The Unraveling of Violeta Bell (16 page)

He left in frustration. And despite my snippiness, I got busy doing both. First I motioned Eric back to my desk. I used my best sign language to have him bring along his clipboard and a pen. “I’ve got a shitload of stuff for you to research,” I said, patting the seat of the chair he’d just pulled up with his foot.

He was not happy. “We? What about that lesson I gave you?”

“One lesson and I’m Bill Gates?” I motioned for him to put pen to paper. “Find out everything you can about the death of Petru Clopotar. Prince Anton’s brother. He drowned in the St. Lawrence River. Fifty-two years ago. In Reed’s Bay.”

Eric scribbled away. “Any idea how Canadian law enforcement works? Who would handle something like this?”

“Just find out everything you can from whoever you can,” I said. “The prince says it was suicide, but apparently some authority or the other ruled it an accident. Let’s see if we can find out which was most likely.”

“And that’s important because?”

“Petru was the prince’s older brother,” I explained. “Which would have made him king some day—if the monarchy were restored and the Clopotar family recognized as the rightful heirs.”

“You’re saying that maybe Petru’s death wasn’t an accident or a suicide? That maybe the prince off’d his own brother?”

I gave him a rare smile of affection. “If Prince Anton wanted the throne so bad that he’d kill his own brother—and that kind of thing does happen in royal families—then maybe he’d kill Violeta Bell now.”

“Why would the prince care if the official cause was accident or suicide?” Eric wondered. “Just as long as he was dead?”

It was a good point. “Maybe your investigation will answer that,” I said. I moved on. “I also want to know when Prince Anton’s father died. His name was Dumitru. Dumitru Clopotar. Maybe he died suspiciously, too. Also, find what you can on Prince Anton’s three sons. Where they live. What they do for a living. Their views on the monarchy. Whatever you can. I guess that’s it.”

Eric angrily tapped the bridge of his nose with his pen. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Transferred aggression, I suppose. “Well, this shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.”

I matched his sarcasm. “Take all weekend.”

“And what will the well-rested Maddy Sprowls be doing while I’m frying my eyeballs?”

I shooed him away from my desk. “Don’t worry, Mr. Chen. I’ll be frying my eyeballs, too. I need to find out what was so urgent fifty-two years ago that Prince Anton might have killed his brother. And what is so urgent now that he’d kill Violeta Bell. Or more likely, have both of them killed.” I motioned him back. “Any idea how we can we find out if Prince Anton left Wolfe Island shortly before the murder?”

Eric played dumb. “I wouldn’t have the foggiest.”

“Me neither. Start with the ferry operators.”

I got busy marking up that morning’s paper. I made it all the way to the bottom of page one before Gabriella Nash smiley-faced her way to my desk. “You’re back!” she sang out.

Good gravy! How many times was I going to have to hear that? “And I see you’re still working here.”

“Yes, I am—you know about the funeral, right?”

“Not Violeta Bell’s?”

“Uh-huh. This morning.”

I went immediately to the metro section and the death notices. It was that morning. In just ninety minutes. At the Umplebee & Meyers Funeral Home. “We’ll have to go,” I said.

She scrunched her face apologetically. “I can’t.”

“Don’t be silly. You can drive.”

“I can’t. I’m on deadline.”

I’d been in the newspaper business for fifty years. I’d heard reporters use that
I’m on deadline
excuse a million times. Then watched them play at their desks most of the day like it was kindergarten. “Whatever story you’ve got to crank out—you can crank it out when we get back.”

“I really can’t. Nancy needs my story for Sunday.”

I picked up my phone and dialed Nancy Peale’s extension. “Hi, Nancy—it’s Maddy.”

“I heard you were back.”

I bit my tongue. “I just saw in the death notices that Violeta Bell’s funeral was this morning. Would you mind if I went along with Gabriella? I feel a part of the story. Sort of. And there’ll be lots of important people to oogle.”

I waited patiently while my words worked their way through Nancy’s synapses. “I’m sure it would be okay,” she finally said.

I put my phone back in the cradle and smiled at Gabriella. “You’d better scamper back to your desk, dear. You’ve got an assignment coming.”

So, at ten-thirty, Gabriella and I headed for Umplebee & Meyers. In Gabriella’s Mini Cooper. Chuck Weideman, the paper’s best photographer, and a real believer in three square meals a day, was crammed into the backseat like a semester’s worth of college laundry.

Gabriella’s assignment, of course, had nothing to do with the questions roiling around Violeta’s murder. That was my assignment. No, Gabriella’s assignment was to write a respectful story on the funeral of a woman much loved by the city’s la-de-das. Weedy’s assignment was to get a nice respectful photo of a tear running down the cheek of somebody important.

Umplebee & Meyers is one of Hannawa’s better funeral homes. It sits right on the city’s shared border with Greenlawn. White brick. Hunter green window shutters. Oodles of grandiose columns. It fits right in with all the neighborhood’s fancy beauty parlors and real estate offices. We parked. Weedy stayed outside with his cameras and Snickers bars. Gabriella and I hurried inside.

We followed the spongy rose-colored carpet down the central hallway to the chapel. I’d been to several funerals there over the years, so the fancy touches didn’t surprise me. They did surprise Gabriella. “A real live harp player, wow.”

The chapel was half full. Fifty people, maybe. I spotted the mayor’s wife and a number of retired judges. There were lots of older women in new outfits. We sat in the back, even thought there were several rows of empty chairs in front of us. I nodded at Joey Junk, who was also sitting in the back, and like us, not appropriately attired for such a fancy funeral. And what was Joey Junk doing there? One professional paying respect to another? One partner in crime to another? A murderer too curious to stay away?

Gabriella took out her reporter’s notebook and started jotting down her impressions of the gathering—the little bits of color that can make a so-so story sing. As for my impressions, well, I recorded them directly into my noodle.

There was a wall of flowers across the front of the chapel. Centered in front, on a beautiful marble-topped stand, rested a bright, violet-colored urn. To the right of the urn stood a blue, yellow, and red flag. I poked Gabriella. “Looks like somebody believed her.”

She responded with a “Huh?” Which was not a bad response given that there was no way in hell she could know what I was mumbling about.

“That’s the old Romanian flag,” I explained. “It has the royal coat of arms on it. Either Violeta left detailed instructions for her funeral, or somebody knows for sure what we don’t know for sure.”

There were several big sofa chairs in the front row. The family chairs. In one sat bread heiress Kay Hausenfelter in a flowery summer dress that showed too much back and probably too much front. In another sat Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy. Next to her sat her antsy, hot-tempered daughter, Professor Barbara Wilburger. Both were dressed in black. Both wore wide-brimmed black hats. Next to the professor sat Gloria McPhee, wearing a somber gray and brown plaid suit. Next to her was husband, Phil, sweltering in tweed. Just as the minister stepped behind his portable pulpit and tapped the microphone to make sure it was on, I recognized someone else. His arms were folded across his chest, pulling his suit coat tight across his ample back. It was Detective Scotty Grant. What in the hell was he doing there?

The harpist stopped plinking and folded her hands in her lap. The service began. The minister read a slew of Bible verses, including that one I like from Ecclesiastes, about there being a time for everything. He didn’t say much about Violeta herself, except that, “I’m told she loved life” and “From the looks of things here today, she had many devoted friends.” Clearly this minister wouldn’t have known that woman in that purple jar from Adam.

The minister read a final verse of optimistic scripture then stood aside. Kay Hausenfelter swiveled her way to the pulpit. Good, I thought. The other Queens of Never Dull were going to regale us with their favorite memories of the dearly departed. There was a chance I was going to learn something interesting.

Said Kay Hausenfelter, “As you know, I was an exotic dancer during my youth. Only back then we ladies of the burleycue called ourselves
striptease artists.
Anyway, Violeta never once looked down her nose at me. Unlike so many others in this town. She loved people for who they were.” Kay raked the tears out of her eyes with her thumb and said this: “Violeta Bell never said much about her life before coming to Hannawa. But I always figured it must have been a little like mine. Memorable but worth forgetting. Anyway, we had so much fun together.” She blew a kiss at Violeta’s urn. “You were a hoot and a half, sweet woman. I will miss you to pieces.”

Kay went back to her chair. Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy went to the pulpit. Said Ariel, “My friend Violeta Bell loved antiques. And I’m not talking about Kay Hausenfelter or Gloria McPhee! And I’m sure not talking about me!” Everyone laughed. People love to laugh at funerals. It’s permission to spit death in the eye. I looked to see if Gabriella was writing it down. She was.

Unfortunately it proved to be the last interesting thing Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy said. For the next ten minutes she talked about homelessness, global warming, eradicating adult illiteracy, and the need to spay and neuter our pets. I could see why she drove her daughter up the wall. Finally, she got around to Violeta Bell. “Each of us is born with a gift, which God expects us to pay forward during the time She has allotted us here on Mother Earth.” I reached over and stopped Gabriella from writing that down. No way in hell was I going to let anything icky get into
The Herald-Union.

“My gift was spending my father’s money,” Ariel continued. “Violeta’s gift was spreading joy. The minute you met her, you just knew she loved who she was. Inside and out. And she expected you to love yourself inside and out, too. As Three Dog Night once sang, ‘Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea. Joy to you and me.’” Again I stopped Gabriella’s pen.

Ariel now turned and spoke to Violeta’s ashes, just as Kay Hausenfelter had. “In some ways I never really lived until I met you, my beloved friend. And I promise you, I am going to keep on living just as long as I can.”

That
I let Gabriella write down.

Now Gloria McPhee came to the pulpit. She didn’t speak from the heart like Kay, or from an over-active social conscience like Ariel Wilburger-Goudy. She read off a sheet of pink stationary. And for my money, she’d labored over it far too long. “Perhaps we will never know why Violeta had to die the way she did,” she began. “Perhaps we will never know the secrets she kept inside her while she lived and lived and lived. But we do know of her generosity. Day by day she gave us everything she had. And since her passing, we’ve learned that she left all she had to the Hannawa Art Museum.”

Well, that sure made my antennae spin. I knew from my talk with Detective Grant that Gloria was the executrix of Violeta’s will. Which meant she knew Violeta died pretty much penniless.

Gloria, for better or worse, had more to read. “Violeta Bell claimed to be the queen of Romania. That’s right, the queen of Romania. She told us a million times. In that whimsical way of hers that said, ‘I don’t care if you believe me or not.’”

Detective Grant took that opportunity to look over his shoulder and wink at me.

Gloria finished reading. “If Violeta was not the queen of Romania, she should have been.” Before sitting down, Gloria curtsied to the urn. I didn’t know whether to cry or throw a shoe.

The minister led a final prayer. The harpist starting plinking. Row by row, people shuffled past the urn. Some brushed their fingers across it. Some bent and kissed it. Many said a silent prayer. I went straight to Gloria McPhee. I introduced myself. I told her that I’d worked with Gabriella Nash on her story about the Queens of Never Dull. “Putting that Romanian flag by her remains was a very nice touch,” I said.

Gloria smiled weakly. “She just loved that flag.”

“That particular flag?”

“She said she’d had it since she was a girl.”

“And her leaving everything to the art museum,” I said. “Isn’t that something.”

Her eyes got as cold as those little round ice cubes they put in highballs. She knew I was laying it on thick, or, as Ike likes to say, giving her the old schmaltzaroo. “Kay told us you came to see her,” she said. “That you were feeling guilty about the story your paper did on us.”

I bobbled my head contritely.

“And do you know what I told Kay, Mrs. Sprowls?”

“I can’t imagine.”

Gloria moved in close, to make sure I could hear her whisper over the harpist. “I told her you were that librarian who sticks her nose into murders.”

I’d been outed again. And I was glad. It made my nose-sticking easier. “I went to see Ariel, too. But all I got was her daughter’s two cents on the matter.”

Gloria pulled back. Her eyebrows shot up. She gave one of the best Lauren Bacalls I’ve ever seen. “I’d bite down hard on those two pennies if I were you,” she said. “To see if they’re made of real copper.”

“I’ll put it on my to-do list.”

She mellowed. “I suppose you’d like to talk to me, too.”

“I’d like that.”

“Expect a call,” she said.

I looked for Detective Grant. He was at the front of the chapel, reading all the little cards on the flower baskets. I snuck up beside him. “Any surprises?”

He flinched. As if a scorpion had just crawled up his pantleg. He took a couple of deep breaths. “No.”

And there weren’t any surprises. No flowers from dukes or duchesses. No flowers from anybody named Bell. No flowers from outside Hannawa.

We followed the other people outside. A black limousine was waiting under the portico. Weedy was circling the crowd like a wolf, clicking away. After a few minutes the four Queens of Never Dull came out. Kay and Ariel had their arms around each other. Gloria had her arms around Violeta’s urn. Weedy got the picture.