Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 67, No. 3. Whole No. 388, March 1976

Although I came in from the side of the building, I was actually at the back of the operation. Since the show was shot without an audience, the entire floor area was working space, with individual sets parked along the walls. I recognized the Martin living room, the malt shop, Doc Danner’s office. Good old Loganburg, U.S.A. I also recognized a burly guy with a shiny domed head talking with a group of people at the far end of the floor. It was Lieutenant Donald (Bullethead) Jaffee of Homicide, who rates me just below Genghis Khan on his Least Favorite People list.

I know if Jaffee or one of his goons spots me, it will be sidewalk time, so I slip around the back of the sets and head for an iron-grill stairway that leads up a brick wall to a balcony with a half dozen doors opening onto it. I’ve been in enough theaters to know they had to be dressing rooms. Since I didn’t see Jeepers in the small crowd around the lieutenant, I was hoping she was hibernating up here.

I opened the first door and found the room empty. So was the second. On the third try I lucked in. Jeepers was sitting at a dressing table talking to a gray-haired lady (Ann Harding-Fay Bainter-Spring Byington-Take Your Pick Stage-Mother Type). She turned out to be Ginny Owens, Old Ma Martin on the show.

Jeepers is really pouring on the emotion, but the Owens dame is giving her a run for the Emmy. I am dividing by seven to find out which part is actress, which part is for real. Between them I finally found out that Walter Powers, the show’s writer-producer, had been stabbed to death in his office downstairs, either before or during the afternoon show.

“I thought Billy Tibbs was the producer?” I asked them.

“He’s the executive producer, Mr. Kelly. Walt did all the work on ‘River of Life.’ In fact, he owned a piece of the show.”

“Make it ‘Chick,’ Ginny. What happened?”

I let Ginny give me the details because she was making ten percent more sense than her stage niece.

The reason the kid, Timmy Martin (his real name, Tippy Grant), missed his camera cue during the show was because it was he who discovered the body. When he was walking onto the set, he noticed smoke coming from under Powers’ office door, and opened it to find the writer slumped over his desk with a letter opener in his back and a fire blazing in the wastepaper basket.

“So what are you getting excited about, Jeep? You were on camera when Powers got it. You and Pop Martin,” I said, smiling.

“Cal McKittrick,” Ginny told me.

“Okay, McKittrick. I need a program.”

“Not according to that lieutenant.” Jeepers is still pouring it on. “You see, Chick, the opening six minutes of the segment was a tape intercut. It was an introspective, double-image shot, and Walt went for tape to make it easier. Everyone was just wandering around the set at the time the police say he was killed.”

“So anyone could have done it, says dear old Bullethead Jaffee, huh? You didn’t give him a statement, did you?”

“No, he’s talking to the rest of the cast downstairs. Will I have to, Chick?”

“From now on you go into pantomime. You’re mute. I’d suggest the same to you, Ginny, but be your own guide.”

I must remember to close doors behind me — at least I’d have some warning when anybody walks in. In this case I didn’t, and Jaffee nailed me.

“Good God Almighty,” he roars at my back. “Have you been here all the time, Kelly?”

Well, maybe he didn’t nail me. Maybe he dealt me a solid hole card. If by “all this time” he meant before the murder, I had him. If he checked with the cops on the door, he would bounce me out. So I lied, which I do not find difficult, and at times find enjoyable.

“I was visiting Miss Jordan before the show and must have fallen asleep up here. You know, like Goldilocks.”

That got him. The hackles went up on his neck. “Get downstairs with the rest of them!” he shouted.

I was hoping he would leave first, because I had eyes for a pay phone on the wall, and a dime ready to call Ted Summers, my lawyer, but I wasn’t that lucky. Jaffee herded us out like Lassie.

One of his minions, a guy named Coogan, was taking statements, while another played stenographer, and the rest of his merry men dragged crime-lab paraphernalia in and out. I slumped against a green cinderblock wall near a doorway that was getting a lot of official traffic. I assumed it was Powers’, the dead writer’s, office, because a smell of wet charred paper reeked out of it. One of the crime-lab boys was saying, “It couldn’t have been any more than six or seven pages, Lieutenant. There isn’t that much ash. I wish the hell they let it bum out instead of ruining everything with a fire extinguisher.”

“It was a natural reaction, Jim. Can you get anything out of that mess?”

“Snap answer, no, but we’ll give it a try, Lieutenant. Might have to send it to the Bureau in D.C.”

“Don’t, if you can help it. Who needs them? One thing is sure. Whoever gave it to him burned that stuff to cover up. Letters, maybe,” Jaffee said.

“Beats me. You getting anything out there with the cast?”

“It’s an Ipswich clam bed.”

When I heard Jaffee turn, I edged away from the door and mingled with the cast. I spotted Billy Tibbs talking with the woman who plays the Martins’ chowderhead neighbor. He introduced her as Mavis Clark. She nodded to me and wandered away.

“How did you get in here, Chick? This would be a good place to stay away from.”

I looked him straight in the eye, owing to Jeeper’s expanded part. “Because I’m in love.”

Billy’s no dope. He picked it up. “She’s got talent, babe. That’s all I care about.”

“Sure, Billy.”

“Look, Chick, don’t complicate matters. I have enough problems. I decided to up the ratings a couple of weeks ago, and the niece role came up. We were going to change a lot of things, but now — well.”

“What’s with this Walt Powers? Any enemies?”

“I thought you ran a night club?”

“I told you I’ve got a personal interest. I think I’m going to get tossed out of here if a certain patrolman comes in from the 74th Street door and sees me lined up with the suspects, so give me what you can fast.”

Billy Tibbs tilted his head in disbelief. “How do I know, Chick? Lord, a writer is a natural-born enemy of actors. So are producers. Walt happened to be both.”

“Yeah, congrats. I hear you’re the executive producer. I underestimated your clout.”

“Clout, hell. I got shoved into this job when I started to lose Nielsen numbers, and it’s been going downhill ever since, because Powers wouldn’t change the format. You wouldn’t believe how old-fashioned that bird was. Our major competitor, ‘End of the Rainbow,’ had an abortion and a bank robbery in one week, while we had Ma Martin handing out advice on raising children.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Soap watchers want gossip and they want it juicy. Over on ‘A Second Life’ they now have a dope-taking brain surgeon involved in a love triangle that would make D. H. Lawrence blush.”

“What was Powers going to change?”

“Damned if I know, Chick. He told me this morning he had the new script worked out, but he didn’t show it to me.”

“Think that’s what the fire was about?”

“You know, I hadn’t thought about that ...” Then one of the Homicide goons called his name, and he went over to the center of the floor. Jaffee was really duking it up. He was now sitting at a table with the steno guy next to him, playing Twenty Questions with whoever sat opposite him.

I wanted to get into Powers’ office unnoticed, but the lab crew was still working in it, although there were fewer of them now. I decided to haunt the doorway, just in case.