The Angel Singers

by Dorien Grey

  He laughed. “Well, he’s a definite asset, and yes, I was very pleased. Despite all this dreadful turmoil, it was probably the best we’ve ever done. I must say, a great deal of credit goes to Eric and a few other members of the group, including Jonathan, for helping to hold it all together.”

  I was rather curious that he didn’t mention Booth’s withdrawal of financial support, but much as I wanted to know more, I really couldn’t bring it up without his knowing how I’d heard about it. I certainly didn’t want to get Eric into any trouble.

  However, taking advantage of the serendipity of his having mentioned Eric, I quickly baited a small hook and dropped it into the conversational water. I wasn’t fishing for anything in particular, just curious to see if there might be a nibble.

  “You’re really lucky to have found Eric,” I said. “It’s amazing he turned out as well as he did considering everything he’s gone through.”

  “I agree. I guess there’s a great deal of truth in the old saying that what doesn’t destroy us makes us stronger. And while I hate to say so, I sometimes think the death of his family…” He let his voice trail off as though he didn’t know how to finish whatever it was he’d started to say.

  “I’m sorry?” I said. “I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”

  There was an awkward pause, then, “Nothing, really. I only meant that his tragedies have made him an exceptionally strong young man.”

  Tragedies? Plural? Good Lord, I wondered what else the poor guy had gone through, but I didn’t want to appear ghoulish by asking for further details.

  I settled for “Ah,” and followed it up immediately with, “Well, I’ll call you as soon as I find out if this lead pans out.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” he replied.

  We talked for another minute or two then hung up.

  *

  Since I’d been charged with starting dinner, I decided to go all out and make my all-time favorite: pork chops, mashed potatoes, and gravy. On the way home, Joshua and I stopped briefly at a supermarket to pick up six large pork chops—one for Joshua, two for Jonathan, and three for me. I could have gotten another one for Jonathan but knew he’d end up giving it to me. And a large box of instant mashed potatoes. Since it was the type of meal where you could almost hear your arteries hardening, we didn’t have it often.

  So when we got home, I had Joshua help me set the table, then made each of us a quick Manhattan. Well, okay, his was a small glass of cherry Kool-Aid, but I put a maraschino cherry in it, and as far as he was concerned, that made it a Manhattan.

  Since I like my pork chops extra crispy, which Jonathan calls “burnt,” and which I have to admit had set the smoke alarm off a few times, I started mine first and in a separate pan.

  Jonathan arrived home, bubbly as a glass of just-poured champagne, as I was dishing a huge cumulus cloud of mashed potatoes into a serving dish. We exchanged our group hug; and while I returned to making as much pan gravy (flour, water, salt and pepper, and pan drippings) as I could manage, he filled me in on his meeting with Stella Conrad.

  “She wants to hire me!” he said, almost disbelievingly. “I told her I had my regular job, but she asked if maybe I could do it on weekends. I told her I’d have to check with you first, because I’ve already been away from home an awful lot lately and it isn’t fair to you and Joshua, so if you don’t want me to take it, I…”

  To be totally honest, a big part of me did not want him to take it.

  “How long do you think the job will take?” I asked.

  “Maybe three Saturdays.”

  “And you can do it all yourself?”

  “Sure. It’s really not all that hard. It’s mostly flowerbeds and a couple small trees and shrubs.”

  I could tell from the tone of his voice that he really wanted to do it, but that he also was truly concerned about my reaction and the possibility that I might object.

  But how could I?

  I poured the gravy into a large gravy boat, set down the pan, and crossed the two steps between us to hug him.

  “Sure you can do it,” I said. “It’ll give Joshua and me a little more quality time together, right, Joshua?”

  “Can we eat now?” he asked.

  Chapter 11

  Wednesday night, after Jonathan went off to class, I caught myself looking at the clock every five minutes, wondering how things were going at the Glicks. I really wanted to be there, and selfishly had a quick flash of longing for the day when Joshua would be old enough to stay by himself.

  I immediately felt guilty and forced myself to concentrate on his latest favorite game, making up stories from photos he saw in magazines. I tried to pay close attention to these tales, since they often provided a good insight into what was going on inside his active little mind. Conflicts between him and either Jonathan or me (or both) would inevitably show up, barely disguised, in his next “story.”

  This particular story’s end (actually, it didn’t end so much as wander off) segued into his insisting on a little rolling-around-on-the-floor roughhousing and then preparations for bed. Jonathan arrived home as we were finishing up the goodnight-to-Mommy-and-Daddy and “now I lay me down to sleep” ritual, so we were able to share Story Time. We’d worked our way about halfway through the book Barry Leggett had brought him.

  I’d noticed Jonathan came home with a few more books than he’d left with. They were sitting on the end table near the couch, and I indicated them with a nod.

  “What’s up with the extra books?”

  “The instructor let us out early tonight—he had a meeting or something—so I was able to stop at the library before it closed to pick up some information on some plants I’d like to use at the Conrads’.”

  I grinned. “You’re really getting into this, aren’t you?”

  “Sure!” he said. “This is my first real landscaping job on my own. I want to do the best I can on it.”

  “And you will.” I assured him.

  “I can’t wait to tell Eric.”

  “Well, try him now,” I suggested. “He’s probably still up.”

  He shook his head. “Not tonight. I just want to spend a little time with you.”

  “Quiet time or active time?”

  “How about both? We can watch the news for the quiet time then go to bed and see what happens.”

  “Like you don’t know?”

  “Shhhh,” he said. “Surprise me.”

  I did. It almost took my mind off my not having heard from Marty or the Glicks on how the dinner had gone.

  *

  I got to the office early Thursday morning, unrealistically hoping to find a message from either Marty or the Glicks. Nothing. I knew Marty would call as soon as he had something to tell me. In the meantime, I resisted calling the Glicks. It didn’t seem right for a private investigator to have to call the people who’d hired him to see how the case was going.

  I went through my morning ritual without much enthusiasm and badly screwed up the crossword puzzle, which my vanity insists I do in ink, by putting the answer to 33 Down (“legerdemain”) in the spaces provided for 33 Across. I probably wouldn’t have noticed except that 33 Across had one less letter in it than 33 Down. By the time I tried to fix my mistake, most of the squares were so overwritten as to be totally illegible.

  Luckily, the phone’s ringing grabbed me by the back of the shirt as I was starting down the slippery slope into a really foul mood.

  “Hardesty Investigations,” I said dutifully into the receiver, though I didn’t know if the “investigations” part was warranted, given my lack of progress either on Grant Jefferson’s murder or Farnsworth/Johnson’s scamming of the Glicks.

  It was Marty.

  “Sorry I didn’t call until now, but we arrested Farnsworth last night the minute he took the check from the Glicks.”

  “Congratulations!” I said. “So, what about the Jefferson murder? Did you get the chance to beat a confession out of him?”

  He laug
hed. “Sorry, the higher-ups tend to frown on that sort of thing nowadays. Takes a lot of the fun out of doing my job, but… Anyway, we didn’t have a chance to question him last night. He demanded a lawyer the minute he saw the handcuffs.”

  “You arrested him yourself?” I asked. “Couldn’t that have been a little dangerous? I mean, if he did kill Grant…”

  “For one thing, we don’t know if he did kill Jefferson yet, and for another, arresting people is kind of what I do for a living. Dan was staked out right across the street, so all I had to do was signal him to come on in. Nice people, the Glicks, by the way. And that housekeeper of theirs! She opens a restaurant, and I’d be there seven days a week.”

  “So, where does it stand now, with Farnsworth and the questioning?” I asked.

  “We had a brief session with him this morning. His lawyer showed up late—young kid from the Public Defender’s office who probably got lost looking for police headquarters. But whatever he lacks in experience, he more than makes up for in zeal. You’d think he was defending a nun falsely accused of chopping up a school bus full of kids.

  “So, we didn’t get much out of Farnsworth, who calmly sat there taking the whole thing in. He’s no dummy, I’m pretty sure he asked for a P.D. only to test the waters. If the kid botches the case, he probably feels he’ll have grounds for not only an appeal but a suit against the city.

  “Kind of interesting—usually it’s the lawyer who’s the smooth operator and the perp who hasn’t a clue, but Farnsworth’s the real pro here. He claimed to be shocked to hear that the first piece he sold the Glicks was stolen. He mentioned at least a dozen times that the Glicks had verified the authenticity of the first piece and insists he’s only guilty of being scammed himself.

  “He even went so far as to insist the Glicks have the piece he sold them last night authenticated, which was a pretty shrewd move in building a defense. If it comes up as stolen, which I bet my bottom dollar it will, his lawyer would make a big deal out of the fact that Farnsworth was the one who insisted that it be authenticated.

  “I’m not sure if he thinks we’re a bunch of rubes, but whatever game he’s playing, I’d say he’d played it before and is pretty good at it.”

  “Did you ask anything about Grant?”

  “A lawyer with a few more cases under his belt and who read the papers would probably have shut us down the minute we mentioned Jefferson’s name, but this guy didn’t catch on right away. We approached it by asking Farnsworth if he had an associate named Grant Jefferson. He hedged at first but then admitted having known him, claiming he briefly worked for Farnsworth as an ‘assistant,’ but that he’d been fired for incompetence. He denied having any contact with him after Atlanta. He said he didn’t know where Jefferson had gone after leaving Atlanta, and acted surprised to learn he’d moved here and been murdered.

  “We’re going to trace his every movement from the time he first got into town, and if we can tie him to Jefferson in any way, we will. We can check for exactly when he arrived, cab company pickups and deliveries, car rental agencies, hotel registrations, phone calls to and from his hotel room—well, you get the idea.”

  I got it. “So, what’s your gut feeling on whether he had anything to do with Grant’s death?”

  He sighed. “I honestly don’t have one. He makes his living conning people, and that kind of guy is very hard to read. But given his history with Jefferson and the coincidence of his showing up here a day or so before Jefferson’s murder… At least we have him in custody, and I doubt he’ll be going anywhere any time soon. We’ll figure it out.”

  I was sure they would, but that still left me up in the air. Should I assume it was Farnsworth and close the book on the case, or keep checking out any other possibilities? Not that I saw that many unturned stones. While I don’t believe in heaven or hell, I think I’d prefer spending eternity in either one of those places rather than in limbo.

  *

  That evening Jonathan mentioned that he’d had lunch with Eric, which for some reason rather surprised me.

  “For somebody who has a full-time job, that guy sure gets around during the day,” I said.

  He nodded. “Yeah, he had to take a special order of something-or-other from the warehouse to their store on Placid. It was around lunch time, so he called and we got together.”

  “Well, I’m glad you had a chance to see him.”

  “Me, too.”

  He seemed a little pensive.

  “A problem?” I asked as we sat on the couch and flipped on the TV for the evening news.

  “No, not really,” he said unconvincingly, then added, “Maybe I shouldn’t take that job with Mrs. Conrad.”

  I looked at him, puzzled. “Why in the world not? You already told her you would.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, but it will take so much time away from my being with you and Joshua, and I was thinking…”

  I detected a little more behind it. “You were thinking?”

  He glanced at me. “Well, I was telling Eric about it, and he really thinks that it’s not fair for me to leave you with all the responsibility for Joshua while I’m gone so much and…”

  I reached out and laid my hand on his leg. “Look, I’m sure Eric is only concerned for you, but I think I’m in a little better position than he is to know what’s fair and not fair here. If things get too tough to manage by myself, you’ll be the very first to know.”

  He laid his hand on mine and looked at me full-on. “Yeah, you’re right. But I do worry.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  “Eric has a thing for you,” he said with a small grin.

  “Oh, come on!” I protested, though it confirmed what I’d suspected. I was a bit embarrassed to realize it was evident to Jonathan, even though he had mentioned it before.

  “No, he does! I don’t mind. I mean, it makes me feel all the more lucky that I’ve got you and nobody else does. I even teased him about it, but I don’t think he likes to be teased.”

  “Well, you certainly don’t have anything to worry about,” I said.

  “I know.”

  *

  The following Tuesday was the first chorus practice after the concert, and Jonathan was almost an hour late getting home. Joshua and I had been absorbed in playing games, and I lost track of the time. He was still up when Jonathan came in, and Jonathan was less than happy about it.

  “Why are you still up, Joshua?” he asked. “It’s way past your bedtime. You’ve got school tomorrow.”

  “Uncle Dick and I were playing,” Joshua said, defensively.

  “Well, Uncle Dick should know better than to keep you up so late. Come on, let’s get you ready for bed.”

  With that, he took Joshua by the hand and led him into the bedroom, leaving me staring after them and wondering what was going on.

  When we finally got Joshua to sleep and returned to the living room, I asked what had set him off and why he’d been late. I could sense something was wrong.

  “You know how cranky he gets the next day when he stays up too late,” Jonathan said.

  “I’m sorry, babe, I really didn’t realize how late it was getting. I expected you home an hour ago.”

  He immediately softened, then sighed and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t call, Dick. A bunch of us stood around talking after the rehearsal, and I didn’t realize how much time had passed. Mr. Rothenberger told everyone tonight about Mr. Booth withdrawing his financial support.”

  Apparently reading my thoughts, he hastened to continue. “Mr. Rothenberger didn’t say why or go into detail, only that he’d withdrawn it, which means we probably won’t be able to go to Chicago. He didn’t say that specifically, but everyone knows. He didn’t tell us until the end of the rehearsal.”

  Probably a wise move on his part, I thought.

  “He was very matter-of-fact about it, but he had to have been really upset. I know everyone else was. Everybody was speculating about it. Some think that Mr. Rothenberger and Mr. Booth might hav
e gotten into another argument over something, though I can’t imagine what, now that Grant’s dead. When one of the guys said Mr. Booth probably withdrew because the chorus reminded him too much of Grant’s death, a couple of the other guys laughed—which I didn’t think was very nice of them.”

  “But Roger didn’t specifically say the Chicago trip was off?”

  “Well, no, but I don’t know how we can go without Mr. Booth’s help. And if we don’t go, I know that a couple guys might drop out.”

  “Their loss,” I said, quite sure he was right. “If the only reason somebody stays with the chorus is for a trip to Chicago, you’re probably better off without them.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “Yeah, you’re right. But a lot of the guys are really upset, especially Eric. You know how much the chorus means to him.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to the chorus,” I said. “Trust me.” I realized even as I said it I had no guarantee that what I said was true.

  While there was no question but that the withdrawal of Booth’s financial support was bad news, how bad it might be I wasn’t in a position to say. Rothenberger hadn’t mentioned it when I’d talked with him. I had a lot of questions as to how and when all this came about and wanted to talk to him for details. The fact that it had nothing whatever to do with who killed Grant and was therefore absolutely none of my business didn’t stand in my way. It never did.

  Jonathan was involved, however peripherally, and that’s what mattered. I wanted to know what was going on and why.

  *

  The first thing I did Wednesday morning was call Rothenberger, hoping he’d be home and up. Luckily, he was.

  “Rothenberger here.”

  “Roger, Dick Hardesty. Jonathan told me about Crandall’s withdrawing his financial support from the chorus. I know you couldn’t go into detail in front of the chorus, but I was wondering if you’d mind my asking his reasons?”

  There was a rather long pause, followed by a sigh. “All I know is what little he told me in a cursory phone call and what I subsequently read in the copy I received of the letter he sent to the chorus’ board, something about financial reversals and cash flow problems.