by Hess, Joan
“She’s at Miss Parchester’s house, living with cats. Don’t say a word about this to Jiang. He’s desperate to find her, but he’ll make matters worse if he does.”
“He’s a lot more than desperate,” Caron said, giving the swing a push with her foot. “He kind of scares me when he starts jabbering about how he has to find her, which is all he’s done the last two sessions. He even wanted me to call all the cheap motels in town to see if Miao was staying there. Like I’m going to spend all afternoon talking to motel clerks!”
“I don’t blame you. Anyway, Miao did not kill Ludmila. I’m convinced she knows who did but is too terrified to tell anyone.” I gave her a brief description of what Miao had admitted. “I think she and Ludmila were both afraid of Gregory that night. He’d bellowed at Ludmila and come close to slapping her. He’s been hitting on Miao, making her nervous around him. Ludmila couldn’t leave until Bartek arrived to pick her up, and Miao probably thought Gregory would follow her to the bus stop. Maybe Ludmila told her that Bartek would drive her home.”
“Did they bond in adjoining bathroom stalls?”
“It’s only speculation, dear. According to Gregory, no one was hanging around when he left. He wouldn’t have looked inside the restrooms. He turned off the lights and went outside, where Sonya was waiting for him. They went to his house for the night.”
Caron’s lip curled. “That is Utterly Gross. He’s way too old for her. Inez will literally barf when she hears this.”
She pulled out her cell phone, but I caught her hand. “Inez can barf later. I need your help. If Gregory turned off the lights, who turned them on before Bartek arrived?”
“Ludmila,” she said promptly. “She saw that Gregory was gone, and she didn’t want to sit in the dark. That doesn’t explain why Miao stayed, though, unless you actually believe Ludmila tried to be nice to her. Inez and I didn’t see any fireworks when we drove by, or hear angels singing.”
“I’ll give you that. If we accept that Ludmila turned the lights back on and sat down to wait for Bartek, why didn’t she go unlock the front door when he started pounding on it?”
Caron shot a look of longing at her cell on top of her purse. “Joel should get here pretty soon. Maybe you should be telling this to Peter, not me.”
“He might find it entertaining, but he’s a stickler for evidence. All I have is Miao’s exceedingly brief statement. There’s no way to substantiate it.” It was my turn to give the swing a push. The gentle motion did not soothe my feverish mind, which was whirring like a grasshopper in the yard. Peter was not fond of speculation unless it involved greenhouses and lily ponds. I gritted my teeth as I pictured his condescending smile and flicker of boredom. There had to be a way to wrap the perp in shiny paper and put a bow on his head. The perp who’d lied to me, that is.
The swing bounced as Caron stood up. “Joel’s here,” she said unnecessarily, since his car had come to a stop near the steps. “You’re not going to do something crazy, are you, Mother? I need you to hang around long enough to help me pack for college.” She bent down and gave me a hug. “I Mean It.”
“I won’t do anything too crazy.”
19
The phone was ringing as I came into the kitchen. I picked up the receiver and sat down on a stool next to the island. “Hello,” I said in a less than delighted tone.
“Did you watch the noon news on TV?” demanded Rick.
“I was having lunch with our key witness. What happened?” I primed myself for more bad news.
“Willie announced her retirement. After she left the hospital, she went home and called a press conference. She said she was two years beyond the minimum age and felt as though she needed to step down because of health concerns.”
“Interesting, but not earth-shattering.” I carried the receiver with me as I took a glass out of a cabinet and held it under the ice maker in the refrigerator door. The ice cubes clattered so loudly that I missed his response. “You’ll have to repeat that. It’s tea time.”
“Oh, I’ll wait, and I suggest you have something stronger than iced tea. You’d better sit down, too.”
I was intrigued. I ignored his suggestion and filled my glass from the pitcher on the bottom shelf. “Okay, I’m ready. What did you say?”
“After Willie said she was retiring, she said that during her career she had done something unworthy of her position and she wanted to apologize to the public. Violating their trust in the judicial system and such. This is the kicker. She said that when she presided over the class-action lawsuit brought by employees of Sell-Mart, she’d taken a bribe to rule in favor of the corporation. The reporters went wild and started pelting her with questions and waving their microphones at her like batons. There was almost a riot. Willie just smiled and refused to comment further.”
“Sheesh.” I took a gulp of tea. “She’s a federal judge, not some county justice of the peace. Sheesh.”
“No kidding,” Rick said. “You can watch it on the six o’clock news, but that’s pretty much the gist of it. The federal prosecutors must be huddled in their offices, weeping and trying to remember what other cases she presided over. Every ruling she’s made in the last twenty years is in jeopardy. They’ll all have to be reviewed. Why would Willie sabotage herself? All she had to do was keep her mouth shut and cash her hefty retirement checks.”
“You’re partially to blame. Once you agreed to go after Gregory, she started feeling guilty. What she did was similar to embezzlement, only her victim was the judicial system. Damn, I feel bad for her.”
Rick gurgled. “For her? You just accused me of forcing her into making the confession.”
“Get over it,” I said. “This does explain the way she allowed Sonya to treat her so rudely. Sonya works in the corporate office of Sell-Mart. She must have found out about the bribe and dangled it over Willie’s head. Blackmail comes to mind.”
His gurgles grew louder. I hoped somebody was nearby in case he collapsed and needed medical attention. He finally regained control of himself. “It makes sense, but ouch. I can’t believe I moved to what was billed as a cheerful little community with kids on bicycles, concerts in the park, festivals, high school football games, and the whole fantasy. Do you realize how many crooked people we’ve uncovered in a week? This makes my acquaintances in Manila look like a bunch of missionaries who happen to peddle something other than religion. When’s the next flight to Hong Kong?”
“I’ll have to look online. Have you heard from Waterford?”
“I’m going to call him when I get home. The time’s an hour earlier, so he should be in his office.”
I was thankful I no longer suspected him of Ludmila’s murder. He’d been such a good little helper thus far. It was time to find out how far out on the branch he was willing to crawl. I asked him to call me after he’d spoken to Waterford. Now I had the rest of the afternoon to polish my plan, which was only partially crazy.
* * *
I was driven to dusting when Rick finally called. Sounding like a birthday boy, he said, “Waterford left a message on my landline. He flew out this afternoon to the CIS office in Fort Smith. He’s calling a meeting for this evening because he’s ready to come down on Leslie like a load of loose gravel. He wants to talk to us first thing in the morning so we can go over the details. After that, we can tag along when he storms the Literacy Council and waves a warrant under her nose.”
I hadn’t expected anything associated with the federal bureaucracy to move so swiftly. “Good work, Rick,” I said, somewhat stunned.
“I guess so. I’ve been thinking—always a bad sign—that maybe what Leslie’s doing isn’t so terrible. I mean, no one gets hurt. It’s a scam, but who’s the victim? A grad student gets enough money to have her car repaired, and a man from wherever realizes his dream of becoming a citizen.”
I’d had the same reservations. “For one thing, it undermines the whole process. There are thousands of people who want citizenship, and it’s an excruciatin
gly lengthy ordeal of filing paperwork, waiting, filing more paperwork, and still waiting. Leslie’s clients cut in line, and they do so through deception. As for the women, they know they’re breaking the law. I’d hate to spend the next forty years of my life worrying some bureaucrat might decide to investigate me for fraud. It’s a federal offense. Even if she escapes with a fine or probation, she’s a felon for life. Would you want to explain that to your children?”
“Trying to put a positive spin on it, huh?”
“Somebody has to.” I took out my thick sheaf of notes and found the pertinent one. After I’d described my plan to expose the perp, there was a noticeable silence on his end. I wished I could see his expression, which I assumed was high on the dumbfounded spectrum. “What’s more,” I said to add to his anxiety, “we may be able to pull it off this evening if Peter has to go to Fort Smith. And, most importantly, if Austin isn’t working late. We can’t do this without him.”
“I’ll call him,” Rick said glumly. “He wouldn’t miss this for all the pot in California.”
I told him that I’d call him back after I heard from Peter. My stomach was seizing as I sank down on the sofa. I’d lost my mind, or what was left of it. All I’d wanted to do was tutor a deserving foreigner for two hours a week to prove to myself that I wasn’t just a parasite, that I still had a trace of my youthful sense of altruism. I’d donated clothes to charity shops, helped organize food drives, and signed enough petitions to constitute a telephone directory for a small village. As Rick had said, a lot of people were going to tumble in the next few days. Gregory deserved to tumble off a cliff in the Himalayas. Leslie was a professional felon. I was saddened that Keiko might be involved.
I hadn’t moved when the phone rang. Groaning, I went into the kitchen. As I’d anticipated, it was my adorable husband. “I have to go to some damn meeting in Fort Smith,” he said. “I’m leaving now, and I should be home by midnight.”
“Meeting?”
“It seems that someone—and I have no idea who—tipped off an CIS agent in Phoenix about criminal activity right here in little ol’ Farberville. The guy decided he has to brief us at the regional office instead of here. Why not make it inconvenient for everybody? Bureaucrats!”
“I’ll leave the light on for you.” I added some other remarks of a private nature, and we were both giggling when we hung up.
* * *
Rick, Austin, and I entered the Literacy Council at eight, having spent the previous hour plotting over coffee at Mucha Mocha. Keiko was already gone. Since Gregory might not be pleased to see me, I sent Austin to tell him that we were having a publicity committee meeting in the back classroom and might stay late. Gregory, it seemed, was not at all interested. The evening class came out of the room and began to leave. I ducked behind a bookshelf until Yelena went out the front door. Some of the cubicles were still occupied. Leslie, accompanied by Aladino and Graciela, went into her office. I didn’t care if she’d seen us.
We spread advertising layouts and stencils on the table. Austin loosened his bow tie and produced a bottle of wine from his briefcase. “Might as well enjoy ourselves,” he said, grinning. “What will dear Frances do if she finds out about this? Put me in time-out?”
“She’s going to find out about it,” I said, my face grim. “You need to get busy, buddy. The council’s about to close its hallowed doors for the night.”
Rick took the corkscrew out of Austin’s hand. “If all we wanted was a wine steward, I would have found somebody cheaper.”
“I’m getting paid?”
I urged Austin to do his assigned task and stood outside the room to watch out for Gregory. Everything proceeded without delays. I heard Leslie say good night to the students as they all left. Two Latino men laughed on their way out. I crept to the end of the cubicles and ascertained that only Gregory remained in the building. Five minutes later he came to the doorway and told us that he was leaving. I reminded him not to turn off the lights. He grumbled unpleasantly and stalked down the pathway to the front door. I waited to see if he’d turn off the lights in a snit, but I heard the door bang closed.
Austin and Rick were seated at the table, discussing a scandal involving the college baseball coach. I was too nervous to sit. I paced around the table until I heard a car door slam. “Go,” I said in an urgent voice, “and do try to pay attention.”
They took the bottle of wine into the room where Willie had been found and closed the door. I waited to make sure they left the light off, then sat down at the table and rearranged the layouts as if I could actually make sense of them.
“Hey, Ms. Malloy,” Toby said from the hallway, “what’re you doing here by yourself?”
“A committee meeting. Austin and Rick were here earlier, but they abandoned me to go to a party.” I did my best to sound pathetic. “I hate committee meetings, but at least I don’t have to listen to other people repeat themselves half the night.”
“Sounds like my history class. The teacher’s a big fan of the Civil War, so no matter what the subject is, he finds a way to start talking about it.”
I smiled. “I may have had the same teacher, although he preferred the French Revolution. It’s amazing how it seems to have affected every single thing that happened afterward.” I pushed a paper. “I’d better get back to this.”
“And I’d better get back to my mop.” He gave me a salute and returned to the main part of the building.
I wished I’d accepted a glass of wine. I twisted my fingers into pretzels while pretending to be absorbed by the array of meaningless material. I gave him half an hour and then went to find him. “Toby, my daughter might call on the phone here. Please answer it and let me know. I won’t be able to hear it in the copy room.”
He tugged on a stray lock of hair as he stared at me. “What are you gonna do in the copy room? Oh, I get it—you’re going to make copies.” He found this mildly hilarious. I overlooked it because of his age.
“No, I’m not going to make any copies. Earlier I was talking to someone who told me there might be a clue to the identity of Ludmila’s killer in the room. Something the police missed because they didn’t know it was significant. I had to wait until Rick and Austin left because”—I’d forgotten to script this moment—“I don’t want to tell anyone until I’m sure. Don’t worry about it. Just come find me if Caron calls.”
I went into the copy room. It was as dismal as it had been a week ago, but even dirtier because surfaces had been dusted for fingerprints. I sneezed as I stepped over an empty box. The copy machine feigned innocence, but I wasn’t fooled. I examined it as if it were a vault rumored to be filled with gold bullion. When I pushed a button, a green light began to blink. I pushed another button that aroused a red light and a series of beeps. The machine hummed as I found more buttons. I lifted the cover and discovered a workbook page that had been left by mistake. I balanced on a two-legged stool and read over it. It proved to be a less than scintillating story about a woman buying fruit in a market.
Fifteen minutes had passed, and I began to wonder if I’d made a miscalculation. Teenagers are hard to predict, since they rarely know themselves what they might do next. I was sneezing on a regular schedule, and my lungs were beginning to ache. I could recite the order in which the workbook woman purchased fruit. I didn’t dare pull another book off the shelves, since I would be rewarded with a cloud of dust. I was almost ready to give up when Toby appeared in the doorway.
“Excuse me, Ms. Malloy, but maybe I can help. I could hear you sneezing from the other classroom. What are you looking for?”
“A DNA sample. Apparently whoever was in here with Ludmila had an itchy scalp.” I tried not to react as his hand, which had been scratching behind his ear, dropped to his side. “All it takes is one single hair to confirm a match that’s ninety-nine percent accurate. Isn’t science amazing?”
“Guess you didn’t find one, huh?”
“I’ve found several hairs.” I held up a small plastic bag th
at conveniently happened to contain several hairs (from Peter’s hairbrush). “I think I’ll take these straight to the police lab before I lose them. Of course, the crime scene techs can always find more, now that they know what to look for.”
He remained in the doorway, his arms crossed. His demeanor had changed as I spoke. His boyish grin was now a tight-lipped scowl. I was quite sure his body had swelled to block the entire doorway. “Nobody knows about these stupid hairs?”
“The police just hate it when civilians meddle in their investigations. If I went to them without evidence, they’d laugh me out of the PD.” I dangled the bag. “They won’t be laughing after I show this to them.”
“That’s not such a good idea, Ms. Malloy. A lot of people come in here all the time. I clean in here every couple of days. Those hairs don’t mean anything. They could belong to anybody.”
“Including you,” I said, nodding, “although I thought I heard that you never clean in here. Didn’t you tell the police you hadn’t even opened the door?”
His eyes narrowed like those of an irritable snake. “So I got confused when they asked me all those questions. It’s no big deal. I think you ought to toss that bag in the trash and forget about it, Ms. Malloy.”
“I wish Miao could forget as easily, but she’s having a hard time. I really felt sorry for her when I talked to her today.”
“You talked to her? Gimme a break. She doesn’t know enough English to talk to a dog. She minces around like she thinks she’s on a runway, all flirty and coy.” I could swear his body was still swelling, and in a matter of seconds, his head would bump the top of the door frame. I gulped back a snicker.
“Her English isn’t as limited as you think,” I lied smoothly. “She told me what happened. Maybe I misunderstood her. I can’t be sure. I need to tell the police where she is so they can get her with a translator.”
“Where is she?”
“I’ll tell you after you’ve told me what really happened in here. There’s no reason why you should be in trouble if she lied to me—or, as I said, I misunderstood her.”