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Authors: Delia Rosen

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BOOK: One Foot In The Gravy
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Chapter 23
Grant happened to call while I was driving home. He wanted to warn me that the grapevine had heard I was at Lizzie’s house and we should have a story prepared.
“Too late,” I said.
I told him where I’d been and what I’d said. He was impressed.
“So now they knowI a playa,” I said, trying to sound ghetto. It was lost on him. “Hey, it’s good that you called. I need a favor.”
“Of course.”
“I want to borrow your Lizzie Renoir file.”
“Sure. You want security code to the arms locker too?”
“I’m serious.”
“No, you’re crazy. I can’t do that.”
“Then give me an unofficial version in an official-looking folder,” I said. “A redacted copy of the report, some of the less upsetting crime-scene photographs, floor plans, and all the key facts. Also the financials, everything you’ve got.”
“Why those?”
“Bank statements speak to me, like tombs to an Egyptologist.”
“I assume you’re going to tell me why you want all of that?”
“I want to see what the Cozy Foxes have to say about this.”
“You want culpability findings from Lolo’s coffee klatch?”
“This killing is probably related to the first, do you agree?”
“It seems to be.”
“Fine. The Cozies have been involved with this party from the start and they have all been to Lolo’s place countless times,” I said. “They know each other. I want to see how they relate when they’re forced to review this morning’s crime. And who knows what else might come out of their chatter?”
“If one of them
is
involved, what makes you think she’ll show?”
“Because no one declines a Lolo Baker invitation. To do so would damn near be an admission of guilt.”
I heard him sigh.
“We’ve got nothing to lose,” I said. “Even if none of them was involved and they decide that Lizzie was killed by space aliens, we’ve at least eliminated them from the list of possible suspects. Except, maybe, for Helen Russell.”
“Why Helen Russell?”
“Because she’s a hell of an actress.”
Grant agreed to put something together. He asked if I wanted to pick it up or if he should drop it off.
“However you’re
comfortable,
” I said, certain he had no idea why I hit that word with a snap like a fly swatter.
“I should have it in about two hours,” he said. “I’ll bring it by?”
I told him that would be fine. Then girded my mental loins to accept it at the door and send him on his way.
 
 
My father once told a joke that lasted a full fifty minutes.
It was Yom Kippur and there wasn’t much else to do, beside talk. We couldn’t watch TV. We couldn’t eat. I was fourteen or fifteen and it was my mother, father, my mother’s parents, and a stray aunt and uncle—a minyan at least, if women had been allowed to participate. (An aside: one reason I became a non-practicing Jew is when I discovered that a slave could be one of the ten people but not a woman. Nice, right?)
After about twenty minutes, everyone knew that there was no way even the greatest punchline ever written could satisfy the build-up. Still, there was something about it....
The joke went like this:
It was during the Depression and the circus was coming to a small Midwestern town.
(He spent about ten minutes describing the town, the weather, the population.)
Buster and his son Cuffy were excited as could be about the circus, since there wasn’t a lot of excitement in their impoverished region.
(Sort of like that high holy day, but I digress.)
Buster scraped together the admission price and he took his son on opening night
. (At this point, the tent and sideshows were described for another ten minutes.)
Finally, it was time to enter the big top. Buster had secured them seats in the front row so they would have the best view of all three rings.
(At this point, seven or eight minutes must be invested describing the aerialists, the elephants, the trick riders, and of course the ringmaster.)
After a while, it was time for the clowns. The last one to emerge from the clown car was the headliner Peskio. He ran along the front row squirting water from a flower at the pretty women and throwing confetti on the children. Buster and Cuffy were literally jumping with anticipation as he reached their seats. Peskio looked squarely at Buster.
“Are you a giraffe?” he asked.
“No-ho-ho!” Buster laughed uncontrollably.
“Are you an ostrich?”
Buster was laughing so hard he couldn’t answer, only shook his head.
“Then you must be
an ass
!” Peskio yelled.
Buster stared at him, stunned, as the clown guffawed and moved on. Cuffy stared up at his father in tears. The man’s world collapsed. He had been insulted in front of his boy. The rest of the night was a blur to Buster, who stared blankly at Flingo the Human Cannonball, Steppy the Stilt Walker, and other amazing sights. Before leaving, Buster took a flyer from one of the hawkers. The circus was headed to California and then it was coming back. They would be here again in exactly one year. Buster resolved to be ready for them.
(Dad invested another ten minutes on what Buster did: he took a correspondence course in public speaking, read books of philosophy, trained with a heavy bag so he would be fit and intimidating, and went to free courses at the local high school to learn rudimentary Latin so he would have a better understanding of language and its meaning.)
Sure enough, twelve months later, the circus was back. Buster made sure that he and Cuffy had the same seats. They psyched themselves up with games along the midway, and gorged on cotton candy for energy. They took their seats and barely heeded the trapeze or animal acts as they waited. Finally, the odious red car appeared and from it the clowns emerged. At last, the moment arrived. Peskio unfolded himself and made the rounds of the front row. He reached Buster and Cuffy and without even a glimmer of recognition on his big painted face, he stared at Buster.
“Are you a giraffe?” he asked.
“No!” Buster said proudly.
“Are you an ostrich?”
“I am not!” Buster replied.
“Then you must be
an ass
!” Peskio yelled.
At which point Buster squared his shoulders and said to the clown,
“Screw you!”
That was the joke.
I tell it because, as I said, while it isn’t funny, it’s got something. What it has is a life lesson, one that applied to me so perfectly that it causes me to wonder what else my dad knew about life that I don’t, and makes me sad I won’t ever get to ask him.
After a day of plotting, and then of refining my plotting about how I was going to put Grant Daniels in his place, he came to the door, I invited him in, we had some wine, and he stayed the night. All of it, until just after dawn.
It isn’t that I’m weak. I’ve gone toe-to-toe with some of the toughest CFOs since the advent of Christianity. I tossed my husband when, after avoiding our marital bed with this excuse or that—from work to late night TV—he told me,
“I’m not having an affair, I’m just not interested in you anymore.”
What’s happened, as you’ve seen, is that down here I’m disgraced Army lieutenant Philip Nolan, the Man Without A Country. I’ve been set adrift with nothing familiar but myself—and so much of me was tied up in the work I did and where I lived and who I lived with.
All gone now, except for Starbucks. I mean—Starbucks ? My only lifeline? How desperate and lonely am I?
Grant, flawed and clueless as he can sometimes be, is one of the few new buds that looks like it could flower. Him, and now Thom. That’s why my brain overruled my heart on this one and I’m glad it did. We had a good, good night.
There was a little awkwardness as we dressed the next day. For one thing, I hadn’t even cracked the folder he brought. I’m not sure he was convinced how bad I really wanted it. I didn’t tell him it really was all about that. For another, I wasn’t even a little convinced that he had a relationship in mind. That was something a sleepover seemed to hint at, at least to him. I decided to take that bull by the oysters.
“This wasn’t a commitment,” I assured him as we checked ourselves side-by-side in the bedroom mirror before heading out. “I’m talking about what we did, staying over, the whole
megillah
.”
He didn’t answer at once.
“Is that what you were thinking?” I asked, ramping up the awkward factor.
“No,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘What’s a
migeelluh
?’”
We laughed for different reasons. I told him that, technically, it was a big story . . . but in this case, I meant it as everything that had transpired from the time he walked in the door until now.
“Nice,” he said. “It sounds like one of those Japanese monsters. Like Mogera or Mothra.”
I had to admit that now he had me at a disadvantage. We chuckled our way out of that fix and out the door. I imagined the neighbors to be watching, though it was probably too early for any of them. I didn’t care—New Yorkers are used to that—and I hoped it didn’t bother him. It didn’t seem to.
He saw me to my car and gave me a peck on the lips. “I liked it,” he said. “A lot. I’m glad I stayed.”
“So am I.”
“Would it be insensitive to bring up work?”
“Not at all. That’s why you came.”
“It wasn’t, but it was a good excuse. Are you really serious about doing what you said?”
“Serious as death.”
“I’ll let you know what the morning brings,” he said. “I’ve got someone checking on your Anne Miller lead. Could be helpful.”
Another peck and he was gone.
The sun was just rising across the street. It seemed unusually bright this morning, but I knew that was delusional. And that was okay. Sometimes it’s good to be a little sunstruck.
Chapter 24
“Somebody’s walkin’ on sunshine,” Thom observed as I set up the slicer.
“That would be me,” I said.
“Do I wanna know why? You medicated?”
“Hell—
heck
no,” I said. “This all natural.”
“Your man,” she said.
“Not the pronoun I’d use but, yeah. We had a good night.”
“Stop there!” Thom said, disappearing into the walk-in to stock the tins of shredded lettuce, dressing, and other tools of Newt’s trade.
The morning blew by, the rush was a breeze, and I was planning to give Lolo a shout when Grant called. I took the call in my office.
“We found Anne Miller,” he said. I had gone into the back room expecting a somewhat different, possibly more romantic, opening line, like
“I’ve been missing you.”
I got mad at myself, not him.
You had a great night. Don’t let big, dumb expectations taint it.
“And?” I asked.
“Thirty-two years old and a fugitive from German justice. She’s a member of the Red Army Faction.”
My disappointment was gone with the wind. The day had taken a sharp right into terra incognita.
“How do you know?”
“We have lawyers too,” he said, sounding a little wounded. “We got the power-of-attorney agreement and put the document up on IPABB—the International Police Assistance Bulletin Board. Police computers around the world check it constantly, searching for a match to new, hot ‘red notice’ postings.”
That was fun to know.
“Anne Miller’s signature came up on file with both the
Bundespolizei
—the German Feds—and Interpol. It was an old sample, from high school, but it’s definitely hers.”
“Germany, eh? That would explain Hoppy’s trip. Question is, what was she to him.”
“An old friend, that’s for sure.”
“Oh?”
“BPOL surveillance caught them together in Berlin seventeen years ago,” he said.
Seventeen years,
I thought.
She would have been fifteen. The goddamn pig. I wondered if John Russell was with him, just so I could hate him more too.
“Hold on,” I said with sudden alarm. “Are you saying that Hoppy was a terrorist or that he was killed by one?”
“No,” Grant said. “I don’t think he knew about her affiliation and the RAF had no reason to go after him.”
“How do you know?”
“She wasn’t in the group in 1993. She was just a kid who was interested in becoming a florist, according to her high school records. Her older brother Karl was a member. He hated his grandfather, who was a Nazi, and went the other way. Karl is the one who recruited her.”
“Charming.”
“But Hoppy obviously cared about Anne. I don’t know how many times they were together, but she obviously made a big impression for him to leave her the shop,” Grant said.
“Meanwhile, good luck getting a passport.”
“Which is another reason Hoppy may not have had any idea about her affiliation,” Grant said.
“Solly did,” I said.
“Yeah, now.” Grant said. “He probably didn’t find out until he had to execute the will. Probably had contact information from Hoppy.”
“Fast turnaround,” I said. “Hoppy dies, he has the power-of-attorney next day?”
“Germany’s eight hours ahead,” Grant pointed out. “She gets a PDF, signs it, sends it back, it’s filed electronically. The whole thing could take under an hour.”
“Well, at least her terrorist past could explain why Solly warned me off,” I said. “Christ, do you think he was actually looking out for me?”
“Probably not,” Grant said. “He’s just a dick covering his own ass. Not that you aren’t worth looking out for.”
Oooh, that was nice. My good mood came galloping back.
“I’m thinking our attorney friend took Hoppy at his word whenever the will was drawn up, that she was an old friend. Now that he was going to be her de facto counsel, he did a quick due diligence.”
“How did he get through all the movie star Anne Miller clutter? Special lawyer filter?”
“In a way,” Grant said. “All he had to do was type in her name and ‘criminal record.’ That’s what we did.”
“Tricks of the trade,” I said, annoyed that I hadn’t thought of that. “So he was afraid of being linked to violent, left-wing urban guerrillas,” I said. “Then why did Solly contact her at all?”
“He had no choice. The probate process ensures that all the terms of the will are carried out to the letter. If Solly screws up, he can be disbarred and jailed.”
I reveled in that prospect for just a few seconds. “So where are we now? Where do the German police stand on all this?”
“Right—I’ve only told you part of that story. The BPOL lost her in 2002.”
“How’d they manage that?”
“She went to ground. Got a fake ID, a new name—not legal, mind you, because that would have shown up on official records. They picked up her brother in 2001 and would have loved to find Anne. But she buried herself well. I’m guessing— and this is just my gut talking—that she had lost interest even before Kurt was pinched. She chose to go inactive because she never really believed in the cause. A lot of radicals do that, especially when the heat is on. And with Hoppy as a potential sugar daddy she might have renewed her dream of being a florist or becoming the perfect
hausfrau
.”
“Question: why, then, did she use her real name on the power-of-attorney?”
“Solly’s activities would have had no legal authority otherwise,” Grant said. “Hoppy probably told her what he did, whenever he wrote that will, and she would have known what she’d need to do. She just never expected a document from Nashville to end up in the hands of the BPOL. And even if it did, there’s no address other than Solly’s—”
“Of course!” I gasped. I had been chewing on something he’d said a minute before.
“What?”
“A new identity. New papers. A new passport.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The money!” I said. “Hoppy needing it, cheating people to get it. That time period—it’s about when he started rolling the older women.”
“Shit. Good one. I think I love you.”
“Don’t joke,” I warned.
“I wasn’t. You know I have a sucky sense of humor.”
That was true, but I didn’t want to lose my groove by sprouting wings and flying off into relationship fairy land.
“If he knew she went underground, he would have had to know about her past,” Grant said. “That would have left him open to arrest and extradition. Did Hoppy have that kind of courage, even for love?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t know about
that
past.”
“You lost me.”
“She was underage when they met. They had an affair, a relationship, something that was more than a fling. You know what I would have told my lover under those circumstances?”
“Do I want to know?” Grant said.
Whoa! Grant was hittin’ that stuff hard today.
I told myself it didn’t mean anything. He was just turned on by the Nick-and-Nora-ing. “I would have said, ‘Herr Hoppy, mein papa found out about us and wants to kill you and put me in a convent. I have to get away from him.”
“But she was in her mid-twenties when she changed her name. Why would she have waited nine or ten years to run away?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. That
was
a problem with my whole scenario. Regroup, brain: what do you know for sure? Hoppy met and fell in love with an underage girl when he was in Germany, at a time when he thought he still had a fortune. He came home to start the chocolate shop to stabilize his own finances. At some point, he reconnected with Anne Miller. Maybe that wasn’t until 2002. She expressed a desire to come to the U.S. but had a problem. Her thinking: if I can get to the U.S., it’ll be easier to stay lost from the BPOL. Maybe she loved Hoppy, maybe she didn’t. He tries to help her with money—
“And connections,” I said.
“What did you say?”
“There’s something else that fits,” I told Grant. “Hoppy sucking up to local politicians. Maybe he was trying to convince them to get their counterparts in Congress to pull strings for him. Or set up face time for him.”
“Possible,” he said thoughtfully. “Damned possible. Constituent meetings are a matter of public record. I’ll check.”
The data flood was a lot more to process than anything we’d come across so far, as was the idea that Hoppy might actually have cared about one of his little chicks. It softened my regard for him just a little, and I couldn’t help but wonder why. Then it dawned on me: maybe Anne was his first. You’ve got a poor little rich kid, a stunted adolescent from all I could tell, falling in love with a girl who was his own mental age. He fell for Anne just like Poodle did for him. It didn’t take a shrink to see that Hoppy cutting a swath through the young ladies of Nashville was his attempt to recapture that lost feeling of love and acceptance.
Unlike John Russell, who was simply a goddamn perv.
But then I realized something else:
“You know,” I told Grant, “all of this might have nothing whatsoever to do with Hoppy’s death.”
“I was just thinking that,” Grant replied. “Well, I’m going to turn Solly over to the Feds and let them worry about him and Anne and the estate.”
“Can’t you just go over and bust down the door?”
“Afraid not. The FBI is the only law enforcement entity with the legal authority to execute claims against individuals by foreign police services on American soil.”
“That’s a mouthful of disclaimers,” I said. “Do we at least have gloating privileges?”
“We’ll see how that pans out. As far as we know, our obstructionist friend hasn’t done anything illegal.”
“No, he’s just representing the interests of a member of the Baader-Meinhof Group.”
“Former member.”
“Not in the minds of Nashvillians.”
“You’ve an evil bent,” Grant said playfully.
“Only when it comes to rat-bastards who tried to steal my property,” I said.
“Fair enough. But let’s stay focused. You’re right: this discovery may not tell us anything about who killed Hoppy, and it doesn’t seem to help at all with Lizzie Renoir. I’ve gotta tell you, though—you homered this one, Gwen.”
“Thanks. I’ll hold off on any victory laps until we’re done.”
He said he would call with any other breaking developments.
I hung up, savoring the little croutons of joy in that big, big salad. I did that because Grant’s attention was nice, Solly’s pain was a delight, and who knew when I’d have the chance again. This was the Louisiana Purchase of information, and it was going to take a lot of time and mental energy to wade through it. Plus, I had a Cozy Foxes meeting to check up on.
BOOK: One Foot In The Gravy
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