One Foot In The Gravy

by Delia Rosen

  “It gets better,” Grant said. “The things that were private when he was alive, like whatever he may have told a shrink or a priest—those things we’re allowed to look into.”

  “Unfortunately for us, he never went to church and we don’t know if he ever saw a psychiatrist,” Whitman said. “That’s one reason we need his records.”

  Grant added, “The catch-22 for us is that the records are now owned by the estate, and in order for us to petition Judge Footwise to force the state to cooperate, we need to implicate them in some way.”

  Their food arrived and while they stared at their turkey clubs, I was busy digesting what they’d told me.

  “You’ve managed to talk to a number of the individuals who are persons of interest to us,” Whitman said, touching the napkin to a spot of Russian dressing in the corner of his mouth. “Detective Daniels tells me you’ve got scraps of information that might help us.”

  “Scraps is right,” I said unhappily and I ran down what I knew.

  Hoppy needed money.

  Hoppy’s sister did not.

  Hoppy had an active libido, which he may or may not have used to charm said funds from wellto-do older women.

  Hoppy was a fraud chocolatier.

  That said, Hoppy taught the Cozy Foxes how to melt chocolate, possibly to expedite access described above. (It occurred to me then that if this were a James Bond novel, that would be a cover for a gold smuggling operation. Except that it wasn’t, so it probably was just chocolate.)

  Hoppy liked having access to the corridors of power.

  Hoppy was a bad pool player.

  Hoppy went to Germany within the last few months.

  Gary Gold is a weirdo.

  Lizzie Renoir, the housekeeper, is another weirdo.

  Rhonda is a bitch, though I knew that.

  Pinky and Jennifer didn’t much care for Mr. H.

  There’s a back entrance to the second floor of Lolo’s mansion.

  When I finished, both men just stared at me.

  “Pretty much a lovely mess, right?” I said.

  Grant finished chewing a mouthful. “Did not know about Germany,” he said.

  “Found that out this morning,” I said proudly.

  “Or the poor quality of his pool game,” Whitman said. “Did he bet?”

  Ha. I was ahead of him there. “Only in the hundreds,” I said. “Gambling was not the source of his debt.”

  “Nice,” Whitman remarked. It was the first time he had said anything that had a hint of open admiration.

  “Here’s the thing,” Grant told me. “We’ve reinterviewed all the members of the Cozy Foxes except one. Helen Russell.”

  “She’s the one I’m missing too.”

  We compared notes on the others. I had a few things the detectives didn’t, and they had a few things I was missing, like the fact that Poodle was adopted and Lolo owned the property where the chocolate shop was located. That didn’t appear to add much to the investigation, though one could never tell.

  “Ms. Russell does not want to talk to us,” Whitman said. “She says she’s too upset to revisit—and these are her words—‘the life he lived.’”

  “Who was he, Saint Francis of Assisi?” I asked.

  Whitman looked at me with surprise. “You know about St. Francis?”

  I called his surprise and raised him. “I did go to school, Detective. I have an education.”

  “Sorry, I just thought that—separation of church and state.”

  “Religious studies, NYU,” I said.

  Grant cut in. “Does Ms. Russell come here often?” he asked.

  “Only with the Cozy Foxes, as far as I know.”

  “Is there any reason you can think of to go to her?” Whitman asked, recovering from his embarrassment.

  “That depends. Where can she be found?”

  “She’s got an old mansion on Acklen Avenue,” Whitman said.

  That was just a short hop down I-65. “What do you want me to do, break in?”

  “Ideally,” Grant said.

  Whitman and I both looked at him.

  “Kidding,” he said. “She bikes, Gwen. Every afternoon following her in-house tai chi class.”

  “We were thinking you might run into her?” Whitman said.

  I hadn’t ridden a bike since I was ten. I didn’t even own one.

  “I took the liberty of bringing my own,” Grant said.

  “You ride it here?”

  “It’s in the trunk,” he replied.

  “Boy’s or girl’s?”

  “Boy’s,” he said. “Is that a problem?”

  “Not at all. I like riding boys.”

  Grant buried his mouth in rye. Whitman looked like he wasn’t sure he heard right, but didn’t want to go there in any case. He pressed on.

  “I know you’ve got an establishment to run, but we need—we’d like—to know if there’s some other reason she doesn’t want to be interviewed.”

  “Like, ‘Did you punch a hole in Hoppy Hopewell’s melon?’”

  “We don’t expect she’ll own up to that, but she may tell you something,” Whitman said earnestly.

  I wasn’t being serious, but poor Deputy Chief W. W. Whitman, Jr. didn’t realize that. He was probably a good egg, just not cracked enough to get me.

  “You’ll owe me a thigh massage,” I said to Grant.

  He stiffened and Whitman turned red.

  “At the Chin Spa,” I added with genius timing.

  Both men relaxed.

  “There’s a Chin Spa here?” Whitman asked as he returned to his sandwich. “And I thought Belle Meade was chi-chi.”

  “Mary Chin,” I said. “From Taiwan.”

  Grant grinned and Whitman shut up. I left them my car keys and excused myself to help with what was left of the lunch rush. Fifteen minutes later, Grant gave me my keys, gave me his thanks, and told me the bike was in my trunk.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” he said.

  I didn’t tell him the door would be unlocked and I’d be soaking in a tub of epsom salt with a glass of red wine. Therein lay the road to disappointment. I said simply, “Yeah.”

  And once again I lost myself—distracted myself ?—thinking about the strange world of Hoppy Hopewell and company....

  Chapter 17

  The antebellum South.

  The period before the Civil War, a time of gentility and breeding, of gentlemen and ladies, of plantations and—

  Slavery. That’s the big ugly shadow. Like thinking of famous Austrians or Germans and sticking to just Mozart, Goethe, and Gutenberg. The shadow of human bondage hangs over the South the way Hitler hangs over parts of Europe.

  It’s indelible.

  But locals have learned to live with the stain. They balance it with a pride in the lives they otherwise lived, with all those qualities that glow brighter in their absence. As much as my grandfather loved wrestling and watched old videotapes until they broke, my dad loved John Wayne. And his favorite John Wayne movie was Stagecoach. There’s a scene in that film when Hatfield, the gambler-gentleman played by John Carradine, is about to put a bullet in the head of Lucy Mallory, played by Louise Platt, because they’re going to be overtaken by savage Indians. I remember being horrified by that as a child.

  “Daddy, is he going to shoot her?” I remember crying.

  “Be quiet,” he said.

  After the movie, he explained that Hatfield wanted to spare her being captured by the savages, that murdering her was actually a kindness.

  I didn’t see that. I saw murdering her as killing her. Years later, I still felt that way, though I saw how it could be interpreted as an act of charity and perverse goodness.

  The South is like that. There’s no getting around the awfulness at the center of that prewar society. But the crepe that was hung from it was thick and gay and, if not transformative, at least an effective camouflage. When pressed, Tennesseans will point out, with pride that sounds more like an apology, that their state was th
e last to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy.

  All of that aside, they did build beautiful homes. Short of a Caribbean beach house or a Central Park triplex, you might agree to marry a so-so guy just to live in one of those plantations. Helen Russell’s estate was no exception.

  I had stopped at home to put on sweats, then scooted down the highway and parked around the corner on Elliot. I hoisted the bike out with an appropriately aggrieved “Oy.” It was a compact mountain bike, mud-splattered where my manly friend had no doubt tested that manhood against hill and stream. He had thoughtfully provided me with a helmet and full water bottle. As I adjusted the flimsy-feeling headwear, I hoped that the old saw was true, that riding a two-wheeler was something you didn’t forget. I thanked God that at least the roads were flat here.

  Helen was supposed to emerge in about ten minutes so I’d have to circle or fuss with the chain or do something until she appeared. I pedaled to the corner—without falling, though I wobbled a little at the start—and was delighted to find that stalling would not be necessary; a woman in spandex was just emerging from the driveway. I was less delighted with the prospect of having to catch up with her; she was a good tenth of a mile ahead of me, I guessed, calculating her distance by the only measure I knew: New York block lengths. Twenty of them made a mile and this was about two blocks.

  I chugged after her, trying to think of what I’d say when I caught up. “Fancy meeting you here” wasn’t going to cut it.

  I was out of breath before I’d gone one block. I don’t work out; it’s not that I’m lazy, but walking in New York and being on my feet at the deli have always been all the exercise I needed to retain my svelte figure. Calf muscles I’ve got; “wind” is not my strong suit. I was shvitzing like a marathoner by the time I caught up to Helen. At which point I had to stop to take a drink. I wasn’t sure she’d seen me until she swung the bicycle in a tight, skillful circle and came back. She continued to pedal around me as we spoke.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  I nodded while I drank, then managed to gasp out, “Fine, thanks.” I looked at her. “Hey, fancy meeting you here!”

  “Who is it?” she asked, still circling like an eagle—but without the same kind of menace Rhonda had displayed.

  “Gwen Katz, of Murray’s Deli.”

  “I see now, yes,” she said. “You’re a little far from home.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said, hoping she meant the deli and not New York. Jews are paranoid that way. “This is how I’m trying to learn about Nashville,” I said, “by biking through its communities.”

  “If you’d care to join me, I’d be happy to show you around,” she said—not breathing hard, the little hummingbird.

  I accepted eagerly and got my legs working again. She kindly let me dictate the pace.

  I caught glimpses of her as she talked about the neighborhood and its history and the homes. I listened as well as I could with blood slamming in my ears, the helmet partly covering them, and the wind scooping up the rest. When we were all finished with our multiple circumnavigations of the block—and when I was about all-in—she invited me to the house for a lemonade.

  Success was never harder won.

  A groundskeeper took the bicycles, a butler opened what used to be the servants’ entrance, and we made our way to a sunroom the size of my house.

  “It’s got lovely light, don’t you think?” she asked.

  “I think you could fit the sun in here,” I said.

  She laughed coquettishly, she did. A practiced Southern laugh, charming and designed to put a guest at ease. We sat in cobra-backed wicker chairs just a few feet apart. Only hers was facing the afternoon sun.

  “That’s why I take my ride in the afternoon,” she said as a servant brought our drinks. “So the rays of the sun can help me recuperate.”

  We had just been out in the sun, which wrung us dry as toast. She seemed to read my mind.

  “It’s a question of sweating out the bad humors and then replenishing them with healthful vitamins.”

  She pronounced the word with a short “i” like the British. I was still on the fence as to whether the woman was genuinely cultured or totally affected. She certainly looked like I had always imagined a Southern Belle to look—except for the form-fitting cycling outfit, which revealed zero body fat. She was petite and fluttery, the delicate bones of her fingers always in motion, her eyes lively and alert, her mouth always upturned and painted very red.

  “I certainly did the former today,” I said, forcing myself not to chuck the unsweetened lemonade.

  “Then you have not been taking these tours for very long?”

  “I just started,” I said. “Went around Confederate Hill yesterday, Belle Meade the day before, two other communities before that.”

  I was watching those big eyes carefully. At the mention of Belle Meade they twitched just a little, like a gnat had buzzed them.

  “We’ve been behaving like criminals,” she said unexpectedly. There was a trance-like quality to her voice. She seemed to be looking at something distant, or past.

  “Who has?” I asked innocently.

  “All of us who were there,” she said. “The guests. We’ve been keeping away from one another, afraid that our eyes would betray us.”

  “Betray what?”

  “Our secret,” she said in a rough whisper.

  I set the drink on the glass-topped rattan table that stood between us. I edged the chair around it, closer to her.

  “What’s going on, Ms. Russell?”

  “We planned this murder,” she said.

  “We?”

  “The Cozy Foxes,” she said. “We—”

  And then she erupted in laughter. I nearly fell back. The laugh was big and real, not like her previous titters.

  “You haven’t ridden a bicycle in years!” she said. “And I haven’t acted in years—oh, at least twenty of them. But I was very good, don’t you think?”

  I was flabbergasted. If I looked half as stupid as I felt, that was too much. What was worse, I couldn’t tell if she were truly amused or if she was Disney villainess amused, laughing at me before she turned me into some kind of creature or locked me in the castle dungeon.

  “Don’t try to put one over on a mystery aficionado,” she said, still sputtering out chuckles. “Never mind the mud, when it hasn’t rained here in weeks. Your sweat clothes smell of nothing, not even fabric softener from a recent washing, and your waitress shoes have white soles that show nothing of the black rubber from the pedals. Also, poor dear, poor silly dear, I told you nothing but lies about the community and you didn’t challenge a single one. Did you really think that Margaret Mitchell lived on this street?”

  I dimly recalled her saying something about Gone With the Wind, but I honestly couldn’t remember what.

  “Child, she was from Atlanta!”

  “I couldn’t hear very well,” I said lamely.

  “No, I’m sure not,” she said. “You were too busy trying to figure out how to work that mountain bike—which you borrowed from whom?”

  “A friend,” I said timidly.

  She took a long draught of lemonade. I waited for the ax to fall. I was too ashamed to move.

  “What is your interest in Hoppy Hopewell?” she asked. “Were you a lover? Did he promise you money?”

  “No, nothing like that—”

  “Then you are interested in him!” she charged.

  Ow. I fell for that old gambit.

  “Yes. I am interested in him,” I said.

  “Then I repeat: why?”

  I wrestled with that one a moment before replying. “Because I’m trying to impress the man I’m dating.”

  That took her by surprise. “And that is?”

  “Detective Grant Daniels.”

  “Indeed! Son of the Civil War historian who named one son each after the competing generals.”

  I didn’t pretend to know that. For all I knew, she was lying again.
“That’s the man,” I answered.

  “Did he tell you about me?”

  “No.”

  “Let me rephrase that. What did he tell you about me?”

  Christ, she was good. “That you declined to talk to the police again.”

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s all.”

  She finished the glass and poured more from the pitcher—refilling mine as well, which gave me some hope.

  “I used to live in this estate with my brother, the eminent philanthropist John Warden Russell,” she said. “Have you heard of him?”

  I said I had not.

  “He endowed hospitals throughout the state, including our own beloved institutions here in Nashville. When Mr. Hopewell came to town, he befriended my brother—who had a fondness for chocolate and young ladies, both of which were to be found at that shop—and persuaded him to put said Mr. Hopewell on the board of his philanthropy. That was five years ago. He then proceeded to use his position there to try and insinuate himself in the good graces of every highborn family in this town.

  “Mind you, John had nothing against a man trying to get ahead—but it became personally embarrassing, as you can, I hope, understand. After several months, John asked him to resign. It created a local scandal, since Mr. Hopewell did not go quietly into that good night. It was insidious—he spread rumors about John and his liaisons. Before very long, my brother became the brunt of jokes at the club, at parties. The matter was not just tawdry, Ms. Katz. It was vicious. There is, as you may know, a rivalry between many of the families in this great state. It was easy and convenient for them to use this to tear him down.

  “John took his life within a year,” she said, the life gone from her eyes, the mouth curving down, the voice dropping. She suddenly seemed much older than her fifty-odd years. “I have always blamed Mr. Hopewell for that.” She regarded me with a hint of fire. “I was not sorry to see him gone.”

  It took me a moment to collect my thoughts. I did not for a moment think that this one had been a performance.

  “Do you think Mr. Hopewell intended for things to go that far?” I asked.

  “What he hoped is of no interest to me,” she said

  “Of course. May I ask, Ms. Russell—if you hated him so much, why did you go to the party?”