Madison Avenue Shoot Read online

  “What is it that you do exactly, Kip?”

  “I’m an assistant art director. That’s low man on the totem pole. I’m not even up to junior art director yet. But Betsy gave me an opportunity to work on a new business project instead of just doing all the scut work that the art directors don’t want to bother with. Of course I have to do that stuff, too. But she was very encouraging.”

  “Is that what you showed her last week when I was here?” I asked. “Something for a new business project?”

  Kip nodded. “You saw that? Actually, it’s kind of secret. I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

  “Not even now?”

  He winced. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. No reason to be quiet about it now that Betsy’s no longer here. It’ll never get used anyway.”

  “What will never get used?”

  “Her logo. I designed a special logo for her.”

  “Yes, I remember it now. It was very striking, very powerful. Did one of the As stand for ‘Archibald’?”

  “Right. It’s for a new agency she was planning. Like I said, no one was supposed to know about it, real hush-hush.” He gave a short snort. “None of it matters now.”

  “I’d love to see it again,” I said.

  He went to a wall of file cabinets, unlocked one drawer, and withdrew the board I had seen him showing Betsy. He sat next to me on the sofa and laid it on his lap, carefully lifting the vellum cover sheet. Kip had designed two intertwining letters, capital As, in a scrolling font, and beneath them in small block letters, it said ARCHIBALD ADVERTISING.

  “I did another one with three As, in case she wanted to add the word ‘agency,’ but she liked this one better.”

  “She was going into business for herself ?”

  “She never said, but if I had to guess, I’d say yes. It doesn’t make much sense for her to create a separate agency within Mindbenders, but sometimes agencies will do that to specialize in something, like digital ads, or public relations, or whatever. But Betsy was, you know, kind of independent.”

  “Maybe she was planning to buy Mindbenders and change its name.”

  He sighed. “That would have been so cool. I could’ve come to work every day and seen my design on the door.” He lowered the cover sheet. “I don’t think so, but it’s a nice idea.”

  “Why don’t you think so? Because she gave the work to you?”

  A rueful laugh escaped his lips. “Sure. If she was doing something for Mindbenders, she would have given the project to one of our big-shot art directors, not an assistant like me. Besides, I happen to know there’s nothing in the files about it. I looked. Any papers she had on this she took home with her.” He stood. “Anyway, thanks for looking at my work. I was pretty proud of it.”

  “You have a lot of talent, Kip. I’m sure another creative director will notice it, just as Betsy did.”

  He smiled. “You sound like my mom,” he said. “I guess I’d better put this away and get back to work.”

  “Nice talking with you,” I said.

  “Same here.”

  Interesting, I thought as I left the building and looked for another taxi. Was Betsy secretly planning to leave Mindbenders to establish her own advertising agency? I didn’t know how the ad business worked, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether she intended to woo away clients from Mindbenders. Like Permezzo.

  Had that been what Antonio Tedeschi was talking about at lunch yesterday—was it only yesterday?—when he’d muttered to himself that perhaps he shouldn’t go with her? By “go with her,” had he meant transfer his business to Betsy’s new agency?

  Betsy wasn’t the nicest person I’d ever met. She was short-tempered, hard-driving, and probably manipulative. But would someone kill her just because she was nasty? There had to be something more at work, something in her background perhaps, something not easily seen on the surface—or something like planning to desert Mindbenders and take clients with her.

  If Betsy was trying to steal away her current employer’s biggest client, that could make some people at Mindbenders very angry. Angry enough to pick up a nail gun and pull the trigger? It was a potential motive.

  I consulted the home address I had for Betsy from the package of materials we’d been given for the shoot, and gave it to a cabdriver. It wasn’t far from Mindbenders’ offices; we were there in less than ten minutes. My driver drew up next to a fire hydrant, the only space unoccupied by a car on the narrow, one-way block.

  “I got too much traffic behind me to stop in front of the building,” he announced. “They don’t give you a break in this city. They press on the horn till you move. Drives me crazy.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I said, groping in my bag for my wallet.

  “See where that girl is coming out of the building over there?” he said. “That’s it.”

  My gaze followed his pointed finger to the front of a four-story, modern building. It looked to me as though someone had taken an older building in that space and applied a new facade to it, presumably renovating the inside, too. The girl to whom the driver referred was wearing jeans and a pink, zip-front sweatshirt with the hood pulled far forward. All I could see of her head was a pair of oversized sunglasses, which covered half her face, and a fringe of red hair on her forehead. She jogged down the stairs, her arms wrapped around a manila envelope. I studied her back for a moment as she walked quickly up the block in the other direction.

  “Something wrong, lady?”

  “Oh, no. I’m sorry. What is it I owe you again?”

  “It’s right there on the meter.”

  I settled with the driver and exited the cab, taking a moment to admire the peaceful tree-lined street. The cabbie’s complaints about other drivers notwithstanding, this was a quiet section of the city, at least at this time of day.

  I walked to Betsy’s building and debated with myself about being there. I’d come to New York on other business, and wound up taking part in a commercial for a credit card. That someone had been murdered during the production was tragic, to be sure, but no one had asked for my input. Not that that had ever stopped me before.

  I climbed the front steps and perused the names and numbers on the building’s directory of residents, finding the name b. ARCHIBALD next to apartment 4A. Because there was only one name, I felt safe in assuming that she lived alone, which meant that no one would be home to answer the buzzer. Instead, I looked in vain for a button for the building’s superintendent. As I did, a mailman on his way out opened the door.

  “Do you know which apartment is the superintendent’s?” I asked.

  “One C,” he said, and held the door, allowing me to pass him to enter the vestibule.

  The door closed with a loud thunk, leaving me standing alone on the black-and-white-checkerboard marble floor. A superstitious person might have said that I was meant to be there, that the mailman’s timely appearance was a sign that it was all right to pursue Betsy’s murderer, and that I was justified in coming here to try to learn more about her. But much as I’d like to believe that divine intervention had enabled me to gain access to the building, I couldn’t fool myself. It had simply been a piece of luck. Had the mailman not arrived, I would have pushed a few buttons until someone answered and allowed me to enter.

  Apartment 1C was ahead on the right. Across the way were the building’s mailboxes, and beyond them an open staircase. The lobby was as sleek and modern as the exterior. I went to the elevator. A handwritten sign was taped to it: OUT OF Order UNTIL SIX.

  I walked swiftly past the super’s apartment and took the stairs, grateful for my regular exercise routine. By the time I arrived at the fourth landing, I was only slightly winded.

  My heels echoed off the marble floor as I wandered down the hall, looking for a door marked 4A. I still intended to speak with the super, but first I would see if any of Betsy’s neighbors were home and would be willing to share information about her. At the end of the hall, I found 4A, and was surprised to see that the door
was slightly ajar. I used my bag to give it a push and it swung inward with a moan.

  “She always meant to get that fixed,” a voice behind me said.

  I swung around to see an old woman standing in the doorway opposite Betsy’s.

  “My goodness, but you gave me a start,” I said.

  She had gray curly hair and wore glasses as thick as the bottoms of soda bottles. With one hand, she leaned on a cane. With the other, she tugged at the sleeve of a designer cardigan in a floral pattern of red and yellow. A Hermès scarf was expertly tied at her neck.

  “What did Betsy mean to get fixed?” I asked.

  “That squeaky door. I told her I always know when she gets home by that sound. Did she want me to know her business that much? She laughed and said she’d get it fixed, but she never did. Did you do that?”

  “Did I do what?” I asked.

  “Make that mess.” She pointed at Betsy’s open door with her cane.

  I turned to see what she indicated. Someone had turned Betsy’s apartment upside down. Clothes were strewn everywhere on the green patterned carpet, drawers left open. Books had been thrown off their shelf. The door to the bedroom was ajar. Through it I could see that the comforter had been stripped back and the mattress was tilted on the bed.

  “Was Betsy a messy person?” I asked.

  “Just the opposite. As fastidious as they come. Always wiping off the doorknobs, straightening the pictures. Neat as a pin, too. A snappy dresser, they used to say. She was a little thing, but she did like her clothes. Looked like she stepped out of the pages of a high-fashion magazine.”

  From the way she referred to Betsy in the past tense, I was confident that she already knew Betsy was dead. If I was wrong, I didn’t want to be the one to give her the bad news.

  She confirmed that she knew before I said anything else. “Cops all over the place here last night,” she said, “making a racket. They knocked on every door, asking what we knew about Betsy. She wouldn’t have liked it. She liked her privacy.”

  “Did Betsy’s apartment look like this when the police arrived?”

  “Nope. I was standing right here like I am talking to you when Mike—that’s the super—opened the door and they went into her place. Looked like it always did.”

  I took a tentative step into Betsy’s apartment and her neighbor followed. We stood quietly, looking at the damage someone had done to Betsy’s belongings.

  “Do you think the police might have done this?” I asked, knowing full well that they hadn’t. The police are almost always careful not to disturb a scene containing potential evidence.

  “Doubt it. Probably was the other one.”

  “What other one?”

  “The young lady was here before you. Told me she was Betsy’s sister and came by to get some things. From what I could see, she had red hair, just like Betsy’s, but I didn’t believe her. Looks like I was right.”

  “How did she get in?”

  “Had the key.”

  “Could you give me a description of what this young lady looked like?”

  “Couldn’t see much, what with those big sunglasses she was wearing. I thought she was a teenager at first. That’s how she was dressed.”

  “Pink hooded sweatshirt?” I asked.

  She nodded. “That’s the one.”

  I shook my head. “She was leaving the building as I arrived. I thought something was funny about her, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

  “There was something funny about her all right. She was a thief, that’s what she was.” She cocked her head and squinted at me, and I had the feeling that she was trying to remember what I looked like so she could report it to the police in the event I was a thief, too.

  I smiled. “Betsy and I worked together,” I said. “We didn’t know each other well, but I was part of the production on the location where she was killed.”

  She hobbled past me into Betsy’s apartment. “Can’t imagine why someone would do something like this.” She used her cane to make an arc in the air. She sniffed. “I gave her this,” she said, using her cane to flip over a large floral pillow that had probably been on Betsy’s couch. Scattered on the floor beneath it were several books. One of them was a photo album with some of the pictures sticking out from between the pages. I picked it up along with the book underneath it.

  The photos that had slid out of the album were pictures of Betsy leaning on a rail overlooking the ocean, obviously on a ship, on a cruise. I pushed them back into place. She looked younger, her red curls a nimbus floating about her face and catching the sunlight. She smiled warmly at the camera. Whoever had taken that photo must have found another passenger to take their picture together, because the next page showed Betsy with her arms around a man whose hair was longer than hers. She didn’t mind being touched then, I thought, remembering how she’d avoided shaking hands. Betsy was smiling up into the man’s face. It was hard to see what he looked like from his profile, but in another picture, his smile was directed at the camera. It was Kevin Prendergast, the head of Mindbenders.

  “Do you know him?” I asked Betsy’s neighbor.

  “Let me see,” she said, putting a hand on the book and squinting at the page. “Can’t tell. It’s too small. Come with me.”

  We returned to her apartment. I followed her into a living room decorated by someone who had a love affair with chintz. Flowered fabrics covered every piece of furniture, with more flowers on the carpet, drapes, and throw pillows piled on the sofa. Even several picture frames had been upholstered in the same design. The old woman hooked her cane over the back of a chair as she passed it and limped to a desk in the corner of the room.

  “Let me see it again,” she said, switching on the desk lamp and taking a silver magnifying glass from a tray.

  I laid the photo album on the desk and stepped back. She leaned over the page, placing the glass an inch from the photo, and tipped her head from side to side. “Used to be her boyfriend,” she said, tapping the picture with the handle of the magnifying glass. “He threw her over for some blonde. Don’t they all? But she couldn’t get rid of him altogether. Still sees him at work. Or did, anyway. She said he was going to be sorry. His new girlfriend would dump him once she got what she wanted. A gold digger, I say.”

  “Has she gone out with anyone since? Someone else you might have met?”

  “Nosy one, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I replied, smiling.

  “Well, I know the type. Some people have called me the same. Guess Betsy won’t mind now. Come have a seat.” She waved at the sofa. “You want some coffee? I make it good, strong and hot. I’m Clara, by the way. It’s actually ‘Clara Belle,’ but I dropped the ‘Belle’ when that puppet show was on the TV.”

  “Howdy Doody?” I said.

  “That’s the one. Didn’t want the same name as the clown.”

  “I don’t blame you, Clara. I’m Jessica.”

  “Have a seat, Jessica. You seem like a nice lady, not a thief. That’s good, because I already called the police.”

  “You did?”

  “Yup. Can’t have just anyone barging in here like they belong. Besides, that girl lied to me. I don’t like liars.”

  “It sounds like the police are here,” I said, becoming conscious of the sound of heavy footsteps rushing up the stairs.

  “Took ’em long enough. You could die several times over in New York before the police arrive. ’Course, they never listen to me. We’ll talk to them provided they knock on the door and ask nice; then we’ll have our coffee.” She winked at me. “What’s that you got there, Jessica?”

  I looked at the other book I’d brought in with Betsy’s photo album. “Looks like a high school yearbook,” I said. “I didn’t mean to take it.”

  “No harm done. You might as well keep it. Betsy won’t be needing it anymore.”

  I laughed. “I do enjoy looking through old yearbooks. We change so much.”

  “Get old, you mean.”


  “Yes. That’s what I mean. I will hang on to it for a day or two, but I’ll see that it’s returned.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  There was a loud knock. Clara took her cane from the chair where she’d left it and went to the door. I accompanied her.

  “You let me handle this,” she said.

  Two uniformed officers were in the hall, one tall and thin, the other large, red-faced, and breathing heavily.

  “You the lady called the cops?” the first one asked.

  The panting officer eyed Clara’s cane. “How the heck . . . do you . . . get . . . up those stairs?” he said.

  “I don’t leave the apartment when they’re fixing the elevator,” Clara said. “Mike, the super, lets me know ahead of time when it’s going to be serviced.” She shifted her gaze to his partner. “Yes, Officer, I was the one who called.”

  “Is this the thief you reported?” he asked, indicating me.

  “No. This is my friend Jessica. We were just about to have a cup of coffee. Would you like one?”

  The policemen exchanged glances. I could see they thought they had a kook on their hands. I remained silent.

  “You reported a theft in progress, ma’am. Could you give us a little more detail?”

  She pointed her cane at Betsy’s door. “I reported a thief in progress,” she said. “She made a muddle out of Betsy’s apartment.”

  The first officer turned, pushed open Betsy’s door, took in the disorder, and remarked, “My daughter’s room looks a lot like that. She have a fight with her boyfriend or something?”

  “Betsy’s dead,” Clara said. “Some crook came here pretending to be her sister and did all that.”

  “How did she get in?”

  “She had the key.”

  “Are you sure . . . she wasn’t really . . . Betsy’s sister?” the portly policeman asked. He cocked his head to see around his partner’s shoulder.

  “Betsy didn’t have a sister, at least not that I know of,” Clara said.

  “Is it possible she had a sister you didn’t know of ?” he asked, taking a deep breath.

  “We were neighbors a long time. I never saw anyone before claiming to be her sister.”