He wondered if he should just come clean and tell the truth. After all, why was he risking his neck for two people he hardly knew? This was not a hard-boiled mystery novel and he was far from being Mike Hammer.
Claire was getting ready for bed. After cleaning the kitchen, she turned off the lights and headed for the bathroom. The walls were in need of a fresh coat of paint and she’d had trouble deciding on a color. As she flicked on the switch, she thought maybe a soft apricot shade would be pretty. After brushing her teeth, she started to wash her face, and then it hit her—like an electrical charge zapped through her body. The memory of being in the hotel bathroom earlier that day, overhearing the cleaning women talking about Graciella. How could she have forgotten to tell Gil?
Donovan came in with Gil’s statement and slid it across the table to him. “Read it over and make sure we didn’t make any typos. Then sign it.”
Donovan remained standing, arms crossed, while Gil read.
“It’s fine.”
He held out a pen to Gil. “Sign it, please.”
Gil signed his name, then returned the pen and paper to Donovan.
“You’re free to go, Mr. Hunt.”
Gil was surprised. He had convinced himself he was going to have to tell the truth to avoid jail. As he stood up, his knees felt weak.
“What about Wendell?”
“We’re keeping him, at least overnight,” Donovan said. “There’s a chance he still might tell us where the maid is—that is, unless you want to. If you do that, we might be able to cut him loose.”
Gil hesitated. He knew Wendell would never tell, and he certainly wouldn’t want Gil to, even if his silence meant the big man would have to stay in jail. Maybe he knew Wendell better than he thought after all.
“I can’t help you, Detective. I have no idea where the woman is.”
Chapter 46
“How could I have been so stupid?” Claire asked Gil the next morning.
“You’re not stupid,” he told her. “There’s been a lot going on. A lot of strange things happening that would distract you.”
She grinned. “Talk about your classic understatements.”
They were sitting in the hotel restaurant, waiting for their breakfast. Claire wanted to confide in Gil as soon as they’d been seated, but the waitress wouldn’t leave them alone until they’d ordered.
“Okay,” Gil said, “so what did you want to tell me?”
They both leaned forward and Claire lowered her voice. Around them, other conventioneers were eating. Several mystery writers had already stopped by the table to say hello to Gil, all smiles and yellow badges. This was the first time she’d thought of his popularity as annoying.
As quickly as she could, Claire told him about the conversation she’d overheard in the ladies’ room.
“A gun?”
“That’s what they said.”
“Are you sure they weren’t just gossiping?”
“Well, of course they were gossiping,” she said testily. “That’s what women do in the ladies’ room. But whether people believe it or not, gossip is usually grounded in some kind of truth.”
“Okay, okay,” Gil said, “so Graciella keeps a gun in her locker.”
“And Robin Westerly was shot to death,” she pointed out. “What does that tell you?”
“That Graciella may own a gun, but it doesn’t prove she shot anyone.”
“Don’t you think this is something you should tell Donovan?”
He adjusted the napkin in his lap. “Under normal circumstances, yes.
“And these aren’t normal circumstances?”
“No.” He told her about his statement, which brought about another interrogation.
“You lied?” she asked. “Why would you lie?”
“I owe it to Wendell and Graciella—”
“You don’t owe them getting yourself in trouble with the law!” she said, cutting him off. “God, are you that nice, or just terminally naive?”
“Claire, I told Graciella I’d give her a chance to turn herself in. So maybe she’s not the sweetest person in the world—she does seem to have it in for men. And she owns a gun. But all of that doesn’t make her a murderer. Not without evidence anyway. Once she’s gone to Donovan, it won’t matter that I lied.”
“Let’s hope not,” she said. “Lying to the police is no small thing.”
“I know that.” He felt like a little boy being scolded. Everything she’d said was right, and yet he still felt an obligation.
“I’ll see her tonight. If she doesn’t go to Donovan, I’ll tell him everything. I just have to give her the chance.”
“What if she’s gone, Gil? Have you thought about what you’re going to do if you go to meet her and she never shows up?”
“I’ll have to take that chance.”
“Ay,” she said sitting back, covering her face with her hands.
At that moment, the waitress arrived with their breakfast and they had to wait for her to finish asking all her questions—”More coffee? Is everything all right? More water?”—before she went away.
“Look,” he said, leaning forward again, “it may sound stupid—”
“I’ll tell you something that sounds even more stupid,” she said, dropping her hands. “I’m going with you tonight.”
“You, don’t have to do—”
“Yes, I do. Maybe I can talk her into going to the police and that will keep you out of trouble. Jesus, obviously you don’t seem willing to help yourself, so I’m going to have to keep you out of jail.”
Suddenly, he felt a smile coming, and he tried to hide it. “Is that a fact?”
“Yes, it is,” she said. “We’ve only just gotten to know each other, but already I consider you one of my friends, and I can’t have one of my friends going to jail because he’s . . . he’s . . .”
“Stupid?”
“No! Too nice for his own good.”
“Thank you, Claire.”
“Eat your breakfast,” she snapped, hiding a smile of her own.
Neither of them knew it at that moment, but that was just the first of many times Claire would have to save Gil from himself.
“So what about Wendell?” she asked. “Are they going to let him out?
“I don’t know. Donovan said they’d hold him overnight or until he told them where Graciella was, but at least they’re not going to charge him with kidnapping.”
“I still feel bad about that.”
“Don’t,” he said. “You were worried about me. It just shows that you—” He stopped short.
“That I what?”
“Nothing. It was an honest mistake.”
They both knew he was going to say something else, but each decided not to pursue it at that moment.
“What about your lie? Have you checked the results to see if that horse won?”
“No,” he said, “I’m just hoping it didn’t. And I don’t want to look, because then I’ll be waiting for the hammer to fall. I’ll just have to hope I can stay out of Donovan’s way until tonight.”
Claire hesitated, then said, “You could come to my house.”
“What?”
“I said—”
“I heard you. It’s a nice idea, but no. That would get you too involved.”
“And going with you tonight to meet with a possible murderer, that’s not getting me ‘too involved’?”
“Okay,” he said, “but let’s just not take all of this into your home. This is a big hotel and people are getting lost in it all the time. I’m sure I can avoid one police detective for one day.”
They started to eat in silence and then Claire said, “I have a question.”
“What is it?”
“If Graciella didn’t kill Westerly, and Wendell didn’t kill him, who did?”
“That’s for Donovan to figure out,” Gil said. “I’m just helping Graciella out. I’m not going to try to solve a murder.”
“Funny,” she said, poking at her f
ood.
“What is?”
“Well,” she said, “solving a murder . . . that sounds like it would be the fun part.”
“Fun?”
“You know, asking questions, looking for clues . . . like Poirot.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have Poirot’s little gray cells,” Gil said. “Remember me? I’m just the nice, stupid man.”
Claire knew that was her cue to argue, but instead of playing along with him, she stuck a wedge of melon into her mouth and kept quiet.
Chapter 47
There were still convention activities that Sunday until three o’clock in the afternoon. Gil had agreed to meet Graciella and Wendell at 6:00 p.m., and as he and Claire finished their breakfast, he tried to decide whether or not to open his table for business. If he did, he’d be an easy mark for Donovan should the detective come looking for him.
“You can’t hide all day,” Claire said to him as they left the restaurant. “I’d feel like the criminal if I had to hide all day.”
“You’re right,” Gil said. “I’ll open the table and if he comes, he comes. I don’t think he can arrest me for lying to him. . . do you?”
“I’m no expert, but didn’t you withhold evidence?”
“I don’t know . . . maybe. Hell, what am I going to do? If I have to try avoiding him all day, I’m gonna really stress out.”
“We could go downtown, to the Old Market, get away from here. Have you been there before?”
“No.”
“This is your third trip to Omaha and you haven’t been to the Old Market yet?”
“I usually stay in the hotel, or go to the track.”
She put her hand on his arm to stop their progress toward the dealers’ room. “If we go downtown, I can show you around, we can have lunch or an early dinner, and then we can go to meet Graciella from there. That way, you’ll be away from the hotel and can’t possibly run into Donovan. And maybe you might even have a good time.”
“So . . . it would be like a date, then?”
She hesitated, then smiled. “Yes, it would be a date.”
“Okay, then I accept.”
They did not even stop by the dealers’ room. Gil decided to leave the cover on his table and write the entire convention off as a bad business trip. As they headed for the lobby on the way to Claire’s car, he spotted Spense coming toward him.
“Claire, I’ll meet you at the car,” he said. “I’ve got to talk to Spense.”
“See you there. I just hope Donovan doesn’t come walking in.”
“You’re right. I’ll get out of the hall and find a corner.”
She continued on and he moved to intercept Spense, already feeling like a criminal. Claire was right: Going downtown was the best plan.
“Spense . . .”
He managed to pull Spense into the alcove where the pay phones were.
“What’s going on?” the convention organizer asked.
“I ran into your partner, Fleming, yesterday,” Gil said. “He was frothing at the mouth because—”
“I know, I know. I talked to him. There were checks that had to be written, and some decisions needed to be made. The guy’s useless. I have to do everything.”
From what Gil knew of Spense, he was a real control freak and would have set things up for anyone who was embroiled in helping him run the convention. He looked harried, and more disheveled than usual. As he stood there, he shifted his weight back and forth, constantly moving. If Gil hadn’t known better, he would have thought the man was on something. And then he realized he didn’t know better.
“Spense, are you okay?”
“No, I’m not. This whole convention has been a disaster from the start.”
“With Westerly getting killed, you mean?”
Spense shook his head and then noticed a piece of lint on his sleeve and started picking at it. “Before that. Even before he got killed—the bastard—this convention was going to be a flop. I swear that this is the last one of these things I’m doing in Omaha, and next time I’m pickin’ my guest of honor a lot more carefully.”
“So you’ll still do conventions?”
“I’m bidding on Bouchercon for Seattle in three years,” Spense said. “I’m getting a big name for that one.”
Bouchercon, named for Anthony Boucher, longtime mystery critic for the New York Times in the sixties, was the biggest mystery convention of the year. Held in a different city each year, the convention usually had around twelve hundred attendees. If Spense was this stressed-out about a local convention, Gil wondered if the man could handle the pressure of a Bouchercon.
“Well, I wish you luck with that. I just wanted to tell you about Fleming.”
“Yeah, yeah . . . You headed for the dealers’ room? I heard that’s been a major disappointment, too.”
“I’m skipping it today. Got a date.”
“Sounds like a good idea. Wish I could run away from here.” Spense turned to leave, then said, “And on top of everything else, I lost my pin.”
“What pin?”
“My good-luck pin—you know, the one with the blue fedora on it. Either I lost it or the damn thing got stolen.”
“Sorry—”
“That’s probably why this whole thing went bad,” Spense said.
Before Gil could comment again, Spense turned and rushed away. Gil figured if Spense continued doing conventions, he’d be a great candidate for an ulcer.
Chapter 48
Gil thought it was way past time for him to try for a kiss.
There had been a nice moment earlier, at breakfast, when it had occurred to him to lean over and softly touch Claire’s lips with his. But there’d been too many people around—people he worked with, people he needed to maintain a certain level of professionalism with. And then there’d been the waitress, interrupting every five minutes.
He found walking through the Old Market with Claire—stopping into a pub for a beer, browsing in the antiquarian bookstore, and walking through one of the art galleries—so pleasurable that for a few hours he forgot all about Westerly, Donovan, and Graciella and started to look for an opening for that kiss.
The moment finally came when they were walking through a brick passageway between two restaurants. They stopped in a small alcove, dark except for a few rays of sunlight that filtered down through the thick ivy, to look at a fountain.
“I want to make a wish,” Claire said. “Do you have any pennies?”
“I’m sure I do.” He fished in his pockets, desperate to come up with a handful of pennies, because he already had formulated his plan of attack. Then he realized it didn’t matter if he came up with pennies, nickels, or half-dollars, for he was going to give whatever he had to her to toss into the fountain.
As it turned out, he came up with several pennies and a nickel.
“Here you go,” he said. He took her hand in his, pressed the change into her palm, then gently pulled her to him and kissed her.
It wasn’t a peck, but it wasn’t passionate, either. She didn’t pull back; in fact, she leaned into him, so that it lasted long enough to be nice, but not too long to be embarrassing.
“What was that for?” she asked when they broke apart.
He smiled, still looking into her eyes. “For extra luck.”
She smiled back, then turned toward the fountain, closed her eyes a second, opened them, and then tossed all but one of the coins into the water.
“There. Now you,” she said, handing him the nickel.
“No.” He grinned. “I just got my wish.”
They went to Chez Chong for dinner around four o’clock. Most people had already had an early Sunday dinner, but those who hadn’t eaten yet would be coming after five o’clock. This meant the couple had no problem finding a quiet, cozy table in the corner.
She had a beer with him, which he loved about her. They had been talking the entire time, learning more about each other, but when the fortune cookies arrived, she grew quiet.
; “What’s wrong?”
“This has been nice, hasn’t it?” she asked.
“It’s been great.”
“This is the kind of day I was hoping for when we first met. It’s just perfect—except for . . .”
“Later tonight.”
“Right. Do you know how to get to where Graciella is?” she asked.
“Yes. I only need to go someplace once to remember the route. It’s a talent.”
“It sure is,” she said. “If I’m not driving, I don’t pay any attention to directions at all.”
He told her about the laundry service that dealt with the hotel, how Wendell knew the manager and had gotten use of the office.
“Will we be able to get in without Wendell there?”
“I hope so,” he said.
“How’s Graciella going to react when we arrive without him?”
“I just hope she doesn’t panic.”
Her eyes widened. “Let’s just hope she doesn’t have that gun with her.”
“Good point.”
They finished eating, then left the restaurant, strolling leisurely to the car. Impulsively, Gil took her hand and was pleased when she squeezed his in hers. By the time they reached the car, it was 5:00 p.m.
“Should we go now?” she asked. “We might get there too early. Maybe we should wait awhile.”
He stopped walking. “I have a confession to make.”
“What’s that?”
He turned to face her. “I only know how to get to the warehouse from the hotel,” he said sheepishly. “I’ll have to drive back to the hotel and start from there. So I guess we better leave now.”
She laughed and touched his face. “You’re priceless.”
“I sure hope the value keeps going up.”
They didn’t have to drive all the way back to the hotel, which made the possibility of running into Donovan very slim. By the time Gil got himself back to the intersection of Seventy-second Street and Dodge, things started looking familiar.
Same Time, Same Murder: A Gil and Claire Hunt Mystery Page 15