C Corwin - The Unraveling of Violeta Bell

We retreated down Hardihood. The rush hour was over. The landscaping crews had finished their work. I would have been content to think about which South Beach dinner in my freezer I was going to microwave for my supper. But Gabriella had other ideas. “We learn anything worthwhile today?” she asked.

“Good gravy-” I started to scold her but the drive-in movie screen in my cerebral cortex had already switched from cashew chicken with sugar snap peas to that sour-pussed woman rolling that cat fur into an ever-tighter ball. “Well, it was pretty clear our Miss Wilburger didn’t much care for Violeta Bell.”

Gabriella laughed. “Or Eddie French,” Gabriella pointed out. “Or her students. Or her mother. Or us.”

I laughed, too. “You’re saying she may not be the most reliable judge of character?”

We reached West Apple. Puttered through the yellow arrow and headed toward downtown. “She obviously knows them a lot better than I do,” Gabriella said. “I only spent a few hours with them doing my story. But I liked Eddie French. And I thought her mother was terrific.”

“You did say you had an uneasy feeling about Violeta,” I reminded her.

“Yeah-but I liked her.”

I suppressed a yawn. “If I’ve learned anything the past two years, it’s that likeable people murder other likeable people all the time.”

“You’re a regular Confucius.”

“A confused Confucius,” I said.

We stopped behind an unloading bus. A lot of dog-tired people got off. “So we learned bupkiss?”

“Unfortunately we learned plenty,” I assured her. “We learned that Eddie French was very familiar with the building. And we learned that anybody familiar with the building could have easily slipped into the fitness room to ambush Violeta Bell.”

“So maybe Eddie French is guilty after all?”

“Maybe he is.”

Gabriella dropped me off in front of The Herald-Union and headed off to have dinner with friends. I went upstairs. Not to catch up on my work. To see if Eric had any more research on the Queens of Never Dull for me. He’d already found all he could on Kay Hausenfelter, Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy, and Gloria McPhee, but he still owed me big, fat folders full of interesting stuff on Eddie French and his sister, and of course Violeta Bell.

Eric wasn’t at his desk. But Dale Marabout was at his. He was typing furiously with his two index fingers. Which meant he was writing an important story. When Dale has a routine cops story, he types with all ten fingers. But when it’s a big story on deadline that requires every bit of gristle in his body and soul to get out fast, it’s just those two fingers.

Dale Marabout is more than a good reporter. He is also my good friend. And if you don’t know already, he and I once had a relationship that went well beyond having lunch. I was a skittish divorcee in my forties at the time. He was just-out-of-college, plump and frumpy, and woefully untrained in the manly arts. We fulfilled each other’s modest expectations for several years. Then a young kindergarten teacher named Sharon moved into his apartment building and I was the odd woman out. But, like I said, we remain friends.

I waited at my desk until Dale clicked off his computer and headed for the elevator. Then I called up his story on my computer. Oh my:

Hannawa-Cab driver Edward French, whom police had characterized as a “person of interest” in their investigation into the July 5 murder of retired antique dealer Violeta Bell, has been released on bail.

The 61-year-old French was arraigned Tuesday on several charges relating to the burglary of Bell’s west side condominium.

Court records show that bail was posted late yesterday by local philanthropist Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy.

That night, after I’d had my dinner, washed my dishes, watched Antiques Roadshow, and taken James out for his after-dark pee, I got up the nerve to read that pamphlet Ike gave me. He was right. Sleep apnea was dangerous. The pamphlet said people with it stop breathing hundreds of times during the night, up to thirty seconds at a time. It increases the risk of having a heart attack or a stroke, or a car accident the next day because you’re so damn tired you fell asleep at the wheel. Even if it doesn’t kill you, it can make you irritable, forgetful, even disinterested in sex. “No wonder Ike gave me this damn thing,” I grumbled to James.

Thursday, July 20

I never thought I’d hear the words come out of my mouth. “Eric,” I said, “you’ll have to mark up the paper this morning-I’ve got stuff to do.”

And I did have stuff to do. Important stuff I didn’t want to do but had to do.

The first thing I did was call Suzie and tell her I’d be taking the first week of August off. “You, a vacation?” she squeaked in disbelief. “For a whole week?”

“Don’t worry,” I snarled back. “I won’t be having a very good time.”

The next thing I did was hike down the sidewalk through the heat and haze to Ike’s. I could see him inside filling a Styrofoam cup with coffee for his only customer. I opened the door just wide enough to stick my head inside and yell, “I’ll take the damn sleep test!”

Then I huffed and puffed up Hill Street to police headquarters. I’d passed the monstrous building a million times but I’d never been inside. I sweated my way up the three tiers of steps, skirted the bronze statue of Roscoe Blough, Hannawa’s legendary Roaring Twenties police chief, and pushed my way through one of the revolving doors. The lobby was cold enough to make ice cubes. Some people were actually wearing sweaters. I obediently put my purse on the conveyor belt and stepped through the metal detector. I clopped across the marble tiles to the information desk. The crisply uniformed woman manning the desk was blowing warm air into her hands. “Where can I find Detective Grant?” I asked her.

She was clearly one of those people who didn’t like their jobs. “I suppose you don’t have an appointment.”

“Actually I don’t.”

“Name?”

“Maddy Sprowls.”

It was as if that statue of Roscoe Blough had clanked in and asked her for directions to the men’s room. “Good Lord!” she howled.

Her surprise didn’t surprise me. In the past two years I’d interfered in two major murder investigations. And made the police look like a pack of doofuses both times. “I’m sure Detective Grant will want to see me.”

She pushed his extension button with more foreboding than if she were launching a nuclear-tipped missile to start World War III. “Maddy Sprowls is here for you, detective,” she whispered. Then she laughed. “No, she doesn’t have a bomb-that I can see.”

So I was told where to go. I took the elevator to the fourth floor. It was just as cold up there as the lobby. An officer pointed me toward Detective Grant’s cubicle.

When Grant saw me coming, he stood up behind his desk and put his fists on his hips Superman-style. He did not, however, suck in his belly, the way most middle-aged men do when anybody remotely female appears. He loudly recited a Bible verse: “Revelations 13:1: ‘I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads.’”

I like Scotty Grant. He’s comfortable in his own skin. Which is a good thing. He has plenty of it. What he doesn’t have is a lot of hair. Except for his eyebrows. They frame his puffy eyes like the McDonald’s arches. I plunked myself in the chair alongside his desk. “Any way you could have the air conditioning turned up?” I asked. “I can still feel one of my big toes.”

He sat and took a noisy slurp from his mug. It had a picture of Daffy Duck on it. “I’m sure we don’t have any of the crappy tea you drink, but I can get you an equally crappy cup of coffee.”