Hotline to Murder

She had quit teaching and gone into the computer industry. She was making far more money than she would ever have made as a teacher. Tony explained the circumstances of finding the poem but not the fact that Shahla had been with him. Don’t borrow trouble.
    “If you gave the poem to the police, how is it that you still have a copy?”
    “I entered it into a computer, being careful about fingerprints, of course.”
    “Were there any fingerprints on it?”
    “Only a couple of mine before I started being careful. Whoever wrote the poem was even more careful than I was.”
    “So, as I understand it, what you want me to do is to read the poem and then tell you who wrote it.”
    “Yes, please, if you would be so kind.”
    They both laughed. This was more like it.
    “All right. But before I perform this feat, let’s have dessert.”
    Tony had several more opportunities to observe the enticements inside Carol’s blouse while she cleared the table. He saw the mole on her breast that had bewitched him once upon a time. He realized that he badly needed to find himself another girlfriend.
    Carol did something behind the counter that separated the table from the kitchen. It involved matches, as Tony could tell from the smell. He wondered whether she was going to add to the two candles already on the table. Then she lowered the lights, leaving the room lit mostly by the candles. She came back to the table, carrying a cake with birthday candles on it and singing “Happy Birthday.”
    Tony was flabbergasted. He had completely forgotten that his birthday was only two days away. Carol placed the cake in front of him and gave him a light kiss on the lips.
    “Make a wish and see if you still have enough wind in your ancient body to blow out the candles.”
    Tony did. He didn’t count to see if she had gotten the number right. At some point, you had to stop counting. He cut the cake and they ate it in an atmosphere as amicable as that of the best day they had spent together, while drinking crème de menthe in miniature glasses with silver stems that Tony had given Carol for a Christmas present. Time stood still.
    When they had finished, Carol broke the spell saying, “Okay, let’s see the poem. And move your chair back from the table. Will I hurt your knee if I sit on your lap? I think I can get the best perspective from there.”
    God. What was she trying to do? She was temptation personified. How was he going to keep his hands off her blouse? Tony realized that he would be the sourpuss if he refused her, so he backed his chair up and guided her to a safe position on his lap. He put his arms carefully around her waist, that being the most innocuous place for them. Carol picked up the computer printout of the poem, which Tony had placed on the table when he arrived, and read it through, seemingly concentrating on the words to the exclusion of everything else.
    Tony read the poem again over her shoulder:
    She wears a summer dress, spaghetti straps
    to hold it up, or is this so? Perhaps
    it's gravity, the gravity of con-
    sequences should it fall. If she should don
    her dress one day but then forget to pull
    them up, those flimsy wisps of hope so full
    of her ripe beauty, do you think the weight
    of promises within, or hand of fate,
    would slide it down, revealing priceless treasures?
    If so, would she invoke heroic measures
    to hide the truth, for fear this modest lapse
    would air the secret of spaghetti straps?
    When she was finished, Carol said, “That poem was written by somebody who has written a lot of poems. It was not an amateur effort.”
    “What else can you tell me about it?”
    “There are not many people in the world who can write a poem like this. Technically, it rates an A. It has images, meter, enjambment, clever rhymes. As to the subject matter, my first inclination is to rate it a C minus and say it must have been written by a horny teenager.”
    “Except that a horny teenager couldn’t write it.”
    “Exactly. Unless he had previously written a few hundred poems and had some talent to boot. If that person exists, I never saw him in any of my classes. And, in addition, although the subject matter is suspect, the way it’s handled, in a poetic rather than a voyeuristic fashion, would probably prompt me to give it a higher grade than a C minus. I can imagine one of my students writing something like, ‘What if her boobs flopped out of her dress?’”
    “Okay, we’ve settled the grading. I’m sure