Murder Can Spoil Your Appetite (22 page)

“Listen, why don’t we have something to drink?” I suggested then. “If this occasion doesn’t merit a toast, I don’t know what does.”

“Thanks, but we’d better pass,” Mike vetoed. He glanced at Ellen to make certain she was in agreement, and she nodded. “Between us, we polished off a bottle of wine at dinner.”

“How about some coffee, then?”

“Thanks anyway, but I don’t think so. Dinner pretty much took care of the caffeine craving, too. As far as I’m concerned, at least.”

“I have a very delicious Sara Lee cheesecake in the freezer,” I cajoled.

Mike’s lips parted—preparatory to his declining again, I’m sure—but Ellen preempted him. “I would absolutely love some coffee—and maybe a tiny piece of cheesecake to go with it.”

Mike and I caught each other’s eye and exchanged bemused smiles. Ellen has the appetite of three truck drivers. And where all that stuff she puts in her mouth winds up is one of life’s genuine mysteries. That girl is so thin I sometimes wonder if her weight even registers on the scale.

At any rate, I made some fresh coffee, and Mike gave in and had some, too. We toasted the engagement, solemnly clinking our mugs. A short while later Mike asked for a sliver of cake—I suspect it was to help him get down the coffee.

Ellen, on the other hand—who seems to have developed an immunity to my brew over the years—had a pretty decent slice of cheesecake just because it was cheesecake.

As for me, I wasn’t even up to nibbling, my always-dependable appetite having deserted me completely tonight.

About a half-hour later the three of us were standing in the doorway, sharing hugs again.

“You know,” Ellen said, “I wish you’d change your mind and come to Florida with us for the holiday. The family would love to see you.”

“Thanks, Ellen, I appreciate that. I really do. But I’m just too busy with the investigation right now.”

“Listen, Thanksgiving’s a week away yet, so promise me you’ll at least think about it, will you?”

“I will.”

She was already in the hall when she turned around. “I still don’t like your working for that man.”

I laughed. “Oh, stop being such a worrywart. Believe me, I’m not in any danger.”

Which shows you how much
I
know.

I was still in a state of euphoria when I got to work on Friday. Passing Lou’s office on the way to my own, I stopped long enough to blurt out my news.

“Gee, that’s great, just great,” he said, sounding like he meant it. Which was very sweet. After all, he didn’t know Ellen or Mike from a hole in his socks. “I have a pretty good idea how crazy you are about that niece of yours.” He smiled. “The only thing is, now that you don’t have to worry about those two making it legal, you’ll have to find something new to get yourself in a stew about.”

“No problem,” I told him. “
That
I can manage.”

Not more than ten minutes later Lou popped his head into my cubbyhole. Fern Lewis, the Oakview Road resident who’d been visiting her daughter in California—and whom her thirteen-year-old neighbor had labeled “an ugly old divorced lady”—was back in Riverton. And she’d just returned Lou’s call. Their brief conversation had convinced him that Lewis couldn’t be of any help to us. She’d met Sheila Vincent exactly twice and the victim only once. And she knew absolutely nothing about their personal lives.

Well, I can’t say it wasn’t what I expected, so I shouldn’t have been disappointed. But this didn’t keep me from feeling that way anyhow. To be honest, I think part of my disappointment was that I wouldn’t be seeing for myself just how ugly and old the woman actually was.

 

At a little after eleven that morning Marsha Whitfield arrived at the station house. Which turned out to be another letdown.

She confirmed her husband’s statement that he and Sheila had not reignited their romance. “I’m completely, totally positive there’s nothing going on between them” was how she put it. (Well, you can’t get more positive than that.) And then she smiled so sadly that if it hadn’t been for the circumstances leading up to her becoming Mrs. Ron Whitfield, I would have cried for the lady. “You see,” she revealed, “Ron and I eloped right before he was set to marry my sister, and I spent years after that shaking in my shoes, waiting for the retribution I knew I deserved. I was so focused on the possibility of losing him back to her that if there’d been anything at all going on there, I would have known it.” She looked at us intently. “Take my word for it.”

I got the feeling that’s just what Lou was doing. Me, though—I wasn’t entirely convinced that Marsha Whitfield’s antennae were as sensitive as she was giving them credit for, especially in the months since she and Whitfield separated. Or maybe her denial stemmed from a necessity to do penance. What I mean is, she could be protecting her sister even if Sheila
had
stolen Ron from her, since she—Marsha—had stolen him from Sheila in the first place.

“Well, it looks as if we can scratch Whitfield,” Lou announced as soon as Marsha left his office. I opted not to argue. “Anyhow, there’s still Morgan Sklaar. Could be he’ll turn out to be the other man.”

He was really trying his damnedest to be supportive. “You don’t believe there
is
another man,” I reminded him.

“Let me put it this way. So far I haven’t seen any indication of it. But you still believe it—don’t you?”

“I’ve begun to have some doubts, but I guess I haven’t completely abandoned that theory.”

“Well, anyway, we should have that talk with Sklaar. Why don’t I try him now?”

I hung around Lou’s office just long enough to find out when we’d be able to meet with the publisher. Then, once Sklaar agreed to see us late that afternoon, I returned to my cubbyhole to deal with my ever-increasing collection of notes.

 

The call from da Silva came just as I was on the verge of phoning the local coffee shop for some lunch. Not that I was hungry, mind you, but a person
should
eat. And I was hoping I could at least manage to get down a sandwich today.

My client opened with, “I understand you and your partner visited Joe Maltese.”

“Hold on a moment, please.” And then after jumping up to check the hall as I always did when I heard from da Silva, I picked up the receiver again. “That’s right,” I confirmed a little breathlessly, “we stopped by his home yesterday.”

“May I ask why? Is Mr. Maltese under suspicion?”

“Not any more than anyone else. We’re merely trying to cover all the bases.”

“Well, I can assure you that Mr. Maltese had nothing to do with murdering Frankie. Nor did any of my other associates. I trust I am making myself clear to you.”

Now, maybe I was taking it the wrong way, but this definitely sounded like some veiled form of intimidation to me. A shiver traveled down my spine. Nevertheless, I put to da Silva, “Are you saying I’m not to talk to any of your associates about the shooting? I was under the impression you wanted me to check out every possibility.” There could be no mistaking the challenge in my voice. Which, in view of my recent displays of cowardice, was, I thought proudly, surprisingly ballsy of me.

A long pause. “You are right, of course. Do whatever it is you feel is necessary in order to uncover who committed this terrible crime.” And then: “But the widow—is she no longer a suspect?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” I took a deep breath. “But from something we’ve learned recently, she appears to have had a fairly strong reason for wanting to keep Frankie alive.”

“And just what is it you have learned?”

“That you made a bargain with Mrs. Vincent to finance a new business venture for her if she’d continue living with her husband until after the next congressional election. Uh, is this true?”

Another, even longer pause. “That is correct. I considered it crucial they remain together at least long enough for Frankie to gain a political foothold.”

“You were aware, though, that he beat her.”

“The boy confessed this to me himself. And by the way, I am certainly not condoning his behavior. Please understand this. However, we are, none of us, without flaws. Frankie? Well, unfortunately he was cursed with a quick temper. And that is what it was: a curse. I don’t know if you will believe this, Desiree, but his treatment of his wife was almost as upsetting to Frankie as it was to her.”

You wanna bet?
I retorted in my head.

“At any rate,” da Silva went on, “after I intervened, he began to work hard to control his temper, and he appeared to be succeeding, too. Furthermore, he agreed that if there should be a recurrence of his problem, he would seek professional counseling.

“Look, before you judge my actions on this, I want you to know that I was—I
am
—convinced that Frankie had the qualities to be a fine advocate for the people of this state. And it was almost unthinkable to me that they should be deprived of his services because of some minor domestic discord.”

Wow! Talk about only seeing what you want to see!
Half a dozen smart-ass remarks sprang to my lips, but I pulled them all back.
Better,
I advised myself,
to just forge ahead.
“Let me ask you something, Mr. da Silva. Say that through no fault of her own Mrs. Vincent was unable to keep her part of this agreement the two of you had—was any provision made for that contingency?”

“None.”

“Then it would seem to me that the last thing she’d want to do would be to commit an act that would cause her to lose the financing she needed so desperately—unless, of course, she’d found another source of funding.”

Da Silva grunted something—I’m not sure what it was. Then he said, “And now it is my turn for a question, Desiree. Exactly how did you acquire your information concerning this agreement?”

“Mrs. Vincent told us about it.”

“And did she also happen to tell you that she only accepted my proposition because she was of the opinion that she had no choice? That I mentioned the possibility of there being some unpleasantness if she should reject my offer?”

“No, she didn’t,” I answered as soon as the lump in my chest had dissolved.

And now da Silva actually chuckled. “I seem to have underestimated the woman. It was very resourceful of her to speak of that pact, do you not agree? Think about it. Being unaware of our connection—yours and mine, I am referring to—she would have had no reason to expect that it would ever come to light that she was . . . ahh . . .
persuaded
to enter into it. You can, I presume, see why there was almost no chance of my revealing any of this to the authorities. After all, I have a reputation as a respectable businessman to maintain, so I would not care to create the impression that I normally engage in this type of persuasion.” Then somewhat defensively he added, “I feel I should impress upon you, however, that regardless of this, there would have been no hesitation in my presenting these facts to the authorities if I believed there was any likelihood they might be viewed as some indication of Sheila’s guilt. I was certain, however, this would not be the case. Particularly since I have no doubt she would have denied my version of our arrangement.”

“I can understand your thinking, but why didn’t you at least confide in me?”

The silence that followed was interminable. When the explanation came at last, there was a hoarseness in da Silva’s soft voice, which was suddenly so low that I had to press the receiver right up against my ear to catch all the words. “I imagine it was because I cannot erase from my mind that by seeing to it that Sheila stayed with Frankie, I may have pushed her into doing away with him. It is not something I find easy to talk about because it is not something that is easy to live with.” He cleared his throat before asserting poignantly, “But I never thought her capable of murder—not then.”

“No, of course not,” I murmured. “And we still can’t be sure she had anything to do with what happened to Frankie.”

Da Silva spoke as if he hadn’t heard me. “Furthermore, I did not anticipate her using our agreement as evidence of her innocence.”

“I can appreciate—”

“What would you say to my offering a large reward—anonymously, naturally—for information leading to the apprehension of the murderer?”

I considered this briefly. “I don’t think it’s a very good idea. We’d have people crawling out of the woodwork and bombarding us with a lot of baloney that would probably do nothing but hamper the investigation.”

“This is what the mayor has been insisting, but I wanted to confirm it with you. Er, you will, I assume, be paying closer attention to the widow as a result of our conversation.”

“You can count on it.”

“There is one thing more, Desiree. This partner of yours—he is not aware that you are working for me?”

I almost snapped out my denial, but at the last minute I remembered that this was, after all, Vito da Silva I was ticked off at here. A flat “Certainly not” was as indignant as I permitted myself to get.

“Good. You will, I know, keep it that way.”

 

Well, this changed everything. I’d just discovered that Sheila Vincent had a really potent motive for doing away with her slime-of-a-husband: the fear that leaving him could trigger some nasty repercussions. Maybe even cost her her life. I mean, da Silva had threatened her with “unpleasantness.” But who knew da Silva’s definition of “unpleasantness?”

And now Sheila not only leapt to the top of my suspect list again, but I pictured her name as being underlined, starred, and printed in bold.

But how,
I put to myself,
are you going to explain your renewed interest in the lady to Lou?

I pondered this little dilemma for quite a while. And eventually I came up with the only possible answer:
You’re not.

“I see you’re practically famous now,” I remarked a few minutes after Lou and I started out for New York City.