Chapter Forty-Eight
Forty-eight
At nine-forty-five p.m., Rita Fiore called.
She told us that Melanie Joan had been fully processed and was now at the Hartford Correctional Facility, with the bail hearing to take place tomorrow at eleven a.m. Charles had already been released on his own recognizance.
“She changed her mind about you guys coming to the hearing,” Rita said.
“She’d like to have Spike there. And maybe Tony. ”
“Not me?” I said.
“She wants you free so you can catch the real killer,” Rita said. “Not that you should feel pressured or anything.”
“Actually, Rita,” I said, “I think I’m getting close.
” I told her everything that had happened since this morning, with Tony, Spike, and Blake filling in most of the details I forgot to mention.
I still felt like we were leaving things out, but at least she got the gist. When I got to the part about a teenage Teddy Piro robbing the house of Melanie Joan’s late publisher, she said, “No fucking way.” And I replied, “Everything’s connected. I just need to figure out why.”
“If you can figure it out before jury selection, I’ll buy you a bottle of scotch.”
“Macallan 18?”
“Macallan 12.”
“Good enough. I’m on it.”
We decided that while Spike went to Melanie Joan’s bail hearing, I would try to figure out the link between Teddy Piro, Leila Donnelly, and the Scepters—if there was one.
Meanwhile, Tony would put some feelers out with the press, pitching a story about how sexism and ageism had fueled this rush to judgment and how certain members of the Connecticut State Police were unwilling to consider any other suspects besides Melanie Joan.
By the time we were done talking, I felt like we had something that may have felt like a plan.
“Sunny, can I ask you something?” Rita said, just before we ended the call.
“Sure.” I braced myself.
“Would you be amenable to my hiring you sometime?”
My eyebrows went up. I wasn’t sure what question I’d been expecting from Jesse Stone’s girlfriend, but it hadn’t been that one.
“I often need a PI,” she said. “And you are really, really good.”
“Thanks, Rita,” I said. “Blake makes me look a lot better than I am.”
Blake beamed at me.
“Duly noted,” she said.
“I’d be honored if you hired me,” I said. “But maybe not for Desmond’s hit man.”
“Alleged hit man,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “I can only handle so many conflicts of interest.”
She laughed. “You got it,” she said. We ended the call.
Blake forwarded all his information to my email address before closing his laptop and returning it to his satchel. Everybody started collecting their things and leaving my place, wishing one another luck tomorrow and talking about what a big day it was going to be.
The whole time, I kept thinking about how strange this case had been—how a one-star review had somehow resulted in Melanie Joan Hall getting arrested for murder, and in my becoming friends with both Rita Fiore and Tony Gault.
You wake up in the morning, and from that point on, there are no rules, no guarantees.
You can’t predict a damn thing that’s going to happen to you.
I tried to remember who had said that to me.
And then I did. Felix Burke. Desmond’s brother.
A murderer. My kindred spirit. Felix had been dead going on five years. I missed him every day.
Spike was the last to leave. On his way out, he stopped and turned to me. “What was that you told Rita about only being able to handle so many conflicts of interest?”
“I know,” I said. “I lied. I live for conflicts of interest.”
“Me, too. They’re like potato chips. You can never have just one.”
I laughed. We hugged goodbye. I hoped I’d never spend a single day in a world that didn’t have Spike in it.
Once I was alone, I stood in my apartment for a few moments, enjoying the silence and the safety, which, like everything else in life, were temporary and only relative.
I walked back to the kitchen table and picked up my phone, clicked on my email icon.
I looked at the information Blake had found and forwarded to me, thinking of all the paths that had crossed to get us to this point—Blake’s and mine, mine and Melanie Joan’s, Melanie Joan’s and Leila Donnelly’s, Leila Donnelly’s and Teddy Piro’s, Teddy Piro’s and Gloria Scepter’s.
I glanced at the clock on my phone’s screen.
Was ten p.m. too late to call a ninety-two-year-old man?
I went back to my home page. The top news story glared out at me: “At this point, I don’t know what she’s capable of”: Melanie Joan Hall’s longtime editor reveals the “year from hell” that led to her unraveling.
That answered the question. No, it was not too late. Nothing was too late when it came to Melanie Joan, because she was getting massacred so relentlessly, by people she’d thought were her friends. First I went to my contacts and blocked Evan Woodrow. Then I called Edward Piro’s landline.