After an extensive series of questions, we were able to deduce that all of them had alibis, except the owner of the place—Mario Donatelli. Joe and I sat the mustached, round-faced, portly, fiery-tempered fifty-two-year-old down at a table in hopes of finding out where he was at the time of the murder.
“You stormed out of the restaurant last night. Where did you go?” Joe asked.
“I needed to get some fresh air, so I took a drive to clear my thoughts,” Mario replied.
“Where did you drive to?” Joe said.
“The water.”
“Did you happen to swing by Claude Giraud’s place while you were out?”
Mario didn’t hesitate with his answer. “No.”
Joe found that hard to believe. “This drive you took corresponds exactly with the time of Claude’s murder.”
Mario’s legendary temper began to show. “I didn’t do this.”
“Every suspect says that. The true test is whether you have anyone who can corroborate your story. So do you?”
“I already told you, I went out and took a drive around town to collect my thoughts.”
Mario wasn’t the only one losing his temper.
Joe was getting tired of asking different variations of the same question. “And I told you, your story is only as good as your ability to verify it. Now, were you alone on this drive of yours?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Finally, we were getting somewhere. That was until Mario spoke up again.
He kept denying any involvement in Claude’s murder. “I didn’t do this.”
Those blanket statements were doing him less good than he thought. A murder investigation was about gathering concrete evidence, not believing random hearsay.
I came at Mario from a different angle. “You say that, but from what we’ve heard, you stormed out of here like a man who was out for blood.”
Mario got very defensive. “Hey, that came out of your mouth, not mine. This isn’t what it looks like.”
Joe disagreed. “Really? Because it looks pretty bad. You had an explosive fight with the victim an hour before he was killed. On top of that, you don’t have anyone who can verify where you were at the time of the murder. I don’t see how things could look any worse for you.”
“I’d agree with you, but you’re forgetting one simple fact,” Mario argued.
“Which is?” I asked.
“I didn’t do this,” Mario replied.
I felt like we were slamming our heads against a brick wall. Then, I thought of another possible way to break through. “Mario, did you know Claude was typing up his blistering review of your restaurant at the time he was killed?”
Mario became frantic, although, not with nerves. That statement surprisingly made him excited. “See, that actually proves my point.”
I furrowed my brow, confused beyond belief. “How so?”
I couldn’t wait to hear the answer to this one.
Mario didn’t disappoint. “If I had killed Claude, why wouldn’t I have deleted what he’d written about my place before I left?”
Joe had a theory. “Maybe you were in a rush to get out of there. Perhaps you were so worried that you’d get caught that you panicked and left without deleting the review.”
Mario shook his head defiantly. “No. If I was the killer, I would have deleted something that incriminating immediately.”
Joe decided to approach this from a different angle. “You say that, but killers don’t always think rationally in the heat of the moment. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be murdering someone in the first place.”
“For the last time, I didn’t do this. If you want to talk to someone with a real ax to grind, why don’t you talk to his soon-to-be ex-wife?” Mario suggested.
Mario was suddenly quick to deflect. Did he throw Claude’s estranged wife under the bus just to point the finger of blame away from himself or because that theory had solid legs to stand on? That was yet to be determined. In the meantime, we weren’t done with Mario. Although, he was done with us.
“We will. But back to you—” I started saying.
He shut me down. “I’m not saying another word without a lawyer present.”
Chapter Seven
Joe really wanted to haul Mario into the station and detain him. The problem was, he could only keep him for a few days without filing formal charges against him. It was too early in the investigation to do that. Even though we had ample suspicion, we had no concrete evidence against Mario. For that reason, Joe warned Mario not to leave town, then we headed off to chase down our next lead.
Joe and I decided to pay Claude’s estranged wife a visit. As we pulled into the driveway of her green rental bungalow, Yvette’s bright purple sedan immediately caught my eye. Like so many Candy Cole Cosmetics saleswomen, Yvette proudly showed off the striking purple shade that was associated with the brand. Still, no matter how often I saw a bright purple car, I never really got used to such a strong bright shade.
Joe was not distracted by the car in the least. He headed straight to the front door of Yvette’s place without hesitation.
His first set of knocks yielded no results.
“Mrs. Giraud. This is the police. I know you’re in there,” Joe said.
After still receiving no response, he knocked again. This time, Yvette Giraud finally answered the door. If the color purple wasn’t burned enough into my brain after seeing Yvette’s car, her outfit sealed the deal. Her curvy figure, combined with her head-to-toe purple outfit, made her look like an eggplant. It was not the most flattering of looks. But judging by the confidence I saw on the fifty-two-year-old’s face, she clearly thought she was very stylish.
“Are you sure you have the right place? What do the police want with me?” Yvette asked.
“Mrs. Giraud, we have to ask you a few questions,” Joe replied.
“About what?”
“Your husband’s murder.”
Yvette seemed unfazed by hearing the words “husband” and “murder” in the same sentence. The woman must have had ice water running through her veins.
“All right. Ask away,” Yvette said.
“I think it would be better if we did this inside,” Joe replied.
She disagreed. “No. I’d prefer it if we did it out here.”
A red flag immediately went up in my mind. “Why don’t you want to do this inside? Unless, there’s something you’re trying to hide from us.”
Yvette was quick to deny my assertion. “That’s not it.”
“You know, I could get a search warrant for your place if I needed to. Or you could just let us in,” Joe said.
Yvette bit the corner of her lip then sighed. “Fine. Come in.”
After she reluctantly led us into her living room, I was on high alert for anything that looked out of place. Granted, some people were just highly private and didn’t like having unexpected company, but when a murder suspect acted withholding, it was usually because they were trying to cover something up.
Yvette sat down on her couch and began filing her nails with an emery board as Joe fired the first question her way.
“Where were you between nine and nine thirty last night?” he asked.
“Here,” she replied.
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“So that means you have no one to verify your alibi for the time of your husband’s murder, then?”
“I just told you, I was here.”
“You can say that all you want, but I make a habit of not blindly taking the word of a murder suspect.”
“I think it’s a little presumptuous to suspect me of murder,” Yvette said.
“Mrs. Giraud, you’re in the middle of a bitter divorce. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t have you on my list of suspects,” Joe said.
I added to my brother’s point. “Yvette, do you have any idea how often a crime like this is committed by a jaded spouse?”
“It wasn�
��t in this case,” Yvette replied.
“I’d really like to believe that, but you’ll have to give me a reason to,” Joe said.
“How about this one? Once the ink was dry on our divorce, he’d be out of my life, and I’d get half of everything he had. Why would I have gone to the trouble of killing him?” Yvette asked.
I threw a theory out. “Half isn’t enough for some people. Maybe you wanted everything.”
She shook her head.
“How about this? You said you’d get half, but maybe Claude was trying to lower your cut. Even more, what if you were worried that he was succeeding?” Joe said.
“You’re just making things up now,” Yvette replied.
Joe decided to tackle things from a different angle. “By the way, why were you and Claude getting divorced in the first place?”
For the first time, since the questioning began, Yvette stopped filing her nails. She hesitated as she answered.
Just as she opened her mouth to reply, a thud was heard coming from the back of her house.
Joe and I both turned our heads towards the direction of the sound.
“What was that?” I asked.
Yvette quickly dismissed the noise. “Nothing. My neighbor is probably messing around in his shed.”
Her answer only aroused more suspicion in my mind. “No. That sounded like it was coming from inside your house.”
Joe didn’t wait for Yvette to explain herself. He got up to investigate the noise himself.
Yvette tried to stop him. “Please don’t.”
“Mrs. Giraud, why do you look so panicked?” Joe asked.
He didn’t wait for her to answer. Joe and I headed down the hall towards the back of Yvette’s house. There was a closed door at the end of the hallway.
Joe swung it open, revealing an unmade bed and little else. His curiosity wasn’t satiated. He headed over to the closet then opened it. That’s when the source of the noise became apparent.
Vincent Castelli, a handsome, muscular, twenty-seven-year-old man was standing in the closet, half-dressed.
Chapter Eight
Joe and I suddenly had a slew of new questions for both Yvette and Vincent. To start, Vincent wasn’t just some random twentysomething guy. He was a server at Mario’s Italian Restaurant. The same Mario’s that Yvette’s husband was about to lacerate in a review. That had some very interesting implications for this case.
The funny thing was, Joe and I had spoken with Vincent an hour earlier at Mario’s restaurant. Since he was working last night, his alibi for the time of the murder checked out. Conversely, his presence in Yvette’s closet only pointed the finger of suspicion harder at her.
Yvette had a lot of explaining to do. She tried to downplay things. “I just want to say, this is not—”
I knew exactly where she was trying to go with this. That’s why I cut her off. “Don’t even try to tell me this isn’t what it looks like. You’re sleeping with a guy who works for Mario Donatelli, the same man your husband couldn’t wait to eviscerate in a new review.”
Yvette lowered her head. She had no snappy comeback for that one.
“We’d heard that Mario believe Claude’s review was biased. Now it looks like that might have been the case. I guess the question is, would Claude have been so eager to rip Mario’s restaurant apart had you and Vincent not been sleeping together?” I asked.
Once again, Yvette didn’t reply. At that moment, she refused to even make eye contact.
Joe’s mind went off in another direction.
“You tried to pretend like you didn’t have a motive, but he’s sitting right in front of us. Claude was the one to file for divorce, wasn’t he? And knowing that you were cheating on him, he didn’t want you to get anything in the divorce, did he?” he said.
She didn’t respond.
Joe tried again. “Did he?”
Yvette still didn’t give him anything to work with.
Joe continued. “There was a chance you could lose everything. But with the divorce not finalized, with him dead, you’d stand to inherit everything. Now there’s a motive.”
Yvette finally looked up. “I told you, I didn’t do this.”
“Your word is meaning less and less to me the more you speak,” Joe said.
For much of the conversation, Vincent had sat in stunned silence. He decided to get a few words in. “Can I just say something?”
“Go ahead,” Joe replied.
“You’re saying all these things about Yvette, but that’s not the Yvette I know. The Yvette that I’ve fallen in love with is an amazing woman. She’s sweet and kind and caring, not some killer. She wouldn’t even hurt a fly,” Vincent said.
After Vincent was done gushing about his lover, Joe brought things back to reality.
My brother had the most dismissive tone in his voice as he replied. “I will take that with the grain of salt it deserves, considering how extremely biased your opinion is. Now, back to your motive, Mrs. Giraud.”
“I know this doesn’t look good,” Yvette said.
“That’s probably the most spot-on thing I’ve heard all day,” I joked.
“At the same time, it doesn’t prove I did anything,” Yvette said.
Unfortunately, she was right about that. At the same time, there was a flip side to her statement.
“It doesn’t exactly make you look innocent, either,” I said.
Yvette had been teetering on the brink throughout the entire conversation. She had finally reached her limit.
“Yeah? Well unless you can come up with something to prove that I’m guilty, I’m done talking to you.”
Chapter Nine
Joe could have easily detained Yvette. The problem was, even though our level of suspicion about her was high, hard evidence proving she was guilty was sorely lacking. Like with Mario Donatelli before, Joe gave Yvette a stern warning to not leave town, hoping to scare the daylights out of her. We then left her rental bungalow and decided to chase down another lead.
Our instincts took us to Claude’s workplace next. As we strolled into the main office of the local newspaper, I prayed that we’d encounter significantly less friction from here on out.
My prayer was not answered. After getting some sass from the newspaper editor’s assistant, we were finally granted access to interview the editor of the paper, Eric Langfield.
Eric had a sizable office, which would have looked even bigger had it not been so cluttered. For a man who put the finishing touches on a daily newspaper, he sure worked in a mess of an office.
Eric was an old school editor, the kind that still wore suspenders to work. He had a crew cut, a clean-shaven angular face, and a distinct lack of body fat. With all the running around on his job, did he just sweat the weight off? It was hard to tell how old he really was, but the stress lines on his face made him look like he was in his early seventies.
The nosy part of me wondered why he was still putting in the taxing hours that were required of a newspaper editor at his age. If the late nights staring down stiff deadlines weren’t bad enough, the stress of running a printed newspaper in the digital age was undeniable. Yet, there he was, sitting at his desk with no quit in him.
An image flashed in my brain of an article I’d read about seniors who shunned retirement. People believed hanging up their work suspenders was for suckers and that the minute they slowed down and took up golf was the minute they started dying. I, for one, thought a retirement on the beach would be splendid. Or tending to a nice garden. When my golden years came, I fully intended to wind down.
Then again, my opinion was neither here nor there. More importantly, Joe and I hadn’t come here to debate Eric’s life decisions. Questions about Claude were on the docket, and it was time to get to them.
“Did Claude have any enemies that you knew of?” Joe asked.
Eric let out a big belly laugh. “Of course he did. That’s why I hired him.”
Joe’s face scrunched up in confusion. “I’m not
sure I follow.”
Eric explained himself. “Claude wasn’t afraid to tell people off. That’s rare in this day and age.”
“Have you been on the internet lately? There’s a lot of people getting told off there,” Joe replied.
I piggybacked on my brother’s point. “That, and plenty of cute cat videos.”
Eric narrowed his eyes. “The internet is the enemy of print.”
“I hate to break it to you, but the internet is winning,” Joe said.
I had a different follow-up. “Don’t you publish a digital edition?”
“Because I have to, not because I want to. The news wasn’t meant to be read on people’s phones,” Eric grumbled.
He was even older school than I thought. It could easily have devolved into a rant about the frustrations of the digital age, but Joe was eager to right the ship.
“Let’s get back on track here. You mentioned that you hired Claude specifically because he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind,” Joe said.
“Absolutely. The man ruffled a lot of feathers, and nothing sells papers like controversy,” Eric replied.
“I can’t argue with that. At the same time, all those feathers he ruffled might have been what got him killed,” Joe said.
Eric tried to eschew any blame. “He was the one to stir up the controversy. I just paid him for it.” He continued deflecting. “Look, the guy got into plenty of problems on his own. Ask his estranged wife.”
“We did,” Joe said.
Eric seemed a little too eager to push the conversation away from the paper.
I stopped him cold. “Did Claude have any enemies here at the paper?”
Eric gave a quick and concise answer. “No.”
“That would make this the only place in his life that didn’t swirl with controversy then,” I said.
“He knew better than to jeopardize his paycheck,” Eric replied.
Hope Hadley Eight Book Cozy Mystery Set Page 36
