The Unraveling of Violeta Bell

by C. R. Corwin

  “She was just protecting you.”

  “And you were just trying to help,” he said. He took an awkward step toward me. He took both of my hands in his hands. He rubbed his sweat all over my fingers. “The sappier moments in life don’t come easy for me,” he said. “But if it hadn’t been for you, Mrs. Sprowls, I never would’ve given the police an accurate account of my who, what, when, where, and whys.”

  “I’m sure you would have eventually.”

  Said Eddie, “No I wouldn’t’ve.”

  Ike tried to intervene on my behalf. “I’m sure you would have, too.”

  “Neither of you know me like I know me,” Eddie said. He pulled me toward him, in a sweet, innocent way. He lowered his face until it was level with mine. His eyes were watering. Instead of the beer and cigarettes on his breath I expected, there was a powerful blast of Listerine. “You remember what you said to my sister that day, Mrs. Sprowls? ‘Your brother is going to be twiddling his thumbs on death row if he doesn’t start telling a more forthcoming version of the truth.’”

  It was a pretty good line. I was impressed with myself. “I said that, did I?”

  “I remember it word for word,” he said. “Like it was one of those dirty parts in Deuteronomy or something.” He let go of my hands. Stuffed his own hands back in the pockets of his baggy shorts. “It didn’t turn me around right away, of course. I’ve been my own worst enemy for a long time. A real self-destructive sonofabitch. Capital S. Capital O. Capital B. But your words of wisdom eventually put my noodle in question mode. What if they don’t find the real killer? What if I’m the best they can do?”

  I patted his shoulder. “I’m just glad it’s gone well for you.”

  Eddie the tough guy was back. “Damn friggin’ straight! Those two measlies behind the Venetians will be a slice.”

  I liked Eddie French. But I also wanted to get away from him. Talk to a few other people before they brought out the steakburgers, or chicken legs, or whatever they were serving. “There is one little thing I’m still curious about,” I began. “About Violeta.”

  Eddie blushed. “Like I’ve told you more than once, I truly never-ever expected that she’d been born with the male accouterments.”

  Smoke was rolling across the patio. The Democrats were taking things off the barbecue racks. Piling it on platters. We’d be eating soon. “It’s not that,” I told him. “I’ve reluctantly accepted the possibility that nobody had a clue about her previous gender. It’s the fake antiques.”

  Eddie showed a little worry. “I’ve already told the gendarmes the brutal truth about that.”

  And for all I knew he had. According to the story Dale Marabout wrote about Eddie’s change of heart, Violeta Bell didn’t start trafficking in fake antiques until after she retired from her shop and moved into the Carmichael House. Dale quoted Eddie’s statement to the police: “She was already hiring me to haul things around. Real things left over from her shop. Then every once in a while she’d sneak in something fake. Before long it was all fake. Some of the dealers called her on it. But others ate it up. Wanted all she could get.” Eddie also opined that, “It’s been my experience that there’s good and bad in everybody, usually simultaneously, but sometimes sequentially.”

  “I know the facts,” I said. “I was wondering how she felt about it.”

  Eddie shrugged. “She did it.”

  I tried to cool off my impatience with a long drink of lemonade. It was too sweet now. “But did she feel guilty about it? Some criminals do feel guilty about the things they do, don’t they?”

  “Crime is a very individualistic thing,” he said. “Some do, some don’t. Some both do and don’t depending on what day it is. I, for better or worse, have always been one of those.”

  I was forced to take another long drink. It was either that or strangle the little man. “And Violeta?”

  Eddie scratched his whiskers. “At first she exhibited the customary pangs of guilt,” he said. “But as things went along, she started to get a kick out of it. I’ve been there myself. You say, ‘Jesus, I can’t believe I’m getting away with this.’ The people you’re rippin’ off are the dummies and you’re the smarty. Good for the ego.”

  I had another question. “Why did you think she was doing it?”

  He looked at me like I was daft. “For the moola-boola!”

  I had him in a lie. “But that day I visited your apartment, you said that you didn’t know she was broke. You were downright flabbergasted in fact.”

  “I was flabbergasted,” he admitted. “As downright as you correctly observed. I’d always assumed she was as comfy as the other three.”

  I was confused. “So, if you thought she was rich why would you also think she was doing it for the money?”

  He shrugged. “Rich people keep working. Crooked people keep crooking. So sayeth Eddie French.”

  People were lining up at the serving tables. Getting their plates and silverware. Oohing and ahhing over the fare that awaited them. I locked one arm around Ike’s elbow, the other around Eddie’s. “What do you gentlemen say we get something to eat?” We headed toward the tables.

  There were more than chicken legs and steakburgers. There were ribs. Blackened jumbo shrimp. Thick medallions of prime rib. Enormous brats ringed with bacon. Golden Cornish game hens almost too cute to eat. Ike and I went for the prime rib. Eddie loaded his plate with shrimp. He used his fingers to make a nest of them and plopped an entire game hen in the middle.

  There were oodles of fancy side dishes, too. I limited myself to German potato salad and an ear of roasted corn. Ike chose roasted peppers, wild rice, stuffed mushrooms, and green beans. Eddie scanned the table with a disappointed frown and then went back to the meat table for more shrimp.

  I was afraid that Eddie was going to latch onto us for the entire party. Instead he excused himself. “Sis will kill me if I don’t spread my countenance about,” he said. He headed off to the bar.

  Ike and I strolled across the lawn, nibbling the best we could. It was a beautiful evening with just enough sun. We chatted with Kay Hausenfelter for a while. With Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy. With the Reverend James W. Bobbs. With Bob and Tippy Averill. With somebody named Penelope. With somebody Penelope introduced us to, whose name I never did catch. Then I saw Gloria McPhee’s husband, Phil, strolling along the lake with his plate, by himself. “There’s just the man I want to talk to,” I told Ike.

  “Alone, I gather?”

  “I’m a one-man-at-a-time girl,” I said. I headed for the lake.

  I’d only seen Phil McPhee once before. At lunch, after my garage-sale juggernaut with the Queens of Never Dull. He’d cooked for us. He’d told way too many jokes.

  I was half way down the lawn when Phil spotted me. I waved at him, hoping I didn’t look too eager. I’m sure he wasn’t thrilled to see me coming—he obviously wanted to be alone for some reason or the other—but he stopped and waited for me. He was sucking on a barbecued rib. He had sauce on his chin. On his white linen pants, too. “Feeding the fish?”

  He smiled. “Don’t tell me you abandoned that good-looking man up there to keep me company.”

  “He’s not that good looking up close.”

  “Even if he’s ugly I’m flattered.”

  Phil was quite the flirt. And that’s exactly why I wanted to talk to him. At lunch that day he’d seemed a little too charming. A little too comfortable around women. “I think it’s just terrific the way your wife and the others stood by Eddie throughout this mess,” I said.

  He went Groucho on me. Wiggled his eyebrows. “And Eddie is a hard guy to stand next to.”

  I pretended to like his joke. Then I got serious. “Then again, they spent a lot of time with Eddie over the years. I guess when you know someone that well, you know if they’re capable of murder or not.”

  This time, no joke. “That seems to be the case.”

  “Seems?”

  He tossed his rib bone in the lake. Lowered his eyebrows and smirke
d devilishly. “You didn’t see that,” he whispered, as if somebody was close enough to hear him.

  He was testing me. Seeing if I was seducible. “I did see that.” “Do you want me to jump in and get it before the fish do?”

  “Whatever your conscience will bear.”

  He laughed loudly. Sucked on a fresh rib. “I’m sure the girls are right about Eddie,” he said. “The police seem to agree.”

  “But you don’t?”

  “I’m an exterminator,” he said. “I know my wiggly little creatures.”

  He started walking along the bank again. I followed him. “I meet my share of those in my work, too,” I said.

  He finished sucking the meat off his rib. Made sure I saw him put the bone back on his plate. “You’re a funny lady.”

  “And you’re a funny man.”

  He grinned at me. Winked. Coming to the mistaken conclusion, I hoped, that I was indeed seducible. To improve the odds, I pointed out that he’d splattered more barbecue sauce on his pants. “And look there,” I said. “You’ve got cat fur all over the place.” I reached down and pulled a couple of the hairs off his knee.

  “Gloria’s cats have the run of the house.”

  “I noticed that day I was there.”

  “Well—I’ve learned to live with it.”

  I turned the conversation to Violeta Bell. “So, what did you think when all that icky stuff came out about Violeta’s sex change? You didn’t say anything about it that day at lunch.”

  He licked the sauce off his fingers. Tucked his arm inside mine. “What’s there to say?”

  “You weren’t surprised?”

  “Everybody was.”

  I was making him nervous. I kept going. “I figured a man might pick up on something like that. Quicker than a woman would, I mean.”

  “You think so?”

  And going. “Was she, you know, feminine?”

  “Yes. Sure.”

  And going. “Sexy?”

  “She was no Maddy Sprowls.”

  And going. “Be serious. Was she the kind of woman that men, well, respond to?”

  He found an opportunity to laugh. “She was of a certain age, you know.”

  “I’d be offended if I didn’t know how you men are.”

  He playfully removed his arm from mine. Folded both arms across his chest. “Now I’m offended.”

  “Men like younger women. It’s nature.”

  Back went his arm. “Men like women, period.”

  “That’s better.”

  Ike and I stayed at the party until nine. Until the mosquitoes started biting and the bats from the woods starting buzzing the dessert table. When we got to my house, we took James for a late night walk. I held the leash. Ike held me. At one in the morning I slipped out of bed and went to the basement. For years now the paper has been computerizing the morgue’s files. Little by little all those wonderful old clippings are being thrown out. I lug them to my car and bring them home. The wonderful old filing cabinets, too. I’ve set up my personal morgue right there in my basement. One hundred and thirty years of Hannawa history.

  I went to the M cabinets. I looked up MCPHEE, P. There was a nice fat envelope of clippings on him. I sat down at the folding table by my washer and dryer. I clicked on my gooseneck lamp and read.

  I found one item from 1951. It was a story on six local National Guardsmen getting married en masse at City Hall before they shipped out to Korea. Phil McPhee, age twenty-three, was one of them. Accompanying the story was a smudgy old photo showing Phil and his new bride saying their I-dos. Read the caption:

  “I TAKE THEE to be my lawfully wedded wife,” says Pvt. Philip McPhee to high school sweetheart Lois Palansky. The McPhees were one of six happy Hannawa couples married Tuesday at City Hall by Mayor Dutch Schneider.

  Another story was from 1959. It was from the business section. Phil McPhee, with the help of a government loan, was opening a new exterminating business in the blighted German Hill neighborhood east of downtown. The accompanying photo showed Phil and the city’s new mayor cutting the ribbon with a big pair of cardboard scissors. Read that caption:

  BUGS BETTER BEWARE: Mayor Merle D. Blackburn helps local exterminator Phil McPhee open his new headquarters on East Apple Street. McPhee’s wife, Elaine, proudly looks on.

  I stuffed everything back in the envelope. I clicked off the lamp and sat in the dark. “Two previous wives,” I yawned. “Why am I not surprised?”

  21

  Monday, August 28

  I took my mug to the cafeteria. I gave it a good washing in the sink, something I do every Monday morning. My goals for the day were modest. Mark up the weekend papers. Stop itching the mosquito bites on my ankles. Have Eric find Phil McPhee’s first two wives.

  Phil McPhee was clearly a ladies’ man. He was more than likely a life-long philanderer. Just possibly he was the mystery man Detective Grant was looking for, the one who went bonkers and killed Violeta Bell when he discovered she’d once been a he.

  While the water for my tea was coming to a boil, I read the crap stapled on the employee bulletin board. I was yawning like the MGM lion. Saturday and Sunday had both been sleep-over nights for Ike. So I was exhausted—from staying awake so he couldn’t catch me snoring.

  There was a letter on the board from Reporters’ Guild President Will Canterbury on the upcoming contract talks with management. Given the paper’s falling circulation and advertising revenues, those talks were going to be brutal. There was also a cute little poster with dancing hotdogs, inviting “friend and foe alike” to Dee Dee Killbuck’s annual Labor Day patio party. An equally brutal prospect.

  I made my tea and headed back to the morgue. Every few steps I stopped, closed my sleepy eyes and took a nourishing sip. I hear that Eric does a hilarious imitation of me doing that, by the way, although I’ve never seen it myself. Anyway, I was half way across the sports department when I opened my eyes and over the steaming rim of my mug saw Prince Anton Clopotar standing in front of my desk with a long white box cradled in his arms.

  I gasped. Spilled tea all over the front of my beloved Tweetie Bird tee shirt. The prince saw me, too. He hurried toward me. I retreated. My first thought was to take refuge in the ladies’ room. Which would have been stupid. The man comes all the way from Wolfe Island to kill me and the social impropriety of going into a woman’s toilet was going to stop him? Instead I trotted back to the cafeteria, where the only escape would be to dive through a fourth-story window.

  “Mrs. Sprowls, please!” the prince called out. “I want to see you!”

  The cafeteria was empty. I backed against the counter where I’d just made my tea. I reached into the utensil drawer and felt for a weapon.

  The prince stuck his head through the open doorway. “Making me tea, are you?”

  “I figured you’d want some.”

  He came in, smiling like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. He was wearing his blazer with the emblem on the pocket. His polka dot bowtie. A pair of beautiful gray slacks with a razorsharp crease. Goofy tan-and-white saddle shoes. I wrapped my shaking fingers around a plastic butter knife. It was either that or a packet of McDonald’s catsup.

  He held out the box. “Friends?”

  I let go of the fork. Took the box. “Not a dead fish, is it?”

  “Roses, actually.”

  I removed the lid. It was roses. Yellow roses. A dozen of them.

  “Friends,” he said again.

  I took the roses from the box. I was no longer afraid of being murdered. That crazy notion was gone. Replaced with embarrassment. “If I smell them will my nose explode?”

  “I hope not,” said the prince. “I’ve grown quite fond of that meddling proboscis of yours.”

  I smelled the flowers. I put them back in the box and put the box on the counter. I refilled the kettle to make him some tea. “Darjeeling?”

  “Is there any other kind?” He sat at one of the empty tables. He leaned on his forearms while I washed out a mug fo
r him. “Why would you ever think I meant you harm?”

  “My letter! Stealing your spoon and your pipe! Involving you in a murder!”

  He smiled at me. Not like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Like Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy. “You found my brother for me. Or should I say my sister?”

  “Does that matter to you? Petru having that operation, I mean?”

  He frowned and rubbed his knuckles. “It is a hard thing to understand. But if it made him happier than he was, well, who can quibble with that?”

  I poured the boiling water over the teabag in the mug I’d chosen for him. A big yellow one. I took it to him. Went back to the counter for the sugar and Coffeemate. “So you really thought he’d drowned himself in the river?” I asked.