Lullaby of Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

he spoke. She devoted a brief final paragraph to the property, all questions—which were more effective than answers—so if Tony chose, he could simply drop it off. She concluded, “Might it not have become a city garage or a learning site? But the Garden of Roses rises again as it fell, a gaudy citadel of dance.”
    Tim Noble checked in to drop his “items” in the copy box. He offered Julie tickets to an off off Broadway opening in the Bowery. She declined and gave one more polish to her piece and felt that it was good. She slipped it through the slot of the box on Tony’s desk. You could put things in but you couldn’t get them out without the key that Tony carried on a ring at his belt. Somebody, probably Tim, had pasted a legend above the slot: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
    When she got home, all the messages with the telephone answering service were for Jeff, save one from Mary Ryan. Julie phoned her and learned that the friends of Jay Phillips were invited to call at the Murray Funeral Home on Second Avenue the following evening and that there would be a Mass at noon on Saturday.
    “I’m thinking of going over to Murray’s,” Mrs. Ryan said. “He was always good to me—five dollars every Saturday night when he had a show in the house where I worked. Would you like to go along?”
    “Well, yes,” Julie said. “I would.”
    “There’s a lovely pub next door called The Galway Bay. Maybe we could have a bite together first.”
    “I’ll buy you dinner,” Julie said.
    “On the expense account?”
    “Why not?” Julie said, although there was one good reason why not: she didn’t have an expense account.
    She answered those of Jeff’s calls that required answers and declined two dinner invitations that, in politeness, were extended to her even in his absence. She then cleaned house and drew the living room drapes. She was unlikely to entertain in Jeff’s absence, and she’d been getting pretty good at it, so long as he did the cooking. He seemed to have been away a lot longer than twenty-four hours.

FOUR
    S HE GAVE THE MORNING Times a quick scan. Jeff’s column, still bearing a New York dateline, was headed Industrial Reprisal. She felt guilty about not reading it and thought again of her former therapist, a very direct woman: “Why can’t you simply say the subject doesn’t interest you?” Well, doctor…
    The Times obituary on Phillips was clear and informative. It gave the plays and the theaters with which he had been associated, including summer stock, a species of legitimate theater almost extinct in the time Julie had made her try as an actress. She tore out the obit and put it in her carryall.
    She had not expected Tony to be in the office that early but he was, and from his smile she knew that something was wrong, probably with her story on Morton Butts. He had the copy in hand. With it he waved her into the chair in front of him.
    “May I put my things away first, Tony?” Her carry-all.
    “No.”
    She sat. Alice’s typewriter had the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun. Tim started to leave the office like a stealthy cat. It ought to have been funny but it wasn’t. Tony ordered him back to his desk and then silenced Alice and read aloud, “‘I never promised you a Rose Garden…’ How’s that for originality?” He continued to read, his tone mockingly folksie. The copy sounded awful. He stopped abruptly before the last paragraph and addressed himself to Tim Noble. “Don’t you think the gal ought to be working for The New Yorker ?”
    Tim was studying his fingernails. He didn’t look up.
    “Please, Tony, cut it out,” Julie said.
    “You don’t know me very well, sweetheart. I sent you up there for a couple of paragraphs of nostalgia about the dance marathon and you turn me in a tight-assed homily. I ask for feeling and you give me style. Style stinks!” He threw down the single page of copy. “It’s got no guts.”
    Julie would have given a lot to find out what was