C Corwin - The Unraveling of Violeta Bell

“I TAKE THEE to be my lawfully wedded wife,” says Pvt. Philip McPhee to high school sweetheart Lois Palansky. The McPhees were one of six happy Hannawa couples married Tuesday at City Hall by Mayor Dutch Schneider.

Another story was from 1959. It was from the business section. Phil McPhee, with the help of a government loan, was opening a new exterminating business in the blighted German Hill neighborhood east of downtown. The accompanying photo showed Phil and the city’s new mayor cutting the ribbon with a big pair of cardboard scissors. Read that caption:

BUGS BETTER BEWARE: Mayor Merle D. Blackburn helps local exterminator Phil McPhee open his new headquarters on East Apple Street. McPhee’s wife, Elaine, proudly looks on.

I stuffed everything back in the envelope. I clicked off the lamp and sat in the dark. “Two previous wives,” I yawned. “Why am I not surprised?”

Monday, August 28

I took my mug to the cafeteria. I gave it a good washing in the sink, something I do every Monday morning. My goals for the day were modest. Mark up the weekend papers. Stop itching the mosquito bites on my ankles. Have Eric find Phil McPhee’s first two wives.

Phil McPhee was clearly a ladies’ man. He was more than likely a life-long philanderer. Just possibly he was the mystery man Detective Grant was looking for, the one who went bonkers and killed Violeta Bell when he discovered she’d once been a he.

While the water for my tea was coming to a boil, I read the crap stapled on the employee bulletin board. I was yawning like the MGM lion. Saturday and Sunday had both been sleep-over nights for Ike. So I was exhausted-from staying awake so he couldn’t catch me snoring.

There was a letter on the board from Reporters’ Guild President Will Canterbury on the upcoming contract talks with management. Given the paper’s falling circulation and advertising revenues, those talks were going to be brutal. There was also a cute little poster with dancing hotdogs, inviting “friend and foe alike” to Dee Dee Killbuck’s annual Labor Day patio party. An equally brutal prospect.

I made my tea and headed back to the morgue. Every few steps I stopped, closed my sleepy eyes and took a nourishing sip. I hear that Eric does a hilarious imitation of me doing that, by the way, although I’ve never seen it myself. Anyway, I was half way across the sports department when I opened my eyes and over the steaming rim of my mug saw Prince Anton Clopotar standing in front of my desk with a long white box cradled in his arms.

I gasped. Spilled tea all over the front of my beloved Tweetie Bird tee shirt. The prince saw me, too. He hurried toward me. I retreated. My first thought was to take refuge in the ladies’ room. Which would have been stupid. The man comes all the way from Wolfe Island to kill me and the social impropriety of going into a woman’s toilet was going to stop him? Instead I trotted back to the cafeteria, where the only escape would be to dive through a fourth-story window.

“Mrs. Sprowls, please!” the prince called out. “I want to see you!”

The cafeteria was empty. I backed against the counter where I’d just made my tea. I reached into the utensil drawer and felt for a weapon.

The prince stuck his head through the open doorway. “Making me tea, are you?”

“I figured you’d want some.”

He came in, smiling like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. He was wearing his blazer with the emblem on the pocket. His polka dot bowtie. A pair of beautiful gray slacks with a razorsharp crease. Goofy tan-and-white saddle shoes. I wrapped my shaking fingers around a plastic butter knife. It was either that or a packet of McDonald’s catsup.

He held out the box. “Friends?”

I let go of the fork. Took the box. “Not a dead fish, is it?”

“Roses, actually.”

I removed the lid. It was roses. Yellow roses. A dozen of them.

“Friends,” he said again.

I took the roses from the box. I was no longer afraid of being murdered. That crazy notion was gone. Replaced with embarrassment. “If I smell them will my nose explode?”

“I hope not,” said the prince. “I’ve grown quite fond of that meddling proboscis of yours.”

I smelled the flowers. I put them back in the box and put the box on the counter. I refilled the kettle to make him some tea. “Darjeeling?”

“Is there any other kind?” He sat at one of the empty tables. He leaned on his forearms while I washed out a mug for him. “Why would you ever think I meant you harm?”

“My letter! Stealing your spoon and your pipe! Involving you in a murder!”

He smiled at me. Not like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Like Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy. “You found my brother for me. Or should I say my sister?”

“Does that matter to you? Petru having that operation, I mean?”

He frowned and rubbed his knuckles. “It is a hard thing to understand. But if it made him happier than he was, well, who can quibble with that?”

I poured the boiling water over the teabag in the mug I’d chosen for him. A big yellow one. I took it to him. Went back to the counter for the sugar and Coffeemate. “So you really thought he’d drowned himself in the river?” I asked.

He knew where I was going. “I never knew he wasn’t happy being a man. Back then such a thing would never occur to you, would it? Not even today. But I knew he was confused to the bone about something.”

I sat across from him. “So you assumed he committed suicide.”

“We Clopotar men are known to take the unfairness of life head on,” he said.

“And that’s what Petru did,” I said. “He burned his bridges and became the woman he should have been.”

The prince smiled sadly. “I just wish he had let me in on it. I’ve missed him terribly all these years.”

Memories of my own lost brother flooded my brain. I’d told the prince about him on Wolfe Island. “At least now you know Petru went on to live a long life as Violeta Bell. And from what her friends tell me, a happy one.”

“Until her murder,” the prince said. “From what that detective told me, that must have been a frightening night for her.”

I was surprised into silence. Not something that happens very often.

He winked devilishly. “Oh yes, Maddy, I’ve already talked to your favorite detective. Last night at the hotel. He showed me the DNA results. And the scrapbook.”

“Did he now?”

“He is quite fond of you. Not to mention Irish coffee.” He dropped the big bombshell. “In fact, Mr. Grant is upstairs as we speak. With Mr. Averill and some extremely unhappy fellow named Winkler or something.”

I corrected him. “Alec Tinker.”

The prince stood up and flattened the pockets of his sports coat. “Actually I volunteered to come downstairs and fetch you.”

I found a horrible plastic vase under the sink for my roses. I trimmed the stems with that plastic knife I’d fingered in the drawer. He carried the roses back to my desk for me. We took the elevator upstairs.

Bob Averill’s office was gray and austere. The no-nonsense domain of a powerful man. He was slumped into his enormous black leather chair, slowly swiveling back and forth. The only thing on his desk was a copy of that morning’s paper. In front of him, on far more modest chairs, sat Detective Grant and Alec Tinker. There were empty chairs for the prince and me. The men were all wearing coats and ties. I was wearing baggy dungarees and that Tweetie Bird tee shirt with the big tea stain.

The prince was right on the money when he’d said how unhappy Alec Tinker was. And I knew why that was. Tinker had been left out of the loop. He hadn’t known about my investigation. Or that Bob Averill had put me up to it. Or that Bob was in cahoots with Detective Grant.