“Barney got a lot out of the relationship,” Alverez said, matterof-factly. “Her definition of caretaking was broader than most wives’, and her passion was unassailable. But as far as I can tell, she has no moral core. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Like what?” Max asked.
Alverez shifted in his chair. “She felt no guilt about any of it. Not the murder. Not trying to frame Josie. Not stealing the Renoir. Nothing.” He shook his head. “From her perspective, she did what was necessary to protect her Barney, and if she had to, she’d do it again.”
I shivered and closed my eyes as a memory rushed into my mind. I could see her mean little pig eyes challenging me to defend my pricing of the bamboo stool at the tag sale. I could hear her sarcastic, mean-spirited tirade. I could easily imagine her murdering someone. And once the initial shock wore off, I could, in fact, believe that she’d set out to frame me. She was evil.
She chose to frame me not because she hated me but because I was an easy and desirable mark. From her perspective, if I were arrested for Mr. Grant’s murder, no one would suspect her or Barney, and, as an added bonus, she’d eliminate a tough competitor.
While it was natural to picture her lashing out, doing what she’d always done, protecting her beloved husband, it was appalling to think that she’d kill and then try to destroy me in the process. I shivered, horrified to realize that she had murdered an old man and set out to ruin my life.
Martha, the bitch-queen, that’s how I’d always thought of her. I shook my head, aghast to realize how right I’d been.
My phone began to vibrate, and I recognized Sasha’s cell phone number on the caller ID display.
“Excuse me,” I said to Alverez and Max, stood up and moved away, standing by the window with my back to the room, and answered. “Sasha?”
“Oh, Josie, I’m so sorry.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I’m afraid I overslept.”
“What? Overslept? You!”
“Yes, and then I was rushing to get in. Still, I should have called you sooner.”
“That’s okay. It’s just pretty unlike you.”
“Well, I was up pretty late…”
All at once I wondered if she’d spent the night with Fred. Wow. Hot doings in the ol’ town overnight.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “All that counts is that you’re okay.”
I turned off the phone, and stood up, a few tears of relief sliding down my cheeks. I swallowed twice, and in a moment, felt able to turn around.
“Is everything all right?” Alverez asked, standing up.
I nodded. “Absolutely.” I waved it aside. “All’s well.” I smiled, and rejoined the table.
The meeting with Murphy was brief. He was a small, chunky fellow in his late forties, very precise and pedantic. He wanted, he said, to meet us to explain the process, which he did in a monotone. I had trouble listening, and after a few minutes, didn’t bother to try. I knew Max would fill me in.
When he gathered his papers together and left, I asked Alverez, “Is he better in court than he is in a meeting?”
Alverez smiled. “Yeah, it’s amazing, actually. He’s a good prosecutor.”
I shook my head, and smiled back. “You’d never know it.”
“What kind of case do you have?” Max asked.
Alverez shrugged. “Mostly, it’s circumstantial, but it’s strong.”
“You have the footprint and what else?”
“We’ll be holding a news conference later today. Nothing I say should be discussed before then. I’m not saying there’s anything confidential. There’s not. Everything I’m telling you has already been turned over to the defense. Still, it’s important that it not be talked about idly. Agreed?”
Both Max and I nodded. “Sure,” I said. “Until when?”
“Until after our news conference.”
“Which is when?”
“Four. Why? Who are you planning on talking to?”
“You never know.” I smiled. “So… what else?”
After a pause, he said, “I accept your assurance that you won’t say anything to anyone until after we issue our official statement. That said, to answer your question, there was one set of prints at the Grant house that had been unidentified. We now know that they belong to Martha.”
The unidentified prints Wes had told me about. “Didn’t you compare them to her prints during the investigation?” I asked, surprised.
“No. Why would we? Barney was the dealer, not Martha. Until I started hearing about her personality from you and others, I never even thought of her.”
“That makes sense,” I acknowledged.
“Something that we kept quiet were two prints that we found on the tube the Renoir was stashed in. We knew that they matched the unidentified ones in the Grant house. Now we know they’re Martha’s.”
“That’s impressive,” Max said, nodding.
“Yeah. And there’s more. We’ve got the call from the Taffy Pull to Mr. Grant. And that call was followed by another one immediately afterwards to Barney’s cell phone. A clerk that was working at the store that day remembers Martha being on the phone. We’ve also got Josie’s testimony that Mr. Grant used a pencil to write appointments specifically so he could erase them if something changed, and that he made those corrections immediately. And Barney told Josie that Martha was their point person in their dealings with Mr. Grant. Put it all together, what it means is that, in fact, they didn’t change the nine o’clock appointment that had been scheduled for the day of the murder, and further, because of Barney’s alibi, we know that it was Martha who kept it. Barney lied. He said it had been changed to cover for her.”
“Did Barney admit the cover-up?” Max asked, sounding surprised.
Alverez’s lip curled, a look of contempt. “Barney folded like a cheap tent in a light breeze. He told us everything.”
“I can’t imagine it!” I said, shaking my head. “He implicated Martha? I thought he was devoted to her.”
Alverez shook his head. “As near as I can figure it, she was devoted to him, and he reaped the benefits.”
“That’s awful.” I shuddered.
Alverez shrugged. “People stay in relationships for lots of reasons having nothing to do with love. No one but them knows the truth of what they each got out of their marriage.”
“Still, it seems as if you have a lot of evidence,” I said.
“Yeah, but there are spousal-privilege issues relating to everything Barney told us.”
Max asked what Murphy, the person tasked with bringing the case to trial, thought of it.
Alverez shrugged. “He thinks it’s medium strong.”
“Do you know why she killed Mr. Grant?” I asked.
“Only she knows why. But I’ll tell you our theory of the case. Mr. Grant told Martha that he was going to hire you, and she killed him to get her hands on the Renoir. Plain and simple, they did it for the money. They’re in pretty bad financial shape, and they needed a big chunk of cash quickly.”
I nodded. “Do you know why they’re broke?”
“Barney, it seems, likes to place a bet or two.”
“Ah,” I exclaimed, nodding. “That would explain the money trouble. But I still don’t understand why, having killed to get the painting, Martha would sneak it into my place.”
“To frame you. She couldn’t understand why you hadn’t been arrested for the murder already, and she was savvy enough to know that without an arrest, eventually we might hit on her as a suspect.”
“She really wanted to frame me?” I was shocked, and turned to Max. “That’s what you thought.” To Alverez, I added, “Max thought it was a gambit. You know, a tactic where you give up something in order to achieve a good position, but that just seems so horrible, I can’t believe anyone would do such a thing.”
“Yeah. It’s pretty logical, though, when you look at it from her point of view. Efficient. You know, businessli
ke. She had a business problem and, to her, you were part of the solution.”
“Jeez!” I exclaimed. “Framing me was part of her business plan? That’s completely diabolical!”
“Wait a minute,” Max protested. “What about the Renoir? Didn’t sacrificing it defeat their purpose? If they’d succeeded in framing Josie, then what?”
“They hoped that Grant’s lawyer, Epps, would hire them to dispose of the estate. Since Epps knew only about the Renoir, and not about the Cezanne and the Matisse, they figured that if they could win the assignment, they’d be able to locate them, sell them privately, and with any luck, no one would even know the paintings had ever been in Mr. Grant’s possession.”
“But how did they know about the Cezanne and the Matisse?” I asked.
“Mr. Grant showed them his wife’s ledger. Barney told me so in one of my first interviews with him. He didn’t realize what he was revealing. He thought he was just describing their first meeting with Mr. Grant.”
“I wonder why Mr. Grant never showed the ledger to me?”
“Maybe he knew you were honest.”
I smiled. “Not with Epps calling me a shark.”
“It turns out that Epps didn’t call you anything at all until after Mr. Grant was killed. I gather it was Martha herself who planted the seeds of that slander. She was determined, it seems, to get rid of the competition-you-by hook or by crook.”
I shivered. “It’s pretty scary to think about.”
“Yeah,” Alverez said. “But she didn’t succeed.”
“No, thank goodness. Still, I hope I get the chance to convince Epps that I’m not a crook.”
“From what he told me this morning, he’ll be calling you to apologize.”
“Well, well, well,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “Maybe I’ll finally get that appointment and be able to pitch my business.”
Alverez smiled. “I think that’s very likely.”
Max added, “I’ll be glad to call him for you, Josie, if you need me to.”
“Thanks, Max,” I said, touched by the beyond-the-call-of-duty tone of his offer. “I’ll let you know.”
Alverez walked us to the parking lot. The sun was trying to poke through, and I thought it might make it by the end of the day.
“You look tired,” I said as we walked slowly toward our cars.
“Yeah, I am. It was a long night.”
“Martha just walked into my place?”
“Yeah, wearing dark clothes and latex gloves. She made a beeline to the storage cabinet and pried it open with a crowbar. Our plan worked like a champ.”
He shook our hands and turned to head back inside. Max and I watched as he walked away.
Max turned to me, pulled an envelope out of an inner pocket, and said, “Here.”
“What’s this?” I asked.
“An application for a gun permit,” he said. “Fill it out.”
I smiled and accepted the papers. “Thanks, Max. For everything.”
Wes called me as I was driving back to the office. “I hear they’ve made an arrest,” he said.
“I heard something about that, too.”
“What?”
“Just that. Do you know anything?”
“Ha. What a question. Of course I know things.”
“Forgive me. I forgot myself. Of course you do.”
“So, give it up. What do you know?” he asked, his tone urgent.
“I know enough so that we can schedule your exclusive. I’m ready to honor my commitment.”
“Where are you?”
“In my car, why?”
“Where?”
“Why?”
“So we can pick a place to meet.”
“Not now. Later.”
“No way. The story’s hot now, not later.”
Alverez had said they were holding their news conference at four, so I said, “Anytime after six.”
“Come on, Josie,” Wes whined. “Don’t do this to me. We made a deal.”
“Wes, you’re making me crazy. I’m keeping my end of the deal. Jeez. Six tonight at the Blue Dolphin, okay?”
“You’re buying.”
I laughed. “You drive a hard bargain, Wes. Okay.”
Talking to Wes was exhausting. He poked and prodded and seemed insatiable. The only thing that helped me endure his picayune questioning were the ice cold martinis.
At 9:00, we walked together to the parking lot. As I stood beside his car saying good-bye, I spotted a familiar object amidst the tangle of papers and discarded fast-food containers that littered the back floor-Alverez’s card.
I tilted my head, and thought for a moment. Hmmm, I said to myself, I wonder if I’ve just identified Alverez’s leak. I pictured him yelling at me, his righteous indignation seemingly sincere. Yet maybe, I thought, he used anger to camouflage a clever strategy. What better way to control the flow of information to the press than to be the one to talk? Alverez, I said to myself, you’re a sly dog.
I spent the evening puttering and thinking. I cleaned the bathroom, changed the linen, and made a huge salad. I thought about the love Martha had for Barney, and wondered if I’d ever feel that level of devotion. Not a love that led to murder, obviously, but a passion so complete, so compelling, that striving to satisfy my lover’s needs transcended effort and became a source of contentment and a way of life. Could I find such a love without losing my sense of self or changing my values? For the first time in eons, I felt hopeful that I would.
My outrage and anxiety had passed, and was replaced, it seemed, by exhilaration. I was excited about the future. I had plans for expanding my company with Prescott’s Instant Appraisals and by finally connecting with Britt Epps, an important player in the greater Portsmouth area, a potentially powerful ally in winning new business. I smiled, allowing myself a private “atta girl.”
When I arrived at work the next morning, Alverez was waiting for me, leaning against his SUV. It was a bright, sunny day, warmer by twenty degrees from the day before. I was wearing a blue sleeveless tank top with an oversized denim shirt and jeans.
“Hey,” he said.
He looked more rested than he had yesterday.
I smiled. “It looks like you got some sleep.”
“Like someone shot me.”
“How you doing?”
“Good. You?”
“Good.”
“So, I want to change my answer.”
“To what?”
“You remember when I drove you home? You asked me in. I said no.”
I looked at him. He wore a gray-gold tweed jacket, a tan shirt and brown tie, and khakis. He looked great. His eyes were on me, watchful and kind. He was tall and strong-looking and competent. I’d always found competence sexy.
“I remember. I asked you in during a weak moment. The moment has passed. It was a onetime offer.”
“Too bad. I’m changing my answer to yes, anyway.”
“just like that?”
“Well, I was planning on buying you dinner first.”
I started laughing, and I couldn’t stop. For whatever reason, his comment, delivered with such seeming sincerity, tickled my funny bone, and sent me into paroxysms of delight. Finally, I wound down, and when I could speak, I said, “Don’t look at me that way, or you’ll set me off again.”
“So, is that a yes?” he asked earnestly.
I paused and looked at him. I memorized the moment, filing it away in my head for review whenever I wanted. And I was willing to bet that I’d want to remember this event often. I smiled, and told him, “Hell, yes.”
Jane K. Cleland
***
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