The Unraveling of Violeta Bell (8 page)

He leaned over the table. Kissed me on the forehead. Right there in the front window. On Hannawa’s busiest street. He retreated to his little kitchen behind the counter. Started loading dirty cups and plates into the dishwasher. Started singing that Johnny Mathis song,
Misty
: “Look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree….”

I couldn’t put up with that. I gathered up my dirty dishes and joined him. “Sorry I popped my cork.”

He smiled at me in a way I sometimes wish he wouldn’t. “I just want you to be around for a while.”

We were getting precariously close to the L-word. I introduced a more manageable topic. “You see Dale Marabout’s story this morning?”

Ike started the dishwasher. The old contraption was noisier than the Space Shuttle taking off. “You know I don’t have time for the paper on weekdays,” he shouted over for the banging and clanging. “I’m a working man.”

I turned the dishwasher off. I wasn’t about to compete with a machine. “Eddie French was arraigned today.”

Ike turned it back on. “Finally have enough evidence, do they?”

“Not for the murder.” I followed him out to the counter. “For the antiques they found in his apartment. They’ve charged him with burglary, grand theft, and receiving stolen property.”

Ike took a Ghirardelli chocolate from the box by the cash register. He unwrapped it. Stuck it my mouth. “Aren’t those sort of the same thing?”

The chocolate was warm and gooey. “According to Dale’s story, the prosecutor’s office wanted to make sure the judge set the bail too high for Eddie to get out.”

Ike unwrapped a chocolate for himself. Led me back to my table. He let me have the chair that faced the fan on the cigarette machine. “I suppose the judge went along.”

I nodded. “The prosecutor not only brought up Eddie’s prior convictions, he also told the judge about Eddie’s repeated failure to show up in traffic court.”

Ike chuckled. “Has a few unpaid tickets, does he?”

“Dozens. The judge set his bail at $40,000.”

“Looks like your Mr. French will be sitting tight for a while.”

“Detective Grant must be convinced he’s guilty,” I said. “There’s blood evidence coming back from the lab any day now. If that blood belongs to Violeta Bell, I don’t think they’ll waste a minute charging Eddie with murder.”

I could see that Ike wasn’t any more interested in discussing Eddie French than I was. He was staring at the empty storefronts across the street. “There’s talk a Starbucks might be going in over there,” he said.

“Oh pooh. There’s always talk about this new business or that coming downtown.”

“I’ve seen people over there measuring,” he said. “Young, eager people with big dreams spilling out their ears.”

“Your eyes are that good, are they?”

“I can compete with empty stores,” he said. “But I can’t compete with Starbucks.”

“Of course you can,” I assured him. “You’ll just have to learn how to make cappuccino.”

“I don’t want to know how to make cappuccino.”

***

“You okay?” Gabriella asked me, as we sped around another stopped city bus.

“Just a little frazzled,” I said. “It was a crazy day.”

Actually I was a lot frazzled. In the first place, I don’t handle the heat very well. And we were crammed into that silly yellow and black Mini Cooper her parents bought for her as a graduation gift, weaving in and out of the rush hour traffic like a pollen-drunk bumblebee. And I was worried about Ike losing his coffee shop. I wanted our lives to stay right where they were. God only knows what kind of crazy ideas he might get if he suddenly had nothing to do but make me happy.

Gabriella zipped onto Hardihood Avenue just as the yellow light turned red. We were going to visit with another member of the Never Dulls that evening, Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy. But when Gabriella pushed the intercom button at the Carmichael House, we heard a younger woman’s voice. A cold, prickly voice. “Come up.”

“That was certainly short and sweet,” I muttered as the door clicked and we went inside.

“I think that was Ariel’s daughter,” Gabriella said. “I didn’t meet her when I did the story but her mother told me what a horse’s patoot she is.”

“She said that about her own daughter?”

“Six or seven times. Those exact words.”

We rode the elevator to the seventh floor. It was Ariel’s daughter. She introduced herself at the door as “Professor Barbara Wilburger.” She was fiftyish, middle-of-the-winter pale. Whatever color hair she was born with, it was very black now. She apologized for her mother’s absence. “She said she’d be back by now. But when mother’s at the foundation—well I’m afraid the real world has to wait.”

“Well, it was very gracious for your mother to invite us over,” I said. “It isn’t easy to talk about the murder of a close friend.”

She tried to smile. “We can wait for her in the living room.”

She led us down a hallway lined with Georgia O’Keeffe prints, into a room as big as my entire house. I absorbed as much of it as I could without appearing nosey. It was cluttered. A bit dusty. The furniture a bit old. Dozens of stained-glass hummingbirds were suction-cupped to the glass slider leading to the balcony.

Before inviting us to sit down, Barbara batted a trio of Persian cats off the sofa. “Sorry about the animals,” she said, raking fur off the cushions with her fingers. “Mother lets them rule the roost.”

Gabriella and I sat. Barbara didn’t. She positioned herself behind one of the matching wingback chairs, resting her forearms on the doily, rolling the cat fur into a ball.

“You live here with your mother?” I asked.

“No way in hell,” she said. Then she quacked a couple of “heh-heh-hehs” in an attempt to make a joke out of something that clearly wasn’t.

I tried to remember what I could about Gabriella’s story, grist for the uncomfortable small talk that was likely to last until her mother arrived. “I understand your mother has an autographed copy of Jane Goodall’s new book.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. She loves all those tree huggers.”

I tried another topic. “Gabriella’s story said you teach at the college.”

“Business ethics.”

“Oh my, that’s got to be interesting.”

“Not to my students,” she said. She launched into a sour rant about how dumb and lazy today’s kids are, all the time shaking that fur ball in her cupped hands like dice in a Monopoly game. “And they’re so damn gullible,” she screeched. “They accept anything as the truth except the truth.”

“The truth is always a tough one,” I said.

“I forgot I was talking to a couple of liberal arts majors,” she said, adding a few more of those duck-like “heh-heh-hehs.”

Her mother was right about her. She was a horse’s patoot. I turned to Gabriella, hoping that she could read the Morse Code that my eyes were twitching at her:
Hurry up and
s
ay something before I throw a lamp at this insufferable woman!

Gabriella thankfully got the message. “So professor, how well did you know Violeta Bell?”

“Well enough.”

“And Eddie French?” I asked. “Were you okay with him? Driving your mother and her friends all over the place, I mean.”

Her answer was equally cryptic. “With all the money those women have, you’d think they’d hire a limo.”

I pretended to be on the same page. “A cab isn’t very classy.”

This time her response was as clear as Saran Wrap. “What kind of man drives a cab, for God’s sake?”

To my delight, Gabriella proved she was born with that egging-on gene that all good reporters need. “In this case, a man with a long police record,” she said.

“Exactly,” the professor said. She was now grinding the fur ball between her thumb and finger like it was an effigy of Eddie French.

“And now Violeta Bell is dead,” Gabriella said.

“On the other hand,” I pointed out, “the police haven’t been able to pin the murder on him.”

Barbara checked her watch. It was a delicate watch. More than likely an antique. More than likely real gold. “I’m sorry my mother isn’t here yet.”

“We can wait a while longer,” I said.

“I wish I could,” she said. “I’ve got an appointment I simply cannot be late for.”

Gabriella and I followed her to the door. I asked a final question. “One more thing about Eddie French—was it usual for him to come up to your mother’s condo? The condos of the other women? Helping with the things they bought at garage sales? Or their luggage when they traveled?”

Barbara deposited the fur ball into the brass wastebasket under the foyer table. She eyeballed her hair and makeup in the mirror above it. “That was always my biggest worry,” she said.

I poured on the empathy. “Well, thank goodness you won’t have to worry anymore.”

She tried her best to smile. Twisted her wrist to check her watch again.

“That’s such a beautiful watch,” I said.

This time her smile succeeded. But it was a strained, somewhat embarrassed smile. “It’s a Rolex. A very early one.”

“White gold, I suppose?”

Her smile faded. “The diamonds are real, too. If you’re wondering.”

“I was. I suppose it’s a family heirloom.”

“Just a gift from a friend,” she said.

She opened the door for us. On the way out I stopped to admire the wastebasket. It was the shiniest thing I’d ever seen. Not a bit of tinge. Embossed on the side was a happy cat wearing a huge tam-o’-shanter. It was playing a bagpipe and dancing a jig. “Isn’t that just darling,” I said. “Is it an antique?”

Barbara rolled her eyes. “A gift from Violeta.”

“Then I suppose it is—simply darling.”

Gabriella and I retreated to the elevator. Gabriella pushed the button for the first floor. I cancelled her selection and pushed the B.

“The basement?” she asked.

“It’s time we get to the bottom of this thing,” I answered.

The elevator deposited us at the intersection of two dully lighted hallways. The cement block walls were painted a cheery peach. Every door was painted the same Bic-pen blue. One door was adorned from top to bottom with a huge yellow X made of crime-scene tape. “I’d say that’s it,” I said, locking my arm in Gabriella’s.

“Which one of us gets to play the Cowardly Lion?” she asked as we padded down the stubbly gray carpet.

We reached our destination. Just in case I couldn’t read, Gabriella read aloud the raised white letters on the door: “Fitness Center.”

I squinted along the ceiling for security cameras. There weren’t any. Which meant the police had no visual record of who used that door the night Violeta Bell was murdered inside.

It also meant I could try the doorknob. I took the hanky from my purse and draped it over my hand. Gabriella was horrified, reading for me the black letters on the crime tape: “Police Line Do Not Cross.”

“Good gravy, girl,” I growled, “I’m nervous enough without your narration.”

I tried the knob. As I expected it was locked. I went to the fire extinguisher box on the opposite wall. Opened it. Picked up the key with my hanky hand and returned to the door. I slid the key into the slot on the knob and turned it until I heard the click. The door swung inward.

Gabriella was mystified. “And how did you know there was a key in there?”

I made a stuffy Sherlock Holmes face. Then I winked and explained my clairvoyance. “Remember the other day when Kay Hausenfelter asked us to bring up her mail? And said there was a skeleton key under the bullfighter? She also told me there were skeleton keys all over the place. ‘With a building full of forgetful old farts there’s a skeleton key someplace for everything,’ she said.”

I reached through the crack in the door and fumbled for the light. Clicked it on with the top of the nail on my thumb. “It’s a good bet lots of people know where those keys are hidden.”

I eased my head into the fitness room. It had the same peach walls as the hallways. There were no other doors. No windows. There were oodles of those shiny contraptions people would rather crucify themselves on than take a good walk. Exercise mats were scattered on the floor. The one closest to the door was splotched with blood.

According to Dale Marabout’s reporting, the police figured that Violeta Bell had been murdered sometime in the early hours of July 5, more than likely between midnight and three. They based that estimate on the condition of the body when it was found later that morning when the yoga instructor unlocked the fitness room door just minutes before her nine o’clock class. Violeta’s wide-open eyes were milky. Rigor mortis was reaching an advanced stage. The police had no way of knowing whether her assailant had forced her into the fitness room at gunpoint, or whether she had been ambushed there. There was also the possibility that Violeta had willingly accompanied her assailant, unaware that her final minutes were ticking down.

The police did know how Violeta Bell died. The assailant had forced her to take off her bathrobe. That bathrobe was then wrapped around the gun in the assailant’s hand, to muffle the three pops that were coming. “We’re pretty certain this was a planned killing,” a police source told Dale Marabout. “If anyone in the building did hear the gunshots, they would figure it was just somebody shooting off the last of his Fourth of July firecrackers.”

I turned off the fitness room light. Closed the door and made sure it was locked. Put the key back in the fire extinguisher box. We took the stairs up to the lobby instead of the elevator, to lower the risk of being seen. I pushed open the stairway door a couple of inches and peeked out. The lobby was empty. We hurried out the front door, into the gooey evening heat. We reached the visitors’ parking lot just as a small black convertible popped out of the underground garage. It was Barbara Wilburger. We waved as she sped by. She lifted her fingers off the steering wheel and wiggled them.

Gabriella squawked with surprise. “Beemer Z4?”

“Interpretation please.”

“That’s pretty sporty for an anal retentive professor, isn’t it?”

I thought about it. The car did seem like a strange fit for the woman we’d just met. I also thought about Bob Averill’s yellow Mercedes. About Ike’s modest Chevrolet and my old Dodge Shadow. About that clown car of Gabriella’s that I was trying to pretzel myself into. “Our cars do give us away,” I said.