money killing bugs than no money studying them.”
Phil kept us laughing throughout our lunch. And his salmon salad was as good as his jokes. After sherbet and coffee Gloria gave me a tour of the condo. The bedrooms were spectacular. Their bathrooms were too magnificent to use. Gloria and Phil both had an office-not converted spare bedrooms but actual offices with built-in bookcases, daybeds and massive desks. I particularly liked Phil’s desk. It was an old roll top with three long rows of pigeonholes. I also liked his wastebasket. It was covered with hundreds of hand-painted ants going every which- away. “Our oldest daughter, Carol, made it for him. For Christmas. Probably ten years ago. She’s an art teacher in Buffalo of all places.”
I took a closer look at the ants. They were all wearing little gas masks. I also took a closer look at what was in the wastebasket. Nothing but several little tightly rolled balls of fur.
16
Monday, August 7
I was determined to have an easy day. I’d mark up the weekend papers, dawdle over my mail, have a long lunch at Ike’s, and then in the afternoon do a little personal research on the relationship between dogs, enlarged tonsils, and snoring. Dr. Menke usually knew what he was talking about-I’d been going to him for twenty-five years-but this business about James possibly causing my sleep apnea was a bunch of baloney.
Eric Chen quickly changed my plans. “I’ve got that stuff you wanted on the prince’s brother, et al.,” he said, falling in next to me as I headed back to the morgue with my morning tea. I’d only given him the weekend to investigate the Clopotar clan. I hadn’t expected him to get it done that fast. “No there there?” I asked.
Before he could give me one of his smart-ass answers, Louise Lewendowski swept past us with a manic smile. “You guys hear?” she squealed. “The president is coming to Hannawa! On Thursday!”
I cringed. “This Thursday?”
She was nodding her head like a Pez dispenser with Tourettes. “Isn’t it exciting?”
“With a capital E,” I said.
Presidents don’t generally come to Hannawa, Ohio. In fact you can count presidential visits to our city on one hand, even if you don’t have a thumb: Abraham Lincoln visited twice, once on his way to Washington to be inaugurated and once on his way home to be buried. Calvin Coolidge once gave a commencement speech at Hemphill College. Ronald Reagan once made a campaign stop at Hyker Hydraulics to tout American competitiveness. Two weeks after Reagan’s re-election, Hyker announced it was moving all 1,300 of its well-paying jobs to Mexico.
Contrary to popular belief, I wasn’t at the paper for the Lincoln or Coolidge visits, but I was here for Reagan’s. Pandemonium doesn’t begin to describe it. For three days I had one damn request after another. “What do we have on this?” “What do we have on that?” “I’m on deadline, Maddy!” “I need it yesterday, Maddy!” Good gravy! You’d have thought the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were spotted galloping up Main Street!
All of this over-kill reporting on the president’s visit would be coming right in the middle of our shameless coverage of Violeta Bell’s sex change. For Sunday Dale Marabout had written a 3,000-word analysis of how the revelation was affecting the police department’s investigation. That morning’s paper featured medical writer Tracy Winkler’s snip-by-snip explanation of gender reassignment surgery. For Tuesday Tracy was examining the psychological impact of such surgery on family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors. A feature on a local transgender college professor was slated for Wednesday. A huge package of stories was being planned for the weekend. The working title: JUST WHO WAS VIOLETA BELL? No doubt about it, my plans to take it easy were out the window.
By ten o’clock no less than eight different reporters had come crying to me about the stories they’d been assigned to write about the president’s upcoming visit. Gabriella’s request was the worst of all. “They want me to do a story on how the paper covers a presidential visit,” she whined as I scrolled through another indecipherable roll of microfilm. “I thought maybe you could give me a quote.”
“There’s nothing I can say that the paper could print.”
“Perfect,” she said. She scribbled it down and scampered back to her desk.
It took Eric and me until two o’clock to make everybody happy. Then we went out to lunch. To the Midas Muffler shop on Orange Street. If I wanted an update on his research on the prince’s family, I’d have to sit with him in the waiting room, eating stale snacks from the vending machine, while the rusty belly of his old Toyota pickup truck was fitted with a new exhaust system.
Eric’s lunch consisted of Strawberry Twizzlers, Chili Cheese Fritos, and his umpteenth Mountain Dew of the day. I chose the Fig Newtons and a slurp of tepid water from the drinking fountain next to the restrooms. We found a pair of empty chairs by a pyramid of windshield wiper fluid and got to work.
Eric licked the chili cheese off his fingers and opened the geeky backpack he’d brought with him. He handed me copies of the news stories and police reports on Petru Clopotar’s drowning. “Looks like they never found the guy’s body,” he said.
“And yet they ruled it accidental?”
“The anchor was missing along with him.”
“Well, isn’t that interesting,” I said, nibbling on my cookie. “Prince Anton told me the anchor had been tied around his brother’s feet.”
Eric tore open the Twizzlers package with his teeth. “The police figured he must have gotten tangled up in it and fell overboard.”
“Accidents do happen.”
“There were also fishing poles and live minnows on the boat,” he added. “And there was a cooler with sandwiches and beer.”
I shook the cookie crumbs off the police report. Mixing lunch and work is never tidy. “It makes you wonder why the prince insists it was a suicide, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe he’s afraid that his brother’s bones will still be found some day,” Eric suggested. “With a bullet rattling around in his skull or something.”
I finished his thought. “Which would make it either suicide or murder.”
Eric finished mine. “So the prince killed his older brother and made it look like a suicide. So he would be the heir and not just the spare.”
I told him about my own research. “When Petru went overboard in the fifties, there was real hope that the Communists would be driven out of Romania. Hungary was in open revolt. People in other Eastern European countries were grumbling. It would be just a matter of time before the monarchy was restored. That was only pie in the sky, of course, but nobody knew that then.”
“What about now? It’s still pie in the sky, right?”
“Where there’s sky there’s pie. Now, what about the prince’s father? Dumitru. Where, when and how did he die?”
Eric handed me an old Associated Press story. “Heart attack. January 1968. Skiing in Austria with his son, Prince Anton.”
My cynicism-as it has a tendency to do-was soaring like a runaway birthday balloon. “Father and son all alone on a remote slope in the Alps, no doubt.” I read the AP story. I hadn’t been that far off. The prince had found his father’s body on the floor of his hotel room when he went to get him for dinner. “What about the prince’s mother? She can’t possibly still be alive.”
“Old age. June, 1996.”
“And the prince’s three sons? Anything about them we need to know?”
Eric handed me his research. While I read, he gave a thumbnail sketch of each son: “Christopher. Age fifty. High school science teacher by trade. Currently Labor Party member of Parliament. No public views on Romanian monarchy…
“Anthony. Age forty-three. Assistant deputy minister of tourism for Ontario. No public views on Romanian monarchy…
“Simon. Age thirty-eight. Hosts an all-night bluegrass radio show in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. No public
