Murder as a Second Language (36 page)

I wanted to hug her, but I was afraid it would startle her into eternal silence. “You and Ludmila hid in the ladies' room. Everyone else but Gregory was gone?”

“I not know. I no hear in lady room.”

Now the million-dollar question. “What happened when you and Ludmila left the ladies' room?”

Her chin shot out. “I no tell you. I no tell anyone. Please to leave now.”

“The police will protect you and Miss Parchester,” I said with all the earnestness I could muster. “I promise you. My husband is a very important policeman. I will tell him to take very good care of you.”

She stared at the wall, once again inscrutable. I stood up and went into the kitchen to shake Miss Parchester's shoulder. “You might be more comfortable on the sofa. Miao has terminated the conversation. For such a fragile girl, she can be awfully stubborn.”

Miss Parchester's eyes remained closed as she said, “Papa would say she was worse than a mule on a blazing August afternoon.”

*   *   *

I was increasingly confident that my theory was correct. Of course, I had only the reluctant testimony of a woman who would keep her mouth shut until blood squirted out of boulders and snowflakes were identical. Even if Peter found a Chinese interpreter, Miao wouldn't cooperate. Whoever had threatened her into remaining mute had also threatened to harm Miss Parchester, and possibly Luo, Jiang, and herself. If he was arrested, he had nasty friends. She could never go to class or ride the bus to the Literacy Council. I wondered how long it had taken him to make her understand. I realized why Luo had gone to the Literacy Council the next morning: Miao wanted someone to find Ludmila, who might still be alive. I was so proud of my deductive prowess that I nearly backed into the black car parked behind mine. It was a shiny new model of some pricey line. Despite Peter's pleas to upgrade, I drove an ancient hatchback. I looked in the rearview window and saw Hamdan behind the wheel, smirking.

“I warned you,” I said aloud. I put my car in reverse, pressed my foot on the gas pedal, and plowed into his hood with a satisfactory
thwack.
Glass clinked on the pavement. The broken headlight gave the police a legitimate excuse to pull him over. I put my hand out the window and fluttered my fingers in farewell, then drove home all by myself, enjoying every mile of it.

*   *   *

Caron was swinging on the front porch when I arrived. I sat down beside her and said, “No lake this afternoon?”

“Joel's coming to pick me up in half an hour. We're going to the matinee at the mall and probably eat in the food court. My life once again has meaning.”

“I don't know how you survived ten whole days of wretchedness and despair. Did you have fun last night?”

She turned to look at a hawk circling above. “Yes, we had fun.”

My hand instinctively went to my mouth. I took several deep breaths while I frantically tried to recall everything I'd read about significant conversations with one's daughter. My mind was blank. My maternal veneer of wisdom shattered into tiny shards. “Does that … that mean that you and Joel…?”

“No, Mother. His father took all these hilarious videos at the family reunion, babies pooping on their daddies' laps, a toddler who belly-flopped in a gelatin salad, stuff like that.” She touched my shoulder for a brief second. “I'm nearly eighteen and am leaving for college in a year.”

“I know,” I said, feeling inept, “but I'll still worry about you—and Inez, too. She seems so ingenuous about…”

Caron snorted. “Maybe last week. She may have spent a lot of time on the sidelines, but I can assure you she was taking meticulous notes. She's got more dates lined up than the Julian calendar. None of them are with Toby, though. She says he's a troglodyte.”

“Good for her.” I glanced up at the hawk, which was still trolling for a succulent snack. All a dedicated predator needs is a momentary opportunity, I thought sadly.

My daughter was more grounded. “I saw you were gone when I finished my session with Yelena. I was going to let you take Inez and me out to lunch. Did Keiko fire you?”

“Peter asked me to resign, and I did. Do you know about the Chinese girl who disappeared last week after the murder?”

“Miao? I heard she went back to China. Did she kill Ludmila? I don't see how someone so petite could budge that Polish mountain. She sure couldn't drag the body into a corner with heavy equipment.”

“She's at Miss Parchester's house, living with cats. Don't say a word about this to Jiang. He's desperate to find her, but he'll make matters worse if he does.”

“He's a lot more than desperate,” Caron said, giving the swing a push with her foot. “He kind of scares me when he starts jabbering about how he has to find her, which is all he's done the last two sessions. He even wanted me to call all the cheap motels in town to see if Miao was staying there. Like I'm going to spend all afternoon talking to motel clerks!”

“I don't blame you. Anyway, Miao did not kill Ludmila. I'm convinced she knows who did but is too terrified to tell anyone.” I gave her a brief description of what Miao had admitted. “I think she and Ludmila were both afraid of Gregory that night. He'd bellowed at Ludmila and come close to slapping her. He's been hitting on Miao, making her nervous around him. Ludmila couldn't leave until Bartek arrived to pick her up, and Miao probably thought Gregory would follow her to the bus stop. Maybe Ludmila told her that Bartek would drive her home.”

“Did they bond in adjoining bathroom stalls?”

“It's only speculation, dear. According to Gregory, no one was hanging around when he left. He wouldn't have looked inside the restrooms. He turned off the lights and went outside, where Sonya was waiting for him. They went to his house for the night.”

Caron's lip curled. “That is Utterly Gross. He's way too old for her. Inez will literally barf when she hears this.”

She pulled out her cell phone, but I caught her hand. “Inez can barf later. I need your help. If Gregory turned off the lights, who turned them on before Bartek arrived?”

“Ludmila,” she said promptly. “She saw that Gregory was gone, and she didn't want to sit in the dark. That doesn't explain why Miao stayed, though, unless you actually believe Ludmila tried to be nice to her. Inez and I didn't see any fireworks when we drove by, or hear angels singing.”

“I'll give you that. If we accept that Ludmila turned the lights back on and sat down to wait for Bartek, why didn't she go unlock the front door when he started pounding on it?”

Caron shot a look of longing at her cell on top of her purse. “Joel should get here pretty soon. Maybe you should be telling this to Peter, not me.”

“He might find it entertaining, but he's a stickler for evidence. All I have is Miao's exceedingly brief statement. There's no way to substantiate it.” It was my turn to give the swing a push. The gentle motion did not soothe my feverish mind, which was whirring like a grasshopper in the yard. Peter was not fond of speculation unless it involved greenhouses and lily ponds. I gritted my teeth as I pictured his condescending smile and flicker of boredom. There had to be a way to wrap the perp in shiny paper and put a bow on his head. The perp who'd lied to me, that is.

The swing bounced as Caron stood up. “Joel's here,” she said unnecessarily, since his car had come to a stop near the steps. “You're not going to do something crazy, are you, Mother? I need you to hang around long enough to help me pack for college.” She bent down and gave me a hug. “I Mean It.”

“I won't do anything too crazy.”

 

19

The phone was ringing as I came into the kitchen. I picked up the receiver and sat down on a stool next to the island. “Hello,” I said in a less than delighted tone.

“Did you watch the noon news on TV?” demanded Rick.

“I was having lunch with our key witness. What happened?” I primed myself for more bad news.

“Willie announced her retirement. After she left the hospital, she went home and called a press conference. She said she was two years beyond the minimum age and felt as though she needed to step down because of health concerns.”

“Interesting, but not earth-shattering.” I carried the receiver with me as I took a glass out of a cabinet and held it under the ice maker in the refrigerator door. The ice cubes clattered so loudly that I missed his response. “You'll have to repeat that. It's tea time.”

“Oh, I'll wait, and I suggest you have something stronger than iced tea. You'd better sit down, too.”

I was intrigued. I ignored his suggestion and filled my glass from the pitcher on the bottom shelf. “Okay, I'm ready. What did you say?”

“After Willie said she was retiring, she said that during her career she had done something unworthy of her position and she wanted to apologize to the public. Violating their trust in the judicial system and such. This is the kicker. She said that when she presided over the class-action lawsuit brought by employees of Sell-Mart, she'd taken a bribe to rule in favor of the corporation. The reporters went wild and started pelting her with questions and waving their microphones at her like batons. There was almost a riot. Willie just smiled and refused to comment further.”

“Sheesh.” I took a gulp of tea. “She's a federal judge, not some county justice of the peace. Sheesh.”

“No kidding,” Rick said. “You can watch it on the six o'clock news, but that's pretty much the gist of it. The federal prosecutors must be huddled in their offices, weeping and trying to remember what other cases she presided over. Every ruling she's made in the last twenty years is in jeopardy. They'll all have to be reviewed. Why would Willie sabotage herself? All she had to do was keep her mouth shut and cash her hefty retirement checks.”

“You're partially to blame. Once you agreed to go after Gregory, she started feeling guilty. What she did was similar to embezzlement, only her victim was the judicial system. Damn, I feel bad for her.”

Rick gurgled. “For her? You just accused me of forcing her into making the confession.”

“Get over it,” I said. “This does explain the way she allowed Sonya to treat her so rudely. Sonya works in the corporate office of Sell-Mart. She must have found out about the bribe and dangled it over Willie's head. Blackmail comes to mind.”

His gurgles grew louder. I hoped somebody was nearby in case he collapsed and needed medical attention. He finally regained control of himself. “It makes sense, but ouch. I can't believe I moved to what was billed as a cheerful little community with kids on bicycles, concerts in the park, festivals, high school football games, and the whole fantasy. Do you realize how many crooked people we've uncovered in a week? This makes my acquaintances in Manila look like a bunch of missionaries who happen to peddle something other than religion. When's the next flight to Hong Kong?”

“I'll have to look online. Have you heard from Waterford?”

“I'm going to call him when I get home. The time's an hour earlier, so he should be in his office.”

I was thankful I no longer suspected him of Ludmila's murder. He'd been such a good little helper thus far. It was time to find out how far out on the branch he was willing to crawl. I asked him to call me after he'd spoken to Waterford. Now I had the rest of the afternoon to polish my plan, which was only partially crazy.

*   *   *

I was driven to dusting when Rick finally called. Sounding like a birthday boy, he said, “Waterford left a message on my landline. He flew out this afternoon to the CIS office in Fort Smith. He's calling a meeting for this evening because he's ready to come down on Leslie like a load of loose gravel. He wants to talk to us first thing in the morning so we can go over the details. After that, we can tag along when he storms the Literacy Council and waves a warrant under her nose.”

I hadn't expected anything associated with the federal bureaucracy to move so swiftly. “Good work, Rick,” I said, somewhat stunned.

“I guess so. I've been thinking—always a bad sign—that maybe what Leslie's doing isn't so terrible. I mean, no one gets hurt. It's a scam, but who's the victim? A grad student gets enough money to have her car repaired, and a man from wherever realizes his dream of becoming a citizen.”

I'd had the same reservations. “For one thing, it undermines the whole process. There are thousands of people who want citizenship, and it's an excruciatingly lengthy ordeal of filing paperwork, waiting, filing more paperwork, and still waiting. Leslie's clients cut in line, and they do so through deception. As for the women, they know they're breaking the law. I'd hate to spend the next forty years of my life worrying some bureaucrat might decide to investigate me for fraud. It's a federal offense. Even if she escapes with a fine or probation, she's a felon for life. Would you want to explain that to your children?”

“Trying to put a positive spin on it, huh?”

“Somebody has to.” I took out my thick sheaf of notes and found the pertinent one. After I'd described my plan to expose the perp, there was a noticeable silence on his end. I wished I could see his expression, which I assumed was high on the dumbfounded spectrum. “What's more,” I said to add to his anxiety, “we may be able to pull it off this evening if Peter has to go to Fort Smith. And, most importantly, if Austin isn't working late. We can't do this without him.”

“I'll call him,” Rick said glumly. “He wouldn't miss this for all the pot in California.”

I told him that I'd call him back after I heard from Peter. My stomach was seizing as I sank down on the sofa. I'd lost my mind, or what was left of it. All I'd wanted to do was tutor a deserving foreigner for two hours a week to prove to myself that I wasn't just a parasite, that I still had a trace of my youthful sense of altruism. I'd donated clothes to charity shops, helped organize food drives, and signed enough petitions to constitute a telephone directory for a small village. As Rick had said, a lot of people were going to tumble in the next few days. Gregory deserved to tumble off a cliff in the Himalayas. Leslie was a professional felon. I was saddened that Keiko might be involved.