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happy.)
“Getting tired yet, Mrs. Turner?” Fla
“I’ve had more than enough,” I said, “but apparently
you haven’t. How long do you plan to keep me here?”
“As long as it takes for you to tell me the truth.”
“And what makes you think I’m not?”
He let out a nasty chuckle. “And what makes you think I’m a stupid fool?” He loosened his tie (finally) and glared at me across the back seat. “Look, I know your game, Mrs. Turner. I know you’re a nosy reporter for
Daring Detective magazine, not just a secretary as you told me at our first meeting. Did you think I never learned how to read? I’ve seen your name in the papers on several occasions-in co
Aaaargh!
“But that doesn’t mean I was lying to you,” I insisted. “Ask my boss Brandon Pomeroy if you don’t believe me. He’ll tell you I’m a secretary, and nothing
but a secretary.”
“Then he’d be lying, too.”
Score one for the perceptive detective.
“Okay, okay! So I’m a nosy crime writer. I didn’t reveal myself before because I was afraid you might tell my boyfriend, Dan Street, about my co
“Oh, yeah?” Fla
He had a point. I wouldn’t have believed it yesterday-even the Baldy and Blackie incidents hadn’t convinced me that I was in serious danger-but the Aunt Doobie incident tonight had made a deep and painful impression. Now I
knew I was at risk.
“If you know what’s good for you,” Fla
whole truth-about what’s been going on. You’ll tell me everything you’ve learned about the case so far, and you’ll stop meddling in the investigation right now. And here’s another tip: You’d better quit dressing like a dyke and hanging out with homosexuals. Willard Sinclair, in particular. He might do to you what he did to Gray Gordon.”
“Oh, come off it, Detective Fla
really believe Willy killed Gray! You can’t! Willy is a kind, gentle, and very squeamish man. He’s as dainty and fastidious as your grandmother. He couldn’t bring himself to carve up a turkey, much less a human being!”
“Leave my grandmother out of this.” Fla
Sinclair is our number one suspect. He’s the same blood type as the killer.”
“Yes, he told me that, but-”
“But what? The proven facts don’t mean anything to you? You’ve decided the fat little faggot is i
By this point I wanted to knock off his. “Don’t be ridiculous! Willy didn’t even know when I left the bar. I shot out of there in a flash because…”
Take it easy, Paige. Slow down. Be cool. I fully intended to tell Fla
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Fla
look manly, you kind of feel manly, too.)
Luckily for both of us, I took the passive (i.e., feminine) route instead. “I’m sorry, Detective Fla
you know, and then I’ll tell you what I know. That way, we can compare notes and work out the truth together.” I smiled sweetly at him and fluttered my lashes, hoping I could get him to go first.
To my great astonishment, he did. (Sometimes you really
can catch more flies with honey.)
“We learned by telephone at approximately ten thirty-five tonight,” he began, speaking in a lofty, official tone, “that a woman had been attacked at the corner of West and Barrow. The caller reported seeing a dark-haired man in dark clothing hit the victim on the back of the head-with a brick, or a rock, or a hunk of cement-and then run away on West toward Christopher. About halfway up the block, the assailant jumped into the back seat of a black Lincoln limousine, and the car took off for parts unknown.”
Black limousine? Baldy. Dark hair and dark clothing? Aunt Doobie. Or maybe Blackie. Cripes! It could have been anybody! Does Baldy have a wig?
“We arrived on the scene within minutes,” Fla
Fla
I knew it was time to come clean. So I did (well, clean
er, anyway). I admitted that I was working on the Gray Gordon story, and that I was trying to find the killer (for a variety of reasons, truth and justice being among them), and that I had withheld that information from the police in order to save myself-and Willy-from further scrutiny and admonishment.
“But now I realize that was the wrong thing to do,” I said, in total honesty, “and I’m ready to tell you everything I know.”
With just a couple of itty bitty details left out. I took an L &M out of the pack in my breast pocket, lit it with a match (Fla
Confessing that Abby and I had begun looking for clues to the killer’s identity the same day we discovered the body, I gave Fla
I didn’t tell him that I had stolen the message pad, of course (if he charged me with evidence tampering, I’d be in trouble too sticky to sidestep), but I did tell him almost everything I could remember about the list, including Aunt Doobie’s room number at the Mayflower Hotel, and the four messages from Randy. The only call I didn’t mention was the one from Binky. I was afraid if I gave Fla
When he had finished taking notes about Gray’s telephone messages, I told Fla