by C. R. Corwin
He blushed and dug out my wallet. He studied my business card and my driver’s license and all the rest. He asked me if I knew my address and my phone number and my Social Security number. I rattled off all three.
“Why did you threaten the president?” asked Agent Morris.
“I did not threaten the president,” I said. “I merely asked the other agent if I looked like the kind of woman the president needs to be concerned about.”
Agent Canfield corrected me. “You said ‘worry about,’ ma’am.”
“I suppose in your business worry sets off more alarms than concern, ” I conceded. “In mine they’re pretty much tweedledum and tweedledee.”
“So you had no intentions of confronting the president?” Agent Morris asked.
“Absolutely not.”
“The agent at the line felt you were exhibiting anger,” said Agent Canfield.
“Poop! I was just worried- concerned -about getting to my appointment with Detective Grant.”
Asked Agent Morris, “And who is Detective Grant?”
“Chief homicide detective with the Hannawa Police,” I said.
“And why was it,” Agent Canfield wondered, “that you wanted to see a homicide detective at the very location where the president was about to speak?”
“I’m helping him solve a murder.”
“This Detective Grant needs help solving murders, does he?” asked Agent Morris.
“All the help he can get,” I said.
I was convincing enough that Agent Canfield called Detective Grant to confirm our meeting. Which was, as they say, problematic. I didn’t actually have an appointment with Grant. I’d just planned to pop in and ruin his lunch, as usual.
Canfield put the phone down. He pulled his sunglasses down so I could see his cold eyes. “He said he’s never heard of you.” Then he smiled somewhat humanly. “Actually, Mrs. Sprowls, he’s on his way to take custody of you.”
“Take custody! What do you mean take custody?”
Ten minutes later Grant and I were fighting our way across the front of City Hall. The president’s motorcade had just pulled up and the crowd was going nuts. “Had you bothered to call for an appointment, you would have found out that I was on security detail today,” Grant yelled into my ear.
“Does this mean we can’t talk?” I yelled back.
“We can talk,” he assured me. “If you don’t mind sharing the stage with the president of the United States.”
“If the president doesn’t mind, I don’t mind.”
And so my meeting with Detective Grant was held on the top step of City Hall, surrounded by the Hemphill College Marching Bear Cat Band. On a makeshift stage fifty steps below us stood the president, the governor, the mayor, two U.S. senators, a gaggle of congressmen, a herd of local politicians. Below them was a great horseshoe of Hannawans, some with signs, some with children on their shoulders, all thrilled to pieces to be participating in this unimportant historic event. I waited until the president got to the podium then got to the business at hand. “So, Scotty-have you questioned Eddie again?”
Grant’s eyes were on the backsides of the politicians in front of us, but at least his mind was on me. Some of it, anyway. “Again and again,” he said.
“But nothing new to report?”
“Nothing new to report.”
The president was getting a resounding cheer about something. I raised my voice. “What about the sex change thing? Getting anywhere with that?”
“We’re still working it.”
“In other words, nothing new there either.”
“Nothing new there either.”
The president was now saying something about the American can-do spirit. The crowd was wildly agreeing. “You know what your problem is, Scotty?” I said. “You’re getting too much sleep. It makes the mind sluggish.”
He knew I was playing with him. And he knew he had no choice but to play along. “Been lying awake nights, have you?”
“Thinking and thinking.”
“I’ve been meaning to try that myself.”
“You should. It can help you unravel the most interesting mysteries.”
“For instance?”
Now the president was saying something about the future. The crowd was all for it, apparently. “Well, for instance, who Violeta Bell was before she was Violeta Bell.”
Grant was done playing. “You know for sure?”
“Not 100 percent sure,” I admitted. “But I think there’s a very strong possibility that the late Violeta Bell was, once upon a time, the late brother of Prince Anton Clopotar, pretender to the throne of Romania.”
It was as if I’d just told him he’d won the state lottery and then explained that it was a $5 scratch-off ticket. “Good God, Maddy, you’re not still climbing that family tree, are you?”
First I told him what I knew for sure. That Prince Anton lived on an island in the St. Lawrence River. That clopot in Romanian means bell. That the prince’s great-grandmother, Violeta, had married a man named Clopotar. That fifty years ago the prince’s older brother, Petru, took the family boat out on the river and was never seen again. That the Canadian police ruled it an accidental drowning even though they hadn’t recovered a body. That the prince, after half a century, still continued to insist that his brother’s death was a suicide. That while there was little chance Romania would ever restore the monarchy, the Clopotar family was in the running if they did.
Then I got to the fun part-my theory. “Until a couple of days ago I thought maybe the prince had killed his brother to get him out of the picture. And then learning that another pretender to the throne was alive and well and living in Hannawa, Ohio, made sure that she, too, was out of the picture. The prince’s father died a bit suspiciously, too, by the way.”
The president was now warning some country or the other to stop doing whatever it was doing, lest we be forced to do something about it. I waited for the applause to die down. “But obviously, the prince couldn’t have killed his brother back then if his brother was also Violeta Bell,” I said.
“It wouldn’t be the easiest thing,” Grant agreed.
He was being a smart ass. I ignored him and went on. “I now think the prince really believed his brother drowned. And I think he really believed it was suicide. Petru must not have been very happy in his own skin. But instead of wrapping himself in an anchor and jumping overboard, Petru only made it look that way. He swam to shore. He went somewhere and had a sex change. Took the name Violeta Bell. Moved to Hannawa and opened an antique shop.”
Grant seemed more relieved than intrigued. “So, the prince didn’t kill his brother fifty years ago.”
“That’s right.”
“And there’s no evidence he killed his father.”
“Well, no.”
“Which means you have no evidence that Prince What’s-his-name is the murdering type.”
“I never said I did.”
“Which means you’re finally off this royalty stuff.”
“Not at all,” I said. “What if the prince had been happy that his brother drowned? Even if he had nothing to do with it? Then all these years later he realizes his older sibling still might be alive. He does some digging. Figures out what I’ve figured out.”
Grant corrected me. “What you think you’ve figured out.”
And I corrected him. “I’m sure the prince knows his Romanian. How many nano seconds after he saw the name Violeta Bell in Gabriella Nash’s story would it take his frontal lobes to start flashing Violeta Clopotar?”
“I suppose it’s a possibility.”
Both the president and I were really feeling our oats now. “You bet it’s a possibility,” I snapped over the roar of the crowd. “And if the prince wasn’t surprised that his brother committed suicide, he might not be surprised to learn he faked his death and had a sex change.”
“And the prince liked it better when his brother was dead and so he kills him now?”
“Ki
lls her-but yes, that’s what I’m saying.”
Grant now reminded me why he was the detective, and I a lowly librarian. “It’s a nice theory, Maddy, I’ll give you that. But you’ve no real evidence. Not that the prince killed Violeta Bell. Not that Violeta Bell was really his sister or brother or whatever.”
It was time to confess. “I may have gone to see the prince during my vacation.”
I could see the headache wiggling across his forehead, like a million invisible worms wielding tiny sledgehammers. “Judas H. Priest! Were you trying to get yourself killed?”
“I was curious. And I wasn’t killed.”
He almost screamed at me. “You’ve just spent twenty minutes telling me what a cold-blooded killer the prince is!”
I pressed my finger across his lips to shush him. “Good gravy, Scotty. The Secret Service is going to wrestle you to the ground.” I gave him a few seconds to cool down. “I know I shouldn’t have gone. But you’ve been pooh-poohing the Romanian thing from the get-go. And I had to get a read on the guy-”
Grant started raking his eyebrows with his fingernails. “A read on the guy?”
“That’s right. And maybe stumble and bumble into something important.”
Grant was wilting in front of me like a bone-dry petunia. “And did you, Maddy? Did you stumble and bumble into something?”
“Well, for a few seconds there I thought he was going to give me a nice sample of his DNA.”
“His DNA? Judas H.-”
“To compare with Violeta’s,” I explained. “To see if they were related.” I took the photo the prince had given me from my purse. I handed it to Grant. “He almost licked the envelope. But then he didn’t. You can get DNA off an envelope, can’t you?”
Grant pulled the photo from the envelope and studied it. “Yes, you can.”
“And I imagine you have Violeta’s DNA.”
“The coroner routinely takes a DNA sample during an autopsy,” he said, beginning to un-wilt a bit. “In fact, we used Violeta’s DNA to back up the coroner’s finding that she’d once been a he. All that X and Y chromosome stuff I’ve never understood.”
“Well, it’s too bad the prince didn’t lick the envelope,” I said. I reached back into my purse. I pulled out a Ziploc sandwich bag. “Of course he did lick this teaspoon. Can you get DNA off that?”
Grant took the bag. Held it in front of his face. “You’d think it would be impossible. Slick surface and all. But sometimes you can.”
I pulled out another bag. “Surely you can get some from this.” It was one of the prince’s smoking pipes. “There’s enough stinky old spit in the stem to gag a buzzard.”
Grant was a much happier man now. “I suppose the prince just didn’t give these things to you.”
“I realize you probably can’t use any evidence from them in court,” I said. “But if you can have the DNA checked-well, we’d at least know if I was on the right track, wouldn’t we?”
The president had finished speaking. The crowd was going insane. The Marching Bear Cat Band was blasting the theme from Rocky. “That we would,” Grant bellowed. “That we would.”
The president waved good-bye to the crowd. Started moving up the steps toward us, fervently shaking hands with all the local pols and their well-scrubbed families. Before I could get out of the way, the president was eyeball-to-eyeball with me, smiling like I was a favorite sister. “So good to see you,” the president said to me.
I don’t have much patience with politicians. No matter how high an office they hold. But I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed the president’s hand. “And good to see you-Madam President.”
***
By the time I got back to the paper I was shaking like a maraca. I’d just met the president of the United States. I’d been hassled by Secret Service agents. Been serenaded at close range by a marching band. I got off the elevator and headed straight for the women’s room.
Eric stopped me in the hallway. I was trying not to look like I needed to get there in a hurry but he’d worked with me long enough to know I did. “I’m done checking into that bread truck business,” he said.
With everything that had happened in the last two weeks, I’d forgotten all about that old Hausenfelter bread truck that Eddie French claimed no one owned. Of course, I wasn’t going to admit it. “And?”
Eric leaned against the wall to block my escape. He slowly opened his notebook and studied his notes. “Let’s see now-Hausenfelter Bread Company maintains a fleet of thirty delivery trucks. It routinely replaces five every year. The old ones are sold to a used truck dealer on Cleveland Road. W.E. Richfield amp; Sons.”
“Did you call them?”
His deadpan face told me he was enjoying my discomfort. “Of course I called them, Maddy. I’m an enterprising young man. A self-starter extraordinaire. Not to mention a multi-tasker of the highest order.”
“What you are is an idiot,” I snarled. “Just tell me what you’ve got before I explode.”
He dragged out a long, long, “ Wellllllllllll -if the good ole boys at Richfield amp; Sons don’t sell the trucks in a year they put them in the crusher and sell the metal for scrap.”
“So obviously someone bought that old truck Eddie drives,” I said.
“Obviously. But they wouldn’t give me any names. Company policy.”
I tried to step around him. “Check the title bureau.”
He moved to the middle of the hallway, blocking me again. “Already have. But there’s no record of Eddie French ever buying a truck from the Richfields or anywhere else.”
Another thirty seconds of this torture and I’d be dancing like James before his morning walks. “So we have no idea who owns that truck in his backyard?”
His straight face was beginning to warp. “We don’t know for sure about that particular truck. But somebody interesting did buy a used Hausenfelter truck from Richfield amp; Sons eleven years ago.”
I crossed my fingers that it wouldn’t be Kay Hausenfelter. I liked her too much for her to be the murderer. “Who bought the bread truck, Eric?”
“Jeanette Salapardi.”
“No!”
“She also buys the license plate stickers every year.”
“No!”
18
Wednesday, August 16
I wasn’t exactly having the easiest of weeks. Oh, don’t worry. I was still keeping to my in-at-nine-out-by-five work schedule. And I was still taking my good old time getting back from lunch. But a multiplicity of intertwining troubles, all of my own making, were beginning to take their toll on my already shaky disposition.
First of all, I was still getting grief about my run-in with the Secret Service. The paper had actually reported it as part of their coverage of the president’s visit. It was a little story on an inside page-SECRET SERVICE STOPS HERALD-UNION STAFFER-but everyone saw it. Everyone in the newsroom saw it. Everyone on my street saw it. All the clerks at the supermarket saw it. That rightwing nut on the radio, Charlie Chimera, saw it. Even the clucks at TV23 saw it. I was the laughing stock of Hannawa, Ohio.
Managing Editor Alec Tinker, to his credit, did have the good sense to warn me of his decision to run the story. “If anyone else in our circulation area had been held by the Secret Service we would have published it,” he said.
“But it was just a stupid misunderstanding,” I argued. “They let me go right away.”
“We have to demonstrate that we’re a part of the community,” Tinker said. “Not above it.”
The other thing churning away at my insides was that damn DNA sample. Detective Grant had warned me that the results probably wouldn’t be back from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification for a week. “It might even take longer if things get backed up over there,” he cautioned.
I growled at him like a bear that hadn’t eaten all winter. “Can’t you tell them it’s important?”
“Oh, we will,” he said. “And so will every other police department in the state about their samples.
Everybody wants it yesterday. So my advice, Maddy my dear, is to take a chill pill and wait for the test tube elves at BCI to do their magic.”
On top of those two things, Bob Averill was continuing to pester me about Eddie, and Ike was continuing to pester me about my tonsils. So I couldn’t get away from the morgue fast enough that noon.
I pulled into Speckley’s ten minutes late. I hurried inside and scanned the crowded booths. Kay Hausenfelter was already there, studying the menu while everyone else was studying her.
Kay was actually dressed somewhat conservatively for our lunch-for Kay that is. She’d squeezed her ample top into a pink scoop-neck jersey and hidden her equally plentiful bottom under a red peasant skirt. Her hoop earrings were big enough for a gymnast to perform on. The straps on her sandals were trimmed with glass diamonds. Her fingernails matched the jersey. Her toenails matched the skirt.
I apologized for being late and recommended the house specialty to her, the meatloaf sandwich, au gratin potatoes on the side. She wrinkled her nose and asked me if the Cobb salad was edible. “I’ve never had it,” I said. “But if it’s on the menu it’s probably good.”
We engaged in the usual Ohio small talk until our lunches came. How hot the summer has been. How the fall is our favorite time of the year. How winter’s always a bitch.
It was Kay who finally got the ball rolling. “I suppose you invited me to lunch to talk about something more than the weather.”
I folded my hands and got as comfortable as I could. “I thought maybe we could talk about sex.”
Kay Hausenfelter forked a slice of avocado and snipped off the end with her perfect whiter-than-white teeth. “My favorite subject,” she said.
I took a bite of my meatloaf. “I don’t want you to think I’m talking to you about this because-”
She could see I was having trouble finishing the sentence. She laughed. Devoured the rest of the avocado. “Because I dress like a hootchie?”
“Because I figured you’d be more comfortable with the subject than Ariel or Gloria.”
She laughed again. Went after a sliver of radish with her fork. “You’re obviously a good judge of people.”