Belinda let in a short guy with thinning, slicked hair and glasses. He wore a gray suit and held a worn leather briefcase tightly under his arm like he was afraid one of us might try to snatch it. Belinda looked like she was mad at him. For showing up, or not showing up sooner, or on general principle, hard to tell.
He walked right up to me and stuck out his hand.
“Gabriel Szwit.”
“Sam Acquillo.”
He was one of those jumpy, fidgety kinds of guys who gravitate toward professions like accounting and law so they’ll have an official stereotype to justify their social insecurities.
Appolonia also shook his hand and got Belinda to bring him a glass of water. He sat on the sofa facing us with his briefcase held upright in his lap. Maybe he had lead weights in there to keep him anchored to the ground.
“So, can somebody catch me up?”
“Nothing to catch, Gabe,” said Appolonia. “We’re just chatting.”
He looked confused.
“The police said you had some information that might interest Mrs. Eldridge.”
“They did?” I asked.
Gabe looked over at Appolonia for a little help. She looked at me for the same thing.
“An officer Sullivan called and said you wanted to share a piece of information that hadn’t been included in the original report. I agreed to you coming on that basis, though I’d thought Mrs. Eldridge might have waited for me to get here before engaging you in conversation.”
Mrs. Eldridge didn’t seem to notice the reproach.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I guess we were so engaged I lost track.”
“I see,” said Szwit. “Perhaps now that your memory’s been refreshed.”
Appolonia looked over at me, calmly composed, as if I had the next month and a half to cough up the goods. Szwit took the other tack.
“Otherwise,” he said, looking at his watch.
“The phone, of course,” I said, as if relieved by the return of my short-term memory.
“Of course,” said Appolonia. “To be fair, Gabe, Mr. Acquillo mentioned early on that he knew something about the phone.”
Her delivery was so deadpan I couldn’t tell whose leg in the room was being pulled, or even if that was what she was doing. The undercurrents flowing through that silent house were powerful enough to dislodge it from its foundation.
“You know that Jonathan got a call on his cell minutes before the explosion,” I said.
Neither of them nodded, but I pressed on anyway.
“It wasn’t his phone,” I said.
I sat back in my chair and took a sip of my tea, shrugged my shoulders and asked, “Which raises the question, whose was it?”
Szwit shook his head.
“I’m sorry, you’re saying the cell phone on which Jonathan received that last call did not belong to him? How could you possibly have known that? Did you speak with him? That certainly wasn’t in the report.”
It wasn’t in the report because I hadn’t said anything about it when they grilled me. For some reason it just hadn’t registered until that moment sitting in Appolonia’s living room.
“I was watching him,” I said. “Killing time waiting for my friend. I watched him try to answer the call. He pecked at the keys, hunting for the right one. You don’t do that with your own phone.”
“It might have been a new one,” said Appolonia. “I certainly wouldn’t have known,” she added, for Gabe’s benefit, I thought.
“Might’ve been,” I said. “Easy enough to check out.”
“You could ask Alena.”
“Mrs. Eldridge,” said Gabe, “I don’t think this conversation should extend to Ms. Zapata.”
“Don’t you love lawyers?” she asked me. “Is no’ the only word they know?”
“You should meet Jackie Swaitkowski. Full of surprises.”
“I should.”
“This is your piece of vital information?” Szwit asked, simultaneously suggesting it was neither vital nor information.
“Yeah,” I said. “You explain it.”
“Jonathan had trouble answering his cell phone? It means nothing. Everybody struggles with those phones.”
“A guy who ran a multi-million-dollar consultancy through his computer, and spent half his life on the road, couldn’t answer his own cell phone?”
“If it was new,” Appolonia repeated, trying to steer me toward a safe harbor.
“Should be easy enough to find out.”
She looked over at Gabe.
“Any objections?” she asked, as if to say, don’t even try.
“Hell, no. I was just hoping for something more substantial. Something that went somewhere.”
I was hoping the same thing, but at that point I was more concerned with getting out of there before the lawyer, or Belinda, made a leap for my jugular.
“You should talk to Jonathan’s assistant. Alena Zapata,” said Appolonia. “She’s still working for his business, tidying things up. Though not for much longer. I have the number and address.”
She rose with little effort and went to get a piece of paper out of a small fold-down desk. She stood with her weight on one leg while she wrote down the information. I noticed for the first time that she had a little shape around the chest and hips, despite her thin arms and legs. She actually was, or could have been, very attractive, if you like your women in black and white. I wondered if Jonathan liked having her all to himself. She’d always be there whenever he came home. To sit and engage him in witty, sophisticated repartee. Fragile and desperately in need of protection. To be indulged, and coddled. His own alone. No one else to see or hear. A world unto themselves. Refined, yet profoundly isolated. Until it collided with several pounds of high-grade plastic explosive.
She walked over and handed me the slip of paper.
“I do have one thing to tell you, though you’ll find it of no use whatsoever.”
“Sure. Can’t hurt.”
She was now close enough for me to smell her. It was a flower smell, sweet and fresh. Like Easter Sunday. Or something you’d get from Crabtree & Evelyn. She seemed to be unsure about telling me what she wanted to tell me.
“Go ahead.”
She pursed her lips and nodded. She went back and sat down in her yellow chair. The flowers lingered in the air. I waited until she was ready.
“Have you ever looked over at the person you’re closest to, and thought, just for an instant, that you have no idea who they really are?”
“Yes.”
“I never felt that way about Jonathan Eldridge. Some people are just so completely who they are. I don’t believe he knew he would be killed, because I would have certainly known it, too.”
She didn’t expect me to respond, so I didn’t. I just finished my tea, thanked her for her time, shook Gabe’s hand and made for the door, one eye peeled for Belinda. Before I could grab the doorknob, Appolonia called to me.
“Mr. Acquillo.”
I stepped back so I could see her in her high-backed chair.
“Yeah.”
“Jonathan was everything to me. I can’t imagine going on without him. I don’t know why I bother.”
Belinda finally came from wherever she was lurking and made a grab for the door, hoping to propel me out of the house. I held my ground.
