C Corwin - The Unraveling of Violeta Bell

“Take custody! What do you mean take custody?”

Ten minutes later Grant and I were fighting our way across the front of City Hall. The president’s motorcade had just pulled up and the crowd was going nuts. “Had you bothered to call for an appointment, you would have found out that I was on security detail today,” Grant yelled into my ear.

“Does this mean we can’t talk?” I yelled back.

“We can talk,” he assured me. “If you don’t mind sharing the stage with the president of the United States.”

“If the president doesn’t mind, I don’t mind.”

And so my meeting with Detective Grant was held on the top step of City Hall, surrounded by the Hemphill College Marching Bear Cat Band. On a makeshift stage fifty steps below us stood the president, the governor, the mayor, two U.S. senators, a gaggle of congressmen, a herd of local politicians. Below them was a great horseshoe of Hannawans, some with signs, some with children on their shoulders, all thrilled to pieces to be participating in this unimportant historic event. I waited until the president got to the podium then got to the business at hand. “So, Scotty-have you questioned Eddie again?”

Grant’s eyes were on the backsides of the politicians in front of us, but at least his mind was on me. Some of it, anyway. “Again and again,” he said.

“But nothing new to report?”

“Nothing new to report.”

The president was getting a resounding cheer about something. I raised my voice. “What about the sex change thing? Getting anywhere with that?”

“We’re still working it.”

“In other words, nothing new there either.”

“Nothing new there either.”

The president was now saying something about the American can-do spirit. The crowd was wildly agreeing. “You know what your problem is, Scotty?” I said. “You’re getting too much sleep. It makes the mind sluggish.”

He knew I was playing with him. And he knew he had no choice but to play along. “Been lying awake nights, have you?”

“Thinking and thinking.”

“I’ve been meaning to try that myself.”

“You should. It can help you unravel the most interesting mysteries.”

“For instance?”

Now the president was saying something about the future. The crowd was all for it, apparently. “Well, for instance, who Violeta Bell was before she was Violeta Bell.”

Grant was done playing. “You know for sure?”

“Not 100 percent sure,” I admitted. “But I think there’s a very strong possibility that the late Violeta Bell was, once upon a time, the late brother of Prince Anton Clopotar, pretender to the throne of Romania.”

It was as if I’d just told him he’d won the state lottery and then explained that it was a $5 scratch-off ticket. “Good God, Maddy, you’re not still climbing that family tree, are you?”

First I told him what I knew for sure. That Prince Anton lived on an island in the St. Lawrence River. That clopot in Romanian means bell. That the prince’s great-grandmother, Violeta, had married a man named Clopotar. That fifty years ago the prince’s older brother, Petru, took the family boat out on the river and was never seen again. That the Canadian police ruled it an accidental drowning even though they hadn’t recovered a body. That the prince, after half a century, still continued to insist that his brother’s death was a suicide. That while there was little chance Romania would ever restore the monarchy, the Clopotar family was in the running if they did.

Then I got to the fun part-my theory. “Until a couple of days ago I thought maybe the prince had killed his brother to get him out of the picture. And then learning that another pretender to the throne was alive and well and living in Hannawa, Ohio, made sure that she, too, was out of the picture. The prince’s father died a bit suspiciously, too, by the way.”

The president was now warning some country or the other to stop doing whatever it was doing, lest we be forced to do something about it. I waited for the applause to die down. “But obviously, the prince couldn’t have killed his brother back then if his brother was also Violeta Bell,” I said.

“It wouldn’t be the easiest thing,” Grant agreed.

He was being a smart ass. I ignored him and went on. “I now think the prince really believed his brother drowned. And I think he really believed it was suicide. Petru must not have been very happy in his own skin. But instead of wrapping himself in an anchor and jumping overboard, Petru only made it look that way. He swam to shore. He went somewhere and had a sex change. Took the name Violeta Bell. Moved to Hannawa and opened an antique shop.”

Grant seemed more relieved than intrigued. “So, the prince didn’t kill his brother fifty years ago.”

“That’s right.”

“And there’s no evidence he killed his father.”

“Well, no.”

“Which means you have no evidence that Prince What’s-his-name is the murdering type.”

“I never said I did.”

“Which means you’re finally off this royalty stuff.”

“Not at all,” I said. “What if the prince had been happy that his brother drowned? Even if he had nothing to do with it? Then all these years later he realizes his older sibling still might be alive. He does some digging. Figures out what I’ve figured out.”

Grant corrected me. “What you think you’ve figured out.”

And I corrected him. “I’m sure the prince knows his Romanian. How many nano seconds after he saw the name Violeta Bell in Gabriella Nash’s story would it take his frontal lobes to start flashing Violeta Clopotar?”

“I suppose it’s a possibility.”

Both the president and I were really feeling our oats now. “You bet it’s a possibility,” I snapped over the roar of the crowd. “And if the prince wasn’t surprised that his brother committed suicide, he might not be surprised to learn he faked his death and had a sex change.”

“And the prince liked it better when his brother was dead and so he kills him now?”

“Kills her-but yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

Grant now reminded me why he was the detective, and I a lowly librarian. “It’s a nice theory, Maddy, I’ll give you that. But you’ve no real evidence. Not that the prince killed Violeta Bell. Not that Violeta Bell was really his sister or brother or whatever.”

It was time to confess. “I may have gone to see the prince during my vacation.”

I could see the headache wiggling across his forehead, like a million invisible worms wielding tiny sledgehammers. “Judas H. Priest! Were you trying to get yourself killed?”

“I was curious. And I wasn’t killed.”

He almost screamed at me. “You’ve just spent twenty minutes telling me what a cold-blooded killer the prince is!”

I pressed my finger across his lips to shush him. “Good gravy, Scotty. The Secret Service is going to wrestle you to the ground.” I gave him a few seconds to cool down. “I know I shouldn’t have gone. But you’ve been pooh-poohing the Romanian thing from the get-go. And I had to get a read on the guy-”

Grant started raking his eyebrows with his fingernails. “A read on the guy?”

“That’s right. And maybe stumble and bumble into something important.”

Grant was wilting in front of me like a bone-dry petunia. “And did you, Maddy? Did you stumble and bumble into something?”

“Well, for a few seconds there I thought he was going to give me a nice sample of his DNA.”

“His DNA? Judas H.-”

“To compare with Violeta’s,” I explained. “To see if they were related.” I took the photo the prince had given me from my purse. I handed it to Grant. “He almost licked the envelope. But then he didn’t. You can get DNA off an envelope, can’t you?”