Rita comes to the table with a white paper bag.
“I got us some cold cuts,” she says to Marny. “We can make sandwiches later-after you wake up from your nap. I put fresh sheets on our bed. Oh, and I found a pair of jeans that’ll probably fit. Plus, I’ve got all sorts of blouses and shirts and stuff. If you need anything else, T.J., that’s our son, he’ll run out and buy it before he heads off to this going-away party a couple of his buddies are throwing for him.”
“Where’s he going?” asks Marny, sounding like the twenty-four year old kid she actually is.
“Annapolis!” says Rita, beaming over at Ceepak who beams back. “He’s going to be an officer.”
“And a gentleman,” I add because I like that movie.
“Awesome,” says Marny, momentarily brightening.
“You’ll be safe upstairs in our home,” says Ceepak.
“You sure will,” says Rita. “So relax. Finish your breakfast. Oh, I got you some chocolate milk.”
“Danny?” Ceepak gestures that it’s time for us to go.
I toss my once-bitten bagel in the trash, follow him to the counter.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” he says to the Coglianese brothers.
“Fuhgeddaboutit,” says Joe, the one in charge of stirring the bobbing bagels in a boiling vat with a giant wooden canoe paddle. “Anybody tries to go upstairs what shouldn’t, they got to get past me and my paddle!”
Ceepak and I head out to the parking lot and hop into my Jeep.
“How come you had so many questions for Marny about the mayor?” I ask when we’re both seatbelted in.
“In examining Mr. O’Malley’s phone records, Denise Diego ID’ed a phone call to Mayor Sinclair’s home phone number at three fifteen yesterday morning.”
“Right after the dog barked?”
“Affirmative. And, using GPS coordinates triangulated from cell towers, we were able to pinpoint the location where Mr. O’Malley made the phone call.”
“Where?” I ask even though I don’t really have to.
“One forty-five Tangerine Street. The house where we found the two suitcases.”
Seven o’clock on the dot, we enter the King Putt pyramid.
Skippy, looking very sleepy, is already on the job and has to undo the lock at the bottom of the front door to let us in. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to wear his chariot skirt and breastplate until the miniature golf course opens around ten.
“Hi, you guys,” he says, sounding kind of glum. “Dad and Kevin are upstairs with the lawyer.”
That would be their oily shyster Louis “I Never Lose” Rambowski. I wondered why the floor felt so slippery.
Skippy trudges back behind the counter to buff the shiny heads of a hundred putters and inventory his balls.
There I go again.
“They brought you guys doughnuts,” says Skippy.
“Very considerate,” says Ceepak.
We climb the spiral staircase to the office.
When we hit the top of the steps, I see Mr. O’Malley seated in a plush rolling chair, feet up on his desk a dozen box of “Donut Connection” glazed and sprinkled treats near his shoes.
Bad idea.
Not the donuts, the shoes.
He’s wearing those white bucks again, and I’m thinking he buys Shine Rite Shoe Polish in bottles the size of milk jugs. He sees us come in, pulls down his dogs, sits up straight.
“Officers,” he says. “Good morning.” He gestures toward the open pastry box. “Hungry?”
“Not really,” says Ceepak.
“I ate a late dinner,” I add.
We sit down in the two visitor chairs fronting the desk.
“This is my father’s lawyer,” says Kevin O’Malley, pacing around the back of the desk, pointing to a bald man in a very natty suit leaning against a credenza, both arms crossed over his barrel chest. “Louis Rambowski.”
The lawyer looks like he has his bald head buffed on a regular basis. Maybe Skippy lent him a putter rag. Or maybe Mr. O’Malley has one of those stand-up shoe polishers for his white bucks and Rambowski bent over to use it this morning.
Now he stands up from his casual leaning pose. Smoothes out his lapels.
“Officers,” he starts in, using his silky smooth courtroom voice, “let me just say that my client has every intention of cooperating with your investigation.” He smiles. The way crocodiles do. “In fact, it is in Mr. O’Malley’s best interest to help you in any way possible because, when you locate and apprehend the true perpetrator, he will be completely exonerated.”
He gestures that we may proceed.
So Ceepak does.
“Mr. O’Malley, why would the deceased, Ms. Gail Brewer make …” He glances at his notepad. “Fifteen separate phone calls to you in the week prior to her death?”
“Who says she did?” asks barrister Rambowski.
“Verizon,” I say as snottily as I can and still be a cop.
“I’ll answer that,” says Mr. O’Malley, smiling magnanimously. “She needed business advice. Ms. Baker, who was employed as a low-paid waitress at a restaurant called The Rusty Scupper, had bigger ambitions. In fact, she dreamed of opening her own restaurant some day.”
“She came to Dad seeking business advice,” says Kevin.
“And,” says the lawyer, “a business loan.”
All three of them are smiling like first graders in the Christmas pageant who memorized all their lines and recited them without making one single mistake or pooping their pants.
“As you may know,” Rambowski continues, “Mr. O’Malley is quite active with the Junior Achievement Program at the local high school, a program that teaches economics and entrepreneurship and that nurtures the business leaders of tomorrow.”
“That’s where Dad first met Ms. Baker,” says Kevin, who, I have a feeling, is the one who concocted this lame script. “When she was in high school.”
Ceepak does not seem impressed. “Why did Ms. Baker send you a text message just after midnight on the day of her death?”
The lawyer raises a hand to object. “Is that what your phone records indicate?”
“Twelve-oh-five A.M.,” says Ceepak. “What did she text you about?”
“I don’t recall,” Mr. O’Malley says with just the hint of a smug smile.
“You don’t remember?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Perhaps you should check your phone. Reread her message.”
“Excuse me,” says the lawyer, “do you have a warrant to search my client’s cell phone or just his usage records?”
“The records.”
“Then why are you badgering him about showing you the actual phone?” Louis looks like he knows he’s going to win again.
“I’m sorry,” says Mr. O’Malley. “I get a million texts every day. I can’t recall the content of each and every one.”
“That is why,” says Ceepak, “I’m suggesting that you open your phone and reread the text at this time.”
“When you get a warrant, perhaps he will,” says the lawyer, puffing out his bulldog chest. “Next question.”
Ceepak flips forward in his notebook.
“Why, Mr. O’Malley, did you call Mayor Sinclair at three fifteen A.M. yesterday?”
