The Unraveling of Violeta Bell (25 page)

Tinker immediately saw the wisdom of his suggestion. “Gabriella did interview Bell before her murder. And she could certainly add a lot of background color to the story. There’s no question about that.”

“And she is a gutsy girl,” I added.

It was decided. Dale Marabout and Gabriella Nash would do the story together.

The next thing to do was break the news to Dale and Gabriella. I cautioned against it, but Tinker had them summoned upstairs together. And of course both immediately balked at working together. “I’m not a big fan of double bylines,” Dale said.

I knew what his real objection was. Gabriella had not only cried when Violeta Bell was murdered, she’d had a hissy fit when Dale was given the story. “Gabriella will behave,” I assured him. “Won’t you, Gabriella?”

“I don’t like double bylines either,” she said, slumping back into an about-to-explode pout.

Bob Averill now played his best role. God. “We assign the stories. You write them.”

Of course even God needs a little help from time to time. “I don’t know beans about the news side,” I said. “But couldn’t they do separate stories? Dale a hard news story for tomorrow on Violeta’s previous identity and how we found the prince. And then for Wednesday, Gabriella could do an in-depth feature on the prince. And then for Thursday Dale could write about the police investigation going nowhere. Friday you could run that worthless story on me you want, written, of course, by Gabriella.”

Tinker loved my suggestion. “A four-day, page one series. Outstanding!”

Dale and Gabriella now quibbled about who should interview the prince first that afternoon. Gabriella said she should go first, since her feature was going to take a lot longer to write than Dale’s hard news story. Dale saw it differently. Not only was he not a fan of double bylines, he wasn’t a fan of “sloppy seconds” as he crudely put it. On top of that, he also had to cover Eddie French’s court appearance at four o’clock. So he’d have two stories to write for tomorrow.

And so it was decided that they would interview Prince Anton together, in Tinker’s office, in fifteen minutes, with him sitting in as a referee. I would sit in, too. His idea, not mine.

***

We gathered in Tinker’s office. There was coffee for everyone. Dale Marabout and Gabriella got their notebooks ready. Clicked their ballpoints. Tinker punched the button on his nifty little digital recorder. I sat there like the bump on the log I wanted to be. Yawning.

Dale Marabout asked the first question. “All these years you didn’t know your brother was still alive? Is that right?”

Said Prince Anton, “I thought he’d drowned himself.”

Gabriella asked her first question. “What was Petru like as a boy?”

“He was a wonderful big brother,” said the prince. “He teased me, of course. But not as much as most younger brothers get teased.”

Gabriella followed up. “How exactly did he tease you?”

“Knocked my toys about. Pinched my
bucă
when we were saying grace at the dinner table.”

“Bucă
meaning backend?”

The prince nodded and spelled the word for her. “B.u.c.a.”

Asked Dale, “So you never knew he had a sex change operation?”

“Like I said, I thought he’d drowned.”

Asked Gabriella, “Was he a good student?”

“Our parents insisted that we both be good students.”

“Was he athletic?” she asked. “Did he play sports in school?”

“We both played tennis and football,” said the prince. “Soccer you’d call it. And we both loved swimming and boating. We spent our summers on the island. So, we’d better.”

Asked Dale, “So it’s feasible that he faked drowning and then easily swam to shore?”

“There’s no such thing as an easy swim in the St. Lawrence,” said the prince. “Not out in the current where he left the boat.”

“But he was capable of swimming to shore?” Dale asked more firmly.

“Yes, of course.”

“Did you and your brother have a happy childhood?” Gabriella asked. “Your parents treated you well?”

“Poppy was quick with the strap if we talked back or shirked our duties, and mama was a stickler for etiquette. We were royals, after all, but no two boys had better parents.”

Asked Dale, “Any hint that your brother wished he was your sister?”

“I never caught him trying on mama’s delicates, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

The interview went on like that forever. Dale asking hardball questions about Petru’s disappearance and sexual orientation. Gabriella lobbing softballs. Out in the newsroom, the desks were filling up and keyboards were starting to click. The pace would pick up little by little throughout the afternoon, with total bedlam breaking out just about the time when the rest of the city was going home for supper.

“Was there an expectation when you were growing up that the Romanian throne would actually be restored?” asked Gabriella.

“Yes,” said the prince. “There was real hope. Not only that the Communists would be booted out and the monarchy restored, but that the Romanian people would come to their senses and choose us Clopotars over King Michael’s clan, those damn interloping Hohenzollerns.”

“So in your minds, there was a real expectation that Petru would be invited home and crowned king?” she asked.

The prince gruffly corrected her. “The expectation was that my father would be invited home and crowned king. Petru’s reign would come many years later.”

Gabriella apologized. “Of course.”

Dale was ready with his next question. “Did your brother like girls?”

“What’s not to like about girls?” the prince asked back, winking at me as he did.

Dale tried again. “Did he date in high school?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I yowled at Dale, remembering the nerdy mess he was when he came to work at the paper. “You didn’t even date in college.”

“If my brother did consider himself a woman, then he wouldn’t have been a homosexual if he were attracted to boys,” the prince said calmly. “He would have been just as hetero as you, assuming that you are, Mr. Marabout.”

Dale winced. Everyone else laughed. I knew that Dale had to ask those kinds of questions. That reporting wasn’t a popularity contest. But I was sure hoping the interview would take a less contentious direction.

Gabriella gave me hope. “Why exactly did you come to Hannawa?”

Prince Anton’s mustache lifted, like a Canada goose taking wing. Apparently he was as pleased with the question as I was. “I suppose for many reasons. All under the rubric of being a good brother. Doing the right thing, as you Americans would say. I want to visit her resting place. Pay my respects and make sure all the final expenses are taken care of. And I certainly want to help the police find the murderer. Not for revenge, mind you. To make sure no one else is harmed.” He stopped and chuckled to himself. Winked at me again. “I did not come here to strangle Maddy for stealing my teaspoon and pipe.”

Dale turned his attention—not to mention his pen and reporter’s notebook—to me. “You stole the prince’s teaspoon and pipe?”

I had no choice but to explain. Both Dale and Gabriella scribbled furiously. Tinker made sure his recorder was getting my every word. “And so when the DNA report came back showing that Prince Anton was Violeta Bell’s brother, I immediately wrote him a letter apologizing for my—”

Prince Anton helped me out. “For your dexterity,” he said. “Which brings me to another reason for my visit. To personally thank Maddy for caring so much about the truth. Even though she suspected I might be the one who did poor Violeta in. To protect the throne for myself. For all I know she still suspects that.”

Before I could lie and assure him that I had no such suspicions, he went on with his long list of reasons for visiting. “I also wanted to see the city where my sister made her life. Meet her friends. Do my best to understand why everything happened as it did.”

It was a wonderful bittersweet moment quickly despoiled by Dale’s next question. “Your sister ran a rather far-flung fake antique ring. Did he, she, or whatever exhibit any larcenous tendencies as a kid?”

Before the prince could answer, Gabriella asked the same question in a more sensitive way. “She lived such a respectful life. So many people loved her. I can’t understand why she would resort to selling fakes instead of asking for help.”

The prince started to answer. “Well, Miss Nash—”

Dale stopped him. “How about answering my question?”

Gabriella’s eyes narrowed. They’d been tripping over each other’s questions for a good hour. “It’s the same question,” she growled.

Dale slowly swung his head and shoulders toward her. He was equally peeved. “Except that I asked it the right way.”

“A question does not need to be disrespectful,” she snapped back.

Dale was suddenly Mount Vesuvius, a trembling lump about to blow. “But a question does need to be a question! Not an admission of your own befuddlement!”

“Befuddlement?”

“Baffled. Bewildered.”

“I know what it means, you condescending dick!”

“Condescending dick?”

“Patronizing. Penis.”

Prince Anton shouted at both of them. “For God’s sake! Will the two of you button up?” Tinker hit the stop button on his recorder. The two reporters shriveled. I—well, I yawned.

The prince now answered both of their questions. “Petru never stole anything when he was a boy, Mr. Marabout. Except his brother’s heart. As to Gabriella’s question about why in later life she resorted to selling fake antiques, I can only tell you what Maddy and the police have told me. She sought to maintain her lifestyle. And she became desperate. And little by little got in over her head. There is no pride more self-destructive than the foolish pride of a royal.”

Gabriella then asked what I considered a very good question. “Was Petru always interested in antiques?”

Apparently the prince considered it a good question, too. He gave her the best quote of the interview. “We Clopotars are antiques ourselves. It must have seemed a natural enterprise for her. The family business as it were.”

The interview went on. Both Dale and Gabriella minding their Ps and Qs. I’m not sure of every question they asked because—well, good gravy—because I fell asleep.

It was the prince who gently shook me awake. “Maddy,” he whispered. “You’re snoring.”

22

Tuesday, August 29

Monday hadn’t been an Ike night. But I was still pooped the next morning. After that three-ring circus in Tinker’s office with Dale Marabout, Gabriella Nash, and Prince Anton, I’d spent another hour bringing Dale up to speed on my investigation. Then I’d spent a couple of hours with Gabriella, helping her get “a mental picture” of the story she had to write for Wednesday. Then I’d gone back to the morgue and marked up the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday papers, all the while keeping an eye on Eric as he grudgingly researched Phil McPhee’s many marriages. After that I’d been forced to have dinner with Bob Averill, Detective Grant, and Prince Anton at Stu Kenly’s Grille, the city’s swankiest restaurant. We’d dined on the street-side patio, they in their coats and ties, me in my tea-stained Tweetie Bird tee, the tiny white Christmas lights twinkling above us in the trees, the New Age music crackling through the speakers hidden in the geranium pots, the wrought iron fence that couldn’t have stopped a runaway tricycle let alone any of the cars and trucks zipping back and forth on West Apple. Then I’d foolishly walked next door with them to Lenny’s Pub for beer and stale nachos. Then thanks to the industrial-strength pee stain James left on my dining room rug—a well-deserved reward for my irresponsibility—I hadn’t crawled into bed until one in the morning. And now it was nine o’clock Tuesday morning and thanks to my big mouth, I’d promised to spend the day showing Prince Anton our fair city.

Prince Anton was waiting for me at the paper, in the small, dusty downstairs lobby that immediately lets visitors know they have not exactly entered the hallowed halls of
The New York Times.
The prince was wearing white slacks, a blue-checked gingham shirt, argyle socks and sandals. His shirt pocket was bulging with a pipe and tobacco pouch. “I’m raring to go!” he announced.

I wanted to curl up on the little sofa and take a long nap. Instead I yawned and gave him our first destination. “There’s a wonderful little coffee shop just down the hill,” I said. “Best caffeine in town.”

And so we got in my Dodge Shadow and drove down to Ike’s. Ike shook the prince’s hand and said the most inane thing: “Now don’t go thinking you can steal Maddy away to that island of yours. She’s already got a handsome prince.”

“I shall resist the temptation,” the prince promised.

We took our tea and muffins to my favorite table by the front window. There was a rumpled copy of
The Herald-Union
waiting for us, paid for by someone else and read by who knows how many people that morning. I’d already read Dale Marabout’s story on Violeta’s royal past at home, of course, and the prince had already read it at his hotel, but we both took turns reading it again.

Of all the facts Dale had stuffed into his story, the most important to me were these:

Chief Homicide Detecitve Scott “Scotty” Grant refused to speculate about what impact the revelations about Bell’s past might have on the murder investigation. “It could be important, or simply a bizarre turn of events that doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” he said, after meeting with the prince Monday at The Herald-Union.

For his part, Prince Anton promised to assist the police in any way he could. “It’s good to know what happened to my brother after all these years,” he said. “And it’s good to know that he, as Violeta Bell, had a good life here. But the fact is, a member of my family was murdered. And the one who did it remains free as a goose.”

“Be honest with me Maddy,” the prince said, as he frowned his way through the sports pages. “So Maddy, do you think you’ll ever find the murderer?”

“Actually, I think I’m pretty close.”

“I hope not as close as the width of this table.”

I smiled at him without answering.

We finished our tea and muffins and drove out West Apple to Puritan Square, the fancy-schmancy shopping center where Violeta’s antique shop had been located. The storefront she’d occupied for thirty years now housed Madame La Femmes’ Fine Frocks and Accessories. The prince stood on the sidewalk outside and absorbed every brick. “Would you like to go inside?” he finally asked. “Perhaps I could buy you something. To show my appreciation.”