After Midnight

Then I dropped a quarter into the phone and made the call.

“Tribune circulation,” a woman’s voice told me. “This is Yvonne. May I help you, please?”

“I hope so,” I said. “This is Mrs. Tony Romano. I’m afraid we didn’t receive our newspaper this morning.”

“May I have your phone number, please?”

I read her Tony’s number off the pad, and figured she was probably tapping it into a computer.

“Yes. You should’ve gotten it by now, Mrs. Romano. I’ll…”

“The thing is,” I said quickly, “we haven’t been getting it since our move. We just recently moved to a new place. I was wondering if there might be a mix-up and maybe it’s still being delivered to our old address on Washington.”

“Hmm. No. We have it here as being delivered to 8448 Adams.”

I wrote the address on my note pad.

“Is that your correct address for delivery?” Yvonne asked.

“Yeah, it is.” Laughing softly, I said, “So much for my theory.”

“Well, I’ll make sure we get this straightened out for you, Mrs. Romano. We’ll have this morning’s paper to you within the hour.”

“Thank you very much.”

“Thank you for being a subscriber, and we do apologize for your inconvenience.”

“No problem. Thanks again. Bye-bye.”

I hung up and grinned.

After glancing around to make sure nobody had an eye on me, I wiped the handset and number pad with a tissue. Then I walked out of Pokey’s and climbed into Judy’s car.

Next stop, Tony’s place!

I felt brilliant.

Of course, the trick would’ve fallen flat if Tony hadn’t been a Tribune subscriber. Lucky me, he was. And lucky me, he’d been prompt about giving the paper his change of address.

If my luck held, I would walk up to Tony’s front door and find it unlocked.

Which was sure to happen.

Sure.

In my dreams.

Too bad I’d gotten rid of Tony’s keys. I could’ve stepped right up to his door, unlocked it and walked in easy as pie. But last night, I’d been sure there was no possibility of learning his new address. I’d been positive. There just wasn’t any way to do it, not without drastic steps such as questioning people in his old building.

Besides, I’d already thrown his keys in the fire before Judy told me that she knew for a fact he had redial.

If only I’d kept them!

Thought I was so smart, throwing all that stuff in the fire.

Yeah, yeah, burn the evidence! Great idea!

Shit!

Of course, the keys would probably still work fine. All I had to do was drive over to Miller’s Woods, hunt around until I find the campsite, dig the keys out of the cold campfire, hike back to the car and drive all the way over to Tony’s…

That’s all.

And in the meantime, maybe the cops might find Tony’s body.

If they haven’t already.

And they get to his place ahead of me.

What if they’re already there?

Tony’s address on Adams was only a few blocks away from Judy’s apartment building. Just for the sake of caution, I made a slight detour and drove to her place, first. The neighborhood probably would’ve been crawling with cops and curious neighbors if Tony’s body had been discovered. But it was quiet, so I drove on.

As I drove, I wondered how to get inside his apartment.

I had no idea.

I planned to play it by ear.

Now, you might be asking yourself, All this over a redial button? Is she nuts?

Maybe.

I wondered about that myself.

But I kept picturing a cop in Tony’s apartment. He notices the redial feature and thinks, This’ll have the last number Tony ever called! It might even belong to the murderer! Check it out! So he gives it a try. Next thing you know, Charlie’s voice is in his ear, saying, “Thank you for calling. Nobody is available to answer the phone, right now, but if you’d like to leave a message…”

This’ll really get the cop going. Especially if he ever lays his hands on the phone company records and finds out what time Tony made the call—and how long it lasted.

He’ll be very eager to pay Charlie a visit.

But Charlie and Serena are out of town for the week.

And the only person with access to the house and phone is me.

Not a pretty picture.

But I now had a chance to make it go away.

All I had to do was get inside Tony’s apartment and make one telephone call.

Worth a little risk, don’t you think?

I thought so.

But then, I’d been through a lot, so maybe I wasn’t thinking very straight at the time.

29

MURPHY

Leaving Judy’s car parked around the corner, I walked back to 8448 Adams.

It was an old, single-level building with eight small units and an open, grassy courtyard in the middle. I didn’t know Tony’s apartment number. So instead of entering, I just looked the place over and kept walking.

Each front door had a mailbox nearby. Too bad. If you’re in a complex with a bank of mailboxes, the post office requires names on all the boxes. But when you’ve got your own box, like at this place, you don’t need to put your name on it. And nobody does.

Three of the units had newspapers in front of them.

One of those was probably Tony’s.

But which?

Had the Tribune delivery person shown up yet with the replacement? If not, I could simply wait for him and see what he does.

But there was a slim chance that he’d already been here and gone. (He certainly wouldn’t have left a second paper on the doorstep.) If he’d already shown up, I would have an awfully long wait.

There was just no way to know for sure.

Anyway, I didn’t have time to waste. I had to get this done and get going.

Maybe the car ports or garages would give me a clue as to Tony’s apartment number. So I headed for the end of the block to look for an alley entrance.