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Authors: Delia Rosen

One Foot In The Gravy (22 page)

BOOK: One Foot In The Gravy
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Chapter 28
We took separate cars, not because it made logistic sense—we had to pass Lizzie’s on the way back to town—but because I didn’t want to be with Grant any more than I had to.
It made a sick, sad sort of sense, I thought as I drove.
I want him, I don’t want him. He’s being too familiar and personal, he’s being too disinterested and professional. I had to blame my delicate gyroscope on the ex. I wanted a man, a good man, to be around me, but I didn’t want him to be too close. Or stay close. Or be in the same zip code. I don’t know. Phil failed at the first and corrupted the second with his presence. I was a victim of need versus fight-or-flight.
Or I was being a
kvetch
. Maybe my mixed signals were destabilizing
his
gyro.
Fortunately, there wasn’t time to contemplate any of this; the ride to Confederate Hill was a short one. I parked in front of Gary Gold’s house and was at the door before Grant arrived. He got there as I rang the bell.
There was no answer. But I would have bet dollars to Hamantashen he was home. Gary felt safe there. It was probably the only place the poor kid—and possible multiple killer—felt safe.
I knocked. “Gary, it’s Gwen Katz. I need to talk to you.”
“Go away!” he wailed.
“He did this last time,” I said to Grant.
“What last time?”
“Someone close to him died,” I said. “He cocooned.”
“What’s going on?” Grant asked quietly. “Do you think this man is our killer?”
“It’s possible,” I said.
“You’d better stand aside.”
“If he’s our man, I don’t think you have to worry about him shooting,” I said. “Otherwise, we would probably have two gunshot victims.”
Grant considered that, then leaned past me and hit the door several times with his fist. “Mr. Gold, it’s Grant Daniels of the Nashville PD. Please come to the door.”
“I don’t want to!”
“You don’t have to admit us,” he said. “But I do need to speak with you. If necessary, I will come back with a warrant for your arrest.”
“I know police procedurals!” he said defiantly. “You need cause to subpoena a person of interest—”
“Not when that individual has concealed the fact Hoppy Hopewell was his father and Lizzie Renoir was his nanny,” I said.
The silence from inside the house was thick as
latke
batter. Grant’s face was a black silhouette against the city-light glow in the nighttime sky, but I did not have to see it to know he was surprised by my certainty.
“So much for drawing him out,” Grant said. “While we’re out here, why don’t you just ask if he killed them?”
“He’ll come.”
“What makes you so sure.”
I knocked again. “Gary, I’m your friend, remember ? You’ve been to my house.”
“What, you’re backtracking now?”
I ignored Grant. He was being anal, didn’t like that I was treating his by-the-book like an e-edition, skipping here and there.
Tough nuggies,
as they used to say in my hood.
“I know about your mother, Anne,” I said. “Please, Gary. Let us in. No one’s going to hurt you, I promise.”
There was a shuffling sound on the other side of the door. I took some consolation in the fact that if it was followed by a shotgun blast, I wouldn’t be around to hear Grant’s told-you-so. A chain was slid from its track. A lock clicked. The squeaky door opened slowly on darkness. Framed within it was a wide man. The man-shape moved back into the shadows. Peripherally, I could see Grant looking him over for weapons—if not a gun, then a power tool or kitchen utensil.
“May I—we—come in?” I asked.
He just hovered there, like those pictures of the Hindenburg in Lakehurst.
“Is there a light?” I asked.
“Insuhtoor,”
he said. It took me a moment to pluck “Inside the door” from the slurred, unhappy words.
I snaked my arm around the jamb, found a pole lamp, switched it on. Gary recoiled like Dracula, his arms crossed in front of his face. He didn’t look like Dracula, however, in his white jockey shorts and a white terry-cloth bathrobe, the kind they have in hotel rooms. There were no bulges in the deep pockets.
I moved in. I couldn’t tell if it was just the sudden brightness that bothered him, or whether he was hiding eyes that were bloated from crying. I thought I saw moisture on his cheeks. Grant shut the door and moved to the right so that we formed the points of an equilateral triangle. He obviously didn’t want Gary to be able to watch us both. It was pure police and I have to admit it turned me on a little.
I know. A
kvetch
and
meshuge
.
I approached Gary with my hands out slightly, like I was dealing with a drunk at the deli.
“Let me look at you,” I said.
“No.”
“Gary, come on. I don’t want to talk to your sleeves.”
That did the trick. He dragged his arms across his eyes, then pulled at his hair for a moment before lowering them. His face was a mess. It wasn’t just tears, it was agony.
“Thank you,” I said. I was closing the gap.
“Nnnn,” he grunted.
I could see Grant moving more cautiously. He was keeping his distance like an orbiting satellite. “Gary, would you answer a few questions for me. About one of your books?”
That seemed to raise the tiniest spark in his eyes. “My books?”
“Yes.
Carl Is Afraid of the Closet.
”
“All right,” he said.
“Great. First, I assume the main character was named after your mother’s older brother, Karl?”
He hesitated as if considering whether this were a trick question. Then he nodded.
“And your other book—”
“Novel,” he said, finding his emotional footing. “It’s a young adult
novel,
not a book. A telephone book is also a book.”
This was what I wanted: to get him somewhere closer to lucid than
Insuhtoo
and
Nnnn
. “So sorry. You’re right,” I said. “The other novel—who is Wagner?”
“A 19th-century German composer,” he replied.
“Of course,” I said. “When your first novel was published, you had a book signing at Lolo’s.”
“Yes. It was in the newspapers.”
“I know. You must have been very happy. I saw a photo of you signing copies.”
“Twenty-nine of them,” he said.
“Good number. Do you remember signing a copy for Lizzie?”
The name rocked him back a little.
“Gary, don’t go away from me—this is important.”
He started to raise his arms, seemed to fight the urge to rake his face, then dropped them.
“She’s in the photograph,” I said.
“I signed it with just my name,” he said. “Later, I went to her home and added an inscription.”
“What did it say?”
I noticed Grant looking around. He had picked up on the fact that Gold’s books were missing from her bookshelf.
“It said, ‘To Lizzie,’ and then I added with the same pen, ‘Who saved my life.’”
Gary started to cry. He stood there heaving like a big baby. I don’t mean that as a judgment; he literally looked like a big, swaddled infant.
“Tell me about her,” I said. “What did she do for you?”
Through the awful, heartbroken sobs he said, “My father . . . found out . . . about my mother.”
“Found out what? That she was pregnant?”
“That . . . of course. But then . . . about . . . the group.”
“Baader-Meinhof,” I said. “The Red Army Faction.”
Gary nodded. The weeping waned; he was tapped out. He looked around and Grant’s hand went for his lapel; the detective relaxed when Gray reached for the arm of his tattered old couch and fell onto the seat. I circled to the other side and sat slowly with an extra Gary of space between us.
“Go on,” I said. “Tell me about Lizzie and your dad.”
“My father . . . Lizzie only knew him from the time he engaged her . . . to care for me,” he said.
“Was that in Canada?”
“Yes. My mother was pregnant. She called and told him about that, then told him everything about her connection with the terrorists. She wanted him to take her baby—me—out of the country. She was afraid the police were looking for her, that maybe they knew about my dad, so he found and engaged Lizzie to go and get me.”
“Why Lizzie?”
“He figured I’d have an easier time getting into Canada than the U.S.,” Gary said. “Even though I had a passport with a different name, customs officials were scrutinizing every first-timer who came from Germany.”
“Even babies?”
“Of course,” he said. “What better hostage to get a terrorist mom to surrender?”
Good point,
I thought. “How did he get the passport ?”
Gary smiled. “Dad was pretty resourceful. He had scored a connection to the State Department through a connection in government. Cash in a brown paper bag put him in touch with something called the Dead Passport Office—the graveyard where our old passports go when we renew. He bought one that belonged to a baby—”
“But what if the real person—”
“Showed up? It would be a miracle. Gary Gold was dead. Long live Gary Gold.”
It was pretty clever, I had to admit. A victimless crime that would be a lot tougher to get away with in the post-9/11 world.
“So you came here,” I said.
Gary nodded.
“You didn’t live with your father, did you?”
“No. When he found out about the RAF, he was afraid he was on some kind of watch list. He set me and Lizzie up in this house. He came by when he could, at night.”
“Did you go to school?”
“She tutored me,” he said. “She had a teaching degree in Canada.”
“How was that?”
He smiled warmly. “She was a hard teacher, but she taught me a lot about words and books and life.”
“And—your mother?” I asked. I hated to jerk him from here to there, but I wanted to get him while he was lucid.
“I have not seen her since the day she bore me,” he said. “I couldn’t exactly renew my passport and Dad didn’t have enough money for another.”
“Do you know he left her the chocolate shop?”
“I do,” Gary said. “He always thought—no, he hoped that with the right encouragement and the passage of time, she might risk coming to America. I understand, from my father’s attorney, that that time is not now.”
He was fighting tears again. I was fascinated by the story, but at the same time I was increasingly concerned. I could tell, by his expression, that Grant felt the same. Either this young man was severely unstable and had off’d those close to him for reasons as yet unfathomed, or we did not have our killer. I had to start directing the conversation.
“Gary, would you mind sharing something else? How did you feel about your father?”
His smile collected tears in the corner, then respilled them. It was not the smile of a murderer.
“I loved him,” he said. “Hoppy Hopewell was a good, good father.”
“How so?”
“For one thing, he published my books.”
Big, damn duh,
I thought. P.O. box for an address and paid for by the cashing-in of his insurance—whence “Policy” Press.
“For another, he paid for this house and put me in touch with his friends, like Lolo, who needed writers. He was always looking out for me.”
Gary broke down again and put his face in both hands.
“I . . . miss . . . him . . .” he cried. “That’s why . . . I . . . couldn’t . . . come to . . . the door . . . that day. . . .”
“I understand,” I said, moving closer.
I saw Grant shake his head, but I backed him off with a frown. I laid a hand on Gary’s elbow and, like an octopus, he threw his arms around me and hugged me close and bawled into my shoulder. Grant started toward us to rescue me; I shook my head and shifted my eyes back and forth, telling him I was okay and to search the damn house. Grant gave me a look, but I made an exasperated face that I hoped said, “I know it’s not admissible but search anyway,” and he did. He came back about two minutes later and shook his head. By that time, Gary’s hysterics had subsided again. I eased away from him.
“Would you like some water?” I asked.
“Why . . . does everyone think . . . upset people need water?” he asked.
“Maybe because you just cried me a river?” I smiled.
He considered that. “Okay. Thank you.”
I went to get it while Grant kept an eye on him. I looked around as I filled a glass at the sink. The place wasn’t the dump I’d imagined on my first visit. It was neat, with photographs of a young Hoppy, Anne, and what I assumed to be other family members on the wall. I got a little choked up myself when I saw a tiny black bow tied to a wall frame of what looked like a pretty recent photo of Hoppy at the store. I couldn’t forget that he had a sordid side and had preyed on young women. But that had no coin here. As far as Gary was concerned, Hoppy Hopewell and Lizzie Renoir were saints.
BOOK: One Foot In The Gravy
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