Fatal Females: A Tony Rawlins Mystery Trilogy

By M. Paul Chinitz

Tony Rawlins does not think he is a stupidly gullible man. Forlorn and desperate to extricate himself from the aftereffects of a bad marriage, he attempts to find romance by answering a provocative personal ad. Unfortunately, Rawlins is about to find himself victimized by the woman he had hoped would cure his loneliness. Now she has accused him of killing her husband.

Innocent but convicted on her convincing testimony, Rawlins heads to jail. Soon, and much to his relief, new evidence is uncovered that casts his accusers story in doubt. She vanishes, and the conviction is set aside until she can be found. Vindicated at least for the time being, Rawlins returns to work where he unwittingly uncovers an illegal business that soon reveals the real reason for the murder. But now others are turning up deadincluding the woman who accused him of murder.

In a mystery trilogy of novellas filled with surprising twists and turns, Rawlins must decide who he can trustand who he cannotas he attempts to untangle himself from a dangerous and very determined web of fatal females.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jan 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781426995293

M. Paul Chinitz

M. Paul Chinitz is a retired computer engineering manager and adjunct university professor who published a technical book on computer design and numerous training manuals on computers for Univac (now Unisys). Also the author of Keonah Days, he currently lives in Pennsylvania. This is his second novel.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Pulchritudinous fawn-eyed WF, 39, seeks altruistic, jocose, brilliant visionary with modest soul, SWM, for amaranthine amour. Phone 31469.

There it was, standing out from the mostly sad personals of presumably lonely women seeking male companionship, or males just seeking women for whatever. I was doubtful if I met all of the required specifications. But would the fawn-eyed supplicant be so demanding that a somewhat less than brilliant visionary respondent be dismissed out of hand? Anyway, her requirements seemed contradictory. Surely a self-confessed brilliant visionary couldn’t be said to have a modest soul.

I decided to reply, pleading an excessively modest soul if she demanded proof of my brilliance. Whoever used words like amaranthine amour instead of something less arcane begged the question of whether she really meant the 1) un-fading, everlasting, definition I had to look up in Webster’s. And what about his 3) purplish? Purple amour? A vision flashed in my mind of love in a rococo boudoir, brocaded draperies drawn against hazy afternoon sunlight, a faint scent of sandalwood incense suffusing the room, dominated by a huge canopied bed. That would certainly be purplish amour, but could it be tolerated everlastingly? Wouldn’t a lover need some more ordinary fare between? To really appreciate purple passions everlastingly wouldn’t you need a few ecru interludes to let you get your second wind?

But I have had my ecrus. Too many, and for too long. A few purple passions would be much appreciated, so I dialed the 1-900 number listed in the Allenville Dispatch, which still carried personal ads for those not yet on the internet, for replies; left my first name, a phone number, and suggested a lunch date for a Friday. Better to meet on a work day and for lunch. Easier to cut things short if her ad was just puff.

Two days went by before she called. Early evening. Friday was tomorrow.

Is this Mr.- ah, Tony? The voice was pitched a little high and shaky. I agreed that was who I was, and asked if she was 31469.

I am, she replied, but I won’t give you my name yet. Perhaps, after I meet you. Will the ‘Cozy Corner’ in Eastown be O.K.? It’s at Broad and Spruce. I only have an hour lunch break at 12:30.

You’re very cautious, 31469, I laughed, but how will we recognize each other?

Oh, she replied as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her. Then, after a moment’s silence, suggested we each carry an umbrella. I agreed, trusting that rain wasn’t in the forecast, and thankful that we were to meet in Eastown which was more convenient for me than Allenville.

CHAPTER 2

She didn’t show. I waited for nearly a half-hour and finally ordered a quick sandwich, ate, and left by 1:30. Another failure for me. I should have just dropped the business then and there, crossing it off as a cruel prank played on a lonely but rather stupidly gullible man. Now she had my phone number, and laid open to further annoyance from this creature if she chose to pursue it. I had better get my phone number changed. That would be a real inconvenience for me, but thankfully I was too new in Eastown to be listed in the phone book, so she couldn’t track the phone number to my name.

I phoned one last message to her though, to vent my irritation, phrasing it in the best purplish rhymes I could make:

I was there

Where wert thou?

So false,

Your amaranthine vow.

Shame. Your fun

It was to fool my trust

And still my hopes

With sterile dust.

Perhaps I should try another ad. It seemed, for me, the only way I could meet a single woman now, though 31469, when added to my unhappy experience with Mrs. Tony Rawlins, my Helen, but not mine anymore, made me doubt I would find a suitable one.

Helen wanted more than I could afford, and after 5 years, gave up on my slow climb up the salary ladder as a CPA and left me. I waited 2 years for her to come back, then I filed for divorce. She didn’t contest it, rather, it seemed, she was so pleased to be free of me that I wondered if she had ever really cared. I had, but then I found the hurt could be papered over by drink. And I drank. I was not a happy drunk. Just a drunk that didn’t care any more. It cost me my job and almost my life. After the accident I checked into a treatment center. Six months later I was dead broke but cured both of alcohol and Helen.

With nothing to keep me in New York but my shame, I moved to Eastown to start over, at the bottom once again. My references as a former drunk wouldn’t warrant a CPA position at a large company, or even a moderate-sized one, but as a bookkeeper at a small printing shop under the watchful eye of the owner, I might be able to prove my reformation was real.

After several weeks 31469, to my surprise, called back. Mumbling a confused apology for missing the Cozy Corner lunch, she asked if we could re-schedule for tomorrow.

I should have refused, but there was still a bit of curiosity over what kind of woman would write an ad like that. So, at 12:10, seated at a table easily seen from the door, and feeling silly having an umbrella hooked over the back of the chair because the day was bright and sunny, I waited.

Tony Rawlins?

I looked up. She was not pulchritudinous. Her features were good, but neither her make-up nor her clothes enhanced her appearance. Could this rather plain Jane be my date? She didn’t carry an umbrella.

31469? She nodded. I stood and invited her to sit. Opening her shoulder bag, she placed a tiny toy umbrella by her plate. The kind you sometimes get in a mai tai. I shuddered at the alcoholic memories. You had better make your selection first, I told her, if you have only an hour.

The waitress came almost at once, apparently she had been keeping an eye on me for occupying a table for so long and depriving her of a tipping customer. 31469 ordered a tuna sandwich and coffee. I dittoed, though I knew I’d be hungry later, then asked my date if she was going to give me her name.

I can’t sit here and call you 31469, or Miss Fawn Eyes for an hour. And how did you know my name was Rawlins?

I was here that first time, but I wanted to see what you were like before committing myself. I followed you when you left, so I know where you work, what you do, and what your name is. A girl, Mr. Rawlins, must be careful about who she meets RSVP-wise. Some friends have had bad experiences. You may call me Julia for now. I still have much to learn about you.

So have I, I replied. So how do we begin? Do we write resumes, give references, or what? I was a little put out by her excessive reserve. After all, I added, your ad hardly described you as the shy type.

She smiled at me, a nice smile that greatly improved her looks. No, it didn’t, but it served its’ purpose, it got a response. But tell me about yourself first.

Our sandwiches arrived, and while we ate I told her what little she needed to know. Name, phone number, place-of-work, and position she already had. It was only-necessary to add that I was divorced and recently moved from New York. A non-drinker. She should have already assumed I didn’t smoke. I reserved the recovered alcoholic and accident events. Why expose myself completely when I knew nothing about her. After half the sandwich was gone, I told her it was her turn.

That’s pretty sketchy, Tony, but you can fill it out more if we meet again. She looked at her watch, a quarter after. I live with my mother, she’s an invalid. Not married. We can afford a practical nurse only during the day, so my opportunities are limited. I started writing in hopes of making more money. Romance novels seemed the easiest and quickest way, but the agent response has not been encouraging. They said my romantic scenes were, well, you know, too tame, and lacked a feeling of exciting reality.

That news didn’t seem to fit with her excessive caution in meeting me. But rather than making the obvious deduction that she was about to propose seduction, I played innocent and asked if her stories lacked credible male reactions. I couldn’t really brief you on female responses in love scenes- my wife was rather cold that way- or for that matter, on other males, except by hearsay. Were you expecting a Don Juan or Lord Byron deposition. Is that why you phrased your ad so romantically?

Of course, she smiled and looked at her watch again, told me she had to go, and started to get up.

But how do I reach you? You surely aren’t going to continue paying for an ad just for a mail drop?

You don’t, Tony. I’ll call you, and don’t try to follow me. She was out the door and gone, leaving me nothing but the bill.

I didn’t try to follow her. I wasn’t really sure, despite the words in her ad, that she was the kind of woman I’d find comfortable to be with. Certainly, her invalid mother would pose serious problems for normal evening dating. And why the desire for anonymity? It just didn’t make sense.

CHAPTER 3

Her ad no longer ran in the papers, so the mail drop was gone. I thought it just as well. It didn’t seem like a very promising arrangement anyway. An hour lunch date over tuna fish would never progress into what I needed most. I was about to run an ad myself when I found a bulky envelope addressed to me on my office desk the following week. A sheaf of maybe 20 typewritten pages and a note signed simply Julia:

Tony—

Here is a part of my novel. Read it, and see what changes you can make to the love scene to spice it up; you being the brilliant visionary I advertised for. You can give it to me when we meet again.

Was she serious? I wasn’t a writer. Double entry bookkeeping was the closest I had ever come to writing. Creative writing?? Not a skill encouraged in accountants!

Curiosity drove me to read it. Maybe it would reveal something more of her personality. I read. The writing impressed me, at least up to the love scene. Her choice of words, the descriptions and the dialogue between the man, Derek Strong, and the heroine, Stacy, were well done. She made the tension between them almost leap off the page. Derek’s advances, subtle at first, grew more demanding with each sign of rejection and disinterest from Stacy. While for her, the thrill of exciting and enhancing his passion became a drug on her mind, a challenge to her ingenuity in maintaining his ardor without herself succumbing to it.

But when she could no longer resist the temptation and surrendered, the writing became flat. I likened it to the cold orgasms I too often had with Helen. A physical climax with no emotional ecstasy, leaving me drained but unsatisfied.

I had read constantly during the 6 months of my detoxification. Anything and everything I could find at the clinic library. It was the only thing I could do to take my mind off my failed marriage and wrecked career. Honed to lose myself in the stories I read for escape, the sudden collapse of Julia’s story line when she got her creations into bed grated like a car racing down a paved highway suddenly rumbling and rattling over a rough country road.

But what could I write? I had no practice at fiction. An accounting report. Yes, I could and did scribble those off at regular intervals, but they were numbers, not emotions; assets and liabilities, not scenes, dialogues, or suppressed desires. But there was a happy thought, suppressed desires!

I could put my own purple fantasies in Strong’s head and let the heat of his passion melt and sweep away the last wall of Stacy’s reserve in a gushing flood of abandonment.

So that was the plan, but to actually start the words flowing onto paper was a terrible torture. I couldn’t get past the first few words of the first sentence. In my head intimate scenes flashed by in quick succession, un-impeded and without embarrassment. But, to actually write those thoughts, reveal my fantasies to my imperfectly known fawn-eyed correspondent with cold and ordinary words, made me flush with embarrassment.

Slowly, some words finally came. Put on paper only to be re-read the next day and erased. Gradually though, I warmed to the task. It was agony at first, I was on the verge of abandoning the whole idea. If 31469, Miss Julia, if that was really her name, couldn’t write a hot bedroom scene what business did she have to offer me an amaranthine amour she couldn’t even describe? I read again the part of her story just before she closed the bedroom door, leaving the reader’s imagination to fill in for the lapse of her own. I picked up at the nightclub scene, during a slow dance medley, but abandoned completely Julia’s dreamy waltz for a more heated jive beat. Derek took command of her body, whirling her skillfully about the floor: open position side-by-side, closed again face to face, another twirl, apart, together, sashay, hip swing. Stacy was breathless, but excited by his energy and rhythmic skill. I slowed the beat to a fox trot blues, letting the couple sway together in slow short steps. Derek pressed her closer, their hips moving side to side slightly in counter motion. Soon, Stacy sensed his manhood brushing against her. Gently at first, as though it was just an inadvertent casual contact. Then it became a persistent pressure, a demanding presence.

I tried as best I could to describe Stacy’s reaction, as I understood her from Julia’s writing. Anger at first to this forced intrusion on her person, then giving way to the exciting fantasy of making love secretly while they danced. The imagery tickled her mind with forbidden pleasures. Dreamy thoughts became tinged with real sensations. Her body unconsciously pressed closer, her hips rubbing past his as they swayed, she shifting her weight on the same left or right leg when he did.

Pulling slightly apart when the music stopped, Derek whispered Stay a moment, Stacy. I need a minute to recover or we’ll both be embarrassed.

Her eyes still dreamy from their hidden intimacy, she smiled at him. It was good, wasn’t it? Take me home Derek. I want to go, now.

She walked back to their table with swaying hips, smiling at the men at each table she passed, and arching her eyebrow at their companions as if to smirk can you do that good, honey?

I stopped where Julia did, at the closing of the bedroom door. She’ll have to carry it further if she wishes, I didn’t know from the short part of the story she sent me what she intended for her lovers’ future. It was already too close to pornography I thought. If her love scenes were a green bell pepper, mine were a jalapeno. Typed, the next day at the office, it ran to 5 pages. I kept a copy for myself, including her 20 pages.

There was another letter several days later. Saying she was unable to call, she asked me to send whatever I had written. My letter was to be addressed to C. Julia, General Delivery, the Allenville post office.

Another week went by. This was clearly becoming a dead-end relationship for me. But for the nagging suspicion that Miss Fawn Eyes must have something yet to give that justified her ad, I would have more actively considered answering another ISO SM.

CHAPTER 4

Julia called me Thursday at the printing office. Since our little shop has only one phone, on the secretary’s desk, I couldn’t give her a piece of my mind without letting the whole damned office have a good laugh at my woman problems. It was just as well, to my surprise, she suggested a dinner date for that evening. The meeting arrangements were to pick her up just outside the municipal parking garage at 7:00 and that she would make a reservation for us at the Cafe’ Napoli. I wasn’t familiar with the place, but Julia said she’d do the navigating. One more indication that Julia was orchestrating our relationship.

I had intended to arrive at the garage early so I could get the license number of her car when she drove up to park. With this, I could get her full name and address which would put us on a more equal footing. It didn’t work. She got off a city bus at the corner and walked to the garage. Was she too clever for me, or didn’t she have a car? I had a better look at my enigmatic date as she approached the garage office, then when we had met at the Cozy Corner. A bit over average height, I’d guess at 5’ 7 or 8. A sturdier, leaner build than my first impression, straight dark brown hair, cut to just above her shoulders and curled slightly at the ends. Probably soft too, as it swayed as she walked. Her features, as I had noticed at the Cozy Corner, were good, but not picture perfect. Rather they conveyed a cool and independent personality. Overall, her face seemed long and narrow. An impression, I thought, from her wide lips and long thin nose. Rather an aristocratic nose in profile, projecting haughtily out from her lips, but not quite straight, a slight change in slope occurring where the cartilage and bone meet.

31469 must have been rushed when we first met, for now her makeup was more artfully chosen to match her rather pale complexion, and much more carefully applied. Even her dress belied her somewhat frumpy earlier appearance. Black velvet pants, cut full in the leg—palazzo style as I remember from Helen’s extravagances, and a Webster’s amaranthine No. 3 colored silky blouse. Sleeves long with French cuffs and a shallow scooped neckline. Her jewelry was simple, silver earrings dangled from pierced ears, a necklace of multiple strands of silvery spaghetti beads, small square silver buckles on black patent leather low heel pumps. She carried a small sequined purse. The whole effect spoke of a classic elegance that surely would have no need to post a plea in the Personals.

Are you surprised, Tony? It’s really me, Caryn Julia. Caryn with a C and a y.

I am surprised. No, I’m more than surprised, frankly, I’m bewildered, even stunned, I stammered. I hurried to open the car door for my gorgeous date. You must admit, Caryn, that your appearance at Cozy Corner wouldn’t have prepared me for such a beautiful date. But I’m absolutely delighted to escort the most elegantly groomed pulchritudinous woman in Allenville tonight. She gave me a thank you pat on my arm and proceeded with the directions as I started the motor and pulled away from the curb.

Cafe’ Napoli was not in a part of town that matched my date’s appearance. Down in the by now darkened area of old row houses and warehouses next to the Reading Railroad tracks, it seemed a strange choice at first, even a little scary. But that turned out to be a surface impression. Opening Napoli’s front door disclosed a fairly quiet and uncrowded dining area. Linens were on the tables. A few families sat in the center tables, and several couples in the high-backed booths along both long walls. I explained to Caryn that I could not drink but she should feel free to order a cocktail or wine, and I would join her with a lemon spritzer. I sensed a surprised disappointment, but she chose a glass of chianti anyway.

I had hoped a drink would open her up enough to tell me more about herself, but I guess the wine was too weak, or her secretiveness too strong. The most I could get out of her was that she had a filing clerk job at a large insurance office across the river in Phillipstown.

I won’t give you the name, Tony. Not just yet. My boss doesn’t like us to receive personal calls, so it’s best for you not to know. That ended that inquiry! In spite of her elegant appearance, I was already beginning to regret having agreed to the dinner date.

You’re not very open, Caryn, I told her, letting a good bit of exasperation flavor my voice. "If you’re so afraid of me, it would be better for both of us to just call it quits."

Oh, I don’t want to do that. I’d have to start searching all over again, and I’ve spent so much time already, she pleaded, insisting that her caution was only the result of a much earlier bad experience, and she had promised her invalid mother to be careful until she knew the man better. In fact, she confided, touching my arm, I haven’t dated since then, some 6 years ago. Mother hasn’t been well for some time now, and I couldn’t get out at nights. Tonight is an exception. My younger sister is visiting, and that gave me the opportunity to call you.

The waitress stopped further conversation by asking for our orders. The prices seemed moderate. Not likely to make a serious dent in my wallet. I ordered veal. Veal picante with orzo, peas and a green salad. Caryn seemed to have difficulty in deciding, finally settling, in what seemed desperation, on a shrimp and rice melange, broccoli in lemon cream sauce, and a green salad also.

Caryn kept the conversation centered on me. What TV I watched, did I go to