One Foot In The Gravy

by Delia Rosen

“Did he know Lizzie? Was there any connection ?”

  The women went silent with thought.

  “I don’t see how that matters,” Mollie said after a time. “He obviously was not the one who went to her apartment.”

  “But they may have had someone in common,” I said. I was desperate to ask if Poodle may have known Lizzie in any capacity, but I couldn’t reveal what I knew about the young woman and Hoppy.

  “Lolo, did Lizzie have any siblings?” Hildy asked.

  “Not that I’m aware,” the society matron replied.

  “So—no nieces and nephews.”

  “She never mentioned any.”

  “Then why would she have saved a blue ribbon?”

  “Holy crap yeah,” I said.

  Lolo was too intrigued with that to chastise me with her eyes. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “Is there any way she could have had a child out of wedlock?” Helen asked, emerging from her little cocoon.

  “I suppose it’s possible, but what would that have to do with her murder?” Lolo asked.

  “I’ve only known one adoptive child who sought out his birth mother to tell her how being given away left him all scarred and rejected,” Rhonda said. “That was my cousin Stymie, and he only found her so he could yell at her. He didn’t kill her.”

  “You had a cousin named Stymie?” Mollie said.

  “Hey, I said he was adopted. He came already named.”

  “I don’t mean to defame the dead,” Hildy said, “but if we’re looking for a connection, is it possible—and I’m just putting this out there—that Lizzie had a child with Hoppy?”

  Lolo and Mollie both made faces.

  “He would have to have known her in Canada,” Lolo said. “How many nine- or ten-year-olds want to kill their mothers?”

  “Well, there was that Jim Grand story What’s the Matter With Oedipus?” Hildy said unhelpfully.

  “That was fiction and it was the only one,” Lolo said.

  “Besides, she didn’t—well, what interest would Lizzie have had in Hoppy?” Mollie asked, changing course in deference to Helen.

  “He could have raped her,” Hildy suggested.

  “I would put that in the ‘very remote possibility’ pile,” I said. “Lizzie would hardly have saved a memento of that . . . event.”

  Silence once again descended.

  “I wonder if she wasn’t a housekeeper when she first came here,” Hildy said. She was just a bundle of ideas.

  The group waited.

  “She might have been a nanny,” Hildy said. “Not like Fran Drescher, but maybe a mentally unstable one, like in that old Bette Davis movie.”

  The group thought. Except for myself and Rhonda, they seemed like a single organism. It was pretty impressive, though. Their brainstorming had produced some useful results.

  “Lizzie could be severe, but she was not cruel. I will attest to that,” Lolo said, effectively ending the debate.

  “Which doesn’t rule out that she may have been a nanny,” I said, still chewing on that. “Nannies pose with babies and photos are apparently missing.”

  “They pose at Disney World too,” Rhonda said. “Maybe Mickey did it.”

  The remark was ignored. Rhonda went to the glass-fronted refrigerator behind the counter and got herself an Amstel Light. The rest of us just sat. We seemed to have hit a wall.

  My mind was still working, though. I knew things about Hoppy that the rest of them did not. I was sifting through the dates and places and dramatis personae, looking for anything that fit with the Lizzie hypotheses.

  And then something started scratching at my brain.

  “Let me see that file,” I said. “Not the photos, just the pages. The background report.”

  Hildy fished it from the pile and handed it over. I flipped back to the bank records Grant had obtained. They went back eighteen years, the entire time Lizzie had been in Nashville. Since there was no attorney to prevent it, that was pro forma research to find out if someone had been extorting money. There were no withdrawals to suggest that was the case.

  “Lolo, how much did you pay her?” I asked.

  “What a question!” she said indignantly. “I don’t see how that is relevant.”

  “It is, but—fine, fine.” I did the mental math. I was good at that. “Was it less than a thousand bucks a week?”

  “It was. Really!”

  “Less than five hundred?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

  “Cheep!” Rhonda imitated a bird as she returned to the table. The bottle was already half-empty. The harsh looks suggested her impulsively launched career with the Foxes was on life support.

  Lolo’s answer was close enough to a figure that fit. I checked another page. “Lizzie’s rent was three-fifty a month.”

  “What does all that mean?” Hildy asked eagerly.

  “Thinking,” I said. “If we knock out what she managed to save during her years of working for Lolo and what she spent, the woman managed to save—not earned, mind you—seventy thousand dollars.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Hildy said impatiently.

  “She’s saying that’s a lot of bread,” Rhonda said.

  “It is a lot,” I said, “but that’s not what’s interesting.” I was still working the numbers as I went through the bank statements. “She deposited decent-sized checks every June for the last ten years.”

  “That’s how long she worked for me,” Lolo said, trying to reclaim control of the discussion.

  “Did you give her summer solstice bonuses?” Rhonda taunted.

  “Not for $1,023.11,” I said, looking at the last one. “That’s a tax refund.”

  “So?” Mollie asked.

  “There were no rebates before she went to work for Lolo. And the deposits weren’t weekly, they were sporadic. Once every three months . . . six months. . . .”

  “What am I missing?” Rhonda said. “Someone was paying her off the books. That’s how I pay my gardener.”

  “Someone was paying her when they had the money,” I said.

  I didn’t have to say anything more. They all knew someone who was constantly looking for revenue. They didn’t necessarily know who else among them had been tapped by Hoppy or how, so no one said a word.

  “I think this session is over,” Lolo said.

  I agreed, and the ladies made a very subdued and hasty end to it. Even Rhonda was unusually quiet, albeit for a different reason.

  “I’m confused,” she said, grabbing another beer as the others left.

  “Me too,” I admitted.

  She chugged half the bottle. “Do we think Hoppy was paying Lizzie for something? For being a nanny?”

  I looked at her. From the mouths of boozers—

  “Did Hoppy have a kid?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Who knows? I didn’t know Lizzie was a carpet cleaner until tonight.”

  I had to call Grant. We may have gotten some things wrong.

  I thanked Rhonda for coming and all but pushed her out the door after taking the empty bottle from her hand.

  “What’s the hurry?” she asked.

  “You’re driving,” I said. “No more drinkee.”

  “Oh, balls! You got a date? Is that it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not with my ex-husband. . . .” she said threateningly.

  “Not with Royce, God, no!”

  “Hey, watch your mouth! What’s wrong with Royce?”

  A lot, I thought, but I didn’t have time to go into that now. I managed to get her outside, locked the door, and called Grant.

  Chapter 27

  I scooped up the file and let myself out. Helen was still parked down the street. I could see her head was bent, her shoulders moving lightly. I didn’t know whether she was relieved because she’d wanted to come out, or whether she was afraid of social consequences for an impulsive act. In any case, I decided to let her be. She was, however, a little less intimidating than
she’d been the day before: despite that big play of setting me up and knocking me down, she had the same insecurities and tender spots as li’l ole me.

  I had told Grant to meet me at Lizzie’s place. We had stuff to go over.

  The apartment was still a crime scene with a patrol car parked out front. I waited in my car until Grant arrived. He walked me in.

  “Productive night?” he asked—a little condescendingly, I thought.

  I gave it to him between the eyes, told him what the Foxes had figured out. He was impressed and, I think, a little embarrassed. His mouth definitely assumed a scrunching posture when he glanced at the door.

  “We’ve been circling some of that ourselves,” he said, a tad defensively. “We’ve got requests out with the RCMP, checking into any reason she might have left Canada. The IRS is looking into her tax records. We also found out that Lizzie occasionally frequented a girls-only bar in—”

  “All useful but none of that gives us Hoppy Hopewell.”

  “Gwen, we can’t assume a serial killer based on Lolo as a common link. I’ll grant you there may be a connection—”

  “I’m not the press, Grant. You will admit it would be a humungous coincidence if these killings are unrelated.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we need to fit them together somehow. Starting, maybe, here.”

  I took him to the bedroom, showed him the blue ribbon on the edge of the carpet.

  “Yeah, we saw that,” Grant told me. His hands went defiantly to his hips. “Let me explain something. We have a methodology, the way we remove and categorize evidence. That goes from eventrelated—the body, the murder weapon, the blood, hair and fingerprints from the immediate murder vicinity—”

  I cut him off. “Can I borrow your pen?”

  “Sure.” He lifted his lapel and I lifted his ballpoint. It was imprinted with the name of a local realtor, Stacey Paul. I knew her. I frowned.

  “What?” he asked.

  “She’s a walking advertisement for breast enhancement.”

  “Oh, please. It’s a good time to buy.”

  “Homes or implants?” I asked.

  I couldn’t help myself. He put on a give-me-a-break look and I went back to work. I squatted and touched the top of the pen to the ribbon. Nothing happened. I used the plunger to flip the ribbon over. I touched the top to the ribbon. It stuck. I lightly shook it free and rose. I handed him back his pen.

  “There was a baby at some point,” I said. “This was taped in an album, an album it obviously slipped from, an album that was taken.” I looked at the bed and the trail of scattered clothes. I took a rain boot from the corner, weighed it with my hand, and tossed it on the bed. It bounced off. “Our killer walked in here, flopped the album on the bed, didn’t count on it flying to the floor, and scooped it up quickly as he went to check the dresser.”

  “The perp didn’t see it fall out,” Grant said.

  I ignored his obvious conclusion. “Racy” Stacey had gotten under my skin.

  “Let’s assume, for the purpose of this discussion, that Hoppy fits in this scenario some way,” I said. “How?”

  “Well, if there is a baby and Lizzie didn’t have it—”

  We looked at each other. I tried to speak but my brain was frozen with the realization:

  “Hoppy had a kid with Anne,” Grant said. “She may not have been the one he was supporting.”

  Thanks, brain, I thought. Now he gets the points for that.

  My brain didn’t care. It had a gender and an age range and was compiling a list. There was Gar y Gold. My own Luke. Lolo had said the electrician was a boy—did he know the back way in? Most likely, since that was how servants entered in Lolo’s world. And what about the chauffeur’s son Gordon. Maybe his father was covering for him.

  Idiot! Hoppy and Anne wouldn’t have had an African-American baby.

  How do you know he’s African-American? Maybe Gordon adopted a white child!

  Stop! I yelled at myself.

  “But let’s put ’er in reverse,” Grant went on. “Even if there is a child, we don’t know where he lives or whether he killed either of them. Or whether someone else knows what we know and is trying to frame said hypothetical child. This is a town full of—what’s your word?”

  “Yentas,” I said. There was the annoying “you people” again.

  “That’s the one. Hell, Gwen, we don’t have anything approaching a motive, other than that Hoppy was a tomcatting swindler.”

  “What about insurance?”

  “That’s a negative,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “I called in a favor from Clancy at Ryan & Clancy Insurance, had him make some calls. Hoppy had a policy that expired two years ago. He terminated it for the cash value, about twenty-five grand.”

  Ouch. So Grant was holding back from me the same way I held info from the Foxes. He seemed to read my mind.

  “I received that call during your tête-à-tête with the Foxes.”

  We stood there again in silence. Standing in the bedroom, her clothes strewn around us, I couldn’t help but think about poor Lizzie. The only thing we knew for sure was that the butler didn’t do it. But why was she involved? Who did she let in?

  “Two years ago, you say?”

  He took out his notebook. “January 2009.”

  “A little over two years,” I thought aloud. “You know, there is one thing the killings have in common.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The tenderizer to the head, the drill to the brain—in both cases the murder weapons were handy.”

  “Okay—the crimes weren’t planned. I agree with that.”

  “They’re also different,” I said. “The first one may have been a crime of passion, the second one of reluctant necessity.”

  “Possible,” Grant said. “What has that got to do with the two-year thing?”

  “Hold on.” Something else hit me. I turned and ran to the living room.

  “They’re not here,” I said.

  Grant had followed me in “What’s not here?”

  Heart and brain were together on this one: they did not feel like sharing. “I’ll tell you when I check something.”

  “Gwen, this is a killer we’re dealing with!”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I’m coming with,” he said. “Where are we going?”

  “To see a writer about a newspaper article.”

  Chapter 28

  We took separate cars, not because it made logistic sense—we had to pass Lizzie’s on the way back to town—but because I didn’t want to be with Grant any more than I had to.

  It made a sick, sad sort of sense, I thought as I drove.

  I want him, I don’t want him. He’s being too familiar and personal, he’s being too disinterested and professional. I had to blame my delicate gyroscope on the ex. I wanted a man, a good man, to be around me, but I didn’t want him to be too close. Or stay close. Or be in the same zip code. I don’t know. Phil failed at the first and corrupted the second with his presence. I was a victim of need versus fight-or-flight.

  Or I was being a kvetch. Maybe my mixed signals were destabilizing his gyro.

  Fortunately, there wasn’t time to contemplate any of this; the ride to Confederate Hill was a short one. I parked in front of Gary Gold’s house and was at the door before Grant arrived. He got there as I rang the bell.

  There was no answer. But I would have bet dollars to Hamantashen he was home. Gary felt safe there. It was probably the only place the poor kid—and possible multiple killer—felt safe.

  I knocked. “Gary, it’s Gwen Katz. I need to talk to you.”

  “Go away!” he wailed.

  “He did this last time,” I said to Grant.

  “What last time?”

  “Someone close to him died,” I said. “He cocooned.”

  “What’s going on?” Grant asked quietly. “Do you think this man is our killer?”

  “It’s possible,” I
said.

  “You’d better stand aside.”

  “If he’s our man, I don’t think you have to worry about him shooting,” I said. “Otherwise, we would probably have two gunshot victims.”

  Grant considered that, then leaned past me and hit the door several times with his fist. “Mr. Gold, it’s Grant Daniels of the Nashville PD. Please come to the door.”

  “I don’t want to!”

  “You don’t have to admit us,” he said. “But I do need to speak with you. If necessary, I will come back with a warrant for your arrest.”

  “I know police procedurals!” he said defiantly. “You need cause to subpoena a person of interest—”

  “Not when that individual has concealed the fact Hoppy Hopewell was his father and Lizzie Renoir was his nanny,” I said.

  The silence from inside the house was thick as latke batter. Grant’s face was a black silhouette against the city-light glow in the nighttime sky, but I did not have to see it to know he was surprised by my certainty.

  “So much for drawing him out,” Grant said. “While we’re out here, why don’t you just ask if he killed them?”

  “He’ll come.”

  “What makes you so sure.”

  I knocked again. “Gary, I’m your friend, remember ? You’ve been to my house.”

  “What, you’re backtracking now?”

  I ignored Grant. He was being anal, didn’t like that I was treating his by-the-book like an e-edition, skipping here and there. Tough nuggies, as they used to say in my hood.

  “I know about your mother, Anne,” I said. “Please, Gary. Let us in. No one’s going to hurt you, I promise.”

  There was a shuffling sound on the other side of the door. I took some consolation in the fact that if it was followed by a shotgun blast, I wouldn’t be around to hear Grant’s told-you-so. A chain was slid from its track. A lock clicked. The squeaky door opened slowly on darkness. Framed within it was a wide man. The man-shape moved back into the shadows. Peripherally, I could see Grant looking him over for weapons—if not a gun, then a power tool or kitchen utensil.

  “May I—we—come in?” I asked.

  He just hovered there, like those pictures of the Hindenburg in Lakehurst.

  “Is there a light?” I asked.

  “Insuhtoor,” he said. It took me a moment to pluck “Inside the door” from the slurred, unhappy words.