Alan Cook - Hotline to Murder

The telephone rang. It was Tony’s turn to answer it. A woman with a cultured voice was on the line, with a slight New York accent. She was definitely a cut above the usual Hotline caller. Tony immediately pegged her as living in West Los Angeles, perhaps Beverly Hills. He would try to get that information before the end of the call.

The call went on and on. She was middle-aged, married and divorced, and trying to decide what to do about her boyfriend. He had his pluses and minuses. In fact, she recited them so readily that Tony wondered whether she had already taken a sheet of paper, drawn a line down the middle, and written the pluses on one side and the minuses on the other.

While they talked, Shahla took a number of calls. At the end of two hours Tony figured that he and his caller had solved most of the world’s problems. Or at least the problem of her boyfriend. She had a plan of action and thanked him for helping her arrive at it.

After Tony hung up, Shahla said, “I thought you were going to marry her.”

“She’s too old for me,” Tony said laughing, “but it sounds like she has some money. Maybe it’s not a bad idea.” He looked at the clock on the wall of the listening room. It was almost ten. He said, “Time flies when you’re straightening out the world. I want to make a copy of that poem before we get out of here.”

“On the copier?”

“No. Flattening it on the copier might destroy any fingerprints. I’ll enter it on one of the office computers and then print it out.” Tony went to the administration room, turned on Patty’s computer and typed in the poem, using Microsoft Word. He had honed his typing prowess writing papers in college and made short work of it. Then he printed it. Shahla asked him to print a copy for her. When he was through, he deleted the poem from the computer.

“No sense leaving evidence,” Tony said. “Now, we’ll replace the original poem in the envelope and place that in a larger envelope to preserve whatever there is to preserve.” He used his handkerchief to handle the documents, determined to keep them as clean as possible. “Then I’ll take the evidence to the police station.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, tonight. No time like the present. And I need to explain to them how my fingerprints got on the envelope.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“We’ve been through this, Shahla.”

“This is different than the other night. First, it’s Friday night. There’s no school tomorrow. And it’s only a few blocks to the police station. I’ll call my mother and tell her exactly where I’m going so she won’t worry.” Tony’s look must have been disbelieving because she said, “Yes, some teenagers do actually communicate with their parents. Besides, I never got a chance to tell you why I think Martha may be a suspect.”

Shahla whipped out her cell phone before Tony could mount a solid defense and got her mother on the line. Her side of the conversation went something like this: “Hi, Mom, it’s me. I won’t be home for a little while…I have to go to the police station…Just to give them some evidence…Don’t worry, I’m going with Tony. He’s a lot older, but he’s pretty strong. He’ll keep us safe…I’ll see you later…Bye.”

“Do I have to show her my muscles and my AARP card?” Tony asked.

“It’s okay. I may have exaggerated a little, but she trusts me.”

The guard who walked out with them was a middle-aged nonentity. Tony wondered whether he had been the one on duty the night Joy was killed but decided not to ask him because he didn’t want to get trapped into a long discussion about what had happened to her.

There was one slight deviation to the plan. Tony had Shahla drive her car home, and he followed her. It was a couple of miles out of their way, but he didn’t want to have to return her to the mall in the middle of the night. She ran inside her house and told her mom she was riding to the police station in his car.

“What kind of a car is this?” Shahla asked as she returned and settled into the passenger’s seat.

“It’s a Porsche Boxter.” Tony was proud of his car, the one outward sign that he had accomplished something in his life. Well, there was the townhouse, which he had shoehorned himself into, but he still needed to have Josh live there as a tenant to come up with the payments. He had leased the Porsche-a manageable down payment, and reasonable monthly payments made him look respectable. Of course, when the lease ran out, he would be left with nothing. But he would cross that bridge…

“It’s small. And it sounds as if the engine is behind us.”

“It’s behind our seats. Located for maximum stability.”

Shahla looked nervously over her shoulder. “I hope it stays there.”

Those were not the comments of a car buff. Shahla wasn’t impressed. Maybe he should have settled for a Honda. He made it all the way up to third gear on Pacific Coast Highway and felt a little better as he listened to the purr of the engine. He needed to take a trip to the desert so he could let it run for a while, like a racehorse. It was not built for the stop-and-go driving of a city.

They arrived at the police station within five minutes. Bonita Beach was a compact city. Joy’s murder had reverberated through it like a fire siren and left the residents feeling betrayed and anxious. The full impact to the city and to the Hotline had grown on Tony as his shock had worn off, and now he wanted to find the murderer as much as Shahla did.

They walked into the station together and approached the counter, behind which sat a young female officer doing something with a computer. After a few seconds, she looked up and said, “Can I help you?”

Tony explained that they had some possible evidence for the murder investigation. He expected her to just take the envelope and their names, but she said, “Detective Croyden’s here. I’ll get him. Have a seat in there.”

She pointed to a doorway that led into a conference room. Tony and Shahla went into the room containing a worn wooden table and worn wooden chairs. On the wall were posters relating to drugs, alcohol, and other temptations of the flesh. The posters exhorted the reader against yielding to these temptations.

Shahla said, “‘Can I help you?’ means, ‘Am I able to help you?’ I was tempted to say, ‘I don’t know. Can you?’”

“So what should she have said?” Tony asked. He had never paid much attention in English class.

“‘May I help you?’ That asks for permission.”

“Thank you for the lesson.”

“No charge.”

“Well, if it isn’t two of my favorite people. I might have known I’d see you on Friday the thirteenth.”

Detective Croyden had entered the room while they had their backs to the door, looking at posters. Tony turned around and said, “Working late, aren’t you?” He knew why Croyden might be sarcastic with him, but not Shahla, unless she had let some of her dislike of the police show when he talked to her.

“Crime never sleeps,” Croyden said. “What have you got for me?”

He didn’t ask them to sit down, and he didn’t take a seat himself, so the three of them remained standing. Tony thought he looked tired. There were bags under his eyes, and his facial wrinkles were pronounced, as was his broken nose. Tony pointed to the brown envelope he had set on the table and told Croyden what was inside. He related how he had found and handled the white envelope, mentioning that several of his own fingerprints might be on it.

“But at least you came to your senses before you covered it with your prints,” Croyden said, with what might be faint praise. “Do you know what’s inside it?”

Tony missed a beat while he reconsidered his first answer and then said, “No.” He hoped Croyden hadn’t noticed his involuntary head-fake.