Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Around ten-thirty I called Opal. It was a choice between calling her and doing the paperwork I’d been asked to do. She was clearly the lesser of two evils.
“Did Denny come back?” I asked when she picked up.
“No. What have you done to find him?”
“Wait. Do you think you hired me?”
“Why would I hire you?”
“Why would I do anything if you haven’t hired me?”
“Because you’re a friend.”
“Am I a friend?”
“You call me for rides like I’m your friend.”
“I have a car.”
“For now.”
I heard a bell in the background and Opal said, “Good morning. Welcome to Pastiche.” She was working. Good. Maybe they’d buy something, and she’d have to hang up.
A moment later, she said to me, “Where were we?”
It took a great deal of self-control not to say ‘You were being a bitch.’ Instead, I said, “Okay, fine, I did talk to someone about how tweakers hook up. You might want to go to Craigslist, back to the last time you knew where Denny was, and check out who was looking for PNP. You could pretend to want to hook up and ask about Denny.”
“I can’t do that. I’m a girl.”
“They won’t know that.”
“They’ll ask for a picture.”
“Take a shirtless picture of Carl and send that.”
She got quiet, and I worried for a moment if I’d sent her into a sexual frenzy just thinking about a sexy photoshoot with Carl. Then she said, “If Denny’s still there with them doing… whatever, then they’re not going to respond.”
That was a good point. Meanwhile, her customer asked, “Is this the only color you have?” I imagined the woman was holding up a blouse or something.
“It is…” Opal said with a mix of regret and loathing. Then back to me, “Could you go talk to Ronnie Scheck for me?”
“Why can’t you go?”
“I’m not a customer of his. He’s not going to talk to me.”
“I’m not a customer of his anymore.”
The ensuing silence was damning and a tiny bit deserved.
“Fine. Okay, I’ll try to fit it in. It might take a day or two.”
“You can’t be that busy.”
“I happen to be investigating Bobbie LaCross’s murder.” Okay, that was an overstatement but at least close to the truth.
Then she said, “You don’t know? Patty Gauthier confessed this morning.”
“How do you know that?”
“My first two customers told me all about it.”
That prompted her current customer to say, “I heard that too. Apparently, she stabbed Bobbie thirty-six times.”
“Bobbie was strangled,” Opal and I said at the same time.
“Well, that’s just what I heard,” the customer said.
I said good-bye, though why I bothered I do not know.
Patty confessed? Why would she do that? Yes, they had issues.
But Patty had gotten rid of her. She no longer lived at Patty’s house.
She was just an annoying person she occasionally ran into.
That wasn’t a good reason to kill someone.
Not that there are good reasons to kill people, but some reasons are better than others and this was definitely not a better reason.
I was about to go downstairs and tell my grandmother she’d missed an opportunity to gossip, when my phone rang. It was Bernie Schaub, Jr.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard—” he began.
“I have.”
“Yes, well, I’m taking my aunt’s case and I’ll need an investigator. Can I hire you directly? What’s your hourly?”
That was a problem. For one, I didn’t know my hourly. I kept forgetting to ask. And for two, I worked for Hamlet. We never talked about this kind of situation, but it didn’t feel, well, ethical.
“You know, I should probably talk to Ham first.”
“Interesting. After everything I’ve heard about you, I thought you’d jump at the chance.”
“What have you heard about me?”
“That you’re a drug addict, very slutty and passably clever.”
“Well, you heard wrong. I’m passably slutty and very clever. Actually, I think I only had sex once last year.”
“Well, in Masons Bay once is enough to get you called a slut.”
I really needed to change the direction of this conversation. “I’m very happy to work for you. You should probably book me through Hamlet, though.”
“Oh, very well. I’ll call him later this afternoon. Consider yourself hired.”
“So, you don’t think your aunt did it?”
“I have no idea. She says she did so she probably did.”
“But she’s your aunt.”
“Oh, I lost all faith in humanity right after puberty.”
Honestly, he didn’t look like he’d finished puberty.
“So, I think Bobbie was killed at the Campbell compound and then thrown in front of Three Friends Winery. Do you think your aunt is strong enough to strangle a seventy-year-old woman and then carry her to a car, in the snow, and then dump her somewhere else?”
“I have no idea. The sheriff is going to have to prove that, isn’t he?”
And I figured that was where we’d start. When Jan arrived at noon, I ran out of the house and drove to the Municipal Center. It was a beautiful day. When the sky is a clear blue and the snow a sparkling white and the temperature in the high twenties, I can almost appreciate winter. Almost.
I was in the Metro, so I slid into a parking place and then went into the sheriff’s office. Bernie had asked me to meet him there so we could talk to his aunt together. On the way, I’d called Hamlet and explained Bernie’s offer.
He said, “Thank you for being ethical. And bringing in work. I think you’ve earned yourself a two dollar an hour increase.
“Which brings me to… how much?”
“Oh shit! I’ve got to go.”
I would have thought he was faking if it weren’t for the gunfire in the background.
Anyway, I reached the sheriff’s office before Bernie.
I stopped the moment I walked in. The office was basically a large, communal room with a lot of empty desks.
The room was ringed by offices and interview rooms. In my other visits it had been a deadly quiet place.
Today, though, it was noisy and chaotic.
Several of the deputies were there standing with Detective Lehmann, as they watched Patty Gauthier attempting to carry Lehmann’s wife Gloria around the room.
Gloria was a very attractive, petite blond who was likely around Bobbie’s weight.
Detective Lehmann had devised a way for Patty to prove her confession true.
Gloria lay over Patty’s shoulders in what looked like a fireman’s carry.
“Honey, relax, you’re a corpse,” Detective Lehman said from the sidelines.
“I’m trying.”
Patty was struggling a bit, but she was managing it.
“Really, Rudy, I could have written you an equation that would have proven whether this was physically possible or not,” Gloria said. She taught algebra.
And then, Bernie Schaub, Jr. was behind me saying, “Oh no, no, no, no-no-no.”
“I’m just verifying Patty’s confession,” Detective Lehmann said.
“Bernie, you don’t need to be here,” Patty said as she put Gloria down. She wiped some sweat off her forehead. “I’ve confessed. I don’t need an attorney.”
“Aunt Patty, that’s when you need an attorney the most.” He looked at Detective Lehmann and said, “Manslaughter.”
“She’s already confessed that she went to Bobbie’s home with the intention of killing her.”
Bernie looked at his aunt, and said, “You really should have talked to me first.”
“I just wanted to get it over with.”
Detective Lehmann said, “Why don’t you and your client go into an interview room. We’ll get a search warrant for her home… Unless you’d like to give us permission?”
“Yes, go ahead,” Patty said.
“Uh-no… get a warrant.”
“We’ll get a warrant.”
Then we went into the interview room. Bernie nodded in my direction, indicating that I should join them. Once in the room, there were only two chairs, so I leaned up against the wall. I was, of course, the least important person there.
“I just can’t believe this. Aunt Patty, how could you do something this horrible?”
“Well, Bobbie took advantage of me for a very long time and I just reached—”
“No, I don’t mean murder. I mean, how could you confess? You must have some idea how inept the sheriff’s office is. They’d never have figured out the killer was you. What possessed you?”
“Well… actually, it was you…” She was looking right at me.
“Me? What did I do?”
“You were asking all those questions at trivia night. I just had the feeling you’d figure it out eventually. So, I confessed.”
Bernie glared at me for a moment. I thought he might fire me on the spot. He turned back to his aunt, and said, “Tell us everything that happened the night of the murder.”
“Well, I knew Patty went to Main Street Café most nights. I waited until around two, two-thirty in the morning, and then I drove over to the Campbell compound. I turned off my lights a couple houses away. Left my car out on the road and walked up the driveway.”
“Was Patty’s car there?” I asked. I knew it hadn’t been so if she said…
“No, it wasn’t there.”
“But you thought Patty would be?”
“When she lived with me, I’d have to drive her into Masons Bay to get her car in the mornings. I knew what she was like.” She took a deep breath and continued. “I walked up the driveway to the RV she was living in, I opened the door and went in—”
Shaking my head, I said, “The door was unlocked. Oh my god, when are people up here going to learn?”
Ignoring me, Bernie asked, “You’re in the trailer. What happened?”
“I strangled her.”
“While she was laying down? Did she get up? Was she asleep?” Bernie shot questions at her.
“Stop, please.” Patty steadied herself. “Bobbie was drunk… and she may have taken something. She did that, a lot when she lived with me. She’d mix alcohol and OxyContin. She didn’t wake up. While I was strangling her, she didn’t wake up.”
“Could she have been dead already?” Bernie asked. I was glad he asked that and not me. The whole thing was making me uncomfortable.
“I don’t know. It’s possible. I didn’t check to see if she was alive before I killed her.”
“Pity. It might have saved a lot of trouble.” Bernie frowned obviously unhappy with the whole thing. Then, “Never mind. The autopsy should tell us if she was already dead. And even if it doesn’t… Were you wearing gloves?”
“Yes. I didn’t bother to take them off.”
“Why didn’t you use a pillow?” I asked, trying to make myself useful.
Patty looked confused for a moment. Lehmann must not have asked her this. Then she said, “It’s an RV. Getting around was awkward. But I’m not sure I thought about it at the time.”
“And then you carried her to your car?” Bernie asked.
“I tried to carry her. And did, for a bit. I also dragged her part of the way.”
“And then?”
“I put her in my trunk. Drove to Three Friends. And then rolled her down the slope to the front door.”
Having been there later that morning, I had a very clear visual of Bobbie’s body, making me ask. “What about the parka? When did you put it onto her?”
“She was wearing it.”
“She was wearing the parka in bed?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent,” Bernie said.
“Why, why is that excellent?” I asked.
“She passed out before taking her coat off. It suggests she was heavily drugged. It supports the idea she was already dead.”
I thought that a bit of a stretch, but he might sell it to a jury. I tried to think back, did anything Melanie say contradict this? I didn’t think it did, but she was going to have to give a detailed statement to the police. I did have one question though…
“You told me Bobbie killed a man down in Detroit. I think you were lying.”
She sighed, heavily, and said, “That has nothing to do with this.”
Which convinced me it did.