Regarding Anna (16 page)

I held my breath—it was only a matter of time before she relayed something she did that was going to get her—or me—into trouble.

She laughed. “You look like you’re bracing yourself for a mortar attack or something. Relax, sweetie. I know what I’m doing.”

“It’s not that—”

“Anyway, so I pay old Henry a visit.”

“How did you know which house?”

“I didn’t, but Mozart’s only two blocks long.”

“What did you do, knock on each door until you found him?”

“I started doing that, but it was taking too long, so I just peeked inside mailboxes until I found his name.” I felt my jaw drop, and Minnie frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Minnie, it’s a federal offense to tamper with someone’s mailbox.”

“I didn’t tamper. I just looked inside.”

“You shouldn’t have even touched it.” I didn’t know if it was actually illegal to look inside, but I had been taught never to even go near a mailbox to be on the safe side.

She pursed her lips for several seconds before she said, “Look, if you don’t want my help, just say so. Here I was going out of my way to—”

“I’m sorry, Minnie. I just don’t want you to get yourself in trouble.”

“Fine then. End of story.”

“What do you mean ‘end of story’? What happened next?”

“No. I’m not going to tell you now.”

Yet another side to her personality—that of an obstinate child.

“Minnie,
please
tell me what happened.”

“Will you let me tell it without your interrupting?”

“I promise.”

“Okay, then. So I knock on his door and he answers it. Well, the look on his face is outright terror, and he proceeds to close the door on me.”

“So he obviously recognized you. Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

More pursed lips. “Obviously. So I put my foot in the door.” She beamed. “You’re not the only one who knows that trick. Now, mind you, I’m only five-foot-one, but he’s shorter than I am and about fifty pounds lighter, so he’s no match for me.”

In more ways than one.

“Never was...none of ’em were. Anyway, he’s screaming at me in that whiney little voice of his that he doesn’t want to talk to me, and I tell him in a nice calm voice that I know all about what he did, and we needed to talk. Otherwise, I was going to the police.”

“Minnie! You were taking a bit of a leap, weren’t you?”

She stared at me for a long moment, her double chin firmly pressed between the folds. “Do you want me to continue or not?”

I slowly exhaled the breath I had been holding for the past several seconds. “Please do.”

“Well, all of a sudden, he quiets down, and I feel the pressure on my foot lessening. He peeks through the crack and asks, ‘What do you know?’ And I tell him I know enough to get him in a lot of trouble, but I’m a reasonable person and we can talk.”

She paused, giving me the opportunity to comment, but I didn’t.

“He opens the door all the way, and I go in. Then he offers me a drink, which I take.” She got up to refresh our glasses but kept talking. “So I pretend I know how he came into the money, and we play cat-and-mouse for a while. But the more we talk, the more nervous he gets. And the more nervous he gets, the more he drinks. And the more he drinks, the more he talks.

“I’ll cut to the chase. I think he stole from Mark, or Marcus, whatever his name is, and then flew the coop. If you dig deep enough, I bet you’ll find O’Gowan had a stash of money...or something...and Henry, the little twerp, knew it. And as soon as O’Gowan died, he stole it and ran. But here’s the thing. He implicated his cousin in whatever it was he did—said it was
his
plan,
his
doing.”

“Who’s his cousin?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me that, but if I could get a little closer to what really happened, I bet I could get him to rat out his cousin.”

Rat him out? She had been watching more than
As the World Turns.

I held up the letter still in my hand. “Did you ever respond to this letter?”

“No. I ignored it. I didn’t make the connection between Mark Smith and Marcus O’Gowan, so I thought the letter was just a mistake.”

“Was there any indication O’Gowan had money, that you saw?”

“None. Of course, I rarely saw the man. When he did leave his room, it was always at night.”

“Tymon must have seen his room when he had to repair things, right? I wonder what else he could tell us about him.”

“I would think so. Maybe I could work on him some more.”

“You have another date with him?”

“It’s
not
a date. He said he’d call me.” She paused a moment. “He does remind me a little of this old boyfriend I had once though...” Her voice trailed off.

“And?”

“And nothing. That’s private.”

“You said on the phone something about the police had it all wrong.”

“This is where I got a little bold.”

No, Minnie, you’ve already crossed that line.

“I asked him what he knew about Anna’s death.”

“And?”

“He turned a shade paler, if that’s even possible, and said he knew nothing. I knew he was lying, and I told him so.”

“Minnie, did it ever occur to you that he may have had a gun or something? Maybe he even killed O’Gowan. Or maybe he killed Anna, and here you are pressuring him and making him nervous and—”

“That ninety-pound wuss?”

“You never know.”

“Well, he didn’t, so let me go on, or do you want to—”

“No, please continue.”

“Anyway, I reminded him that he made it his business to know everyone else’s business, so I knew he knew what happened to Anna. And
that
’s when I laid it on him.”

Oh, dear.

“I told him I had reason to believe he had something to do with her death, and I was going to go to the police with it.”

“You really said that to him.”

“I did. I know how to read people. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have given
you
the right time of day.”

I shut up.

“So we talk back and forth, and all he’s willing to say was the police thought it was a robbery gone bad and left it at that, but they had it all wrong, he told me.” She paused to take a sip of her drink. “Then he told me he didn’t think they even knew she had a baby.”

“I knew it!”

“I asked him if he told the police that there was a baby involved.”

“And?”

“He said, ‘Hell no. None of my business.’ We all know what a crock of shit that was. His nose was in
everyone’s
business.”

“Unbelievable.”

“So that’s it.”

“That’s how you left it with him?”

“And I suppose you would have done better?”

“No, not at all. I was just—”

“The way I left it with him was that I would have to think about our little chat and what I was going to do next. Then he gets all serious on me and tries to be my friend, suggests we have dinner sometime soon…says maybe we can help each other out.”

“What did you say to that?”

Minnie peered at me over her glasses. “Are you kidding me?”

“Sorry.”

FIFTEEN

An Ethical Dilemma

“Grace?”

“Yes.”

“Flora.”

“Yes, Flora. What can I do for you?”

“Last night, our midnight robber stole Mrs. Huxhold’s prize American gensing, and she is hopping mad.”

“Her what?”

“American gensing. Apparently, it’s a rare plant that takes eight years to mature and produce flowers, and she had been nursing this one along for all that time. And, mind you, she had a small fence around it to keep out rabbits and stuff…and it was just about to flower when—”

“It turned up missing.”

“Yep. And she wants whoever stole it charged, tried, and—if possible—hung.”

“That might be a little harsh for a stolen plant.”

“Tell that to Mrs. Huxhold.”

“What does it look like?”

“Hold on a second. I’ll read it to you.” Flora cleared her throat. “It has the most Arcadian shade of green leaves you’ll ever see, each intransigent leaf perfectly shaped, and it had just starting to exhibit a lone limpid but exquisite umbel.”

“Let me guess—her words?”

“They’re not mine. I don’t even know what half of them mean.”

“Please tell Mrs. Huxhold I plan to stake out the neighborhood myself, and we’ll try to get to the bottom of it. Anything else reported missing lately?”

“I’m embarrassed to tell you this, but I may as well. Last night, my husband and I...well, we got a little amorous in the backyard. He sorta flung my panties, and they landed in the kids’ sandbox. I forgot about them until early this morning, so I snuck out there before the sun even came up, and they weren’t there anymore. I asked George if he had brought them in, and he said he hadn’t, so I’m thinking someone must have stolen them.”

“Your panties.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Describe them please.”

“Pink with white polka dots.”

What I had to put up with in this job.

After Flora’s call, I had no sooner started to organize the sudden backlog of work that had accumulated during the previous week when a woman walked in the front door. She asked Naomi if she could make an appointment with someone at NSU Investigative Services. I could see Naomi from my vantage point and watched her open one of those black-and-white composition books, pretending it was my appointment calendar, and told her that there didn’t appear to be an opening for several days but if she wanted to take a seat, she would see if one of the investigators could possibly squeeze her in. I loved her style.

Naomi confirmed with me that it was okay to bring her in.

She was tiny, maybe five feet tall and a hundred pounds, if that. My age or a little younger, conservatively dressed in a navy pinstriped pants suit.

Before I could even introduce myself, she took a seat and started talking.

“My name is Fern Herschberger,” she said in a soft voice. “I’m trying to locate my birth mother, Anna Vargas.”

The woman continued to talk, but for several minutes at least I was barely conscious of what she was saying. My brain seemed to be fixated on the steady tapping sound coming from Naomi’s typewriter. Unable to speak myself, I tried to raise my hand to signal her to stop, but I couldn’t even move my arm.

Finally, she stopped telling her story and asked me, “Are you all right?”

A wave of something fluttered down my body, releasing me from an apparent hypnotic state.

“Yes, of course. Will you excuse me for just a minute or two?”

She gave me a concerned look and nodded.

I rose from my chair and hoped my legs would carry me.

As soon as I got to the bathroom, I locked both doors and sat on the toilet-seat lid. We had never covered anything like this in law-enforcement school.

The water I splashed on my face rejuvenated my better senses while I tried to digest what this woman had just said. Did she realize who I was? I had to know that for starters. Otherwise, I’d be working completely blind.

Elmer wasn’t in, so I unlocked the bathroom door on his side and slipped into his office, trying hard to keep from choking on the stale after-effect of his cigarettes. I used his phone to call Naomi.

“Naomi, listen to me carefully. I need you to find out who referred that woman to me. Does she even know my name?”

“Yes, Mr. Billingsly. I’ll take care of that right away. What is your location?”

“I’m in Elmer’s office right now, but I’m going into the bathroom in case he comes back. Let yourself into the bathroom through his door when you come in, and please make up something about why I needed to excuse myself for a few minutes.”

“Yes, sir. Goodbye.”

I could hear Naomi talking to Miss Herschberger, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I snuck back into the bathroom and waited.

A few minutes later, Naomi came in.

“She said she found your company name in the phone book, and she doesn’t live far from here. She’s embarrassed she doesn’t even know your name.”

“Do you believe her? Does she sound sincere?”

“I think so, and I’m pretty good at being right on first impressions.”

“What did you tell her about my absence?”

“I said you had a taco salad for lunch, and it wasn’t agreeing with you.”