His voice was sleepy. Nasal. “In the flesh, madam.”
Gabriella in her ignorance had said he talked like an old hippie. Actually, it was more of a fifties’ hipster voice, sculptured more by black coffee and nicotine than funny mushrooms and Pepsi-Cola. “I hope you don’t mind me dropping by,” I said, before realizing I hadn’t introduced myself yet. “I’m Maddy Sprowls, by the way.”
He’d heard of me. “Oh yes-the buttinsky responsible for my current conundrum.”
I advanced to the bottom of the stairway. “I am somewhat responsible,” I admitted.
He flicked a caterpillar of ashes into his cup. “And I am resoundedly irresponsible,” he said.
It took me a few seconds to translate his particular brand of English. Even then I wasn’t 100 percent sure of what he meant. I eased myself onto the first step. “For Violeta Bell’s murder, you mean?”
“Is there somebody else I didn’t kill?”
Had I actually planned on confronting Eddie that afternoon, I would have been prepared for his hostility. But I hadn’t, and I wasn’t. I found myself stammering like a little girl who’d just been caught drawing on the wall with her mother’s bright red lipstick. I moved up another step. “No, no. Of course not, no. And there are people who don’t think you killed Ms. Bell, either.”
He flipped his spent cigarette in my direction. “Including the diminutive apparition sneaking up my backstairs?”
Before I could answer, the screen door to his apartment banged open. A woman came out. She was fiftyish. Impeccably and expensively dressed in white slacks, a melon crepe tee and designer flip-flops. She, too, was wearing a baseball cap, a bright pink one. A perky blond ponytail stuck out the back. She just had to be the owner of the silver Volvo. “Are you Jeannie?” I asked.
She pressed her palms on the railing and leaned out. Even from down there I could see her jaw muscles tighten. “I’m Mrs. Salapardi,” she said. “Can I help you?”
Eddie filled her in before I could open my mouth. “That, sis, is Bob Averill’s ace in the hole.”
That changed everything. Suddenly Jeannie was smiling like Glinda the Good Witch, beckoning me to come up with both hands. “Maddy, I’ve been dying to meet you.” She said when I reached the top. “Just dying.”
“Bob told you about me, did he?”
Eddie remained perched on the railing. Jeannie warmly shook my hand with both of hers. “He sure did,” she cooed.
I could tell by the twitches at the tips of her phony baloney smile that he hadn’t mentioned how frumpily unimpressive I was. The only way to counter her correct impression of me-and hide the fact that after two weeks of snooping I hadn’t learned a damn thing that would prove her brother’s innocence-was to get right to business. “So Mr. French, is that old bread truck down there the vehicle you allegedly used to haul those antiques from Violeta Bell’s condominium?”
Eddie splayed his hand across his heart. He pushed an opened pack of Newports to the top of his shirt pocket. He bowed his head low and pulled out a cigarette with his lips. A very cool move. “So say the gendarmes.”
“You do own it, then?”
He struck a stick match on his fingernail and lit his cigarette. Filled his lungs with smoke. Suppressed a cough. “No one owns it that I know. It sort of belongs to the neighborhood. Anybody needs a short haul, there it is. Keys in the ashtray. Hopefully enough liquefied brontosaurus in the tank to get you there and back.”
Knowing Meriwether Square as I did, I knew he could very well be telling the truth. “What about the license plates?”
Smoke rolled out of his nostrils. “That is the metaphysical part of the mystery. New stickers appear every April like tulips through the cold, cold earth.”
I knew he could be telling the truth about that, too. “Exactly where did the police find that blood?”
Eddie pointed to a faint chalk circle on the floor of the deck, about a foot from the welcome mat. I kneeled next to it. Inside the circle was a dark brown blotch. When I got my nose close enough, I could see the faint zigzag of tennis shoe treads. I looked over at Eddie’s feet. He was wearing a spotless pair of white Nikes.
Eddie clicked his toes together. “Brand f-ing new they are,” he said, in an exaggerated British accent. “The bobbies in their ‘aste confiscated all me bloody footwear, they did.”
“And was there actually blood on one of your shoes?” I asked.
“I’m sure you can find all kinds of stuff on anybody’s shoes,” Eddie said. “Life being the untidy juggernaut it is.”
“So, there was blood?”
“So sayeth the men in blue,” said Eddie. “But I sternly cautioned them not to jump to conclusions. That if indeed it proved to be blood, then there was a high probability that said blood did not dribble from the veins or arteries of a bipedal primate.”
I was pretty sure I was following him. “Not human?”
“Eddie’s got a cat,” Jeannie explained.
He corrected her. “It ain’t my cat. Sort of a neighborhood cat. I put out a can of tuna every once in a while. And the grateful beast rewards me with a variety of headless beasts. Rats. Mice. Moles. Rabbits. Right here at my door.”
I studied the stain again. “That’s animal blood, then?”
“I’d be surprised otherwise,” Eddie said.
“Why don’t we go inside and talk,” Jeannie said.
The living room in Eddie’s apartment was exactly what you’d expect. Hot. Stuffy. Darkened by cheap, half-pulled shades. There was a plaid sofa decorated with an Indian blanket. A rocking chair stacked with newspapers. A bookcase crammed full of paperbacks. A sisal rug long overdue for the city’s landfill.
Jeannie offered me the rocker. Eddie dutifully removed the newspapers. They sat on the sofa. He with his cigarette and coffee cup. She with her twitching smile. “Bob seems pretty confident you can find the murderer,” Jeannie said.
“For all I know the murderer is sitting across from me, polluting my lungs with second-hand smoke,” I said, rocking back and forth.
Jeannie was stunned. Her voice jumped two octaves. “I thought you were on board with Eddie’s innocence?”
Eddie was merely amused. The result, I suppose, of being interrogated by the police a time or two. “Chill, darlin’,” he said, patting his sister’s knee. “She’s good-cop-bad-copping me, that’s all. Playing both parts with aplomb.”
With no idea what I should say, or should not say, I blundered straight ahead. “Everybody knows about your gun phobia,” I said. “So there’s no need to get into that. And it’s pretty clear your alibi for the night of the murder isn’t worth a hill of beans. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been arrested.”
Jeannie immediately protested. “He was only arrested for the antiques.”
“Antiques from the condo of a dead woman,” I barked. “Your brother has got to take this thing seriously. We may be only a few days from a murder charge here.”
The guilt of blowing smoke in my face finally got to Eddie, apparently. He smashed his cigarette into the cup. He told me what presumably he’d told the police. “Those antiques were gifts. She gave them to me approximately two weeks before her unfortunate demise. Perhaps the reason no one saw me load them into that truck I don’t own is because it was late at night. The reason it was late at night is because the economic realities of my hardscrabble, law-abiding life force me to work from early morning to long after more affluent people are asleep. Hannawa ain’t exactly New York cab-driving-wise.” He sniffed the smoke wafting from his coffee cup. “The long and short of it is that I did not kill the lady and I did not steal her precious shit.”
I told him that I’d seen the police department’s list of the antiques they found in his apartment. “Why would she give you all those expensive things?”
“She knew how excruciatingly dire my financial situation was.”
“So she knew you’d sell them.”
“I imagine so.”
I studied his body language. I couldn’t tell if he was lying or having a nicotine fit. “Given your police record, it’s easy to believe that you might know how to sell those fireplaces and things if they were stolen,” I said. “But would you know who to sell them to if they weren’t?”