by Delia Rosen
It happened so fast that no one could stop him. Luke ran from behind the counter with a stainless-steel soup ladle. He crossed the dining room with the kitchen implement raised high and a cry of outrage rising even higher. All I could do was get up and put myself between him and his intended victim. I took the bowl of the ladle square on the bean, seeing red as I fell forward across Stephen Hatfield. By that time Thomasina had come from behind the counter, along with the only patron who had remained after Hatfield started shouting, our mail carrier, Nicolette.
They wrested Luke back as Dani ran over and got between him and me. But her eyes never left Hatfield, as though she were afraid he would grab her tiny frame and run her off to the Lonely Mountain.
Instead, Hatfield stood and lifted me gently and sat me in a chair and gave me some of my untouched Diet Coke. He was very gentle about it, very attentive.
“I’m all right,” I said, gently pushing his sleeve from my face.
“Are you certain?”
“Very.”
He stepped back. It was then that I noticed his entourage standing in the open door of the deli, ready to jump in if necessary.
“I am sorry I’ve upset some of your staff,” Hatfield said.
“They’ll survive.”
I could hear Luke shouting in the kitchen and Thom shouting right back. They fell quiet a moment later.
“You see, Gwen, words, even honest words—or maybe especially honest words—have consequences. I will reply to this text that there is no reason for Stacie to trouble herself with another visit. I will tell her I do not wish to see her anymore.” He leaned close and said in a whisper, “You may not realize this, but I gave her stability. I gave her dignity. We will see how long she survives with Mr. Scott Ferguson.”
“Dignity . . . on her back?”
He stood, smiling again. “Your comments reveal more about yourself, Gwen, than they do about Stacie.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“There you are wrong,” he said. “I know that sex is not the sheer joy for you that it is for so many women. It comes with riders and codicils.” He touched my face as he walked away. “A waste.”
I shuddered, but not with fear. It was worse. It was excitement.
Hatfield had made a point of putting his personal card under my hand. I crushed it slowly as he walked off. He looked around as he rejoined his companions. “I beg all of your pardons for disrupting the afternoon. We will return when things have settled somewhat.” He looked back at Thomasina. “The potato pancakes were very, very good.”
Thom stood still and tall, like a statue of herself.
Not Dani. The young woman leaned forward and snarled, “They’re latkes,” just before the door closed.
Hearing her little voice, proud and assured, I actually felt tears fill my eyes.
Score one for our side—for our sides. The women, the Jews, and the kids who loved each other enough to risk a beating.
Chapter 20
I called Grant and left a message that whatever he was doing, wherever he was, whoever was killed between now and then, he needed to come by the house tonight.
I made sure the staff was okay before I checked to see what damage might have been done to my skull. Fortunately, I had decided I liked the scarf look, and had kept one on. That had cushioned the blow somewhat.
Luke could not have been more apologetic, and I could not assure him enough that not only was it okay, but I was also proud of him.
“Even though I don’t know how the dishes would’ve gotten clean if you’d been arrested for assault,” I told him.
He hadn’t even considered that, he said. I believed him. More words that I never thought I’d think came into my head: I envied Dani.
Thom was a little rattled—the first time I’d ever seen that—because she immediately saw Luke in jail, me in the emergency room, and Dani with her legs parted at Casa Hatfield, not that she thought Dani would go willingly. But once she heard the name Stephen Hatfield, she knew things were going to get ugly.
“He’s like that Mr. Potter in the James Stewart movie It’s a Wonderful Life,” she said.
It was unusual to hear Thom make a movie reference since she rarely watched TV, with its sinful men and loose women. But then, it was a Christmas movie.
“I hadn’t heard much about him before this whole thing started with Joe Silvio,” I said.
“He’s been a landlord for years, and he was a slumlord before that,” she said. “About five years ago the Metro County Council went after him for rental properties that had sofas and refrigerators in the yards, leaking ceilings and windows, overgrown grass with rats—all kinds of dilapidation. The codes department got all over him, and he finally set things right by tearing a lot of those places down and building new condos and affordable housing—with tax credits, which is what he was after all along.”
“And he called my wine cheap,” I said.
“Oh, he’s a bad ’un. Now he uses that same formula to buy rundown places and build new ones through his construction companies. Word at the church—among some of the parishioners who move in those circles—is that he hires thugs to trash respectable places or harass the occupants so they will sell to him cheap.”
“He really is Mr. Potter,” I said. He seemed to feel bad about Joe Silvio, but I wondered if he would kill a man to get his wife to sell her place. The way his mind seemed to work, he would blame her for making it necessary.
I couldn’t wait to get out of there, but I felt obligated to wait until everyone else had gone, until I made sure they were all right. I had given Stacie my cell and office numbers, but there were no messages from her. If Hatfield had contacted her, as he’d threatened, maybe she was going to deal with the fallout herself.
Which is as it should be.
Luke and Dani thanked me before leaving. They thanked me as a couple, her arm in his. He apologized again. I told them everything was fine. It was still raining mistily, as the day had begun, and there was a welcome quiet to the world.
Grant arrived at my house shortly after I did, bringing gifts of Thai takeout and French vanilla frozen yogurt. I kissed him, hugged him, and told him I did not honestly know what to eat first. We decided on actual food and set the containers on the old coffee table by the living room sofa.
“Still wound up about Brenda?” he asked.
It took me a second to figure out what he meant. “Brenda? No. That seems like yesterday.”
“You’ve been busy?”
“Très.”
I don’t know why I drew on my high school French to answer. Probably because my brain was dead. Or maybe the hit on the head with a soup ladle had jogged it loose. I proceeded to tell him about my visit with Robert, my lunch with Stacie, and my teatime encounter with Stephen Hatfield. The last one troubled him.
“He’s a bad man,” Grant said.
“So everyone keeps telling me. But I’m guessing that is limited mostly to his business dealings.”
“From what I hear, everything in his life is a business deal.”
“To some degree. But while he doesn’t think much of women as a gender, I believe he genuinely likes and certainly appreciates the ones he bonds with personally. He may be a serial monogamist, but he sounds like a loyal one.”
Even so, I kept my cell phone near as we ate just in case Stacie called.
Grant told me that the case was still turning into dead ends.
“About the only thing certain I’ve got is the lab analysis of the wound on Joe Silvio’s throat,” he said. “It was made by a jeweler’s screwdriver.”
“Come again?”
“A jeweler’s screwdriver with an eighth-inch-wide flat blade. Second and third stabs pierced the carotid artery. Seventh and eighth punctured the windpipe, though Joe was already unconscious by then.”
“How many stabs were there?”
“Sixteen.”
“Jesus.”
“Somebody was pissed at Joe,” Grant
said. “We figure the dog came in around the tenth stab, since the blood had reached the shoulder blade, which is where the dog got to before it went between Joe’s back and the seat.”
“Do you know what kind of dog it was?”
He shook his head as he handed me the pad thai with chicken and took the curry chicken puffs. “That’s the strange thing. Usually, you’ll find strands of animal hair, but not this time. Nothing in the back of the truck, nothing on the back of the seat. No indentations in the bread or the vinyl of the seat from claw marks. Not even its territory marked on the tires. Zip. We can’t account for it.”
“Unless the killer was holding the dog,” I said.
“We thought of that,” Grant said. “But it would have been tough to do and inflict the wounds, especially if the guy was trying to defend himself. Which is also surprising. There are no defensive cuts on his hands.”
Grant’s description brought me back to that morning. Entering the truck from the back, stepping in the blood, finding the body sprawled in the seat. A deliveryman surprised by someone who got into the truck from the passenger’s side or the back and . . .
Took out a jeweler’s screwdriver and stabbed him to death while holding a dog?
“Do you think it was premeditated?” I asked.
“With a small screwdriver?”
“True.”
“An argument? With a hitchhiker?”
“I don’t know about a hitchhiker, but an argument with someone he may have known is our working theory,” Grant said. “We’ve checked security cameras along the route he presumably took. Some places we see the truck, some not. He isn’t stopped in any of the footage, and it’s too dark inside to see if there’s another passenger. So right now it’s still just a theory.”
“Who would Joe Silvio be arguing with?”
“No one who shows up on his home or office phone records,” Grant said.
“What about his cell?”
“We’re still waiting on those,” he said.
“Does it usually take this long?”
Grant shook his head. “The chief gave it to McCoy at his request. He doesn’t want to push until after the funeral.”
“Is that a way to run an investigation?”
“No, but McCoy made a legitimate case. He said that it’s possible there may be personally embarrassing information, which he would like to be able to present to Brenda before ‘impersonal parties’—meaning me—get hold of it.”
“Jeez, isn’t that almost a confession that the guy was doing something he shouldn’t’ve!”
“Not necessarily,” Grant said. “It could be a legitimate abundance of caution on behalf of a bereaved member of an officer’s family.”
“Ah, more blue line stuff, huh?”
“Yes, but he gave us company records and logs that it would’ve taken days and a subpoena to get. It’s a knife that cuts both ways.”
“Unlike a screwdriver, which only goes in and out,” I said.
Grant winced.
“Autopsy turn up anything else?” I asked.
“Old appendix operation. Prostate cancer, pretty well along. He may not have known.”
“Jeez.”
“His doctor wasn’t even aware of it. Said he’d had it years before, licked it,” Grant said.
Poor guy. I was thinking about the screwdriver, the oddness of that—who the hell would carry such a thing?—when I blurted, “Holy crap!”
Grant dropped his chopsticks.
“Grant . . . Joe.”
“What?”
“Joe’s hands. Defensive wounds.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Grant, he didn’t have any cuts or dog bites, because he was wearing gloves. Deliverymen wear gloves. He didn’t have any on when I found him. Someone took them.”
He continued to look at me, even as he felt on the old carpet for his chopsticks. “You’re right,” he said.
“Damn straight. Think about it. A dog owner attacks someone. What does the dog do? Joins in, thinking the master is at risk. He attacks the victim.”
“Who is so busy holding the dog away, the killer is free to perforate his throat!”
We resumed eating.
“That still doesn’t tell us anything about the dog, though,” Grant said. “The killer may not have been holding him. He could have been on his or her lap. That’s why there are no claw marks.”
“Well, at least we can rule out a stray,” I said.
“We’d pretty much done that due to the lack of fur anywhere.”
“Right.”
We continued to eat and think in silence. Neither of us heard the car pull up until the doorbell rang. We jumped; I yelped. My cats, who had been lurking nearby, waiting to see if anything dropped to the floor, slunk away.
I looked out the peephole.
“It’s Robert Reid,” I told Grant.
“I assume you weren’t expecting him?”
I shook my head as I opened the door. He was still dressed in white, holding a clear umbrella, roses, and a folder.
“Come in,” I said.
He smiled his big smile, handed me the flowers, closed his umbrella and left it outside, then came in. He did a little double take when he saw Grant.
“See what you don’t know when you don’t have me followed?” I asked.
“I do indeed,” he said.
Twenty-four hours ago this little vignette would have been my fantasy of the moment. Amazing what a difference a day can make.
“Care for some fried rice with pineapple?” I asked.
“No, but I’ll take a ginger ale if you have one.”
“I so happen not to,” I said. “I may have a Diet 7UP.”
“Even better,” he said.
I went in the kitchen to get the drink and a glass and put the roses in water.
“How are you, Detective Daniels?” I heard him ask.
“Pretty well. Yourself?”
“I’m good. Keeping busy trying to find a killer.”
“So Gwen has been telling me. Having any luck?”
“I’m not sure,” he said as I returned. “That’s why I’m here.” He pulled up a slightly worn armchair to gather round the coffee table. “Just to be clear,” he said to Grant, though he was looking at me, “I’ve apologized to Gwen for what I will charitably describe as a burst of exuberance in the methods I’ve used to try and cover this story.”
“As far as I know, you didn’t break any laws,” Grant said diplomatically. “Just hassled a good friend.”
“Guilty of one and”—he reached into the folder—“I’m afraid I may be guilty of the other.”
Grant’s chin came up.
“If I were smart and not so damn curious, I wouldn’t do this in your presence,” the bright-eyed publisher said to Grant. He handed me a sheet of paper. “This is a printout of calls made from Joe Silvio’s cell phone.”
Grant’s mouth twisted. “When did you get those?”
“This morning,” Robert said. “After Gwen left, I had a . . . well, a spare body to put on other kinds of research. I thought you would have obtained this list already and it was a waste of time and money, but you never know.” He was studying Grant. Robert’s features brightened. “Wait a minute. You didn’t get them, did you?”
Grant’s head went back and forth once.
“Interesting,” Robert said.
I glanced at Grant. I gave him a look that said, “Knife cutting the wrong way.” He nodded back, and then we looked at the list. A local number was circled in gold Sharpie.
“Recognize it?” Robert asked.
Grant shook his head. I told him I didn’t know it, either.
“That makes three of us, but it’s the night before the murder,” Robert said. “Four hours before it happened, in fact. And the reason we don’t know the number?”
“It’s an off-the-rack phone,” Grant said.
“Available at any number of local emporiums, that’s correct,” Robert sai
d. “I’m wondering if our poor bread truck driver received a message, called back on the cell, and was, by this very phone call, lured to a meeting that led to his death. Lured by someone who either did not want to be traced or cannot afford a cell phone with a contract. But someone who knew him . . . and knew he would be making a delivery.”
“That could be anyone at the bakery or in the deli,” I said. “And that’s just for starters.”
“Or Joe may have had this cell phone number and initiated the call,” Grant said. “He could have asked for what turned out to be the fatal rendezvous.”
“It doesn’t appear in any other records going back six months,” Robert said.
“Which tells us nothing, except that Joe probably knew his killer and it was someone who had a beef with Joe personally,” Grant said. “It was not a random killing.”
Which still left the field wide open. Lydia’s words came back to me just then, her response when I asked if she knew Joe Silvio: “A lot of folks down here knew him.”
Chapter 21
The best laid plans of mice and men and love-starved women . . .
Robert didn’t hang around much longer; he was trying very hard to be respectful and deferential to me. I didn’t respect him any more for it, but I appreciated it. The poor little rich man climbed back into his vintage red Corvette a few minutes later, leaving Grant and me to finish our dinner and poke at the tub of frozen yogurt. Neither of us felt much like dessert of any kind.
I initiated the end-of-evening non-festivities.
“You can stay,” I said, “but I think we should call it a night.”
“I’m on board with that,” he said.
It was what I wanted to hear. It was what I expected to hear. But Stephen Hatfield’s words came back like a tsunami. In my world, there was no sex for sex’s sake. I couldn’t just say to Grant, “Hey, let’s have a quick tumble. Then you can go to sleep. Or go. Whatever you want.” If there was sex, he would stay, and if he stayed, there would be an implied “something” of a relationship or a familiarity, at least, in the morning, an obligation to be friendly or close or in some way committed.
There was a price for sex with me.