Birthdays of a Princess (27 page)

Chapter
57

The doctor didn’t give the detectives much time to digest the news.
He ushered them into the hospital room, pointing out that they had ten minutes
max, as long as they didn’t upset his patient.

The woman was still connected with various tubes to several
machines. The left side of her face was heavily bandaged, the right was
distorted by swelling. Nobody would recognize her like this, but the detectives
didn’t plan on letting her find out. A blitz attack was needed to make the most
of this shocking new development, and Macintosh signaled to Harding that he
would give it a try.

“Graciella Rodriguez,” he coaxed with his softest voice. “How nice
to see you coming around.”

She cocked her head to move the three men in front of her bed into
her one-eyed vision. “Who are you?”

“We are detectives from the Vancouver Police Department in charge of
investigating the attack on you.”

Her right eye stared at him, watchful, warily.

“So?”

“So we’ve been waiting for you to get well enough to talk to us. We
just need to confirm a few details to wrap up the case. I’m sorry we don’t have
any good news for you regarding your attacker.”

The eye clouded over.

“The young person escaped. Obviously a drug addict. So sorry.”

Dr. Vanderhoof looked up and opened his mouth, but Harding silently
pleaded with him to keep quiet, and the doctor only coughed lightly into his left
fist.

Macintosh quickly pressed on, praying that his deceit would bring
the desired result. “So if you are up to answer a few questions now—that’s
standard procedure I’m afraid—we can leave you to your hopefully speedy
recovery.”

“What do you want to know?” She sounded harsh.

Macintosh opened his notebook and pretended to read from it. “Your
name is Graciella Rodriguez.”

“How do you know?”

“You told the doctor when you woke up.”

“I did?”

“Yes. You did. You’re a visitor from Texas?”

“Mm, yes. Yes, I am. On a visit.”

“And you were staying where? The name of the hotel?”

“Ah, uhm, I don’t remember. I need to think.”

Dr. Vanderhoof interfered.

“I really think we should give the patient time—”

Macintosh nodded.

“Oh sure, just one more minute. My note here says you have relatives
in Vancouver. I guess you probably stayed with them.”

“Yes. No.”

“No, you don’t have relatives or no, you didn’t stay with them?”

“I don’t have relatives. I’m a tourist.”

“Sure. Thank you.” He closed his book and turned to Dr. Vanderhoof.
“We are done here.”

The doctor seemed relieved.

“Very good. Thank you, Ms. Rodriguez.”

The three men left the room, and, once outside, the detectives
thanked the doctor again and walked to the elevators. While waiting for one to
arrive, Macintosh watched Dr. Vanderhoof disappear down the hallway.

Harding bit his tongue until he was out of sight. “What was that?”
he then asked. “Why did you stop?”

“Oh, I didn’t,” Macintosh said. “I only called a short time-out.
Come on, the doc is gone, let’s get back in there.”

“But we can’t. It’s not procedure. We need the doctor’s permission.”

“Didn’t he give it to us just a few minutes ago?” Macintosh marched
straight past the intensive care floor receptionist who barely glanced at them.
They were detectives who had been in the company of a resident doctor, so their
presence was not to be queried.

“No, he didn’t. We can’t do that, we’ll get into trouble.”

Macintosh stopped in front of the room they had left two minutes
earlier.

“Do you really think the Sergeant is gonna do more than slap my
wrist? And it’ll only be me who gets into trouble, you won’t. I’m the senior
here, and I say we go in again. You got no choice but to follow my orders. I’ll
write in my report that you objected and that we had a slight difference of
opinion. I understood the doc’s shift was over and he didn’t hang around. Got
it?”

Harding relaxed.

“Got it. It's all your responsibility and you’ll retire soon.”

“Thank you.”

Macintosh opened the door and immediately felt a hawk’s eye on him
again.

“Sorry, Graciella, I forgot to ask you one more question.”

“What?”

“How did you kill Inez Alvares?”

“I … what are you—”

“We know you burned the house in La Marque down and stole Inez
Alvares’ identity. We know who you are and where you’ve lived and what you’ve
done. The only thing I don’t know is
how
you killed her, and I’m really
very interested in that. I really want to wrap up this case.”

The eye blinked several times. “How the hell do you come up with all
that shit?”

“That doesn’t matter, does it? You are in a hospital in Canada now,
but as soon as you have regained enough strength to be deported, you’ll be sent
back to the States to stand trial for your involvement in the child-abuse
allegations Texas MCS is compiling against you, as well as the murder charge—”

“It wasn’t murder! It was an accident.” Her harsh voice had shrill
overtones but was barely above a whisper by now. Talking obviously strained her.

Macintosh pulled a chair closer to the bed and sat down. “Tell me.”

Graciella blinked and swallowed hard.

“Wait,” Macintosh ordered. “Do you mind if we tape it?”

“What does it matter? I’m done, aren’t I?”

Harding took a small tape recorder from the inside pocket of his
jacket, turned it on, stated time and day and asked the suspect again if she
gave her consent to be interviewed. She nodded but he made her say yes.

“Good,” Macintosh said. “Now let’s get started. We know you’re
Tiara’s aunt.”

“That little bitch. After all I’ve done for her. Whenever she opens
her mouth, she’s lying. Make sure you tape that! I’m gonna tell you how it
really was. It wasn’t my fault.” She stopped to clear her scratchy throat.

Harding came closer to the bed, sat on the edge and held the tape
recorder in position. Macintosh moved Harding’s hand even closer. He had enough
trouble understanding her foreign intonation without her windpipes damaged as
they were.

“Tell us everything you remember from that day when Inez got killed
by accident.”

“I was with Inez, at her place,” she whispered. “We were just
talking when the phone rang. Inez has a brother, Antonio, her kid brother, she
spoiled him way too much. I’ve always warned her that he was a no-good
son-of-a-bitch, but she didn’t want to hear any of it. Even when he took up
with Tiara’s aunt, who was actually his employer, she didn’t cut ties
altogether. Imagine, the fool actually confided in her. I overheard it when he
gushed about the affair like a love-sick puppy, even telling her that Melissa
had stolen money from me and given it to him, out of sheer love. The idiot. He
didn’t have a clue that I had been safe-keeping the money for Inez, so he
actually had taken money that belonged to his own sister. At least then she
stopped supporting him financially. Her own brother became a liability to her
and she wanted to stay away from him as much as possible. The guy is a total
loser.”

She had to pause again and swallow a few times before she could
carry on.

“Anyway, he called on that day, all in a huff about something, and
she was getting really pissed off with him. I heard her say he’d better lie low
for a while, and assumed he’d gotten himself into trouble, but when she hung up,
she told me that my sister-in-law Melissa was on the run with her daughter,
leaving the country with another woman, one he didn’t know. Tony had said the
three of them were packing up when he’d left their place, and he begged Inez to
do something about it. Now, Inez was very worried about the money I was keeping
for her at my place. Very worried, I tell you, and so was I. Melissa had stolen
from me before and Inez had insisted I pay her back, so you can imagine how I
felt.”

Now she coughed. Macintosh handed her the glass with tea from her
bedside table but she ignored him. Her desire to finish off the story made her
ignore the discomfort of talking.

“So we raced off like two crazies, over to my house, but it was all
deserted. Melissa and Tiara and that other woman had left already. All the
wardrobes were empty and the stuff from the bathroom was gone. Jesus, I tell
you, my heart sank when I saw the door to my bedroom wide open. Inez went into
panic mode. She started screaming at me that it was my fault that those women
had left. I didn’t say anything, just went to my hiding place, and can you
believe it, Melissa had cleaned it out. It was all gone. The lot of it, nearly
one hundred thousand dollars. I thought I’d die. Inez then flew at me with
claws out, like a werewolf on a rampage. She thought I had put Melissa up to
it. And Tiara. It was actually not only about the money, but also about Tiara.”

“I bet,” Macintosh mumbled under his breath.

“What? Yeah, sure, she liked that girl a lot. Was like family to
her. Tiara gone, and the money, that was just too much for her. Inez hurled
herself at me, screaming I’d never get away with cheating her like that, and I
had no choice but to defend myself. I knocked her over and, would you believe
it, she fell and banged her head against the brass frame of the sideboard. We
had one of those glass and metal things to match the dining table, it had been
Melissa’s idea, I hated that stupid thing from the start. Anyway, there she
was, bleeding like a pig, all over the rug. It was a nightmare. I didn’t know
what to do. I wanted to call an ambulance, but with her last breath Inez said I
shouldn’t. She’d done some terrible things, she said, I guess to cleanse her
soul before she would meet her maker, and it was no good for nobody to involve
the authorities. She knew she was dying fast. She begged me, honestly, she
begged me, to destroy the evidence of her wrong doings and to disappear for a
while. She said Melissa was a mean woman and would try and destroy me, once she
was out of the country.”

She had to stop to swallow a few times before she could carry on.

“It made sense to me then. I mean, I was Inez’ best friend, and
Melissa had disliked me from the start. I’ve had a bit of a run-in with her a
week earlier, about …, well, about all sorts of things, so I spent the week at
Inez’ pad. Wasn’t in Melissa’s good books, so to say. Inez knew that. In fact,
we’d been discussing all week how to solve this mess. With her dying breath she
told me to protect myself. That was Inez, in her last moments still thinking of
me. She made me promise to take care of everything and said it would be best
for me to act as if she was still alive, until everything was sorted out. See,
I had no choice. She hadn’t been totally legal in her dealings, they would’ve
confiscated everything if they’d found out.”

“So you burned the place down.”

“She was dead. With my little niece gone and with all the money
missing, the stuff in the house meant nothing to me. It was only a rental
anyway.”

“But you said her business partners would come after her when they
found out their money was missing. Weren’t you worried then to take on her
identity?”

She lifted her one eye to the ceiling, brought it back and pierced
Macintosh with an angry look.

“Actually, it was like this, Inez had some cash money stashed at her
studio and at a few other places and she told me to get that and pay people she
owed. Get it? That was part of what I had to do for her. And to get it all
done, I needed to be her. I took care of things and then I left town. That’s
all there is to it.” She closed her eye. “I’m tired now. I don’t think I need
to say any more.”

“You certainly told us enough for today. Thank you very much.”

Macintosh waved to Harding to turn off the tape recorder, and as
soon as he heard the quiet click, he came even closer to the bed. He bent low,
until his face was right next to Graciella Rodriguez’ head.

“I’ll come back with a warrant. We know about the whole pedophile
operation, and you’ll be held accountable, I don’t care which name I write on
your deportation order, Inez or Graciella. In fact, I might ask Texas police
which one they prefer. They got proof that Inez and you, you two scumbags, were
partners, we got a witness statement—”

The eye flew open again, blazing like burning coal.

“Tiara is a liar. And she tried to kill me.”

“Why did you come to Vancouver?”

“What do you think? To get my investment back.”

“I take it with that you mean Tiara? You came to Canada because you
knew Tiara is living here, you found out where she lives, stalked her, watched
her movements for a while, followed her, and eventually confronted her in
Starbucks to lure her back.”

“Nothing of the kind. I did nothing wrong.”