“I did forget. For a minute, anyway. Suppose we confine our questioning to the morning, then. Would that be okay?”
Lou reluctantly agreed that it would.
I overslept on Thursday, so I didn’t get to the station house until close to eleven. “We’ll just see how much we can accomplish by noon,” I murmured, shamefaced, as Lou and I set off for the nearest motel.
We had no success at The Haven, our first stop. And we did equally well at Barbara’s Hideaway. What’s more, it was now past twelve. “Look, why don’t you take off for your sister-in-law’s,” I suggested. “I can do a little canvassing on my own, you know.”
“Forget it,” Lou said firmly. “I’ll call and tell her something’s come up, and I can’t make it today. Claire probably won’t mind at all, as long as Jake can be there.” And then, with a grin: “Claire and my wife were sisters, and she’s never been that crazy about me anyway.”
We ended up going from motel to motel that entire afternoon—except, that is, for a brief break for sustenance in a highway fast-food joint. And by six-thirty that evening I was tired and disheartened and anxious to get home. But Lou wanted to have some dinner. “I’d appreciate the company” was how he put it.
“Okay,” I agreed. I’d already loused up his family celebration, so I figured I owed him.
“Listen, I was thinking Italian. Or is that too un-Thanksgiving?”
“Italian is never un-anything,” I assured him.
We went to Danny’s, the restaurant we’d been to more than a week ago—you know, the place where I verified once again that it doesn’t take much more than a whiff of the wine cork to render me totally useless.
Tonight, however, I played it extra-safe, ordering a Coke to Lou’s beer.
The waiter set the drinks in front of us about five minutes after we were seated, and Lou wasted no time in letting me know that there was something on his mind. “I was going to let this pass, but then again, maybe you can clarify it for me.”
“What’s that?”
“I can’t understand why you would antagonize Mrs. Vincent the way you did yesterday.”
“Believe me, I hadn’t intended to. It’s just that she . . . well . . . she lies so effortlessly. And did you notice the smug smile?”
“You don’t explode at everyone else who’s a good liar, though, do you?” Lou countered. “Look, Desiree, if Sheila Vincent should ever have the inclination to cooperate with us, your attacking her like that could discourage her from going ahead with it.”
I practically snorted. “You don’t seriously think there’s a chance of her confessing?”
“Well, assuming for a moment there’s anything to confess, it’s always possible that if we can come up with something that really worries her, she might roll over on the boyfriend.”
I contemplated this for a couple of seconds. I was definitely dubious. “I suppose it could happen, but—”
“And did it ever dawn on you that she might be telling the truth? That, just as she claimed, Raphael did mistake her for someone else?”
“No, it didn’t. It still doesn’t.”
“Fine. But at the risk of sounding repetitious, even if Sheila does have a lover, that doesn’t mean she had anything to do with offing her husband. You pointed that out to her yourself.”
“That was a ploy, as you very well know. I personally would regard any extracurricular activity on her part as maybe not proof positive of her guilt, but at least a fairly convincing indication of it.”
“But remember Mickey Mouth. He talked about having something for us on the da Silva bunch. So how does Sheila Vincent figure in his murder?”
“Maybe Mickey’s death was a—” I couldn’t keep the word “coincidence” from sticking in my throat, feeling as I did on the subject, so I switched my response in midstream. “Uh, what I mean is, it’s conceivable that there is some kind of a connection. We just haven’t uncovered it yet.”
Lou’s expression was one of bemusement. “It’s nice that you have such an open mind about Mrs. Vincent. Listen, I suggest—humbly, of course—that you at least try to be fair and give some consideration to the things we’ve discussed.”
I ignored the recommendation. “Look, Mickey or no Mickey, I still have this . . . this intuition that Sheila is responsible for her husband’s death.” I paused for a sip of Coke, which seemed to make room for a moment of sobering thought. “Umm, Lou?”
“What?”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have lashed out like that, no matter what. I’ll watch myself from now on, I swear. It’s just that the woman has this talent for rubbing me the wrong way.”
“Really? I never would have guessed it.” Lou flashed me one of his dynamite grins, and I had to fight the impulse to throw myself across the table and squeeze him.
After this the conversation was a lot more friendly. We went on to cover such diverse topics as cop TV shows, the fact that Lou’s friend Pete Peterson was contemplating early retirement, the deplorable condition of my car (with Lou sarcastically recommending that I spring for something manufactured in the last couple of decades), and even Brad Pitt (yes, Brad Pitt). But by the time we’d finished our salads and the entrees came along, I’d latched onto a new way to pressure myself.
I was going to follow Ellen’s advice. I would make a move of some kind with Lou. But it took me until I’d consumed more than half my eggplant parmigiana to work up to it.
“Umm, how was your veal?”
“Excellent. But then, I’m addicted to Danny’s veal piccata.”
“I do a pretty good veal piccata myself,” I informed him. “Damn good, in fact.”
“No kidding. What are your other specialties?”
So now I had to stop and tick off half a dozen dishes before resuming my machinations.
“To get back to my veal piccata, though, I don’t like to brag, but—”
“Oh, no. Perish the thought,” Lou retorted.
“Listen, Lou, I’ll bet my piccata is every bit as good as Danny’s. Maybe better. And don’t look so skeptical. You’re going to have to try it before you can make any kind of a judgment.”
“You’ve got a point there. Okay, I’m willing to sacrifice myself and give it a taste.” Well, now we were getting somewhere. “Tell you what, the next time you make it, bring some to work.”
Chapter 45
I didn’t mean to linger so long at dinner, but as the evening progressed, Lou got more and more revved up. By the time we dug into Danny’s wonderful cheesecake, he was recounting one amusing story after another. I began to get a little sleepy around ten o’clock, but it’s not easy to break away when you’re with someone you care about. Besides, a second cup of coffee supplied the jolt I needed to remain conscious.
Driving back to Manhattan, I was certainly alert enough. Maybe because the events of the last couple of days kept racing around in my head.
I hadn’t accomplished a thing with Lou—insofar as our relationship, I’m talking about. His response to my veal piccata offer could only be interpreted in two ways. Either he wasn’t at all interested in taking things further or he was just plain stupid. I had my fingers crossed that the man was stupid.
But in any case, that seemed to be that. Well . . . for the present.
It occurred to me at this point that my lack of success there could be some kind of punishment from on high for my treatment of Al. (It flitted through my brain that I was sounding a bit like Eric Raphael, only in reverse.) Almost immediately, though, I shrugged off the notion that I’d been anything but fair with Al. I had to be honest with him, didn’t I? And you can’t help the way you feel about a person, can you? But retribution or not, I was sad that Al and I hadn’t worked out. Very sad.
I moved on to some of the other subjects that were gnawing away at me.
Take the Eric Raphael thing. I’d been positively ecstatic over his information. And it had wound up being a dead end. A bust.
Then again, maybe I was jumping the gun
. I had yet to talk to the three other Breeze Inn employees. Maybe one of them would remember Sheila and her lover. After all, it was very possible the happy couple had also availed themselves of the Inn’s facilities at night or on a weekend. And besides, there were all these other motels in the area, too. We’d barely scratched the surface yet, for heaven’s sake.
Uh-uh. Not so fast. Let’s say I did find someone who was able to ID Sheila and the mystery man. It wouldn’t be considered proof (by anyone but me, I mean) that the woman was a killer. Merely your everyday, garden-variety adulteress.
But I quickly decided that once we identified Sheila’s honeybunch, there was really no telling where this would lead us. Maybe even to the sort of evidence that would induce the two to turn on each other.
Yeah, sure.
Okay, forget the motels for a minute. What about the mob angle? We still had a number of those guys to question. And it was conceivable one of them knew something and would—
I rolled my eyes. Da Silva’s boys were just falling all over themselves to cooperate with us, weren’t they?
And now I began to giggle. You know what, Shapiro? I announced. You are well on the way to becoming a genuine, certifiable manic-depressive.
It was past midnight when I dropped my Chevy at the garage and set out on the block-and-a-half trek to my apartment.
Getting there, however, was to take a lot longer than I could have imagined.
Automatically, I glanced up and down the street. It appeared to be completely deserted tonight, and normally in this neighborhood you’re likely to find at least a couple of people coming or going at almost any hour. I reminded myself that the residents of East Eighty-first Street had no doubt joined countless other New Yorkers in the mass holiday exodus from the city.
But was it darker around here than usual? I wondered. No, it was only that I seemed to have some perverse little creature inside my head who was bent on scaring me to death.
Nevertheless, I was uneasy. And cold. Icy cold. Frequent and merciless gusts of wind stung my cheeks and ears and numbed my fingers, then crept brazenly inside my coat collar to attack the rest of me.
I walked faster. But as eager as I was to get home, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from slowing down every couple of seconds to peer anxiously over my shoulder. (Well, I never claimed to be your heroic, prototypical TV-type PI, did I?)
About eight feet from the corner, I decided to cross diagonally to the uptown side of the street, the direction in which I was heading. Stepping into the gutter, I checked for oncoming traffic. Bright lights alerted me to a car parked more than halfway up the block that was just now pulling away from the curb. I started across anyway. Before it even got close, I’d certainly make it to the other side.
Moments later, I looked again. The car was traveling more rapidly than I’d anticipated, so I took longer strides. Still, it was quickly shortening the distance between us.
But even then I wasn’t fully aware that it was bearing down on me. Not until a split second before the impact.
Chapter 46
I spent Friday and part of Saturday availing myself of the hospitality of New York Hospital.
The hit-and-run had left me with a broken right leg, a head swathed in bandages, and a really colorful torso—my entire right side having turned a gorgeous shade of purple. Initially, the doctors also suspected a concussion, but of course, they couldn’t possibly know how hardheaded I am. Eventually they determined that a very large lump and a couple of smaller ones, along with some minor contusions, were the extent of my injuries in this area.
All in all, I considered myself extremely lucky. While there were a lot of places I would have preferred to spend a holiday weekend, one thing was for sure: A bed here had it all over a slab in the morgue.
I didn’t contact Lou until Saturday morning. I just hadn’t felt up to it earlier.
I reached him at the station house about eleven-thirty, and he reacted to my voice with relief, accompanied by a fair amount of annoyance.
“Are you okay?”
“More or less.”
“I’ve been trying to get you. I thought we were supposed to be working yesterday. Where have you been, anyhow?”
“I’ve been exactly where I am now—in New York Hospital.”
“My God! What’s wrong?”
“I was hit by a car.”
It seemed to take a couple of seconds for this to sink in. Then Lou asked in a hushed voice, “Were you badly hurt?”
“Well, I have a broken leg and a whole collection of bumps and bruises. But I’m grateful it wasn’t worse.”
“What do the doctors say?”
“That I’ll be fine. And after so many tests and X-rays, they should know.”
“Are you in much pain?”
Now, the truth was, every time the medication began to wear off, my leg hurt like hell. And sometimes my head throbbed so much that my teeth ached. The realization that somebody wanted me dead hadn’t left my nerves in such great shape, either. But if you’re out to get a man romantically interested in you, kvetching is not likely to help the cause. Which is why my answer was more heroic than factual. “Most of the time the pain’s pretty well under control—they keep giving me stuff. Although I don’t think I’m ready to go dancing yet, so you’d better hold off on the invite.”
“When did this happen?”
“On Thursday—around midnight. Right after I got back to the city.”
“Jesus. Look, are you up to company yet?”
“Sure.”
“Good. I’ll be over tonight.”
“Thanks, I’d like that. Before you come, though, you’d better check and make certain I’m still here. I’m hoping to be released this afternoon.”
“In that case I’ll see you at home. Listen, if you do go home, is there any chance of your preparing some of that veal piccata you bragged about at dinner Thursday? In time for my visit, I mean.”
“Oh, absolutely. No problem. And I’ll bake you a pie for dessert.”
Lou chuckled. “I knew I could count on you.”
After we said our good-byes, I hugged the receiver to me for a moment. I was slightly giddy. In spite of his kidding around like that, Lou had sounded really worried about me. Of course, this might have been because somewhere along the line we’d evolved into pretty good buddies. But I refused to take it that way. His concern, I told myself, was a very positive sign.
I could have gotten in touch with a friend—maybe a friend in my own building—to pick me up at the hospital on Saturday. But it was just as easy to call a car service, so why impose on anyone?
At any rate, I was back in my apartment by three o’clock.
Glancing around, I felt as though I’d been away for a year, and suddenly the place looked quite wonderful to me. It’s remarkable what a forced absence—or maybe it was those lumps on the head—can do to your perspective. For the only time that I can remember, I regarded my much-too-cramped living quarters as cozy. Cute, almost.
Putting aside my crutches—which I feared I would never get the hang of (and thank goodness the limo driver had taken pity on me and helped me upstairs)—I struggled out of my coat. Then I retrieved the messages on the answering machine.
The first call was from Ellen.
“I hope you’re not working today. It’s Thanksgiving, for heaven’s sake. I just wanted to tell you how much I wish you could be with us. Everything’s going great, too, Aunt Dez. The whole family loves Mike, and they’re all thrilled about the engagement. You wouldn’t believe how excited my mother is.”
Oh, yes, I would, I muttered snidely to the machine. Until Mike Lynton happened along, my sister-in-law Margot had been adamant about Ellen’s marrying within her religion. And not only Ellen, either. Years ago Margot had all but grabbed for the smelling salts when her brother told her he was tying the knot with a Catholic girl (me!). Mike, however, had the one attribute needed to override my sister-in-law’s objection to interfaith unions: his medical
degree.
The second call was from Lou, asking me to get back to him. “Weren’t you supposed to be coming in this morning?”
The third call was another from Ellen.
“It looks like I’m out of luck today, too. I guess you’ve left for work already. Hope everything’s all right. I’ll talk to you when we get home Sunday.”
Finally it was Lou’s turn again. This time he was clearly rattled.
“Where are you? You’ve got me worried. Let me know what’s going on, will you?” And then, as an afterthought: “Oh, it’s Saturday—ten-forty-five a.m.”
The instant I’d finished accessing my messages, I deposited myself on the sofa, completely exhausted from what had been less than a fifteen-minute trip from the hospital. I was sitting there fretting about being so totally inept at handling these damn crutches I was saddled with now—I mean, how was I even going to be able to fix my meals?—when, at that moment, the phone rang. I reached for the portable telephone on the coffee table.
“Suppose I get to your place around seven tonight. Would that be okay?” Lou wanted to know.
“Absolutely,” I told him.
“I figured I’d pick up some supper for us. How do you feel about Chinese food?”
I silently blessed him. “I love it.”
“Good. See you soon.”
At six o’clock I awoke from my nap, took a couple of pain killers, and laid out my least ratty bathrobe. Then for well over a half-hour I worked feverishly to make the topmost portion of me not as likely to have an adverse effect on small children and skittish animals. I don’t think I was entirely successful, however, because when Lou arrived, he stood at the door for a few moments, checking me out from head to foot. After which he shook his head. “Geez, Dez, you look like hell.”
Who ever said honesty is the best policy?
About two minutes later we were in the kitchen, unpacking the four-bags’-worth of food he’d purchased at a neighborhood Chinese restaurant. I could hardly believe the procession of aluminum tins and plastic containers and paper cartons and cellophane packets that came out of those bags. I mean, it was endless. “How much did you buy?”
Murder Can Spoil Your Appetite Page 23