The Innocent Woman

other a moment. Then Dirkson waved it off, flopped into a chair. “Get on with it,” he said.
    “Okay,” Steve said. “For whatever reason, at the end of dinner Cunningham went and made a phone call. He said he was checking his answering machine, but actually he was checking hers. Why? Because he had call-forwarding on, transferring his calls to her phone.” Steve pointed to Dirkson. “And there is a fact that you can check. First that he has call-forwarding. And second, that on the night in question it was routing his calls to her phone.”
    “Will there be a record of that?” Dirkson said.
    Steve shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea. But it’s something to check out. If there’s a record, it will help. But there should be other proofs.”
    “Such as what?”
    “You might try cabs.”
    “Huh?”
    “Cunningham beat Amy down to the office and had time to get in, kill Fletcher and get out. If she went home, checked the answering machine and went straight down there, that would be cutting it rather close. I doubt if a man on that sort of time schedule would take the subway.”
    “What time schedule? According to her, she didn’t get down there until ten o’clock.”
    “Yeah, but he didn’t know that. As far as he was concerned, she was right on his heels.”
    “She was,” Dirkson said, “and you know it. She came down right after him.”
    “I don’t want to get into that,” Steve said.
    “I’ll bet you don’t.”
    “I mean now. It’s another digression. Right now, I’m telling you what Cunningham did.”
    “And I for one want to hear it,” Judge Wylie said. “We can deal with these other matters later on. You were saying, Mr. Winslow?”
    “I’m saying the odds are he took a cab. And if he did, somewhere out there there will be a cabbie with a trip sheet listing that ride. And if there is, the cops can find it. Just like they did with Tracy Garvin.”
    “You admit that was her in that cab?”
    “I admit nothing of the sort. I’m just using it as an example.” Steve leaned back in his chair. “Where was I? Oh yes, Cunningham takes a cab downtown. You can figure that cab was hailed at approximately seven-thirty.”
    “Not eight o’clock?” Judge Wylie said.
    “Absolutely not.” Steve turned to Dirkson. “Amy Dearborn has always maintained she left the restaurant at seven-thirty. Cunningham’s the one said eight o’clock. He was most insistent about it. At first I thought he was lying to give her an alibi. It took a while before I realized he was lying to give himself one.”
    Dirkson frowned.
    Steve smiled. “See how it fits? Anyway, he made the phone call at seven-thirty. Just as he would have if they were going to the pictures at eight. Which Amy thought they were actually doing. So Cunningham goes, makes the phone call, hears the message from Frank Fletcher because he has call-forwarding on, is incensed, goes back, tells Amy Dearborn a business matter came up. They leave the restaurant. She goes home, he grabs a cab downtown.”
    Dirkson put up his hand. “Hold on a moment.”
    “What?”
    “The business appointment. With the client. Whatever his name is.”
    “Philip Eckstein.”
    “Yeah, him. Are you saying there never was a business appointment?”
    “No. Of course there was.”
    “How? Where’s the message?”
    “What message?”
    “The message on the answering machine. Look,” Dirkson said. “I served the search warrant. We impounded Amy Dearborn’s machine. The only message on that tape was from Frank Fletcher, asking her to come to the office. If Larry Cunningham had call-forwarding on, the message from Philip Eckstein should have been on there too,”
    Steve smiled. “Yeah, but you’re taking his story at face value.”
    “No, I’m not,” Dirkson said. “I checked with the client. He said he left the message.”
    “A wholly reliable witness?” Steve asked.
    Dirkson took a breath. “Actually, no. As I recall he’s a nerdy little twerp, nervous as hell, gave the impression he was lying. But not about the call. About the time element. See, I always figured just like you did that Cunningham was lying about the time to give her an alibi. And this guy was his client, owed him a favor and was backing him up. I’ll give you that. But the bit about the phone call and the message—there was nothing bogus about that. And with a guy that transparent, I’d know.”
    “I think you would too,” Steve said.
    “So where’s the