You Might As Well Die (28 page)

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Authors: J.J. Murphy

BOOK: You Might As Well Die
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“Stop, damn it!” the man said as the car prowled along beside her. “I got something for you.”
She turned around and hurried back the way she had come, to Fifth Avenue. The car—by now she realized it was a taxi—came to a quick stop, then started in reverse.
“Get back here, you stupid broad!” the driver’s deep voice yelled.
She reached Fifth and she heard the taxi’s brakes scream. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw that the car had stopped abruptly. The driver got out. She could see his figure outlined by the passing headlights. He was a big, heavyset man.
She remembered how Dr. Norris described MacGuffin’s potential murderer:
a tall, strong man.
Dorothy kept moving, faster now. But she could hear the man’s heavy footsteps a few paces behind her.
“Where do you think you’re going, lady?” he snarled. He was getting closer. “I said wait!”
She tried to run, but her shoes slowed her down.
Why did she wear these high-heeled pumps?
She was short already ; did her feet—and maybe her life—have to suffer for it, too?
She had to find a crowd. She’d be safe among people.
Behind her, the man’s breath was coming in gasps. He may have been big and strong, but he was no athlete. Still, he was coming nearer. Soon she’d be within his grasp.
Up ahead, bright light from a shop window spilled onto the sidewalk. Dorothy could smell baking pastry and powdered sugar. A doughnut shop. Neon flashed: OPEN 24 HRS.
The man’s ragged breathing and heavy footsteps were right behind her now. She grabbed the door handle and flung open the door. She flew inside. Two workers, in folded white paper hats and faces dusted in flour, turned to look at her.
“Help,” she gasped. “A man is trying to attack me!”
But then the big man burst through the door, his barrel chest rising and falling, his face coated in sweat. He was older than she had expected—quite a bit older. And fatter, too. Dorothy had seen him somewhere before, but she couldn’t place where.
“Got you!” he wheezed. He lowered his head and lumbered at her. He thrust out his hand toward her. Dorothy flinched and covered her face.
But nothing happened. Slowly, she lowered her hands.
The man stood there, catching his breath. In his hand was a long piece of rich wool cloth. “Your scarf! Just dropped off a guy . . . Doctor . . . Paid me five bucks to track back and find you . . . Return it . . . Left it at the restaurant.”
“Oh,” she said, taking the scarf. She realized her heart was pounding. She had been afraid—afraid for her life.
The bakers behind the counter stared wide-eyed at her and the cabdriver.
She didn’t know what to say to the big old man. “Can I offer you a doughnut?”
The driver looked up. Recognition dawned on his flushed face. “It’s you! That crazy lady! You were in my cab a week ago.”
Ohhhh!
Now she recognized him, too.
He wheezed, “I drove you and some other lunatic to the Brooklyn Bridge. We was chased by another crazy lady and her devil kid!” The cabbie recoiled, holding up his hands. “Get away from me. Just leave me alone!”
He retreated, nearly crashing through the door as he made his escape.
She turned and looked innocently at the bakers. “I guess he doesn’t like doughnuts,” she said. “And he thinks
I’m
crazy?”
Back out on the dark sidewalk, she held the scarf to her beating chest. She tried to calm herself down.
Why had she panicked? Was it the stress of the past few days? Was it all the talk of death? Or was it just too much champagne? She could already feel a headache coming on.
She knew this much: She couldn’t keep on like this. She had to do something.
Chapter 39
“Y
ou want us to follow the
suspects
?” Benchley said in a prickly mood. “Mrs. Parker, it’s nine o’clock on a Sunday morning. No self-respecting suspect is even awake at this hour!”
Why should he be so cranky? Dorothy wondered. Just because he had to ride in on the early train from the suburbs on a Sunday, that didn’t give him the right to be so irritable. After all, she was the one with the hangover and raging headache.
She wouldn’t touch another drop of champagne until New Year’s Eve; that was for sure. It figured that she would go for more than a week of imposed teetotaling, and then, after a one-night binge, want to swear off the hooch for the foreseeable future.
Robert Sherwood yawned and stretched. “Mrs. Parker, what makes you so sure that MacGuffin was actually murdered ?”
It was just the three of them again in the editorial office of
Vanity Fair
. She had called them to meet with her there and form some kind of plan.
“Because MacGuffin is simply not the type to commit suicide. I know that for sure now. Also, I feel in my gut that it was no accident. And Dr. Norris agrees with me on that point.”
“And how is the good doctor?” Benchley asked, an unusual tension in his voice. “How was the fancy date last night?”
Sherwood sat up at this. “A date?”
Dorothy lit a cigarette and shook the flame out of the match. “It was no date. We talked mostly of MacGuffin. Norris agreed that he was likely murdered.”
“Not a date?” Benchley said. “Was it just the two of you? Did he buy you dinner? Were there drinks? And candlelight ?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes,” she said. “If you must know, it started off as a date, but we ended the night as friends.”
Benchley and Sherwood exchanged a knowing glance and nodded.
“Can we
please
just get back to talking about who killed Ernie MacGuffin?” she said.
“Of course.” Benchley pulled out his pipe and tobacco. “But what’s the mystery? Without a doubt it was Snath, his lawyer. Snath was the only one who could have done it.”
“What makes you so sure about Snath?” Sherwood stood and put a kettle on an electric hot plate. “By the way, anyone for a cup of tea?”
“Tea for me,” Dorothy said. “As for Snath—”
“No tea for him,” Benchley said. “He drinks only engine oil.”
She ignored him. “Snath is the only one tall enough and strong enough to have smashed in the top of Ernie’s head.”
“The only one?” Sherwood repeated. “The other suspects are his wife and his mistress?”
“They’re the only ones who knew Ernie was alive,” she said.
Benchley leaned back in his chair, a cloud of smoke enveloping him as he pulled on his pipe. “If one may take this seriously for a moment—”
“But only for a moment, Mr. Benchley,” Sherwood said.
“It occurs to me,” Benchley continued, “that his wife, Midge, is tall enough to strike the back of Ernie’s head. If memory serves, she even was an inch or two taller than he was. Perhaps—”
“Perhaps nothing,” Dorothy said. “Midge is as hard and indifferent as a statue. Certainly she could have done it . . . somehow.”
“Somehow?” Sherwood said.
“Dr. Norris thinks that Ernie died by a single hard blow to the back of his head. He suggested he was hit with something like a large block of concrete.”
“But there was no such thing where Ernie was found,” Benchley explained to Sherwood.
“Still,” she said, “Norris also said there was some kind of construction site nearby. Perhaps Midge somehow used a heavy tool or a cinder block to clock Ernie on the head, and then tossed it back over the fence—or something.”
“From what little I know of Midge,” Sherwood said, “she doesn’t seem the type to do such a thing.”
“I didn’t think she was the type to help Ernie stage his own fake suicide,” Dorothy said. “But now I know that she did just that. Who knows what, if anything, is going on behind that porcelain facade?”
Sherwood handed Dorothy a cup of tea. “And the mistress?”
“She seems even less likely to do such an atrocious act,” Benchley said.
“Why?” Dorothy asked. “Just because she’s a sweet young thing who takes her clothes off for money?”
Benchley smiled. “That may be part of it. But I was actually thinking she couldn’t have done it because she’s neither tall nor strong.”
“But Viola
is
willing to bend or break the law,” she said. “She had no compunction against fleecing gullible dupes and coercing Ernie into dropping by for a fake phantasmic visit. She doesn’t exactly have the moral fiber of a Sunday school teacher.”
“That doesn’t mean she killed him,” Benchley said. “After all, he was putting money in her pocket.”
“And wasn’t he doing the same for Midge?” Sherwood said to Dorothy. “The money Ernie was making
after
his death allowed her to live in the lap of luxury—or at least on the kneecaps of comfort.”
That was absolutely true, Dorothy realized. She slumped in her chair. “Come to think of it, that goes double for Snath,” she said glumly. “To hear Ernie tell it, Snath was working him to the bone to create more and more ‘posthumous’ paintings.”
Indeed, on Halloween night, Ernie had begged her to help him out of the corner he had quite literally painted himself into—to help him out of the snare in which Snath had him trapped.
Sherwood sipped his tea. “So we have three suspects but absolutely no motive. If anything, each of them wanted him
alive
, not dead. Alive, he could continue to churn out paintings that brought in money. Dead, he was of no use to them whatsoever.”
“True enough,” Benchley said. “Why would any of them want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?”
Dorothy gulped her tea. “So, of the three, which of them
did
want Ernie’s goose cooked?”
 
Dorothy came back to the decision that had brought them here in the first place. “We need to follow them.”
“But why, Mrs. Parker?” Benchley said.
She didn’t want to admit that Norris had put the idea into her head. “Because that’s what the cops do.”
“So let them do it,” Benchley said.
“We can’t afford to, remember? Who knows how long they’ll take.”
Benchley nodded, clearly remembering the deadline that Mickey Finn had set.
“If we do follow them, how do we go about it?” Sherwood asked.
“We’ll split up,” she said. “There’s three of them and three of us. One per customer.”
“Won’t they recognize us?” Benchley said.
Dorothy would not wear a costume again, as Houdini had required her to do.
“We’ll each follow the suspect who may recognize us the least,” she said. “Both Midge and Viola probably know me too well—after I scolded Midge and set Viola’s wig on fire. So I had better follow Snath.”
Benchley yanked the pipe out of his mouth. “You can’t follow him alone. He’s a hothead. What if he’s dangerous? Perhaps—”
Perhaps we should follow him together,
was what he was thinking, Dorothy knew. But Benchley didn’t come out and say it.
“Not to worry, Fred,” she said. “I’ll get Houdini to go with me.”
“Houdini?” he said. “The man is in his fifties.”
“And he’s as strong as a gorilla and as quick as a cobra.”
“And he smells like a zoo. But will he protect you?”
Dorothy was touched by his concern. “Oh, Fred, I don’t need that much protecting. Don’t be worried.”
Benchley frowned. “I’m not worried, Mrs. Parker. And stop calling me Fred.”
“Then worry about yourself, Mr. Benchley, because you’ll have to follow Midge.” She didn’t want him following that hotsy-totsy phony spiritualist. “Mr. Sherwood,
you
find and follow Viola.”
Sherwood perked up. “The nude artist’s model? I’m on top of her. You can count on me.” He stood up immediately.
The door opened and their boss, Frank Crowninshield, entered. As usual, he was dressed with Old World dignity in his Sunday best. “What are you young whelps doing in the office on the weekend? Certainly you’re not working.”
“Certainly not,” Benchley said. “Just enjoying a nice cup of tea.”
Crowninshield folded his arms. “As I’ve said before, this is not your private clubhouse. This office is a place of work and business, in a building that’s a cathedral of editorial craftsmanship. I’m consternated at your laissez-faire attitude.”
As he spoke, Dorothy, Benchley and Sherwood grabbed their coats. “You’re what?” she asked.
Crowninshield’s impeccable white mustache twitched with frustration. “I’m consternated, that’s what!”
“Go see your doctor.” She pushed him into his private office. “And eat more roughage.”
She closed his office door. They hurried out into the hallway and waited for the elevator. When it arrived, Sherwood stepped in but Dorothy hesitated, laying a hand on Benchley’s arm.
“Going my way?” Sherwood said.
“We’ll take the next one,” she said. “Let’s meet at the’Gonk around dinnertime. Good luck, and be careful.”
Sherwood tipped his hat as the elevator doors closed.
Alone in the corridor, Dorothy turned to Benchley.
“Something the matter?” he asked.
“It’s very rare to see you upset,” she said. “You’re not really angry with me, are you?”
He smiled and spoke tenderly, looking at her with those sweet, merry eyes. “Dottie dear, I’ve never been angry with you in my entire life.” Then he gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. “Now, enough of this. Let’s get going.”
A kiss on the forehead?
What the hell did that mean?
They waited for the next elevator to arrive. She was silent and thoughtful as they descended to the lobby.
Chapter 40
R
obert Sherwood had never met an artist who actually wore a beret.
Sherwood stood at the door of the Hudson River School of Art facing the beret-wearing man. To match the black beret, the man also had on a stained, black turtleneck sweater. A thin, vile-smelling cigarette dangled from his dry lips. He held a broom in one hand.
“Viola the model, huh?” the man said in response to Sherwood’s question. “Sorry, pal—she’s no longer here.”

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