One Foot In The Gravy (17 page)

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Authors: Delia Rosen

BOOK: One Foot In The Gravy
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“Well, apart from the lack of witnesses and evidence, there’s a lawyer who does not want the police prying into the private life of the deceased. Did you ever have any dealings with Solomon Granger?”
He shook his head once, vehemently, and said, “I do not believe in attorneys.”
Neither of those facts surprised me. “Until the detectives can get into Hoppy’s apartment, assuming it hasn’t already been cleaned out, and access to his phone records, things are probably going to proceed very slowly.”
He pushed out his lower lip as he took that in. “Perhaps I shall write a play about this,” he said.
“A lovely idea,” I said.
“I believe I will call it
Death of a Chocolate Salesman.
”
I had to stop myself from asking if he knew my Uncle Murray. They had the same creative bent, and I meant that as being something unsound. I didn’t want to talk to Gary any more about anything. I was tired and I just wanted this visit to end.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Gary said as though he’d read my mind. “I will show myself out.” He strode to the door, his hands still clasped behind him like Captain Bligh.
He opened the door, shut it behind him, and was gone. I shuddered. Gary Gold might not have been the hands-down oddest of the people I’d met, but he was definitely the creepiest. He was preposterous enough, unseen in his own element; in mine, he was like one of those science fiction androids with a software tic.
While the meeting was not especially enlightening, it
was
exhausting. The entire day had been a real challenge. But with Thom’s help and some of my own boot-strapping, I’d survived it. Maybe my manager was correct about one thing. Maybe this was some kind of overdue settling, turning a corner of some kind.
The kitchen clock told me the new day was a half-hour old. I was too tired to think and, as they always are, the problem would still be here tomorrow . . . and would probably seem less onerous in the daylight.
I pulled off my work clothes, fell into bed, and was asleep before Gary’s heavy tread had disappeared down the street.
Chapter 20
I woke up feeling proactive.
Now that there was a go-get-’em vibe in my body, I appreciated just how absent it had been. Not just since the murder, but since I got here. I had gone through motions, did what I had to do, but without a real fire-in-the-belly desire.
I had that now. It wasn’t because I’d had a long sleep—it was six a.m. when the alarm dragged me from a dreamless, narcotic-like super-slumber. And it wasn’t a late-blooming sugar high from the doughnuts. Rather, it was because that old New York steam had crept back in the engine. I didn’t have to be like them, do the old, Jewish fit-in thing. I could be me.
On the way to the deli, I left a message for Dag Stoltenberg, the semi-retired attorney who had handled my family’s affairs down here. An expert in international copyright, the Norwegian expatriate liked—or took pity on, or both—my Uncle Murray and had tried to help him place his songs overseas.
We hadn’t spoken in about two months. Dag had gone to Tromsø for a visit and had only just returned. He was an early riser—he ran an hour every morning on his treadmill while listening to Grieg—and, in any case, was still on Norwegian time.
“God morgen!”
he said in Norwegian. The heavy accent thinned when he switched to English. “How is my favorite and most beautiful client?”
“Not so bad,” I said truthfully.
We exchanged a few pleasantries about his trip, after which I asked if he had heard about Hoppy Hopewell.
“
Ja,
I just caught up with dat news,” he said.
“I was there,” I said. “Catering.”
“Herregud! ”
he said, which, from experience, I knew meant “My God!” The only other Norwegian I knew was
ja
and
ikke
—yes and no—and
forbanne,
which meant damn.
I told him that I was thinking of putting in an offer on Hoppy’s shop, but that Solomon Granger was throwing up all kinds of roadblocks.
“Vell, you understand he can do dat,” Dag told me.
“You mean, solicit offers without providing access to any kind of financials?”
“Sure,” he said. “I would not recommend someone to buy under those conditions, but it is not a publicly traded company. If Mr. Granger is the executor, he can set whatever terms he wishes.”
“Why would he, though? Why wouldn’t he even say who owns the place?”
“Maybe de individual vas a girlfriend
or
boyfriend. Maybe dey do not want to be asked about Mr. Hopewell. Maybe dey do not vant to reveal
vere
dey are.”
Oy.
I hated the idea that Solly had any rights at all.
“Dere
is
one ting ve can do,” he said. “If he has been named executor, dere must be a power-of-attorney document filed vit de county. Dat can only be sealed if de assignee is not actually an attorney.”
“I don’t follow. Are you saying that if I gave power of attorney to Thom, that could be sealed—”
“
Ja.
Because it does not run a reasonable risk of having been coerced.”
Light bulb
on
. “Gotcha. An attorney could theoretically fake someone’s signature, or have them sign a bunch of documents which they wouldn’t read, and thus conduct business for them without anyone else being able to check.”
“Without
anyone
being able to check, not even de person who signed!” Dag said. “So de state enacted dis law to protect people like you from people like me.”
That not only made sense, but it explained why Grant or Whitman had not thought to check on it. They stopped at the will being sealed, at the probate being sealed, at the corporate papers being sealed, but didn’t bother to look into the single document that gave Solly the authority to seal them.
“I vill make a call over dere as soon as dey open at ten,” he said. “I vill get dat information for you.”
I thanked him. I wasn’t sure what that might tell us, but it was like chicken soup: it couldn’t hurt.
The morning rush came and went. Thom was a little more solicitous than usual, keeping an eye on me as I did the hostessing, helped in back, worked the counter, and even bussed. I wanted to keep busy.
It was a quarter past eleven when Dag called back. I went to the office, sat with coffee from my private office stash and a fresh-baked bialy, which I ate plain. I found I was eating healthier, or at least less greasy, since keyboards and keypads became so important. They didn’t work as well with a coating of shmear or butter.
“Find anything?” I asked the attorney.
“Ja, ja,”
he said. “Power-of-attorney was granted by a woman.”
That got my attention. I almost tipped over my coffee. “Who?”
“Anne Miller,” he said. “I took de liberty of looking for her—but dere’s a problem.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You get a million hits for the movie star.”
“Ja,”
he said.
“I don’t think it was her.”
“She was dead when dis paper was signed,” Dag said. “If it is important, ve can hire someone to go through de listings—”
“Thanks, no,” I said. “It will be easier just to ask people if they ever heard of her.”
“You going to tell me vhy dis is so important?”
“Because I’m not accounting, I’m not using that forensic part of my brain. It’s what I was trained for, what I’ve been doing almost my entire professional life.”
“Dat’s a good reason,” he said. “Dat’s a very good reason!”
“I’m glad to hear you say that, Dag, because I appear to have absolutely no control over myself.”
He laughed. “Just be grateful you have got a manager.”
“The best,” I agreed and hung up. I ate the bialy and stared at the wallpaper on my computer monitor, a photo of my parents and me at my high school graduation. It was the last picture I had of the trifecta: the three of us smiling, really smiling. It was one of the last times I could remember the universe seeming to have some kind of order.
Maybe that’s why I do what I do, why I do this,
I thought. To try and restore some of that discipline to my world.
“What about fun too?” I asked, taking a last look at the smile.
I picked up the phone and called Solly Granger.
“Mr. Granger is busy at the moment,” the receptionist told me. “Would you care to leave a message?”
“Yes,” I said. “Tell him I want to talk about Anne Miller.”
“Hold, please.”
That got her attention. Probably his too.
“Ms. Katz, Mr. Granger will be right with you.”
Sweet,
I thought. I might finally be onto something.
Solly picked up and said without a hello or preamble, “You found the loophole. Congratulations.”
“I wasn’t looking for a ‘loophole,’ only more information about—”
“Don’t tell me you were looking into the chocolate shop,” he said. “That was old the day you ran it up the flagpole. You’ve been looking into the death of my client Mr. Hopewell.”
“All right. What if I am?”
“Leave Ms. Miller out of it.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s suffered enough,” he said. And hung up.
Okay. That wasn’t the fun I expected it to be. It was actually a little scary: I had never heard Solly so angry.
I was about to call Grant when there was a knock at the door. It was followed by Thom poking her head in.
“You’ve got a visitor,” she said.
“Who?”
“Poodle Baldwin.”
“Send her in,” I said, thinking that if she was here by herself it was to discuss something in private.
The young woman entered and Thom shut the door behind her. “Sit,” I said, indicating Thom’s chair. As soon as I said it, I realized she could have taken that as a dig. She didn’t. I guessed she had built up a tough skin in school to all the dog jokes.
The photo on the computer caught her eye. She leaned over, not quite allowing enough clearance for those hair balls. One of them brushed my face and I had to do a cobra-head move to escape.
“Your parents?”
“Yup. High school graduation.”
“That’s so nice,” she said.
Poodle didn’t sit. She stood fussing with the end of the orange pashmina scarf thrown casually around her neck.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“I heard my mom talking to Helen Russell on the phone this morning,” she said. “I guess you went to see her yesterday. Helen, I mean.”
“I did,” I told her.
“You talked about Mr. Russell—John.”
“A little,” I admitted. I had an awful sense about where this was going.
“I . . . I . . .”
“What is it, Poodle? You want something to drink? You sure you don’t want to sit?”
She nodded and went to the chair. She worked it out from behind the other desk, and sat beside me. “I don’t know you very well, but you come from New York and you probably have a different view of things than people down here.”
“You could say that.”
“Did Helen tell you about John and Mr. Hopewell and the kind of things they did together?”
“A little,” I said cautiously. I didn’t think she was setting me up the way Helen Russell had. She really seemed to be struggling with something. But I didn’t push. I wanted to make sure that she got to where she was going of her own accord. The words, the truth, had to come because she wanted them to.
She sobbed once—it was more like a hacking cough—then caught herself and regained her composure.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
“Know what?”
“That they both liked . . .
other
girls.” She said the last two words quickly, suddenly, as though she’d sucked venom from a wound and was spitting it out.
“Talk to me,” she said. “It’s okay.”
She sucked down a breath and let it out. “Hoppy . . . was my first.”
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen,” she said. “And two days.”
I didn’t know what the age of consent was in Tennessee, but that still seemed pretty young. Not cut-your-junk-off young, just pathetic.
“Poodle, do you mind sharing something? Can you try?”
She nodded again.
“How did they do it?”
It took a second before she blurted out, “Gift cards.”
“You mean, to stores?”
“Yes. It started as a birthday gift, they said. Mom had put a sweet sixteen notice in the paper. They gave me hundreds of dollars worth of cards.”
What a pair of pricks. But that couldn’t account for Hoppy’s money problems. Besides, Russell was well heeled.
“Go on,” I said. “Where did they meet you?”
“The first time it was at the pool parlor. I went there to celebrate with my friends. After that we’d meet at the mall late in the afternoon. They’d give me my choice of stores and off I’d go.”
“They had a selection of cards?”
“Big-time,” Poodle said. “Hoppy would fan it out like he was a magician or something. They’d wait for me in the food court and when I was done they’d drive me back.”
“Where?”
“To Hoppy’s home,” she said. “He’d pull into the garage, close the door, and we’d go to the den. They’d ask to see whatever clothes or shoes or jewelry I’d bought.”
“You modeled for them.”
“In a way. It was kind of a joke. He had this long carpet that was like a runway and I’d walk it like they do on those VH1 shows. Then they’d toast me, we’d all drink a toast. That was how it started.”
“Wine?”
Another nod. Underage drinking; even that didn’t help us. With both men dead, even if Poodle gave a statement to Grant, there wouldn’t be a reason to search Hoppy’s home.
“How often did this happen?”
“Five times,” she said. “About once a week for a month.”
“And then?”
Her miserable expression was my answer.
“You never knew that there were other girls?” I asked.
She shook her head once.
“Did you love Hoppy?” I asked. “Did you think you did?”
“Yeah, I thought I did,” she said with the hint of a smile. “He was fun to be with. John not so much, but Hoppy was funny and attentive.”
“Were you with John too?”
“I was with him
mostly
,” she said. “Hoppy said he liked to see me enjoying myself.” The little smile turned crooked. “I pretended to. For Hoppy.”
I felt sick now, not because I was a prude, not because the whole May-December thing held any kind of special freak status in my world, and not even because the girls had effectively been turned into hookers. That was scummy, but sort of par for the course where men of means were concerned. I saw a lot of that in cooked books back in New York, though the price of seduction was a little higher—private jets and Mediterranean yachts. What sickened me was that these two bastards had come up with a plan to make this happen again and again. It wasn’t like a CEO with a crush on his secretary or a film producer seducing a day player with the promise of a line or two. It was a program to take advantage of Poodle and other young girls and then not care whether they messed them up.

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