pretended-I hope-to call for an ambulance.
I glanced at Mia Parker and Jay Lawrence. They didn’t seem overjoyed at this news. I shouted to them, “We’ll have an ambulance here in three or four minutes!” Great news. Right? Try to contain your feelings of hope and joy. I resisted shouting, “It’s a miracle!” I did say, “Mrs. Parker can ride in the ambulance.”
They looked…well, stunned. And that wasn’t playacting. Also, I didn’t see Mrs. Parker running up the stairs to smother her awakening husband with kisses. If she did come upstairs, it might be to smack him in the head with a book. Well…that’s just me being cynical and suspicious again.
I disappeared from the rail and let a minute pass, and then I walked slowly and deliberately down the spiral staircase and headed toward two worried-looking people. The expression on my face told them they were in deep doo-doo. Actually, if this didn’t work, I was in deep, deep doo-doo.
I stopped in front of them and said, “He’s speaking.”
No response.
I looked them both in the eye and said, “He spoke to me.”
Very smart people would have shouted in unison, “Bullshit!” But they were so unstrung-actually shaking-that all they could do was stare at me. Also, I’m a good liar. Ask the last guy I tricked into a confession.
I let a few seconds pass, then said, “I saw that someone had removed the furniture wedges from under the bookcase. I also saw that someone had used the toilet plunger to lever the bookcase away from the wall.” I paused for dramatic effect, then said, “And now I know who that was.” Actually, I didn’t. But they did.
I would have bet money that it would be Mia Parker who cracked-but it was Jay Lawrence. He said, “Then you know I had nothing to do with it. I was in my hotel all morning, and I can prove it.”
When someone says that, you assume they’re telling the truth, i.e., they’ve established their alibi for the time of death. Or they think they have. Meanwhile, Mia Parker was staring at her friend, who continued, “I had room service at six thirty, and then I had it cleared at seven thirty.”
“All that proves is that you had breakfast.” And I didn’t.
I looked at Mia Parker and said to her, “Mrs. Parker, based on the statement your husband just made, I am charging you with attempted murder.”
I was about to go into my right-to-remain-silent spiel, but she fainted. Just like that. Crumpled to the floor. Ideally, a suspect should be awake when you read them Miranda, so I turned my attention to Jay Lawrence.
He was just standing there, looking not too well himself. Hello? Jay? Your friend just fainted.
I would have come to Mrs. Parker’s assistance, but Rourke was already coming toward us.
I looked at Jay Lawrence, and I said, “I have reason to believe that you were an accomplice. That it was you who assisted Mrs. Parker in removing the two furniture wedges from under the bookcase. Probably last night after you arrived from LA.” I informed him, “So your alibi for this morning, even if it proves to be true, does not exclude you as an accessory to attempted murder.” He didn’t faint, but he did go pale.
Rourke had run out to his squad car and returned with a first aid kit. He was now reviving Mrs. Parker with an ammonium nitrate capsule. This was good because now I only had to give the Miranda warning once. A small point, I know, but…anyway, I asked Jay Lawrence, “Do you have anything to say?”
He did. He said, “You’re out of your mind.” He added, “I had nothing to do with this.”
“That’s for a jury to decide.”
Rourke had gotten Mrs. Parker into the wingback chair, and she looked awake enough, so I began, “You both have the right to remain silent-”
Jay Lawrence chose not to remain silent and interrupted, “I can prove conclusively that I came directly to the hotel from the airport and that I was in the Carlyle all evening and until ten this morning.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but I needed to hear more, so I asked, “How can you prove that?”
He hesitated, then said, “I was with a woman. All night.”
Apparently he did better than I did last night. I watched Bonanza.
He continued, “I will give you her name and cell phone number and you can speak to her, and she will confirm that.”
Okay…so we have the nearly airtight in-bed-with-a-lady alibi. But sometimes this is not so airtight. Still, this was a problem.
I was about to ask him for the lady’s name and number, but Mrs. Parker, fully awake now, shouted, “You were where?” She stood and shouted again, “You said you had interviews to do. You bastard!”
I’ve been here, and so has Rourke, apparently, because we both stepped between Mrs. Parker and Mr. Lawrence to head off a physical assault.
Mrs. Parker was releasing a string of obscenities and expletives, which Jay Lawrence took well, knowing he deserved them. And knowing too that his lover’s wrath was a lot better than being charged with accessory to attempted murder-which was actually a successful attempt. But that was my secret.
Mia Parker was still screaming, and I had the thought that I should have left her on the floor. But my main concern was that I’d gotten this wrong. About Jay Lawrence, I mean. But not about Mia Parker, who confirmed my charge of attempted murder by shouting, “I did this for you, you cheating bastard! So we could be together! You knew what I was going to-”
Jay Lawrence jumped right in there and shouted back, “I did not know what you-”
“You did!”
“Did not!”
And so forth. Rourke was nodding, letting me know he was a witness to this, while at the same time he kept repositioning himself so that the wronged lady could not get at her two-timing lover. I kind of hoped that she got around Rourke and dug her nails into Jay’s pretty face. I certainly wasn’t going to get between them. Hell hath no fury and all that.
Well, I was sure that the Dead End Bookstore hadn’t seen so much excitement since the upstairs toilet backed up.
Meanwhile, neither of the now ex-lovers seemed to notice that over five minutes had passed and there was no ambulance pulling up to rush Otis Parker to the hospital.
By now I should have had Rourke slap the cuffs on Mia Parker, but, well…I was enjoying this. She was really pissed, and she shouted to her fellow Angelino, “We could have bought that house in Malibu…we could have been together again…”
Where’s Malibu? California? Why did she want to go back there? No one wants to leave New York. This annoyed me.
She broke down again, sobbing and wailing, then collapsed in the chair. She was babbling now. “I hate it here…I hate this store…I hate him…I hate the cold…I want to go home…”
Well, sorry, lady, but you’re going to be a guest of the State of New York for a while.
As much as I wanted to cuff Jay Lawrence, I wasn’t certain what his role, if any, was in this murder. Well, he knew about it, according to Mia Parker. But did he actually conspire in the murder? And assuming she had help, who helped her? Not Jay, who was in the sack with his alibi witness.
I motioned for him to follow me, and he did so without protest. I led him to the rear of the store, away from his pissed-off girlfriend, and I said to him, “You get one chance to assist in this investigation. After that, you get charged with conspiracy to commit murder and/or as an accessory. Understand?”
He didn’t respond verbally, and I didn’t even get a nod. Instead he just stood there with a blank expression on his face.
I glanced at my watch to indicate the clock was ticking. Then I said, “Okay, you’re under arrest as an accessory-”
“Wait! I…okay, I knew she wanted him…out of the way…and she asked me…like, how would you do this in a novel…but I didn’t think she was serious. So I just made a joke of it.”
I informed him, “I think Otis Parker will live, and he can tell us what happened up there and who was in the room at that time.”
“Good. Then you’ll know that I’m telling the truth.”
And he probably was. Mia Parker committed the actual murder herself. But, with all due respect to her apparent intelligence, she didn’t think of that bookcase and that plunger and those furniture wedges by herself. That was Jay Lawrence. And that’s what she’d say, and he would deny it. She said, he said. Not good in court.
I said to him, “She seemed to think she was going to be with you in…” Where was that place? “Malibu.”
