by Delia Rosen
“I was wondering if you had time to consider that work you wanted me to do,” he said.
“I don’t know about you, but for most people, the time to inquire about such things isn’t midnight.”
“Yes, well, it wasn’t when I first got here,” he said. “I took a taxi to the deli, but it was closed, so I thumbed a ride here. I’ve been waiting for four hours.”
I felt a twinge of bad about that, though I was more amazed that someone actually picked this man up. Then again, people were friendlier and less suspicious down here than they were up north. A lot of them were also as strange as this guy.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been busy—I haven’t been able to think about it any more.”
“I understand,” he said. “Whatcha been doing?”
The casualness of his question made it sound threatening. It wasn’t curious, it was demanding, softened only slightly by the gentle Southern accent. Maybe that was just his way. I sat on the sofa. Okay, I thought. Gary wants to talk. He was there the night of the murder. Let’s see how this plays out.
“I was the caterer at Lolo Baker’s party the other night,” I said. “Mr. Hopewell’s death traumatized me. I’ve been working through it, I guess, by talking to people.”
“I see.”
There was a big, fat period at the end of that sentence.
“You were there, weren’t you? Didn’t you find it disturbing?”
“Disturbing,” he said as though weighing the word. “I don’t think things really disturb writers.”
“Oh? What do things do?”
“They nourish us.”
“Do they?”
“Like the offerings at a salad bar,” he said. “Surely that doesn’t come as a surprise.”
The idea that this portly fellow had ever laid eyes on a salad bar was a surprise. The rest was a natural fit with his pompous, inflated self-regard. “I guess that makes sense,” I said charitably.
“What did you think of my scenario?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure what he’d do if I told him the truth. “Fascinating,” I said. “Very layered. Surprising.” I wasn’t trying to make with the double entendres, secretly insulting him. I tried to say things that he’d buy, that would open him up.
“Surprising in what way?” he asked with the trace of a self-satisfied smile. Once again, he wasn’t really curious. He was encouraging me to stroke his ego.
“The twist at the end,” I said. “Harley Marley faking his death.”
“That was fun, wasn’t it?” he said proudly.
“Very. I’m sorry I didn’t get to see it acted out.”
“Could I have a glass of water?” he asked. “Sitting outside dehydrated me.”
I smiled as sweetly as I could and went to the bathroom. I had a glass there. I was afraid that if I went to the kitchen he would follow me and settle in at the table, where I had put the remnants of our doughnut dinner. I filled the glass and turned, then started: he was standing in the hallway, right outside the door. So much for hearing cat paws on the carpet.
“Why did you come here?” he asked.
“You mean to Nashville or the bathroom? Because I’ve been wondering one of those—”
“The latter.” Again, the demanding tone of voice. I didn’t like it. I wondered if it would be possible to defend myself with a hairbrush.
“I had something in my teeth,” I told him.
His eyes dropped to the wastebasket. “There’s a piece of dental floss . . . but it’s under a tissue. I didn’t hear you blow your nose.”
“I used the rubber end of my toothbrush,” I said. If he touched it to see if it was wet, I was going to knee him in the groin and run.
“Ah-ha,” he said without any sense of discovery. He was just taking the information in.
His gaze shifted. “My water?”
“Your water.” I handed him the glass. He left with it.
We returned to the living room. He stood in the center of the room as though he was on stage, feet planted squarely, shoulders back as far as his belly and waistband would permit. He drank half the glass.
I stood close to the TV . . . and the DVD player where I’d placed the knife.
“I am naturally interrogative,” he said unapologetically, “probably bordering on the inquisitional. I don’t know. I can’t see myself. I can only be what I am.”
That was some of the most convoluted hash he’d yet put forth. As a writer, he was a terrific meat grinder.
“It’s a constant fueling process,” I said.
“Yes!” There was a glimmer of appreciation in his voice. “That is why I lock myself away for stretches. I’m like a boa constrictor. I need time to process things without additional overstimulation.”
“Perfectly understandable.” It was my turn, now. “So, Gary—applying those qualities to what happened the other night, I have a question. What do you think? I assume you’ve given the aborted mystery night a fair amount of thought.”
“I have,” he said. “I think it was someone who wasn’t there.”
“Come again?”
“By that I mean figuratively—someone who wasn’t invited to the party.”
“Why do you think that—and who would that be?”
“Those are two questions,” he said as he drained the glass. I don’t think he was being snarky. He was simply anal. He was correcting my misstatement that I had “a” question. “To answer the first one second, I think it would be a woman.”
“Why?”
“Because the party was mostly women,” he said. “That would help to effectively disguise one. If someone happened to see her they would say, ‘Oh, was she invited?’”
He acted that last part out with a little mince. I said, “I would have guessed that too—”
“Not a guess,” he said. “Reasoning.”
“Right. I would have reasoned it to be a woman but for an entirely different reason.”
He gave me a look that asked, “And that reason is?”
“It would have been easier for a woman to get close enough to a man to push a drill bit up his nostril.”
“By pretense of affection?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“That is a stereotype,” he replied.
“Of what? Human interaction?”
“No, of one of those horridly trashy romance novels that I refuse ever to write. ‘Oh darling, I must have you now! Take me here, on this floor that appears to have been cut away, so that if we fall through it we will be together for eternity.’” He shook his head. “Ridiculous!”
That was snarky. “Has anyone ever asked you to write one of those?”
Gary waved his pudgy hand dismissively. “They know better. I never would.”
I didn’t ask what publishers he was in contact with. Fish in a barrel.
Gary was still standing there in the center of the room, but as we spoke he had become more agitated. Either the juices were flowing, or he was just becoming more relaxed around me, or else there was a full moon and I hadn’t noticed.
“To answer the first question second,” he went on, “I think it was someone who wasn’t invited because then the police would not know to talk to her.”
“But then if it were proven they were there, by evidence—say, a fingerprint or an eyewitness—wouldn’t it make them more of a suspect?”
“A calculated risk,” he said. “There is a perception that criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot—”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Detective Comics number twenty-seven,” he said. “The first Batman story.”
“Not canonical,” I suggested.
“Of course not! The author was only seventeen years of age, so how could he know better? Yet that flawed notion has pervaded criminological circles.”
Of comic book fans, I thought.
“My point is, some are clever and most are risktakers,” he said. “I believe, based on the fact that there are apparen
tly no viable suspects, that our felon was both.”
“How do you know there are no suspects?” I asked.
“There’s an invention you may have heard of. The Internet?”
“Sounds familiar. Just not getting from here to there—”
“The blogosphere,” he said as though it should have been self-evident. “People post things on sites such as Nashville Nuggets and The Confederate Hill Yell. No one knows anyone who has been arrested.”
I didn’t mention that the news also would have been on the news. Moreover, none of that meant there weren’t any suspects, just that no one had been formally charged. I didn’t explain any of that because there was no winning with this guy. And as it happened, he was accidentally right. Grant and Deputy Chief Whitman were as stymied as I was.
Gary came over. He handed me the glass like I was his mother. He clasped his hands behind his back and regarded my right cheek. He had trouble making eye contact, I’d noticed.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Regarding—?”
“The case. What do you think?”
That nearly knocked me on my doughnutenlarged backside. The sensei, apparently, of all things wanted to know what Grasshopper thought. For a moment, I thought I saw the boy in the man.
“I think you’re right, that whoever killed Hoppy Hopewell brought to bear a little bit of ingenuity and more than a little bit of planning,” I said. “Who and why is something that will probably take some time to uncover.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, apart from the lack of witnesses and evidence, there’s a lawyer who does not want the police prying into the private life of the deceased. Did you ever have any dealings with Solomon Granger?”
He shook his head once, vehemently, and said, “I do not believe in attorneys.”
Neither of those facts surprised me. “Until the detectives can get into Hoppy’s apartment, assuming it hasn’t already been cleaned out, and access to his phone records, things are probably going to proceed very slowly.”
He pushed out his lower lip as he took that in. “Perhaps I shall write a play about this,” he said.
“A lovely idea,” I said.
“I believe I will call it Death of a Chocolate Salesman. ”
I had to stop myself from asking if he knew my Uncle Murray. They had the same creative bent, and I meant that as being something unsound. I didn’t want to talk to Gary any more about anything. I was tired and I just wanted this visit to end.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Gary said as though he’d read my mind. “I will show myself out.” He strode to the door, his hands still clasped behind him like Captain Bligh.
He opened the door, shut it behind him, and was gone. I shuddered. Gary Gold might not have been the hands-down oddest of the people I’d met, but he was definitely the creepiest. He was preposterous enough, unseen in his own element; in mine, he was like one of those science fiction androids with a software tic.
While the meeting was not especially enlightening, it was exhausting. The entire day had been a real challenge. But with Thom’s help and some of my own boot-strapping, I’d survived it. Maybe my manager was correct about one thing. Maybe this was some kind of overdue settling, turning a corner of some kind.
The kitchen clock told me the new day was a half-hour old. I was too tired to think and, as they always are, the problem would still be here tomorrow . . . and would probably seem less onerous in the daylight.
I pulled off my work clothes, fell into bed, and was asleep before Gary’s heavy tread had disappeared down the street.
Chapter 20
I woke up feeling proactive.
Now that there was a go-get-’em vibe in my body, I appreciated just how absent it had been. Not just since the murder, but since I got here. I had gone through motions, did what I had to do, but without a real fire-in-the-belly desire.
I had that now. It wasn’t because I’d had a long sleep—it was six a.m. when the alarm dragged me from a dreamless, narcotic-like super-slumber. And it wasn’t a late-blooming sugar high from the doughnuts. Rather, it was because that old New York steam had crept back in the engine. I didn’t have to be like them, do the old, Jewish fit-in thing. I could be me.
On the way to the deli, I left a message for Dag Stoltenberg, the semi-retired attorney who had handled my family’s affairs down here. An expert in international copyright, the Norwegian expatriate liked—or took pity on, or both—my Uncle Murray and had tried to help him place his songs overseas.
We hadn’t spoken in about two months. Dag had gone to Tromsø for a visit and had only just returned. He was an early riser—he ran an hour every morning on his treadmill while listening to Grieg—and, in any case, was still on Norwegian time.
“God morgen!” he said in Norwegian. The heavy accent thinned when he switched to English. “How is my favorite and most beautiful client?”
“Not so bad,” I said truthfully.
We exchanged a few pleasantries about his trip, after which I asked if he had heard about Hoppy Hopewell.
“Ja, I just caught up with dat news,” he said.
“I was there,” I said. “Catering.”
“Herregud! ” he said, which, from experience, I knew meant “My God!” The only other Norwegian I knew was ja and ikke—yes and no—and forbanne, which meant damn.
I told him that I was thinking of putting in an offer on Hoppy’s shop, but that Solomon Granger was throwing up all kinds of roadblocks.
“Vell, you understand he can do dat,” Dag told me.
“You mean, solicit offers without providing access to any kind of financials?”
“Sure,” he said. “I would not recommend someone to buy under those conditions, but it is not a publicly traded company. If Mr. Granger is the executor, he can set whatever terms he wishes.”
“Why would he, though? Why wouldn’t he even say who owns the place?”
“Maybe de individual vas a girlfriend or boyfriend. Maybe dey do not want to be asked about Mr. Hopewell. Maybe dey do not vant to reveal vere dey are.”
Oy. I hated the idea that Solly had any rights at all.
“Dere is one ting ve can do,” he said. “If he has been named executor, dere must be a power-of-attorney document filed vit de county. Dat can only be sealed if de assignee is not actually an attorney.”
“I don’t follow. Are you saying that if I gave power of attorney to Thom, that could be sealed—”
“Ja. Because it does not run a reasonable risk of having been coerced.”
Light bulb on. “Gotcha. An attorney could theoretically fake someone’s signature, or have them sign a bunch of documents which they wouldn’t read, and thus conduct business for them without anyone else being able to check.”
“Without anyone being able to check, not even de person who signed!” Dag said. “So de state enacted dis law to protect people like you from people like me.”
That not only made sense, but it explained why Grant or Whitman had not thought to check on it. They stopped at the will being sealed, at the probate being sealed, at the corporate papers being sealed, but didn’t bother to look into the single document that gave Solly the authority to seal them.
“I vill make a call over dere as soon as dey open at ten,” he said. “I vill get dat information for you.”
I thanked him. I wasn’t sure what that might tell us, but it was like chicken soup: it couldn’t hurt.
The morning rush came and went. Thom was a little more solicitous than usual, keeping an eye on me as I did the hostessing, helped in back, worked the counter, and even bussed. I wanted to keep busy.
It was a quarter past eleven when Dag called back. I went to the office, sat with coffee from my private office stash and a fresh-baked bialy, which I ate plain. I found I was eating healthier, or at least less greasy, since keyboards and keypads became so important. They didn’t work as well with a coating of shmear or butter.
“Find anythi
ng?” I asked the attorney.
“Ja, ja,” he said. “Power-of-attorney was granted by a woman.”
That got my attention. I almost tipped over my coffee. “Who?”
“Anne Miller,” he said. “I took de liberty of looking for her—but dere’s a problem.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You get a million hits for the movie star.”
“Ja,” he said.
“I don’t think it was her.”
“She was dead when dis paper was signed,” Dag said. “If it is important, ve can hire someone to go through de listings—”
“Thanks, no,” I said. “It will be easier just to ask people if they ever heard of her.”
“You going to tell me vhy dis is so important?”
“Because I’m not accounting, I’m not using that forensic part of my brain. It’s what I was trained for, what I’ve been doing almost my entire professional life.”
“Dat’s a good reason,” he said. “Dat’s a very good reason!”
“I’m glad to hear you say that, Dag, because I appear to have absolutely no control over myself.”
He laughed. “Just be grateful you have got a manager.”
“The best,” I agreed and hung up. I ate the bialy and stared at the wallpaper on my computer monitor, a photo of my parents and me at my high school graduation. It was the last picture I had of the trifecta: the three of us smiling, really smiling. It was one of the last times I could remember the universe seeming to have some kind of order. Maybe that’s why I do what I do, why I do this, I thought. To try and restore some of that discipline to my world.
“What about fun too?” I asked, taking a last look at the smile.
I picked up the phone and called Solly Granger.
“Mr. Granger is busy at the moment,” the receptionist told me. “Would you care to leave a message?”
“Yes,” I said. “Tell him I want to talk about Anne Miller.”
“Hold, please.”
That got her attention. Probably his too.
“Ms. Katz, Mr. Granger will be right with you.”
Sweet, I thought. I might finally be onto something.
Solly picked up and said without a hello or preamble, “You found the loophole. Congratulations.”