Strangled Prose (8 page)

The second detective stuck his head in the door. “I've finished with the scene of the crime, Rosen. I'm going to the hospital to see if the pathologist has anything to add about the time of death. Do you know who the victim was?”

“Beyond the obvious?”

“The victim was a well-known romance writer. She wrote a string of sexy novels, right up there with Harold Robbins and Rosemary Rogers. My wife reads them, then keeps me up half the night for a week trying out these really kinky things. I can't play racquetball for months afterward.”

Lieutenant Rosen gave me a wounded look. “Mrs. Malloy mentioned that Mrs. Twiller wrote novels, but she didn't elaborate on the content. Scout around and see if you can find some of the books.”

The man nodded and disappeared. The lieutenant and I studied various corners of the ceiling for several minutes. I wondered where Douglas was. I prayed I wouldn't still be in den-detention when he finally returned home to hear the news.

“Mrs. Malloy,” Lieutenant Rosen finally said, “I wish you'd be a bit more candid with me. We're not dealing with a case of shoplifting or a failure to yield. Someone—specifically, a friend of yours—has been murdered in a very brutal way.”

“Granted. But I don't know why you think I have any information about it. Mildred most likely surprised a burglar or caught the gardener digging up a hybrid to sell on the botanical black market. I certainly didn't kill her, nor did anyone I know. Everybody liked Mildred Twiller; hence, we tolerated Azalea Twilight.”

“That is an interesting point. Who was murdered, Mrs. Malloy? A romance writer or a housewife?”

“That is your interesting point, Lieutenant. I need to run by the Book Depot to make sure I locked the back door, then go home and drink a toast to my friend. Call me if I can add anything else,” I said firmly. I grabbed my purse and started for the door.

“One other thing,” he said as we walked into the foyer. “I'll have to have an official statement about the reception and Miss Belinski's telephone call. I'll let you lock up your store and drink the toast, then I'll come by after I speak with Miss Belinski.”

“With a stenographer?”

“The CID branch lacks the resources of Scotland Yard. I'll take it down and have someone type it tomorrow. You will have to run by the station to sign it.”

“Wonderful. If I see Douglas Twiller, I'll send him home. In the meantime, happy sleuthing, Lieutenant.”

“One last thing, Mrs. Malloy.”

“One
last
thing, Lieutenant?” I said, emphasizing the second word with a wry tone.

“Yes, Mrs. Malloy. Please try to remember your exact movements this afternoon, with corroboration if possible. Unless we find the gardener with fresh soil on his hands, we will be wanting to know where everyone was during the hours preceding the crime.”

“I was hostessing a reception,” I said coldly. “There are approximately seventy-five people who will confirm that. I'll have the guest list for you when you come by.”

I stomped across the porch, trying to look terribly indignant, and made it to my car without any obvious tremors. But as I pulled away into the relative safety of the traffic, the lieutenant's offhand request reverberated in my head as though it were an echo chamber.

I had been hostessing the reception—up until I lost my temper and went raging down the railroad tracks to glower at Mildred's roof. Murderously, if I recalled my mood with any accuracy. Not that I had scrambled up the path to follow through on it, I told myself in a virtuous tone. I had merely reminded myself that I was not the only one in town with a grievance. Britton and Maggie were both as furious as I. Maggie had only read a few excerpts from
Professor of Passion;
she might have missed references to other faculty members.

“Oh, damn!” I said aloud, as I pulled into the weedy patch of gravel I refer to as my parking lot. Mildred might have compromised the entire Farber English faculty. Her murder might have been a departmental effort, à la
Orient Express.
Clearly, the first order of business was to read the silly thing. The second was to decide exactly how much Lieutenant Rosen needed to hear about my actions after the tawdry scene. I do not go willingly to meet lions in the middle of the Colosseum.

The Book Depot was dark and still. I switched on a single light and went back to the office to grab the book I had noticed on my desk. It was not there. I pondered for a moment, trying to remember what had happened to my own personally autographed copy. I had used it for a canapé tray but then had put it down somewhere when I heard the first stirrings of the FWO demonstration.

It was hardly worth stealing—especially when everyone in the room had already been coerced into buying one. Surely no one would want two copies of
Professor of Passion.
None of us had wanted one—until we heard the juicy parts from Maggie. It was now a hot item in Farberville.

I checked the back door and returned to the front of the store. The last few unsold copies of the book were in a carton behind the counter. Poor Azalea Twilight would never again take up her purple pen, I thought sadly. The world of prose would survive; I could only hope the widower would do the same. I stuffed a copy in my purse.

I locked up and drove home. A splatter of rain caught me as I dashed to the porch. Once inside the house, I stopped to stare at Maggie's door. No line of light spilled from underneath it, nor were there any muffled noises beyond it.

I went up the stairs to my own apartment. I was relieved to find a note from Caron taped on the door. It said, amid curlicues and heart-shaped dots, that she and Inez had gone to the Farber library to work on reports for world government. I didn't believe it, but I certainly wasn't in the mood to explain what had happened in the last few hours. They, if no one else, would be devastated by the loss of Azalea Twilight, their favorite author.

I dialed Britton's number, but he wasn't home. For the best, I told myself as I made a pot of coffee and a sandwich, then settled down at the kitchen table to discover Stephanie's dark secrets and Derek's winsome technique.

I came out of the sensuous quagmire an hour later. Stephanie did indeed have some dark secrets, and everybody but Derek seemed to be aware of them. He just kept nibbling her throat and whispering endearments. Stephanie clung firmly to her virtue, despite a boggling array of invitations from the faculty. But I didn't spot any references to the Farber crowd beyond the three already known to me: Britton, Maggie, and Carlton.

Footsteps thudded up the stairs. I went into the living room to admit Lieutenant Rosen. His dark curls were flat, plastered over his head like a wet beret, and his coat was dripping copiously on my rug.

“It's raining,” he explained, in case I was incapable of piecing together the clues.

“You
are
a detective!” I took his coat and tossed it over the railing at the top of the landing. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“I don't suppose you have any bread crumbs on the floor that I might sweep up and munch?” he said. “I haven't had a chance to eat dinner.”

I thawed a bit at this sign of human frailty and led him into the kitchen. “The roaches carried off the last bread crumb. You'll have to settle for a sandwich, Lieutenant.”

He followed me to the kitchen and busied himself with creating a tower of bologna, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles. When he seemed satisfied with its caloric content, if not its structural integrity, he took an empty plastic milk carton out of the refrigerator. After an optimistic shake, he replaced it and began to shift jars around the shelves. “I don't suppose you have any beer?”

I have read thousands of mystery novels since the first was slipped between the bars of my crib. Although I prefer the English whodunit variety, I have dipped into jaded private eyes, secret agents, and an occasional police procedural. In not one of them did the investigating officer paw through the suspect's refrigerator or demand a beer.

“How about a glass of wine? Then we'll build a fire and play Scrabble,” I said coldly.

“That sort of thing will have to wait until later,” he said through a mouthful of sandwich. “This is official business. Can't drink wine on official business. Just beer.”

I shrugged. Still chewing, Lieutenant Rosen picked up the copy of Azalea's book and glanced at the cover. When his eyes slid to me, I shrugged again. We both looked at each other for a long time, but there was none of Derek's warmth in his eyes, nor any of Stephanie's smoldering passion in mine. At last I tried one final shrug, laughed lightly, and said, “For old times' sake.”

“I heard there was a lot of old times' sake in it. Good old Martin Carlow, for one thing. A rather unpleasant reference to Britton Blake, and another to your downstairs neighbor.”

“I didn't realize you'd spent the last hour swinging from the proverbial grapevine, Lieutenant Rosen. Perhaps you ought to spend more time looking for fingerprints?”

“Don't show up on silk,” he said. He stuffed the last of the sandwich in his mouth. “Damn shame.”

“Lieutenant Rosen, if you're finished with dinner, I'd prefer to get this over with so that I can go to bed.”

“Does that mean we don't play Scrabble?”

“I'm beginning to be awed by the relentless acumen of the Farberville CID,” I said. I went into the living room and sat down on the arm of the sofa. “Are you ready to take my statement?”

“Well, I was going to tell you what Miss Belinski had to say about calling you, but if you're not interested…”

The man was a worse tease than Stephanie, I decided. Of course I was interested, but I certainly wasn't going to beg. “All right, tell me,” I pleaded.

“Tell me, please,” he corrected me. I could almost hear him chuckling triumphantly, which did nothing to endear him.

“All right—tell me, please!” Before I shove you out the window, parachutes not available at this time. Inquire tomorrow, from traction. I smiled, but not at him.

“The young woman says that she called you because she wanted to give you an opportunity to explain. She said she saw you earlier near the Twiller house.”

“She did not!”

“She did not—what?”

“She did not call me to give me an opportunity to explain!” I snapped at him. And I had thought my daughter was insufferable! When I had regained a bit of self-control, I managed to repeat the gist of the telephone call, from the first howl to the final click. “So Sheila simply called for advice,” I concluded firmly.

“But she did see you near the Twiller house?”

It was getting a bit sticky. I sat down on the sofa and tried to look rueful. “Although it has nothing to do with poor Mildred's death, I was going to tell you that when you took my statement, Lieutenant.”

“Then why don't you rehearse it now?”

I told him about my innocent stroll down the railroad tracks to the bridge. The details about my mood struck me as inconsequential, so I omitted those. I concluded with meeting Caron and Inez and taking them back to the Book Depot to help with the restoration.

“So you were gone about thirty minutes?” he asked, making squiggles in a battered notebook.

“And I did not go up the embankment to the house. Write that down in your little book,” I said with a show of spirit. Strictly show. “I would imagine it takes a long time to strangle someone.”

He peered down his beak at me. “Not really. It doesn't take long to flounce down the railroad tracks to that bridge, either. Certainly not more than five minutes each way. That leaves about fifteen minutes unaccounted for, Mrs. Malloy.”

“I was strolling,” I countered in a patient voice.

“Miss Belinski described it as a ‘flounce,' but perhaps it's a matter of semantics.”

“Very possibly. And where was Miss Belinski, anyway? I went out front to see if the demonstration was over, but I didn't see her lurking around to analyze my posture. Did she get her information from a spy satellite? A periscope?”

“She was walking down Arbor Street when she happened to glance at the railroad tracks. She thought you looked dangerously angry, but she assumed you were simply walking it off. Later, she said, she began to wonder about it.”

“Later? When she was standing over a dead body? Is that the ‘later' we're discussing? Just what was she doing inside the Twiller house?” At this point, my voice might have carried to the Twiller house.

“She admitted that she was looking for a friend of hers, Miss Margaret Holland. It seems that Miss Holland flounced off with the same expression that you had. Miss Belinski said that she went to the house and waited on the porch for someone to answer the door, but became suspicious when all she heard was the dog yapping. The door was ajar.” He beamed at me for a minute, then said, “Let's discuss the alleged flounce further, shall we, Mrs. Malloy? I'd like to get a precise picture in my mind of your movements.”

I saw no reason to point out that Britton had also flounced into the sunset. It seemed as if Farberville had been rife with flouncers earlier in the afternoon—an unsettling idea. I briskly repeated my version of the stroll, stressing the leisurely manner in which I admired the autumn hues of the foliage along the gully. He listened without comment. A diversion seemed propitious.

“Sheila must have done quite a lot of wondering,” I sniffed, making it clear that I had dismissed her statement as trivial mental meanderings.

“Aloud,” he agreed cheerfully. “By the way, Douglas Twiller finally showed up. He said he had taken a drive to think about the situation, since he was so upset about everyone's reaction to his wife's newest book.”

“Was he—did he handle the news?”

“He looked fairly gray about the gills. One of the uniformed officers found the doctor's name by the telephone and called him. Twiller's sedated for the night.”