Murder is a Girl's Best Friend (26 page)

To evade further limb licking, I jumped up from my chair and quickly pulled down my sweater sleeve. “Thank you so much for the invitation, Mr. Smythe. My husband and I will be happy to attend. And I will look forward to seeing you there,” I gave him a wink and a little wave, and then walked briskly toward the door (I didn’t dare shake his hand!). When I reached the door, I turned and shot him a farewell smile. “Where did you say the party is being held?”

“At the penthouse,” he said, straightening his tie and smoothing his steamy mustache. “My home on Park Avenue. You can get the address from my secretary on your way out.”

Chapter 20

I HAD HOPED TO EXPLORE TIFFANY’S ON my way back to the subway, but I didn’t have time. I didn’t have time for lunch either. I had to rush back across town to the bakery for cake and cookies, to the dime store for paper plates and napkins and plastic forks, to the grocery for eggnog and soda, and to the liquor store for a bottle of bourbon (half of which I planned to consume, single-hand edly, before the party even began). Then I had to cart all the stuff up to the office.

Brandon Pomeroy was sitting at his desk when I staggered in, so loaded down with heavy packages my arms were breaking. He didn’t lift a finger to help (big surprise!). He just sat there like a sheik, sucking on the stem of his Dunhill pipe, and staring at me through the glinting lenses of his high-priced horn-rims.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Turner,” he said, in a voice so cold I decided to keep my coat on. “It is now two-fifteen P.M., and your lunch hour ended at one P.M. Either your watch has stopped working, or
you
have.”

“Sorry to be so late, sir, but I had to go to four different stores to get everything for our Christmas party this afternoon, and they were all very crowded. Especially the
liquor
store,” I added, figuring the realization that one of the packages in my arms contained a bottle of booze would soothe his angry soul.

I’m a genius. Pomeroy actually got up out of his chair, walked over to me, and took two of the packages into his own arms. Then he carried them over to the table where the coffeemaker was set up and began to unpack them! It wasn’t that he was being gentlemanly, of course. He was just looking for the hooch. Still, it was nice to have a little help for a change. And the fact that he had stopped crabbing about my too-long lunch hour was a welcome boon.

I unpacked the other two bags, took off my hat and coat, and made everything nice for the party. (Well,
tried
to, anyway. When the only Christmas decorations you have to work with are a stack of red and green paper plates and a batch of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer cocktail napkins, your creative goals are limited.)

At the stroke of three, Harvey Crockett emerged, groundhog-like, from his office to announce that our workday had ended and our Christmas vacation had officially begun. He made a very short (but not the least bit sweet) speech about how it had been a pretty good year, and we all had done a pretty good job putting out a not-too-bad magazine. Then he pushed his fingers through his thick white hair, wished us a happy holiday, and huffed his way around the office, passing out the Christmas envelopes.

My envelope contained my normal weekly paycheck for seventy dollars—
without
the ten-dollar deduction Pomeroy had promised—and a bonus check for fifty bucks. It was a bit short of the million I felt I deserved, and probably only half as much as my male coworkers received, but I was
very
happy to get it. (When your bank account is sitting on empty, and all you have in your purse is a dribble of dimes and nickels, a fifty-dollar windfall makes you feel rich as Rockefeller—John or Nelson, take your pick.) Trouble was, the banks had already closed for the day—and they would remain closed the following day, Christmas Eve—so I wouldn’t be able to deposit or cash either one of the checks until Monday. If I lived that long.

After we’d thanked Mr. Crockett and put our envelopes away, we all gathered around the goody table, helping ourselves to cake, cookies, and eggnog—except for Pomeroy, who shunned all the sweets and filled his coffee cup to the brim with straight bourbon. I might have done the same, but I was so hungry I ate a huge piece of cake and four cookies. And I mixed my whiskey with eggnog to make it more filling.

It was a sad little affair. No happy toasts or handshakes. No friendly hugs or backslaps or gaily wrapped gifts. Mike and Mario were being as quiet and boring (i.e., well-behaved) as they always were in Mr. Crockett’s presence, and Pomeroy just stood off to the side by himself, focusing his full attention on his drink. Lenny was too shy to talk to anybody, and Crockett didn’t have anything to say either. I tried to jazz things up by asking what everybody was doing for Christmas, but that sparked as much merriment as the sight of a corpse in an open casket.

I was dying to break out of there—to hop the subway back to Tiffany’s, take a look around the famous store, talk to an employee or two about certain diamond settings and designs, and then ride the rails straight home to have drinks (and hopefully some dinner) with Abby and Terry. Maybe Dan would have time to drop by. But I knew I couldn’t leave until everybody else had gone and I had cleaned up after the party.

So I was thrilled when, after just a few more minutes of strained non-conversation, Mr. Crockett sidled over to the coat tree, put on his hat and coat, tucked a couple of the afternoon newspapers under his arm, bid us goodnight, and scuttled away like a giant sand crab. And I was ecstatic when Pomeroy downed the dregs of his drink, mumbled an almost inaudible “Merry Christmas,” and followed in Crockett’s wake.

Hoping Mike and Mario and Lenny would hit the trail, too, I began the cleanup, making a big show of the fact that—in my humble (okay,
servile
) opinion—the festivities had come to an end. I tossed all the dirty paper plates and plastic forks in the wastebasket and packed the leftover cake and cookies up in one of the shopping bags. I screwed the top on the half-empty bottle of bourbon and put that in the bag, too. Then I lugged the Coffeemaster down the hall to the ladies’ room, washed it out, refilled it with water for Monday morning, and carried it back to the office. As I was gathering up all the dirty coffee cups for another trip to the washroom, Mike and Mario were putting on their hats and coats.

“Hey, look what I found!” Mario cried, pulling something out of his coat pocket and holding it up high in the air.

“What is that?” Mike asked, gazing up, looking befuddled.

“Can’t say for certain,” Mario said, snickering, marching over to me and holding the object up over my head, “but it sure looks like mistletoe to me!” With that, he grasped the back of my neck, yanked my head forward, and—craning his wide clammy face over the assemblage of dirty coffee cups I was trying to balance in my arms—slapped a sloppy wet kiss on my startled mouth.

Ugh!
First Jimmy Birmingham, then Gregory Smythe, and now Mario Caruso. I was getting really sick of all these surprise smooch attacks (except for Dan’s, of course). And when Mario pulled his lips away and sputtered, “Hey, Mike! Wanna jump on the same Paige? Better take your Turner while the mistletoe’s still hot!” . . . well, let’s just say I dropped a few crumbs of my composure. Oh yeah, I dropped all the coffee cups, too.

Mike and Mario didn’t stick around too long after that. Giggling and guffawing like the juveniles they truly were, they slipped out the door and scurried down the hall before I’d even stooped down to start picking up the cups (or, as was the case with the two that had broken, the pieces). Red-faced with rage over our coworkers’ childish behavior (and embarrassment over his own feelings of impotence), Lenny shuffled over to where I was stooping and—muttering curses under his breath—got down on his knees to help me.

“They’re cretins,” he said. “They should be kept in a cage.”

“Yeah,” I said, adding nothing. I was too pressed for time to start griping about Mike and Mario. Tiffany’s would surely be closing soon.

“I’m glad they’re gone, though,” Lenny went on, picking up bits of the broken cups and pitching them into the nearest trash can. “Now you can tell me about the story you’re working on.”

Desperate to avoid a long explanation and discussion about the Judy Catcher murder (and my own life-threatening involvement in the case), I spit out a quick “Hold on a sec!” and snatched up the unbroken coffee cups. Then I whisked them off to the ladies’ room to wash them, thereby avoiding Lenny’s looming inquiries. And the very minute I brought the clean cups back into the office and set them down next to the Coffeemaster, I launched a discourse on a totally different (and, I hoped, totally
diverting
) topic.

“I bought you a Christmas present yesterday,” I said, giving Lenny a big, toothy, Dinah Shore smile.

“Really?” he said, eyes wide with surprise. “Why’d you do that?”

“Because I
wanted
to, silly.”

“But I didn’t get
you
anything.”

“I know. I didn’t expect you to.”

“So, then, why’d you get something for me?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I already answered that question.”

He was blushing even redder now. He pushed his glasses higher on his nose and blotted his perspiring upper lip on his shirt sleeve.

“It’s the perfect gift, too,” I added. “Something I
know
you’ll really like.” I took my coat off the rack and put it on. “Too bad I can’t give it to you.”

“Huh? Why can’t you give it to me?”

“Because I don’t have it anymore.” I donned my gloves and beret and tucked my purse under my arm. “I was in such a tizzy to get to work on time this morning, I left it on the subway.”

Lenny laughed and wiped his sleeve across his forehead. “Maybe somebody will take it to the Lost and Found. What
was
it, anyway?”

“I’ll never tell!” I said, picking up the bag containing the cake, cookies, and bourbon and propping it on my hip.

“I’m going to get you another one just like it—just as soon as I cash my Christmas bonus.”

“That’s really nice of you, Paige,” Lenny stammered, staring down at his feet, “but you don’t have to do that! You work so hard for your money, I don’t want you spending one more penny of it on me!” His face was as red as a Santa suit.

It was time for me to make my move. While Lenny was standing there, blushing, too self-conscious to make eye contact, I stepped up close to him and sprang a surprise smooch attack of my own, landing a loud and loving smack on his ever-so-rosy cheek. “Happy Hanukkah!” I yelped, and before he could curb his embarrassment enough to reply, I zipped through the door and ran down the hall, shopping bag clutched to my chest like . . . well, like a shopping bag. (I saw no reason to leave the leftover cake and cookies for the office mice. And though it would have been a kind gesture to give the surplus bourbon to the building’s booze-loving custodian, I was convinced I needed it much more than he did.)

Look, I know it wasn’t very nice of me to run out on Lenny the way I did, absconding like a thief with his equanimity and presence of mind (as well as the bag full of goodies). But I was running for my life, you know. I was fixed on finding a killer who now seemed to be fixed on killing me, and the race was on.

EVERY SURFACE IN TIFFANY’S WAS SPARKLING. The green marbled walls were gleaming, the long glass showcases were shining, the salesmen’s faces were glowing, and the diamonds were so dazzling that the eyes of every customer danced with darts of light reflected from their keen, glistening facets. The showroom’s high ceiling was strung with thousands of twinkling white lights and fragrant boughs of pine, producing the euphoric sensation that you were standing beneath a towering tree, looking up through its branches at the stars. No music was playing, but if there had been, it would have been the Hallelujah Chorus.

The aisles between the illuminated glass showcases were so crowded you could barely walk, but I bravely snaked my way along, snatching an occasional glimpse of a bright, black-velvet-backed display. A batch of diamond chokers here, a slew of emerald earrings there, a stretch of sapphire bracelets just ahead. One showcase was devoted entirely to pearls, another to solid gold cigarette cases. I kept walking until I came to the silver section, and then I kept on walking till I reached the lowliest showcase on the aisle—where the more plebeian items were displayed. Items peasants like me might actually be able to afford.

Working my way over to
that
counter, I peered down through the glass-topped case at the various silver sundries perched on the upper shelf. Some of the things were nice enough—elegant
and
utilitarian. The silver cigarette lighters were pretty nifty, for example. Likewise, the pen and pencil sets. The silver baby spoons were kind of sweet, and the key rings were okay, I guess. But some of the other stuff I saw was downright ridiculous. I mean, who needs a silver telephone dialer? Molded in the shape of a finger, no less! And if you show me a woman whose life won’t be complete until she has a silver eyebrow tweezer, I’ll show you a blooming idiot. And the sterling silver toothpicks? I can’t even bear to mention them.