“What do you mean, sideways?”
“You know, a little off-kilter, from an unusual angle. Smart, yes, but in an unusual way.”
“Like how?”
“Like he knew a lot about collectibles and antiques, but he talked about them like you or I would talk about friends. Like how they smile when he comes into the room and surround him with love when he’s down. And he told me when the country collapsed he would survive by selling food from this big stash he had in his basement.”
“So he didn’t say that perhaps he had more stuff than he actually needed, or that at least some of it was junk?”
“No, no, no, of course not. Anyway, nobody thinks his possessions are ‘junk.’ He said he had a lot of ‘things.’ Used that word a lot. Said his house was full of three generations’ worth of valuable things.” Booth shrugged his broad shoulders. “Maybe some of it’s junk; I know my folks have a house full of things they treasure but other people might think is junk.”
Accepting the rebuke placidly, Malloy shifted gears and asked, “Did Riordan mention anyone who was angry with him, or he was angry with?”
“His cousin, what’s-her-name, Val. I think it went both ways, he was mad at her and she was mad at him.”
“Do you know why?”
Booth thought briefly. “As I understood it, she was supposed to go into his house and clean it up, make some repairs to the plumbing, but instead she got a crew together and was throwing out all his things. He said she was mad because he was trying to stop her from selling his things and pocketing the money. She said she wasn’t going to report to him anymore about what she was doing. He said if he ever got out of the hospital he was going to shoot her dead.”
* * *
FROM that start, it only took a few days for Malloy and Halloran to circle in on Valentina Shipp as their best suspect, mostly because there didn’t seem to be any other suspects. Malloy got the address of the motel she was staying at. Halloran met Malloy at Excelsior’s police building one midmorning, and the two drove over to Shorewood to see her. They prepared for the interview on the way by going over what they had already discovered.
They agreed that Shipp’s motive was apparent and strong: money. She was not a wealthy person; in fact, she was probably perilously close to the poverty line—Halloran thought she was probably on the wrong side of it—despite having no dependents and owning her own home.
Being Tom Riordan’s only living relative put her in line to inherit his home and property. The house was probably not much of an asset, but Malloy pointed out that the lot on which it stood was very valuable. And there were apparently many things of considerable value inside it. He’d had a talk with the Leipolds, who said their estimate of the contents of the house amounted to something above twenty-five thousand dollars.
“Holy buckets!” exclaimed Halloran.
“Yeah, and that doesn’t include the hoard of Morgan dollars or the three pieces of high-quality jewelry currently residing in a safe deposit box at First Bank of Excelsior.”
“How did you find out about them?”
“Had a little talk with a couple of people who were helping Shipp clear out the house. One of them told me—I promised not to mention the name.”
Halloran nodded, then asked, “What’s a Morgan dollar?”
“It’s a silver dollar minted between the late 1870s and early 1900s, named after the man who designed it for the U.S. Mint. It’s got a woman’s head on one side and a spread eagle on the other. They’re about ninety percent silver and weigh a tad over an ounce, so there’s value to be had in just melting them down. They’re also very collectible, some are much more valuable than the others.”
“How many in the hoard?”
“My informant isn’t sure, a couple-three dozen—and I don’t know if any of them are the high-end kind.”
“Have you already talked to Ms. Shipp?”
“No, but I’ve talked to someone who knows her, and he said she’s a lot like her cousin, an outlier, well out on the fringes of normal behavior.”
“Was it your informant who told you that?”
“No, I called her hometown and got hold of a sergeant on the Muncie PD, and got an earful. Years back, before people started keeping chickens for pets, she had her own little flock in her backyard. They laid eggs and when they didn’t she’d whack off their heads and make chicken dinner.”
Halloran snorted.
“Also, she’d been cited repeatedly for not cutting the grass in her front yard, but then she came up with a plan to ‘restore’ her property to ‘natural prairie’ status. Granted, she did her research, testified before the city government to get a special permit—and won. But the result was all weeds all the time, because she couldn’t afford the seeds of native prairie plants, and she didn’t have the knowledge or skill it took to do it right.”
“Hmmmm,” said Halloran. “Anything else?”
“I saved the best for last. She’s got the kind of funny-looking house and she looks just odd enough to start rumors that she had a stash of gold coins in her basement. After a couple of burglaries and some vandalism, she got a concealed carry permit. She nailed an announcement to that effect on her front door, and beside it a target from a visit to a shooting range with six holes in a tight little cluster in the center.”
Halloran laughed and Malloy smiled; after all, what she did was legal, and she didn’t live in their jurisdictions.
Halloran said, “But still, I see how it might indicate a problematic personality.”
“Yeah, like that of the late Tom Riordan.”
“He’s in your neck of the woods, how well did you know him?”
“Back when I was on patrol, I had had a few meet-ups with Tom, mostly on complaints that he was loitering or begging outside a store or restaurant, or nude bathing—seriously, he’d take a bar of soap and a washcloth and go down to our beach—did it about once a summer. But he didn’t mouth off; when I called him in, he’d smile and apologize, come on out of the water to towel off, at least most of the time.”
“And other times?”
“Aw, he’d get a little mouthy. But not often. He’d see it was me, and get friendly again, because he considered us buds. Once in a great while, he’d seem confused. There was something wrong in the man’s head, that was obvious. But I never saw him offer to strike anyone. Ever.”
“But nobody thought to arrest the fellow and get him the help he so obviously needed?”
“Well, I’m not sure that was a mistake. You know the kind of help most of those impoverished hopeless cases get: none. I think he was better off being a public nuisance than serving as prey to thugs incarcerated with him. People liked him, or at least put up with him. The worst thing about him was, he was an incorrigible thief. But what he took were little things, an orange pop at the gas station, an old magazine at Leipold’s, a couple pieces of candy from the bowl at a restaurant checkout register without first buying a meal. Sometimes he’d look up, see the owner looking back, and take the item anyway. He’d grin and walk out with it. Other times, he’d look ashamed and put it back. If you stood in his way and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, he’d give it back—but if he got as far as his house with it, he would deny he knew anything about it.”
“And no one filed an official complaint?” Halloran’s scorn was clear.
“Aw, Excelsior was used to him and his ways, no one had cared to press charges. Oh, now and again some one of us would haul him in, tell him he was banned from someplace, and have the chief give him a lecture, but he never appeared in court charged with a crime. He was mostly harmless.”
“Yeah, a harmless jerk who made a threat of violence against someone he thought was taking serious advantage of him. And now he’s dead.”
Yes, thought Malloy, someone came into his hospital room and leaned on his face with a spare pillow taken
from the room’s closet. And now we’re going to talk with someone who just might be the someone we’re looking for.
They parked in front of Valentina Shipp’s motel room, beside the shabby old car that belonged to her, and went to rap on the door. She answered it promptly, but said nothing, eyeing them with suspicion, a tall, thin woman somewhere in her early fifties, with dark, intense eyes and dark graying hair pulled back and fastened with a rubber band. She was wearing faded jeans, green sneakers that had a hole in one toe, and a tan sweater a size too big that looked hand-knit.
She was younger than Tom, less strange-eyed, but obviously cut from the same genetic cloth. Like him she was bony and narrow, with that same beaky nose, wide mouth, and lots of oddly dark freckles. But the thing that sent Malloy’s cop-alarm ringing was how sharply defensive she turned as soon as he showed her his ID and asked if she would speak with them.
“Why? What about?” she asked, eyes widening, and one arm lifting as if to close the door on them—a gesture she quickly halted half made.
“About Thomas Riordan. He’s your cousin, right?”
“Yes?” She made it a request for more information.
Halloran spoke up. “And you have an emergency conservatorship over him, is that correct?”
“Well, I did, but now he’s dead, it’s ended, according to my attorney, Mr. James Penberthy.” There was noticeable emphasis on the phrase “my attorney.”
Mike knew Jim Penberthy, knew he wasn’t a criminal defense attorney and therefore only a little better than useless in the predicament Ms. Shipp was about to find herself in.
“So the work on sorting out the material in the Riordan house is ended?”
“Yes, for now. The conservatorship ended when Tommy died. But I’m going to be appointed a—” She hesitated, looking for the right legal term. “Ah, yes, personal representative. My attorney says it takes about five days or a week. Then I get to go back to work.” She frowned and took several deep breaths through that prominent nose before bursting out, “This delay is outrageous! No one really cared about Tommy while he was alive! I cared, I drove hundreds of miles to help and people like you think I came here on purpose to kill him!”
Halloran said, “We’re not here to blame you, we’re here to find out what happened to him.”
“So why aren’t you doing that, instead of picking on me?”
“We have to go where the case leads me. You profit by his death, so here we are to ask you about that. Would you be willing to come with me downtown?”
“No . . .” She wasn’t sure she was entitled to refuse.
Malloy said, “Or you can meet us at the Excelsior police building.”
“Am I under arrest?” She was becoming belligerent.
Halloran said in a surprisingly conciliatory tone, “No, of course not. But we’re conducting an investigation, and you may be able to help us go forward with that. You do want whoever murdered your cousin found, right?”
Sudden tears in Shipp’s eyes were quickly blinked away. “Of course I do! But you can ask me anything you like right here.”
Halloran gave a big, exasperated sigh. There was no way they could tell her they wanted her in a law enforcement environment, where her growing impudence would be cowed and therefore she’d be more likely to cooperate, less likely to shout and throw things. Drawing from experience with other citizens, Malloy was sure Shipp was a shouter.
Still . . . she was right, she was not under arrest. They did not have the evidence—yet—to arrest her.
As lead investigator, it was Halloran’s decision. “Fine, let’s sit down and talk right here.”
Shipp stared at Halloran for several seconds, her face a careful blank, then she stepped back and let them come inside.
The room was small but clean. The carpet was thin and worn, a sad shade of brown. The blackout curtains on the window were also brown. The cushion on the only chair in the room was a dusty maroon, pulled up to a table with a scarred veneer surface. She gestured at Halloran to take the chair, and Malloy went to stand against the wall next to the door. She sat on the bottom edge of the bed, which had a red and brown paisley coverlet slightly disordered, as if she’d been lying on it.
A radio in the next unit could be heard broadcasting a news program, the words unintelligible but the urgent voice of the reporter and the bumper music that marked a segment were unmistakable.
Mike got out his fat notebook and wrote down the date, time, location, and Valentina’s name.
“Have you been able to make final arrangements for the burial of your cousin?” he asked.
He made the query in a quiet voice, but the words made her flinch. “Not yet. I don’t know . . .” She hesitated. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do about Tommy. The medical examiner is supposed to call me, and then . . . I don’t know.”
“There’s an excellent funeral home in Excelsior, Huber’s is the name. They can help with arrangements, even if it’s to send his body somewhere else for burial.”
She was surprised at this offer of assistance. She asked, half serious, “It’s not owned by your brother-in-law, is it?”
He smiled. “No, they’re no relation. I understand you’ve hooked up with the owner of Crewel World, Betsy Devonshire. You can ask her about them, they buried her sister.”
“Thanks, I’ll do that.”
The tension in the room had eased.
Halloran took over. “Now I want to talk to you about your cousin. How well did you know him? Did you grow up together?”
“Not well at all. For one thing, I’m ten years younger than he is, and for another, I grew up in Indiana and he grew up here. That house he lived in was bought by his grandparents and left to his parents, who left it to him, along with some kind of legal setup, a trust I think, because he can’t earn his own living. I saw him maybe three or four times when he was growing up; once when we came up there for a week and twice when he came to stay with us for a summer.”
“Are there any other cousins?”
“No.”
“So he was an only child and you are an only child.”
“Yes. Well, that is, we didn’t start out to be that way. Tommy had a younger brother, or maybe it was a sister, who died right after she was born. My mother had two stillbirths.”
Definitely something awry in the genes of these people, thought Malloy, taking notes as Halloran asked the questions.
“How did you two stay in touch? Phone calls, e-mail, Christmas letters?”
“We mostly didn’t. He didn’t have a computer and neither of us likes writing letters. I used to send him birthday cards, when I remembered to, and I almost always sent him a Christmas card. He sent me a Christmas card sometimes, and twice he sent me a postcard with a picture of a flying pig on it—same postcard, three or four years apart. No message, just his name. I don’t know what that was about, maybe he thought it was funny and forgot the second time he already sent it to me the first time. The only reason they contacted me was I’m about his only next of kin.”
Malloy spoke up. “So you are the sole heir?”
She stared at him for several seconds while a puzzled frown formed. “Heir? You mean like in a will? I didn’t know he wrote a will.”
“As far as I know, he never wrote a will.”
“Then what’s this heir stuff?”
“I mean, who gets his house and anything else he owned?”
“How should I know?” She was sounding belligerent again, and a little frightened.
Halloran gave Malloy a quelling look and said to Valentina, “Well, let’s take another approach. You said you’re his only next of kin?”
“Oh, that. Yes, I am. Is that what he means? Next of kin gets his stuff?” Her eyes shifted to a corner of the room and she said, “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Malloy nearly smiled at this lie and said
, “Really?”
She looked uncomfortable, then her chin came up. She looked him in the eye but said nothing.
He said, “So, if there are no other relatives still alive, that would make you his sole heir.”
She still said nothing, though she was breathing so hard the air whistled in her nose. “So what?” she finally asked.
Halloran said, almost gently, “That means that because he’s dead, you get all his property: the house and its contents.”
“I already got a house, and his house is full of crap.”
Malloy said impatiently, “According to the Leipolds, there is more than twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of not-crap in the house.”
“They said that? They haven’t said that to me!” said Valentina.
“They will, they’re making up a report for you right now. And there’s no law that says you can’t sell the property and take the money home with you.”
She drew a breath to argue with him, then let it out. “So what?” she asked again, this time without the fangs.
“So who else had a motive as strong as that to kill Mr. Riordan?”
She blinked away sudden tears of fright almost before he noticed them, but said bravely, “It’s not my job to find that out. It’s yours.”
* * *
“WELL, what do you think?” asked Halloran as the two rode in Malloy’s car back to Excelsior.
“Apart from the fact that she’s about as hinky as she could be? I think she’s almost as scared as she’s angry. I think she came up here thinking she could tuck poor Cousin Tom into some kind of locked ward, sell his house the following weekend, and go home on Monday with a purse full of money.”
“I don’t know,” said Halloran slowly. “I think she’s behaving—for her—normally.”
“Normally? Seriously?”
“I don’t think she told us a single lie.”
Chapter Seventeen
IT was a little past noon the next day when Valentina came into Crewel World. She found Betsy and Godwin sitting at the library table in the middle of the room having lunch, each with a cup of soup and half a sandwich, a complex scatter of papers and catalogs between them.
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