C Corwin - The Unraveling of Violeta Bell

“They want me to do a column,” she said.

“So those are tears of joy.”

She started waaaah-ing like Lucy Ricardo. “No they aren’t.”

I felt like strangling her. I strangled my teabag instead. “Let’s get this straight-you’ve been at the paper for two months and they’ve given you a column? And this is bad news? Most reporters have to wait for twenty years.”

“It’s for the Saturday Home amp; Garden section.”

“Oh.”

“On pets.”

“Oh dear.”

She pulled a paper towel off the roll on the counter and wiped her nose. “I didn’t go to journalism school to write about cats and dogs. Not to mention tropical fish.”

“You’ll still be able to write your features won’t you?”

“Well, yes.”

“See there,” I said. “It’s not as bad as you think. Continue to write your features as well as you can and make the column as unreadable as you can. When the veterinarians and dog groomers start to bitch, they’ll give the damn thing to someone else.”

“I guess that’s a plan.”

“You bet that’s a plan,” I said. “Meanwhile I’ll give you an idea for your first column. Does your dog make you sick?”

“That’s a stupid idea.”

I headed for the door. “You think so? Do you know that dog hair can make your tonsils swell up like basketballs? Make you snore? Ruin your last chance at love?”

“Love, Mrs. Sprowls?”

I gave her my best Morgue Mama scowl. “That was an unfortunate slip of the tongue, Gabriella. And if you ever tell anybody, I’ll see to it that your next job is writing want ads.”

The afternoon crawled like an 800-year-old Galapagos turtle. Finally, at 4:30, Eric reported what he’d found. He was quite proud of himself. “There are 120 units at the Carmichael House,” he said. “The turnover rate during the eight years Violeta Bell lived there averaged 7.9 percent a year. That’s 183 owners, total. Seventy-two percent of those owners were single women. Four-point-four percent single men. Married couples, happily or otherwise, 23.6 percent. That’s forty-three couples if you can’t do the math in your head.” He handed me the list I wanted with all the married couples’ names.

“Alphabetically, too,” I said, pretending to be impressed. “Now what about the obits?”

He continued his geeky presentation. “Assuming we ran all their obits, a grand total of eight married men passed on to their heavenly reward during the last eight years.” He not only gave me copies of their obituaries, but a cover sheet listing their names and dates of death.

I sent him back to his desk and got to work on the obits. One husband had died the same month Violeta moved in, so I eliminated him as the likely lover. That left seven. Two had died in nursing homes, which meant they had probably been out of their condos for some time. So I eliminated them. That left five. One of the husbands was ninety-seven when he passed. Men being men, I couldn’t totally eliminate him, but I did put him in the unlikely category. That left four.

I checked those four against the first list Eric gave me. Two wives had sold their units after their husbands died. Two still lived there. Was one of them the nice gal who didn’t have a clue her husband had an affair with Violeta Bell? Or was Kay Hausenfelter lying? Was that husband still alive? And did his wife actually have a clue? Was Kay covering up for her? Or was Kay telling a much bigger lie? Was Kay Hausenfelter covering up for herself? Sending me on a wild goose chase? Looking for a goose that didn’t exist?

And there was an even bigger question: How in the hell was I going to find answers to those other questions?

I fled the morgue at five. Drove straight home. I gave James a quick walk. Boiled a packet of Tabatchnick’s Golden Cream of Mushroom Soup for my supper. Thank God it wasn’t an Ike night. I watched a couple hours of TV, flipping back and forth between the Everybody Loves Raymond marathon on Channel Nine and The Naked Archeologist on The History Channel. I was slipping into my pajamas when the phone rang. It was Detective Grant. “Don’t tell me you’re home from work already,” he said.

I knew he was yanking my chain. “I just walked in the door.”

I was standing in my dark bedroom with one leg in my bottoms and one leg out, but I could see the grin on his big round face. “Well, Mrs. Sprowls,” he said ever-so-nonchalantly, “I’m sitting here behind my big policeman’s desk with a very interesting report from my pointy-eared pals at BCI.”

I hopped into the second leg. “And?”

“Looks like Prince Anton and Violeta Bell are siblings. A ninety-percent likelihood, anyway.”

“A ninety-percent likelihood? That’s the best you can do?”

There was a long silence. Then the sound of something being slurped. “Apparently testing for siblingship, as the elves call it, is not as conclusive as other types of DNA testing. Especially when you don’t have a mother or father to test. Which in this case we don’t.”

To say the least I was disappointed. “Can’t they squeeze out another ten percent?”

“We’re not talking about making lemonade, Maddy. Be happy with the ninety. It’s as close to a slam-dunk as you can get. Then, of course, there’s the scrapbook.”

“The scrapbook?”

“Yeah-she had a scrapbook. Mostly birthday cards and Christmas cards and gooey crap like that. But there are several pages of clippings on Prince Anton and his sons. From Canadian newspapers and magazines.”

I screeched at him like a cuckolded wife. “And you’ve had this all along?”

He hemmed and hawed. “Actually-no. After I got the BCI report this afternoon, I went back to Violeta’s condo. To make sure we hadn’t overlooked something. Seems we weren’t as thorough as we should have been.”

I forced myself to simmer down. Not an easy task. “So, the DNA and the scrapbook pretty much make the case?”

“Yes, they do.”

“And I was right.”

“Yes, you were.”

“And you were wrong. Not to mention sloppy.”

“Yes and yes.”

I had oodles of questions for him. I asked the only one that counted. “What do we do now?”

Said Grant, “That was going to be my question to you.”

“I suppose the polite thing would be to tell the prince first,” I said. “Before you leak it to the media.”

“I agree.”

“To see how he reacts to the news.”

“Absolutely.”

“That’s what we’ll do then.”

Grant tickled my eardrum with his happy little laugh. “No-that’s what you’ll do. You already know the man. You can better judge his reaction.”

Now I laughed in his ear. “You still don’t believe it’s possible that Violeta was killed because of her royal blood, do you?”

There was another long silence. Another slurp. “Frankly, your theory is just too far-fetched for me to devote my department’s resources to it,” he said. “Especially since I’ve got a couple of much better leads to spend the city’s money on. And then there’s the political ramifications of the thing.”

“Political ramifications? Who gives a flying frog about political ramifications?”

His irritation was growing. “He’s a Canadian, Maddy. And Canada the last time I checked is another country. And I’m not too crazy about getting our fair city into an international brouhaha unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“And I’m not too crazy about getting myself killed,” I snarled.

He snarled right back. “Do you really think I’d let you go ahead with this if I thought you were in any danger?”

“Yes, I think you would,” I said, joking but not joking. “I’ve been nothing but a burr in your saddle since the day we met.”