Hotline to Murder Page 15

  The bending over and kneeling hurt his knees. He wasn’t going to be able to do this much longer. What was left? A two-drawer filing cabinet. Tony pulled open each drawer, in turn, being sure to look in the open space in the back of the drawers. He found nothing unusual. All that was left to search was a bunch of brown, cardboard boxes—boxes that Josh had carted around with him for years, containing all his other possessions. Keepsakes, mementoes, souvenirs, books, whatever it was that Josh saved.

  Tony didn’t relish the idea of going through the boxes in his present condition, especially since they were heavy and stacked three high. He looked at his watch. It was after nine. He didn’t know when Josh would be home. He’d better wrap this up soon. He could look inside the boxes on top while standing up. He decided to do that and then quit for the evening.

  The first box contained books. Tony lifted several out to see what was underneath. More books. He gave a pass to that box and went on to the next. This one contained papers, tickets, programs. It was definitely a souvenir box. He had to lift each item individually and that took time. Near the bottom of the box he felt something soft, something that wasn’t paper.

  He pulled it out and stared in shock. A pair of white panties. This was what he was looking for, but now that he had found it, he couldn’t believe it. He had been trying to clear Josh, not convict him. How long he stood there with the wispy piece of lingerie in his hand, he didn’t know. It suddenly came to him that he should find the bra. He searched the rest of the box, feverishly, but there was no other piece of clothing.

  There was no time to search the other boxes. He interleaved the flaps on the top of the box together the way he had found them, just as the sound of an engine came from the carport area. If that was Josh, he had already seen the light on in his room. Tony would have to bluff his way out of this. He stuffed the panties into his pocket, turned, and headed for the door. He never made it.

  He forgot about Josh’s swivel chair; he had moved it into the middle of the room during the search. He tripped over one of its metal supports and felt flat on his face. And his bad knee.

  Tony let out a yell as the pain hit him like a Freightliner truck. After a few seconds he tried to get up, but his leg collapsed, and he was back on the floor again. He was still there when Josh found him a minute later.

  “Holy shit. Tony, what happened?” There was real concern in Josh’s voice.

  “I was trying to check your calendar.” Tony forced the words out, between spasms of pain. “I can get tickets to the SC football game on Saturday.”

  “But what happened to you?”

  “My knee. I fell on my knee.”

  “Can you walk?”

  Josh helped, or rather lifted, Tony to his feet. If it hadn’t been for Josh’s continued support, he would have fallen again. Tony put his left arm over Josh’s shoulder and leaned against him.

  “Help me get to my room.”

  “I’m taking you to a room all right—the emergency room.”

  “I’ll be all right. I just need to sit down for a few minutes.”

  “Don’t argue with Uncle Josh. You can’t even stand up, for crissake.

  Josh practically had to carry Tony down the stairs. When they reached the ground floor, Josh became his left leg as they slowly made their way out to the carport. He bundled Tony into his SUV and went around to the driver’s side.

  On the way to the hospital, Tony tried again to explain why he had been in Josh’s room. Josh didn’t listen. He concentrated on his driving—accelerating and stopping slowly, easing his way around corners, as if Tony were Humpty Dumpty. Tony wanted to tell him to drive normally, but he didn’t. He felt protected, just as he had when he first met Josh in college, and Josh had taken him under his wing.

  ***

  “I don’t think there’s any permanent damage,” the young-looking emergency-room physician, whose name Tony had never caught, said, surveying the X-rays mounted on the wall. But you’ve got a helluva bruise and some lacerations to boot. I’ll bet you didn’t get those falling down in your house.”

  “No,” Tony agreed. “I got those falling down a hill.” A paraphrase of the old nursery rhyme kept singing in his head: “Jack and Jill went up the hill, to see two siblings playing. Jack fell free and broke his knee….”

  “I’m going to give you a pair of crutches,” the doctor continued, “and a flexible knee brace. But I don’t want you putting much weight on that knee for a couple of weeks.”

  “Will I be able to use that leg to shift gears in my Porsche?”

  “I don’t want you even bending your knee as much as it takes to get into a Porsche. You need to be driving something big and roomy, with automatic transmission, that will allow you to keep your leg straight. And you’re lucky this isn’t your right knee or you wouldn’t be able to drive at all.”

  Lucky? How was he going to work? How was he going to do anything?

  “I know what we’ll do,” Josh said. “We’ll swap cars. You can drive my Highlander and I’ll drive the Porsche.”

  “If he hadn’t volunteered to trade you, I would have,” the doctor said smiling. “It’s always been my dream to own a Porsche, but with a wife and two kids….”

  Tony had never let anybody drive his Porsche, and he would have rated Josh near the bottom of his list of possibles. But Josh had taken care of him tonight; he had not only driven him here, but stayed with him for hours while the paperwork ground slowly, and sicker and more seriously injured patients gained priority over him.

  “Will you promise to drive it the same way you drove me here tonight?” Tony asked Josh.

  “Scout’s honor.”

  Josh had never been a boy scout, but there was another reason Tony was willing to consider it. The pair of panties was still in his pants pocket, which at the moment hung on a peg on the wall of the examining room. Fortunately, his wallet had been in another pocket, so he was able to retrieve his insurance information without pulling them out, but he was feeling a fair amount of guilt at violating Josh’s privacy.

  CHAPTER 23

  Tony remembered the way to Carol’s apartment so well that he could have driven it blindfolded. As it was, he was driving it with one leg. He was thankful for Josh’s SUV. At least he didn’t have to rent a car, in addition to making hefty lease payments on the Porsche. He forced himself not to worry about what Josh was doing with his car.

  During his few free moments at work, he had used the time to worry about something else: what to do with the panties. He couldn’t bring himself to turn them over to Detective Croyden. He couldn’t rat out Josh, especially since he would have to drive Josh’s car to the police station to do it.

  Josh had been super nice to him ever since their little “talk,” during which Josh had said he would move out within thirty days. He hadn’t mentioned moving out since, and there was no evidence that he was looking for another place to live. He hadn’t violated Tony’s rules about having loud visitors over on work nights. He was still a slob, but Tony could live with that. At least Tony knew Josh’s habits. And he always paid his rent on time. What would life be like with a new roommate he didn’t know anything about? It would be risky, to say the least.

  While he was driving to Carol’s apartment, Tony thought some more about the panties. Even though he had finally opened his mind to the probability that Josh was somewhat of a misogynist, he still couldn’t picture him as a cold-blooded murderer. Josh might have looked up the address of the Hotline office in Tony’s notebook. He might have gone to the office out of curiosity. He might have seen Joy come out. He might even have accosted her, verbally, perhaps tried to make a date with her. But murder her? Tony couldn’t picture it.

  But this line of reasoning fell apart as Tony thought once again about the panties stuffed into the bottom of his attaché case. He couldn’t explain them. And they badly needed an explanation.

  Here was Carol’s apartment building. Fortunately, a parking place appeared, on demand, on the street
close to the entrance. Unfortunately, Carol lived on the second floor and there wasn’t any elevator. Tony had practiced using the crutches on his own stairs; going up last night, coming down this morning. It had not been easy.

  He was glad that none of the apartment dwellers was watching as he made his way up the stairs, trying not to fall, trying not to look too awkward. It was like attempting to play a new sport at which one has no experience. That he made it to the second floor without disaster was a major relief to him.

  As he rang the bell to Carol’s apartment, he realized that he was looking forward to seeing her. That quickening of his pulse, that feeling of glad anticipation—they returned as he waited for her to open the door. When she did open the door, she looked as good as he had pictured her, except for the expression on her face.

  “Tony, what happened to you?”

  “I, uh, fell down.”

  “You didn’t tell me. Oh, you poor dear. Are you all right?”

  She gave him a gentle hug, which he couldn’t return because his hands were holding the crutches.

  “It’s just my knee. It’ll be all right in a couple of weeks. I can make it through the doorway.”

  Carol was trying to help him, but she didn’t know how to do it. He smiled a wry smile. Perhaps he should have gotten hurt while they were dating. Then she might have had more sympathy for him.

  “Dinner is all ready. Here, would you like to sit in this chair?”

  “That should work. I just need room to stretch out my left leg. There’s a bottle of wine in my fanny pack.”

  Carol laughed as she extracted the Merlot.

  “I can always count on you to bring the right wine, even when you can barely walk.”

  He had been using the fanny pack to carry essential papers and other items today because his hands were tied up. Carol had the small table set intimately for two, with candles and even cloth napkins. When he had called her, asking for a little of her time, he hadn’t expected her to invite him to dinner. But he also hadn’t been able to refuse the invitation. What was the occasion? He knew he shouldn’t ascribe any special meaning to it.

  Tony sat down in the proffered chair, and Carol took his crutches—and placed them out of his reach. He almost protested; he felt like a prisoner. He watched her as she opened the wine in the adjacent space that was the small kitchen and placed the food on the table. She looked unbelievably good in form-fitting white pants and a purple silk blouse. A blouse that he was sure he could see through in the right light.

  And then when she passed through a beam of light pouring in the window, courtesy of the setting sun, he had the revelation that not only could he see through the blouse, but she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath it. He had a sudden and overwhelming urge to bury his face in that blouse. It was a good thing he couldn’t get up. None of the outfits he had seen on the teenage girls even approached this one in sensuality. All his libidinous feelings for her came back. How long had it been since their liaison had ended? How long had he been celibate?

  Tony barely noticed what he was eating. The Caesar salad, the barbequed ribs, the mashed potatoes, the wine; he ate and drank them automatically, but didn’t taste them as they entered his mouth and slid down his throat. Carol chatted about various things, and he agreed with everything she said—for a change. Until she started talking about the Hotline.

  “You know that Josh called me because he was worried about what had happened to you since you started working at the Hotline.”

  “Yes. Remember, you called me and told me.”

  “But I didn’t know what he was talking about until I saw you with that teenybopper at the Beach House.”

  “I work with her on the Hotline.” He kept his voice even. And if it was Shahla that concerned her, he knew that her concerns were different than Josh’s.

  “Right. But as I recall, it was rather late at night. And she had the kind of innocent good looks that men can’t resist.”

  Tony decided that silence was his best option at this point and was thankful once again for his Hotline training. He put a large bite of mashed potatoes into his mouth so that he couldn’t say anything.

  “Okay, I’ll get off it.” Carol smiled a thin smile. “After all, it’s none of my business anymore.”

  “Let’s talk about the reason I wanted to see you,” Tony said after swallowing the potatoes.

  “You said you wanted to show me a poem that might have something to do with the girl’s murder. What was her name?”

  “Joy.”

  Carol had been an English teacher for a few years before she became disgusted with principals who didn’t back her and the lack of discipline that made teaching difficult. She had quit teaching and gone into the computer industry. She was making far more money than she would ever have made as a teacher. Tony explained the circumstances of finding the poem but not the fact that Shahla had been with him. Don’t borrow trouble.

  “If you gave the poem to the police, how is it that you still have a copy?”

  “I entered it into a computer, being careful about fingerprints, of course.”

  “Were there any fingerprints on it?”

  “Only a couple of mine before I started being careful. Whoever wrote the poem was even more careful than I was.”

  “So, as I understand it, what you want me to do is to read the poem and then tell you who wrote it.”

  “Yes, please, if you would be so kind.”

  They both laughed. This was more like it.

  “All right. But before I perform this feat, let’s have dessert.”

  Tony had several more opportunities to observe the enticements inside Carol’s blouse while she cleared the table. He saw the mole on her breast that had bewitched him once upon a time. He realized that he badly needed to find himself another girlfriend.

  Carol did something behind the counter that separated the table from the kitchen. It involved matches, as Tony could tell from the smell. He wondered whether she was going to add to the two candles already on the table. Then she lowered the lights, leaving the room lit mostly by the candles. She came back to the table, carrying a cake with birthday candles on it and singing “Happy Birthday.”

  Tony was flabbergasted. He had completely forgotten that his birthday was only two days away. Carol placed the cake in front of him and gave him a light kiss on the lips.

  “Make a wish and see if you still have enough wind in your ancient body to blow out the candles.”

  Tony did. He didn’t count to see if she had gotten the number right. At some point, you had to stop counting. He cut the cake and they ate it in an atmosphere as amicable as that of the best day they had spent together, while drinking crème de menthe in miniature glasses with silver stems that Tony had given Carol for a Christmas present. Time stood still.

  When they had finished, Carol broke the spell saying, “Okay, let’s see the poem. And move your chair back from the table. Will I hurt your knee if I sit on your lap? I think I can get the best perspective from there.”

  God. What was she trying to do? She was temptation personified. How was he going to keep his hands off her blouse? Tony realized that he would be the sourpuss if he refused her, so he backed his chair up and guided her to a safe position on his lap. He put his arms carefully around her waist, that being the most innocuous place for them. Carol picked up the computer printout of the poem, which Tony had placed on the table when he arrived, and read it through, seemingly concentrating on the words to the exclusion of everything else.

  Tony read the poem again over her shoulder:

  She wears a summer dress, spaghetti straps

  to hold it up, or is this so? Perhaps

  it's gravity, the gravity of con-

  sequences should it fall. If she should don

  her dress one day but then forget to pull

  them up, those flimsy wisps of hope so full

  of her ripe beauty, do you think the weight

  of promises within, or hand of fate,


  would slide it down, revealing priceless treasures?

  If so, would she invoke heroic measures

  to hide the truth, for fear this modest lapse

  would air the secret of spaghetti straps?

  When she was finished, Carol said, “That poem was written by somebody who has written a lot of poems. It was not an amateur effort.”

  “What else can you tell me about it?”

  “There are not many people in the world who can write a poem like this. Technically, it rates an A. It has images, meter, enjambment, clever rhymes. As to the subject matter, my first inclination is to rate it a C minus and say it must have been written by a horny teenager.”

  “Except that a horny teenager couldn’t write it.”

  “Exactly. Unless he had previously written a few hundred poems and had some talent to boot. If that person exists, I never saw him in any of my classes. And, in addition, although the subject matter is suspect, the way it’s handled, in a poetic rather than a voyeuristic fashion, would probably prompt me to give it a higher grade than a C minus. I can imagine one of my students writing something like, ‘What if her boobs flopped out of her dress?’”

  “Okay, we’ve settled the grading. I’m sure the author will be pleased. But who did write the poem?”

  “Somebody with talent and a lot of poetic experience. Somebody who remembers what it’s like to be a horny teenager.”

  “Or somebody who is a horny adult,” Tony said, his thoughts about Carol’s blouse still heavy on his mind.

  Carol turned toward Tony so that her mouth was not more than two inches from his and said, “Do adults still get horny?”

  Tony couldn’t say anything. She kissed him. At first he sat there, not responding, wondering what was going on. Then, before he could return her kiss, she jumped up from his lap and said, “This brings us to my present for you. Or perhaps it’s for me.”

  “Present?” Tony said dumbly.