Want To Play (47 page)

‘If you think you’re up to it, yes.’

Apparently she was not only up to it; she decided to skip the questions and go straight to the answers. ‘All right. So this is what happened. I got up at six-thirty, just like I always do, made some coffee, came out to the greenhouse, and there was Morey, lying in the rain. Marty thinks I should have left his father-in-law outside with the rain falling in his eyes; left him there so strangers could come and see his mouth filling with water.’

‘Jesus, Lily.’

‘But this is not how families take care of each other. So I brought him inside, made him presentable, called Sol, and then I called Marty, who hasn’t answered his phone in six months.’

‘Lily, it was a crime scene,’ Marty said tiredly.

‘And I should know this? Am I a policeman? I called a policeman, but he didn’t answer his phone.’

Marty closed his eyes, and Magozzi had the feeling he’d been closing his eyes to this woman for a long time. ‘I’m not a policeman anymore, Lily.’

Magozzi had an immediate flashback to a day almost a year gone, when he’d passed Detective Martin Pullman as he went out the front doors of City Hall, carrying his career in a cardboard box, looking like he’d been run over by a truck. ‘You’ll be back, Detective,’ Magozzi had said, because he didn’t know what else to say to a man who had lost so much, and worse yet, he didn’t understand a man who could walk away so easily from a job he loved. Marty had smiled, just a little. ‘I’m not a detective anymore, Magozzi.’

Magozzi shifted back to the present in time to hear Gino asking the usual litany: Was anything missing? Any sign of a break-in? Did Morey Gilbert have any enemies, any unusual business dealings?

‘ “Unusual business dealings?” ’ Lily snapped. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? You think we’re growing marijuana in the back greenhouse or something? Running a white slavery ring? What?’

Gino had never responded very well to sarcasm, and his face started to turn red. They’d dealt with their share of grieving relatives over the years, and Gino did okay with the ones who fell apart. They tore him up, and he suffered for a long time afterwards, but at least he knew how to respond to them. People were supposed to fall apart when a relative died. That fit in with Gino’s image of life and death and love and family, and made it easy for him to be softspoken, gentle, as comforting as a cop could be in such a situation. But the angry ones who lashed out, or the stoic ones who kept their feelings close to the vest, always threw him into a tailspin, and Lily Gilbert seemed to be a combination of the two.

‘Excuse me, Mrs Gilbert,’ he interrupted gently, eliciting an eye roll from Gino. ‘Would it be too difficult for you to take me outside and show me where you found your husband? Maybe walk me through it, step-by-step, while Gino talks to your friend Sol? We can get through this faster, then.’

The reminder of finding her husband’s body brought the first sign of weakness to her eyes. Just a flicker, but it was there.

‘I’m really sorry to have to ask you to do this. If it’s too hard, we don’t have to do it right now.’

Her gaze sharpened immediately. ‘Of course we have to do it now, Detective. Now is all we have.’ She marched toward the door, a little old soldier focusing on the mission, so she didn’t have to think of anything else. Magozzi hurried to open it for her.

‘Wait just a minute.’ Marty frowned. ‘Where’s Jack, Lily? Why isn’t he here yet?’

‘Jack who?’

‘Damnit, Lily, don’t tell me you didn’t call him.’

She was out the door before he finished.

‘Shit.’

‘Who’s Jack?’ Magozzi asked, still holding the door.

‘Jack Gilbert. Her son. They haven’t talked in a long time, but Jesus, his father just died. I gotta call him.’

While Marty went to the checkout counter and started punching numbers into the phone, Gino walked over to Magozzi and said under his breath, ‘Listen, while you’re out there talking to the old lady, why don’t you ask her how a ninety-pound peanut managed to drag over two hundred pounds of dead weight all the way in here, then heft it onto that table.’

‘Gee, Mr Detective, thanks for the tip.’

‘Glad to help.’

‘You don’t like her much, do you?’

‘Hey, I like her fine, except for the fact that she’s got a personality like ground glass.’

‘Huh. She never mentioned your outfit. I’d say that was a kindness.’

‘This is the deal. I’m thinking, How the hell did she move him? So I answer myself: Gee, maybe she didn’t. Maybe she shot him in here, and just said he was killed outside so we’d think we didn’t have a crime scene.’

Magozzi thought about that for a minute. ‘Interesting. Devious. I like the way you think.’

‘Thank you.’

Magozzi opened the door to go outside. ‘But she didn’t do it.’

‘Damnit, Leo, you don’t know that.’

‘Yeah. I do.’