Time Off for Murder Read online

  Boson Books by Zelda Popkin

  Time Off For Murder Death Wears a White Gardenia

  _____________________________

  TIME OFF FOR MURDER

  by

  Zelda Popkin

  _____________________________

  BOSON BOOKS

  Raleigh

  Published by Boson Books

  3905 Meadow Field Lane

  Raleigh, NC 27606

  ISBN 978-1-886420-20-5

  An imprint of C&M Online Media Inc.

  © Copyright 1995 Richard H. and Royal S. Popkin All rights reserved

  For information contact C&M Online Media Inc.

  3905 Meadow Field Lane Raleigh, NC 27606 Tel: (919) 233-8164

  e-mail:[email protected] URL: http://www.bosonbooks.com

  Zelda Popkin made a definite place for herself when her first mystery novel Death Wears a White Gardenia was published last year. The New York Times Book Review said: "Zelda Popkin has a genuine talent for writing mystery stories." The Saturday Review's Guide to Detective Fiction, The Criminal Record, pronounced the Verdict, "Good!" In Time Off For Murder Mary Carner, the efficient department store detective, leaves her job at Blankfort's Fifth Avenue Store when her friend, Phyllis Knight, a young socialite attorney is found murdered after having been missing for six months. Inspector Heinsheimer of the New York Homicide Squad admires Mary Carner and is willing to work with her but - Mary is finally on her own entirely; poking into the affairs of Rockey Nardello who is doing time as leader of a numbers racket gang. Dangerous? …so Mary Carner found out! Smart, tough, sophisticated, fast, Time Off For Murder will keep mystery fans burning the midnight oil.

  All incidents and characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely co-incidental.

  Chapter I

  On the third Thursday of every month, Contempora held a luncheon meeting, with dry martinis before and a male guest speaker after, in the upstairs dining room at Musetta's.

  Around that luncheon table one might find Henrietta Wickliffe, who owned a Fifth Avenue beauty salon; Terry Cayle, playbroker, currently collecting ten per cent from three Broadway hits; Jane Tennant, news-paper columnist; Eda Prince, stylist for the country's leading silk manufacturer; Rhoda Arnheim, chief of social service at a large public hospital; Beth Stiles, editor of a national magazine; Laverne Sullivan, psychologist at the Women's Prison; Mary Carner, detective at Blankfort's Fifth Avenue department store, and Phyllis Knight, attorney-at-law, who was president of the group.

  Contempora was a career women's club. Business women, editors, writers, social workers, doctors, lawyers. Glamour girls of the higher earning brackets. Important young women. Smart. That last adjective referred as much to attire as to mentality.

  The "girls" dressed for their jobs as deliberately as actresses making up for a role. To be a type, to look a part. Mary Carner's costume was a case in point.

  Mary looked like year before last's debutante, last June's bride, this year's young matron. Prospective shoplifters, hesitating before a haul, never guessed that the pretty, well-groomed young woman in the oxford gray suit and kolinsky scarf, standing beside them at the counter, was far more interested in the behavior of their nimble fingers than in the quality of the step-ins, marked down from five-ninety-eight to three and a half. They - poor, mis-led thieves - took her at dress and face value. It was one of the secrets of her success as a minion of law and order.

  Style, chic - whatever the season's pet fashion phrase might be - the "girls" of Contempora possessed it. For them, Schiaparelli had invented her weirdest hats; Chanel and Worth brewed their most sophisticated perfumes. Their finger nails seemed fresh from the abattoir. Toward the end of a day, they were grubby around the cuticle.

  They is, of course, a generalization. Rugged individualists among them Phyllis Knight, for example - clung, while the tempests raged in the hairdressing salons, to long, blonde braids, wound coronet-wise around her head, and scorned the rouge pot. But that made Phyllis a type, too, as definite as Eda Prince in her slinky black dress and three strand, gilt choker necklace.

  Wise girls. Clothes wise. World wise.

  When one looked closely, fatigue was plain in their eyes, in the hard line, circling the rouged lips that moved glibly in bright patter, that drooped in tired parenthesis when they believed themselves unnoticed; in the parchment lifelessness of the skin under their makeup.

  Tired women, driving themselves too hard toward fame and fortune. All of them smoked at least a pack a day.

  They lived - omitting the few who resided under a parental roof with an aging mother or father - in modern, two and a half room housekeeping apartments and spoke with wistful pride of their domesticity. They entertained at intimate little dinners and Sunday night suppers. The food was sent up from the restaurant on the street floor of the apartment house.

  They had well-stocked liquor closets, mixed drinks with a bartender's expert hand, but rarely took more than two in an evening themselves. A minute on the palate, a lifetime on the hips.

  On Mother's Day and Christmas, they telegraphed flowers to maple-shaded towns in Ohio and Kansas. Their favorite magazine was Esquire.

  Few of them wore wedding rings, not even those who had had a husband or two. No prejudice against matrimony, of course. Simply that it was bad business to flaunt the marital state. Nor had those who still wrote themselves down as "spinster" taken vows of celibacy. Men were amusing. One dined, danced, went to theatre, sat at bars, golfed, motored with them, all with a brittle gayety that had its overtones of hopefulness that this male would turn out to be the someone special. The man who was big enough to share a household with a wife who had a career, or make her forget she had ever wanted one.

  When the "girls" talked about themselves, it was in a vein of persiflage, as though they thought it fantastic that they had gone so far and achieved so much. Amusing! That was their word. Work was amusing. Life was amusing. People, events. Amusing. A wisecrack hid a multitude of yearnings.

  It was amusing, for example, to invite a male to address the luncheon meetings of Contempora, to offer advice, to treat the "girls" as helpless little women.

  The guest speaker for the luncheon of the third Thursday of October was a visiting Englishman, an author, currently the darling of sophisticates on both sides of the Atlantic. A rosy cheeked young man with a negligible nose and chin and curly, golden hair, the solitary male fidgeted like a worm on hot ashes between Henrietta Wickliffe and a vacant chair.

  The vacant chair waited for Phyllis Knight.

  Phyllis was late and so luncheon was late that afternoon. Waiters puttered around the tables, refilling water glasses, straightening cutlery. The "girls" smoked, chattered, looked pointedly at their wrist and lapel watches.

  At half past one, Terry Cayle said: "This can't go on. I've got a date at three. Let's begin without Phyllis."

  Laverne Sullivan added: "I shouldn't have come at all today. Twenty new girls to be I.Q.'d. It looks like a busy season for us."

  "My busy season, too," Mary Carner echoed. "First cool weather this year. Store's jammed today. Chris'll be tearing his hair if I'm late."

  Henrietta Wickliffe frowned. "Phyllis should have telephoned," she said. "She should have let us know she'd be late. It's discourteous to our guest. I'm sure he's impatient too."

  The guest shook his blonde head gallantly. "In this company? Not impatient, really. But - shall I be frank?" He patted his upper abdomen, smiled ruefully. "Somewhat empty."

  Miss Wickliffe blushed like an adolescent. "Oh dear," she tittered. "We can't let the poor man starve." She thrust back her chair. "Girls. Attention, please. Is it the consensus of opinion that we begin without Phyllis?"
<
br />   "Let's…. Come on."

  Miss Wickliffe nodded to the head-waiter. He crooked his finger. Trays of crab meat cocktail scuttled through the swinging doors.

  While the salad was being served, some twenty minutes later, Mary Carner said to Laverne Sullivan: "I can't understand it. Phyllis doesn't do this."

  Laverne answered: "She's probably been detained at a conference. Or traffic. It's nothing less than a miracle to keep appointments in New York."

  "Not to Phyllis." Mary shook her head decisively. "They set the Grand Central clock by her."

  "Don't worry about her. She'll be along."

  But, over demi-tasse, Mary said: "I am worried about Phyllis."

  "Don't. Phyllis must have a good reason. And we're getting along all right without her."

  "Henrietta is. She has the Englishman. No little Phyllis to compete with." She glanced at the head of the table and smiled.

  Miss Wickliffe's color was high. Her eyes and teeth sparkled. She chattered ceaselessly while the young man pulled at his neck-tie, and fidgeted toward the vacant chair on his left.

  Laverne Sullivan stared at the empty chair. Unexpectedly, irrelevantly, she asked: "Do you think Phyllis is attractive?"

  Miss Carner puckered her small, pert nose. "In a way. She's petite and she's blonde. And her hair's gorgeous. And she has those china doll blue eyes. If her mother had taken her to a dentist and had her front teeth straightened when she was little, she'd have been very nice-looking."

  "Didn't you know? Phyllis never had a mother."

  "No? Test tube baby in reverse?"

  Laverne Sullivan laughed. The prison psychologist exhibited deep dimples when she laughed. More than one jail inmate, getting her psychological at Miss Sullivan's desk, had come right out with it. "Say, beautiful, if you're not doing all right at this racket, you're a sap to work at it with your looks. Let me put you wise."

  "Phyllis' mother died when Phyllis was born," Laverne explained. "Her father brought her up. A dreadful parent. He seems to have blamed her for her mother's death. And held it against her, too, that she was a girl. Wanted a son to carry on his name and lineage…. I shouldn't be talking about Phyllis like this. She hates to be discussed."

  "I know. Phyllis is close-mouthed. We've all known her for years, but I don't think she's ever been really intimate with any of us."

  "She isn't used to confidantes. I'm probably the only one whom she has told anything at all about herself. Poor Phyllis spent her childhood in a gloomy old house on Washington Square, with no one for company but a housekeeper, hired by her mother when she was a bride. Old family retainer. Phyllis had governesses and private tutors. No schools. No contact with the outside world. Just the house with the same rugs and chairs Lyman Knight's bride put into it before McKinley was shot. It's amazing that that girl had spirit enough to go through college and law school. Shows you how tough the human ego can be. Other girls might have run away from home, and taken the path that leads to one of our little cells."

  "She never abandoned her father or turned against him?"

  Laverne shook her head. "She has an amazing loyalty. But poor old Lyman Knight, I gather, hates her more than ever since she's become a successful lawyer. I had dinner at her house one night last spring. I'll never forget it. That cadaverous old man sat at the table, scarcely touching his food, staring at Phyllis with venomous eyes. Mary, there was murder in those eyes. I'm not susceptible to glares as a rule. But he terrified me. Have you ever seen him? You should. He's something to see. All bones and mustache. And the housekeeper! A ferocious female. But very tender with him. Fussed around him, coaxed him to eat, as if he were a child. After dinner, he slithered upstairs without an excuse-me. We could hear him moving around in his room over the parlor, making strange noises, that (honestly, I'm not making this up) were exactly like the dragging and clanking of chains. I talked to Phyllis about it. I even warned her. But Phyllis laughed. 'Oh, don't be silly, Laverne,' she said. 'You're taking father too seriously. He hates the world. Not me in particular. Everything and everybody. He's old and infantile. He was much older than my mother, and very much in love with her. When mother died, father's world fell to pieces. He never had the spirit to go out and make a new world for himself. He takes his unhappiness out in helpless rage. He's more to be pitied than feared.' She laughed it off, Mary, but she did look worried. I pleaded with her. I said he might become dangerous if something upset him. 'Oh no,' she answered. 'He'll never hurt anyone. Generations of gentility. Too far removed from the elemental passions. The blood runs thin. Gentlemen never hurt anyone. They merely curdle.' Did you ever hear such nonsense?"

  "Never," Mary agreed. "But that's Phyllis. Stubborn as a mule. And utterly without fear."

  Laverne Sullivan said: "That's wrong, too. It's not normal to be without fear. Nor sensible. Mary, what was the illness she had in September, did you know?"

  "Influenza. A bad case. She went to the hospital. And then to Ashville for convalescence."

  Miss Sullivan seemed relieved. "I was afraid it was a nervous breakdown."

  "No. Just old-fashioned flu. She was run down. She works too hard. She's been back from Ashville a week and working like a dog again. I talked with her on the phone Monday. Tried to make a date. But she was busy. Work had piled up while she was ill. She said she wanted to see me. Had something important to tell me. She sounded well and happy, particularly when she said she'd something important."

  "A man, do you think?"

  "Might be. She's always had that nice collar man from Troy. P'raps she's decided to marry him."

  "I wish she would. And get out of that gloomy house. Settle down with a man who'd take care of her."

  Mary Carner shook her head gently. "She couldn't do that. Any more than you or I could. Ordinary domesticity with ordinary males isn't for us."

  "Sh." Laverne Sullivan touched her finger tip to her lips. "We are about to be addressed."

  "Ladies." Miss Wickliffe tapped the edge of her demi-tasse with a spoon. "Your attention, please. The time has come to share with you the charming young man whose wit it has been - thanks to our president's inexplicable absence - my pleasure to enjoy alone."

  The visiting Englishman bowed to Henrietta, inclined his blonde head toward Contempora, jerked his necktie. "Young ladies." His smile was uncertain. "Mesdames. I scarcely know how to address you. You have the freshness, the verve of youth, the maturity of achievement . . ."

  "Just call us pal and let it go," Terry Cayle wise-cracked.

  The speaker pretended not to hear. He ploughed ahead.

  "I have, to be sure, met many of your sort individually, but never, I confess, have I at one time faced such an alarming assemblage of pulchritude and intellectual acumen. I must admit a bit of diffidence at offering you any advice whatever. You ladies know your own minds, possibly a bit too well for your good. But, undoubtedly, you did not invite me here merely for the privilege of gazing at me, or feeding me - as if I were some strange creature out of the Zoo. And I confess I have felt very much that way this afternoon." (Laughter and applause. The speaker pulled his tie again.) "Come, come, young ladies. This is no laughing matter. I am not here to amuse you. I am here to give you sound advice. And may heaven protect me! Here it is: are you ready? Ladies, stop this nonsense at once. Go back to the agreeable pursuits of domesticity which nature has ordained for you." (Pencilled eyebrows rose in interrogatory arcs.)

  "Oh, no indeed, I do not intend to speak sanctimoniously about the nobility of wifehood or motherhood. Nor the sacred duty to be handmaidens to the warrior. I refer to another aspect. You girls are simply idiotic. Now, don't fly off. Hear me out. As females, you would have, save for your wretched contrariness, been relieved by nature and custom from the cruel necessity of contending in the marts of commerce. You would have been spared the sordidness of money grubbing. You would have been sheltered from life's ugliness. You would need to know nothing of man's inhumanity to man. Yet, deliberately, you have tossed away your natural go
od fortune. Ladies, you have gone far out of your way to look for trouble . . ."

  "He means you, Mary."

  "And you, Laverne."

  "All of us. Do you think he's a fool?"

  Chapter II

  When Mary Carner got back after three o'clock to Blankfort's Fifth Avenue department store, where she was employed, Christopher Whittaker, the parrotbeaked, saturnine chief detective at the store, looked up from his desk and said: "About time."

  Miss Carner flashed a conciliatory smile. "Didn't miss me?"

  He scowled. "Never do. Men never miss girls like you. Don't even know they're around. Don't know when they're not around."

  "I'm just a quiet little mouse?"

  "Mouse that imagines itself a ferret. Don't throw that ink-stand, Mary. Put that down, woman. You could hurt someone with a thing like that. All right. All right. I'll admit you're a fair to middling ferret - sometimes - when you take the trouble to come to work."