“I most assuredly do,” said Grant.
“That would be more appropriately done in court,” said Dunedin, “but we have agreed to this hearing, with the understanding that the record made today can be shown to the court—in camera at least.”
“Agreed,” said Grant.
“Lieutenant Columbo,” the District Attorney began.
“I don’t know just how we’re supposed to proceed here,” said Columbo. “I thought Mr. Kellogg would probably want to ask me some questions. But, uh— Sir, would you be willing to answer some questions?”
“I do have some questions for you, Lieutenant, but I am not unwilling to answer any you may want to ask.”
“Well, that’s fine then. I thank ya. The first question— Well, let’s see. Yesterday you mentioned a threatening call from a Mr. Gottsman. Would you mind telling us what that was about?”
“It’s totally irrelevant.”
Columbo turned to the District Attorney and shrugged. “Mr. Kellogg,” said the District Attorney, “it will be up to the judge, when he reviews this transcript, to decide what is relevant and irrelevant. If you intend to respond to all questions asked you by citing your personal opinion that the answer would be irrelevant, we might as well adjourn this hearing right now.”
Grant frowned and pondered. “Alright. Harry Gottsman is unhappy about some photographs I sold him.”
“What photographs are those, Sir?”
“The photographs showing the defendant semi-nude.”
Td like to ask Miss Björling a question,” said Columbo. “If that’s okay. Miss Björling, have you seen the pictures we’re talking about?”
Erika nodded. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Well… Are those really pictures of you?”
She turned to Grant, and the two of them conferred hastily, in whispers.
Erika spoke to the District Attorney. “Do I have to answer?”
“You don’t have to answer anything. You don’t even have to be here. But the record of this hearing will be shown to the court—and maybe parts of it to the jury—and in any case it will become the basis for cross-examination.”
She whispered to Grant again, then turned toward Columbo and said, “No.”
“In other words, those were your face on somebody else’s body.”
“Yes.”
“How much did Mr. Gottsman pay for those photos, Mr. Kellogg?”
“He paid $50,000, which I’m refunding. And what does that prove, Lieutenant?”
“Nothin’. Maybe nothin’. Another question. Who’s Constanza, Miss Björling? You remember: the woman’s voice on your answering machine.”
“A girl who wanted to come to my apartment once a week to clean.”
“What’s her last name?”
“I don’t know.”
“How could you get in touch with her? Did you have her phone number?”
“No. I couldn’t get in touch with her. She got in touch with me.”
“And who’s Larry?”
“Guy who wanted a date.”
“What’s his last name?”
“I don’t know. I’d told him to quit calling me.”
Columbo ran his hand through his already tousled hair. “Mr. Kellogg, I have somethin’ to confess to you. I did have officers check your driveway Tuesday night. And Monday night. And last Friday night.”
“That’s what I’m complaining about Grant snapped. “The Los Angeles Police Department is harassing me!”
“Well, Sir, I— I got a note here someplace. Lessee. Oh, yeah. Here it is. Uh… A car that’s not yours parks in your driveway some nights. Friday night last week it showed up there about two o’clock and left around six on Saturday morning. That same car was there Monday night, about the same hours; and again, same car, same hours, Tuesday night. Whose car is that, Mr. Kellogg?”
“It’s none of your business! Now, this is irrelevant. I protest!”
Columbo turned up the palms of his hands. “Really, I don’t have to ask, Sir. We know whose car it is, from the license plates. It belongs to Miss Sonya Pavlov.”
“Grant!” Erika shrieked.
3
2:01 P.M.
After a recess, taken to give Erika time to recover her composure and confer with her attorney, the hearing resumed.
Erika’s face was red. The corners of her mouth turned down. She stared at the wall behind the District Attorney as if she saw nothing.
Grant Kellogg stared at Columbo. “What business is it of yours if Miss Pavlov’s car has been in my driveway?”
“She’s your chief alibi witness, Sir.”
Grant glowered.
“If you’re conferring about her testimony between two and six in the morning, that’s your business, Sir.”
Erika sobbed.
“Lieutenant Columbo—”
The District Attorney interrupted. “Do you want to close this proceeding, Mr. Kellogg?”
Grant shook his head. “It’s been turned into a travesty, but—”
“Can I ask another question of Miss Björling?”
Grant stared at Columbo. He sighed loudly. “Do your damnedest, Lieutenant,” he said. “Nothing you’ve said amounts to the slightest evidence against my client.” Columbo scratched behind his ear. “Miss Björling, do you know what voiceprints are?”
Erika grabbed Grant’s sleeve and whispered urgently in his ear.
“My client is, uh, not entirely aware of what voiceprints are.”
Columbo glanced back and forth between the District Attorney and Grant Kellogg. “Well— We don’t need to go into that right now. What I’m really wonderin’ about, Miss Björling, is that anonymous call you got about Mr. Wylie murdering Miss Tammy Björling. Mr. Kellogg says that was in February. Is that right?”
Erika nodded. “January… February.”
“An’ it was in January or February that you, uh, wrote Mr. Wylie the note we found in the escritoire in his living room?”
She stared hard at him for a moment. “Yes…”
“But Mrs. Wylie says that’s where they kept their postage stamps, so the note was not in that drawer all that time.”
Glistening tears ran down Erika’s red cheeks. “I don’t know what he did with it, where he kept it. How could I know?”
“Uhhm… Kind of a mystery, isn’t it? Lessee… Mr. Wylie gave you five thousand dollars in January. Was that before or after you sent him that note?”
“Before.”
“Right. Or he might not have wanted to give you any more money. Right?”
“I suppose so.”
Columbo shifted his eyes from Erika to Grant, to the District Attorney, then to Captain Sczciegel. “The way I understand, we gotta disclose any evidence we got. So— Miss Björling, do you know that ballpoint ink oxidizes?”
“What the hell is this?” Grant asked indignantly.
“I guess you didn’t know,” said Columbo. “And I guess Miss Björling didn’t know either. But, y’ see, the ink in a ballpoint pen is one chemical composition when it’s up inside the tube in the cartridge; but when it’s rolled out on paper, it dries, which means it oxidizes. It does that at a regular rate. A first-class chemical lab—which we got at LAPD—can analyze the ink on a sheet of paper and give a pretty good estimate of when that writing was written. Miss Björling, the note you wrote to Mr. Wylie was written within a few days before his death—a week at the most, maybe as little as two days.”
Erika screamed and turned to Grant Kellogg and began to pound his arm and shoulder. “You son of a bitch! You PROMISED me!”
“Erika! Calm down! They got nothing—”
“Millions of fuckin’ dollars! You and Sonya living on millions of fuckin’ dollars, while I sit in the slammer doin’ a life sentence! No way, you son of a bitch! No way!”
XXVI
1
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22
Adrienne was already at her table when Columbo walked into Emilio’s. She had her usual martini in
front of her and was wearing cream-white stirrup pants and a dark-blue cashmere sweater.
Columbo had checked his raincoat, and he had taken time to stop in the men’s room and je-knot his necktie so the wide end hung below the narrow end.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Where’s Dan?”
“He’ll be really late. But he’ll be here. Anyway, Merry Christmas and— Columbo! You’re carrying a gun!”
“Yeah…” He looked down, saw that the Beretta was visible to anyone who looked, and quickly buttoned his jacket. “That’s why I’m late. I had to go to the range and shoot this thing. Cap’n ordered me.”
“Did you qualify?”
“Not exactly. But the range officer’s a pal, and he’ll send Captain Sczciegel a note sayin’ I came awful close and will sure pass next time.”
“How close did you come?”
Columbo grinned slyly. “I managed to make it shoot.” He shook his head. “It’s awful noisy, though.”
The waiter who now came to their table was frowning and visibly disturbed.
“It’s alright, Jose,” Adrienne said. “This is Lieutenant Columbo, LAPD.”
The waiter exhaled a relieved breath. “What can I bring you, Sir?”
“This bein’ our Christmas lunch and all, maybe we ought to have a bottle of champagne.”
“Sure. Absolutely. When Dan joins us. But have a Scotch first while I finish my martini.”
“Yeah. Bring me a Glenfiddich on the rocks.”
Adrienne smiled. “You’re developing sophisticated tastes, Columbo.”
“The man that introduced me to that kind of Scotch won’t be drinkin’ any for a while.”
“Grant Kellogg?”
“Right. And, incidentally, thanks for the kind words.” He referred to her column published Tuesday—
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE DETECTIVE, NOT D.A., SANK KELLOGG
by Adrienne Boswell
Assistant District Attorney Charles Dunedin is to be commended for his aggressive and effective prosecution of Grant Kellogg, resulting in the life sentence imposed Monday. It should be noted, though, that he was able to achieve the conviction because of shrewd and dogged sleuthing done by a veteran detective lieutenant of the Los Angeles Police Department. Mr. Dunedin graciously acknowledges that it was Lieutenant Columbo who broke the case.
The Erika Björling testimony was, of course, the dramatic highlight of the trial. It was reinforced by the testimony of Sonya Pavlov and Fred Mansfield, who testified that Kellogg had offered them $100,000 apiece to perjure themselves to create an alibi for Miss Björling.
Although the testimony of those three witnesses sank the Kellogg defense, they were motivated to testify only because Detective Lieutenant Columbo had punched holes in the mercenary scheme concocted by Grant Kellogg. The detective had established, for example, that the notorious note threatening Tim Wylie had been written within days before the murder, not months earlier as Miss Björling and Mr. Kellogg had asserted. He had evidence also that voices recorded by Miss Björling’s answering machine were the disguised voices of Mr. Kellogg and Miss Pavlov.
A dramatic break in the case occurred when Lieutenant Columbo produced evidence that Grant Kellogg was involved in an intimate affair with the principal alibi witness, Sonya Pavlov. Already made distraught by the damaging contradictions the detective had found in her story, Erika Björling became convinced that Kellogg was planning to let her go to prison while he and his new girlfriend enjoyed the profits from the murder she had committed at his behest. Faced with that, she broke down and accused her attorney of concocting the murder plot, telling her that Tim Wylie had murdered her daughter Tammy, and promising her not only revenge, but millions of dollars from the exploitation of her story.
Defense attorney Marvin Duke quotes Grant Kellogg as saying he knew he was in trouble when he learned that the chief investigator in the Wylie murder would be Lieutenant Columbo.
The detective says that Kellogg’s overweening self-confidence did much to destroy him.
“Mrs. Columbo asked me to thank ya, too. She’s been carrying the clipping around with her all week, and I don’t think there’s anybody left she hasn’t shown it to.”
“You’re a modest man, Columbo, in a world that doesn’t any longer count modesty as a virtue.”
“I guess I’m an old-fashioned fellow, Adrienne.”
She interrupted the conversation to allow the waiter to put his drink before him. Then she said, “You’re old- fashioned enough to be able to feel sorry for people. I caught it that you feel sorry for Erika Björling.”
He raised his glass in salute, then took a sip. “Y’ got me.”
“Let me tell you something that may make you feel a little better about her. I was with her yesterday. She’s in the new women’s prison, at Chowchilla. With squeaky-clean behavior and the sympathy most people feel, her ten-to- twenty is going to get her a parole in less than eight years. She’s already done eight months. Hey! Eight months and eight days; she’s got it exactly. So—”
“How is she?”
“She’s miserable. What else? But she’ll be fifty years old when she gets out, and she’ll be a rich woman.”
“How’s that gonna happen?”
“What Grant Kellogg figured—only nothing for Grant Kellogg. I signed a contract last week for 'The Erika Björling Story.’ Seven figures. She gets half.”
“What about the law that says a criminal can’t profit from books about—?”
Adrienne grinned and shook her head. “ 'Son of Sam’ laws. The Supreme Court of the United States knocked that notion into a cocked hat. When the book is out, we’ll do a TV documentary on her. Seven more figures. Columbo—” Adrienne raised her glass. “Grant Kellogg’s vicious plot is going to make two people rich. Erika… and me!”
“Everybody makes money off murder but me,” said Columbo wryly.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Note to Reader
Dedication
Epigraph
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XVIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
Columbo: The Game Show Killer Page 17
