“And what was that?” I asked quietly.
“I saw Sheila Vincent at the Breeze Inn. That’s this motel all the way out on Route—”
“When was this?” I was so excited I couldn’t hold back the question.
“Toward the end of October, I guess it was.”
“Who was Mrs. Vincent with?”
“That, I don’t know. I spotted her as she was leavin’ one of the rooms there. The man was still inside, because Sheila turned around and said something like ‘Call me tomorrow,’ and he said something I couldn’t make out, and then he closed the door.”
“You didn’t get even a glimpse of the man?”
“No.”
“Did Mrs. Vincent see you?”
“I don’t think so. As soon as she walked out of that room I flattened myself against the soda machine. That’s why I was outside in the first place—getting a Pepsi. And luckily, her car was parked in the opposite direction, so she didn’t have to pass me.”
“One more question. This was in the evening?”
“No, during the day. Maybe twelve-thirty, one o’clock. I can tell you somethin’ else, too. It was on a Monday or a Wednesday, because that’s when Chloe and I mee—used to meet.”
“I want to thank you for getting in touch with us like this, Mr. Raphael.”
“That’s okay. When you and the lieutenant came to the house that time? I wanted to tell you about it then. I didn’t feel right about not sayin’ anything, honest to God. But you understand, don’t you? Anyways, it’s been botherin’ me ever since. Especially because I always liked Frank. I didn’t have much contact with him, but whenever I was in his company, well, I liked him. I was in a bind, though, because I had the wife and kids to consider.” And then he added self-righteously, “I’m basically a family man, Detective Shapiro, so, of course, I had to put them first.”
What struck me as truly remarkable was that Raphael didn’t seem to find even the slightest irony in this ridiculous claim of his. But the next words really got to me.
“They say that when you do the right thing—which, although granted I’m a little late with it, is what I’m doing now—things’ll work out right for you, too.” He giggled nervously. “So maybe Miriam will decide her and I had somethin’ good goin’ after all, huh?”
I couldn’t believe it! The man had come to us with his information as part of a bargain he’d made with God or the devil or somebody. Of all the lying, cheating, self-deceiving, self-serving, self-centered hypocrites!
Still, at that moment, Eric Raphael was my hero.
Chapter 42
I could hardly wait to trumpet my news. I practically flew next door to Lou’s office—only to find Chief Hicks standing on the threshold.
He turned around, acknowledging my presence with a nod and a curt “Miss Shapiro.” He didn’t even try for a smile, which was probably wise, since his smiles never seemed exactly sincere. Not when they were directed at me, at any rate.
Stepping aside so I could enter the room, he called out over my head, “If I don’t see you later, Lou, you and Jake have yourselves a happy Thanksgiving.” Lou wished him the same. It was a good two seconds before the chief’s grudging, “You, too, Miss Shapiro.”
I turned around, stopping the man before he could walk away. “I think you might like to hear this, Chief.” It had slipped out before I could decide whether this was the time to share with him what I’d so recently learned.
Chief Hicks lifted an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Uh, maybe you’d want to come in and sit down. Somebody just called me with important information on the case.”
Without a word, he marched into the office and drew up a chair. “Go on,” he said when we were seated across from each other, on opposite sides of Lou’s desk.
I proceeded to relate the highlights of my conversation with Eric Raphael, trying to suppress my elation.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Lou muttered when I was through. He smiled broadly.
If the chief was excited by my revelation, he was very adept at concealing it. After a few moments of silence he finally deigned to respond in a matter-of-fact tone. “What we’ve just discovered, then, is that Sheila Vincent had a lover. But whether Mrs. Vincent and this lover of hers are killers remains to be seen. And in the meantime, a valued informant of the Riverton Police Department was run over in an alley only a short time before he was to reveal to Lou here what he knew about the Vincent homicide, this information apparently involving a known New Jersey mobster. Well, I consider Polansky’s death extremely suspicious. Don’t you agree, Miss Shapiro?” He went on without pausing, making it clear how anxious he was for my opinion. “So I certainly wouldn’t abandon that area of inquiry if I were in your shoes.”
It had taken a bit of doing to convince Lou to postpone interrogating more of da Silva’s cronies until after we paid a visit to the Breeze Inn. But my status with regard to the investigation, together with a talent for wheedling that had been honed since my pigtail days, eventually did the trick.
On our way to the motel, Lou tried hard to explain his precious chief’s reaction to my news. “John is determined to find out who did Mickey. On the one hand, as I told you before, he views Mickey’s murder as a break in the case. But on the other, he looks at it as something—I don’t know—personal, I guess. A few of us had been working with the little guy for years. And every once in a while he was a real help to the department, so—”
“I can understand that. But Hicks acts as if I’ve crept out from under a rock.”
“A lot of people regard New Yorkers that way,” Lou joked, trying to improve my mood.
A black look rewarded the effort.
“Okay, I realize the chief hasn’t been your biggest booster, but—”
“Booster! He isn’t even civil to me.”
“Yeah, I know. But consider how your being brought in has affected him. He feels as if he’s been stripped of his authority in the Vincent homicide. Which, of course, he has. And what’s worse, even though the case is pretty much out of his hands, he’s the one taking all the heat from the politicians and the media to get the thing solved.”
“I appreciate that. Still . . .” Shaking my head, I pressed my lips together angrily.
“If you ever got to know him, you’d find him to be an eminently good and fair man.”
I made certain I slipped in the last word on the subject. “Right,” I muttered as we turned off the highway onto a gravel driveway. A big red-and-white sign over the driveway proclaimed the long, low, white structure straight ahead of us to be the Breeze Inn.
The motel, I saw as we drew closer to it, was slightly ramshackle. Although, I decided, not enough so as to be really off-putting.
“Hey, Dez,” Lou remarked, pulling into the parking lot to the left of the building, “wasn’t that a Burger King I saw across the road?”
“That’s right.”
“What do you say I shoot over there and get us a couple of burgers and some fries while you do the photo thing?” Then he added sheepishly, “I figure I’m about five minutes away from starving to death.”
I glanced absently at my watch: almost two o’clock—it had been close to an hour’s ride out here. I realized then—and it was a very good feeling—that I was hungry, too.
It didn’t occur to me at the time, but this resurgence of appetite was probably due in part to the fact that I was no longer wrestling with my feelings toward Lou—and in even larger part to my finally putting things right with Al.
“I like how you think,” I told Lou, giving him my order.
It took less than fifteen minutes to conclude my business at the Breeze Inn. Lou, back in the motel parking lot again, was waiting for me in the car. He was just having the last bite of his bacon burger.
I slid in next to him. “Well?” he demanded.
“The manager looked at the photographs of the three men and said things like ‘Who knows?’ and ‘Maybe yes, maybe no.’ He told me that mos
t of the time the woman waits outside, and he doesn’t see her at all.”
“I take it, then, that he couldn’t ID Mrs. Vincent.”
“You take it correctly. Neither could the chambermaid, but she barely speaks English. She shook her head when I asked if she recognized anyone. I’m assuming that she knew what the question was, though, and that the answer was no.” I heaved a sigh. “Of course, there’s still the assistant manager—he works nights. Plus, they have another fellow who fills in on weekends. Also, there’s the weekend maid. I’ll try them, too, in case the widow and whoever varied their schedule. But I’m not exactly optimistic.”
Lou’s expression was sympathetic. “Here.” He passed me a cardboard tray and started the motor. “Dig in before this stuff gets any colder than it already is. Listen, I’m sorry we didn’t get to dine together. I had every intention of holding out until you came back, but, well, there was this irresistible aroma, and—”
“And you’re weak.”
He grinned as we drove off. “True. Also my stomach had a lot to say about things.” A moment later, reacting to what he saw on my face, he said, “The chief had a point, you know. Whether or not the widow is involved with somebody doesn’t necessarily mean beans. So try not to be too upset that we didn’t get anywhere today.”
“You’re still sure it was one of da Silva’s people, aren’t you?”
“I’m not sure of anything, but I won’t deny I’ve been leaning in that direction, all the more so since Mick’s death. And we’ve barely begun to question those guys, to say nothing of not having had a talk with da Silva himself yet.”
“It could be that I’m totally on the wrong track, but Eric Raphael gave us a tip this morning, and I intend to follow up on it. I’ll return here. And if I don’t have any success at this place, there are plenty of other little hideaways in the area.”
I suppose I sounded pretty argumentative because Lou was plainly irritated. “Of course we’ll continue checking out the motels,” he retorted testily. “In fact, I’ll get together a list of every one that’s within about an hour’s radius of Riverton. I assure you I wasn’t suggesting for a minute that we give up on the boyfriend angle. I was only trying to impress on you that Sheila Vincent’s love life may not have any bearing at all on the case.”
“Maybe not, but let’s extend that list to include any motels within an hour-and-a-half’s radius of Riverton. And listen, why don’t I ask the new secretary—I think her name’s Darlene—to draw it up?”
“Fine. And then I’ll put it in some kind of order. Might be a good idea to start with the places closest to the Vincent house and work our way outward.” He reached over and patted my hand. “Have some faith, will you, Dez? One way or another, we’re going to crack this thing.”
Chapter 43
After striking out like that at the Breeze Inn, Lou and I shifted gears as planned.
First we stopped off at the law offices of James Sherman, da Silva’s corporate attorney and a close personal friend for many years.
And we promptly struck out again.
Sherman readily admitted knowing Frank Vincent. In fact, he’d attended a few fund raisers for the man. However, he couldn’t shed any light at all on his death. Nor did the names Michael Polansky or Mickey Mouth ring a bell. What’s more, the lawyer made it only too apparent that he resented our intruding on his valuable time.
Following this, we drove over to the showroom of William Dugan & Sons, Linoleum and Tiles. John Dugan, reputed to be da Silva’s third in command, greeted us with an angry lecture.
“Whaddaya mean by showing up so late? I was gonna close early—tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, for crissakes—but I stayed an extra hour on accounta you two. You were pushing your luck, though,” he said, jabbing his finger into Lou’s chest for emphasis. “Another thirty seconds, and I’da been outta here.”
Once he was convinced we were sufficiently contrite, Dugan agreed to hang around for five minutes more. We were only with him for two.
“Michael Polansky or Mickey Mouth? Nah, don’t even sound familiar.” And: “So what if this Vincent guy was in politics; I still never heard of him. And I don’t give a crap if you think I’m lyin’ or not.”
Strike three.
Now, as to whether Sheila Vincent could possibly have been romantically involved with either Sherman or Dugan, I’ll leave that to you.
Sherman was a dried-up little fellow who looked to be near seventy. He had greasy, dyed-black hair, bulging eyes, and a nervous habit of incessantly jiggling his leg. Dugan, a large, heavy man maybe fifteen years the lawyer’s junior, was dressed in a badly fitting gray polyester suit that shone like a mirror. What’s more, he accessorized it with a bright yellow shirt and an orange, yellow, and green tie. And to top it off, the guy sweated up a storm.
But as I said, you can draw your own conclusions about the likelihood of Sheila’s pairing off with one of these two prizes.
Our final order of business that day was to have a few words with the widow herself.
Driving over to the house, Lou suddenly stuck his right hand up his left sleeve and began to scratch. A moment later he reversed the process.
“What’s with you?” I asked.
“I guess I’ve got a rash,” he admitted, somewhat embarrassed.
“Well, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, for God’s sake. Let’s stop off at a drugstore, and you can pick up some ointment.”
There was a pharmacy only a couple of blocks from Oakview Road, and Lou ran in. He was back a few minutes later with a small silver tube. “You know something, Shapiro?” he said, applying the salve to his arms.
“What?”
“I think I’m allergic to you.”
Very funny. In spite of all his bravado, Lou Hoffman was, it seemed, just as nervous about our prospects for solving this case as I was.
As we stood on Sheila’s front porch waiting for her to answer the bell, the biting wind that seemed to have come out of nowhere during the last hour easily penetrated what had suddenly become my pitifully inadequate trench coat. In an effort to keep warm I crossed my arms, hugging them to my body, and then I began to bounce up and down on the balls of my feet. All the while my teeth were chattering uncontrollably. I was certain that Lou—and maybe the entire neighborhood—could hear them clicking together.
I was about to press the bell a second time when the door swung open.
“I wish you had called instead of just dropping in like this,” Sheila scolded. “It’s the dinner hour, you know. Besides, I’m expecting company tomorrow, and I have a lot of preparing to do.”
As if to attest to these words, an exquisite blend of cooking aromas wafted in our direction.
Lou asked if we could come in for a moment. In response, Sheila stepped aside, accompanying the action with a sour, put-upon expression that I knew was meant to intimidate us. And glancing at Lou’s face, I had the feeling she might have been at least partially successful.
She led the way into the study, confronting us before I was even properly settled on the sofa. “Well?”
Lou explained—but not without a great deal of hemming and hawing—that only today a witness had come forward who claimed to have seen her at the Breeze Inn motel last month.
“I’ve never in my life been to the Breeze Inn,” Sheila stated calmly.
“Well, the problem is, we can’t figure out why our witness would lie about a thing like that.”
“Who is this witness of yours, Lieutenant Hoffman?”
“I’m sorry, but at present we can’t release that information.”
“Fine. It’s not important anyway. To give this person the benefit of the doubt, it might have been a case of mistaken identity. But in any event, what you were told isn’t true.”
“Listen, Mrs. Vincent,” I cajoled, “considering the way your husband knocked you around, you could hardly be blamed for having another man in your life. And it certainly wouldn’t make you a murderer.”
“Are you hard
of hearing, Detective? I just said I have never been to that motel.”
“All right. Have it your way. I was hoping you might make things easier for everyone concerned by admitting to what we already know. But no matter. Lieutenant Hoffman and I will be paying a visit to the Breeze Inn, where I’m reasonably certain you’ll be positively identified. However, if the staff there can’t recall your having been a guest at their establishment, we will then canvass every other motel in this part of the state—in the entire state, if we have to. And I have no doubt that it won’t be long before we obtain corroboration that you had yourself a little something going on the side.”
Sheila’s smile was small, but much too confident for my tastes. “By all means, canvass away, Detective Shapiro.”
I should have left it at that. But the woman just looked so smug, so superior. “And we won’t stop there,” I fumed. “If necessary, we’ll also check out every hotel and restaurant. I promise you that from here on in, our top priority will be to confirm that you, Mrs. Vincent, have been lying through your teeth.”
The words had barely left my mouth when the widow jumped up and showed us to the door.
Chapter 44
“Starting tomorrow,” I informed Lou the instant we were back in the car, “you and I are going to question all of the employees at every single—”
“All right. All right. But tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, in case you’ve forgotten. And Jake and I have been invited to my sister-in-law’s for dinner.”
Murder Can Spoil Your Appetite Page 22
