Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 05 - A Deadly Change of Luck (9 page)

“But he thought he was helping someone else conceal assets.  Isn’t that like being an accomplice to a crime?” I insisted.

Sam rubbed his tired eyes then ran his fingers through his hair.  “You want me to go after Simon when we know he’s not the murderer?  Why waste our resources on him?” 

“So, the killer has a million bucks, Simon has thirty-million, and Lou Winnomore’s murder goes down in the annals of unsolved mysteries.”

“Not necessarily.  Simon did us one big favor in this whole mess.  He recorded the serial numbers of the bills before he handed them over.”

I raised my eyebrows. 
“Really?
  Why’d he do that if he thought everything was kosher?”

Sam smirked at me. 
“Because Simon is smart.
  He wanted a little insurance that if it wasn’t above-board, he wouldn’t be stuck holding the smoking gun.”

“So this is your plan?  Wait till the bills show up in circulation and nab the culprit?”

“It’s worked in the past,” Sam replied.

I rolled my eyes.  “You know how many ways there are to launder money?  The guy’s already on to the fact that we know Lou was murdered.  This whole Arthur Simon scenario proves that.  You think he’s going to stick around town and buy his groceries with that money?  I bet he’s already in Mexico.  He’ll put that money in a Mexican bank and the trail will hit a block wall right at the border.”

Sam scowled at me.  “You got any bright ideas?”

“You try checking out the source of the anonymous e-mail?” I asked.

“I got guys working on it right now.  They don’t sound hopeful.”

“How about fingerprints on the locker and under the seat where they hid the key?”

“It would only take about a year to sort out the eighty-some-odd prints we’d probably find, half of which would not be complete enough to make any identification, and run them against our database.  Then, if the guy was stupid enough to not wear gloves or wipe off his prints, and if he’s already got a record, we might be lucky enough to get him.”

“Do you ever see the glass half full?” I asked.

“Only when it’s whiskey.”

I stood and headed for the door
, then
stopped with my hand on the knob.  “You go ahead and wait for one of those bills to show up.  I’ve got work to do.”

Sam pounded his fist on his desk.  “Not on this case, you don’t!”

I ignored his comment as I walked out the door.

“I mean it!  I’m not
gonna
lift a finger to save your scrawny little neck when you find it in a vice!” he hollered at me through the closed door.

“Oh, yes you will,” I whispered to myself as I pushed my way out the door to the parking lot.  “And you’ll thank me when you get promoted for solving this murder.”

Chapter Eight

I
decided my best bet was to start with Chuck, the brother-in-law.  He would probably know more about Lou Winnomore’s family than anyone.  I called ahead to let him know I’d be stopping by, but I didn’t tell him why.  He seemed like a very accommodating man on the phone, giving me block-by-block directions to his house.  When I arrived, he was waiting at the front door to greet me.  He was a plump, baldheaded man with a white mustache.  He wore a plaid shirt and fire-engine-red suspenders, which held up a pair of brand new blue jeans.  A pair of reading glasses sat perched on the end of his nose, and he had a newspaper rolled up and tucked under his arm. 

“Hello.  You must be Devonie,” he called as I got out of my car.

“Yes.  And you’re Chuck?”

“That’s me.  Come on in.  The wife is baking cookies.  Oatmeal, I think.”

I smiled and followed him into his kitchen.  “Betty, this is Devonie.  She’s the little gal who bought Lou’s place,” Chuck said to his wife, who was busy measuring out a cup of raisins into a bowl of oatmeal cookie dough.  She was twice as plump as her husband. 

“Nice to meet you,” she replied.  “Sorry I can’t shake your hand, but I’m all gooey with dough,” she continued, waving her pudgy, dough-covered fingers over the bowl to prove her point.

“Oh, don’t worry.  I know never to bother a chef when she’s busy creating a masterpiece,” I said, admiring a rack of cooling cookies.  The aroma of cinnamon wafted to my nose.  “They smell great.”

Betty smiled proudly.  “Help yourself.  They’re still warm from the oven.”

Chuck grabbed two off the cooling rack and took a bite out of one.  He pointed toward the rest.  “Better hurry before I eat ‘
em
all.”

I took one and tasted it.
It was wonderful
—warm and chewy with lots of raisins and walnuts.  It was clear to me why Chuck and Betty were a bit on the plump side, especially if she cooked like this routinely. 
“
Mmm
.
  Delicious.”

Chuck handed me a napkin and pulled a chair out for me to sit at the table.  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the seat.  “I don’t really know how to break this to you gently, so I guess I’ll just tell you straight out.”

Chuck frowned.  “You mean about Lou?”

I was a little surprised.  “What about Lou?” I asked.

“That someone killed him,” Chuck said.

“You know?”

“Yes.  A detective came by last night to talk to us.  He told me what happened.”

“Detective Wright?”
I asked.

“That’s him.  Nice fellow.  I told him all I could about Lou.  Don’t think I was much help,” Chuck said.

I was more than a little irritated that Sam didn’t tell me he’d spoken with Chuck.  He told me the whole story about Arthur Simon, so why not Chuck?  Maybe Chuck was right.  Maybe he didn’t have anything to offer to the investigation, so Sam didn’t bring it up.  I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“So, did he ask you about the painting?” I asked.

“Painting?
  Oh, yes. 
The purple one.
  He wanted to know if I knew who painted it.”

“Do you?” I asked.

“No.  That picture just showed up on Lou’s wall one day.  I made a passing comment about it the day he hung it up.  Think I might have made Lou mad.”

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I think I said something like, ‘Good thing Maggie’s not around to see it.’  She hated purple, you know.”

“That’s true,” Betty said as she dropped spoonfuls of cookie dough onto a baking sheet.  “We were twins.  She hated purple from the day we were born. 
Wouldn’t wear it if her life depended on it.
  I always liked the color, so I wore it all the time. 
Worked out good because she’d hardly ever want to borrow my clothes.”

“So he got the painting after she died?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah.
  I think he only had it a couple months before he died. 
Maggie’d
been gone for a year or more,” Chuck explained.

“You don’t know where he got it, do you?”

Chuck shook his head.  “No.  After I said that Maggie wouldn’t like it, he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.”

I tapped my fingers on the table.  “Did you know he played the lottery?”

“Twice a week.
  Never missed a draw, except when Maggie died.  You could wallpaper his house with that box full of all those tickets he bought.  He quit for a while, but we told him he needed to get back into the routine of things.  He got really down.”

I nodded.  I could certainly understand that.  “Did you know the numbers he played?”

“You mean, like regular numbers?”

“Yes.  Birthdays, anniversaries,” I said.

“I didn’t know he played any particular numbers.”

I studied Chuck’s face.  My brain told me he could be lying, but something else said he was telling the truth.  “What about his children?  I understand he has a son and daughter?”

“Two sons, but Joey died right after Lou.  Real sad,” Chuck said.  I detected a faint quiver in his voice.

“What about the other son?” I asked.

“Frankie?  He’s Up in Norwalk.  He, uh, he doesn’t ever get out to visit anymore.”

I knew there was a state mental hospital in Norwalk.  I laced my fingers together, trying to come up with a tactful way to ask if Frankie was still crazy. 
“Metropolitan State Hospital?”

Chuck nodded. 
“Yeah.
  As long as he takes his medication, he’s okay, but when he doesn’t,
boy look
out.”

“What’s the matter with him?” I asked.

“Paranoid schizophrenia.
  Put a scare into Lou and Maggie about fifteen or twenty years ago.  Secret Service came knocking on their door one day wanting to know if Frankie was their son.  Seems he’d
made some threats against the p
resident, and they were taking them seriously.”

“Was he serious?” I asked.

“He’s sick.  The old Frankie was a sweet kid, but that disease, it takes over the brain.  Got to where he didn’t know what was real and what
was imagined.  He thought the p
resident was the devil.  I think if he had the chance, he’d have done what he said.  They had him committed and he never came home again.”

“There was that one time he escaped,” Betty reminded him.

“Oh, yeah.
  About five years ago, he went AWOL and hitchhiked all the way home.  Lou and Maggie tried to keep him with them and take care of him, but he’d stopped taking his medication.  They just couldn’t handle him.  They finally called the hospital and asked them to come get him.”

“That’s too bad,” I said.  “Maybe someday we’ll be able to cure that disease.  What about Lou’s daughter?  I heard she’s in Africa?”

“Sister Nellie.  That child wanted to help anyone and anything she could from the time she could walk. 
Always bringing home animals that were hurt or hungry.
  Lou’s place looked like a regular zoo while she was growing up.  Lou thought she’d become a veterinarian, but when she got to be a teenager, she quit bringing home animals and started bringing home people instead.  Homeless she’d find wandering
the streets.  Drunks she found passed out in the gutters. 
Troubled runaways who couldn’t go home.
  Lou finally had to put his foot down.  He could handle the pets, but that’s where he drew the line.”

“Was she angry?” I asked.

“Angry?  That girl would like to have boiled her father in oil when he made her turn those people out.  She thought Maggie would be on her side, but when Maggie backed up Lou, Nellie felt deserted.  She did her time there at home until she graduated from high school, then she joined the Peace Corps and took off for all those third-world countries.”

“She never came home?” I asked.

“Oh, she comes home every few years for a short visit, mostly for appearances, but we haven’t seen her for six years.  When she heard that Lou and Maggie sent Frankie back to the hospital, she disowned the entire family.”

Betty gently slid a tray of cookies into the oven.  “I’d like to see her try to handle that brother of hers.  She had no idea what he was like,” she said, closing the oven door and setting the timer.

I started thinking about poor Lou Winnomore.  It seemed his life was riddled with difficulties.  “What about his other son? 
The one who passed away?”

“Joey.  There’s another sad story.  I’m just glad Lou wasn’t around for that.  It would have torn him apart,” Chuck said.

“What happened?”

“Joey committed suicide, must have been about two weeks after Lou died.  That’s when we found out about the mess he’d gotten himself into.  Shot
himself
in the head with his service revolver.  Bridgett would have killed him herself if he hadn’t done the job first.”

“Bridgett?  That’s his wife?”

Chuck nodded.  “He’d had an affair and the other woman turned up pregnant.  Boy, everything hit the fan when that news came out.”

“Does Bridgett live around here?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah.
 
Over near the university.
  She’s trying to get a degree in
something,
I don’t remember what, so she can get a better job, now that she’s a single parent.

“You don’t know what she’s studying?”

“No.  She’s pretty much divorced herself from Joey’s family.  It’s like she thinks we supported what he did.”

I wondered what Bridgett might
be capable of.  The old saying about
a woman scorned
crossed my mind.  She could have killed her cheating husband, then killed her father-in-law and stolen the lottery ticket to avoid splitting her son’s inheritance with the other boy.  “Her name’s Bridgett Winnomore?”

“As far as I know, she hasn’t changed her name.  If it weren’t for the boy, she’d probably go back to her maiden name.”

I took the last bite of my cookie and wiped my fingers on the napkin.  “What about the other woman?  Is she still in the picture?”

Betty laughed.  “Oh, she’s in the picture,
all right
.  Never saw a greedier woman in my entire life.  I bet she spends more time in her lawyer’s office finding ways to get her hooks in
to
other people’s money than she does at home with that baby.  You know the ordeal we went through to sell the house because of her.”

“Do you think I could have her address? 
And Bridgett’s, too?”
I asked.

“Sure.  That detective already has their addresses.  You might run into him if you go to see them,” Chuck said as he reached for a pen and paper and an address book near his phone.”

I certainly hope
d
I
wouldn’t
run into Sam.  He’d kill me if he thought I was interfering with his investigation.  I thanked Chuck for the information, and Betty for the cookies.  She wrapped up a half-dozen for me to take. 

I stared at the paper with the women’s addresses and wondered whom to visit first.  I struggled with the decision for a while,
then
decided that under the circumstances, I’d rather face a bunch of mental hospital workers than either of those two women. 

It’s quite a long drive from San Diego to Norwalk, so I stopped for lunch along the way.  I’d just been seated in a booth near a window when Sam surprised me by sliding into the seat opposite me.

“Sam?  What are you doing here?” I asked.

He opened a menu and studied the lunch specials.  “Following you,” he said, still reading the menu.

“Why?”

“You’re headed for Norwalk,” he replied.

“So?”

He closed the menu and pushed it aside.  “What do you think you’re going to do once you get there?”

“Find out if Frankie was AWOL when Lou died.  Maybe see if he does any painting,” I replied, indignantly.

Sam laughed.  “No one there is going to tell you anything.  You’re just some stranger off the street.”

“I considered that.  I had a plan,” I defended.

“Okay, I’ll bite.  What’s your plan?”

I opened my menu and began reading.  “How’d you find me, anyway?”

“It was easy.  I figured you’d go see Chuck, so I waited till you showed up,
then
tailed you here.  You really ought to learn the tricks of the trade if you’re going to be a private investigator.”

“Who said I want to be a private investigator?”

“Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…”