Murder is a Girl's Best Friend (15 page)

(Okay, okay! So I was stretching things a bit now, but I only did it to make a point—a salient and, I believe,
legitimate
point: that
I
was the one who had been doing all the homework here, and if anybody deserved to get a good grade on this test, it was
me
.)

“It was the well-to-do, married older man who bought her the jewelry in the first place,” Abby declared, unimpressed, totally ignoring my sarcasm and bid for distinction. “The richer they are, the deeper the killer instinct, you dig? I bet his wife found out about his pretty young plaything, and about all the pretty trinkets he’d bought for her, and I bet she threatened to haul him into divorce court and sue his playful pinstriped pants off—unless he ditched his little dolly and got all the diamonds back.”

“That could be true,” I said, so eager to talk to somebody about Judy’s murder that I stopped competing with Abby and teamed up with her instead, “but I don’t think he would have had to
kill
her to get the jewelry back. From everything I’ve learned about Judy so far, all he would have had to do was
ask
her for it. Judy wasn’t looking for diamonds, she was just looking for love.”

“Some girls get the two mixed up,” Abby said, raking her fingers through her wild black hair and tying it back in a ponytail with her red chiffon neckerchief. “Who
is
this rich guy anyway? Do you know his name?”

“I know his
fake
name,” I told her. “It’s Gregory Smith.”

“How did you get that name, and how do you know it’s fake?”

“I went to Judy’s apartment building on my lunch hour today, and I had a little chat with her manly-but-motherly next-door neighbor, Elsie Londergan. Elsie told me about Judy’s sugar daddy and gave me his alias. I think she just assumed it’s a phony name because of the Smith.”

“Does Whitey know who this rooster is?”

“I don’t think so, but I can’t say for sure. I haven’t had a chance to ask him yet. He’s been a little—how shall I put it?—under the weather.” The sarcasm slithered back into my tone with a stubborn will of its own.

Abby still paid it no mind. “Are there a lot of G. Smiths in the phone book?”

“Just a few hundred thousand,” I moaned. And that was just a slight exaggeration. (Really!) I had looked the name up when I’d gotten back to the office after my lunch hour (okay,
two
hours), and the roster seemed as long as HUAC’s blasphemous blacklist.

“Well, if it
is
a fake name, how’re you going to find out the real one?”

“From Judy’s landlord, maybe—or by tracing the diamonds back to their original source and trying to get the name of the buyer . . . Or maybe Vicki Lee Bumstead can help me.”

“Who’s that?” Abby said with a scornful smile. “Dagwood’s sister?”

“No, but she was kind of like
Judy’s
sister,” I explained. “They worked together at Macy’s for over a year. On my way home from work tonight, I stopped at Macy’s to speak to Vicki, and she told me that Gregory Smith was Judy’s lord and savior—whatever
that
means—and the greatest love of Judy’s life.”

“Did she know if Smith was his real name?”

 

 

“I didn’t get a chance to question her about it. She gave me her phone number, though, and said she would talk to me tonight if I called before eleven.”

 

 

“
Oy, gevalt!
” Abby cried. “Then what’re you waiting for?!!!” She glowered at me and threw her hands up in exasperation. “In case you haven’t heard, Moses
already
came down from the mountain. And if you take a look out the window, you’ll see that Hell has frozen over, too!”

 

 

See how pushy she could be?

 

 

“It’s only ten thirty-five,” I muttered, annoyed. “I was going to call as soon as I finished my drink.”

 

 

“Bottoms up!” she said, encouraging me—by example—to gulp down the rest of my highball. “Time waits for no woman . . . so you’d be a damn fool to wait for
it.
”

Chapter 11

I WENT BACK TO MY OWN APARTMENT TO make the call. The sales slip with the phone number was in my purse, and besides, I wanted to talk to Vicki in private,
without
Abby sticking her cheek up next to mine and mashing her ear against the receiver, trying to tune in Vicki’s words the very moment they came through the wire.

I dialed and the phone rang twice. Then a woman’s voice, much higher and shriller than Vicki’s, answered, “Hello, who’s there?”

“This is Phoebe Starr,” I said, “and I’m calling to speak to Vicki . . . Vicki Lee Bumstead. Do I have the right number?”

“Vicki!” the woman screeched, blasting my eardrum to smithereens, then dropping the phone down—hard—on a table, or the floor, or some other solid surface. “You got a call! Hurry up! It’s almost your bedtime!”

A few seconds passed, then I heard footsteps racing toward the phone. “Hello?” Vicki said, huffing as though she’d just run down to the deli and back. “Phoebe?”

“Yes!” I said, surprised that she knew it was me (or, rather, the “me” I was
pretending
to be) without her mother telling her.

“Thank God!” she exclaimed, her gravelly voice giving the words she spoke a rich and smoky intensity. “I was praying you would call.”

“You were? Why? What’s happening?” This sounded serious.

“I was thinking about everything you said—about Judy being killed on purpose by somebody who knew her—and I started wondering if you were right. And that started me wondering who could have done it—who could have actually pulled the trigger—and why that person wanted Judy dead. And you know what I think?”

“What?!” I squawked (and I’m sure the timbre of my voice was every bit as shrill as Vicki’s mother’s). “What
do
you think?”

“I think somebody killed her to get the diamonds.”

Big sigh. So Vicki knew about the diamonds, too . . . “What? What diamonds?” I said, playing dumb, waiting to see how she would explain the jewelry connection to me.

“Oh, come on, Phoebe!
You
know!” she insisted. “The diamond necklace and bracelets and earrings and stuff that Judy’s daddy-o gave her. Your aunt
must
have told you about it! I know for a fact that Judy told
her
.”

I wondered if Elsie would have mentioned the jewelry to me today if I hadn’t had to leave her apartment so suddenly. Then I wondered how many
other
people knew about Judy’s valuable rock collection.

“You’re right,” I said. “Aunt Elsie
did
tell me about the diamonds. I was just surprised that you knew about them, too.” God forgive me for being such a barefaced bamboo zler.

“I don’t know what you were so surprised about. I
told
you that Judy always told me everything!” She was getting impatient with me now. Was it because she thought I was being too slow and secretive, or because it was getting too close to her bedtime?

Deciding for both our sakes to hurry things along, I took a deep breath and posed the all-important question. “Did Judy tell you whether or not Smith was her daddy-o’s real name?”

“She didn’t
have
to tell me,” Vicki said. “I knew it was a fake. Judy knew it, too. She wasn’t stupid, you know.”

“Did she ever tell you what his real name was?” I took another deep breath and held it, praying for a definitive answer.

“She didn’t have to tell me that, either,” Vicki declared. “I knew the man long before she did. See, I started working in the lingerie department about six months before Judy, and he was a regular customer of mine. He bought a lot of sexy undergarments from me, and he charged everything to his account, which was credited under the name of Gregory Smythe, not Smith.”

Hallelujah!
It wasn’t wrapped in pretty paper with a bow, but it was still a fabulous Christmas gift. Bursting with excitement, I grabbed the telephone directory out of the drawer of the living room table and opened it to the S’s .

“So, is that where he and Judy met? At Macy’s?” I asked, greedily pumping for more information and madly flipping through the pages of the phone book at the same time.

“Yep! It was Judy’s third day on the job, I remember, and Mr. Smythe came up to buy a black lace bra for his girlfriend. At least I
thought
it was for a girlfriend, since most men don’t usually buy stuff like that for their wives. Anyway, while I was back in the stockroom looking for the right style and size, Mr. Smythe and Judy got to talking—and flirting, she told me later—and I guess he took a real tumble for her, because by the time I came back with the brassiere he wanted, he’d already asked her to go out on a date with him that very same night.”

“Did she accept?” I asked, running my finger down the short column of Smythes, disappointed to find no listing under G. or Gregory.

“Sure did,” Vicki said, “and who could blame her? Her boyfriend Jimmy—the one I told you about before, the poet with the dog?—well, he was giving her a real bad time at that point, spending all his nights at the Vanguard and all his mornings with other girls, and Judy was desperate for a little attention and affection.”

“Which, I presume, Mr. Smythe was more than happy to provide.” My voice was sounding a tad sarcastic again.

Vicki giggled. “He sure was! He took her out that night—and every night after that—for about two weeks. And then—abracadabra!—he gave her a diamond bracelet, and he told her he loved her, and he talked her into becoming his mistress, and he set her up in her very own apartment, and I guess he ditched his other girlfriend, too—the one he had been buying all the slinky underwear for—because he never came back to the lingerie department after that. And I never laid eyes on him again. He was doing all his shopping at Tiffany’s instead of Macy’s.”

Did I detect a note of jealousy in Vicki’s husky alto?

“What does Smythe look like?” I asked her. “Aunt Elsie said he’s pretty old.”

“I would guess he’s in his fifties, but I can’t say for sure. He’s so handsome and debonair, you really can’t tell. He’s got sparkly blue eyes and thick, wavy gray hair, and he looks and dresses like a movie star. Like Cesar Romero.”

“Do you know where he lives, or what he does for a living?”

“No idea. He never talked about his personal life to me
or
Judy. Judy knew he was married, and that he was rich, but he never told her anything else about his work or his family. She didn’t even know if he had any kids or not. She never asked him any questions about his private life, either, because she didn’t want to bother him or make him uncomfortable. She said she didn’t care if he worshipped his wife and had thirty-six children—she loved him anyway.”

“Was it
Smythe
Judy loved, or the jewelry he gave her?”

“Judy wasn’t like that!” Vicki said, with an audible exclamation point. “She didn’t care about the jewelry at all! She never even
wore
any of it. She only accepted the gifts because Mr. Smythe insisted, and because it made him so happy to give them to her. She would do anything to make him happy.”

I thought about what Vicki said for a moment and realized that—in spite of the improbability of her statements—I was inclined to believe her. Her perception of Judy jibed perfectly with both Terry’s
and
Elsie Londergan’s—and three out of three was good enough for me. For the time being, anyway.

“I’d really like to speak with Mr. Gregory Smythe,” I told her. “Could you go into your bookkeeping files and get his address and phone number for me?”

There was a long silence. “Gee, I don’t know,” Vicki finally answered. “I couldn’t do it myself, but maybe I could get a friend of mine who works in the the billing office to look him up.”

“Please try,” I said. “It’s very important that I talk to him.”

“What for?” she inquired, with a sudden and unmistakable tone of disapproval in her voice. “You don’t think
he
killed Judy, do you?”

“I have to investigate all the possibilities.”

“But Mr. Smythe is definitely
not
a possibility!” she said with conviction. “He’s a real classy gentleman. I mean it, Phoebe! He wouldn’t hurt a gnat.”

“But would he hurt a
girl?
” I said. “
That’s
the thirty thousand dollar question.”

“Thirty thou . . . ? What are you talking about?”

“That’s how much Judy’s diamonds were worth. Thirty-thousand dollars.”

“Wow!” Vicki blurted, obviously surprised. “I had no idea that . . .”

“Vicki!” her mother screamed in the background. “It’s past eleven! Get off the phone! Now!

“I’ve gotta go,” Vicki sputtered, responding to her mother’s orders on the double. “Call me tomorrow?”

“Uh, sure . . . okay,” I said, barely getting the last syllable out of my startled mouth before the line went dead.

I LOOKED AT MY WATCH. VICKI’S MOTHER was right; it was fifteen minutes past eleven. But the way I was feeling, it seemed much later. I was so tired, jittery, and confused—and still so upset about Dan—I wanted nothing more than to creep up the stairs to my bedroom and crawl under the covers with my clothes on. I wanted to curl myself up in a tight little ball and pull Bob’s old army blanket all the way over my head, I wanted to drop off into oblivion and forget I ever heard the names of Terry and Judy Catcher. Or, for that matter, Gregory Smythe.