We climbed the stone steps to the patio. Both of our fears proved to be unfounded. Ike quickly counted three other black guests and I spotted one of the most prominent Democrats in the city, Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy. All-in-all there were maybe a hundred people there, dressed casually but expensively, mingling like a hive of honey bees. Bustling among them were those Democratic servers Ike had joked about, in crisp white shirts and black slacks, some balancing big trays of finger food on their palms, some toting wine bottles the size of artillery shells.
Jeannie Salapardi saw us and came running with her fishbowl-sized margarita. “Maddy! I’m so glad you could come.” She smooched the air a foot from my cheek. She stuck out her hand for Ike. “And you’re Mr. Sprowls?”
“So far I’m still Mr. Breeze,” he said. “Ike Breeze.”
“Well, Mr. Ike Breeze, don’t you let Maddy escape,” she said. “She’s one of a kind.”
“Thank God for that,” said Ike.
Now Jeannie got as serious as her margarita would allow. “Even though it didn’t work out exactly as we wanted, Eddie and I are still grateful for your help. My husband, too.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting him,” Ike said.
“Ike’s a businessman, too,” I explained.
Jeannie pouted apologetically. “Then you know how it is. Work-work-work, 24/7. But I’m hoping he’ll be here later.”
Jeannie hurried off to welcome another couple coming around the corner. Ike and I headed for the lemonade.
That night’s party was for Eddie. Sort of a combined going away and going straight party. After several meetings with the prosecutor’s office, Eddie had agreed to plead guilty to a single charge of aiding and abetting. In exchange, he agreed to tell everything he knew about Violeta Bell’s fake antique business. That had led to the arrest of antique dealers in Tuckahoe, New York and Brattleboro, Vermont. Also arrested were a pair of talented furniture makers in Buncombe County, North Carolina, a whiz-bang metalworker in Mckeesport, Pennsylvania, and a crafty potter in Zanesville, Ohio.
The antique dealer in Tuckahoe confirmed that on the night of July 4, just four hours before Violeta Bell was murdered, Eddie was at his store unloading a shipment of just-made 19th century mantle clocks. The Tuckahoe Motor Inn confirmed that Eddie had checked in shortly before midnight and had watched one X-rated pay-per-view movie after another until dawn. Another establishment in that leafy New York City suburb, G.W. Moley amp; Son Auto Repair, confirmed that on July 5 a yawning man wearing a bright orange baseball cap paid in cash to replace the muffler on an old bread truck.
So that coming Monday Eddie French was going to court. To plead guilty and start doing the twenty-four months in state prison the prosecutor’s office promised him.
Eddie, by the way, wasn’t the only member of the French family to have a heart-to-heart with Detective Grant. His sister, Jeannie, confessed that she owned that bread truck Eddie used to deliver Violeta Bell’s fake antiques. “My brother was broke, as usual, and was already driving his cab on a suspended license,” she explained. “He was crying how he could get his life in order if he only had a truck. So I made sure he had one.” She bought the old Hausenfelter truck from Richfield amp; Sons. She paid a mechanic at her husband’s Mitsubishi dealership to pry the identification number off the dashboard. She bought new license plates and stickers for it. She made sure it was insured. She filled it with gas and had it parked behind her brother’s apartment.
Eddie accepted the mysterious truck as a gift from the gods, just as Jeannie figured. No questions asked lest he be struck dead by a torrent of scruple-sized hail. He used the truck when he needed it. He wasn’t the least bit territorial when others in the neighborhood did, too. Every year Jeannie bought new license stickers and stuck them on the plates when Eddie wasn’t looking. “I know it wasn’t exactly right,” she told Grant. “But it wasn’t exactly wrong either. He’s my brother and, well, what can I say? I love him.”
Ike poured our lemonade. We clinked our plastic tumblers together and sipped. It was not the sweetest lemonade. While I puckered like a goldfish, and Ike frantically searched for a sugar bowl, Eddie sauntered toward us. He had a bashful grin on his face. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his Bermuda shorts. A baggy blue and green Hawaiian shirt was hanging off his shoulders. Instead of his orange ball cap, he was wearing a white straw fedora with a tiny Budweiser can stapled on the crown. He tipped it and gave me a cross-legged curtsy. “Quite an extravaganza, eh, Mrs. Sprowls?”
“The party or your shirt?”
He twirled slowly for me, like a model. “My sister insisted that I be dressed to the nines tonight,” he said. “And how could I not oblige her wishes, me being the guest of honor, et al., and her picking up the freight credit card wise.”
“She must be proud.”
He laughed and twirled again. “She was appalled. But I said, ‘Sis, you weren’t exactly Grace Kelley before you became a Salapardi.’”
He was certainly right about that. According to Eric’s research, Jeannie and Eddie had grown up in a working class family on Hannawa’s east side. Their father worked in the city’s sewer department. Their mother was an LPN at Hannawa General. While Eddie spent his youth getting in trouble, Jeannie spent hers getting As. That effort was rewarded with a scholarship to Kent State and an invitation to join one of the university’s top sororities. After trying out majors in elementary education and English, she wisely switched to business. In one of her accounting classes she sat next to a Vietnam veteran named David Salapardi who had big plans for turning his father’s used car lot into an empire. Unlike brother Eddie, she’d only had one scrape with the law. A speeding ticket in 1983. “Your sister obviously loves you very much,” I told Eddie. “The way she’s stood behind you through all this.”
Ike had found some sugar cubes by the coffee maker. He gave us both three lumps. I introduced him to Eddie. “You’re doing the honorable thing,” Ike assured him as they shook hands.
“It’s not like I haven’t been in prison before,” Eddie said. “Two measlies behind the Venetians will be a slice.”
I could see that Eddie’s choice of words had Ike’s brain tied in knots. “Two years in a jail cell,” I explained. “Piece of cake.”
“I intend to mind my Ps and Qs in there, too,” Eddie said. “Come out clean and live happily ever after, like a well-scrubbed clam in a fairy tale.”
Ike looked at me for another interpretation. “You’re on you own,” I said.
All three of us laughed. Then Eddie’s tough guy facade fell away. “I know you were forced into helping me,” he said. “And for all your sneaking around and such, came up with pretty much nada el grande. ”
He was right. I hadn’t uncovered anything that helped exonerate him. Except for realizing that Violeta Bell’s antiques might be fakes, I’d simply confirmed what Detective Grant already knew. “I was happy to try.”
His apology-if that’s what it was-apparently was just beginning. “And all you got from me was a hard time. Capital H. Capital T.”
“I can understand your being a bit defensive.”
“Defensive? I was the epitome of despicability. My only hope now is that my remorsefulness seems genuine.”
“It does.”
“That’s good to hear,” he said. “Because all I did that day you showed up unannounced at my abode was blow smoke in your face. Both literally and figuratively at the same time. My sister, too.”
“She was just protecting you.”
“And you were just trying to help,” he said. He took an awkward step toward me. He took both of my hands in his hands. He rubbed his sweat all over my fingers. “The sappier moments in life don’t come easy for me,” he said. “But if it hadn’t been for you, Mrs. Sprowls, I never would’ve given the police an accurate account of my who, what, when, where, and whys.”
“I’m sure you would have eventually.”
Said Eddie, “No I wouldn’t’ve.”
Ike tried to intervene on my behalf. “I’m sure you would have, too.”
“Neither of you know me like I know me,” Eddie said. He pulled me toward him, in a sweet, innocent way. He lowered his face until it was level with mine. His eyes were watering. Instead of the beer and cigarettes on his breath I expected, there was a powerful blast of Listerine. “You remember what you said to my sister that day, Mrs. Sprowls? ‘Your brother is going to be twiddling his thumbs on death row if he doesn’t start telling a more forthcoming version of the truth.’”
