I groaned out loud. As much as I loved my friend Abby and depended on her interest and support, I did not like being subjected to her often hasty and unreasonable expectations. “No, I don’t know who did it yet,” I said sarcastically, “do you?”

“Well, no, but I’ve got a few ideas.”

That figured.

“Pray tell,” I said, lighting a cigarette and exhaling loudly. “But make it snappy, please. I’ve got an important phone call to make.”

“Well, here’s the way I see it,” Abby said, breathlessly toting our drinks over to the table and flopping down in a flutter. Her stupendously beautiful face was glowing with the thrill of the chase. “Whoever murdered Judy was after the diamonds!”

I don’t know about you, but I found this to be a somewhat less than brilliant deduction.

“Of course the killer was after the diamonds!” I sputtered, disappointed in her simple theory. “That goes without saying! The question we need to answer is, who was after the diamonds? Was it Judy’s closest confidante and short-of-cash, bingo-playing next-door neighbor, or the penniless, dog-loving poet she threw over because he had too many other girlfriends, or the well-to-do, married older man who was paying the rent on her apartment and may have bought her all the jewelry in the first place? Was it Judy’s greedy, oversexed, violently spurned landlord, or the devious, down-and-out ex-roommate whose hair she ripped out by the roots? Or did Judy have a brand new boyfriend-a man who may, for all we know, have participated in some big diamond heist, and then coerced his malleable new girlfriend to hide his take in her apartment, and then shot her in the heart when she got scared and wanted to turn the loot over to the police?”

(Okay, okay! So I was stretching things a bit now, but I only did it to make a point-a salient and, I believe, legitimate point: that I was the one who had been doing all the homework here, and if anybody deserved to get a good grade on this test, it was me.)

“It was the well-to-do, married older man who bought her the jewelry in the first place,” Abby declared, unimpressed, totally ignoring my sarcasm and bid for distinction. “The richer they are, the deeper the killer instinct, you dig? I bet his wife found out about his pretty young plaything, and about all the pretty trinkets he’d bought for her, and I bet she threatened to haul him into divorce court and sue his playful pinstriped pants off-unless he ditched his little dolly and got all the diamonds back.”

“That could be true,” I said, so eager to talk to somebody about Judy’s murder that I stopped competing with Abby and teamed up with her instead, “but I don’t think he would have had to kill her to get the jewelry back. From everything I’ve learned about Judy so far, all he would have had to do was ask her for it. Judy wasn’t looking for diamonds, she was just looking for love.”

“Some girls get the two mixed up,” Abby said, raking her fingers through her wild black hair and tying it back in a ponytail with her red chiffon neckerchief. “Who is this rich guy anyway? Do you know his name?”

“I know his fake name,” I told her. “It’s Gregory Smith.”

“How did you get that name, and how do you know it’s fake?”

“I went to Judy’s apartment building on my lunch hour today, and I had a little chat with her manly-but-motherly next-door neighbor, Elsie Londergan. Elsie told me about Judy’s sugar daddy and gave me his alias. I think she just assumed it’s a phony name because of the Smith.”

“Does Whitey know who this rooster is?”

“I don’t think so, but I can’t say for sure. I haven’t had a chance to ask him yet. He’s been a little-how shall I put it?-under the weather.” The sarcasm slithered back into my tone with a stubborn will of its own.

Abby still paid it no mind. “Are there a lot of G. Smiths in the phone book?”

“Just a few hundred thousand,” I moaned. And that was just a slight exaggeration. (Really!) I had looked the name up when I’d gotten back to the office after my lunch hour (okay, two hours), and the roster seemed as long as HUAC’s blasphemous blacklist.

“Well, if it is a fake name, how’re you going to find out the real one?”

“From Judy’s landlord, maybe-or by tracing the diamonds back to their original source and trying to get the name of the buyer… Or maybe Vicki Lee Bumstead can help me.”

“Who’s that?” Abby said with a scornful smile. “Dagwood’s sister?”

“No, but she was kind of like Judy’s sister,” I explained. “They worked together at Macy’s for over a year. On my way home from work tonight, I stopped at Macy’s to speak to Vicki, and she told me that Gregory Smith was Judy’s lord and savior-whatever that means-and the greatest love of Judy’s life.”

“Did she know if Smith was his real name?”

“I didn’t get a chance to question her about it. She gave me her phone number, though, and said she would talk to me tonight if I called before eleven.”

“Oy, gevalt!” Abby cried. “Then what’re you waiting for?!!!” She glowered at me and threw her hands up in exasperation. “In case you haven’t heard, Moses already came down from the mountain. And if you take a look out the window, you’ll see that Hell has frozen over, too!”

See how pushy she could be?

“It’s only ten thirty-five,” I muttered, annoyed. “I was going to call as soon as I finished my drink.”

“Bottoms up!” she said, encouraging me-by example-to gulp down the rest of my highball. “Time waits for no woman… so you’d be a damn fool to wait for it.”

Chapter 11

I WENT BACK TO MY OWN APARTMENT TO make the call. The sales slip with the phone number was in my purse, and besides, I wanted to talk to Vicki in private, without Abby sticking her cheek up next to mine and mashing her ear against the receiver, trying to tune in Vicki’s words the very moment they came through the wire.

I dialed and the phone rang twice. Then a woman’s voice, much higher and shriller than Vicki’s, answered, “Hello, who’s there?”

“This is Phoebe Starr,” I said, “and I’m calling to speak to Vicki… Vicki Lee Bumstead. Do I have the right number?”

“Vicki!” the woman screeched, blasting my eardrum to smithereens, then dropping the phone down-hard-on a table, or the floor, or some other solid surface. “You got a call! Hurry up! It’s almost your bedtime!”

A few seconds passed, then I heard footsteps racing toward the phone. “Hello?” Vicki said, huffing as though she’d just run down to the deli and back. “Phoebe?”

“Yes!” I said, surprised that she knew it was me (or, rather, the “me” I was pretending to be) without her mother telling her.

“Thank God!” she exclaimed, her gravelly voice giving the words she spoke a rich and smoky intensity. “I was praying you would call.”

“You were? Why? What’s happening?” This sounded serious.

“I was thinking about everything you said-about Judy being killed on purpose by somebody who knew her-and I started wondering if you were right. And that started me wondering who could have done it-who could have actually pulled the trigger-and why that person wanted Judy dead. And you know what I think?”

“What?!” I squawked (and I’m sure the timbre of my voice was every bit as shrill as Vicki’s mother’s). “What do you think?”

“I think somebody killed her to get the diamonds.”

Big sigh. So Vicki knew about the diamonds, too… “What? What diamonds?” I said, playing dumb, waiting to see how she would explain the jewelry connection to me.

“Oh, come on, Phoebe! You know!” she insisted. “The diamond necklace and bracelets and earrings and stuff that Judy’s daddy-o gave her. Your aunt must have told you about it! I know for a fact that Judy told her.”