Murder Can Spoil Your Appetite (36 page)

The thing is, mentally I was in a deep funk.

Bad enough I’d fallen for a murderer. Only I hadn’t picked on just any old murderer—but somebody who would eventually target me as one of his victims. I’d tossed aside a really wonderful man in favor of Lethal Louie, too. (Which, of course, wasn’t the situation at all. I hadn’t broken up with Al because of Lou; I’d broken up with Al because of Al. But when you’re looking to beat yourself over the head, why let a little thing like the truth stand in your way?)

And don’t think, either, that I restricted myself to carrying on about the shambles that was now my personal life. I was continually wringing my hands over my professional failings, as well.

Just look at those clues I’d closed my eyes to for so long. And how could I not have caught on to the fact that Lou was Sheila Vincent’s advocate? It was a long while later, when I’d finally (somewhat) forgiven myself for my disastrous choice in men, that I decided to let myself off the hook about this, too. Lou Hoffman had, I conceded then, done a masterful balancing act, constantly attempting to divert my suspicions while he maintained every appearance of being the detached and efficient police officer. (Unless I’d been too damn hung up on the guy to see very clearly.)

But to get back to my depressed state . . .

Adding to the angst was, quite naturally, my frustration at Sheila’s still running around loose.

Plus, Chief Hicks’s concerns that we didn’t have enough to ensure a conviction for Lou also weighed heavily on me. The possibility of this bastard’s not being held accountable for the things he’d done filled me with outrage. (Although more recently I’ve come to suspect that mostly—and this was the Scorpio in me again—I wanted Lou to pay for the feelings I’d allowed myself to have for him.) At any rate, in mid-January I received the call that would, at least, allay my fears on that score.

“It looks like we may finally have ourselves a piece of physical evidence,” Chief Hicks announced.

I felt a little faint. “What do you mean?”

“It’s like this,” he began. “The other day a Riverton man reported that someone had apparently taken his Buick for a ride some time during the last seven or eight weeks and that it must have been in an accident.

“What happened was that on November twenty-third he and his wife were hit by a truck while they were crossing the street. The woman died instantly, and Mr. Snyder—that’s this guy’s name, Bill Snyder—was released from a rehabilitation facility just this week. At any rate, when he got home he took a look at his car and noticed this large dent in the left fender. Now, this guy tells me he’s very meticulous about that Buick of his, and he’s certain the damage hadn’t been there before he was hospitalized. Anyway, he thought it was very strange that someone would steal a car and then return it to the owner. He figured that maybe the thief hadn’t wanted the police to go looking for it, and so he decided it might be a good idea if he got in touch with us.”

I didn’t even let him pause for breath. “And—?”

“And I sent a team over to the house to investigate. It turns out that the garage has no lock and no alarm system. The car itself, however, had been locked; also, it’s got a shrill siren. But according to Snyder, it was highly unlikely any of the neighbors would take note of a siren going off. Those things were always short-circuiting in his neighborhood, he said.” Hicks stopped for a couple of seconds to have a sip of something.

“Go on,” I urged.

“Well, there was evidence the vehicle had been broken into. But, you know, Lou’s a lot neater than I ever gave him credit for. Everything had been pretty well wiped clean. There were no identifiable prints on the steering wheel, the door handles—anywhere. Fortunately, though, our friend did miss one little thing . . .”

I could barely get the question out. “What was that?”

“A crumpled foil wrapper from a stick of chewing gum had fallen under the driver’s seat. I just got the word a little while ago that there was a decent thumb print on the foil.”

“Lou’s?”

“Right you are. And listen, there’s a good chance I’m doing some legwork for the NYPD on this.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I have this gut feeling we’ll find your DNA on that fender. But I’m going to need a blood sample from you to confirm it.”

“Yes, of course.”

Hicks and I engaged in a bit of conjecture then, attempting to piece together the most likely scenario leading up to my Thanksgiving holiday mauling.

Lou must have read the police report on the couple’s accident, we speculated, and would have known that there’d be no one at home then. So some time Wednesday evening he went over to the Snyders’ and hot-wired their car in preparation for the attack on me that—after my explosion at Sheila—he now regarded as virtually inevitable. Most likely that night he even parked the Buick on the street in back of the station house, where it would be really handy. At any rate, after dinner on Thursday, as soon as he dropped me at my car, he took off for Manhattan in the Snyder Buick. It would have been absolutely no sweat to beat me into the city. I certainly wasn’t driving fast—I was too preoccupied with making myself nuts.

Well, with both of us fairly satisfied with the way this thing hung together, Hicks was just about to say goodbye now. But I detained him long enough to find out if he’d made any further attempts to persuade Lou to open up.

“I did. Two, in fact. During my last visit, I talked a lot about his kid. I told him he owed it to Jake not to spend the rest of his life behind bars. But I got nowhere.” And then, in typical Hicks fashion, he threw in caustically, “Otherwise, Miss Shapiro, I’d have called you. Like I
said
that I would.”

 

I felt an enormous relief once that little gum wrapper put in an appearance. I mean, it was the first
tangible
piece of evidence against my former partner. Although evidence of
what,
it took a while to discover.

Eventually, however, we learned that—in spite of that gut feeling of Hicks’s—whatever car Lou had had in readiness to run over me that Friday morning, it wasn’t Bill Snyder’s Buick.

You see, it turned out not to be my DNA on the fender at all, but—
ta-da!
—Mickey Mouth’s. And as you can appreciate, in view of Lou’s facing a murder charge with regard to Mickey, this was certainly far preferable.

On the down side, though, even now that this strong proof of his culpability had surfaced, Lou was continuing to maintain his innocence and—what was
really
sticking in my craw—refusing to point the finger at Sheila.

So while her lover rotted in jail—albeit deservedly—the widow remained at liberty to enjoy her happy, Frankie-free life.

But as it happens, Vito da Silva’s words were to prove prophetic: “One can never tell about these things.”

It happened on a Monday at the end of July, less than three weeks before the trial was scheduled to begin.

There no longer seemed to be even the slightest chance of Lou’s amending his original “not guilty” plea. Which meant, of course, that I had to let go of even the miniscule scrap of hope I’d been clinging to that Sheila Vincent would serve so much as a day in jail for her part in her husband’s murder.

And then, out of the blue, Doris Shippman telephoned me.

Her voice was strained. “I just got your number from Chief Hicks—I couldn’t locate the card you left with me.” (She probably tossed it the second I was out of her house.) “Uh, he said you were only on loan to the Riverton Police Department to help investigate Frank’s murder.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, that’s what I’m calling about—Frank’s murder. I have some information that I think could be important.”

“You didn’t want to discuss it with the chief?”

“Well, I thought it might be better to speak to you. I’m hoping you’re still interested in the case.”

“Oh, I’m interested, all right,” I responded firmly.

“I . . . umm . . . it’s difficult to do this on the telephone. Do you suppose it would be possible for you to meet me somewhere?”

“You bet.”

 

An hour and a half later Doris Shippman and I were seated in a booth in the Century Diner, a little place a few miles west of Riverton. Doris looked nervous and drawn, at least ten pounds thinner and a good five years older than when I’d last seen her.

We both ordered coffee, and then she said, “What I have to tell you—well, it’s about Sheila.”

I pounced. “What
about
Sheila?”

“I suppose the best thing would be to start with this

weekend. I was reading Friday’s
Riverton Gazette,
and there was this article about the upcoming trial. It said something about there being evidence that Sheila and Lieutenant Hoffman were ‘romantically involved’—that’s how they put it—but that he’s claiming this had nothing to do with Frank’s shooting. Do you believe that?”

“No.”

“I don’t, either. I think Sheila planned Frank’s death and got Hoffman to pull the trigger.”

“I agree,” I responded, stunned to be hearing what I was hearing from the widow’s close friend.

“Do the police have a good case against Hoffman?”

“Very good.”

“Wouldn’t it go easier on him, though, if he confessed and then explained how Sheila was the one who instigated the whole thing?”

“Yes, but Lieutenant Hoffman would never blow the whistle on her. He’s gaga about the woman, and he’s positive that the feeling is mutual.”

“Look, if you’d like to get him to change his mind, I think I may be able to help.”

“How?” I sat there stiffly, every nerve in my body on red alert.

Doris Shippman’s next words came out in a rush, as if she couldn’t wait to get rid of them. “Sheila’s been sleeping with my husband.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“Yes, I do. You see—” Our coffee arrived at this moment, and she stopped abruptly.

It was almost impossible to contain myself. “Please continue,” I prodded as soon as the waiter was out of earshot.

“Well, Sheila’s big on perfume. She practically drowns herself in it sometimes.”

I nodded, remembering. “I know.”

“Anyhow, for years she was wearing Joy exclusively.” Doris swallowed hard before continuing. “And for a while I kept smelling Joy on my husband’s clothes.”

“Millions of women wear Joy,” I pointed out, priming myself for a letdown.

“Of course they do. And I never, ever would have suspected Sheila.”

“But—?”

“Did you ever hear of a perfume called Forever?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“It’s fairly new. Anyhow, a few months after Frank died, Sheila and I went to dinner together, and I noticed that she had on a different perfume. She said that it was called Forever, and didn’t I think it was beautiful? Then she told me that Frank had given it to her for her birthday last year, but because of how things were between them, she hadn’t even wanted to try it. So as not to set him off, though, she’d promised to open it when she finished the bottle of Joy she was using. But she just shoved it in a drawer and forgot about it. Then recently she was looking for something in her dresser, and she came across that bottle of Forever. She told me she had worn it for the first time only the day before.”

Doris leaned toward me at this point, two fiery dots decorating her pale cheeks. “Now, I’d gotten a good whiff of that same fragrance just that morning—after Andrew came home from a, quote,
business
meeting at two a.m. And I’ve been smelling it on his shirts and things ever since, too. To clinch it, I haven’t smelled any Joy on him since my very best friend Sheila switched to the new stuff. Still, I wouldn’t actually let myself see the truth until a couple of weeks ago.”

“What happened then?”

“I was getting ready to take some of Andrew’s clothes to the cleaners, dutiful wife that I am. And when I went through his pockets I found a tissue full of lipstick in one of the jackets.”

“Not very careful, is he?”

“Oh, but he is,” Doris retorted bitterly. “It was no accident, my finding that tissue. Andrew seems to take some sort of perverse pleasure in—But that’s not important. What
is
important is that the color looked exactly like this putrid lavender shade that Sheila sometimes wears; it matches a sweater she has. But I wanted to be certain. So the next morning I went over there, ostensibly so we could have coffee together. ‘By the way,’ I said to her, ‘you have a lavender lipstick, don’t you?’ She said that she did. I told her I’d been looking for one to go with this new blouse and that so far I’d bought half a dozen different tubes, and nothing worked. Well, Sheila bit. She asked if I wanted to try her lipstick. I put it on, and then a short while later I went home and blotted it. Do I have to tell you that when I compared that tissue with the one in Andrew’s jacket pocket, they matched?”