“There’s no record of one,” he said. “Nor could we find her naturalization papers, assuming she had any.”
I sank into my chair. “Let me guess, no last will and testament.”
“You wouldn’t think so, would you?” he said, producing one from his folder. “But-”
I took it from him. “Is it real?”
“Yup. Prepared by J. Albert Ritchey himself.”
Al Ritchey was one of Hannawa’s most prominent attorneys. A million years ago he’d handled my divorce from Lawrence Sprowls. I gave the will a quick read. “She left everything to the Hannawa Art Museum?”
There was that giggle again. “Which, not counting her condo or the things in it, comes to a whopping thirty- five hundred bucks.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. No insurance policies. No stocks or annuities. No CDs or savings accounts. Just a checking account dwindling toward zero.”
“Dwindling? So she used to have more?”
Grant showed me a stack of printouts from the First Sovereignty Bank. It showed very few deposits but oodles of cash withdrawals. Over the past eight years she’d gone through $385,000. “Any tax records?” I asked.
“That’s the fun part,” he said. “She loyally paid her city taxes, but she never paid a penny in state or federal taxes. No sales taxes. No income taxes.”
I went back to her will. In it she requested that her remains be cremated. She named one of her fellow Queens of Never Dull as her executor. “Why do you think she chose Gloria McPhee?” I asked.
Grant shrugged like the Italian he wasn’t. “They were friends.”
I scowled like the librarian I was. “Of course you’re aware that Mrs. McPhee is on the art museum board of trustees.”
He pretended to be surprised. “No kidding? We’ll have to look into that!”
I was trying to see what else he might have in that folder. “Are those photographs of the murder scene?”
“Believe me, Maddy. You don’t want to see these.”
I impatiently wriggled my fingers at him.
He handed me the photos.
There were ten of them in all. They all showed Violeta sprawled out dead on the exercise mat. They were taken from different angles and different distances. I tried to be hard-boiled, the way cops on TV always are. “Tiny bullet holes,” I said.
“Homicide-wise, a. 22 isn’t a very reliable weapon,” Grant said. “Sort of a BB-gun on steroids. The assailant apparently understood that. Three quick shots at point-blank range right in the heart there. And only three.”
I knew where he was going. “And the killer wrapped the gun with Violeta’s bathrobe to muffle the sound.”
“That’s right,” said Grant. “Small caliber gun. Middle of the night. Basement. Big, fluffy bathrobe wrapped around and around just to make sure. The assailant was very careful that nobody saw anything or heard anything.”
“And nobody did?”
“Just the asswipe pulling the trigger.”
I continued studying the photos. Violeta was flat on her back. Her arms and legs were spread-eagle, sort of, suggesting she just fell back dead without struggling or suffering. “You think she went pretty quick?”
“Died instantly, as they say.”
Dale had correctly reported that Violeta was wearing only her underwear when her body was found. He had not, however, reported that it was a fancy red bra and matching panties. “She wasn’t-”
Grant answered brusquely, “There’s no evidence of this crime being sexual in any way.”
“Well, that’s something at least,” I heard myself say. I handed the photographs back to him. I moved on to another subject. “So, what did you think when Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy bailed Eddie out? You couldn’t have been overjoyed.”
“Bad guys getting out on bail stopped bothering me long ago,” he said. He put the folder back in his desk drawer. Closed the drawer with his foot. “Anything else the Hannawa Police Department can do for you today, Mrs. Sprowls?”
I was not disappointed that our chat was over. Between the black coffee and the damn air conditioning, I was fighting a losing battle with my bladder. I put the Cinderella mug on the corner of his desk. “I’m sure it has nothing to do with nothing, but are you looking into that queen of Romania nonsense?”
Grant knew me too well. “Which means you are.”
“Not exactly looking,” I said. “But it is interesting, isn’t it? A few days after she publicly claims to be the queen she’s dead.”
It was clear from Grant’s patronizing smirk that the Hannawa Police Department was not giving much credence to her claim. “I think this case has a lot more to do with good old, garden variety American greed than European history,” he said. “But if you learn something interesting-”
“You’ll be the first to know.” I stood up to leave. He remained in his chair, swiveling back and forth. “It was good seeing you, Maddy.”
“It was good seeing you.” I was telling the truth and I think he was, too.
Grant stood up now. He stretched his arms until his shirttail popped out. He walked me to the elevator. “You’re going to behave this time?”
“I always behave,” I said. “Sometimes badly, but I behave.”
“I don’t want you getting yourself into trouble.”
I knew he was getting at something. “And how might I do that?”
He pushed the down button for me. “Oh, I don’t know-illegally entering a crime scene maybe.”
“That’s illegal now, is it?”
He smiled like a mischievous elf. “Don’t let this go to your noodle, Maddy, but we didn’t know about those skeleton keys.”
I rode the elevator to the main floor. Used the ladies’ room. Successfully spun myself through the revolving doors into a blast of hot wind. It felt as if The Almighty, for some reason, had decided to punish our sinful city with a giant hair dryer. I slipped past Roscoe Blough. Headed back to the paper.
Detective Grant is one of my favorite human beings. But between you and me, I’m always relieved when our jousts are over. He’s just too good a match. He’s just as willful as I am. Just as unpredictable. Just as exasperating. And that morning I knew he’d bested me in all three. He not only knew I was sticking my shnozola in another murder, as he put it, he didn’t much care that I planned to stick it in even farther. Which meant he wanted me to stick it in farther. Which meant he had his own doubts about Eddie French’s guilt. Good gravy! He didn’t even care that I’d stuck my head inside the fitness room at the Carmichael House. Which meant he’d hidden a video camera somewhere. No doubt to catch the murderer returning to the scene of the crime. To retrieve or erase some little piece of evidence, maybe. He even volunteered that his department didn’t know about the skeleton key in the fire extinguisher box. His way of admitting that he needed me, you think? And how about all that stuff he told me about Violeta Bell? No birth certificate. Fake Social Security number. All that. It sure confirmed Gabriella’s suspicions. Not to mention mine.
I reached the paper. Pushed my face against the red-hot glass door so Al Tosi, our rickety security guard, could see me. He buzzed me in. Called after me as I drooped past him toward the elevator. “Scorcher today, no?”
9
Friday, July 21
I spent the afternoon redoing Eric’s mark-up of Thursday’s paper, making sure he heard my cussing. Actually,
