With each case I solved, his resistance weakened. We still hadn’t reached the point where he completely embraced me investigating murder cases with him, but he was getting there. Joe decided to temporarily deputize me, then we headed off to Claude Giraud’s house.
It was a single-story beige Spanish-style home. As we arrived at the scene, yellow police tape had already been strung up. A number of deputies were coming and going while the coroner’s van was parked out front.
I followed Joe into Claude’s home office, where his body had been discovered slumped over in his desk chair. Phil Kelton, the coroner, was examining the body. The sight of dead bodies made me queasy. It was something I’d never gotten used to. To keep from gagging, I looked away. That’s when I saw an open laptop on Claude’s desk. There was a word processing document open on the computer.
I would have zeroed in on it, but Joe’s conversation with the coroner drew my attention.
“What have you got for me?” Joe asked.
“Deceased male, early fifties. He died of blunt force trauma to the back of the head,” Phil replied.
“Did you find the weapon that killed him?”
Phil nodded. “You’re not going to believe this, but he was hit on the back of the head with his own Golden Critic award statuette.”
The Golden Critic was the top honor a restaurant critic could receive. It was ironic—Claude had won the award based on his hypercritical reviews, but perhaps it was one of those reviews that led to his murder. The blood-stained statuette was in an evidence bag on the desk. I only gave it a cursory glance, mostly because I hated the sight of blood.
“Were you able to pull any fingerprints from the statuette?” Joe asked.
Phil shook his head. “Not one—from the statuette, or any other place in the house.”
“The killer must have been wearing gloves,” Joe deduced.
The coroner agreed. “That’s my guess. There’s no way the killer wiped this whole area clean before they left.”
“Approximate time of death?” Joe asked.
“It’s looking at between nine and nine thirty last night.”
That answer gave me pause. Daniel and I had been at Mario’s restaurant during that time frame. One notable person happened to be absent, though—Mario Donatelli.
“Anything else?” Joe asked.
“The laptop was open when we got here. It looks like Claude was in the middle of typing up a blistering review of Mario’s Italian Restaurant,” Phil replied.
If my suspicions of Mario weren’t strong enough before, they only seemed to grow with each piece of new information I received.
“Who found the body?” Joe said.
“The neighbor across the street.”
“In that case, it’s time to talk to that neighbor. Let me know if you find anything else out,” Joe replied.
Chapter Four
Joe and I walked across the street to interview the neighbor, Gertrude Brotwick. She looked to be about seventy-five. The pair of glasses she was wearing was nearly as old as she was.
Gertrude’s thick, oversized circular-framed glasses looked like they took up half of her face. It was almost as if she didn’t realize they had modern frames that didn’t look like goggles. Maybe she just didn’t care.
Joe didn’t seem to be distracted by the size of her glasses, which was good for him, as it was much easier for him to focus. I had to work at it. Because of that, I was happy to let Joe ask the first question.
“Mrs. Brotwick, I understand that you found the body.”
She corrected him. “First of all, it’s Ms. Brotwick. Heaven claimed Mr. Brotwick four years ago, God rest his soul.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Brotwick.”
A wistful look came to Gertrude’s face. Joe worried the conversation could slip away from him if he didn’t get back on topic right away. That’s why he quickly got back on topic.
“Now, you were the one to find the body, correct?”
Gertrude looked traumatized. “Yes, what a terrible sight. I’ve never seen anything so awful in my life.”
Joe scrunched his nose. “I’m sorry about that, but I’m also confused. What were you doing at Mr. Giraud’s house in the first place?”
“I can explain.”
“Please do.”
“I was out front watering my plants this morning when I happened to notice that the light was still on in Claude’s office. That didn’t make any sense to me. He’s never up that early in the morning. And he’s very particular about not leaving lights on. He’s complained about his electric bill to me nearly half a dozen times.”
“All right. That still doesn’t explain why you were in his house.”
“I gave him a call just to check in and see if everything was all right, but he didn’t answer. That’s when I figured something must have been wrong. He never let his phone go to voice mail. So I went over to his place and knocked. When he didn’t answer the front door, I walked around the front of his house to his home office where the light was on. That’s when I saw that the window was open. I looked inside, and that’s when I saw his body slumped over his chair with a big bloody gash on the back of his head. I haven’t been able to get that sight out of my head ever since,” Gertrude explained.
“Again, I’m very sorry about that. We’re going to do everything we can to find out who did this.”
Gertrude got feisty. “You’d better. I don’t want some crazy murderer running around town.”
“No, of course not. Now, did you happen to hear any strange noises last night, especially ones that may have been coming from Mr. Giraud’s house?” Joe asked.
She shook her head. “No, but then again, I don’t hear all that well anymore. Besides, I sleep like a rock. The minute my head hits the pillow, I’m out like a light.”
“It is believed that the murder occurred between nine and nine thirty last night. You weren’t already asleep then, were you?” Joe asked.
“You bet I was. Nine o’clock might as well be midnight to me these days. I was out like a light.”
Realizing that he was getting nowhere, my brother wrapped things up with Gertrude, then let her go on with her day. At first, it seemed like Gertrude could have been good for a lead or two. Alas, that was far from the case.
After the disappointing discussion with Gertrude, we checked with Claude’s other neighbors, hoping to get some kind of lead. All our legwork was for naught, as we came up empty-handed. No one else had any additional information for us.
A number of Claude’s neighbors were out having dinner at the time of the murder. Some appeared to have left town for the weekend. Either way, despite our best efforts, it seemed like Joe and I were right back where we’d started.
Chapter Five
As Joe and I reconvened at the crime scene, my brother’s frustration was becoming palpable.
“That wasn’t terribly helpful,” he grumbled.
He was a master of the understatement. Whereas most people’s range of emotions featured wild extremes on both the positive and negative end, Joe never really got too high or too low. Normally, I was a fan of moderation, but in his case, it had a tendency to come off as humorous. While I envied his ability to never truly get too down on himself, conversely, he never really seemed to experience moments of unabashed joy either.
In this particular case, his comment led to a much-needed chuckle on my part. The levity ended up being short lived as the gravity of the situation crept in again.
My brother wasn’t the frustrated one. I had plenty of pent up irritation of my own. “I’ll say it wasn’t helpful. Even getting the gender of the suspect would have made a huge difference.”
Joe sighed. “Instead, we’re right back where we started.”
I tried to re-frame the conversation so I didn’t become discouraged. “Hey, we’re going to hit some dead ends every once in a while. No one said solving murders was easy.”
“You can say that again. But it doesn’t m
ean it always has to be so hard. I’d kill for a nice open-and-shut case just once,” he replied.
“You’d kill for one? Talk about a poor choice of words.”
“As long as that’s the only poor choice I make today. Now, who had a reason to want Claude dead?”
That was more of a rhetorical question than anything. A name immediately came to my mind. Judging by the wide-eyed expression on Joe’s face, we were probably thinking along the same lines.
“I think we both know the answer to that,” I said.
“Mario Donatelli.”
I nodded. “Exactly.”
Joe continued. “Not to mention everyone else at that restaurant.”
There was no doubt where our next stop would be. “Time to see what’s cooking at Mario’s.”
Chapter Six
My taste buds were clearly unaware that we weren’t stopping into the restaurant for culinary reasons because my stomach started rumbling the minute we entered Mario’s restaurant. I had to shelve my urge to order a calzone. It was hard to go wrong with dough and ricotta cheese. When I finally put the lid on my hunger pangs, my brother and I started interviewing everyone in the restaurant that had worked last night.
After an extensive series of questions, we were able to deduce that all of them had alibis, except the owner of the place—Mario Donatelli. Joe and I sat the mustached, round-faced, portly, fiery-tempered fifty-two-year-old down at a table in hopes of finding out where he was at the time of the murder.
“You stormed out of the restaurant last night. Where did you go?” Joe asked.
“I needed to get some fresh air, so I took a drive to clear my thoughts,” Mario replied.
“Where did you drive to?” Joe said.
“The water.”
“Did you happen to swing by Claude Giraud’s place while you were out?”
Mario didn’t hesitate with his answer. “No.”
Joe found that hard to believe. “This drive you took corresponds exactly with the time of Claude’s murder.”
Mario’s legendary temper began to show. “I didn’t do this.”
“Every suspect says that. The true test is whether you have anyone who can corroborate your story. So do you?”
“I already told you, I went out and took a drive around town to collect my thoughts.”
Mario wasn’t the only one losing his temper.
Joe was getting tired of asking different variations of the same question. “And I told you, your story is only as good as your ability to verify it. Now, were you alone on this drive of yours?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Finally, we were getting somewhere. That was until Mario spoke up again.
He kept denying any involvement in Claude’s murder. “I didn’t do this.”
Those blanket statements were doing him less good than he thought. A murder investigation was about gathering concrete evidence, not believing random hearsay.
I came at Mario from a different angle. “You say that, but from what we’ve heard, you stormed out of here like a man who was out for blood.”
Mario got very defensive. “Hey, that came out of your mouth, not mine. This isn’t what it looks like.”
Joe disagreed. “Really? Because it looks pretty bad. You had an explosive fight with the victim an hour before he was killed. On top of that, you don’t have anyone who can verify where you were at the time of the murder. I don’t see how things could look any worse for you.”
“I’d agree with you, but you’re forgetting one simple fact,” Mario argued.
“Which is?” I asked.
“I didn’t do this,” Mario replied.
I felt like we were slamming our heads against a brick wall. Then, I thought of another possible way to break through. “Mario, did you know Claude was typing up his blistering review of your restaurant at the time he was killed?”
Mario became frantic, although, not with nerves. That statement surprisingly made him excited. “See, that actually proves my point.”
I furrowed my brow, confused beyond belief. “How so?”
I couldn’t wait to hear the answer to this one.
Mario didn’t disappoint. “If I had killed Claude, why wouldn’t I have deleted what he’d written about my place before I left?”
Joe had a theory. “Maybe you were in a rush to get out of there. Perhaps you were so worried that you’d get caught that you panicked and left without deleting the review.”
Mario shook his head defiantly. “No. If I was the killer, I would have deleted something that incriminating immediately.”
Joe decided to approach this from a different angle. “You say that, but killers don’t always think rationally in the heat of the moment. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be murdering someone in the first place.”
“For the last time, I didn’t do this. If you want to talk to someone with a real ax to grind, why don’t you talk to his soon-to-be ex-wife?” Mario suggested.
Mario was suddenly quick to deflect. Did he throw Claude’s estranged wife under the bus just to point the finger of blame away from himself or because that theory had solid legs to stand on? That was yet to be determined. In the meantime, we weren’t done with Mario. Although, he was done with us.
“We will. But back to you—” I started saying.
He shut me down. “I’m not saying another word without a lawyer present.”
Chapter Seven
Joe really wanted to haul Mario into the station and detain him. The problem was, he could only keep him for a few days without filing formal charges against him. It was too early in the investigation to do that. Even though we had ample suspicion, we had no concrete evidence against Mario. For that reason, Joe warned Mario not to leave town, then we headed off to chase down our next lead.
Joe and I decided to pay Claude’s estranged wife a visit. As we pulled into the driveway of her green rental bungalow, Yvette’s bright purple sedan immediately caught my eye. Like so many Candy Cole Cosmetics saleswomen, Yvette proudly showed off the striking purple shade that was associated with the brand. Still, no matter how often I saw a bright purple car, I never really got used to such a strong bright shade.
Joe was not distracted by the car in the least. He headed straight to the front door of Yvette’s place without hesitation.
His first set of knocks yielded no results.
“Mrs. Giraud. This is the police. I know you’re in there,” Joe said.
After still receiving no response, he knocked again. This time, Yvette Giraud finally answered the door. If the color purple wasn’t burned enough into my brain after seeing Yvette’s car, her outfit sealed the deal. Her curvy figure, combined with her head-to-toe purple outfit, made her look like an eggplant. It was not the most flattering of looks. But judging by the confidence I saw on the fifty-two-year-old’s face, she clearly thought she was very stylish.
“Are you sure you have the right place? What do the police want with me?” Yvette asked.
“Mrs. Giraud, we have to ask you a few questions,” Joe replied.
“About what?”
“Your husband’s murder.”
Yvette seemed unfazed by hearing the words “husband” and “murder” in the same sentence. The woman must have had ice water running through her veins.
“All right. Ask away,” Yvette said.
“I think it would be better if we did this inside,” Joe replied.
She disagreed. “No. I’d prefer it if we did it out here.”
A red flag immediately went up in my mind. “Why don’t you want to do this inside? Unless, there’s something you’re trying to hide from us.”
Yvette was quick to deny my assertion. “That’s not it.”
“You know, I could get a search warrant for your place if I needed to. Or you could just let us in,” Joe said.
Yvette bit the corner of her lip then sighed. “Fine. Come in.”
After she reluctantly led us into her l
iving room, I was on high alert for anything that looked out of place. Granted, some people were just highly private and didn’t like having unexpected company, but when a murder suspect acted withholding, it was usually because they were trying to cover something up.
Yvette sat down on her couch and began filing her nails with an emery board as Joe fired the first question her way.
“Where were you between nine and nine thirty last night?” he asked.
“Here,” she replied.
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“So that means you have no one to verify your alibi for the time of your husband’s murder, then?”
“I just told you, I was here.”
“You can say that all you want, but I make a habit of not blindly taking the word of a murder suspect.”
“I think it’s a little presumptuous to suspect me of murder,” Yvette said.
“Mrs. Giraud, you’re in the middle of a bitter divorce. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t have you on my list of suspects,” Joe said.
I added to my brother’s point. “Yvette, do you have any idea how often a crime like this is committed by a jaded spouse?”
“It wasn’t in this case,” Yvette replied.
“I’d really like to believe that, but you’ll have to give me a reason to,” Joe said.
“How about this one? Once the ink was dry on our divorce, he’d be out of my life, and I’d get half of everything he had. Why would I have gone to the trouble of killing him?” Yvette asked.
I threw a theory out. “Half isn’t enough for some people. Maybe you wanted everything.”
She shook her head.
“How about this? You said you’d get half, but maybe Claude was trying to lower your cut. Even more, what if you were worried that he was succeeding?” Joe said.
Sweets, Suspects, and Women Sleuths Cozy Mystery Set Page 35