“And yet we’ve got evidence just up the stairs that very bad things indeed do happen.”
“I guess we do.”
“Do you mind if we speak to you next, Uncle Joe?”
“You’re in luck, I just cleared my schedule.”
He put an arm around my shoulder and closed the front door with his other. “Come on. Let’s get this interrogation over with.”
* * *
“So, Joe,” Ian began, “how long have you known the victim?”
I jabbed him with my elbow. “We don’t need to go all the way back to that, Ian.”
“You said we were supposed to do things properly,” Ian said, sounding wounded.
“We are. But we also don’t need to ask things we already know the answer to.”
“Fifty years. If we hadn’t gotten divorced, we’d be celebrating our golden anniversary this year.”
“And if she wasn’t dead,” Ian helpfully added.
“That too.”
“You got back in contact with her in recent years, Joe?”
“Yeah. We didn’t speak for nearly forty years. She left when Taki was ten, and I didn’t want anything to do with her. Said I’d never speak to her again. But a few years back I heard from an old acquaintance that she was living here. I assumed she was in Morocco or Fiji or Timbuktu or somewhere. Not right here, so close to where I lived in Las Vegas. I looked her up. Saw the address. Figured maybe it wouldn’t hurt to get back in contact.”
“You just wanted to see her?”
Joe shook his head. “Goodness, no. It wasn’t for me. It was for Taki. Even though she’s out there in Japan, I thought that maybe I could get Beryl to think of her.”
“In what way?”
“I figured Beryl was nearly eighty—that’s what I thought, anyway—and she didn’t have any other kids. I wanted to remind her that she did have one, even if she was far away. I wanted to make sure she put Taki in her will.”
“You wanted Taki to inherit this house?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Okay.” I didn’t tell him what the will actually said.
“I had this idea, see—Nah, you’ll think it stupid.”
“Go on. We won’t think it’s stupid, will we, Ian?”
“Depends on what it is.”
I smacked Ian while Joe laughed at him.
“He’s right,” Joe said to me. “He should save his judgment until after. No, see, I had this idea that if Taki and her husband inherited this house, they might decide they want to come back here.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“To live in?” Ian said somewhat incredulously. “It’s hardly Tokyo out here.”
“I thought it would have potential. You know, maybe as a country hotel. A place for hikers or hunters to stay. Something like that. Taki used to say she wanted to run a hotel one day, and I thought maybe this place could be it. I thought it might bring her home.”
“That’s not stupid, Uncle Joe. I think it’s sweet.”
“A hotel, huh?” Ian was nodding thoughtfully. “I could give her some tips.”
“What do you know about running a hotel, Ian?”
“Plenty, thank you very much.”
“Yeah, right.” I turned my attention back to Joe. “Do you know if anyone here had anything against Beryl?”
“Apart from me, you mean?” He chuckled. “I only know what I saw. Marcus and Jini didn’t really know her, but you know she upset them. Roman and Yumi too. And me. And then I guess old Maeve didn’t like her much either.” Joe shrugged. “Can’t tell you any more than what you heard. No one said anything suspicious while you’ve been in the library.”
“Okay. Ian, the picture?”
Ian pulled up the photo of the handle of the knife that was still embedded in Beryl upstairs.
“Do you recognize this? Have you seen it anywhere before?”
Joe took the phone from Ian’s hand and held it close up to his face.
“It looks Asian.”
“Yes, that’s what we think.”
“Pretty sure I saw something similar in a museum in Japan, when I went to visit. But I couldn’t be certain.”
“Right. But you haven’t seen it in the house before?”
He shook his head. “Nope. But Beryl’s got a lot of old stuff scattered around. Half of its junk, but she’s got a few nice pieces, too.”
“Ian? Any questions?”
“Umm…” He tapped his pen against his chin. “Did you kill her?”
I gave him another elbow jab.
Joe didn’t take offense. “If I killed her, it would have happened forty odd years ago. I’ll admit I wanted to back then. But not now. Now I just think she’s a—she was a sad old woman with no friends, no family, and not much to show for it.”
“And did you hear anything the night she died?”
“I heard some commotion, and then Maeve screaming like she was trying to break the windows. That’s about it.”
“Do you know why Marcus was so slow to get there? How come he didn’t arrive with Jini.”
Joe shook his head at me. “You’ll have to ask him.”
“Is there something we should know, Joe?”
“I don’t want to say. But he’s got nothing to do with Beryl’s death, I can tell you that. He’s my son.”
“I know, Uncle Joe. There’s nothing you want to tell us?”
He shook his head again, adamantly. “Ask him yourself. He’s got nothing to hide. I just don’t want to spread gossip.”
If it was anyone else in the house I probably would have pushed it further. But I figured we could talk to Marcus ourselves first to find out whatever it was Joe was skirting around. If he didn’t give it up, we could come back to Uncle Joe. I hoped we wouldn’t have to.
“Thanks for talking to us. Sorry we had to do it.”
“I don’t mind. It’s interesting seeing how you work. Maybe I’ll give sleuthing a go myself, one day, if I ever get fed up with making tables.”
“I’m sure you’d be great at it.”
“I’d learn from the best. I’d get you to teach me.”
I grinned at him as I stood up. I squeezed his shoulder. “Right, out you go.”
We walked him to the library door.
“Who’s next?” Ian asked me.
I tapped my finger against my chin.
“Let’s get Roman in here.”
Chapter Ten
Roman arrived accompanied by Yumi, arm in arm.
”Do you mind waiting outside, Yumi?” I asked her. “We’re talking to everyone separately.”
“But we were together when it happened,” Roman said. “We’ve been together every moment.”
“But you’d hate for the others to think you’re getting special treatment, wouldn’t you?”
Roman looked like he wanted to argue, but then dropped it. “Love, I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Yumi squeezed both his hands before she left the room. “See you in a minute, love.”
Roman sat down in the old leather chair in front of the desk.
“How long have you known Beryl?”
“I first spoke to her about three months ago. She ran across my ad in the paper. That’s how I find most of my clients.”
“What exactly is it you do?” I asked. “Can you explain your job, and how you work?”
“I’m a ghostwriter for memoirs and autobiographies. What I do is interview people, dig out their most interesting stories, and then try and frame them and fit them into an interesting narrative. I spend several weeks with each client, interviewing them and then getting their stories written down. I try to write in their voice, to match it, so it’s just as if they’d written it themselves. What we produce is all their stories, but I just help them get it onto paper.”
“And do you usually live with them?” Ian asked.
Roman laughed and shook his head. “No. Definitely not. This was something of a special case. This house isn’t exactly easily
accessible. Beryl suggested I stay here while I write the book. She offered me free board and rent, and a little extra for the trouble. To tell you the truth, I was actually looking forward to it initially—I thought it might be like a writing retreat, where I could work on some of my own projects as well. I thought the mountains would be restful.”
“So you were looking forward to it. How do you feel now?”
“What do you think? My client’s dead, and I’ve only received half my fee. Goodness knows how I’m going to get the other half now.”
“And were you enjoying your time here?”
“It was different than what I expected,” he said diplomatically.
“Yeah? How so?”
“Perhaps I was naïve. But staying here was less restful, less peaceful than I expected. And Beryl was something of a nightmare. She kept changing her stories day to day. Sometimes I would produce a rough draft of a little vignette she’d told me, but as soon as I read it to her, she would say it was all wrong. She’d give me a completely different version of events. Sometimes it felt like she wasn’t remembering, but instead making it up as she went along. I wasn’t sure the project was ever going to end with the way she kept changing things around.”
“And so you killed her to bring it to a halt?” Ian asked.
“What? No! Apart from that being ridiculous, as I told you before, I’ve only received half my fee so far. I’d be losing out big time.”
“Why don’t you tell us about your mother?” I asked.
“My mother?”
I nodded. “At dinner last night, Beryl mentioned your mother. It seems you two did actually know each other.”
“I didn’t know Beryl before she hired me.”
“She thinks you did.”
Roman was shaking his head again. “Look, there’s a history.”
“Sounds juicy.” Ian rubbed his hands together. “Spill.”
“Fine. But you have to understand, I didn’t know who Beryl was. Not at first.”
“Just tell us about your mother and Beryl.”
“After Beryl hired me, I did a bit of preliminary research. And I found out she used to go by the name of Beryl Krank. Her married name. Your uncle’s name. Right?”
“And?”
“And my mom knew a Beryl Krank. This Beryl. I didn’t realize who she was until I’d already agreed to the contract. If I had, I would never have come.”
“Why not? What’s the story?”
Roman licked his lips in a furtive movement. He pushed his glasses up his nose. He rolled his shoulders back to stretch them.
“Roman?”
“Right. Yeah. So, a long time ago. Before I was born, my mom had a café. And it was popular too. It was in all the guide books for Las Vegas, it was popular with the locals as well as the tourists. It was booming.”
“Sounds nice,” I said.
Roman nodded and then pushed his glasses back up again. “Yeah. Real nice. Mom didn’t run this café alone though. She had a partner. A friend of hers, an older woman. Beryl. Beryl Krank. Despite the age gap, they were friends, real close friends. At least Mom thought they were. They lived together, worked together. Did everything together. And business was booming.”
“And?”
“And then things got even better. A businessman saw how successful they were, and offered to partner with them in franchising the cafe. The plan was that there would be a whole chain of their coffee shops. This was years before Starbucks and the rest of the big ones really blew up. That could have been Mom’s.”
“What happened?”
“Everything was going gangbusters. Then, one night, Beryl didn’t come home. She was locking up that night. Mom would open in the morning. But when Mom went in—there was no café, either.”
“What do you mean no café?” Ian asked.
“It had burned to the ground overnight.”
“Didn’t they have insurance?” Ian asked, already annoyed at their lack of foresight.
“They did have insurance. It took a few weeks to pay out. In the meantime, Mom didn’t see much of Beryl. She’d started hanging out with some other people. Said she needed to step back. That she was overwhelmed by what had happened. Mom, meanwhile, was preparing to rebuild, drawing up plans for an even bigger, better café. The businessman investor told her that if the re-opened café could maintain the magic, he was still interested in growing the business with her.”
“But…?” I asked.
“But the same day the insurance payment landed in the business bank account, it moved right on out.”
“Moved?”
Roman nodded. “Yep. Transferred. To a bank in Morocco.”
“Morocco?”
“Yep. Morocco. And guess what?”
“Beryl disappeared and went to Morocco?”
“Bingo.” Roman shook his head to himself in regret for something he never knew, but what might have been. “Mom was pregnant at the time too. With me. Suddenly she had no partner, no business, and no money. She tried to get the businessman to give her a loan, or take a chance on her. But he was out. He was no longer interested—not without Mom’s partner, not without an existing viable business.”
“And so what happened to your mom?”
Roman shrugged. “She moved back in with Grandma, into her little two-bedroom house. Broke. Unemployed. Then I was born. I was raised by Mom and Grandma. Shared a room with Mom until I grew up and started sleeping on the sofa in the living room. She worked two jobs to get us fed and insured. Grandma found the stress of us all crammed into her house too much, and she started drinking too much. Smoking too much. I hated that house. So did Mom. Every night, when she came home, she would tell me about what might have been, what could have been. How we should have been millionaires. Billionaires, maybe.”
“Wow,” Ian said. “That’s quite a story.”
“Tragic,” I said.
Roman nodded. “But that was all before I was born. I never knew Beryl. I never knew a different life than the one I had.”
“Ian, the photo?”
While Ian held his phone in front of Roman, I watched his face very carefully.
Roman looked at the closeup photo of the knife handle with its Asian lettering.
“I’ve never seen this before.”
“You’re sure? You’ve been in the house a few weeks now. If it was Beryl’s, you might have seen it around somewhere. Have a think, Roman.”
“Nope. I would remember a knife like that. Maybe a vase or something I would forget, but a knife? I’d definitely remember.”
“And you haven’t seen it before, outside of this house?”
“Outside the house?”
“Perhaps back in Las Vegas?”
“Do you mean Yumi? Are you asking me if it’s Yumi’s knife? Just because she’s from Japan?”
“We’re not trying to imply anything, Roman. We’re asking everybody if they’ve seen the knife before. Not just you and Yumi.”
He pushed up his glasses and folded his arms in front of him. “I’ve never seen it. And neither has Yumi.”
Ian scribbled in his notebook.
“What are you writing?”
Ian looked down at his notes. “Claims never seen knife.”
“Claims?”
“Roman,” I said, trying to distract him from Ian’s notes, “this is how we conduct our investigations. Ian’s notes will look like that for every suspect.”
“I don’t like this.” He shook his head. “We should wait for the police.”
Ian scribbled something more down.
“What did you write now?”
“Nothing,” Ian said brightly.
“You just wrote down that I want to wait for the police, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s not suspicious! It’s normal. That’s what normally happens when there’s a crime. Cross it out.”
“Cross it out?” Ian asked, tilting his head.
“Yes!”
&nb
sp; “Ohhhh-kay…” Ian drew a single solitary line through what he’d just written.
“You can still read it!”
“I can still remember it, too,” Ian told him with a happy little smile. “We’re not going to forget that you’re getting irate and demanding we stop the investigation as soon as we asked you about the Japanese knife.”
“But—”
“Roman?” I interrupted. “That’s all our questions for the time being. Remember, we’re asking everyone about what happened. There’s no need to get upset.”
“Maybe you need to ask better questions.”
Ian leaned over at him, shaking his head. “These seem to be working quite well.”
“I can go?”
“Yep. That’s all we’ve got for the moment.”
Roman stood up and brushed his shirt as if we’d been involved in a messy activity.
We walked him to the door. I was worried he’d try and convince Yumi not to come in.
She was waiting right outside the room.
“Hi, love, how’d it go?”
Before he could answer, I smiled at Yumi. “Why don’t you guys talk after? Please come in, Yumi.”
Her smile faltered, but then she stepped into the room.
Roman squeezed her arm. “If you don’t like their questions, just stop answering them. They don’t have any authority.”
Yumi gave her boyfriend a tentative nod.
When we were all seated, Yumi looked across the desk at us expectantly, a wary but curious smile on her lips. Her brown eyes were as wide as a cat’s in the dark.
“How long have you known Beryl?”
“I just met her. I arrived the other day, a few hours before you. Roman picked me up in Las Vegas.”
“This is your first visit to the house?”
“That’s right.”
“But Roman’s been working here for weeks.” Ian tapped his pen on the desktop.
“Yes. But during the week, I was studying, and he was working, and on the weekends, he wanted to go back to Las Vegas instead of staying out here.”
“That’s not surprising,” I said.
Yumi shook her head quickly. “No. I think Beryl was quite tiring for him.”
Reunions and Revelations in Las Vegas: A Humorous Tiffany Black Mystery Page 8
