“No. Just us girls. We eat in the back and I show her whatever I’m working on.”
“In your workroom?”
“That’s right.”
“And David?” asks Ceepak. “Did he ever spend time in your workshop?”
“Maybe. When I was doing the heart ring. I think he was back there with me once or twice so I could show him the work in progress.”
So David and Judith both knew a local spot where they could pick up some cyanide.
“Has David been back in your shop since he ordered the ring?” I ask.
“No. Just Judith.”
“Do you ever use powdered cyanide?” asks Ceepak.
“Not for years. Oh, speaking of Judith, this is cute.”
Cele Deemer pulls a sheet of paper out from under a pile of receipts and ledger books.
“Last couple months, over lunch, we’ve been brainstorming a design for a big, chunky ‘J’ she could wear on a necklace like a rapper.”
“Was this something Mrs. Rosen anticipated purchasing in the near future?”
“I doubt it. Not unless she won the Lottery. That’s what we always said. When her numbers hit, we’d make the fourteen-karat ‘J.’”
“How much do you estimate such an item would cost?”
“Three, four times more than her ring. But there’s no harm in dreaming, am I right?”
True. Unless, of course, you take a few illegal steps to make your dreams come true.
Like poisoning your father-in-law.
56
“Ms. Deemer?” says Ceepak.
“Yes?”
“I would be remiss if I did not encourage you to take better security precautions and more stringently control access to your workroom. Cyanide gas, which could be generated in a simple spill, is what many states with the death penalty use to execute …”
The radios clipped to both of our belts start squawking.
“Detective Ceepak?” bursts out of the radio surrounded by static.
“Excuse me,” Ceepak says to the jewelry storeowner as he reaches for his radio.
“Please,” she says, sounding annoyed. “Be my guest.”
“This is Ceepak. Go.”
“Yeah, this is Officer Al Hallonquist. Me and Craig Kennedy just made our loop through the Sea Spray Motel parking lot and eyeballed that guy you asked us to keep tabs on.”
“Michael Rosen?”
“Right. He just took off in his white rental car. We tailed him as he cruised out of the parking lot. Kept hoping for a busted tail light or a minor traffic infraction, but …”
“Where are you now?”
“Three cars behind him. On the causeway bridge. Another hundred yards, they’re out of our jurisdiction.”
“Stay with him.”
“Okay, but like I said …”
“Stay with him, Officer Hallonquist. We need to know where Michael Rosen is headed. I will personally assume all responsibility for any jurisdictional blowback.”
Hallonquist gives us a 10-4 and tells us he’ll continue following Michael. Ceepak and I dash outside, hop into the Detective-mobile, and blast off.
And I’m hanging on to that grab handle over the passenger door again while Ceepak bobs and weaves his way through traffic.
A couple minutes later, Hallonquist radios in with Michael Rosen’s final destination: The Garden State Reproductive Science Center in Avondale. I’m guessing Michael wants to chat with Revae Dunn some more.
“He went into the building,” says Hallonquist over the radio.
“Roger that,” says Ceepak. “We’ll take it from here. Return to Sea Haven. And Al?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
Riding in Ceepak’s turbocharged black bullet, we’re at the clinic five minutes after David.
We shove open the swinging glass doors and stalk into the medical building, making a beeline for Revae Dunn’s office. We shove open her door, too. Ceepak is not in the mood for knocking, today.
When we barge into Revae Dunn’s posh office, we find her and Michael sitting with an aging surfer dude with curly blonde hair. Franz Gruber. Yes. I know him, too.
“Yo, Danny boy. How fare thee, dude?”
When I was a teenager, Mr. Gruber was my surfing instructor on Saturday mornings. For a couple months, anyway. I didn’t like all the wiping out or the salt water shooting up my nostrils when I fell face-first into the foam.
“I’m sorry, officers,” says Revae Dunn. “This is a private meeting.”
Ceepak ignores her. “Mr. Rosen? We asked you not to leave Sea Haven until we concluded our investigation into your father’s murder.”
“So, sue me,” he says.
“We don’t sue,” I say. “We arrest.”
“Take a chill pill, detective Boyle,” says Michael, sounding all snitty. “You two are going to
Michael happily bobs his head toward Mr. Gruber.
“Like I told you yesterday, ever since my one and only nephew hit puberty and started blossoming into a handsome young lad, I have been wondering about Little Arnie’s paternity. His perfect teeth. His athletic prowess. His blonde hair and sky-blue eyes. These are not Rosen traits, gentlemen. Trust me.”
Mr. Gruber grins. His teeth are perfect. His eyes sparkle like blue marbles.
Michael keeps going. “Now I knew that, in the ninth year of their marriage, David and Judith began investigating various fertility treatments. How did I know this? Because my father kvetched and moaned to me about paying for them.” He turns to Revae. “How much did Dad-ums pay you people?”
“All told?” says Monae’s sister. “One hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars.”
“One hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars!” Michael fans his face like the number might give him a heat attack. “All that money and still Judith could not conceive. Why?”
Michael, once again, turns to Revae.
“Your brother, David, was shooting blanks.”
Ceepak raises a hand. “Excuse me, Ms. Dunn. Aren’t you divulging confidential information?”
She shrugs. “So? I figure Michael has a right to know the truth.”
Ceepak’s jaw joint is popping in and out near his ear again but he doesn’t stop Michael and Revae Dunn from revealing everything they’ve learned in their well-financed investigation.
“When Mr. David Rosen’s sperm proved incapable of fertilizing his wife’s eggs,” explains Ms. Dunn, flipping through a stack of papers, “Mr. and Mrs. Rosen filled out a request for donor sperm. They specified that the donor be athletic, intelligent …”
“I’m in Mensa,” says Franz. “But I find the meetings
“She also wanted her son to be handsome and, preferably, blonde,” says Revae.
