Murder Can Spoil Your Appetite (34 page)

“But anyhow, as I said, I did some thinking. And I finally got it through my thick skull that you didn’t actually have a thing to tie me to either of those homicides. And that even if you should find proof that Sheila and I were seeing each other—which apparently you managed to do this morning—so what? It wouldn’t necessarily follow that I was the one who shot her husband. And it would hardly implicate Sheila, especially since she wasn’t even in the country when Frank bought it. Actually, the worst that could happen is that it would come out I’d been concealing my relationship with a suspect—a
so-called
suspect—and I’d be brought up on charges. Maybe get kicked off the force. But while losing my job isn’t something I’m looking forward to, it’s a possibility I was able to come to grips with. You see, as much as I love my work, it’s not the biggest part of my life. Not anymore.

“As far as your turning me in for murder, though?” And here a slightly mischievous, almost boyish expression crossed Lou’s face. “It goes without saying, of course, that I’ll deny we ever had this conversation.”

My head was spinning. And for a few moments I couldn’t seem to locate my voice. Then at last I made a promise. “But now that I
know,
Lou, I’ll get the evidence I need to nail you for murder.” And locking his eyes with my own: “I swear I will.”

 

Three or four minutes after this I was ushering Lou out. He paused on the threshold, attempting a grin. “Hey,” he said, “just for the record, I won’t hold it against you if you break that promise of yours.”

And he closed the door behind him.

Life, I decided, was shit.

Imagine. Here I’d been entertaining all these hopeful, romantic thoughts about the man, only to come face-to-face with what my dream guy
really
was. A besotted, love-struck jerk who, three weeks ago, had morphed into a deadly killer.

I hobbled back to the sofa and sat down heavily. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t seem to muster the strength. Unconsciously, I bit my lip. Hard. I stopped when I tasted the blood. And then I slid my hand under the seat cushion and withdrew my .32. Thank God Lou hadn’t given me cause to reach for it!

A few minutes later I picked up the phone.

 

Chief Hicks wasn’t any too eager to pay a call on me that evening. “My wife’s expecting me home for dinner.”

“This is urgent.”

Obviously he didn’t give me credit for knowing the meaning of that word. “Suppose I drive out to see you in the morning?”

“Suit yourself, but I thought you might be anxious to find out who killed Frank Vincent.”

“All right, Miss Shapiro. I’ll see you in a little while.”

Miss
Shapiro. I slammed down the phone.
And I’m coming along just fine. Thank you so much for asking.

The chief made it to my place in a remarkable forty-five minutes. He took the chair that Lou had so recently occupied and looked at me expectantly.

Thinking of all the attitude I’d endured from this character these past few weeks, I wondered if I was letting myself in for more of the same. Or could it be that I would finally meet up with the fair-minded human being Lou had insisted was hiding in there someplace? Well, I’d already decided to take my chances with the man, so keeping my fingers crossed, I laid it on him.

“Lou shot Frank Vincent,” I said straight out. I really didn’t know how else to say it.

“Lou?”

“Lou Hoffman.”

“Is this a joke?” he demanded, glowering at me.

“I never joke about murder.”

“Then, Miss Shapiro, you’re just plain out of your fuckin’ mind.”

“Don’t you think you should at least hear me out?” I retorted, my voice quivering.

“All right,” Hicks conceded with obvious reluctance. “I’m listening.”

He sat there in stony silence as I went into the whole story about Lou and the Vincent/Maltese photograph. When I was through, he regarded me as though I were missing the majority of my marbles. “You’re talking about one of the finest, most honest cops I know. There is, I’m certain, a ridiculously simple explanation for what you just told me. Do you want my opinion? Lou happened to make a lucky guess.”

“I wish that
were
the case, but the fact is, this afternoon, right here in this room, Lou admitted to me that he was the shooter.”

It was obvious that Hicks was taken aback. But, recovering almost at once, he eyed me skeptically. There was a touch of sarcasm in his voice when he asked, “And did he also tell you the
reason
he wanted Vincent dead?”

“The widow. Lou’s in love—no,
obsessed
—with Sheila Vincent.”

“I am now absolutely sure that you’re totally off base. Lou was pulling your leg. He had to be. I’ve known him for more than twenty years, and he’s never let his zipper rule his head. Believe me, Lou Hoffman isn’t the type to go off the deep end over a woman.”

“Don’t you understand? That’s exactly why the thing with Sheila hit him so hard. He was never really in love with anyone before, not even his wife. And it wouldn’t surprise me if all his life he’d been waiting to feel that passionately about a woman—probably without even realizing it. The trouble was, though, that his beloved had a husband who smacked her around and—worse yet—she was terrified of leaving him.” Very briefly now, I disclosed Vito da Silva’s threat. “So anyway,” I concluded wryly, “Lou saw only one way to deal with the problem: Shoot it.”

“Lou volunteered to you how he felt about Mrs. Vincent?” Hicks snapped his fingers. “Just like
that
?”

“No, of course not. It wasn’t until after I confronted him with what I’d discovered.”

“This being—?”

“I returned to the Breeze Inn this morning. I showed the manager Lou’s photograph, and he recalled his being at the motel on a number of occasions.”

“Nobody there was able to identify Mrs. Vincent, however,” I was reminded.

“Not that first time. But that’s because when she went to the motel she was wearing her hair the way she does now—which is different than in the photo I’ve been carrying around. Today, though, the manager talked about Lou’s being with a woman who fit Sheila Vincent’s description to a ‘T.’ He even mentioned her chignon. Uh, that’s a—”

“I have a wife and four daughters,” Hicks informed me testily. “I know what a chignon is. But tell me, was the man finally able to make a positive identification?”

“Well, it wasn’t what you could call
positive,
but I had that same picture with me, and, naturally, the hair still threw him off a little. Even so, he’s pretty sure at this point that she was the woman with Lou. And I promised to bring him a better photograph to confirm it.”

“Look, you haven’t convinced me that those two have been having an affair—you couldn’t even get a positive ID on Mrs. Vincent, for Christ’s sake. But if they
are
messing around, then Lou’s in trouble. Only it’s for investigating this homicide without bothering to mention his relationship with the widow of the deceased. Now, I consider that a serious matter, but it certainly doesn’t make Lou Hoffman a killer. Just a damn fool.

“But let me get this straight. Are you claiming that Lou was acting on his own, or is the widow also supposed to have been involved in her husband’s murder?”

“Oh, she was in on it, all right. Up to her armpits. Notwithstanding the fact that Lou denies she had any knowledge of what he was going to do.”

“Listen,” Hicks said, “I understand that this Mrs. Vincent is a very striking lady. And classy. And as fond as I am of him, Lou’s never been the type of man that women toss their panties at. So I’m having a slight problem accepting that Sheila Vincent would have gone for him in the first place.”

“I’m not convinced that she did. From what I know of Sheila, I’d say she had no intention of living on a cop’s salary for the rest of her life. Her long-term goal, I’m certain, was to latch onto a man who’d be in a position to finance her business interests. Or, at the very least, would be able to keep caviar on the table and a couple of Porsches in the garage. The way I see it is that in the meantime, though, she had this pressing need for someone to rid her of her husband. And who had a better chance of getting away with it than a smart cop—a lieutenant, yet—with a nice, clean record?” I didn’t feel it germane, so I didn’t throw in that Lou also wasn’t a screamingly inappropriate bedmate, which couldn’t be said about the majority of men with whom Sheila came in contact.

Hicks was shaking his head as if to clear it. “I feel like I’m fucking losing my mind,” he growled. “This can’t be happening.” And then after scratching his almost-bald pate and rubbing his chin for a couple of seconds, he offered hopefully, “I still say Lou was putting you on.”

I dug in my heels. “You’re wrong.”

“You’re
that
sure, are you, Miss Shapiro? Well, why don’t I find out what Lou has to say to all of this? I’ll stop by his place on my way home tonight.” He began to get to his feet.

“Wait. There are other things, too.”

The chief settled back in his chair, scowling deeply. “What other things?”

“For starters, Lou was always coming up with a different theory in an effort to get me to abandon my premise that the motive for the murder had to do with Sheila’s love life. First he had the victim dealing drugs, and when I wouldn’t buy into that, he switched to the mob’s being responsible for Vincent’s death.”

“I know all of that,” Hicks snapped. “Lou believed in checking into every possibility—like any good cop.”

From his tone of voice and the way he narrowed his eyes when he looked at me, I knew what the man was implying. Nevertheless, I forbade myself from taking the remark personally. “He also killed Mickey Mouth,” I declared a bit indistinctly (because I was speaking through clenched teeth). “It was a frantic bid to draw my attention away from the widow and make it appear as if Vito da Silva or one of his cronies had done the deed.”

“Do you have any proof of that?”

“Lou told me so himself.”

“He admitted this too, huh? He’s certainly one talkative murderer, isn’t he?”

“All right. Forget Mickey for now. In retrospect, I can recall a number of suspicious incidents that—never even dreaming Lou could be the perpetrator—I completely ignored at the time.”

“Such as?”

“There’s the fact that when we drove out to the Breeze Inn together that day, Lou didn’t come with me to talk to the employees. Instead, he went across the road to Burger King to pick up some lunch for us.”

“Maybe he was hungry.”

“Oh, please. That wasn’t like Lou—as you must know. Based on just the couple of weeks I partnered with him, I have no doubt that under normal circumstances he would have been right there with me, asking questions. I mean, until that afternoon he was in on every interrogation. And remember, the Breeze Inn was a major lead—our first one, too. But, of course, Lou couldn’t take a chance on showing his face there.”

Hicks opened his mouth for what I anticipated would be another rationalization of some sort, so I hurried on while I still had the floor. “And here’s something else. He offered to come up with a list of motels by location. And I don’t think it would be too implausible to assume that he intended to eliminate those he and Sheila had stopped at. Anyhow, when I said we could have Darlene put together the list, he agreed readily enough. But then he told me it would be a good idea to check out the places closest to the Vincent house first.”

“So? What’s your point?”

“Well, that’s another thing that should have turned on a light in my head. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if you wanted to keep your little trysts under wraps, you’d frequent motels that
weren’t
near your home.”

“Maybe.”

I continued with a little more confidence now, emboldened by even this much of a concession. “And, of course, the more time that elapsed before we canvassed the motels he and Sheila had actually been to, the less of a possibility there’d be that someone would still remember them.”

“Is that it?” the chief asked expressionlessly.

“I’d also like you to consider the timing of the attempt on
my
life. It occurred immediately after I swore to them both—Sheila and Lou, I mean—that, no matter what, I’d keep plugging away until I uncovered her mystery lover.”

“Just hold it a second. Are you suggesting Lou was the one behind that wheel? I’m sorry, but I can’t accept that. He liked you—he told me so himself. He even liked working with you. That is,” Hicks amended dryly, “as much as the circumstances of your involvement in this case would allow.”

“I’m not saying Lou
wanted
to kill me. He felt that he
had to.
Listen, he even saw to it we lingered over dinner for a long time on Thursday night, since the later it got, the less likely it was that there’d be a bunch of witnesses to his mowing me down.”

“What are you telling me? That he followed you home?”

“Not exactly. I was hardly burning up the road that night, so it’s more probable he made it into the city before I did and was waiting for me at my garage. We’d had a conversation one day about the liability of owning a car in Manhattan, and I mentioned that I’d recently switched to a garage with at least semi-reasonable rates. Most likely I supplied the location, too.”

Hicks’s tone was close to being dismissive. “I’m not convinced the timing of the attack on you means anything at all. In fact, I’ll bet you threatened to hunt down Mrs. Vincent’s lover more than once, didn’t you?”

I considered the question for a few moments. “No, not in the same way. Not that vehemently. And never to Sheila.”

For a brief time Hicks closed his eyes. When he opened them he looked at me intently. “Lou confessed to this, too?”

“That’s right. In his defense, though,” I felt obliged to add, “I should tell you that at the last second he had a change of heart and tried to avoid hitting me.”