“Well, it’s too bad the prince didn’t lick the envelope,” I said. I reached back into my purse. I pulled out a Ziploc sandwich bag. “Of course he did lick this teaspoon. Can you get DNA off that?”
Grant took the bag. Held it in front of his face. “You’d think it would be impossible. Slick surface and all. But sometimes you can.”
I pulled out another bag. “Surely you can get some from this.” It was one of the prince’s smoking pipes. “There’s enough stinky old spit in the stem to gag a buzzard.”
Grant was a much happier man now. “I suppose the prince just didn’t give these things to you.”
“I realize you probably can’t use any evidence from them in court,” I said. “But if you can have the DNA checked-well, we’d at least know if I was on the right track, wouldn’t we?”
The president had finished speaking. The crowd was going insane. The Marching Bear Cat Band was blasting the theme from Rocky. “That we would,” Grant bellowed. “That we would.”
The president waved good-bye to the crowd. Started moving up the steps toward us, fervently shaking hands with all the local pols and their well-scrubbed families. Before I could get out of the way, the president was eyeball-to-eyeball with me, smiling like I was a favorite sister. “So good to see you,” the president said to me.
I don’t have much patience with politicians. No matter how high an office they hold. But I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed the president’s hand. “And good to see you-Madam President.”
By the time I got back to the paper I was shaking like a maraca. I’d just met the president of the United States. I’d been hassled by Secret Service agents. Been serenaded at close range by a marching band. I got off the elevator and headed straight for the women’s room.
Eric stopped me in the hallway. I was trying not to look like I needed to get there in a hurry but he’d worked with me long enough to know I did. “I’m done checking into that bread truck business,” he said.
With everything that had happened in the last two weeks, I’d forgotten all about that old Hausenfelter bread truck that Eddie French claimed no one owned. Of course, I wasn’t going to admit it. “And?”
Eric leaned against the wall to block my escape. He slowly opened his notebook and studied his notes. “Let’s see now-Hausenfelter Bread Company maintains a fleet of thirty delivery trucks. It routinely replaces five every year. The old ones are sold to a used truck dealer on Cleveland Road. W.E. Richfield amp; Sons.”
“Did you call them?”
His deadpan face told me he was enjoying my discomfort. “Of course I called them, Maddy. I’m an enterprising young man. A self-starter extraordinaire. Not to mention a multi-tasker of the highest order.”
“What you are is an idiot,” I snarled. “Just tell me what you’ve got before I explode.”
He dragged out a long, long, “ Wellllllllllll -if the good ole boys at Richfield amp; Sons don’t sell the trucks in a year they put them in the crusher and sell the metal for scrap.”
“So obviously someone bought that old truck Eddie drives,” I said.
“Obviously. But they wouldn’t give me any names. Company policy.”
I tried to step around him. “Check the title bureau.”
He moved to the middle of the hallway, blocking me again. “Already have. But there’s no record of Eddie French ever buying a truck from the Richfields or anywhere else.”
Another thirty seconds of this torture and I’d be dancing like James before his morning walks. “So we have no idea who owns that truck in his backyard?”
His straight face was beginning to warp. “We don’t know for sure about that particular truck. But somebody interesting did buy a used Hausenfelter truck from Richfield amp; Sons eleven years ago.”
I crossed my fingers that it wouldn’t be Kay Hausenfelter. I liked her too much for her to be the murderer. “Who bought the bread truck, Eric?”
“Jeanette Salapardi.”
“No!”
“She also buys the license plate stickers every year.”
“No!”
18
Wednesday, August 16
I wasn’t exactly having the easiest of weeks. Oh, don’t worry. I was still keeping to my in-at-nine-out-by-five work schedule. And I was still taking my good old time getting back from lunch. But a multiplicity of intertwining troubles, all of my own making, were beginning to take their toll on my already shaky disposition.
First of all, I was still getting grief about my run-in with the Secret Service. The paper had actually reported it as part of their coverage of the president’s visit. It was a little story on an inside page-SECRET SERVICE STOPS HERALD-UNION STAFFER-but everyone saw it. Everyone in the newsroom saw it. Everyone on my street saw it. All the clerks at the supermarket saw it. That rightwing nut on the radio, Charlie Chimera, saw it. Even the clucks at TV23 saw it. I was the laughing stock of Hannawa, Ohio.
Managing Editor Alec Tinker, to his credit, did have the good sense to warn me of his decision to run the story. “If anyone else in our circulation area had been held by the Secret Service we would have published it,” he said.
“But it was just a stupid misunderstanding,” I argued. “They let me go right away.”
“We have to demonstrate that we’re a part of the community,” Tinker said. “Not above it.”
The other thing churning away at my insides was that damn DNA sample. Detective Grant had warned me that the results probably wouldn’t be back from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification for a week. “It might even take longer if things get backed up over there,” he cautioned.
I growled at him like a bear that hadn’t eaten all winter. “Can’t you tell them it’s important?”
“Oh, we will,” he said. “And so will every other police department in the state about their samples. Everybody wants it yesterday. So my advice, Maddy my dear, is to take a chill pill and wait for the test tube elves at BCI to do their magic.”
On top of those two things, Bob Averill was continuing to pester me about Eddie, and Ike was continuing to pester me about my tonsils. So I couldn’t get away from the morgue fast enough that noon.
I pulled into Speckley’s ten minutes late. I hurried inside and scanned the crowded booths. Kay Hausenfelter was already there, studying the menu while everyone else was studying her.
Kay was actually dressed somewhat conservatively for our lunch-for Kay that is. She’d squeezed her ample top into a pink scoop-neck jersey and hidden her equally plentiful bottom under a red peasant skirt. Her hoop earrings were big enough for a gymnast to perform on. The straps on her sandals were trimmed with glass diamonds. Her fingernails matched the jersey. Her toenails matched the skirt.
I apologized for being late and recommended the house specialty to her, the meatloaf sandwich, au gratin potatoes on the side. She wrinkled her nose and asked me if the Cobb salad was edible. “I’ve never had it,” I said. “But if it’s on the menu it’s probably good.”
We engaged in the usual Ohio small talk until our lunches came. How hot the summer has been. How the fall is our favorite time of the year. How winter’s always a bitch.
It was Kay who finally got the ball rolling. “I suppose you invited me to lunch to talk about something more than the weather.”
I folded my hands and got as comfortable as I could. “I thought maybe we could talk about sex.”
Kay Hausenfelter forked a slice of avocado and snipped off the end with her perfect whiter-than-white teeth. “My favorite subject,” she said.
I took a bite of my meatloaf. “I don’t want you to think I’m talking to you about this because-”
She could see I was having trouble finishing the sentence. She laughed. Devoured the rest of the avocado. “Because I dress like a hootchie?”
“Because I figured you’d be more comfortable with the subject than Ariel or Gloria.”