The Unraveling of Violeta Bell (15 page)

“I heard you live here year round now.”

“Oh, yes. Agnes and I retired here after my stint with the government. She just loved it. And so do I, of course.” His eyes danced about the room. No doubt he was savoring some special memory. “Anyway, I’m happy that you like it.”

I nodded that I did. “And the mansion in Toronto—your family still owns that?”

He laughed. “Mansion? I only said it was more substantial than this little box. My mother sold it and bought a condo on the lakefront after my father died.” He motioned me toward the kitchen. “We can have our tea by the water if you like.”

He poured a boiling saucepan of water into a beautiful bone china teapot. He placed it on a silver tray, along with a pair of matching cups and saucers, a sugar bowl and creamer. He emptied a canister of teabags on the counter. “I’m a Darjeeling man myself,” he said, picking through the bags. “But I’ve got at least one of everything.”

“I’m a Darjeeling man, too,” I said.

He lowered two teabags into the china pot. He picked up the tray and headed for the back door. “Too good a day to hide inside, wouldn’t you agree?”

He held the door open for me with his rump. We headed down his backyard toward the bay. There were plots of vegetables everywhere, surrounded with low chicken wire fences to keep out the rabbits or raccoons or whatever other short-legged beasts lived on the island. On a knoll just above his boat landing he had a small garden table and chairs. He poured my tea for me. It was so European. So aristocratic. No way was I going to tell him I grew up just over the border in LaFargeville. No way in the world.

“So Miss Sprowls—it is miss isn’t it?”

“Miss and Mrs. I’ve been widowed for some time.” Just as I wasn’t going to tell him that I was from LaFargeville, I wasn’t going to tell him that my husband had died long after I’d divorced his womanizing behind. I wanted him to relate to me. So he might just tell me things he’d never told anyone before.

He stirred a small mountain of sugar into his tea and then licked the spoon. “I’m a widower, too.”

“I saw your website.”

He brightened. “Did you, really? I don’t get anywhere the hits I thought I would.” He laughed. “Nobody gives a damn about grouchy old men who think they should be king these days.”

I took a sip of my tea. The sailboats and gulls made it taste that much better. “It’s a cruel world, isn’t it?”

“Actually, it’s a beautiful world.” He toasted me. Took a sip of his own. “If you read my website, then you know I’m quite content if the people of my homeland don’t want to restore the monarchy. But if they ever do vote to restore it, they ought to do it right.”

“Recognize the Clopotars.”

“The throne is rightfully ours.”

He was right, assuming that everything I read on the Internet about the Romanian royal bloodlines was true, of course. Prince Anton was the great-great-grandson of King Carol I. His greatgrandfather, Prince Anthony, to the king’s dismay, had married the daughter of a cavalry officer. When Anthony died unexpectedly, his bride—baby in her belly—was banished from the royal household. That baby was Prince Anton’s grandfather.

It was time to steer the conversation to my investigation. “As I recall, your great-grandmother, Princess Violeta, married a commoner after she was banished from the royal family.”

The prince became a bit defensive. “Gavril Clopotar. A very fine man.”

“He raised Prince Anthony’s son as his own,” I agreed.

“Yes, he did. A fine thing for him to do.”

I let him know I’d done my homework. “And Prince Anthony’s son—your grandfather, Constantin—should have followed Carol I as king. Instead, the throne went to a nephew of the king. And the living heir of that nephew is King Michael I. Who was kicked off the throne when the Communists took control in the forties. And if the monarchy were restored, Michael would get the throne back. Unless the parliament did the proper thing and recognized you.”

He toasted me again. “You are a diligent student.”

I was ready to let the cat out of the bag. “The truth is, I’m working on a murder investigation for my newspaper
—
the Hannawa, Ohio,
Herald-Union.
In a roundabout way it may have something to do with you.”

He reacted to this startling news by warming up my tea. “Such an American thing, murder.”

“We’re very good at it, no doubt about that.”

“And just who was murdered, Miss Sprowls?”

“Another Violeta.”

His eyeballs were floating, a sign that a lot was going on inside his head. “Violeta is a common Romanian name.”

“This one claimed to be the queen of Romania.”

“Claimed?”

I got his point. “She never offered any proof. And she proved to be a fraud in other ways. But she did make the claim publicly in our newspaper. And a few days later she was found dead.”

“How old was she, this Violeta?”

“She claimed to be seventy-two.”

“And her last name? What did she claim that was?”

“Bell.”

“Bell?”

“Doesn’t ring one?”

An expression that could be interpreted as relief calmed his wrinkles. “That’s not a Romanian name. Of course it could be a married name, I suppose.”

“She was never married,” I said. “As far as anybody knows.”

I kept my mouth shut now. Let his mind work. We sipped our tea and watched the sailboats and gulls. Let the sun and the quiet soak in. “Is the fact that she claimed to be the queen of Romania your only hypothesis for her demise?” he finally asked.

“The police think her murder is connected to the theft of antiques from her condominium,” I said.

His ears perked up, the way James’ do when my microwave beeps. “Antiques? None of them had anything to do with Romanian history, did they?”

Knowing what was found in Eddie French’s apartment I had to laugh. “A bejeweled crown, you mean?”

He did not appreciate my little joke. “All of the crowns are accounted for, Miss Sprowls. But there are plenty of important family heirlooms floating about.”

I told him that Violeta Bell had been an antique dealer. I showed him a list of the antiques found in Eddie’s apartment. I told him that I had a suspicion they were fakes. “More than likely her murder had nothing to do with her claim to be royalty,” I said. “It’s just one of the improbabilities I need to put to rest before tackling more fruitful possibilities.”

A sad smile turned up the ends of his mustache. “Forgive my irritation, Miss Sprowls. I’ve spent much of my adult life trying to find a set of lead soldiers that had been given to my greatgrandfather when he was a boy. By Prince Albert of England. One hundred tiny Romanian Hussars in all their glory. Cavalrymen. Romania, you see, won its independence for helping Russia drive the Turks out of the Balkans. And the British, who had sided with the Turks, wanted to repair relations with the new Romanian nation. So they were more than toy soldiers. They were diplomatic chess pieces.”

My next question was obvious. “You wouldn’t kill for them, would you?”

He laughed. “Not literally, I wouldn’t. But it is quite a coincidence that my great-grandfather would grow up to marry the daughter of a cavalry officer, isn’t it? Who knows, I may owe my very existence to the romantic roilings fostered by those lead soldiers.” His manner suddenly changed. He became passionless. Analytical. “Let’s get back to why you came to see me. You’re wondering if I had something to do with this woman’s murder. In the event her claims were true, I might want her out of the way in case the monarchy is restored. Yes, there is a small royalist party in Romania today. And a few of its members actually support my cause. But there is no room in the new constitution for a monarch. Not even a toothless figurehead.”

He was right. I’d Googled the new Romanian constitution. It didn’t say boo about a king or queen, except, somewhat cryptically, that no one could
exercise sovereignty in one’s own name.
“Couldn’t the constitution be amended?”

“Yes, but it would take quite a groundswell of public support,” he said. “And that’s not very likely. Certainly not in my lifetime. Or old King Michael’s.”

That, too, jived with what I’d read. “What about the next generation of heirs? You have three sons. King Michael has five daughters.”

He poured more tea for us. “Surely you don’t expect me to opine on the possibility of my own sons thinning the royal herd.”

“Of course not. I’m sorry.”

He winked at me. “If they were so inclined, I think they would start with me.”

I toasted him. He was a funny man. An attractive man. “You had an older brother. Petru. Did he leave any heirs?”

Prince Anton shook his head no. Pointed across the bay. “He drowned himself right out there. A half-mile off that point. Fifty-two years ago. When he was twenty-six.”

“Drowned himself? Suicide?”

“The authorities ruled it an accident. How do you accidentally get an anchor rope tied around your feet?” His eyes were cloudy with tears. “A passing boater found our boat. The motor was still running. The propeller turned sharply to the right. The boat going round and round like the hands of a clock. X marks the spot. Intentionally it seemed to me. ”

My eyes were clouding up, too. “I lost my brother when he was nineteen. In Korea. His death was an accident. If you can call anyone getting killed in a war an accident. He was accidentally shot in the leg by one of his buddies while crossing the Han River. He tumbled off the pontoon bridge and drowned before they could pull him out.”

The prince pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to me. While I dabbed my eyes with it, he pulled the tears from his with his pinky fingers, studying each tear before he wiped it off. “Both drowned,” he said softly. “Horrible.”

“I always felt sorry for the boy whose gun went off,” I said. “His name was Andy Brown. He was from Connecticut. Over the years he must have written me a dozen letters apologizing.”

The prince was still working on his eyes. “Horrible.”

“When he died they sent me a letter he’d attached to his will apologizing one last time.”

“Horrible.”

I changed the subject before we both fell apart. “The only thing I need to know, I suppose, is whether Violeta Bell was telling the truth about her royalty.”

He stood up. Stretched until I could see his belly. “I am something of an expert on the Romanian royals, as you can well imagine. There are no living Violetas. And certainly no Bells. Like I said, Bell is not a Romanian name.”

“Well—I’m sure there’s nothing to it.”

We walked back to his bungalow. Along the way he showed me his vegetable gardens. Like every other backyard gardener in North America, he had enough zucchini to feed an army. Back inside, he led me into his tiny den. There was nothing on his desk but a gooseneck lamp and a long rack of smelly pipes. He rummaged through a bottom drawer, pulling out a folder filled with shiny photos of himself. He took one out, careful not to get his fingerprints on it. It was the same pose that appeared on his website, the one with the big Romanian flag, the silly little bow tie and big manly pipe. He rustled through the top drawer until he found the fancy gold ballpoint he wanted. When he was finished scribbling, he read the inscription to me: “To Maddy. Thank you for your company on such a beautiful summer morning. Anton.”

It was so informal. So unassuming. Then again, printed across the bottom of the photo, in raised gold letters, was a less humble assertion:

His Royal Majesty
Anton Alexandur Clopotar

He slipped the photo into a white envelope. The prospect of him giving me an easy DNA sample nearly buckled me at the knees. But just as he was about to lick the envelope, he seemed to think better of it. He tucked in the flap and handed it to me.

Before leaving I gave him copies of the various stories we’d run, including Gabriella Nash’s original feature on the Queens of Never Dull. I gave him my business card. “If anything comes to mind, you’ll let me know?”

“I will.” He took my hand and kissed it. I almost dropped my car keys.

I spent the afternoon at my cottage. I tried to nap in the most uncomfortable Adirondack chair ever built. Which is saying something. I walked along the rocky beach until my feet ached. I tried to coax James into fetching a piece of driftwood. I made six pancakes for my supper and ate every damn one of them. I went to bed at nine and, for all I know, snored up a storm.

In the morning I wrestled James into the backseat of Ike’s car and drove straight back to Hannawa.

14

Friday, August 4

Eric Chen stood in front of my desk, sucking on his morning bottle of Mountain Dew while shaking his head in pity, an impressive display of his multi-tasking skills. “I knew you couldn’t take an entire week off,” he said.

“Some people have a work ethic,” I growled back.

“And some people don’t have a life.”

“My life is more than adequate,” I assured him. “I accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish. Including getting away from you for a few days. I’m rested and restored. The sweet, lovable Maddy Sprowls of old. Now get to work before I fire your ass.”

Eric sauntered off to BS with the boys in sports. I started deleting four days of worthless voice mail. There was one call I actually had to listen to:
“Hello, Mrs. Sprowls. This is Dr. Menke’s office. The doctor wanted you to know that your results are back from the sleep center and that you should make an appointment as soon as you can to discuss them.”

I deleted the message from my phone. But I couldn’t delete it from my brain. I called the doctor’s office. There was an opening at 4:20 that afternoon. I hemmed and hawed for a minute then took it. I went on deleting messages like it was an Olympic sport.

Just as I was nearing the finishing line, Bob Averill pressed his huge palms into my desktop like a couple of toilet plungers. “I heard you were back!”

“Yes, Bob, I’m back. And I’m no closer to solving your little problem than when I left.”

“I was just hoping we could pick up the speed now,” he said. “Bear down a bit.”

“I’m one little woman, Bob. I can pick up speed or bear down. But I can’t do both.”