C Corwin - The Unraveling of Violeta Bell

A sad smile turned up the ends of his mustache. “Forgive my irritation, Miss Sprowls. I’ve spent much of my adult life trying to find a set of lead soldiers that had been given to my greatgrandfather when he was a boy. By Prince Albert of England. One hundred tiny Romanian Hussars in all their glory. Cavalrymen. Romania, you see, won its independence for helping Russia drive the Turks out of the Balkans. And the British, who had sided with the Turks, wanted to repair relations with the new Romanian nation. So they were more than toy soldiers. They were diplomatic chess pieces.”

My next question was obvious. “You wouldn’t kill for them, would you?”

He laughed. “Not literally, I wouldn’t. But it is quite a coincidence that my great-grandfather would grow up to marry the daughter of a cavalry officer, isn’t it? Who knows, I may owe my very existence to the romantic roilings fostered by those lead soldiers.” His manner suddenly changed. He became passionless. Analytical. “Let’s get back to why you came to see me. You’re wondering if I had something to do with this woman’s murder. In the event her claims were true, I might want her out of the way in case the monarchy is restored. Yes, there is a small royalist party in Romania today. And a few of its members actually support my cause. But there is no room in the new constitution for a monarch. Not even a toothless figurehead.”

He was right. I’d Googled the new Romanian constitution. It didn’t say boo about a king or queen, except, somewhat cryptically, that no one could exercise sovereignty in one’s own name. “Couldn’t the constitution be amended?”

“Yes, but it would take quite a groundswell of public support,” he said. “And that’s not very likely. Certainly not in my lifetime. Or old King Michael’s.”

That, too, jived with what I’d read. “What about the next generation of heirs? You have three sons. King Michael has five daughters.”

He poured more tea for us. “Surely you don’t expect me to opine on the possibility of my own sons thinning the royal herd.”

“Of course not. I’m sorry.”

He winked at me. “If they were so inclined, I think they would start with me.”

I toasted him. He was a funny man. An attractive man. “You had an older brother. Petru. Did he leave any heirs?”

Prince Anton shook his head no. Pointed across the bay. “He drowned himself right out there. A half-mile off that point. Fifty-two years ago. When he was twenty-six.”

“Drowned himself? Suicide?”

“The authorities ruled it an accident. How do you accidentally get an anchor rope tied around your feet?” His eyes were cloudy with tears. “A passing boater found our boat. The motor was still running. The propeller turned sharply to the right. The boat going round and round like the hands of a clock. X marks the spot. Intentionally it seemed to me. ”

My eyes were clouding up, too. “I lost my brother when he was nineteen. In Korea. His death was an accident. If you can call anyone getting killed in a war an accident. He was accidentally shot in the leg by one of his buddies while crossing the Han River. He tumbled off the pontoon bridge and drowned before they could pull him out.”

The prince pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to me. While I dabbed my eyes with it, he pulled the tears from his with his pinky fingers, studying each tear before he wiped it off. “Both drowned,” he said softly. “Horrible.”

“I always felt sorry for the boy whose gun went off,” I said. “His name was Andy Brown. He was from Connecticut. Over the years he must have written me a dozen letters apologizing.”

The prince was still working on his eyes. “Horrible.”

“When he died they sent me a letter he’d attached to his will apologizing one last time.”

“Horrible.”

I changed the subject before we both fell apart. “The only thing I need to know, I suppose, is whether Violeta Bell was telling the truth about her royalty.”

He stood up. Stretched until I could see his belly. “I am something of an expert on the Romanian royals, as you can well imagine. There are no living Violetas. And certainly no Bells. Like I said, Bell is not a Romanian name.”

“Well-I’m sure there’s nothing to it.”

We walked back to his bungalow. Along the way he showed me his vegetable gardens. Like every other backyard gardener in North America, he had enough zucchini to feed an army. Back inside, he led me into his tiny den. There was nothing on his desk but a gooseneck lamp and a long rack of smelly pipes. He rummaged through a bottom drawer, pulling out a folder filled with shiny photos of himself. He took one out, careful not to get his fingerprints on it. It was the same pose that appeared on his website, the one with the big Romanian flag, the silly little bow tie and big manly pipe. He rustled through the top drawer until he found the fancy gold ballpoint he wanted. When he was finished scribbling, he read the inscription to me: “To Maddy. Thank you for your company on such a beautiful summer morning. Anton.”

It was so informal. So unassuming. Then again, printed across the bottom of the photo, in raised gold letters, was a less humble assertion:

His Royal Majesty

Anton Alexandur Clopotar

He slipped the photo into a white envelope. The prospect of him giving me an easy DNA sample nearly buckled me at the knees. But just as he was about to lick the envelope, he seemed to think better of it. He tucked in the flap and handed it to me.

Before leaving I gave him copies of the various stories we’d run, including Gabriella Nash’s original feature on the Queens of Never Dull. I gave him my business card. “If anything comes to mind, you’ll let me know?”

“I will.” He took my hand and kissed it. I almost dropped my car keys.

I spent the afternoon at my cottage. I tried to nap in the most uncomfortable Adirondack chair ever built. Which is saying something. I walked along the rocky beach until my feet ached. I tried to coax James into fetching a piece of driftwood. I made six pancakes for my supper and ate every damn one of them. I went to bed at nine and, for all I know, snored up a storm.

In the morning I wrestled James into the backseat of Ike’s car and drove straight back to Hannawa.

Friday, August 4

Eric Chen stood in front of my desk, sucking on his morning bottle of Mountain Dew while shaking his head in pity, an impressive display of his multi-tasking skills. “I knew you couldn’t take an entire week off,” he said.

“Some people have a work ethic,” I growled back.

“And some people don’t have a life.”

“My life is more than adequate,” I assured him. “I accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish. Including getting away from you for a few days. I’m rested and restored. The sweet, lovable Maddy Sprowls of old. Now get to work before I fire your ass.”

Eric sauntered off to BS with the boys in sports. I started deleting four days of worthless voice mail. There was one call I actually had to listen to: “Hello, Mrs. Sprowls. This is Dr. Menke’s office. The doctor wanted you to know that your results are back from the sleep center and that you should make an appointment as soon as you can to discuss them.”

I deleted the message from my phone. But I couldn’t delete it from my brain. I called the doctor’s office. There was an opening at 4:20 that afternoon. I hemmed and hawed for a minute then took it. I went on deleting messages like it was an Olympic sport.

Just as I was nearing the finishing line, Bob Averill pressed his huge palms into my desktop like a couple of toilet plungers. “I heard you were back!”

“Yes, Bob, I’m back. And I’m no closer to solving your little problem than when I left.”