GUNNED (12 page)

“So tell me your thoughts so far on what we’ve discovered?”

Annie put her fork down and looked over at me. “It is interesting that everyone has a story, no? I am not certain that any of it pertains to the murder of Mr. Spiegel, but I think eventually something will, how do you say, click?”

“Like what?” I asked, as I wiped some melted cheese from my chin.

“The first person we spoke with was Jennifer. Other than Mr. Spiegel upsetting her mother, she did not seem to be too upset at the prospect of perhaps not being her parents’ biological child. She almost seemed to welcome the fact as an explanation of why she felt like she didn’t belong.” Annie took a sip of tea before continuing. “In contrast, her parents had been more resentful of Mr. Spiegel’s intrusion.”

“But only because it brought up the pain of Mrs. Shalt losing her father right before Jennifer was born. Would that be a motive to get rid of the man?” I asked.

“Only if she is telling us the truth,” Annie said with a sly smile. “Did you not say that the guilty party would lie?”

“I did.”

“Perhaps Mrs. Shalt was upset for other reasons. She had a sister working at the hospital, so out of everyone we have talked with so far she was the one with an insider.”

“Yes, but for what purpose?”

“Her father had just died of congenital heart failure. Very sudden and very upsetting. When you are giving birth, Alex, your emotions are no longer under your control. I cried constantly, and once our daughter was born it became worse. Every time I looked at her I was so overcome that something bad would happen. I did not want to leave the hospital. I felt she was safer there with professionals to look after her. Not rational, but you are not sane at that point.”

“So you’re saying that maybe Mrs. Shalt, at that very emotional time, was so concerned that perhaps her daughter might have inherited the same condition, whether or not something like that was possible, that she…what? Had her sister help her get another baby, one who presumably came with no health risks?”

Annie shrugged. “You are not yourself, I tell you. Your emotions have been taken over. Perhaps Jennifer feels like an outsider because her mother, knowing what she has done all those years ago, has pushed those feeling onto her daughter unknowingly.”

I sat there cradling my cup, thinking about this when Annie reached across the table and nudged my arm. I looked at her and she nodded toward the door.

“I think perhaps we will now get to speak with Mr. Perry.”

Jerome Perry was not what I expected. He was much younger than I imagined. And cocky. Funny how we have preconceived ideas about things, which never turn out to be right.

“Who are you again and what do you want? How did you know I would here, by the way? Are you stalking me, because I’ve had someone stalking me before and I’ll call the police if I have to. You’re not some kook from Facebook, are you?”

“We stopped by your apartment and the doorman told us you sometimes come by here.” I explained to Mr. Perry exactly why we wanted to speak with him.

“Sal talks too much. Look, I already talked to the police,” Mr. Perry said, while standing next to our table and holding onto his phone, one of those new high tech things like Annie has. “And I told them they had the wrong guy. I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Yes, I know. My husband is the detective you spoke to. Why don’t you have a seat? This will only take a minute.”

Mr. Perry took a call on his cell and ignored us for a minute. He told the person on the other end he would call them later and then he turned back at me. “So, what is it that you want?”

“Please sit down.” My neck was hurting from looking up at the man, who had to be over six-foot tall.

Jerome Perry sat down in a chair he pulled over from another table, and looked at me impatiently.

“Mr. Spiegel came to see me and then ended up dead shortly thereafter. His wife has also been to see me, and one of the women he’s been looking for works for me and she’s very upset. I’m trying to get to the bottom of this.”

“Yeah, well, hang on a minute.”

He took another call. Who was everyone talking to? It was amazing any work got done in the world anymore.

“Okay, look, like I was saying, I didn’t kill Sheldon. Not that I didn’t feel like it. I lost my job because of him. He said I screwed up big time, which wasn’t completely my fault, and he said I was on my phone all the time texting and playing games and missing deadlines.” Jerome Perry looked at his phone, smiled, and started typing something on the miniature keyboard.

“Image that. So nothing he said was correct.” I gave a nod to the phone. “And everyone’s out to get you.”

Mr. Perry pushed a piece of pale blond hair off his forehead. “What? Well, yeah, kind of. That’s how it felt at that place. Look, I’m glad I’m out of there. A bunch of old guys who got their degrees eons ago. I have a masters in structural engineering and they’re saying
I
screwed up?” He looked at his phone again, gave a small laugh, and typed something quickly.

“I heard after you got fired you posted some nasty comments about Mr. Spiegel on Twitter.”

“What? I never said anything about Sheldon, and you have a lot of nerve looking at my Twitter account.”

“It’s Twitter. That’s what it’s for. If you don’t want people to see stuff then stop sharing your every thought with the rest of the world. So what about it? You sounded pretty upset.”

“One, I never actually used his name, so good luck proving it was about him. And two, the guy was old school. You have to cut corners wherever possible, and Sheldon always had to use the best. Well, the best costs, you hear me, and then we go over budget. How is that good for the client?” Jerome glanced down at his phone and typed in another message.

I made a mental note to find out what, if any, bridges this kid had worked on and not to ever drive over them. And ditto for buildings. I didn’t want to be in one of his structures when the walls caved in because he used inferior cement.

“You want to know something? I liked old Sheldon, I really did,” Jerome Perry said. “But he was acting weird lately. And like I told the police, I have no idea what he was up to. He never said and I never asked. I don’t know anything about any women he was trying to find. The guy was married. And old. I don’t need to hear about his sex life. But you know what? I completely forgot about this when I talked to your husband. Sheldon did say something odd.”

Annie and I both leaned forward.

“What was that?” I asked.

Jerome gave the phone another glance. One more time and I was going to rip it out of his hands and stomp on it until it broke into a million pieces.

“Mr. Perry. You were saying.”

“Oh, right. Yeah. I was in the North Carolina office. This was the day before we got into it, and as I walked by his office I could hear him talking. No one was in the office with him and he wasn’t on the phone so I thought maybe he was talking to me. I stopped and asked him what he just said.”

“And what did he say?” My patience was wearing.

“He said, ‘There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has once begotten.’ I remember it because it was a really weird thing to say.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

Jerome Perry gave me a look he probably reserved for lesser mortals. “How the hell should I know? I thought at first he was accusing me of something, you know? I was just about to get into it with him.”

Annie gave Jerome a stern look. “Did you ask him what it meant? What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything. He just started working again on his computer and I walked away.”

And that’s what Jerome did now. He got up and went to the counter, ordered a drink, and then took a seat at a table by the window where he opened his laptop and typed another message on his phone.

There was no more information to be gleaned from Jerome Perry, so we finished our teas and left. But something about that cryptic statement started a tingle inside my brain, and I thought another visit to the widow was in order.

Andrea Spiegel Spellman was the spitting image of a young Fran Drescher, and had the nervous energy to match. She was on the phone when she opened the door of her mother’s room at the Indian Cove Inn, and from the snippets of conversation I heard, it sounded like she was making funeral arrangements for her father.

“I’m sorry. How can I help you? Are you here to see my mother? I’m Andrea, by the way.”

“I’m Alex Harris and this is Annie Willix. We were hoping to speak with your mother, if she’s here.” I explained to Andrea about how her father had come to my office.

“She went to visit my uncle Jerry. As a matter of fact, she just left. My father left some stuff there and she went to get it.”

I really wanted to speak with Jackie again. I had a feeling that Sheldon’s words,
There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has once begotten
had to be a reference to his belief that Andrea was Jerry’s daughter. But the more I thought about that, how could it be. If Andrea was the product of an affair between her mother and uncle, the DNA would have definitely matched with Jackie and it would had to have been pretty damn close to Sheldon’s DNA as well. I only had Jackie’s word that the DNA didn’t match with the Spiegels’.

“This must all be so very difficult for you. First finding out that your mother and father weren’t your biological parents and then having your father killed. I’m very sorry.”

Andrea sat down and motioned to the small sofa for Annie and me. “It’s not been the best year so far, that’s for sure. And now this.” Her eyes misted over.

“How exactly did it happen that you found out about your parents?” I asked. I wanted to hear the story from Andrea to check for any inconsistencies with what her mother had told us.

“At first the doctors told me my DNA didn’t match my mother’s. That was a shock, and then after they took a blood sample from my dad and it wasn’t a match, I sat my parents down and asked what the hell was going on.” Andrea got up and poured herself some coffee from a carafe and then asked us if we wanted anything. Annie took a cup of coffee and I took a bottle of water from the small refrigerator.

Andrea twisted her long hair and then secured it to the top of her head with a huge clip. “I need a hair cut in the worst way, but, well, now’s not the time. So where was I? Oh, right. When my mother got cancer, I got really scared. Not just because I was afraid of losing her, but also because her mother had it and my aunt. What if I got it, too? I have a young daughter. I couldn’t risk not being there for her, you know? I told my mom I was going to be tested.” Andrea got up, cradling her coffee mug, and began to pace in front of a large window that looked out onto the Sound. “My mother didn’t want me to do it. She comes from a generation of what you don’t know won’t hurt you. She didn’t want to find out. As a matter of fact, when she found a lump, she didn’t want to go to the doctor, but my dad and I forced her. We told her we would pick her up and take her if she didn’t make an appointment. She said if it turned out that I had the same gene or whatever it is that causes all this stuff, she would never forgive herself for passing it on to me. She was really upset.”

“But you did it anyway,” I said. “You had to. You needed to know.”

“Yes, I did, but it took me a while to get up the nerve. Maybe I didn’t need to know, you know? I mean, my mother’s right, why stir up trouble. If I got sick, I would just deal with it then, but my husband said we had to know. Then we could take whatever steps we needed to so that I wouldn’t get sick. So I took a blood test and then we waited. When the results came back and I told my mom, I thought she was going to pass out. She insisted on talking to the
schmegeggy
of a doctor, and then had my dad take a test. At first she threatened to sue the lab. She made them do all the tests again. But the results came back the same.”

“Then what happened?” Annie asked.

Andrea continued her pacing. “I told my parents I didn’t care. I loved them and they were my parents. I had no idea what was going on, but I didn’t care. My mother calmed down when she realized I wasn’t going to start looking for my biological parents. I was a bit curious, yeah, but what if I found out my real parents were like horrible people, you know? Serial killers or something. Then what? No.” Andrea shook her head quickly. “Leave well enough alone. At least I knew I didn’t have the risk of getting the same kind of cancer that my mother had.”

“But your father wouldn’t let it go.”

“No. He became obsessive. At first he didn’t believe any of it when I told him. He was certain my mother’s affair with my uncle resulted in her getting pregnant with me.” Andrea shuddered. “Finding that out, about my mom and uncle, made me physically sick. Who wants to know that stuff about their parents? And my uncle.
Oy
. He’s a weird one. I certainly didn’t want him for a father. But then my dad talked with the doctor and he calmed down about my uncle Jerry. That lasted for a week or two and then he started digging into the other people who had babies on the same day. He kept saying that they needed to find their real daughter.
I’m
their real daughter. My mother kept telling him to leave it alone. What would happen if I turned out to be a
goy
? She was horrified.”

I put up my hand. “Wait. What’s a
goy
?”

“A non Jew. A
shiksa
. A fate worse than death in my mother’s opinion. I told my mother to just let him get it out of his system, but I was hurt. And angry. He was acting like all these years I didn’t mean anything. Like I was
bupkis
. He made me feel like dirt. Wasn’t he happy with me? What was he going to find out anyway? How could he possibly get access to hospitals and people’s DNA? But he wouldn’t stop. It was causing problems for me and my husband because I was so upset all the time. Plus, I know I was probably just imagining it, but I felt Ben, that’s my husband, I felt him looking at me funny, like maybe I was just a
shiksa
, or maybe a daughter of a serial killer, and passed on all that evil to our daughter.” Andrea shook her head. “Crazy, I know, but that’s how I was thinking.”