I handed her my card. “Harriet Horowitz to see Tricia Weinstein,” I said.
She eyed me with a mix of what I could gather only as curiosity and suspicion, then pushed a button on her phone console and spoke into her headset.
“Ms. Weinstein will be with you soon. Please have a seat,” she said in a snippy tone as if I were a nuisance.
It couldn’t be soon enough as far as I was concerned.
I sat down on one of the couches opposite her desk and looked around the room. It was a far cry from yesterday’s reception area in the Rescue Mission. The decor was classic Boca: Art Nouveau Riche. A Persian rug covered the floor, the walls were hung with original oils, and the furnishings were leather and mahogany. If the decorators had stopped there it would have been okay, but they had to screw it up by adding on: faux Roman statuary, faux Ming vases, and English chintz draperies. Suffice it to say, Boca style does not involve understated elegance.
The receptionist broke into my design critique. “Excuse me, ma’am, Ms. Weinstein will see you now. Follow me.”
She led me into an inner office.
The first thing my keen powers of detection picked up about Tricia Weinstein was that she was pregnant. About eight months. Yeah, okay—so it was pretty obvious. The second thing was that she was perfect. Her dark brown hair hung about her shoulders in a perfect flip, her bright blue eyes and delicate nose were flawless, her aqua-blue maternity suit could only have been couture, and her French manicure was worthy of Marie Antoinette. Not that I was envious or anything.
The perfection extended to her office. Sleek filing cabinets lined the far wall. Folders were neatly stacked on her desk. There wasn’t a paper clip or a pencil out of place.
She extended a hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Horowitz,” she said. “I’m glad someone is following up on Gladys’s case. It’s a travesty that the police haven’t been able to solve it. But I don’t know what help I can be. I already told the police everything I know.”
“Well, if you wouldn’t mind repeating it, I would appreciate that. It’s always possible that you might remember some new detail. And I prefer to hear things for myself, rather than just read about it in the police report.”
She glanced at her Rolex. “All right. But I really don’t have much time. I’ve got a client coming soon, and I’m trying to wrap up a lot of work here before I go on maternity leave in a few weeks.”
“I’ll be as brief as possible,” I lied. “Can you tell me how you came to employ Gladys?”
“Well, I needed a housekeeper. I had gone to some fund-raising event for Contessa von Phul’s charity a few months before, and I learned that the Rescue Mission had this employment service, so I called to see if they might have anyone available. They sent a few women for me to interview, and I selected Gladys.”
“And how did she work out for you?”
“Great. She did her tasks just as I wanted, was no trouble at all. I’ve been told I’m a perfectionist and that I’m not easy to work for. But Gladys and I got along fine. She was very reliable. Until she disappeared, that is.”
Yeah, I guess getting killed might make you a little unreliable.
She seemed to realize her faux pas. “Oh, I didn’t mean that like it sounded. Of course, she didn’t disappear intentionally, the poor thing. But that’s what I thought at the time.”
“Tell me about that day.”
“Well, there’s not much to tell. The evening before she disappeared, Gladys said she was going to her English class. My husband and I went out, and we didn’t check on her when we came back late that night. I just assumed she was in her room. But the next morning, she didn’t come down at her usual time for breakfast. I knocked on her door, and when she didn’t answer, I went in and she wasn’t there. I didn’t report her missing because, like I said, I just assumed she had bailed out on the job. I called the Rescue Mission to complain, but they assured me that it wasn’t like her and that all their workers were very reliable. They were so apologetic. I decided to give them another try, so when Gladys still hadn’t shown up a couple days later, I hired another housekeeper from them—Adriana. She’s still with us. And a couple days after that, they found Gladys’s body and called me.”
Just then the phone on her desk rang. She picked it up, listened for a moment, and then looked up at me. “I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “I must take this call. It’s very important. And as I said, I have another client coming soon. Anyway, I don’t see how I can be of further help. I’ve told you just about all I know. Gladys only worked for me for a couple weeks before she disappeared.”
“That’s okay,” I said, even though I sensed I was getting the brush-off. “Can we meet another time? I’d like to ask you about Gladys’s personality, her friends, that kind of thing. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Oh, all right,” she sighed and opened a large day planner on her desk. She flipped through the pages that were full of bulleted items. Man, that woman was busy—and organized. It looked as if just about every hour of every day was filled with something.
“I can fit you in Saturday morning at my house,” she pronounced. “Here is the address.” She jotted it down on a notepad and handed the sheet to me. Then she pushed a button on her phone.
“Hello, Mr. Finkel,” she said. “Yes, your will is ready. That’s right, your wife gets what’s stipulated in the prenup, your first wife gets nothing . . . What’s that? Your older son has shacked up with a shipper from Bahrain? Oh, a stripper from Ukraine. Right . . . Your younger son hit on your wife? Well, he is about her age . . . No, I said that’s an outrage! Strike both your sons from the will? No problem. We’ll have it ready for you in the morning.”
I’d heard enough. Enough to deduce that Tricia Weinstein’s client was a member of the TWTW Club—Trolls With Trophy Wives. Boca’s overrun with them. But they were the least of my worries at the moment. Unless one of them was the killer.
Chapter 6
I CALLED THE contessa to update her on my progress. Then I had a few hours to spare before going to the Rescue Mission to try to speak with Eulalia, so I decided to take a ride out to the beach. I rode to A1A, the road that runs parallel to the Atlantic Ocean, then headed north. It was a day straight out of paradise. February is one of the best months in South Florida. It was sunny, and the temperature hovered around seventy. There was a breeze coming in off the ocean that blended with the wind resistance buffeting me as the Hog chugged up the road. For all my bitching about Boca, this is why I stay here—it’s just damn gorgeous. I took it nice and slow, putting along, looking at the breakers come into shore and looking at the people looking at me and the bike.
Most people don’t know quite what to make of a woman riding her own bike. A woman in control of a rumbling, throbbing machine that might be five times her own weight. Most people don’t know what to make of bikers in general, for that matter. The uninformed masses think we’re all a bunch of drugged-out, sex-crazed, bullying outlaws.
But I love riding because of the freedom, the noise, the wind, and the speed. I feel in control, and that’s beautiful.
That afternoon, I rode all the way up to Palm Beach, then turned around and did it all over again in reverse, then headed inland to the Rescue Mission. Lupe greeted me at the door. Today she had on shades of bright red and yellow with oversize gold and ruby jewelry to match.
“C’mon in,” she said. “The women are in back. Eulalia is there.”
We went down the hall into one of the back rooms. Eight Mayan women were seated in a circle, weaving tapestries. Kind of an Oppressed Women’s Quilting Circle. But wow, were they different away from the men and the tomato fields. The fearful looks and the cringing, defensive stances were gone, replaced with talking and laughter.
Then I had to come in and ruin all that. When Lupe called her name, Eulalia got that deer-in-the-headlights l
ook. Lupe walked over and put her arm around her and spoke to her softly. Eulalia got up, and the three of us went into another room.
Lupe told me, “I’ve explained to her who you are and that you’re not going to hurt her in any way. I’ve told her you’re not with the government or anything like that, that you just want to try to find Gladys’s killer, and you’ll keep everything she tells you in confidence. Okay, go ahead and ask your questions.”
I smiled at Eulalia. She was a small woman with dark eyes, golden-brown skin, high cheekbones, a broad nose and the same dark red lips as Gladys. I felt a sudden urge to protect Eulalia, as if in some way that could atone for Gladys’s brutal murder.
She sat with her hands folded in her lap, keeping her eyes downcast, occasionally casting fleeting glances upward through a fringe of black bangs. I spoke directly to her, rather than to Lupe.
“Can you tell me about your relationship with Gladys?” I asked. Lupe translated.
Eulalia looked warily from me to Lupe. Lupe gave her an encouraging smile.
“We grew up together in our village. We came here together, worked together, did everything together.” Lupe translated Eulalia’s words verbatim, as only a trained interpreter would know how to do. Eulalia began to sob. Lupe held her hand.
“Tell me about the day she disappeared.”
“She had come here to our English class that night. Then she went back to that house she lived in, and I went back to the fields. I never saw her again.” Eulalia’s shoulders shook as she cried uncontrollably now. I paused to let it pass.
“That night, did Gladys say she was concerned about anything? Did she seem worried at all?”
“No. She was very happy. She talked about how wonderful her new job was compared to working in the fields. She really wanted me to get my legal papers, too, so I could do what she was doing. The lawyer here is still working on my case.”
“Did Gladys ever talk about any problems with her boyfriend Miguel?”
Eulalia looked up at Lupe then quickly cast her eyes downward again, “No,” she said.
Her actions belied her words. But I didn’t want to push her for fear it would shut her off to me completely. I let it drop, for now.
I’d about run out of questions, too. There sure wasn’t much to grasp on to here.
“Do you have any ideas about who might have wanted Gladys dead?” I asked.
“No, no,” Eulalia cried, looking up at me.
I put my hand on her back. “Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone that you talked to me. And I promise I won’t give up on Gladys.”
Eulalia got up to go. She walked to the door and put her hand on the knob. Then she stopped. Lupe opened her mouth to say something, and I quickly put up my hand and shook my head at her. As a P.I., just like a therapist, I had seen this behavior many times: the Doorknob Confession. People who denied having anything to say throughout an interview suddenly opened up just as the session came to a close. I knew we had to let whatever it was Eulalia wanted us to know to come out without interruption.
And it did.
She reached beneath the waistband of her skirt and pulled out a crinkled, dirty, legal-size envelope and handed it to me. She whispered something.
“Gladys gave this to me a few days before she disappeared,” Lupe translated. Then Eulalia looked me right in the eyes and spoke directly to me. In English.
“Please, please help me. Help us.” Then she quickly shuffled out the door, closing it behind her.
Lupe and I stared at each other, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. What did she mean, “Help me, help us?” Was she, or were the other Mayan women, in danger? Was Gladys’s murder part of some larger peril?
I looked down at the envelope in my hands. I opened it and pulled out two torn, dirty sheets of paper. Lupe and I bent over eagerly to read them. The first was some kind of ledger sheet, handwritten in Spanish. I picked up the word Guatemala, the name of Miguel, and some dates going back a year to a year and a half ago. I looked questioningly at Lupe.
She reached into her cleavage and pulled out the coolest pair of reading glasses I’d ever seen—sleek, multicolored frames attached to a beaded necklace around her neck. Of course, I should have expected no less from Frida Kahlo’s doppelgänger.
“It’s some kind of shipments to Guatemala,” she said. “See these dates? And these numbers? It’s showing quantities, but it doesn’t say quantities of what.”
“What’s this?” I pointed to some letters beneath Miguel’s name: FLGI.
“I have no idea.”
“Could this be Gladys’s writing?” I asked. “In Spanish?”
“Yes, it’s possible. Gladys may have known how to write some Spanish. Mayan languages are primarily oral, so if Mayans do learn to write, it’s usually in Spanish.”
I looked at the other sheet of paper. It appeared to be part of a medical chart. The top read “Isis Comprehensive Women’s Health and Fertility Clinic,” followed by an address in a fashionable Boca neighborhood. The left margin was torn off, but what remained read “UD,” followed by Gladys’s name.
“Any idea what this is?” I asked Lupe.
“None,” she replied. “Let me go talk to Eulalia alone for a minute.”
She went out, and I was left to gaze around the room. God, don’t you hate it when you’re left alone and there’s nothing around to snoop into, to satisfy your curiosity, your nosiness?
In the vacuum, Britney Spears’s cover of the Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” started to run through my mind. Yeah, I know, musical sacrilege. So sue me.
Just then Lupe returned.
“Eulalia insists she doesn’t know what these papers mean,” she said. “She says Gladys gave them to her without explaining what they were, she just asked her to hang on to them. Eulalia says she always carried the envelope on her because she didn’t trust leaving it at the shacks while she was out. I asked her why she hadn’t said anything about this when the police questioned her, and she said she was afraid. Well, that’s totally understandable. Of course, they’re all afraid of being deported, or worse. But she thought she could trust you.” Lupe said this with a wry expression.
I feigned offense. “As well she can,” I huffed. “I am the Diva of Discretion. Well, I think it’s time to pay a friendly visit to Miguel. You game?”
“Are you kidding? You’re lookin’ at one game dame, lady.”
And so the game was on.
Chapter 7
NIGHT HAD FALLEN by the time Lupe and I drove out in her truck to the tomato fields. The temperature had dropped a few degrees, and the stars were out. We drove in companionable silence. Eulalia’s plaintive appeal—“Help me, help us”—echoed in my mind until we pulled up to the workers’ shacks.
A few men were sitting around outside, drinking from a bottle in a paper bag. We approached, and Lupe asked them (so I gathered) where we might find Miguel. The men hooted and hollered, presumably calling for Miguel to come out of the shacks. The door of one of the buildings opened, and Miguel emerged. He was a small, wiry guy in his twenties. His black hair and clothes were disheveled, and his deep-set dark eyes bore a bewildered look.
“Can we go somewhere to talk?” I asked, and Lupe translated for him. He turned his head back and forth between us and his “boyz” like a spectator in a tennis match. His male pride won out. He squared his shoulders, thrust out his chin and declared (as Lupe translated), “I don’t talk to women.”
“Is that so?” I said. “Then I guess you’d rather talk to the police.”
He went through the tennis spectator thing again. Trouble was, we weren’t exactly at Boca Bath & Tennis, and our score wasn’t exactly love-love, either. My patience was running out. Finally he turned his back on his homeys and walked to us. The three of us
walked farther out into the tomato fields. More hoots and howls followed. We proceeded through the rows of tomato vines till we were well away from the shacks. There we found some wooden packing crates, and our little trio sat down for a cozy chat.
“Miguel,” I explained as Lupe translated. “I am investigating the murder of Gladys. I know you were her boyfriend. So of course you’re the prime suspect. The police know that, too. I have some new information that links you to her death.” It was a slight bluff, a common trick of the trade. “So, I think it would be in your best interest to tell me what you know about her murder.”
He crossed his arms over his skinny chest and glared at us with his narrow black eyes. “I don’t know anything about it. I already told that to the police,” he told Lupe.
A smug smile crept on to his face. That was a mistake. The little prick was rapidly getting on my nerves. If he’d really cared for Gladys, where did he get off with this macho attitude or whatever the equivalent term was in their language?
I pulled out the ledger sheet of shipments to Guatemala. “What’s this?” I asked.
I detected a flicker of fear and uncertainty in those belligerent eyes. Then it passed. “Where did you get that?” he yelled, grabbing for the paper. I snapped it back out of his reach.
“I’m asking the questions here.” Of course I wasn’t going to reveal my source.
He did the arm-folding and jaw-jutting again. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what you’re talking about, you crazy woman. And if the police ask, I’ll tell them the same thing.”
That did it. “Listen, you bottom-feeding, pond scum dirtbag,” I said. “You spill the beans, or I’ll spill your guts all over this godforsaken field.”
“Um, Harriet?” said Lupe. “That’s not really going to, like, translate.”
Well, hell. My Dirty Harry act would be lost in translation. Well, there was only one fix for that: I had to resort to a universal language, a lingua franca. I reached out, grabbed his crotch, and squeezed.
Dirty Harriet Page 4