thing is just so sad.”
He leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Yeah. Are the police close to making an arrest?”
I shrugged. “Maybe Keith knows, but no one has told me a thing.”
He took a sip of vodka. “This murder has got everyone in the city all cranked up.”
We moved on to other topics and soon I was wondering more about how to get invited into his Park Slope bedroom than anything else.
19
MISS NIXON
Victor made no move to seduce me the night before. Like a perfect gentleman, he thanked me for a pleasant evening and put my horny behind in a cab. I spent my night dreaming of the two of us locked in a series of feverish, fantasy sexual positions. When the phone rang, I groaned and willed it to go away. I wasn’t ready to let Victor go just yet. It stopped and started ringing again insistently.
“Hello.”
“Jackie, it’s Paul. Wake up, girl, all hell is about to break loose.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s eight. Get up, throw something on, go out and buy the Comet. Then call me back.”
I swung my feet onto the floor. “Is it about Annabelle’s murder?”
“Stop talking and get the paper, Jackie.”
Paul hung up.
I threw my coat on over my nightgown, slipped my feet into a pair of loafers, and hit the street with my sleep-encrusted eyes and unwashed body, looking like a madwoman.
The chilly, winter-morning air had pierced through my coat, danced under my flannel pajamas, and wrapped itself around my naked skin by the time I turned onto 111th Street where the little Spanish man stood hawking his newspapers. I dug two quarters out of my coat pocket, pressed them into his hand, and raced back home, hugging the New York Comet to my chest.
I sat down on the sofa without removing my coat and started to read. The headline blared FORMER DEBUTANTE’S MURDER STILL UNSOLVED. The front page was divided lengthwise by a thick, black line. On the left side was a photo of Annabelle, looking young and fresh in a floor-length white gown. A white corsage was pinned to her wrist. The caption underneath it said: Eighteen-year-old Annabelle Welburn, on the eve of her society debut. The right photo showed Annabelle on the beach, throwing a ball at a tiny, dark-haired tot who was clapping her hands in glee. The caption underneath that one said: Annabelle Welburn Murray and her two-year-old daughter, Dora. The pictures were touching but no reason for Paul to wake me up at eight in the morning.
There were more pictures of Annabelle with various family members inside and two lengthy stories about Annabelle’s life as a prep school student and her years at Vassar. I was about to close the paper and call Paul when the name “Gilchrist” in Tiffany Nixon’s column caught my eye. It read:
WRAPPED IN A PC CLOAK
by Tiffany Nixon
So Detective Marcus Gilchrist has a videotape of someone with a grudge against poor Annabelle Welburn Murray running away from the scene of her murder. The district attorney knows where the woman lives and works and yet neither man is making any moves toward an arrest in this month-old case. Why not? Because the woman on the tape is wrapped in a cloak called Political Correctness.
The press also seems willing to let the videotape slide under the rug, accepting a celebrity attorney’s word that the woman’s sprint was toward a business appointment rather than away from a body with its throat twisted and mangled like an obscene, oversized doll. Why? Because the woman on the tape is Black from a humble background and the victim is white and rich.
Fear of political incorrectness has turned the media away from the obvious and paralyzed the New York City Police Department.
The ridiculous PC awareness which runs rampant through our society has long been the bread and butter of standup comics, but it isn’t funny. In this case it is downright appalling.
I was perched on the edge of my sofa in a semitrance, struggling to determine which was more horrific: the fact that the writer of such racist trash was a Black woman, or her thinly veiled allegation that I was a cold-blooded killer who was being spared the electric chair simply because of my ethnicity.
The telephone chimed. It was Paul again.
“Jackie, did you read it?” he asked.
“I’m stunned.”
“Honey, what grudge did you have against her?”
“I guess it means I was mad about the promotion.” My heart was thumping against the wall of my chest with such force that I thought it was going to pop right out and fall to the floor at my feet. “I’ve got to get off the phone and try to reach Keith Williams.”
“Call me back and let me know what he says. I won’t leave for work until I hear back from you, okay?”
My heart thumped with anger and terror. “No. I’ll get back to you when I can.”
The only people I trusted at that moment were Mama and Keith. I wasn’t worried that Mama would see the column because she only bought the New York Daily News. I concentrated on finding Keith. His secretary said he wasn’t expected in until ten A.M. I couldn’t bear to just sit in the apartment, and my instincts told me I needed legal advice before going anywhere near the offices of Welburn Books. So I decided to cool my heels in the waiting room at Keith’s law firm.
Finding a yellow cab on my street was nearly impossible, even though plenty of whites had moved into Harlem. So, I took a Gypsy cab down to Trump Tower and the driver charged me twenty dollars, which pissed me off even more. A young man was sitting at the reception desk.
“Hi, my name is Jacqueline Blue. I know Keith isn’t in yet but I’d like to just sit here and wait for him if you don’t mind.”
“Is he expecting you?” The young man had close-cropped brown hair and the beginnings of a moustache.
I was in no mood for protocol. “If he has read the New York Comet this morning, he is certainly expecting at least a phone call from me. Now please, may I just sit down?”
“Mr. Williams is in his office,” the young man said smoothly. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”
The pint-sized secretary was wearing another expensive suit and I wondered how much Keith paid his staff. She beckoned me to follow her and I did.
There was no music coming out of the sound system and Keith was on the phone.
I sat down in the same guest chair facing Keith that I had used on my first visit.
Keith ended his call and came all the way around the desk to shake my hand before sitting down again.
“Did you see that column in the paper this morning?” I cried out anxiously.
“I did.”
“Well, what should I do?”
Keith was noticeably uneasy. “You have got big problems, Jackie.” He sighed and repeated himself, “Big problems.”
He said “you,” not “we”! My God, he was pulling out!
I was desperate. “Listen, Keith, I know I can’t afford you but if you’ll just help me out a little longer, I promise I’ll pay your bill even if I have to work two jobs when all this is over.” My voice was rising to a shriek. “Please, you can’t desert . . .”
He put a stop to my lament with the raise of his hand. “Calm down, Jackie. It’s been almost three years since I took on a pro bono case. I’m not going anywhere because that would make you look guilty as hell and I don’t believe you killed Annabelle Murray.”
I actually wept with gratitude and he took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and gave it to me.
“Now, we’ve got a lot of work to do. Let’s get to it. The police have ruled out burglary as a motive. There were several paintings on the premises valued at over three million dollars that weren’t touched. The victim was still wearing an expensive pearl necklace and matching earrings when the body was found and her wallet, which was clearly visible, contained $500 in cash and several credit cards.”
“So, the motive was personal,” I replied.
“Yes.”
“What on earth did Annabelle do to make someone so angry?”
&
nbsp; “That’s the $50,000 question, Jackie. Tell me, do you know a lot of journalists?”
“No. Most of my authors write fiction.”
“Have you ever met the columnist Tiffany Nixon?”
“Yes.”
“When, where, and why?”
“Last year at the office. She came in to meet with an editor named Astrid Norstromm about a book idea that she had. Since Tiffany Nixon is Black, I had to attend the meeting.”
“Did the book get published?”
“Not by Welburn. It was a horrible idea . . . some right wing, conservative rant against Black colleges, affirmative action . . . I don’t remember it all but it was truly nauseating.”
“Did you tell her how you felt about it?”
“No. She was Astrid’s guest and that would have been inappropriate.”
“Then what happened?”
“We listened to Miss Nixon’s spiel and then Astrid walked her out to the reception area. When Astrid came back, I told her I would not support the acquisition when it reached the editorial board.”
“What happened at the board meeting?”
“Astrid didn’t bring it up. I never heard about it again.”
“Do you think Astrid told Miss Nixon that it was you who jettisoned her chances?”
“We’re not supposed to let a prospective author know about stuff like that, but Astrid hates me, so she might have.”
“I want to hear all about your problems with Astrid but not right now.”
“Okay. I have to call my job and tell them I’m on my way. May I use your phone?”
“Jackie, someone in that office may be trying to set you up. I’ll talk to whoever is in charge and arrange a paid leave-of-absence for you until this case is closed.”
“My authors need me, Keith. Can’t I just work from home?”
“Jackie, I was on the phone with a friend of mine when you came in. She is a high-ranking member of the police department and we’ve known each other a very long time. Your fingerprints have been found in the same bathroom where Mrs. Murray’s body was found. By tomorrow morning, Tiffany Nixon will know that and the pressure on the police department to make an arrest will be tremendous. I sincerely doubt that the victim’s family will allow you to take any company documents home to work on.”
A Meeting In The Ladies' Room Page 9
