yes. It was
He smiled. “Did you like it, ma’am? My wife liked it but I didn’t. I’m not into imaginary rabbits. Although now and then, as a detective, I try to pull one out of a hat.” He chuckled at his own joke. Movie reviews and an interrogation? Quietly, I waited as his face hardened. “Then?” He looked sharply into my face.
“Then we stopped back at the Paradise for a nightcap. A glass of sherry. That is, Lorena and I did. Alice was worried about Max and hurried home.”
“What time?”
“Perhaps ten. Maybe a little later. I know I was back here just after eleven and asleep soon after.”
“Alice Jeffries went right home?”
“So far as I know. Where else would she go?”
“She drove herself?”
“No, she had walked to the bar. It’s close. We said goodbye in the parking lot.”
“Do you believe she murdered her husband? Max?”
“Of course not, young man.”
“Why not?”
“People I know don’t kill one another.”
He smiled. ”She was a suspect in the killing of her mobster husband, Lenny Pannis. His brothers still want her charged.”
“Absurd,” I snapped.
“Absurd?”
I didn’t answer him. I’d already stated my opinion.
On and on, a detailed recounting of an eventless evening, the small bits and pieces of a lovely time in the company of two women who made me laugh-one of whom was happily married to a man I cherished. Max, now murdered.
“Any tension?”
“Among us? Of course not.”
“Any hint of trouble with her husband?”
“Of course not.”
“Are you sure?”
I was piqued. “Young man, I’ve already answered that question. Do you think I’d revise my answer in my very next breath?”
He stared. “It’s been known to happen.” He grinned. I saw gleaming white teeth, too many of them.
“Then you don’t know me, sir.”
He nodded. “I do now, Miss Ferber.”
“Then you’re obviously quicker than others of your generation.”
His eyes twinkled. “I like to think so.”
I was starting to like him. “No,” I concluded, “nothing struck me as odd. Alice was devoted to Max, who was a decent man…”
“What about this Commie business?” he broke in, his eyes darkening. “The Hollywood Ten, pinko sympathies. He seems to have had some questionable associates.”
I breathed in…Perhaps my liking of this young man was premature. I didn’t like it when my snap judgments proved wrong. “Scurrilous nonsense. A man who exercised his First Amendment rights…”
His face tightened. “I hear you, ma’am.”
I doubted that he did, but his investigative instincts told him to back off.
He got nowhere with me and finally snapped his pad shut abruptly. He stood and stretched. He’d get back to me, if necessary. I was in town for another week, right? I nodded. “How did you know that?”
“I checked the hotel registration.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, Miss Ferber.” He turned away.
“A second, Detective Tilden.” He paused, folded his long, lanky arms around his chest. “The radio said Alice was a suspect.”
“Yes, she is.”
“Based on what?”
He hesitated, then sighed. “Well, I’ll tell you. A gun was found in his workroom, dropped onto his desk. Her fingerprints were on it.”
“Surely…”
He held up his hand, and I got quiet. “No harm telling you, Miss Ferber, I suppose.” A pause. “Two small fingerprints on the handle, which suggests she gingerly picked it up between thumb and index finger, someone not used to handling a gun. Not
“Sort of? Young man, I don’t trust sloppy qualifications.”
He paused for a second. “Her story is that she arrived home, opened the front door-it was locked-and spotted the.32 laying on the side table where she keeps her mail. She was surprised, thinking Max had left
“Max had a gun?”
He nodded. “A.38 that was found in his desk drawer under some papers. His wife couldn’t tell the difference. She picked the gun up and was carrying it into the workroom, angry that he’d been so careless. She found him slumped over his desk, a bullet hole in the back of his head. He’d been shot from behind, surprised perhaps. She says she dropped the gun on the desk.”
“So she’s innocent.” I was ready to dismiss the officer.
He gave me the indulgent smile you’d bestow on a child, and one not very clever at that. “As I said, she’s still a suspect. Sort of. She could have
“Rather elaborate planning, no?”
“Nothing compared to some of the stuff I come across.”
“But she was gone for the evening. He planned on going to bed.”
“Well, somehow during that long evening, he was murdered. Maybe before she left for dinner with you. No way of knowing. We figure it didn’t happen when she got back home sometime before eleven.”
“She called him from the Paradise Bar. He didn’t answer.”
“Maybe because he was conveniently dead. And she knew it.”
“Impossible.” I remembered something. “As I’m certain you’ve found out already, Lorena Marr phoned the house from the bar. She was making certain Alice was on her way, but Alice had already left. Max said someone was at the door and he couldn’t talk.”
“Maybe Alice was returning, surprising him. She was late getting to the Paradise, I’ve heard.”
“Impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible when it comes to murder, Miss Ferber.” Finished, he nodded a goodbye and walked out.
“Impossible,” I announced to myself.
Within seconds, someone rapped on the door, and I suspected that Detective Tilden had returned, sheepish, apologizing again for his intrusion but peppering me with more questions. But a lanky young man in a bellman’s outfit mumbled something about Western Union, thrust an envelope into my hands, bowed, waited for a tip, and then retreated. Inside an envelope marked “Deliver Immediately” was a telegram from George S. Kaufman in New York. Edna. Just Heard. So Sad. A Good Man. Can I Help? George.
So the calamitous news had been carried to the East Coast, where Max’s many friends, settling into their lunches at midday, now grieved at the loss. I sat at the edge of a chair, the telegram crumpled in my hands, and reread it. A Good Man. Succinct, perfect: the bittersweet epitaph.
In that moment, gazing out the window, I thought of my last days here-all the frenzied activity surrounding my visit to Max, who’d been hounded in the press for his defense of the Hollywood Ten. Even my name had been
