The Unraveling of Violeta Bell (17 page)

“Any objections if I ride out to the cemetery with you?” Grant asked.

“Not a one.” A few minutes later we were in the funeral procession, buzzing up West Apple in Gabriella’s little bumblebee car, me up front, Weedy and Grant scowling from the back like a pair of adjoined hippopotami.

It took the procession a good half hour to reach the cemetery. It was out in Bloomfield Township. It was one of those new corporately owned jobbies that don’t allow gravestones—just those flat, bronzed plaques to make the mowing easier. It was called Riverbend Moor. As if there actually was a river nearby, bent or otherwise. As if anybody in America knew what a moor was. And according to the big, flagstone-encased sign in front, it was not a cemetery at all. It was a “family memory garden.” There was an 800 number on the sign, so you could call and make your reservations on their nickel.

The procession snaked through the gates and parked along the drive. People got out of their cars, stretching and twisting until their undergarments were back in place. It was a big cemetery. Big and sterile. The grass was short and brown. There was a sprinkling of small trees still tethered to their stakes. There was a chalky-white angel statue surrounded by a ring of red geraniums. At the top of the hill sat the columbarium, the modern glass and brown-brick monstrosity where Violeta’s ashes would spend eternity.

“I’ve never been in a columbarium before,” I confessed to Detective Grant as we followed the walkway toward a pair of tall, copper-covered doors. “But I’d hear they’re quite the thing these days.”

“You’re in for a real treat,” he said.

I can’t say it was a treat. But it was interesting. The building had a high, vaulted ceiling. All glass, so that rays of sunlight were shooting down at every angle, and in every color, like rainbows almost. The marble walls were lined with niches for the urns. Each niche was maybe a foot-and-a-half square. They were lined up eight across and eight high. They looked like giant trophy cases.

Anyway, each individual niche had a glass door and a lock. And what made it all so interesting is the way the niches were decorated. Next to the urns were favorite family photos and keepsakes. Baseballs. Teacups. A favorite pair of shoes or fishing lure. Military medals. Big-eyed Precious Moments figurines. Bibles opened to special passages. One niche contained a half-smoked cigar resting in one of those horrible topless-woman ashtrays. But most were in good taste and quite touching. I’d always envisioned myself being lowered into the ground in a casket. But the place did make me think.

Violeta Bell’s niche had a very nice view of the pond and sitting garden outside. It was in the third row, too, so you didn’t have to stoop too low or stretch too high to see inside. Gloria put the urn into the niche. Kay placed a ceramic bell next to it. It was covered with hand-painted violets. Ariel put a folded classifieds section from
The Herald-Union
inside. A half-dozen garage sales were circled. Gloria took a small wooden box out of her purse and put that inside. The box was about the size of a harmonica, maybe five inches long and a couple of inches wide. A fancy little box.

Gloria closed the glass door. The click of the lock echoed across the columbarium. The minister conducted a brief service. There was a little sniffling and a lot of silence. People headed for their cars.

Detective Grant locked his arm in mine and eased me off the walkway, away from Gabriella and Weedy. We walked along a row of those bronzed plaques, twenty or thirty of them, until we were well out of eavesdropping range. “So, Maddy,” he asked, grinning like a Buddha statue. “How’s your investigation going?”

“Badly. And yours?”

“It’s taken an interesting twist. One I figured you’d want to know about before the brown stuff hits the fan.”

“Before Dale Marabout’s story comes out tomorrow, you mean?”

“Pretty much the same thing—no?”

Maybe I was only the paper’s librarian, but I was a newspaperwoman. And I was a good friend of Dale Marabout’s. I had my loyalties. I took the offensive. “Given that it took you so long to release the body for cremation, I gather this interesting twist of yours has something to do with the autopsy.”

He was still grinning but he suddenly looked a lot more like Beelzebub than Buddha. “It seems that when the coroner did his thing—how can I put this—a few things were missing inside.”

The sun was suddenly very hot. “Things missing?”

“Everything you’d expect to find on the outside was there—but inside.”

“Scotty—what are you saying?”

He knew me well enough to get to the skinny. “It seems that once upon a time Violeta Bell had been a man.”

The sun was now sitting directly on top of my head. “Are we talking sex change here?”

“Yes, we are,” he said. “Yes, we are.”

“Heaven’s to Betsy! First she’s the queen of Romania and now she’s a man?”

Grant took my arm and started us toward the car. “We live in interesting times, don’t we?”

I slipped my arm out of his. “I hate to go liberal on you, but does the whole world have to know? She was who she wanted to be. And apparently didn’t want anyone to know.”

“I’m a very open-minded guy,” he said. “I’ve got a transgendered officer in my department. I’d be happy to let Violeta Bell’s secret stay right up the hill there in that jar.”

“But it’s public record?”

“And it could be pertinent to the case,” he added. “Transgenders get murdered all the time. Boyfriends who aren’t too happy with the news.”

“Boyfriend? She was seventy-two!” I laughed at my own stupidity. “What am I saying—I’m sixty-nine with a boyfriend.”

Grant helped me over the droopy chain that ran along the edge of the drive. “I’ve got a press conference at four to spill the beans. You want to come?”

“Unfortunately, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.”

***

Dr. Menke finished his examination. He scooted back on his stool. “I figured they might be the culprits,” he said.

It was not what I wanted to hear. “They’re that big?”

“A couple of beauts. You should have them removed.”

“Absolutely not.”

“It’s a relatively simple procedure.”

“Absolutely not.”

He stood up. Deposited the tongue depressor in the wastebasket. “Like I said, your test results show that you have obstructive sleep apnea. Which is often caused by enlarged tonsils. And like I said—”

“A couple of beauts?”

“More than likely your swollen tonsils are the result of an allergic response to something,” he explained. “Your body has ordered immune cells to take up residence in your tonsils to fight off the infection. That’s what puffs them up.”

I slid off the examination table. “I thought allergies made you sneeze.”

“They can cause all sorts of interesting reactions,” he said. “And given that your snoring is a relatively new problem—or so you say—then I’d say you were only recently exposed to this allergen.”

I rewound my memory tapes and played them fast forward. “Can you be allergic to a man?”

He chuckled. Let me know that my time was just about up by grabbing the doorknob. “Have you recently exposed yourself to one, Mrs. Sprowls?”

I sure wasn’t going to answer that. “How about a dog?”

“A much more likely culprit,” he said.

15

Saturday, August 5

Ike was not happy. Not with the Cream of Wheat I’d made for our breakfast. Not with my refusal to have my tonsils out. “I’m not mad at you,” he assured me as we sat in the breakfast nook watching a pair of squirrels plunder the birdfeeder outside. “I’m just pointing out the inconsistency of your stubbornness.”

“The inconsistency of my stubbornness?”

“That’s right,” he said, wagging his spoon at me. “We’re choking down this tasteless gruel because of your
bad
cholesterol—”

“The male species comes with good and bad cholesterol, too, you know.”

“—But you don’t care one iota how many times a night you stop breathing!”

“If I make you eggs will you shut up about my tonsils?”

“Good try.”

“I’m just trying to be consistent, Ike.”

“And I’m just trying to keep you from falling over dead.”

“Good! We’ve met each other half way. Now eat your gruel so I can read the paper.” I snapped the paper open and read the headline across the top of page one:

Stunned Police Say
Slain Woman Born A Man.

I’d already read the story twice that morning—once on the trunk of Ike’s car, where the paperboy had graciously thrown it, and once sitting on my front step—but how can you not read a story like that over and over?

By Dale Marabout
Hannawa-Union
Staff Writer

HANNAWA—The autopsy of 72-year-old antique dealer Violeta Bell revealed that she had undergone a sex change operation earlier in life, Police Detective Scotty Grant said.

“We debated long and loud whether to release such a personal detail about the deceased,” Grant told a hastily called press conference yesterday. “But given that Miss Bell’s murderer is still at-large, we decided that public disclosure might facilitate our investigation.”

While Grant refused to discuss what he called the “more intimate details” of the coroner’s examination, he did say that the autopsy report “shows unequivocally that Bell had been born male.”

“Makes you wonder if the other Never Dullers knew,” I said.

Ike scraped the last lump of Cream of Wheat from his bowl. He spooned it into his mouth and pretended to enjoy it. “How could they not know? Every time I see a person of that variety I know it.”

“And how do you know that?”

He laughed at his foolishness. “I guess I wouldn’t, would I?”

“Still, you’ve got to wonder if the killer knew.”

“Yes—you do have to wonder that.”

The phone rang. It was Bob Averill. He was in a tizzy. “You’ve seen the paper, I assume?”

“That, I have, Bob.”

“Did you know?”

“I learned the same time Dale Marabout did. Give or take a couple of hours.”

He hesitated just long enough to take a drink of something with ice cubes in it. “Well, I just want you to understand that this doesn’t diminish my interest in the case.”

“Mine either, Bob.”

Ten seconds after I hung up, the phone rang again. This time it was Gloria McPhee. After inquiring about my well being, apologizing for bothering me so early, and then rattling my eardrum with one of the most agonizing sighs I’d ever heard, she got to the matter at hand. “Well, I guess you know what was in the paper this morning.”

“Quite a surprise. But I suppose you already knew.”

“Actually, I didn’t know,” she said. “The possibility never dawned on me. She was as much a woman as you or me. I’m absolutely flabbergasted.”

Her bewilderment sounded genuine. Which meant it was either real or beautifully played. “I imagine it came as a surprise to Kay and Ariel, too.”

“It was. Which reminds me why I called. How would you like to go garage-saling with us today?”

That, I wasn’t expecting. “Well—”

“I could have Eddie swing by and get you in a hour.”

“Eddie?”

“It’s no fun without Eddie.”

A day with those three could be very profitable. It could also be deadly. I twisted the receiver toward Ike, so Gloria could hear my every word: “Ike, dear? Do we have any plans for today?”

And so she could hear Ike’s very manly voice: “For crying out loud, Maddy! You know I’m working today!”

Having established that it would be a bad idea to drive me out to the middle of nowhere and knock me in the head, I accepted the invitation. Fifty-seven minutes later Eddie French pulled into my driveway. Ike had already left for the coffee shop but when I came out, I yelled, “See you later, honey!” anyway. Eddie invited me to sit up front with him but I sat in the back. Harder for him to strangle me while he drove.

I was acting like a paranoid fool. I knew it. Oh yes, garage-saling with Eddie and the surviving Queens of Never Dull was a dangerous thing for me to do. But not physically dangerous. The danger was that I’d be seduced out of my objectivity.

Eddie didn’t make a peep until we were on West Apple. Then he sang like a cage full of canaries. “I am truly remorseful for my attitude the other day,” he said, flicking his cigarette ashes out his open window. “But law enforcement matters always seem to aggravate my stressfulness.”

“No need to apologize.”

“Nevertheless I truly appreciate your graciousness in assisting my problematic cause.”

“I’m not being gracious,” I said. “I’m just trying to prove you didn’t murder Violeta Bell.”

“
Comprendo.
”

“You are still insisting that you’re innocent, aren’t you?”

He took a long draw on his cigarette. “That part of my story remains unflinchingly consistent.”

“But other parts don’t?”

“Let’s just say that you came very close to hitting the nail on the head the other day.”

“About you transporting stolen antiques for her?”

“Let’s just say we’re on the same page.”

It was a good time for me to unveil my suspicion. “Any chance that they weren’t stolen, Eddie? That they were fakes?”

He swung onto Hardihood Avenue, using nothing but the heel of his hand. “You do have a way of making the less-than-innocent squirm,” he said.

“It’s one of my specialties,” I said. “So, were they?”

“Given the precariousness of my position, I would prefer to use the word reproductions.”

“Okay, reproductions then.”

“
Merci beaucoup.
”

I could see the top of the Carmichael House in the distance. I had to hurry. “And were they reproductions?”

He ground his cigarette into the ashtray. He popped his glove compartment open. He pulled out a can of Glade and started spraying. A sickening vanilla smell filled the cab. “Ariel is a fierce foe of the tobacco industry,” he said.

I took my voice up a notch. “Eddie—were you transporting reproductions for Violeta Bell?”

He shook several Tic-Tacs into his mouth. “Neither the making nor selling of reproductions is illegal, Mrs. Sprowls. Nor is the
transportating.
”