“The one-eyed man?”
“Yes. I watch television,” she said. “Good, clean entertainment if you are discerning. Rockford Files on the old TV channel.”
“He was on the Rockford Files?” Ames asked.
“What’s the Rockford Files?” asked Darrell.
The marriage of Torcelli and Rachel had been made in heaven or in hell. He exhaled a slick veneer of deception and she floated on a vapor of ethereal innocence.
“Did he kill your father?” Ames asked.
“The one-eyed man?” she asked, bubbling the last of her iced tea through the straw.
“Your husband,” I said.
She thought, looked down at her drink, and said, “May I have another one?”
I ordered her another iced tea. Rachel wasn’t brilliant, but she wasn’t a fool. If she was playing with us, we were losing.
“Ronnie,” I repeated. “Did he kill your father?”
She sucked on her lower lip for a few seconds as she considered her answer and said, “I wouldn’t have blamed him if he did. My father was not a good man. He never hurt me, but he wasn’t a good man. No, he was definitely a bad man. Ronnie saved me from him. When I finish my second iced tea, I’d like to see him.”
“You’re very rich now,” I tried.
“Lawyer said. Policeman said. Man with one eye said,” she said. “Ronnie married me for the money.”
“He did?” I asked.
“He did,” she said as she worked on her drink. “He never denied it. He said when my father died we would be rich and he would be a good husband. Ronnie’s a looker and though I am somewhat plain and wistful, he treats me nicely and I tell him he is smart and beautiful which he delights in hearing provided I don’t overdo it, and he pleases me in bed or on the floor. He likes sex.”
“More than I need to know,” said Darrell with a mouthful of hamburger.
“Did Ronnie kill your father?” I tried once more.
“No. I saw the other man do it.”
“You actually saw him do it?” asked Ames.
“Yes. He was all bloody. He was there earlier. Had words with my father, who called him a ‘shit-bastard- cocksucker.’ ”
“And you didn’t recognize the killer?” I asked.
“I had a little dog and his name was…?” she said with a smile.
“Blue,” said Ames.
“Yes,” she said.
“Old song,” said Ames.
“New suspect,” I said.
“Please take me to Ronnie now, after I pee,” Rachel said.
Victor got the washroom key and walked with her to the rear of the Hob Nob, where he waited outside the door.
“Lady’s on a cloud,” said Darrell finishing off his burger. “What time’s the next cloud? I might want to hitch a ride.”
“Believe her?” Ames asked.
“You?” I answered.
“She didn’t see Berrigan kill her father, just heard it,” said Ames.
“Or maybe didn’t hear it. Or maybe just wants to get her husband off the hook and the murder of her father blamed on a dead man.”
“She’s just acting?” asked Ames.
“If she is, she’s really good.”
“Ain’t nobody that good,” said Darrell.
“Yes,” I said. “There is.”
16
He’s too smart for that, the little bastard,” Detective Ettiene Viviase said.
He was seated behind his desk at police headquarters on Main Street. Ames and I were across from him, in wooden chairs that needed a complete overhaul and serious superglue to forestall their inevitable collapse.
Victor and Darrell were at Cold Stone ice cream store, across the street and half a block away.
Viviase was talking about Dwight Torcelli.
His door was open. Voices carried and echoed from the hallway beyond, where the arrested and abused sat after they got past the first line of questioning and into the presence of a detective.
“The weapon we found in Torcelli’s apartment is a now-bloody wooden meat pounder.”
“Tenderizer,” I said.
Viviase was working on a plastic cup of coffee of unknown vintage.
“The girl makes little in the way of sense.”
“Some things she said make sense,” I said.
“What?”
“Berrigan.”
“Says her father knew Berrigan, used him as a greeter at a weekend sale at his Toyota dealership in Bradenton.”
“He owned a Toyota dealership?” I said.
“Now she owns it and if luck or you turn up something to keep Torcelli from going to jail, the Horvecki estate will be his too. And weirdest goddamn thing is that they both really seem to like each other. She said she’d remarry him.”
I said nothing. I didn’t want to open the door to Alana Legerman and possibly to Sally and possibly to who knows how many others.
“Treats her like a nine-year-old,” said Viviase, finishing his coffee and looking into the cup to see if he had missed something.
“She says Berrigan killed her father,” I said.
“Convenient,” Viviase said, looking into his empty cup for some answers.
He dropped the cup into the garbage can behind his desk.
“Williams and Pepper,” I said.
“You make them sound like a law firm, a men’s clothing store, or a mail-order Christmas catalog.”
Someone screamed down the hall, not close, but loud enough. I couldn’t tell if it was a cackle, a laugh, or an expression of pain.
“Williams and Pepper both have solid alibis for the times of death of both the Horvecki and Berrigan murders.”
“They weren’t each other’s alibis, were they?”
“I’m in a good mood, Fonesca. Truly. I don’t look it, but I’m in a good mood. My daughter, I’ve discovered, has not been fooling around with our heartthrob prisoner.”
“That’s good.”
“No,” he said. “She’s been fooling around with a high school senior. She assures me and her mother that ‘fooling around’ is all that she’s been doing, whereas if she were fooling around with Ronnie the words would take on a whole new meaning. So, I’m in a good mood. I’m waiting for a DNA report on Horvecki and the blood on the meat pounder.”
“You checking Berrigan’s DNA too?”
“We are.”
“I think the blood on the tenderizer is Berrigan’s, not Horvecki’s.”
