Killed on the Ice Read online

  Naked women, all of them pretty, started to scream as soon as I dashed inside, but it wasn’t my arrival that set them off. I looked across the room and saw the reason for the screaming. Bea Dunney, still in the gingham jumper and pigtails she wore as the Innocent Heroine, was lying on the floor, twitching. All around her was a pool of clear liquid, with shards of brown glass in it. Her bare feet and legs sat in the liquid, drinking it in. The air was full of the garlic-and-oyster odor of DMSO.

  I set my jaw. I tend to do that when I’m trying to talk myself into shooting craps with my own life. Carefully, I walked around to Bea’s head, reached down, and hoping the liquid hadn’t spread this far, went to take her under the shoulders.

  “Don’t touch her!” The guard had his gun out. He pointed it at me. I froze.

  Bea Dunney stopped twitching. Her lips and fingernails were blue.

  I thought, to hell with it, pulled her back from the pool, then stood with my hands raised. Until Wendy came running up, still barefoot.

  “Get the hell out of here!” I barked. “Call the cops. Lieutenant Martin.”

  The guard scowled at me; I was stealing his lines. I told Wendy to ask for an ambulance, too, but one look at the staring eyes of the girl on the floor told me it would only be a gesture.

  “I’ve got a problem. Believe me, I’ve got a problem.”

  —Charles Farrell, My Little Margie (CBS)

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I DON’T KNOW WHAT the killer mixed with the DMSO,” I told the Frying Nun for about the fiftieth time. “In a Dick Francis book, they mixed it with some horse tranquilizers.”

  “Figures,” Rivetz said. He once told me he reads about one mystery a year. He likes to get mad at them.

  Lieutenant Martin was holding his temper. You have to know him a long time before you can tell he’s doing that; his brown face gets just a slight touch of purple to it, from all the blood rushing to his head.

  “Cobb’s not a chemist, Miss Goosens,” he said. “Why don’t we just wait for what the Medical Examiner has to say?”

  The implied message was, everyone should do his (or more to the point, her) own job and not try to horn in on others. ADA Goosens got the message, all right. Her acknowledgment took the form of a slit-eyed smile that was off the top end of the smugness scale. For a second it looked as if the lieutenant was toying with the idea of smacking her one, but he thought better of it, and mumbled something under his breath.

  “Mr. Cobb may not be a chemist,” the Frying Nun intoned, “but he has a disturbing knack for finding corpses. At least this time he has had the good grace to present us with a theory to go along with the young woman’s body. I was merely asking him to elaborate.”

  We were in the Network office-turned-studio, which I had donated to the officials involved to use as a headquarters. Wendy was down-stairs, being hysterical all over her stepmother and/or Ivan Danov. All three were under orders not to leave the building.

  Typically, Livia Goosens was the only person in the room standing up, and she stood as if she had a poker sewn into the back of her suit. Lieutenant Martin had a swivel chair; I was leaning up against a desk. I had an embarrassing moment when I first went to it—I leaned too hard and sent it sliding backward along the carpeting. I had a near miss at another even more embarrassing moment when I stopped Rivetz inches away from sitting on a fifty-seven-thousand-dollar video switcher.

  There was an odd air of quiet in the building. You might not be aware of the noise a crowd makes in the arena, but the whole building changes when they’re gone. In this case, they must have gone away puzzled. In the Great Tradition of Show Biz, the Show Went On, but it went on without its star; without Bea Dunney; without, in fact, any more female skaters than those who had been on the ice when Bea keeled over. It must have made for an extremely lopsided finale.

  I sighed. “I don’t mind elaborating,” I said to Livia Goosens, “but I get damned weary of repeating myself.”

  “Oh, Mr. Cobb,” she said coldly. “Indulge me, won’t you? You work so well with official investigations.”

  “Well, since you put it that way, how can I refuse?” I went on to tell her about DMSO; how its pain-relieving properties were almost incidental; how it will dissolve practically anything; how it will carry whatever is dissolved in it right through the skin into the bloodstream. It was the same stuff I’d told Wendy in the restaurant; the same stuff I’d told Livia Goosens herself at least six times already.

  “Yes, Mr. Cobb. Quite educational. But what I am interested in is not how this chemical—”

  “Dimethylsulfoxide,” I interrupted. Once I get started reciting, it’s hard to stop.

  “Yes. I’m not interested in how the dimethylsulfoxide got the poison into the victim. I am interested in how the poison got into the bottle of dimethylsulfoxide.”

  “The killer had his own bottle with the poison mixed in. The stuff is easy enough to get—I think somebody at the Network told Wendy a drugstore where she could get it near her hotel. The killer just switched his bottle with the one in Wendy’s bag.”

  “Yes, Mr. Cobb. And when did that happen?”

  “After 3 A.M.,” I said. “Wendy used it then, and it was fine.”

  “She told you this?”

  “I saw her use it.” There goes the image for real now, I thought.

  Lieutenant Martin made a face. He’s a prude. Under different circumstances he would have made a remark, but not in front of the Frying Nun.

  “Actually,” I went on, “it had to be after 10 A.M. or so. That was the time Wendy left with a member of my staff. Al St. John. You’ve met him, Ms. Goosens.”

  “Of course,” she said. It was impossible to tell if she remembered Al at all. Nuns are supposed to be serene, and lawyers practice not looking surprised, so it was hard to read anything from Livia Goosens’s face.

  “Still,” she said, “there is nothing to tell us that you might not have switched the bottles, Mr. Cobb. You had, by your own admission, some seven hours of opportunity, during part of which, at least, I assume Miss Ichimi was asleep.”

  I looked at her. For a long time. Finally I said, “Am I under arrest?”

  She was spared the necessity of backing down, or even worse, having to put me under arrest, by the arrival of Detective Gumple. “News from the lab, Lieutenant.”

  I was impressed. They were right on top of this one.

  Gumple is the type who won’t go on without encouragement. Lieutenant Martin humored him. “Well, what the hell is the news from the lab, goddammit?”

  “It was this DMSO stuff, all right.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a battered notebook. “It was mixed with some kind of cyanide compound, like they use in developing film. They’re not sure what, yet.”

  “Great,” the lieutenant snarled.

  “Yeah,” Rivetz said, “try tracing it. Especially if they don’t nail down which one.”

  “The lab also doesn’t know what the dosage was, because...” he peered closely at his notes, “because ‘the interdermal properties of dimethylsulfoxide have not been sufficiently well determined to enable us to say how much of a dissolved substance will penetrate the subcutaneous fat and enter the bloodstream.’ ” Gumple looked up at us with a vague smile of accomplishment.

  “She rubbed it on her ankle for Christ’s sake,” I said. “How much subcutaneous fat is there to worry about there?”

  The Frying Nun brought the meeting back under control. “Whatever the dosage, it was fatal, and that is our only concern at present. Mr. Cobb. When and how was that bottle switched?”

  I had had about enough of this woman. I hadn’t known Bea Dunney long or well, but I liked her as much as you can like anyone on that kind of acquaintance. Less than three hours ago Bea Dunney had died horribly before my eyes, and ADA Goosens was using it as a chance to twit me. To hell with her.

  “Objection, counselor,” I said.

  That amused her. “On what grounds?”

  “Call
s for a conclusion on the part of the witness. Not the best evidence.”

  Lieutenant Martin started to laugh. “Sustained, Matty. Sustained. He’s got you Ms. Goosens. You want to know what happened to that bag, you’ve got to talk to Wendy Ichimi or Cobb’s man, St. John. They were with it all day.”

  It must be hard to speak without moving a single muscle, not even your lips, but the Frying Nun managed it somehow. “Oh, I’ll speak to them. Both of them. Have Miss Ichimi brought up here.”

  Helena Speir came along; ADA Goosens said it was okay, she had questions for her, too. The stepmother kept trying to take Wendy’s hand, and Wendy kept shaking loose.

  Wendy did not look well. She was back in street clothes, but somehow she didn’t seem to fill them; she looked like a bundle of rags wrapped around a stick. Her face was strange, too. There were marks of recent tears, and her eyes were large and liquid, but aside from that, there was no sign of emotion. Damn near no sign of life.

  “Miss Ichimi,” the Frying Nun said politely enough, “my name is Livia Goosens. I am the assistant district attorney assigned to this case—”

  “He meant to kill me, didn’t he?” Wendy said. She was looking at me.

  “What makes you say that, Miss Ichimi?”

  There was life in Wendy’s face now. Ms. Goosens caught an accumulated store of fear, frustration, and anger. “Don’t be stupid!” Wendy hissed. “And don’t treat me as if you think I’m stupid!” She started to laugh, not her usual laugh. Not a pretty sound. “Why, no less an authority than the famous psychiatrist Paul Dinkover said I was unusually gifted. I got a great gift today, didn’t I?”

  Helena Speir wanted to get Wendy out of there, a move that struck me as a healthy idea, but Wendy would have none of it.

  “I’m all right,” she insisted. “I just want to know. Come on, Matt. No lies,” she said. “We’re friends, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “It was me he was trying to kill. Wasn’t it?”

  No official tried to prevent me from answering her. They wouldn’t have succeeded if they’d tried. “It looks that way, Wendy.”

  Wendy nodded. “I thought so. It was my DMSO. Bea never used it, never needed to. She used to joke about her strong joints, how she never even got a charley horse. How she was going to skate forever. It couldn’t have been meant for her. No one could have known she was even going to use it.”

  She swallowed. “Somebody wanted me to use it. Poison DMSO. It was only a matter of time before I would have. If Bea hadn’t fallen on the ice today, I’d be the one who was dead.” She looked at me again. “Wouldn’t I?”

  What do you say to someone in a situation like that? The silence hung over the office like a mist until Detective First Grade Horace A. Rivetz, who, prior to this, I had never seen display an ounce of sentiment, said exactly the right thing.

  “Relax, kid,” he told Wendy, “it wasn’t your turn today. That’s all there is to it. Don’t drive yourself nuts over it.”

  Lieutenant Martin stared at Rivetz as if he’d grown bat wings; I sneaked a look at him myself. I couldn’t stare because Wendy had another question.

  “Does anybody know why?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  Wendy nodded, as if to say it was silly to have expected anything else. Then, all hostility gone, she turned to Livia Goosens and said, “What do you want to know?”

  She wanted to know who had the opportunity to get into her bag. Wendy tried to oblige. First there was the group at Brother’s office: Brother, Danov, Mrs. Speir (who was more than a little upset to hear her name mentioned in this context; Ms. Goosens assured her it was just routine); Carla Nelson Dinkover, and Wendy herself.

  “I hope nobody thinks I wanted to kill Bea,” she said. “We were friends.”

  “How could you have made her need to use the DMSO?” I said, and the assistant district attorney shot me a look that could have burned the bark off an oak. I subsided, but I was glad I’d reassured Wendy.

  The second group of people boiled down to the World at Large. Wendy had left her bag on the sidewalk while she’d signed autographs outside the Garden. It had been near her, but she hadn’t seen anybody mess with it, just as she hadn’t seen anybody go near her bag in her agent’s office. Which was not to say she would necessarily have noticed if anyone had. Sorry.

  Lieutenant Martin decided it was time to assert himself, and addressed the same questions to Wendy’s stepmother, who got indignant again.

  “Someone has tried to kill my daughter! And instead of finding the real killer you treat us like criminals.” I’m not kidding, she really said that. She had more, too, but I tuned out. The cops were having some trouble paying attention, too.

  Once she got it out of her system, she was fairly cooperative. She wasn’t any help, but she was cooperative. She hadn’t seen anything either.

  The Frying Nun was just about to excuse them when Gumple opened the door and ushered in Max Brother. Below the cheekbones, the agent was as smooth and well dressed as always. Above them, he was a mess. His eyes kept jumping around, as though they were trying to escape the purple pouches he now kept them in. His forehead was grooved from the eyebrows halfway to the hairline.

  Brother’s voice was fine, but the things he said were off. For instance, when he was brought in, the first words out of his mouth were, “So this is the experimental control room. Amazing how compact it all is.” I got the impression that Brother had decided to say that the first time he saw the room, and the mess this afternoon had knocked him onto automatic pilot.

  “I understand you and the victim have been intimate in recent months.” Trust the Frying Nun to bring him back to the point. Furthermore, it showed she wasn’t letting any grass grow under her—she’d turned up (or more likely some cop had) that little tidbit in no time at all. Probably got it from one of the girls in the show.

  As it turned out, bringing him back to the point had probably been a tactical error. The question hit him like a bucket of cold water. He shivered, blinked, and straightened out into the Max Brother I’d known before.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, we were. Bea was a wonderful girl and a fine talent. Not a talent like Wendy, of course, but Bea had a special quality that was quite unique.”

  I wanted to tell him nothing can be quite unique. “Unique” means one of a kind; something is either unique or it isn’t, and that’s that. I didn’t say anything, though, despite this phrase’s unique (see?) ability to make my teeth grind together. Somehow, I thought it just wouldn’t be appreciated.

  Actually, my pique at Brother’s diction was just a symptom of a general antsiness I’d been feeling for quite a while. Seeing people die and bandying words with clever lawyers are two of my least favorite ways to spend an afternoon two days before Christmas.

  Brother was taking a few seconds to speak to Wendy and Helena Speir; it was terrible, and they had all lost a friend. He didn’t get much of a response.

  Helena Speir asked if she and Wendy could leave; Livia Goosens gave them permission and didn’t even write them out a pass. She offered Wendy police protection; Wendy turned it down.

  Both Max Brother and her stepmother were aghast. I wasn’t too pleased about it myself, but Wendy was adamant. Wouldn’t explain, either. The only thing she would say was that she wanted to talk to me outside.

  I was ready to go, and the Frying Nun was ready to get rid of me. I was under orders not to leave the building without permission, not that I would have, anyway. I might not have wanted to stick around and hear Max Brother’s every word, but I intended to find out what he had said.

  Outside in the hallway, Wendy put her hand on my chest and pushed me about twenty yards down the curving corridor, away from her stepmother.

  “I talked with the road manager of the show,” Wendy said softly. I could see Helena Speir looking at a picture of Walt Frazier on the wall, pretending she wasn’t trying to rabbit-ear the conversation. “Before I was sent for. I’ve decided someth
ing—there’s going to be a show tonight, but I’m not going to be in it.”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” I told her. “But why don’t you let the cops assign someone to you? It doesn’t have to be obtru—”

  “No!” she said in a voice loud enough to spin the head of the older woman in our direction.

  “You’re being overheard,” I told Wendy.

  “No,” she said again, quietly but just as intensely. “I hate this. I’m isolated enough already. I don’t need police around reinforcing it.”

  “Your logic,” I told her, “eludes me. If you don’t have a guard, you’ll be isolated in your room across the street with your stepmother.”

  “No, I won’t,” she said. It occurred to me that the old canard about Orientals being inscrutable was just so much bullshit. Wendy’s face was a picture window to what was in her brain. What was in her brain that moment was determination, or to be less diplomatic about it, pigheadedness.

  “Wendy, I hate to be a spoilsport, but you put your finger on it yourself in there. Somebody tried to kill you today.”

  She jumped as if a cat had scratched her.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s a fact that has to be faced. When something like that happens, it doesn’t go away if you ignore it. You can hope he’ll have some kind of miraculous reformation, or get hit by a truck, before he tries again, but it’s just silly to take it for granted.”

  “No police. I want to stay with you again.”

  Helena Speir strode to us, her sensible shoes slapping on the hard floor. Rabbit ears was right—she’d heard every word of it.

  “You will not stay with the man,” she declared.

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Helena,” her stepdaughter said.

  “You don’t know him. You met him only a week ago. How can you possibly trust him more than the police?”

  “Knowing someone a long time doesn’t mean you can trust him,” Wendy said. “How long did my father know Dinkover? How long did you know him? You even went to bed with him—”