Parnell Hall: The Innocent Woman

“How do you know it had never worked before?”

“My client told me.”

“Big deal. I wouldn’t take her word for anything.”

“Gentlemen, please. Let’s not digress,” Judge Wylie said.

“The point is,” Steve said, “he was planning to get her up there. So at the end of dinner he went to check the answering machine. Not that he was expecting to get a message. More than likely, he was just laying the groundwork for skipping the movie He intended to tell her something had come up, they didn’t have time to go to the show, but he had time to come up to her place for a while.”

“You know that for a fact?” Dirkson said.

“No, I’m making it up. It just seems plausible to me.”

“I need more than that.”

“I don’t.”

Dirkson looked at him. “Huh?”

“If you don’t convict this guy, it’s no skin off my nose. I’ll give you what I’ve got, but frankly I’m getting a little sick of the sarcastic interruptions.”

“You haven’t given me a fact yet.”

“You haven’t shut up long enough for me get to one.”

Winslow and Dirkson glared at each other a moment. Then Dirkson waved it off, flopped into a chair. “Get on with it,” he said.

“Okay,” Steve said. “For whatever reason, at the end of dinner Cunningham went and made a phone call. He said he was checking his answering machine, but actually he was checking hers. Why? Because he had call-forwarding on, transferring his calls to her phone.” Steve pointed to Dirkson. “And there is a fact that you can check. First that he has call-forwarding. And second, that on the night in question it was routing his calls to her phone.”

“Will there be a record of that?” Dirkson said.

Steve shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea. But it’s something to check out. If there’s a record, it will help. But there should be other proofs.”

“Such as what?”

“You might try cabs.”

“Huh?”

“Cunningham beat Amy down to the office and had time to get in, kill Fletcher and get out. If she went home, checked the answering machine and went straight down there, that would be cutting it rather close. I doubt if a man on that sort of time schedule would take the subway.”

“What time schedule? According to her, she didn’t get down there until ten o’clock.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t know that. As far as he was concerned, she was right on his heels.”

“She was,” Dirkson said, “and you know it. She came down right after him.”

“I don’t want to get into that,” Steve said.

“I’ll bet you don’t.”

“I mean now. It’s another digression. Right now, I’m telling you what Cunningham did.”

“And I for one want to hear it,” Judge Wylie said. “We can deal with these other matters later on. You were saying, Mr. Winslow?”

“I’m saying the odds are he took a cab. And if he did, somewhere out there there will be a cabbie with a trip sheet listing that ride. And if there is, the cops can find it. Just like they did with Tracy Garvin.”

“You admit that was her in that cab?”

“I admit nothing of the sort. I’m just using it as an example.” Steve leaned back in his chair. “Where was I? Oh yes, Cunningham takes a cab downtown. You can figure that cab was hailed at approximately seven-thirty.”

“Not eight o’clock?” Judge Wylie said.

“Absolutely not.” Steve turned to Dirkson. “Amy Dearborn has always maintained she left the restaurant at seven-thirty. Cunningham’s the one said eight o’clock. He was most insistent about it. At first I thought he was lying to give her an alibi. It took a while before I realized he was lying to give himself one.”

Dirkson frowned.

Steve smiled. “See how it fits? Anyway, he made the phone call at seven-thirty. Just as he would have if they were going to the pictures at eight. Which Amy thought they were actually doing. So Cunningham goes, makes the phone call, hears the message from Frank Fletcher because he has call-forwarding on, is incensed, goes back, tells Amy Dearborn a business matter came up. They leave the restaurant. She goes home, he grabs a cab downtown.”

Dirkson put up his hand. “Hold on a moment.”

“What?”

“The business appointment. With the client. Whatever his name is.”

“Philip Eckstein.”

“Yeah, him. Are you saying there never was a business appointment?”

“No. Of course there was.”

“How? Where’s the message?”

“What message?”

“The message on the answering machine. Look,” Dirkson said. “I served the search warrant. We impounded Amy Dearborn’s machine. The only message on that tape was from Frank Fletcher, asking her to come to the office. If Larry Cunningham had call-forwarding on, the message from Philip Eckstein should have been on there too,”

Steve smiled. “Yeah, but you’re taking his story at face value.”

“No, I’m not,” Dirkson said. “I checked with the client. He said he left the message.”

“A wholly reliable witness?” Steve asked.

Dirkson took a breath. “Actually, no. As I recall he’s a nerdy little twerp, nervous as hell, gave the impression he was lying. But not about the call. About the time element. See, I always figured just like you did that Cunningham was lying about the time to give her an alibi. And this guy was his client, owed him a favor and was backing him up. I’ll give you that. But the bit about the phone call and the message-there was nothing bogus about that. And with a guy that transparent, I’d know.”

“I think you would too,” Steve said.

“So where’s the message?”

“On Cunningham’s answering-machine.”

“How is that possible if he had call-forwarding on?”

“That threw me a while too,” Steve said. “Before I realized Cunningham was lying all the way along. But it works out if you trace his motivation. First off, he’s looking to get laid. He’s going out with Amy Dearborn, he’s looking to score, and that’s number one in his mind.

“Here’s how I dope it out. He gets home that afternoon, checks his answering machine. There are two messages on it. One is this guy Philip Eckstein, saying he really wants to meet with him that evening to go over some stock. The other is Amy Dearborn, high as a kite, saying she just got home from court, she was acquitted on all counts, and let’s go out to dinner and celebrate.”

Steve shrugged. “Tough luck for Eckstein. Cunningham never calls him, never gives him a second thought. He calls up Amy Dearborn, says he’ll be right there. He stops long enough to set call-forwarding on his phone so if he gets any more calls they’ll be routed up there. Then he picks up Amy Dearborn and goes out to dinner, at the end of which he calls to check the machine. Since it’s call-forwarding he checks hers, gets the message from Fletcher, and there you are.

“Now he needs a pretext to get away. Well, he’s got one already. The business meeting. He calls Phil Eckstein, pretends he just got the message from him, tells him to sit tight, he’ll be right over. Then he goes back, tells Amy Dearborn something came up, sends her home, rushes down and kills Fletcher.”

Dirkson shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“I do,” Steve said. “When you questioned Eckstein, you knew he was lying, right? About the time element?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So, if he’s so transparent, I bet you can break it down.”

Dirkson frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The lie Cunningham got him to tell was that the phone call from the restaurant was at eight o’clock. We know it was seven-thirty. That’s the lie, and that’s why the guy’s nervous.

“The other half of the story-that Cunningham got there at eight-thirty-that happens to be true. Why? Because he went to kill Fletcher first. See, if he called at eight o’clock and went straight to the client’s house, he’d get there at eight-thirty. But if the phone call was seven-thirty and he went right there, he’d get there at eight o’clock.