“Yes, I have. Texas? What’s Texas got to…?”
“Houston, Texas?”
“No. Just Dallas.”
“Do you know anyone named Andrew Hale?”
“No. Yes. I never met him, but I know his name. Someone mentioned it.”
“Who mentioned it?”
“Cynthia, I think. He was her father, wasn’t he?”
“How did she happen to mention it?”
“Something about underlying rights? I really can’t remember.”
“But you say you don’t know anyone named Martha Coleridge.”
“That’s right.”
“Didn’t you get a letter from her recently?”
“What?”
“A letter. From a woman named Martha Coleridge. Explaining that she’d written a play called…”
“Oh yes. Her. I sent it back to Norman. Are you telling me she’s the same person who got killed?”
“Norman Zimmer?”
“Yes. Is she the one…?”
“Why’d you send it to him?”
“I figured he’d know what to do about it. He’s the producer, isn’t he?
What do I know about a crazy old lady who wrote a play in 1922?”
“Excuse me,” Kling said politely. “But what do you mean you sent it back to him?”
“Well, it was addressed to me care of his office. He had it messengered to me here. I mailed it back to him.”
“Didn’t try to contact Miss Coleridge, did you?” Meyer asked.
“No, why would I?”
“Didn’t write to her, or try to phone her…”
“No.”
“Didn’t you find her letter at all threatening?”
“Threatening?”
“Yes. All that stuff about starting litigation…”
“That has nothing to do with me.”
“It doesn’t?”
“That’s Norman’s problem. And Connie’s. They’re the ones producing the show.”
“But if the show got tangled up in litigation…”
“That’s not my problem.”
“It might not get produced,” Kling said reasonably.
“So what?”
“Come on, Miss Carr,” Meyer said sharply. “There’s lots of money involved here.”
“I’ve got a good job in L.A.,” Felicia said. “It’ll be nice if Jenny’s Room happens. But if not, not. Life goes on.”
Not if you’re Martha Coleridge, Meyer thought.
“So can you tell us where you were Sunday night?” he asked.
“I went to a movie with my girlfriend,” Felicia said, sighing. “The woman whose apartment this is. Shirley Lasser.”
“What’d you see?” Kling asked casually.
“The new Travolta film.”
“Any good?”
“The movie was lousy,” Felicia said. “But I like him.”
“He’s usually very good,” Kling said.
“Yes.”
“Do you find him handsome?”
“Extremely so.”
“What time did the show go on?” Meyer asked, getting back in character.
“Eight o’clock.”
“What time did you get home?”
“Around eleven.”
“Girlfriend with you all that time?”
“Yes.”
“Where can we reach her?”
“She’s at work right now.”
“Where’s that?”
“You guys kill me,” Felicia said.
The sky was beginning to cloud over as they headed uptown. Decked out for Christmas as she was, the city petulantly demanded snow. Store windows were decorated with fake snow, and there were fake Salvation Army Santas shaking bells in front of fake chimneys on every other street corner. But this was already the ninth of December and Christmas Day was fast approaching.
What the city needed now was a real Santa soaring over the rooftops, real snow falling gently from the sky above. What the city needed was a sign.
“I think she was telling the truth,” Kling said.
“I don’t,” Meyer said.
“Where was she lying?”
“She gets a letter threatening legal action, and she forgets the woman’s name?”
“Well…”
“Says she never heard of her, quote, unquote. Then all at once, comes the dawn! Oh yes, now I recall,” he said, doing a pretty fair imitation.
“Martha Coleridge! She’s the one who wrote a letter that can only deprive me of early retirement.” He snapped the mobile phone from its cradle, held it out to Kling. “Call this Shirley Lasser,” he said, “tell her we’re on the way.
Six to five her pal’s already been on the pipe, telling her they saw a Travolta movie together last Sunday night.”
Kling began dialing.
“I wonder which one it was,” he said.
Knowing that Jamaicans slept ten, twelve to a room, Fat Ollie Weeks did not consider it beyond the realm of possibility that a Jamaican visitor from Houston, Texas, might have crashed with friends or relatives now residing in this fair city, ah yes. Further knowing that the Jamaican in question had picked up Althea Cleary in a diner in the Eight-Eight, he took a run at the precinct’s own Jamaican enclave, The Forbes Houses on Noonan and Crowe -and came up empty. Undaunted, but unwilling to do a door-to-door canvass of the city’s six other Jamaican neighborhoods, he headed for the largest of them, downtown in the Three-Two Precinct.
Here in the old city, narrow, twisting little streets with Floridasounding names like Lime, Hibiscus, Pelican, Manatee, and Heron ran into similarly cramped little lanes and alleys called Goedkoop, Keulen, Sprenkels, and Visser, named by the Dutch when the city was new and masted sailing ships lay in the harbor. Them days was gone forever, Gertie.
