“No, it wasn’t my place.”
“What?” she said again, only this time it was more of a screech. She spun around, stared me in the eye, propped her hands on her hips, and cried, “It wasn’t your place?! How could you be such a boob, Paige? Don’t you have any chutzpah? The woman runs a whorehouse, for Pete’s sake, and you’re worried about your stupid place?”
“It’s an escort service, not a whorehouse.”
“Oh, excuse me!” she said, sarcasm seeping out of every pore. “The last time I checked, call girls and whores were the same thing. And prostitution, by any other name, was still a crime.”
“Yes, but I don’t believe it should be,” I said, thinking of all the desperate young women who peddled their flesh because that was the only thing of value that they had.
“Don’t change the subject!” Abby blustered. “We’re talking about you now. You and your fearful, self-conscious ways.”
She was starting to tick me off. “I’m not fearful, I’m cautious,” I said, keeping my voice low and my emotions under control (for once). “There’s a big difference between the two. And I’m not self-conscious, either; I’m self-aware. Also modest, polite, and reserved-which is more than I can say for some people.”
“Oh, stuff it, Paige! That’s a crock, and you know it. You’re as modest and reserved as Milton Berle with a lampshade on his head.” She took two cups out of the cabinet and plopped them down on the counter. “You know what? This is a really stupid argument, and I refuse to take part in it.” (She had, apparently, forgotten that she was the one who started it.) “All I want to know is how you could spend a whole afternoon talking to the madam of a brothel-excuse me, escort service-without asking her how she got into the racket.”
I was two seconds away from blowing my top. (Okay, one second.) “For God’s sake, Abby!” I bellowed, blood rushing to my head. “What the hell do you want from me? I was sitting in an impressive Gramercy Park apartment, having lunch with a total stranger, talking about the brutal murder of a beautiful young woman! I was in shock that I was there, appalled and intrigued by the sinister circumstances, and madly scratching in the dirt for information-so focused on the hideous death of Virginia Pratt that I could hardly breathe. And you’re telling me… what? That I should have ignored that little problem? That I should have-first and foremost-found out why my snooty, short-tempered hostess had given up a life of leisure to become a madam?!”
Unaffected by my tirade, Abby calmly replied, “I never said you should ignore anything. I simply felt it would be useful to have more clues to Sabrina’s character. She could be the murderer, you know.”
Aaargh!
“I’m very well aware of that,” I said, inhaling deeply, trying to cool myself down from a boil to a simmer. “That’s why I’m going back to question the queen in the morning. I’m going to storm her big white castle, fight off the two knights in armor standing guard at her door, charge up to her private turret, and force her to tell the true tale of her secret passage from maidenhood to madamhood.”
Abby rolled her eyes. “What the hell are you dithering about? Castles! Knights! Turrets! Secret passages! I think you’re going bats.”
Frankly, I thought so, too. “Sorry, Ab,” I said. “I was just trying to describe the odd building Sabrina lives in, but I got a little carried away.”
She shrugged it off and charged ahead. “Are you really going to see her tomorrow?”
“Yes,” I said, coming to a firm decision. “First thing in the morning. But don’t think for one minute that you’re going with-”
“I’m going with you,” she said.
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am!” She stomped one foot on the floor, then filled the two cups on the counter with coffee and brought them over to the table. “We’re a team, remember? Burns and Allen. Abbott and Costello. And as your partner, I have a right to meet and interrogate the notorious Miss Stanhope myself.”
“That’s impossible,” I said, with Charlton Heston-like conviction. “I swore to Sabrina I wouldn’t tell anybody about her involvement, so I could never show up at her apartment with you at my side. She’d know I broke my promise, and she wouldn’t trust me anymore, and then she wouldn’t provide me with any new information. And she wouldn’t divulge any of her personal sex secrets to you, either,” I added, tossing a bucket of ice water on Abby’s eternal flame, “so you can kiss those burning questions good-bye.”
That cooled her off, thank goodness. “I get your drift,” she said, spooning sugar into her coffee and staring off into the distance like a Gypsy telling her own fortune. “I have to be slow and sneaky and stay deep undercover.”
“Right,” I said, heaving a huge, but silent, sigh of relief. “The deeper, the better.”
Chapter 19
IN SPITE OF MY FATIGUE, SLEEP DIDN’T COME soon. I thrashed around in my bed for a good two hours before Morpheus finally scooped me up in his arms, breathed a warm, seductive promise of peace into my ear, and then swept me off to dreamland.
But Morpheus is a liar and a cheat. Did you know that?
My slumber was anything but peaceful. Hostile was more like it. And my dreams were so horrible, I woke up howling. (Believe me, if you had been dreaming that you were tied up and naked, with your nose and mouth packed tight with huge wads of turpentine-soaked cotton, you’d have woken up howling, too.) I got out of bed at seven and went straight into the shower, hoping a blast of hot water would drive the demons out of my skull and bring me back to the land of the living.
It worked-sort of. I wasn’t exactly alive, but at least I was walking and talking (mostly to myself, since I was the only one there-but also to Virginia, who, I hoped, could hear my heartfelt pledge to see her vicious killer locked up for life).
After slathering on some makeup and getting dressed in a dark green pencil skirt and pale yellow sweater set, I staggered downstairs to look for my shoes. After finding them on the floor in the living room, I straightened my stocking seams and slipped on the dreaded high heels. Then I stuck the fresh pack of Pall Malls and the five one-dollar bills Abby had loaned me last night in my purse, put on my camel hair jacket and red wool beret, dashed down the stairs to the street, and headed for the subway.
I wanted to get to Sabrina’s early. Hopefully before she got out of bed. That way, I might get to talk to her maid, Charlotte, for a few minutes in private-i.e., without Sabrina’s supervision. And since Sabrina never went to bed before three in the morning and probably slept at least until ten, I figured I had a pretty good chance to accomplish this goal.
It was the middle of the morning rush, so the uptown express was packed tighter than a tin of sardines. (Yes, I know that’s an overused analogy, but it really is the perfect description.) I stood mashed between two men who wore gray flannel suits, overcoats, and fedoras, and who smelled of cigarettes, coffee, and English Leather. Their big briefcases kept bashing me in the knees.
I squeezed off the train at 14th Street and trudged up the crowded stairs to the street. It felt good to be out in the open air, even though I had a ten-block walk ahead of me and my feet hurt so much I wanted to crawl the distance instead. I looked around for a crosstown bus, but the only one I saw was going in the wrong direction. Wishing I could stop at Chock Full for coffee and a roll, but not wanting to take the time, I hunched my shoulders, bowed my head against the morning chill, and marched onward like a migrating penguin to Gramercy Park.
Even though I’d seen it before, the gargoyle-and-cherub-trimmed façade of Sabrina’s weird white building still came as a surprise. It was so completely out of place. It belonged in a different country and a different century. And I couldn’t get over the two knights in shining armor positioned on either side of the walkway leading to the building’s entrance. The first time I’d seen the twin statues, I found them forbidding, but now they just looked silly. As I passed between them, I gave them a hearty “Hello, boys!” but they didn’t seem to notice.