A Phone Booth, a Doorbell, and Death

Our story takes place in Los Angeles, California somewhere around 1930. Let's begin, shall we?

Joan Smith was young and pretty. She was glamorously dressed as she headed to the home of her friends, Tony and Pamela Stevens. The party was in full swing when she arrived, and a fortune teller, complete with crystal ball, had been hired as the evening's entertainment. Joan waited her turn then sat down at the card table opposite the handsome, turbaned gentleman.  

A fire danced in the immense stone fireplace, altering the fortune teller's swarthy complexion with ominous, flickering shadows. Soon he was telling Joan that he could see a man. The man was missing his left index finger and was talking to someone on the telephone. 

“He is someone you know,” the fortune teller intoned.

"I don’t know anyone with a missing finger,” insisted Joan.

“Think again,” urged the fortune teller. “I am sure that you know him. He is talking on the telephone when he is violently killed. It seems the murderer has designs on you as well. If you can identify the man with the missing finger, and can do so in time, you might spare him and yourself a terrible fate.”

Joan sat there, thinking hard, and couldn’t remember anyone she knew who was missing a finger. But the fortune teller had more news, just as personal and far more chilling: Joan's death would come soon after that of the man on the telephone, and her final moments would be heralded by the ringing of a bell.

Eight days passed. Joan calmed her rattled nerves by telling herself that the fortune teller was merely staging melodramas for the benefit of the guests. But on the ninth day, she had a chance encounter with a young man at Sherman's Drugstore. His name was Frank Carson. He was a dear friend Joan had grown up with but hadn't seen in years. Frank lost his left index finger when he was a boy and the gun he was cleaning went off. The fortune teller's prediction howled back at Joan as though carried on a murderous wind. 

"Frank, if I tell you something, do you promise not to think me crazy?"

"Why, of course, Joan. What is it?"

"I went to a party a short while back and there was a fortune teller there. He told me of a man with a missing index finger who would be killed while talking on the telephone."

Instead of looking alarmed, Frank laughed.

"Joan, surely you don't believe such a thing!"

"Well, maybe just a little. And now, seeing you, I feel I must warn you. The fortune teller also said that I would die shortly after the man with the missing finger."

"Oh, Joan now, really!"

"I suppose it is silly," Joan agreed. 

"Do you want to hear a secret?" Frank smiled.

"Of course!" said Joan, happy for the first time in a long while. 

"I've been cooling my heels at a flophouse down the street for the past three days because my wife kicked me out. I've been crying in my beer and wondering what to do ever since. There's only one telephone there, and it's tied up all the time, not to mention its decided lack of privacy. I walked down here to call her from a phone booth. I'm going to try to win her back. Can you wish me luck?"

Joan's lovely features clouded again. "Frank, do you have to use the telephone?"

"Why - do you want to make a call?" joked Frank, but Joan was not amused. 

"Well, I doubt throwing pebbles at her bedroom window will do the trick," he said, more serious now. "I was a fool. I behaved badly. She had every reason to do what she did. I'm just hoping she'll talk to me when I call."

"Then let me stay," Joan urged. "The idea of you dying while using a telephone, it frightens me. I'll just sit over there. I won't eavesdrop."

"Oh, very well, if you must," agreed Frank. "But if I come out of there in tears, don't expect me to stop and chat. I'll just run back to my room and lick my wounds."

"I understand. Good luck, Frank."

Joan kissed Frank on the cheek and sat down at the soda counter. The place was deserted except for a man behind the counter. 

"What'll it be, lady?"

"Just coffee, please - black."

The man headed toward a cupboard then remembered. "Wouldn't you know, cupboard here's fresh outta coffee. Got some in the back though. Sit tight."

The man left and Joan sat, studying Frank's profile in the massive wooden phone booth. Things seemed to be going well. Frank was talking and didn't seem the least bit upset. That was when she saw it, tall and slouched over. It was wearing a black cape with the collar turned up and a black hat with the brim pulled down. She couldn't even begin to see its face.

The thing crept up behind Frank and with a decaying hand, yanked the  phone booth open. The rest happened so quickly, Frank never had a chance to scream. Now he sat in the phone booth, with the phone's earpiece dangling from his hand, his heart and his throat ripped away and his wife's voice coming through the earpiece, inviting him to come home.

Joan ran. The thing snagged her coat, tearing off a scrap of tweed fabric as she shot out the door. She hurried up the block to her car, then threw open the door, flung herself behind the wheel, and sped off. Once home, she unlocked her front door with shaky hands, locked it behind her, and snatched up the phone.

"Hello, operator, get me the police!" 

As calmly as possible, Joan told the desk officer what happened and gave him her address. He promised to send a car to Sherman's Drugstore immediately, adding that a second car was being dispatched to Joan's house. Joan paced for what felt like hours, though it was really just minutes. 

The doorbell rang.

"Oh, thank God!"

Joan threw open the door just as the rest of the fortune teller’s prediction snapped into focus, the part about her last moments and the ringing of a bell. This time, for just an instant, she did see the killer's face - if you could call it a face. It was the last thing Joan Smith ever saw.

The police failed to determine who or what killed Frank Carson and Joan Smith, but they were convinced it was the same entity because when they inspected Joan's mangled body, her left index finger was missing, along with her heart and most of her throat. 

The fiend must have been inspired by that striking physical characteristic of Frank's and decided to add to its grisly - and gristly - bag of tricks.

 

Sam Spayed, Dog Detective - The Case of the Dead Cat Squawking

It was a sunny day in a city of hisses and growls. An October chill had me turning up the collar of my trench coat. 

Whiskers LeMieux playing dead. (Actually

the Aronin's sleeping tabby, Kitt).

Image: Sydney Aronin

And who am I, you ask? I'm Sam Spayed, Dog Detective.

Things were hopping and I don't mean the fleas. The grounds around City Hall were muzzle to muzzle with revelers celebrating Squawktoberfest.

Squawktoberfest is a three-day celebration marking a night in 1692 when a mob of angry villagers flipped their mental kibble and rounded up three ravens rumored to be witches.

"Burn them at the stake!" screamed the mob and the whole time they're yelling, they're dragging those birds into the village square. According to city lore, the birds were roped to stakes by a trouble-making bunch called the Cocker brothers while a gray tabby got busy preparing to set fire to the birds' tail feathers.

Then the ravens did something nobody expected. They hypnotized the tabby and the Cocker brothers into thinking they were the ravens. Those dogs and that cat started squawking like birds then ran around the village square setting each other's tails on fire. 

Meanwhile, the real ravens hypnotized each other into thinking they were axes and chopped through the ropes. The rest of the villagers saw what was happening, screamed and scattered.

When the fur and the feathers stopped flying, the tabby and the Cocker brothers were sporting singed stumps where their tails used to be.

Now my friends, get a load of this: that cat and those pooches are supposed to be the ancestors of the present-day Cocker Spaniel and the present-day Manx cat. Never mind that Cocker Spaniels with stub tails have undergone a procedure called "docking," people fall for that old yarn anyway and it's been the backstory on Squawktoberfest since it started more than 30 years ago.

But wait, folks; it gets better: These days people say that the ghost of that match-happy tabby haunts the town square one night every year during Squawktoberfest. They say they've seen him prowling the steps of City Hall, flapping his arms and squawking. They'll tell you that not only is he doomed to climb those steps one night each year but that he has to do it with his shroud forever hiked up over his nub of a tail. 

Something about this whole ghost tabby nonsense smelled fishy so I set up a stakeout behind a bush at the southeast corner of the City Hall building. By 10 p.m., I was all tucked in nice and warm behind the bush - and the flask of Jack Russells whiskey I'd been sipping from helped keep me toasted - I mean toasty. Since the ghost tabby wasn't due to appear till around midnight, there was plenty of time for old Jack and me to do some serious paling around. But I'd still have to keep my wits about me in case the ghost did show. 

Midnight struck, there was no ghost, Jack was gone, and I had nothing but my hiccups for company. 

Just then I heard something squawking. I looked in the direction of City Hall and there it was: a shadowy feline shape, its gauzy shroud hitched up over its stumpy tail. Its paws were tucked under its armpits as it flapped its arms up and down, more like a chicken than a raven.

I took off at a run and the cat saw me coming. Unfortunately even ghost cats are faster than a dog full of Jack Russells tripping on a trench coat. I threw the coat to the winds and closed in. The cat, in the meantime, hiked up his shroud and ran faster.

I was on that pussy in a New York minute and we fell. Down the steps of City Hall we rolled and when we finally stopped, I was on top. The cat was no ghost and it didn't take long to get the whole story once I twisted his arm, growling at him to cough up that fur-ball called the truth.

"Okay! Okay!" he yelled. "I'll tell you everything!"

Turns out the "ghost" was Whiskers LeMieux, a tough little Manx whose only claim to fame was that he was the founder of Squawktoberfest.

"Aren't you too long in the tooth to be flaunting your rump and your stump?" I asked. He wouldn't stop struggling so I muscled him a little harder.

"You idiot!" hissed LeMieux. "A thing like Squawktoberfest doesn't just run itself! It needs publicity! It needs mystique! It needs  - GHOSTS!"

I didn't appreciate being called an idiot, but Whiskers had a point. Attendance at Squawktoberfest had been lagging until the ghost made its first appearance last year.

I looked around, didn't see a soul and was glad I hadn't blown Whiskers' cover. Face it, drumming up interest in Squawktoberfest by showing folks his backside is pretty harmless in the scheme of things, and Squawktoberfest does have a certain educational merit. 

After all, a flash in the dark can be pretty enlightening. 

Sam Spayed, Dog Detective

The "murderer" always returns to the scene of the crime.
Photo: Teece Aronin

It was a dark and stormy night in a city of secrets and lies. I hovered over my desk - a hot stove with nothing cooking - and prayed for a scream in the dark, a wailing siren, a ringing telephone - anything, anything to end the boredom, the uneasy sense of uselessness from sitting around doing nothing. Who am I, you ask?

I'm Sam Spayed, dog defective - I mean detective.

I'm a mutt with a nose for crime and no case of mine has ever gone unsolved. But right then I didn't even have a case. And I needed a case. I needed a case like an unscrupulous dame needs an unsuspecting dupe. Yeah, I needed a case that bad.

Just when I thought I couldn't stand it anymore, the phone rang, its jagged brrrriiiinnng-brrrriiiinnng beating out a hellish tattoo in the dim and dingy office.

I snatched up that phone on the third brrrriiiinnng.

"Spayed here."

The call was from a dame, and a hysterical one at that. It seemed that the cunning jewel thief known simply as the Cat Burglar had struck again - this time in the vicinity of Dogwood and 34th. But unlike the Cat Burglar's other conquests, this was a murder too. I dove into my trench coat, grabbed my faithful fedora and disappeared into the night.

I reappeared ten minutes later at the posh and pricey penthouse doghouse of one Kitty Marmaduke. I was met at the door by the dame who'd called me, the cute little chickie who'd been doing all that yelling. Her name was Furniece Marmaduke and she was Kitty Marmaduke's daughter. 

I'd never met Furniece, but I recognized her from the society pages. She knew me by reputation. I expressed my condolences and we got down to business. She led me across a the foyer to the darkened study where her mother was stretched out on the floor, one ankle daintily crossing the other. Dawn was beginning to break and there was enough light in the room to see that on the floor near Kitty's head was a collar, a collar with a diamond-shaped tag engraved with the initials, C.B. 

Hmm . . . Cat Burglar? 

One look at Kitty proved she wasn't posing for a spread in Dog Fancy Magazine; in fact, she was a little long in the tooth to be posing naked, and besides, she wasn't naked. But she did look to be one dead dog, and none of her diamond-studded collars and her lifetime membership to the American Kennel Club could help her now.

"Miss Marmaduke, have you touched anything in here?" I asked.

"No," Mr. Spayed. "I remembered I wasn't supposed to. The lamp was off, too. I haven't touched that either. Oh Mr. Spayed," Furniece cried, all breathy and fragile-sounding, "Why did he have to murder Mumsy? She would have handed over her jewels without a fight."

"He murdered Mumsy - I mean your mother - because he knew she could identify him," I said, my eyes skirting the room for evidence. Loose pearls littered the floor and the chaise. Maybe the Cat Burglar had yanked the pearls right off Kitty Marmaduke's neck. Or maybe Furniece was wrong and her mother had put up a fight.

Suddenly someone growled and Furniece's wide eyes locked with mine. 

"Hey, don't look at me," I told her. 

"Well it certainly wasn't me," Furniece snipped. 

That growl was followed by another and Furniece and I turned to see Kitty Marmaduke's ankles uncross. Furniece's eyes were bigger than milk saucers, and she gasped as her mother moved again. 

"Mumsy!" she yelled, high-tailing it to where her mother lay. It seemed that reports of Kitty Marmaduke's death had been greatly exaggerated.

"Oh, my head," Mrs. Marmaduke muttered, slowly sitting up. "Someone hit me on the back of my head."

"That was the Cat Burglar," Furniece explained. Then sobbing into her mother's neck: "Oh, Mumsy, thank goodness you're alright!"

"Oh, Furniece, for heaven's sake, get your paws off me!" barked Kitty Marmaduke. Furniece looked wounded and came back to huddle against me. 

It seemed that Kitty Marmaduke also knew me by reputation because she snarled: "Get away from my daughter, Mr. Spayed." Then she shot me another order: "And come over here and help me up!"

"Yes, ma'am," I said, strolling to her in my own sweet time. No broad like Kitty Marmaduke was going to order me around. I started wondering how a doll like Furniece could have a mother who was such a b . . . well, you know. 

I helped Mrs. Marmaduke into a chair. Furniece was at her side again in a flash.

"So, ladies," I said, "You've both had quite a night. Whatta ya make of this?"

Furniece Marmaduke looked at me while dabbing her eyes with a hankie. She appeared innocent and vulnerable. Kitty Marmaduke looked at me while rubbing the back of her head. She appeared disgusted and insulted.                

"I would think, Mr. Spayed, that you're the one who should be making something of all this," she snapped. I had the feeling that staying clear of Kitty Marmaduke's teeth was a very good idea.                    
                                                                                                             
"Sorry, ma'am, and you're right," I said. "And I think I have an idea. But it means staying put, the three of us, right here. Nobody goes anywhere. Nothing personal, Miss Marmaduke," I said to Furniece, "but you're a little upset, and I can't risk you saying or doing anything that might spook the Cat Burglar. He'll likely be watching for you." 

Something I'd said had all the color draining from Furniece's spots. Would I have been that nervous in Furniece's place, thrown into a plot to trap a jewel thief? I wondered. Her mother, on the other paw, didn't bat an eye. 

"Miss Marmaduke, have you talked to the police?"

"No, Mr. Spayed. I was frightened, had heard about you and just phoned. I'm not sure why I didn't call the police."

"That's alright," I reassured her. The police and I don't often agree on methods and since there was no real murder here, I think we can work around them for now. You know what I'm thinking?"

"Of course we don't know what you're thinking," snapped Kitty Marmaduke. "Suppose you tell us?"

Her barb stung a little but I let it go.

"I'm thinking that the Cat Burglar will be missing that collar, the one with C.B. engraved on the tag. I also think he'll be desperate to get it back in his possession. So we're just going to hunker down for the night and wait him out. 

Hearing these words, Furniece was one scared puppy - even more than before - but Mrs. Marmaduke was one ticked off old dog. And the tick who'd had the misfortune of annoying her at that moment hit the Aubusson rug after a quick but merciless death. 

"What? On the butler's night off? I should think not, Mr. Spayed! The very idea is preposterous! Kitty and I would have to fend for ourselves under very stressful circumstances! Why I never!" 

"You did at least once, ma'am," I smirked, my eyes cutting toward Furniece. I enjoyed having Mrs. Marmaduke by the short hairs. "And besides, if you want me to catch the Cat Burglar, it's best you play along."

I hustled Furniece, who was simpering about the butler, into an adjacent room. Of course, the pup doesn't fall far from the pooch, so I had to bring her a bottle of Purrier on ice before I could shut her in. If marrying rich meant busting my tail for a dame as spoiled as she was, I'd rather stay single and poor. 

After I got Furniece settled, I rejoined Mrs. Marmaduke in the study and turned the lights back off. There was nothing for either of us to do but wait. Before I knew it, there came the distinctive clicking sounds of someone picking a lock. I then had the pleasure of shoving Mrs. Marmaduke to the floor where I quickly re-positioned her the way the Cat Burglar had left her. Then I slipped behind a curtain and froze. 

It was darker in that room than the inside of a doberman's heart. I held my breath and imagined the Cat Burglar pussy-footing across the floor. Then I sprang from behind the curtain counting on the element of surprise. 

It worked. The Cat Burglar let out a hiss and then a yowl as I grabbed him and took him down. We struggled for a minute, but cats aren't as strong as dogs, so it was only a matter of time before I had him cuffed. Then I tied his hind legs together to keep him from running. 

When I turned on the light, there he was, a panting, raging little pussycat with his hair standing on end. Then I opened the door to the room where I'd stashed Furniece and hauled her out of there. To be on the safe side, I took my heat out and pointed the gun's muzzle straight at her.

The Cat Burglar took one look at Furniece and hissed, "It's her fault! She's the one who's behind all this!" 

"Just as I suspected," I said.

"What are you talking about?" demanded Furniece.

"Well, sugar," I said, "the first nail in your coffin came when you said you 'remembered' that you weren't supposed to touch anything. 'course that's not proof of anything, but it did get me wondering if someone might have coached you on a few things. Then you nearly fainted when I said we'd all be playing it cozy for the night and waiting for a visit from Puss-In-Boots over there. It wasn't much of a deduction to figure out the rest."

"But why, Furniece?" asked Kitty Marmaduke, and I have to admit, I felt sorry for her - but only for a second.

"Oh, please!" shouted Furniece. "You and I both know that I'm not even your daughter; I'm your niece! My father ran with that horrible pack and one day he just never came home. Then my mother found out she was expecting me, and you undermined her confidence until I was born and she begged you to adopt me. You even named me Furniece as a constant reminder that you would never see me as your own daughter. I hate you! 

"Then, when we argued one night and you threatened to cut me off without a cent, I put feelers out through the criminal grapevine that I wanted to talk to the Cat Burglar. When he got in touch, we made our plan and part of that plan was that I'd give him one third of my inheritance plus whatever jewelry he could nab if he killed you during the break-in. I hate you!" 

Furniece threw that second I hate you in there just in case her mother or her aunt or whoever Kitty was, had missed the first one.

But there was something I hadn't figured out yet. "But doll-face, why did you call me in?" I asked.

"It was a calculated risk," Furniece explained. "Calling you in made me look more innocent. And it did, didn't it, Mr. Spayed? You have to admit that it did. What doomed me came later when I gave myself away."

"And you, pussnick," I said, gesturing toward the cat. "I presume you came back for your tag. Do the initials stand for Cat Burglar?"

"No - my name - Cecil Butterbottom," the Cat Burglar muttered, too embarrassed to say that name to my face.

He had reason to be. I burst out laughing then picked up the phone. I tucked the receiver between my shoulder and ear so that I could call the police with one hand and hold the gun on Furniece with the other. I had to admit, it was pretty sweet knowing I'd bagged two criminals with one trap. 

I guess you could say I'd collared them.